Fox News, The Good and The Bad

First the good.  In the Ames Iowa debate Fox News Chris Wallace, along with the rest of the panel, for the questions they asked the candidates.  Those were hard questions and that was a conservative panel, as three of them were from a Washington D.C. based conservative newspaper.  Thank you.  At first I was wondering if I was watching Fox, or was MSNBC putting on this debate.  Once again, thank you.  Now the bad.  Fox News.

All week Fox News has been talking about S+P downgrading our countries credit rating, and that it was Obama's fault.  They have all been calling it the Obama downgrade.  It has been talked about all week by not just Fox, but by several of the Republican candidates for President.  The problem with that though, is S+P has said since the downgrade was given, that the reason they did it is because forces in our government have turned the debt ceiling and the threat of default into political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.  How does the right wing interpret that into Obama's downgrade?  When did Obama ever say he would use it as a bargaining chip.  He was for raising it on its own the way it was always done.  He was stupid to not do it during the lame duck Congress, before the Tea Partiers got in.  But Fox News kept hammering that it was Obama's downgrade.  When the rhetoric started on Fox, the next day, an S+P Senior official gave an interview to the Wall Street Journal, coincidentally owned by the same parent company as Fox News and said "The conclusion was pretty much motivated by all of the debate about raising the debt ceiling".  The "Conclusion" was the downgrade, the "Debate" was in Congress, specifically in the Republican Caucus in the House.  The debate was with the Tea Party Caucus and the rest of the Republicans.  The fact is the Tea Party members of the House wanted the U.S. to default.  Skip ahead to the debate Thursday night and you'll see.  Michele Bachman, a Tea Party Congresswoman said "We just heard from S+P, when they dropped our credit rating, what they said was we don't have the ability to repay our debt.  I was proved right in my position and we should not have raised the debt ceiling".  After hearing that, the next day a Senior Director of  S+P in an interview with Politico said "Several lawmakers have expressed skepticism about the serious consequences of a credit default.  That a country even has such voices, albeit a minority, is something notable.  This kind of rhetoric is not common among AAA rated nations".  You can't spell it out more clear than that.

S+P downgraded our rating due to the actions of the Tea Party members of the House.
I would say John Boehners days are numbered as Speaker, he has no control over his Caucus.  I don't agree with the downgrade as the U.S. has never nor will they ever default.  In the days after the downgrade the stock market crashed but U.S. Bonds couldn't be bought fast enough.  That shows the world that we are still the safest bet out there.