I try to monitor C-SPAN's morning call-in show Washington Journal when I get a chance just to see what viewers of that network and the public are saying about the topics of the day and this one jumped out at me this morning as being from someone who's been watching too much Fox News or for that matter possibly a lot of the rest of our corporate media with the right wing talking points this woman rattled off when weighing in on this debt ceiling kabuki theater.
How someone comes off thinking that President Obama sounds like a partisan when he has, to the dismay of liberals, bent over backwards to make concessions to Republicans, or says he's playing the "class warfare card" is beyond me, but obviously this person has no idea what "class warfare" even means, or that they're probably losing that war.
She also was informed enough to realize that there was a deficit commission put together that went nowhere and in her defense, the one thing she said here that I agreed with completely is that doing that again may very well be a colossal waste of time, but then she lost me with saying she really didn't understand this whole concept of the debt ceiling at all, and even though she admitted she was clueless on what they're debating about, claimed the whole thing is just some scare tactic by both sides.
It goes without saying that since she does not understand what the debt ceiling is and thought it was about future spending, she obviously has no clue that this is about approving raising the debt ceiling for spending that the Congress has already approved, and not what they might spend in the future. It also seems pretty obvious she did not listen to the president's speech at all this week or she would already know that.
It pains me to hear just how misinformed our citizens are in the United States and this is just one example coming from someone who actually knows just enough to know that a deficit commission existed but not a whole lot else on the specifics of what's going on in this debate. This is your brain on Fox or after hearing too much right wing propaganda from somewhere else. There is class warfare going on. Unfortunately too many people don't even understand what that means or who is waging it.
Rough transcript below the fold.
BRAWNER: Martha, a Republican in Kalamazoo, Michigan.
MARTHA: Hi, I watched the debate last night and I was kind of hoping to hear something from Obama that would encourage the discussion. Instead it felt like it was very partisan. And I felt that he really played the class warfare card. I was expecting something a little more presidential that would help the debate. Instead, I left feeling very... I don't know, upset with the country, for both Republicans and Democrats because I felt Obama really lacked the leadership.
BRAWNER: So, Martha, on this issue of the two proposals put up by House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, one thing they have in common is this idea of a super committee, that they would put together a bipartisan panel of lawmakers to recommend further cuts than the House and the Senate would have to vote up or down on.
What do you make of that and to your point about leadership, do you think that that's something that the two sides, the two parties should get behind?
MARTHA: Well, I thought there was a similar committee that was meeting a year ago that came up with the way to reduce the deficit. Am I incorrect on that?
BRAWNER: Yeah, the bipartisan deficit commission that the president put together.
MARTHA: But nothing really came of that. I don't understand why that did not go forward and why that doesn't work. Yeah, I agree. I mean, we have to go back to a time when people would just talk and communicate and compromise.
I totally agree with the Republicans that we cannot continue to spend. I don't understand the whole debt limit thing. It seems like there's a lot of scare tactics going on here, probably on both sides. But I don't understand this scare tactic game that everyone is falling for.
But what bothers me most is seeing the class warfare and seeing one group of citizens against another and playing one as the bad guy and one as the good guy.
There are no bad guys or good guys. Everybody cares about the United States. Why can't they just come to some way of working together?
Karoli adds:
After I read this post I started looking through my DVR recordings for some of the talking points Heather mentioned. This was today's meme o' the day from Fox & Friends. Point 1: President Obama's speech was all partisan. Point 2: It was a campaign speech, not a leadership speech. Point 3: He used the term "balanced approach" SEVEN times. SEVEN. Can you remember the number SEVEN, kids? If you can remember that he said that SEVEN times, you might forget everything else he said. Or what it is he said seven times.
These people probably employ CIA brainwashing operatives to write their copy. Heavy sigh.
