Prospects for Obama-care just keep getting better and better. At least they are in the rather over-excitable world of New York Times health reporter David Herszenhorn. After Obama's address to Congress last month he confidently proclaimed the speech to be a "clear turning-point in the health care debate."

And then nothing continued to happen.

Yet Herszenhorn remains undaunted. On Tuesday morning he posted this story on the nytimes.com "Prescriptions" blog, "Obama Adds Schwarzenegger to His Republican Chorus for Health Care." The original headline, judging by the title of the URL, was even more triumphant: "Obama Adds Schwarzenegger to His Republican Trophy Case."

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.

Every time voters face a ballot initiative of some sort that would raise their taxes, proponents of such measures will trot out any of the following components to champion the cause - school children, policemen, firemen or the release of criminals from jails.

But this time, the June 3 "NBC Nightly News" waited until after California voters denied passage of initiatives that would raise their taxes to say, "I told you so." NBC correspondent George Lewis followed up a dire, one-sided June 3 "Today Show" report with a "Nightly News" segment that blamed the budget cuts for one supposed hardship story - a California school district forced to cancel summer school, which in turn made it impossible for one child's mother to look for a job.

In a time when fiscal responsibility from politicians seems to be a thing of the past, NBC’s “Today Show”  and ABC’s “World News with Charles Gibson” criticized California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for his proposed budget cuts in his effort to save California from reaching total financial ruin.

The June 3rd “Today Show” featured numerous opponents of Schwarzenegger’s budget cuts, but nobody supporting or defending them.

The segment began with a clip of the governor stating: “Our wallet is empty. Our bank is closed, and our credit is dried up,” a fact that does not seem to bother NBC, as they mourn the proposed solution to this problem: the cutting of what they deemed “essential services.”

A Tuesday story on ABC's World News, which ignored soaring state spending, reflected frustration with California voters for the anticipated rejection of ballot initiatives to raise taxes as reporter Laura Marquez blamed the Golden State's budget deficit on an “unwillingness to raise taxes” stretching all the way back to 1978's Proposition 13. In fact, though personal income tax collections “dropped 14% last year,” a Tuesday Wall Street Journal article noted they “soared 70% from 2002 to 2007.”  

In the story pegged to Tuesday's vote on a series of initiatives to raise or extend an income-tax surcharge, a big hike in the car tax and one point sales tax jump to 9 percent, Marquez fretted that “polls show five of six initiatives aimed at reducing the budget gap are likely to be voted down,” leading Schwarzenegger, Marquez relayed, to warn “the defeat of these measures will mean billions of dollars in cuts to social services and education, and will force thousands of layoffs from the state rolls.” From San Francisco, Marquez rued:

Coast to coast, state governments are swimming in red ink, overwhelmed by the tanking economy. Here in California, the problem is even worse because of its sheer size and an unwillingness to raise taxes. Thirty years ago, Californians passed Proposition 13, mandating an almost unachievable two-thirds vote by the legislature to raise taxes.

As Californians go to the ballot box to vote whether or not to increase their taxes, government leaders in Sacramento are trotting out "the usual human shields" - kindergarteners, firefighters, policemen and nurses to frighten people into voting.

The ballot initiative, promoted by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, has little to no chance of passing according to the Los Angeles Times. But that did stop the governor from using fear tactics, as Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck pointed out on his May 19 program.

"What's their plan to turn the state around? They have one?" Beck said. "Yes - the Governator, he proposed $15 billion in cuts. Wow. And he warned that if his, if his propositions failed, California will need to release 40,000 prisoners out on the streets."

After earlier this week defining what a moderate Democrat is, on Saturday CNN tried its hand at defining what a moderate Republican is.  CNN Newsroom featured a segment on governors who are refusing stimulus funds because of the inevitable Federal strings.  Anchor Fredricka Whitfield had this exchange with CNN deputy political director Paul Steinhauser:

WHITFIELD: Well, that's interesting, because perhaps one other Republican whose name has been tossed into the whole could he run for president, but he can't, he did accept money for his state, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

STEINHAUSER: Exactly. That is very -- a very different case there, too, because Arnold Schwarzenegger is very much of a moderate Republican. He's kind of on the different end of the spectrum from Sarah Palin and Mark Sanford and Bobby Jindal.

OK, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a moderate Republican.  That may come as a surprise since he's widely been deemed a liberal by a variety of sources.  In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington bureau chief titled a column "Schwarzenegger's liberal views leave GOP flummoxed: Actor is pro-choice, pro-gun control and pro-gay rights."  At about the same time, National Review editors determined "Schwarzenegger, it seems clear, does not merit conservative support."

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's three-year lurch to the left, with the enthusiastic assistance of Democratic majorities in the state's legislature, has sent the state's fiscal situation once again into Gray Davisland -- and this time, unlike in November 2003 when he took office, the Governator doesn't have a growing economy to make getting out of the mess easier.

