Meet the Press Stays Liberal Infomercial

NBC's Meet the Press has had a few weeks to adjust to the passing of Tim Russert. It provided them with an opportunity to adjust their coverage from partial to fair and they chose instead to continue their broadcasting of liberal talking points from the environment to politics. Today for example, the first 45 minutes featured former vice-president Al Gore continuing his battle against fossil fuels, and the last 15 minutes featured the Democratic talking points for the week, as espoused by NBC Political Director Chuck Todd and White House reporter David Gregory. Tom Brokaw has demonstrated his absolute inability to ask, not just tough, but any questions to Gore, Todd or Gregory. He let them all pontificate without a single objection and never followed up on any statement. For example when Al Gore talked about wind mill and solar energy Brokaw neglected to point out to Gore that it was reported this week that both types require fossil or nuclear backup due to the limits of how they work. The most obvious example is the absence of wind and sunlight. When he implied that California's forest fires were a result of global warming he was not challenged on the failure of clear cutting dead tress and brush from California's forests, which has been championed by environmental groups for several decades. The clearing of brush and dead tress was the main way in which the damaged caused by summer fires was controlled prior to the emergence of America's Environmental lobby. Al Gore was never pursued on his position that American's must pay the price of high gas because we must move on entirely to alternative energy. Gore offers not a single solution to the price of gas except not to use it or pay the escalating cost. He thinks we should eschew fossil fuel despite the fact that he consumes 10 times as much as the average American with his 22-room house, fleet of cars and private jets. He insists that there are firms successfully producing energy in alternative forms, failing to note that the energy is more expensive, less efficient and more difficult to distribute throughout the country. His view that Americans will be able to create enough energy in their individual homes using wind and solar, and then sell the power back his theoretical nationwide power grid is a just a pipe dream. Further more, that power grid will feature coal, oil and natural gas as its backbone for the next 50 years. Two overlooked items about the use of fossil fuel. In the past 30 years American car companies have reduced the pollution created by cars by 90 percent. In the past 20 years new technologies have emerged for environmentally-friendly oil and gas drilling techniques, clean coal scrubbing and oil-extraction from shale. All these technologies make oil, gas and coal more efficient, less expensive and more environment friendly than they were in the now distant past. Moving on to Chuck Todd and David Gregory we learn, if you can call it that, that the Republicans are shaking in their boots and for all intents and purposes the election is just a formality to the anointing of Barack Obama. Never mind that the election or even the party conventions have not taken place, Todd and Gregory think that Obama's Traveling Medicine Show (See June 28th) is well on it's way to marketing the elixir of change to America. Despite Gregory’s well-known anti-Republican views and Chuck Todd’s obvious infatuation with Obama, Brokaw demonstrated his absolute ignorance about environmental issues and politics. For example when Al Gore said he was elected (in 2000) and did not serve in a discussion about General Grant’s famous quote, “If nominated I will not run, and if elected I will not serve,” Brokaw failed to challenge that statement and treated it as humor. In regard to the environmental discussion Brokaw permitted Gore to take him by the hand and walk him down the path of least resistance. Despite the growing opposition and evidence to the contrary demonstrated just this week by the American Physical Society’s rejection of the human-caused global warming theory and other items previously mentioned Brokaw offered not one tough question, which demonstrates a failure to look outside his own researchers for evidence that was easily available on the web on major magazine, newspaper and television websites. Once again not a single challenging question was asked of any participant on Meet the Press during the entire show. It is becoming fairly obvious that NBC executives have decided they like the declining and abysmal ratings of their cable outlets (MS-NBC and CNBC) so much they want to bring them to the network as well.