Chuck Todd and the demise of journalism in America

The Committee to Protect Journalists released their annual report today, and it's nothing but good news! Well, maybe not for journalists, but at least for Americans!

Seems the countries most likely to jail journalists are the evil communist regime of China, followed by American allies Egypt and Turkey.

As you well know, and as the Committee to Protect Journalists will confirm, America does not toss journos in the slammer!

That is because America is a bastion of free speech!

And nobody embodies that commitment to free speech more than Meet the Press host, veteran journalist Chuck Todd.

Did you know that Chuck was once considered one of the most influential journalists in America?

I would not have guessed it either, but I ran across that factoid while researching for this blog post.

There's absolutely no danger that Chuck Todd will ever be imprisoned for espousing unpleasant points of view from his bully pulpit at Meet the Press. I watched his phone interview with Trump yesterday, and in terms of the imaginary ethics that journalists are imbued with at J-school, it was utterly pathetic.

On the other hand, in terms of what we expect from shills for the two-headed ruling class in America,(two heads, one owner)  it was utterly predictable.

Chuck stuck to the mainstream talking points quite fastidiously. How could Trump possibly engage in a civil back-and-forth with Putin? How could he allow himself to become a poster-boy for Islamic State recruiters? How could he possibly alienate twelve million illegal immigrants? How could he diss every Muslim on the planet with his blatantly racist plan to deny entry to America to the world's 1.2 billion Muslims?

And so on.

Chuck was absolutely bereft of authentic lines of inquiry but chock full of establishment talking points.

I bear no brief for Donald Trump.

But he is the only candidate broadcasting the fact that America's political system is broken.

The Chuck Todds and all the rest of them are desperately fighting a rear-guard action in defense of an establishment that has long lost any claim to democratic legitimacy.

Senator McCain spills the beans; Afghanistan has been a triumph!

That's got to come as a surprise to most folks who have been watching our "progress" over the past eleven years.

But there he was on Meet the Press this morning, assuring America that we've decimated the Taliban. Not only that, but the vast majority Of Afghans absolutely love their NATO/US liberators and would like us to stay indefinitely.

Which is what McCain is lobbying for. And he cites a number of historical precendents. Aren't American troops still in Korea and Japan and Germany? Haven't they been there indefinitely? Don't all those people love us?

So what's the rush pulling out of Afghanistan? Besides, even though the Taliban are decimated, as soon as we leave al Qaeda is gonna be all over the place.

What we should be rushing, according to McCain, is the liberation of Syria. That Assad chap is pretty much the most evil dictator in the whole world. For some obscure reason we should back up al Qaeda chief Zawahiri's call to free those poor Syrian folks from their government.

It was one of those McCain performances that leaves you scratching your head. Is he really privy to so much insider info that any of this nonsense might make sense?

Or is he just smoking way better stuff than us regular folks?