Video

The poor, benighted little people.  They just don't understand what a wonderful hopey-changey world Pres. Obama is offering them . . .

Andrea Mitchell has suggested that the problem Pres. Obama is facing in selling his health care plan to Americans who already have coverage is that people "may not know what's good for them." [H/t reader Restless 1]

Mitchell made her condescending comment on today's Morning Joe.

Call it damning with fat praise . . .

After Sgt. James Crowley did a good job at his post-beer press conference, a condescending Chris Matthews—apparently surprised that a policeman could handle himself well in such a situation—said "I think we've got our Susan Boyle here."

Here's how Matthews ended the post-Crowley press conference kibitzing on the 7 PM edition of Hardball:

Are liberals less racist and/or more knowledgeable about racism than others?  Donny Deutsch evidently thinks so.  On MSNBC this afternoon, Deutsch asked a black academic to give him an example of racism he'd encountered because "as liberal as I am, I can't understand because I've never walked in your shoes."

Prof. James Peterson of Bucknell was a guest in MSNBC's 4 PM EDT hour, during which Deutsch served as sidekick/kibitzer to host Tamron Hall. Peterson was in to comment on this evening's impending beer fest among Pres. Obama, Sgt. Crowley and Prof. Gates.

Overcompensation: (psychiatry) an attempt to overcome a real or imagined defect or unwanted trait by overly exaggerating its opposite.

Today brings a prime example of the phenomenon in the person of Brian Williams, overcompensating for his image as a pampered straight arrow by joking about having a vast staff of servants, looking forward to the prospect of watching some nude male swimming, and, yes, doing meth to get going in the morning.

It worked for President Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election, when he took tax cuts - a conservative issue - and made it his own. Now, liberals are employing a similar tactic in promoting their health care agenda.

But Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., isn't having it. He called out Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the left wing The Nation magazine and MSNBC guest co-host, for attempting it in questioning him in a MSNBC segment on July 29. vanden Heuvel asked Ryan why he was against a so-called public health insurance option. His opposition, she reasoned, would deny consumers the choice of a public option in the marketplace.

"Rep. Ryan, that sounds like an anti-competitive vote," vanden Heuvel said. "Competition is at the heart of America and to deny Americans competition by denying them an option of a public plan seems to me un-American."

NBC's Matt Lauer, on Wednesday's "Today" show, invited on conservative columnist and author Michelle Malkin to discuss several topics ranging from Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s arrest to Malkin's critique of Michelle Obama, but when the subject of only one Republican voting for Sonia Sotomayor in the Senate Judiciary committee came up, Lauer wondered if that would hurt the GOP with Hispanics as he queried: "After the, the last election it was said that the Republicans need to broaden the tent, they need to reach out to minorities. Reach out to Hispanics. Is that, are those six 'no' votes gonna hurt Republicans down the road?"

Lauer also expressed incredulity that Malkin dared to "take on," the First Lady as seen in the following exchange:

MATT LAUER: Let me ask you about your book. In it -- I mean clearly we know by the co-, we know by the title where it goes – you take on Michelle Obama-

MICHELLE MALKIN: I certainly do.

LAUER: -in this book. You call her the "First Crony."

MALKIN: Yes I do.

LAUER: Why?

Somewhere, Lyndon Johnson is smiling.  Howard Dean has provided perfect proof of LBJ's adage that when it comes to potential adversaries, "it's better to have them inside the tent p---ing out than outside the tent" doing the reverse.

Barack Obama chucked Dean out of his DNC chairmanship. Adding insult to injury, PBO denied the good doctor any role in his health care initiative. Now, it's payback time.  Subbing for Keith Olbermann on this evening's Countdown, Dean depicted Obama as a loser in the health care fight. For good measure, he flung a famous Obama campaign slogan back in the prez's face.

[Update, 2:15 pm Eastern: Audio and video clips from the segment added.]

HBO’s Bill Maher, after being asked during a segment on Monday’s Situation Room on CNN to explain his recent “soulless vampire bastards” moniker of the current health care system, pushed for President Obama’s “reform” plan, paraphrasing the Democrat’s own words: “We can’t do nothing- doing nothing is actually worse.” He also stood by his consistent labeling of the U.S. as a “stupid country” [audio clips available here].

