Fox News watching. Ugh.

Watching Fox News - Chris Wallace's Sunday roundtable with Brit Hume, Bill Kristol, Juan something, and someone I don't know - and the weirdest thing about it is the absolute disjunction between, on one hand, actual analysis (Boehner and Obama both need to satisfy several constituencies with disparate aims, most Americans want the debt ceiling raised now, the GOP caucus is sharply divided over tax cuts in particular, etc.), and on the other hand pure partisan talking-points nonsense ('the Democrats haven't put forth a plan,' etc.). Everyone who's appeared on Fox News this weekend has mouthed lines about how Obama has put nothing at all forward - the only person to use the word 'intransigent' actually applied it to SEIU, AFL-CIO, and AARP! It's like being in a screwed up alternate universe where no one actually knows anything about the underlying economic questions. Or, no...it's like a televised segment in our universe, in which that actually happens to be true. Damn. The only breath of fresh air today was Tim Geithner's hard-nosed performance on Wallace's show, in which he maintained exactly the right tone of professionalism - spiked with richly-deserved contempt for Wallace's ignorant parroting of talking points. Stark contrast with the babble from the other talking heads. Though you have to respect the nepotism-hire Bill Kristol, in a way, for his absolute cynicism: he really did have the audacity to describe the negotiations as 'laying the groundwork for electing [a Republican] president in 2012...' What a pathetic wretch that man is.