The state's controller said earlier today that the state "the state will run out of cash in about two months" if the state doesn't close its current budget gap of $18 billion.

Finally, the state is attempting to do something about its disproportionately costly welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) program.

The howls are predictable, if somewhat understandable (which I'll get to). Excerpts from a Sacramento Bee story by Cynthia Hubert lay out the situation:

Though NewsBusters is normally in the business of critiquing the liberal media, not praising the conservative, I want to ensure that as many of our readers as possible have the pleasure and profit of reading Mark Steyn's recent column: We're in the fast lane to Bailoutistan.

With its mordant, don't-know-whether-to-laugh-or-cry take on our current fix, it's my nominee for best column of the year.

I urge you to read it all, and marvel at its insight and wit.  Let me tempt you with a few morsels:

The UAW is AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as "workers" (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people.

The Terminator makes Gray Davis look like Calvin Coolidge. Care to terminate a government program, Governor? Hey, great idea! We'll hire 200 people to do an impact study on terminating the Department of Impact Study Regulation and get back to you in a decade.

On Saturday, Ben Stein accused the media of whipping the nation into a frenzy concerning how the economy is doing. On Sunday, ABC's George Stephanopoulos proved his point.

While talking to California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on "This Week," Stephanopoulos actually said of the economy, with a straight face no less, "In the last four years it's gone more down than up."

I kid you not (photo courtesy ABC):

How different do you think Americans' take on the current economy would be if the business press picked up on the fact that the bad employment news is coming predominantly out of two struggling states -- and that most of the rest of the nation is holding its own?

That's the question that occurred to me as I looked at April's Bureau of Labor Statistics regional and state employment and unemployment report this morning.

Three things stick out:
- How big of a drag California is in the overall employment picture.
- How much of an outlier Michigan is.
- How Oklahoma continues to impress.

How much California and Michigan are affecting the overall picture is a real eye-opener:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) is proposing a new insurance surcharge to plug a budget gap that conservative critics are calling a tax. And objectively speaking, it really is a tax. But the L.A. Times was careful to avoid attributing the T-word to the idea.

Here's the teaser from the Times Web site's front page:

Gov. urges levy on insurance

By Marc Lifsher and Evan Halper

Plan calls for 1.25% assessment on all residential and commercial property policies to fund firefighting. Foes call it a tax.

Here's the header, subhead, and lede from the January 9 article:

On Monday's "NBC Nightly News," correspondent Mike Taibbi oddly suggested that Barack Obama could be considered an "independent" or centrist politician as he included the liberal Senator as one of several politicians with an "independent streak" with whom New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been associated. Taibbi: "Bloomberg was a long-time Democrat, turned Republican mayor, turned Independent, who has kept company with others with an independent streak, from Senators Joe Lieberman and Barack Obama to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger." Such a juxtaposition seems especially out of place in light of National Journal's 2006 vote ratings which found that Obama had a more liberal voting record than all but nine of his Senate colleagues. (Transcript follows)

A hard-hitting subscription-only editorial in the Wall Street Journal today needs some reinforcement.

That's because Californians relying on Old Media for their news about the Golden State's dire financial situation are being conditioned to believe that only a tax increase will solve the state's problems.

The latest offering in that regard is a Field poll covered at the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle, headlined "Many voters think deficit fix will require higher taxes" and "Voters resigned to higher taxes to solve budget crisis," respectively. Those headlines conveniently obscure the fact that the margin of those believing that tax increases are necessary vs. those who think that the answer is totally in spending cuts is only 48%-43%.

Here is some of what the Journal had to say:

Barely four years after California's historic recall of sitting Governor Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide election to replace him, the Golden State is, again, in a budget crunch of its own making.

Oh, it's not as bad as the Gray days -- yet. The $35 billion budget deficit Davis papered over long enough to win reelection in 2002 over Bill Simon, with the help of the state's ignorant and non-inquisitive news media, is 2-1/2 times higher than the $14 billion gap the state is facing over the next 18 months.

The state's Old Media, as would be expected, is moaning about cuts that might have to be made, obsessing over the possibility that "universal health care" might be derailed, and of course giving visibility to anyone and everyone who thinks even more taxes will solve the problem.

As has been the case for well over a decade, nobody that I know of in California's Old Media is considering the idea that the state is paying the price for failing to sufficiently go along with the rest of the country in aggressively reducing welfare rolls. But the numbers support the idea that if the state had done what the rest of the country has "somehow" done without visible suffering, it would be in a much better situation.

(A table and graphs illustrating the situation are after the jump.)

When California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed two bills on Oct. 12 that essentially turn the state's public schools over to homosexual and transgender activists, there was virtually no media coverage outside California. There still isn't.

