James Fallows has an Excellent column: Your False-Equivalence Guide to the Days Ahead that exposes some of the "fair and balanced" reporting you can expect in the coming days.
As a matter of journalism, any story that presents the disagreements as a "standoff," a "showdown," a "failure of leadership," a sign of "partisan gridlock," or any of the other usual terms for political disagreement, represents a failure of journalism*** and an inability to see or describe what is going on.
More below the fold. This is a short, but spot on column that you should read.
As a matter of substance, constant-shutdown, permanent-emergency governance is so destructive that no other serious country engages in or could tolerate it.
The Oligarch created Tea Party monster has already done enormous damage to our country and is on a path to make the U.S. a 3rd world country.
As a matter of politics, this is different from anything we learned about in classrooms or expected until the past few years.
Bingo! But I would argue that this all started in 1980 when Ronald Reagan and a group of Libertarian Republicans took control of the government and started dismantling the middle class. We've been steadily going down hill, but we really went over the cliff with the Tea Party nutcase victory of 2010, which also gave the constitutional delusionalists on the Robert's Supreme Court, to openly sell our political system to the Oligarchs.
In case the point is not clear yet: there is no post-Civil War precedent for what the House GOP is doing now. It is radical, and dangerous for the economy and our process of government, and its departure from past political disagreements can't be buffed away or ignored.
Are there other media columnists and news organization who will finally stand up and tell the truth? Mr. Fallows is not expressing an "opinion". He has accurately described the politics of a radical group in control in Washington, and has shown that this is truly unprecedented since the Civil War, and that it is one of the biggest threats our country has faced in it's history. The democratic processes of give and take, compromise, and majority rule, that our founding fathers believed was the basis for a self-governance is at risk.
My hat is off to Mr. Fallows for this important column at this dangerous time.