Category Archives: Media

Correction, Gov. Christie: It’s Obama The Liar Talking

Barack Obama, Education, Healthcare, Intelligence, Media, Morality, Propaganda, Republicans

“That’s Barack Obama the lawyer talking” was the crappy Chris Christie’s explanation to the attempts of the president to finesse the lies he told at least 24 times about his subjects’ ability to hang on to their health-care.

Correction Gov. Christie: It’s Obama the liar talking.

CNN knows who to go to in order to bolster the narrative that the nitwork has been promoting: The Anointed One merely misspoke when he roared repeatedly, from 2009 through to 2012:

“If you like your health care plan, you will keep it. Or, “If you got health insurance and you like your plan and like your doctor, you will keep your plan, you will keep your doctor.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper is obviously—and energetically—collecting affidavits for his nitwork’s favorite man. Who else to galvanize but a character like New Jersey Gov. Christie, who is an expert at lying about lying? Here’s what that mountain of opportunistic flesh told Tapper:

“Don’t be so cute,” Christie said. “And when you make a mistake, admit it. Listen, if he was mistaken in 2009, 2010 on his understanding of how the law would operate, then just admit it to people. Say, ‘You know what? I said it, I was wrong. I’m sorry and we’re going to try to fix this and make it better.’ I think people would give any leader in that circumstance a lot of credit for just, you know, owning up to it.”

Tapper referenced Obama’s revision last night of his “if you like your plan, you can keep it” pledge.

“Don’t lawyer it,” Christie continued. “People don’t like lawyers. I’m a lawyer. They don’t like ‘em. You know? Don’t lawyer it. When I saw that this morning—I saw that this morning for the first time, and I thought, he’s lawyering it. That’s Barack Obama the lawyer.”

I love the way everyone reverentially alludes to the president’s former profession, as though he was anything but a lawyer with no private-practice or scholarly achievements, and a subpar university teacher with bad ratings from students:

During his 12 years as a lecturer at the University of Chicago’s Law School, [Obama’s] student-approval ratings were low. In fact, he was one of the lowest ranked professors in his last 5 years at the university. As we already know … [Barack Obama] left no record of legal scholarly writings.

Curse of Chucky Krauthammer

Media, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

Fox News is energetically marketing the neoconservative warmonger, Chucky Krauthammer. A generally “fair and balanced” newsman, Fox News’ Bret Baier turned positively obsequious in his Krauthammer coverage, making a song-and-dance of disclosing their close friendship. It’s all so incestuous, isn’t it?

When it comes to spying on Americans, Charles Krauthammer sees Obama’s NSA, 4th Amendment infractions as a vindication of Bush’s. The columnist has invited Democrats now excusing Obama to pardon Bush and … party on.

“After badmouthing tea-party Republicans for attempting to leverage a partial government shut-down and debt-ceiling deadline to dilute ObamaCare, Krauthammer quickly scolded ‘the media” for its biased coverage of the quixotic showdown. Pot. Kettle. Krauthammer.”

Like all “neocon artists”—they were once radical leftists and are still hardcore Jacobins—on the invasion of Iraq, Krauthammer dished out dollops of ahistoric, unintuitive, and reckless verbiage. Neocons had dismissed and maligned the Old Right (that’s us) and rubbished generals and government officials who warned against that war: Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, Secretary of the Army Thomas White, former general and National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft; former Centcom Commander Norman Schwarzkopf; former NATO Commander Wesley Clark; former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and Marine Corps Commandant James Jones: all were cool to the war. Retired General Anthony Zinni, distinguished warrior, diplomat and card-carrying Republican, warned Congress against the “wrong war at the wrong time.” The neocons dismissed them all as “yesterday’s men.”