Beginning in January 2008, California public schools must teach children as young as 3 to 5 years old that homosexuality is a normal, healthy lifestyle and that kids can choose their "gender." This means banning the terms "husband" and "wife" for the more progressively inclusive term "partner." "Moms" and "dads" will morph into sexually neutral "parents." Textbooks will be rewritten to blot out any reminder of married-couple-led families as a social norm. Gender-confused kids will get to use the restrooms of their choice. Any expression of negativity toward deviant sexuality will be punished as "bigotry." The coming changes are so radical that they produce gasps or professions of disbelief from people who hear about it from sources outside the mainstream media.

Bruce Shortt, an advocate of private schooling who writes a periodic report called "the Continuing Collapse" about problems in government schools, provides this analysis:

So far, the media have maintained a near total news blackout on this development.

A recent article [at Medill Reports online] on homosexual gains in the schools reflects how the advocates of legislation to mainstream deviant lifestyles plan to respond to queries from naive or fellow travelling reporters:

According to the media website TV Week, "most TV news operations" deemed Arnold Schwarzenegger's grabbing of "Good Morning America" reporter Claire Shipman's hands during an interview to be "inappropriate." The exchange, which was first reported last Wednesday on NewsBusters, occurred after Shipman repeatedly tried to get the California governor to admit that some efforts to combat the state's wildfires were going poorly. At that point, the former actor seized the journalist's hands and proclaimed, "...You're looking for a mistake and you won't find it because it's all good news, as much as you maybe hate it, but it's good news." Apparently, Shipman found Schwarzenegger's actions "bizarre and amusing."

According to TV Week, the physical touching amounted to applying "force to a female reporter" and an attempt to "muscle" her. TV Week's Michele Greppi cited the MRC for highlighting the story: "The Media Research Center, founded by Brent Bozell to wage a war against liberal bias in journalism, posted a transcript of the interview....The headline was 'Arnold Grabs ABC’s Shipman, Demands: Stop Spinning Fire Coverage.'" TV Week also explained how the elite media reacted to the governor's grabbing. Greppi wrote, "At most TV news operations, the Schwarzenegger move was regarded as inappropriate on his part and smoothly handled on hers."

On CNN's "Reliable Sources" Sunday, host Howard Kurtz asked ABC's Claire Shipman about California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger grabbing her hands during an interview about the wildfires. "Would he have done that to a male correspondent?" And when Kurtz served up Glenn Beck's wildfires comments on CNN Headline News, CBS's Harry Smith was so non-plussed he changed the subject. First, the Shipman exchange:

KURTZ: What were you thinking when Schwarzenegger grabbed your hand and accused of you hating good news?

SHIPMAN: Well, my first thought was, this is unusual. You know? And then I thought, when is he going to let go of my hands? He held my hands for the entire answer.

Aren't they Grand?

On Wednesday's "Early Show," Harry Smith gushed over Bill and Hillary Clinton and how two "idealistic kids" transformed themselves into "political rock stars." Smith also took pains to point out that the Clintons are a "still-young couple." Over on ABC, Clinton-fan Kate Snow fawned over Bill and Hillary for being "masters at turning bad news into good." In general, she seemed to be impressed with the 2008 candidate's ability to spin the American public.

Global Warming: The Answer for Everything

NBC, predictably, kicked off the media blame game and assigned the cause of the California fires to, you guessed it, global warming. "Nightly News" host Brian Williams wondered, "Are these fires somehow a result of climate change?" CBS echoed a similar theme on "60 Minutes." CNN also used the tragedy in California to speculate about global warming. A CNN special, "Planet in Peril," which aired this week, failed to mention that one of the climate change scientists featured also happened to be funded by George Soros.

Reporter Claire Shipman did her level best to get California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to say the efforts to combat the state's wild fires were going poorly. Shipman interviewed the governor on Wednesday's "Good Morning America" and wondered about "the comparison to Katrina that everybody's making in the back of their mind..." At one point, Governor Schwarzenegger cut off Shipman's pleas for negative assessments of the effort by grabbing her arm. He bluntly scolded, "Trust me when I tell you, you're looking for a mistake and you won't find it because it's all good news, as much as you maybe hate it, but it's good news."

Video (1:21): Real (2.21 MB) and Windows (2.51 MB), plus MP3 audio (632 kB).

Earlier, the ABC correspondent attempted to deflate Schwarzenegger's sunny optimism by mentioning unnamed officials in Orange County who asserted the state doesn't have enough resources, including firefighting aircraft. The former actor simply wouldn't go along with this premise of victimization. He firmly retorted, "Anyone that is complaining about the planes, just wants to complain because it's a bunch of nonsense." Schwarzenegger then proceeded to point out that the state has 90 planes and only wind has hampered their use.