It appears as if the MSM has abandoned the F-Word. It was well used several years ago but it seems as if has become the word-that-can't-be-uttered. Luckily there are euphemisms to replace it that won't offend the reader/viewer. You know like time wasting, grandstanding, and the popular Democrat stunt. God knows that the Repugs would never do anything to stop an up or down vote! Oh wait the Repugs staged a fili***ter. Don't they want an up or down vote?
Even the newly redesigned Flyover Times, that heralded progressive newspaper couldn't bring it's self to use the dreaded word. Of course their progressive credentials are based on the fact that they supported The Original Progressive 100 years ago. That and that over 50 years ago they pulled a stunt where local flyover citizens were asked to sign a statement comprised of parts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Of course the McCarthy fearing crowd wisely refused to have anything to do with something that smelled of politics. Since then their progesiveness has consisted of endorsing Democrats at election time and weeky (weakly?) listing the number of deaths in Iraq. The civilian figure is the one given out by the government and right now is around 35000. You wouldn't want to use the leftist British Lancet figures of more than 600,000. So goes the vaunted left wing media.