From anti-discrimination legislative attacks on private property and First Amendment rights to the promotion of “large-scale Third World immigration” that displaces “Western core populations by groups that are culturally different and, in some cases, openly antagonistic”—the neocons are in philosophical tandem with The Left.
… these “illiterate leftists posturing as conservatives,” as Paul Gottfried has dubbed them, have been partial to—even complicit in—the historical elevation of Martin Luther King Jr. above the Founding Fathers. Neocons are always eager to conflate the messages of the two solitudes, even though the founders’ liberty is related to King’s egalitarianism as neoconservatism is related to traditional Republicanism—never the twain shall meet.

About the “sage of Fox News,” Jack Kerwick has reminded me of Krauthammer’s admission, as late as the eve of the 2008 election, that neither he nor George Will could figure out who Obama was: a centrist or a leftist. This, ventures Kerwick, speaks volumes. How anyone could’ve doubted that O was anything but a radical leftist, especially after the Jeremiah Wright thing blew up, is unfathomable. Jack thinks “Krauthammer and co. have zero business doing what they’re doing if they are that blind. And, of course, they got the country into Iraq.”

As to Chucky’s prose. He writes decently enough, but I am never curious enough to complete a column of his. It’s as unexciting as he is.

Chucky Krauthammer is a failed “expert,” for whom public goodwill runs eternal. “So why are insightful commentators whose observations have predictive power generally barred from the national discourse, while neoconservative false prophets are called back for encores?” This last question was posed and answered in “PUNDITS, HEAL THYSELVES!”:

The answer will not please admirers of the late James Burnham, who blame scheming elites for any popularly accepted project they dislike, be it unwarranted wars or welfare. Contrary to Burnham, elites, media included, can rule only if they represent ideologies that are widely embraced, as the invasion of Iraq was. Today’s news is not what it used to be because a dumbed-down population, well represented in newsrooms, cannot distinguish evidence from assertion and fact from feel-good fiction. News is now nothing but a slick, demand-driven product designed to please – not inform – the populace.

CNN Dummy Dana Bash Admits GOP Told Her So

Democrats, Ethics, Healthcare, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

“Many analysts of the conservative and libertarian persuasion prefigured our current healthcare predicament. [EPJ] It is not rocket science, but simple reason. Slow, stupid and shackled by ideology, reality must bite the “one-party media” before they’ll recognize it, much less report it.”

Dumb, Democratic devotee, “reporter” Dana Bash, belatedly admits (4 years on) this:

… When the President made that statement during the heat of the health care legislative battle, Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia, dismissed the commander in chief’s promise in a weekly Republican address.

“If you read the bill, that just isn’t so,” Price said. “For starters, within five years, every health care plan will have to meet a new federal definition for coverage, one that your current plan might not match, even if you like it.”

Fast forward three years, and that’s exactly what’s happening.

Indeed, 2:43 minuets into his August 2009 address, Rep. Price explained the simple stuff that a deeply stupid America has only just grasped, thanks in no small part to the “reporting” of party faithful like Dana.

REP. PALLONE(Y)’S Health-Care Baloney

Democrats, Healthcare, Media, Morality, Politics

Lying is second nature to politicians, but there can be no doubt that Democrats have notched it up, becoming increasingly brazen about, well, lying. Small mercies, Fox News still provides a transcript here and there for those of us who prefer to speed READ, rather than waste time watching video clips. Read through this interview with Democrat Frank Pallone, a ghastly congressman from New Jersey. Watch him in the act, and your skin will crawl.

MEGYN KELLY, HOST: Joining me now, Democratic New Jersey Congressman, Frank Pallone. He’s a member of the Energy & Commerce Committee. He was one of the lawmakers questioning the Secretary today. Congressman, thank you for being here.

REP. FRANK PALLONE, D-N.J.: Thank you.

KELLY: We’re struggling to understand how Ms. Sebelius can say the president kept that promise. That specific one of if you like your healthcare you can keep it, period, I guarantee it, when we’ve seen 2 million Americans have policies cancelled so far. And the estimates are it will top 10 million.