Anchor Wolf Blitzer interviewed Maher for two segments starting at the bottom of the 5 pm Eastern hour. Towards the end of the first segment, Blitzer prompted the HBO host for his take on the health care debate. After playing a clip from his “Real Time” program where he used the “vampire bastards” label, Blitzer complimented Maher for the “very funny stuff” as well as the “serious element” on his program and asked, “What would you want to see emerge from this whole health care debate in Washington?” Maher echoed the Democrats’s talking points on the issue:

The New York Times' Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist and staunch champion of government medicine a la the Canadian model of our neighbors to the north. 

Just this past Saturday in "Toyota, Moving Northward" he flogged the advantages of the single-payer system Canada offers.  He postulated that one reason why the Japanese auto maker is locating it's new RAV4 plant in Ontario is their government medicine:

Canada's other big selling point is its national health insurance system, which saves auto manufacturers large sums in benefit payments compared with their costs in the United States.

Suddenly Krugman the Leftist is all for huge government subsidies for big business. 

Krugman's Nobel-prize winning economic mind then offers up:

So what's the impact on taxpayers? In Canada, there's no impact at all: since all Canadians get government-provided health insurance in any case, the additional auto jobs won't increase government spending.

Really?  Adding workers brought in from outside Canada to the government rolls won't increase government spending?  A little of Krugman's new math: X plus 5,000 still somehow equals X.  

It's the kind of astute analysis you'd expect from MSNBC - the place for the politics. CNBC regular and MSNBC fill-in anchor Donny Deutsch solved the mystery behind the media's fascination with former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

According to the former advertising executive, it has nothing to do with her stance on several hot-button issues - an advocate of gun rights, a pro-life stance on abortion, pro-exploration and drilling for oil and concerned about the fiscal policies of President Barack Obama. Instead, he contended, it is her sexual appeal that held the media's attention - and not just from a male perspective, but a female perspective as well.

"I'm going to throw something out since I'm talking to three women here and I've said this theory before and I'd love you guys to react to it," Deutsch said on MSNBC on July 27. "That - the reason we have a fascination with Sarah Palin - men and women: This is the first woman in power that has sexual appeal and people don't know what to do with it. That's why people are fascinated with her. Everything else is secondary. OK, beat me up."

Conservatives are used to hearing liberals gloat about how the island paradise that is Cuba provides free health care to its fortunate denizens. Apparently there's now yet another country that we have to look up to: Rwanda.

On her MSNBC show this afternoon, Dr. Nancy Snyderman proclaimed herself "jealous" of Rwanda, which reportedly provides health insurance coverage to 90% of its citizens.

Snyderman's guest was Mary Robinson.  The former President of Ireland is now in charge of "the Ethical Globalization Initiative" at the hoity-toity Aspen Institute.  Snyderman seemed intent on drawing her guest into making invidious comparisons between the US and the rest of the world.

At least one journalist isn't impressed by the health care initiatives of  the White House and congressional Democrats, and is warning of consequences should they succeed.

CNBC's Maria Bartiromo was on MSNBC's July 27 "Morning Joe" to preview her upcoming special "Meeting of the Minds: The Future of Health Care," set to debut on July 27. According to the Bartiromo, who also anchors "Closing Bell" and "Wall Street Journal Report with Maria Bartiromo," much of the increased costs of health care could be prevented with changes in lifestyle and behavior.

"You know, I mean the issue is - 70 percent of the cost of health care is preventable disease. It's lifestyle, behavior," Bartiromo said.

CNN correspondent Suzanne Malveaux made an apparent Freudian slip in response to a sound bite on health care reform from Senator Mitch McConnell on Monday’s American Morning. Malveaux initially labeled McConnell’s remark, in which the Senate Minority Leader cracked that the “only thing bipartisan about the measures so far is the opposition to them,” as a “snippy little phrase there” [audio clip from the segment available here].

The correspondent filed a report just after the beginning of the 6 am Eastern hour about the Obama’s administration and Democratic leaders’ efforts to get their health care “reform” package passed in Congress. Malveaux stated that “obviously, in public, there’s a lot of confidence. You heard Nancy Pelosi. You talk to White House aides....In an e-mail that I got this morning, however, one of the top White House aides was saying, look, this is a time when it’s important that the president look credible- look viable, still in this debate, and that the one thing that they are trying to get across to folks is that he is still a player in this, that he has not lost his political capital, despite the fact that he...did not get what he wanted this time around.”

Generations past and present of the Washington Post heaped abuse on Sarah Palin today.  Appearing on Morning Joe, Carl Bernstein called Palin "ignorant," a "demagogue" and a "flake."  Current WaPo editorialist Jonathan Capehart chimed in to second Bernstein's emotion "100%."

