I clearly remember Al Hunt on This Week mentioning this. He described it as blackmail for pork comparable to the Nebraska carveout.

The Corporate Media is the Corporate Media: owned by Repiglican Corporations who then 'hire' individuals that then pretend to be reporters and journalists who only do the bidding of the Corporations themselves. These are the 'media elite' whose souls have become nothing but rancid abscess. They control everything you see and hear on your TV's, sitting there in their million dollars suites, ties, and dresses and issuing their corporate authorized 'news' and talking points through their million dollar teeth. So of course there was nothing of substance on any of the corporate controlled news shows, and the one reference itself was a lie. For any of you who watched the super bowl yesterday and had to watch the CORPORATE WHORE CALLED KATIE COURIC interview President Obama this was the perfect symbol of the Corporate Media at work. Every questions issued out of her Faustian Mouth was a Corporate/ Repiglican talking point. Sitting there with her Faustian smile and dripping with this propaganda. Even lying about things she already knew to be lies.

So, if this story is "no big deal" then it should be "no big deal" if the president makes recess appointments to these positions that Shelby has blocked.

My guess is that Republicans will not let recess appointments slip under the radar and their echo machine will repeat their indignation ad naseum.

Maddening. I'm not sure whether we need better media, or a better-informed audience. Bit of a catch-22, perhaps.

Even the "liberal" MSM knows that Joe Six-pack isn't interested in this story.

Steve, I have to say that if anything, you are one persistent guy. You keep trying to find scapegoats to blame for the Dems own failures. One day it's Fox, then it's Republicans, next day it's the MSM.

LOL.

If you want the "MSM" to do a story then you better go tell your senior *elected* Democrats to start making a fuss, get on TV and say something about it.

So Sunday was 0 for 5 in that regard.

Blame you "MSM" if you want, but that's just weak.

Hey, if we knocked out all these job creation rackets (earmarks) another million or two would probably be unemployed. I am sure these Republicans (or Dems for that matter) really want to get serious about budget cutting.

"The media didn't cover the story I wanted covered in just the way I wanted it covered" is not a recipe for seriousness.

Well, of course you're right, Steve, all of that is a problem. But none of it is the BIGGEST problem, which is:

The media continue to cover this kind of stuff as if it's a football game, completely ignoring the profoundly negative effects it has on actually governing the country. In the middle of a huge recession and with all the other things we have going on, having a government that can't function because important posts cannot be staffed is a disaster with real-world consequences for real people.

They're all guilty of it - another recent example was Chris Matthews' grilling of Jeb Hensarling regarding cutting social security and Medicare. Matthews' whole pushback was "you really want to go on record with that in an election year?", not "is it fair to ask people to live in poverty in their golden years just to avoid asking the wealthiest people to pay a little more, when the debt was created in service to lowering their taxes?" Matthews framed the whole "good or bad" on the proposal in terms of the personal electoral consequences of one Jeb Hensarling, NOT the personal life circumstances of tens of millions of citizens.

It's utterly offensive.

The public is not interested in arcane senatorial shenanigans, by either party.

The public wants 'news' that speaks to THEIR interests.

Hence, the months of breathless coverage of Shaundra Levy and the Congressman.

Vince Foster. Trooper/Travel/Watergate.

The public will accept nothing less than real-life CSI and 24.

Observer, if a tree falls in the forest does it make a sound if no one is there to hear it?

If a democrat makes a fuss on the Capitol steps, does he make a sound if no reporter is there to listen?

Should they just storm the set of Faux Noise? You know, they do have to be invited.

Answer this: Why has John McCain, the losing candidate of a party that has been repudiated in the last 2 major elections, get more invites to Sunday morning talk shows than any other "senior elected democrat" (to use your own words)?

You act as if it's just a matter of someone speaking up and they'll be heard. That's BS and you know it.

I see the trolls are trolling early this morning. The story is a big one. If the White House and the Senate give in to Shelby every Republican in the Senate will line up for his own pork. If the White House and the Democratic leadership doesn't take this one on well, it will be politics as usual.

Dana Bash is a media whore. She ought to wear red shoes and a short purple skirt.

You have to give the media credit for burying this story. Surely the Dems sent out their surrogates armed with talking points about (a) pork, (b) earmarks, (c) the national security need for these appointments, (d) the similarity to Newt shutting down the government, and (e) how Shelby wants to take federal contracts away from an American company (Boeing) and give them to a foreign company (Airbus).

How 4 talk shows managed to blow this off entirely despite the Dems' tenacious efforts to get this story out is simply amazing.

[/sarcasm]

The only "megaphone gap" between the GOP and the Dems is that the Dems are too stupid and lazy to work on message control.

FYI---Alabama's capital city newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, has yet to report on the story, just as it neglected to report Jeff Sessions voting against the new GI Bill two years ago. Hate to make our senators for life look bad!

"If you want the "MSM" to do a story then you better go tell your senior *elected* Democrats to start making a fuss, get on TV and say something about it."

While many of us enjoy hearing others who agree with us, it is refreshing to hear those who don't. I find it better to hear both sides, then contact the *corporate* "MSM", excluding Fauxnews. The fuss that needs to be made is from we the people and not our elected officials. I try to make it a point to contact the media and express my displeasure and explain why I choose to boycott what they have to say. Does anyone else do that?

Now you know why the ratings for all these Sunday morning shows are declining!

Ms. Couric's CBS News actually did an excellent job with this story on Friday evening:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6178947n&tag=contentMain;contentBody

It wouldn't have come up in "This Week" at all if Podesta hadn't mentioned it a part of the larger conversation. Hunt did come down hard on it, though, which was interesting.

Main thing, it wasn't the primary topic for discussion and was only incidentally referenced.

The Couric piece was very good. Good for her.

citizen_pain, while it's true that *some* shows are more friendly than others, it's also untrue that *all* shows are unfriendly to *all* senior elected Dems.

Obama put out a statement on the White House blog. Instead, he could have held a press conference or sent Joe Biden to *any* show.

Harry Reid can get on *any* show. He's the majority leader of the Senate, the very issue he can raise hell on. He chose put out a statement that nobody will read instead.

I see Barney Frank on all the time and on Fox. He could have said something.

Honestly, if you guys want change you have to stop making excuses for your own elected officials.

I'm not sure you're right--if you wrote "administration nominees that was intended to hold them hostage until the senator was paid off in earmarks." you'd be right, but I don't think the "holding..." clause is restrictive. Sen. Reid's blanket hold on all GW's nominees can be defended because it wasn't tied to earmarks/pork for Nevada, but I think you're being too tricky in your wording.