REP. PALLONE: Well you can keep it as long as the insurance company agrees to continue to sell it. But the problem is a lot of insurance companies now have been caught because they’re selling lousy plans at a high price that are skeletal and don’t provide any benefits. So they are now cancelling those lousy plans. In which case many of them are just a scam and saying, look we’re not going to sell this anymore because nobody’s going to buy it. And therefore we’ll try to get, we’ll give you a better plan that has better benefits at a more affordable price.

So the president never said that he could stop the insurance companies from cancelling plans. This is a private market. This is a competitive market. They’re not going to sell something they can’t sell.

KELLY: Okay. But that’s only partially true. But what you’re saying is only partially true.

REP. PALLONE: What’s only partially true?

KELLY: There are some insurance companies who cancelled policies. And that’s what insurance companies–

REP. PALLONE: They cancelled the policies —

KELLY: Wait a minute, let me just, let me pose —

REP. PALLONE: They don’t have to sell them. It’s a private market.

KELLY: Let me pose the question. Then you respond. Some of the insurance companies said, all right, I’m going to cancel the policies because that happens on the insurance market.

REP. PALLONE: Right.

KELLY: But many, many other policies — in fact, according to the insurance companies the vast majority of these policies that are being cancelled are being cancelled because the regulations imposed on them by ObamaCare left them with no choice. The way the HHS —

REP. PALLONE: That is absolutely not true.

KELLY: The HHS regulations —

REP. PALLONE: They have a right to continue the policies —

KELLY: She admitted it. She admitted it today, sir.

REP. PALLONE: She did not admit that.

KELLY: She did too.

REP. PALLONE: That’s simply not true.

KELLY: She was asked about whether —

REP. PALLONE: The insurance companies can cancel the policies if they want to. They can offer policies at the same price for the same lousy benefits if they want to.

KELLY: If they change the policies in any marginal way then ObamaCare requires that they be cancelled and the people get kicked off.

REP. PALLONE: No, that’s not true.

KELLY: Yes. She was asked about this today by a $5 increase in the premium.

REP. PALLONE: It’s not true. ObamaCare —

KELLY: Let’s run the sound bite. Let’s run the sound bit, $5 change, $5 change and you’re kicked off. Watch.

REP. PALLONE: ObamaCare simply says that —

KELLY: Stand by.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. WILLIAM CASSIDY: If coinsurance went up by any amount, even by a dollar according to your regulations that would not qualify as a grandfathered clause? Just to have that out there for the record. I gather even by a dollar.

HHS SECRETARY KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: Dr. Cassidy, I want to start by the amount that you gave is not accurate. I was told $5, not a dollar.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KELLY: So she’s not saying, no, you’re wrong. They can’t cancel the people if the policy changes by five dollars. She’s saying, yes you’re right. If they up your premium by $5 it’s cancelled, ObamaCare kicks in, the person gets a cancellation notice and they’re wondering where to get their insurance.

REP. PALLONE: Look the bottom line is, they tell them where they can get the insurance. Look, the bottom line is, if you are selling a lousy policy at a price that’s too high, nobody is going to buy it. And so they’re cancelling these policies because they know people can’t, won’t buy them.

KELLY: OK.

REP. PALLONE: It’s a competitive marketplace.

Mainstream press, meantime, is every bit as allergic to the truth as the pols. WaPo’s Fact Checker is being lauded far and wide for doing what it’s supposed to do: award maximum “Pinocchio’s” to “Obama’s pledge that ‘no one will take away’ your health plan.” Sad. When mainstream media detect and report facts unflattering to O, it is considered a momentous event.

The president’s statements were sweeping and unequivocal — and made both before and after the bill became law. The White House now cites technicalities to avoid admitting that he went too far in his repeated pledge, which, after all, is one of the most famous statements of his presidency.
The president’s promise apparently came with a very large caveat: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan — if we deem it to be adequate.”

MORE.