Pat Buchanan stepped in to explain Palin's appeal.

President Obama's experience last year earning fawning press coverage as a “genius” on race relations lulled him into assuming “he can say anything on race and is so smart that he will be untouchable,” columnist Charles Krauthammer postulated Friday night on FNC in suggesting an explanation for why Obama so misunderstand how his remarks on Henry Louis Gates would ensnare him in controversy. Krauthammer opined: “A lot of the Obama presidency is a contest between his intelligence and his arrogance” and he thought “he can say anything on race and is so smart that he will be untouchable.”

One reason for that, Krauthammer contended, is that after he “gave the famous speech in Philadelphia” on race in March of 2008, in which “he did not renounce Jeremiah Wright” as “he blamed everybody for racism -- black, white and grandmother, except himself,” he nonetheless “was hailed by a supine press as the second coming of Lincoln at Cooper Union. So after, that you think you can say anything on race and be hailed as a genius.”

Indeed, hours after Obama's Tuesday, March 18, 2008 address, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, NewsBusters recounted, praised it as “worthy of Abraham Lincoln” and also claimed it bypassed Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I Have a Dream” address as the “best speech ever given on race in this country.”

Imagine the post-oil apocalypse, with modern American society heading into a direction with no Disney vacations, no airlines - a world devoid of one-stop convenient big retailers. Sounds like a desolate place, but that's an ideal society according to Forbes magazine Christopher Steiner.

Steiner appeared on NBC's July 24 "Today" and described a world with gas headed to $20 a gallon, but according to him it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

"Well, it's important to understand that $20 per gallon, those types of figures, those are a couple decades away," Steiner said. "But what's important to understand is that we are running out of oil. Over the next 30 years, you're talking about another 2 billion people entering the globe living American-style lives. Right now there's only a billion of those people on the globe and those people are going to want oil. And so our supply is going to slowly go down and demand's going to go up."

The networks might just as well have hung out a sign this morning: non-African-American experts on policing and racial profiling need not apply.  Good Morning America, the Early Show and Today had a total of six guests on the subject . . . and every one was African-American.

Among the highlights: a writer from Tina Brown's Daily Beast suggested that given our incarceration rate, the USA meets the definition of a "police state."

ABC, CBS and NBC all led Friday night with President Obama’s decision to appear in the White House press room to backtrack on the fury he inflamed by presuming “stupidity” by the police in the Professor Henry Gates alleged “racial profiling” incident, but only Katie Couric trumpeted Obama’s appearance in the White House briefing room -- which the CBS Evening News ran for an uninterrupted four solid minutes -- as “extraordinary” and “really unprecedented,” before she pouted over how “the timing could not be worse. Just as he was pushing so hard for health care reform and having some pretty serious setbacks.”

She pressed Bob Schieffier to provide Obama with guidance to get back on track on health care: “And how do you think the President can, if he can, resuscitate this whole effort?” Schieffer advised the obvious: “What he's got to do, I think now, is set out some specific things that he wants them to do and then push them to do it.” (Between the four minutes of Obama and when Couric turned to Schieffer, CBS aired a piece from reporter Bill Whitaker on why blacks fear the police.)

CNBC "Mad Money" host Jim Cramer credits lack of government regulation with a recent market jump in technology stocks. The tech-heavy NASDAQ composite (NASDAQ) shot upward 3 percent, from July 8 through July 23, even defying other market indexes that had down days in the same time period.

Cramer theorized on his July 23 show that the tech sector during that time period, despite the setback on July 24 in the wake of news that Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) reported lower than expected earnings - because of government.

"So, now let me explain a pattern that I've discerned that could be incredibly important - important for you to take profits on if President Obama regains his clout and starts pushing hard with the rest of his agenda," Cramer said. "Everyone today wrote him off because of health care. I got to tell you, you can't write this guy off. He's too darn popular."

Expounding on a formulation he's propounded this week on his radio show in pivoting off Senator Jim DeMint's prediction health care could become President Obama's “Waterloo,” in an interview with FNC's Greta Van Susteren aired Thursday night Rush Limbaugh asserted: “The press has met their Waterloo and it's Obama.” Limbaugh contended “they have sacrificed whatever integrity, character, professionalism, ethics that they've had” so now “their total reason – most of them – for existence” is “propping this guy up.” The nation's most popular talk radio host ridiculed MSNBC's “countdown clock” during the day Wednesday: “Countdown clock: 8 hours, 25 minutes, 13 seconds until Obama's press conference!”

