Balancing Act

And a giant sigh of relief from Big Media: the longer the shutdown and threat to the economy, the more criticism of the GOP it might have been forced to air.

With predictable lack of proportion, the national health care exchange's website problems were deemed an instant Huge Scandal. Relieved and grateful, the media put their all into covering Republican tears—shed over the public's difficulty in accessing a service the blubberers had done everything possible to deprive them of.

After all, no big website launch ever had problems until now. And never mind that 36 states were allowed to refuse participation, forcing their residents to swamp the national site. And a contractor built the site, because we can't have government performing its own functions, when "business does better."

In other stories, a former Speaker of the House dies; cue fatuous hand-wringing over The Good Old Days of Bipartisan Cooperation.

Pierce weighs in, and commenter John Rogers adds—

I knew people in the Speaker's office at that time and [Chris] Matthews was basically a gopher, regardless of what he's telling people now.

Oh, and remember Ronnie's 3x5 cards? Most of the Tip and Ronnie meetings consisted of Tip listening patiently (if exasperatedly) to Ronnie reading off his cards. The cards were necessary because Ronnie's Alzheimer's (and aberrational behavior) were already showing themselves during the FIRST campaign. Efforts of the NY Times reporter I got this from to report on it were repeatedly spiked.

Followed by Susie Madrak—

How can you not love TipnRonnie, the moral midgets who passed the legislation that, for the first time, taxed unemployment benefits -- to pay for a tax cut for the rich? Good times.

Fair and balanced as we are, there is—what else?—a mere slap on the wrist for one Master of the Universe ("And this is just one bank")—

...Jamie Dimon will never suffer any consequences for this spectacular fail, his calls will always be returned, he will always have a roof over his head, unlike the thousands or millions of people his bank stole life savings from.

As San Francisco area BART workers went on strike— largely over work rules affecting both worker and passenger safety—reaction by local Masters of The Universe said oh so much about their sense of entitlement.

But when it comes to MOUs and "creative disruption," those guys are nothings—not when Big Time is back, and on a book tour.

Philip Toledano

Here CNN touts Cheney's interview with Sanjay Gupta. With extra added sympathy for Bush (He's had heart surgery, too...)

Lest Mr. and Mrs. America be outraged, CNN was careful to note about Cheney and his hack-free device—

SPOILER ALERT: Fans of the Showtime series "Homeland" might find it a familiar scenario. The vice president in that series died after terrorists hacked his heart pacemaker and instructed it to emit a lethal jolt of electricity.