New York Times reporting goes over the cliff on fiscal debate.

 

 

 

 Though it might seem like a broken record, it still needs to be pointed out as often as necessary the colossal ineptitude and incomprehensible incompetence in the mainstream press and too often with the New York Times when it comes to reporting news that matters, or not reporting it, or if they do, inevitably getting it wrong.

The most recent example is a the front page lead story in the Times on how the Tea Party has been so weakened they are having no influence on the fiscal debate taking place in Washington.

Yes, the Tea Party has been signicantly diminished in the aftermath of their failures in the last election,  and they are well on their way to being neutered in terms of their influence in general elections. And there are those in the Republican party getting fed up with them in light of all they have cost the Republican party in loss of seats in the House and senate. .But as far as the Tea Party's influence right now on the fiscal debate is concerned, the Tea Party is the single biggest reason, in fact the  only reason Boehner's Plan B failed, they are the biggest obstancle to making a deal before Jan.1 and they are giving Boehner serious heartburn.

They are, right now, the biggess influence on the fiscal debate because it is Tea Party members of the House who are the obstacle to a deal, and what the Times reporter and editor missed was an article in The Hill where Tea Party Republican House members admitted  that it was threats of primary challenges from the Tea Party in 2014 that has kept them entrenched in their "no tax rate increase" stance on the deficit negotiations. The real story which the Times missed, is that only one month after being elected, Tea Party conservative Republicans are more concerned with their own re-election two years away then in doing what is best for the country. We know this for a fact because of the incomprehensible illogic of their position, saying they will not vote for anything that includes an increase in tax rates, even for millionaires, when their position is a vote for an increase in tax rates for everyone.

The Times assertion that the Tea Party is having no influence on the fiscal debate in Washington is the Times itself, their reporter and editor,  going over the cliff in its reporting.

In another time, when journalists actually had a backbone, these Tea Party conservatives would have been mocked by news organizations and, singled out and held in contempt for obstructing a deal on the deficit in putting their own political self interests ahead of the country. But to say they have had no influence on the debate is a journalist  more enthralled with his own disconnected musings or assumptions than reality. One more example of the current crop of journalists having the powers of observation of a drunken sailor on shore leave in Samoa.

The reporter who wrote the front page nonsense about the Tea Party having no influence in the fiscal cliff debate, a story placed in the most prominent positon on the NY Times front page, and a story picked up and talked about on MSNBC as if it were reality by other journalists,   is by a reporter appropriately named -- no kidding --  Trip. That's his name. Trip Gabriel.   You can't make this stuff up. So Trip tripped on his reporting, tripped and went over the journalistic cliff and took the  NY Times, its editors and readers lwith him. As mainstream journalists always seem to do and have been doing for 20 years.