Journalists are “sitting around with the tingles up their legs all day” as “they marvel at how Obama is so smooth and elegant,” yet, Limbaugh observed in the interview conducted in Florida, over 50 percent of the people “oppose this health care plan,” prompting him to ask and answer: “Who's telling the people what's in it? Alternative media, your network, talk radio, the conservative blog network. The mainstream media has cashed in its chips, they have become nothing more than stenographers for Rahm Emanuel.”

Audio: MP3 clip (1:30)

While interviewing the daughter of arrested Harvard Professor Henry Gates on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith wondered: "Is there something in this that says, ‘I'm not going to take this’?...In speaking with your father, was he hurt by this?...Was his heart broken by it?" [audio available here]

Elizabeth Gates, a writer for the DailyBeast.com, declared that: "I think for anybody, you know, who is violated in their own home in that way, I think they would, you know, also call on their own defenses...My father was so sad about this, and again because he's always – you know, my father might be one of the last black men on earth who actually believed in the justice system." It would seem that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas still believes in the American justice system.

Gates, whose father was arrested for disorderly conduct after breaking into his own home, went on to explain: "You know, my father is a proponent of, you know, intellectualism can help you outrun the – the war on race. And I think the incident last week is a clear indication that that's not yet true...You know, he believes in following the rules, and when they're broken, it kind of disturbs his sense of security. And yeah, he was deeply heartbroken. I was not surprised, but he was very surprised."

NBC's medical correspondent, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, was “rooting” for President Barack Obama to do well in selling his health care takeover during his Wednesday night press conference: “As a physician, you know, I felt like I understood the complexity of the problem. As an American citizen, I was rooting for the President to hit a home run.”

On the 10 PM EDT Hardball an hour after Obama wrapped up, Snyderman, who hosts the noon EDT weekday hour on MSNBC, fretted that he had “whiffed” in not making some persuasive points, such as using “plain talk to take the scare out of things like rationing, which basically is what's going on now -- some people get medicines, some people don't. It didn't come through tonight.” She also ominously warned of disaster if Obama does not prevail: “We're going to pay big time if we don't get this. I don't think we're going to be a great world power.”

MP3 Audio available here.

In her Tuesday interview with President Obama, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric wondered: "You're so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say, ‘Damn, this is hard. Damn, I'm not going to get the things done I want to get done and it’s just too politicized to really get accomplished the big things I want to accomplish’?" [audio available here]

In her last interview with Obama, during the debate over the stimulus package in February, Couric also portrayed Obama as a victim of Washington: "You campaigned to change the culture in Washington, to change the politics as usual culture here. Are you frustrated? Do you think it is much, much harder to do that than you ever anticipated?"

Most of Couric’s latest presidential interview was aired on Tuesday’s Evening News, however, the question about Obama’s confidence was saved for Wednesday’s Early Show. At the top of the CBS morning show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez informed viewers about the President’s press conference scheduled for Wednesday night: "President Obama goes prime time tonight, taking the battle for health care reform directly to the American people."

ABC anchor Chris Cuomo played the liberal emotion card and asked California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during an interview on Wednesday’s Good Morning America if Republicans were “playing politics” with President Obama’s health care “reform” proposal, and whether this was turning into a “little bit of a reckless situation” on the part of the GOP. [audio available here]

Cuomo first put the health care issue in the context of California’s budget woes, and started out of the gate with his plea to people’s emotions in his first question to the governor: “Your state is somewhat of a window into the reality of health care. You’ve been pictured at your desk with a big knife, having to cut the budget- over $1 billion in health care cuts. It’s going to affect low-income families. It’s going to affect the coverage that children get. Is this absolutely necessary?”

After Schwarzenegger’s answer, the ABC anchor then turned to the president’s proposal for health care “reform,” and asked the liberal Republican governor why he supported it. The former actor clarified that he didn’t 100% support Obama’s plan, “because I don’t know exactly what is in that bill. It changes all the time, as you know.” Cuomo followed up by asking if he was leaning towards supporting it. Schwarzenegger again didn’t give a solid answer.

It's one of the few times one can wish the reporting by NBC News was right and CNBC was wrong.

A segment on the July 21 "NBC Nightly News" pointed out some of the key points of a budget deal reached between California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and leaders of the state legislature. The deal means some service cuts - but also includes the possibility of exploration and drilling for oil off the California coast.

"California is our biggest state in terms of population and it long ago ran out of money," "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams said. "They got nothing to pay the vendors they owe and now they have struck a deal for more cuts, and these are going to hurt. They're going to allow offshore drilling for the money it will bring in. The LA Times reports tens of thousands of seniors and children would lose access to health care. Prisoners will spend less time in prison. And the governor is going to sell cars and furniture and office supplies and autograph some of it, he says, to raise more money. It's an unbelievable turn of events."

In the grand scheme of things, Donny Deutsch's radical prescription for health care might not count for much.  Just a former-ad-man-turned-pundit spouting off.  But let's consider.  Deutsch is well-off and presumably harbors no electoral ambitions.  He is free to say whatever's on his mind.  And he is immersed in the liberal media-political culture.  Is Deutsch giving voice to the radicalism that Obama/Pelosi/Waxman harbor but dare not fully express?

Appearing on Morning Joe today, Deutsch offered a two-part plan for health care:

1. Make the rich pay for it: "I'm an extremist. I'm for redistribution of wealth."
2. "Outlaw tobacco."

It’s one thing to honor the deceased, but it’s another to suggest a mere human anchorman seemed like a god, whose set would be the site of a "pilgrimage" to the "center of the universe." On Friday night’s Larry King Live, NBC anchor Brian Williams oozed that he loved the anchor since childhood: "I have lived such a charmed life that I got the chance to explain that to Walter and tell him that and make it clear. And just was able to breathe the air he exhaled and know him a little bit, as friends."[audio excerpts available here]

Williams told of his childhood home in Elmira, New York, where his mother refused to serve dinner until Cronkite had finished his evening oration.

And I announced my intention to my family, apparently, at the age of 8, that he was the man I wanted to be. And this was the profession I wanted. And I have lived such a charmed life that I got the chance to explain that to Walter and tell him that and make it clear. And just was able to breathe the air he exhaled and know him a little bit, as friends.

I went on a pilgrimage as a young man. I wanted to see that newsroom and that studio in New York where the "CBS Evening News" originated. And you get close to some of your icons, they can tarnish. Walter never did.

Katie Couric provided some comic relief on this morning's Early Show, preaching the importance of objectivity in reporting.  As evidence of her impartiality, the CBS Evening News anchor cited the fact that, as did Cronkite, she has gotten "grief from both sides of the aisle."

Now I suppose some of the more radical elements of the Red Army Faction might have found something to quibble with in Couric's coverage over the years.  But how can the woman who has come to epitomize MSM liberal bias suggest with a straight face that criticism has come in comparable degree from the left and right?

Couric appeared as part of CBS's continuing coverage of Cronkite's passing and career.  Her description of a dinner she had with him at the time she took over as Evening News anchor included this gem.

On Friday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Randall Pinkston described President Obama’s Thursday address to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People: "The crowd responded to his soaring, almost sermon-like rhetoric."

Obama’s speech was part of the NAACP’s annual convention and marked the 100th anniversary of the organization’s founding. Fill-in co-host Jeff Glor introduced Pinkston’s report by declaring: "The NAACP has spent a century trying to break down racial barriers...last night's anniversary party in New York featured the man who broke the ultimate barrier."

In contrast to the two news briefs the Early Show dedicated to the President’s speech, both ABC’s Good Morning America and NBC’s Today offered only single-sentence reports. [audio available here]

[Update, 10:36 pm Eastern: audio and video links added below.]

CNN anchor Rick Sanchez devoted an entire segment on Thursday’s Newsroom program to his interviews of five “wise Latina” women from his hometown of Miami, including his own mother, about the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. Though Sanchez did point out how many Americans disagreed with the nominee’s decision in the New Haven firefighters case, all of the women supported Sotomayor [audio clips from the segment are available here; the video clips are available at this link].

The anchor traveled to Miami, in his words, going “out of the D.C. Beltway and find some other Latina women with a smart take on one of their own.” He conducted the interviews around the dinner table in his mother’s house, or, in his mother’s case, in the adjourning kitchen. Sanchez gave a preview of the segment on the Wednesday edition of Newsroom while on location in the south Florida metropolis. Both days, the CNN anchor featured the clip from his interview of his mother, who, through her son’s translation (she’s originally from Cuba), voiced her support for the Supreme Court nominee and her identification with her. Also on both days, Sanchez made light of the now-infamous “wise Latina” label that Sotomayor had used in the past, and is now being scrutinized over.