Championing Obama's Big Government 'Generosity,' Slapping GOP 'Pettiness' and 'Disrespect'
As If Media Bias Had Nothing to Do with It
“He [President Obama] got the post-election honeymoon, not the Republicans.”
— NBC’s Chuck Todd on Nightly News before the State of the Union on January 20.
Obama vs. Republican “Pettiness” and “Disrespect”
“That one odd moment that a lot of people are talking about this morning, Mr. Vice President, where the President was talking about having arguments that are worthy of the body and the country, and then he said, ‘I’ve run my last campaign,’ and there was a smattering of applause, maybe even laughter from some Republicans and the President shot back. Did you see that as a moment of disrespect? Was it a symptom of the very pettiness that the President was referring to?”
— NBC’s Matt Lauer to Vice President Joe Biden on Today, January 21, the morning after the State of the Union.
Obama’s Mainstream: Halfway Between a Liberal and an Ultra-Liberal
“The economic message, also, is so politically in tune with where the broad spectrum of the American people are. He’s laying out themes that are equidistant between the Elizabeth Warren and Hillary Clinton branches of the Democratic Party.”
— Correspondent Andrea Mitchell during NBC’s live coverage of the State of the Union speech, January 20.
Championing Obama’s Big Government “Generosity”
“Still ahead on this Friday night: free college for millions of American students — an ambitious offer that could help so many families....In Tennessee today, President Obama unveiled the goal of a nation where everyone has not only the chance, but also the means to go to college. He has a plan to put more careers on the launch pad with two years of community college tuition — courtesy of the government. And while for millions of us, a community college education can be the only viable option, the question is how to pay for this generosity?”
— Anchor Brian Williams on the January 9 NBC Nightly News.
Disappointed None of Obama’s Lefty Dreams Will Become Law
NBC’s Chuck Todd: “He read a lot of issues, paid sick leave, a lot of things that people may like what they heard, but it’s a Republican Congress and I thought we should do a reality check in what might actually get to his desk. Those are the three items [child care tax credit, trade negotiating authority, and an anti-ISIS war authorization], I would suspect.”
Anchor Brian Williams: “That’s traditionally your role. Some people hope you’re right, a lot of people hope you’re wrong.”
Todd: “Don’t mean to pour the cold water here.”
Williams: “No, no, that’s just great timing, Chuck.”
— Exchange during NBC’s live coverage following the State of the Union, January 20.
Obama’s Limping Recovery Deserves Equal Reward as Reagan Boom of the ’80s
“He [Obama] has to do a lot like Ronald Reagan did when he was going into the seventh year of his presidency....What he was able to do is convince the country that his economic program, Reaganomics, worked. As Jon Karl just said right there, that’s exactly what President Obama has to do tonight: convince people this recovery is sustainable, that it can be broadened out to everyone, that everyone can share in this bounty, and it’s because of the work that he did over the last six years....[Reagan] was able to lock in gains for Republicans for a generation by convincing them that his program worked. That’s President Obama’s job tonight.”
— ABC’s George Stephanopoulos previewing the State of the Union on World News Tonight, January 20.
Will Congress “Screw Up” Wonderful Obama Economy?
“The [Labor Department] report came out Friday morning that we [created] 600,000 jobs in the last two months, unemployment down to 5.6. We are the envy of the world right now, and I guess the question is: Is there any danger Congress will screw it up?”
— Bloomberg View columnist Al Hunt to Colorado Senator Cory Gardner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, January 14.
Brian Fears for Cuba: “What Happens to the Revolution?”
“From Havana tonight, we have a bit of a caution for all those Americans who may think that, in a year or two, this will all be different, teeming with American tourists and big American brand names....[to Cuban woman] When Americans are here, and planes and hotels and the cars are 2015 cars and not 1958 cars, what happens to the revolution?”
— NBC anchor Brian Williams reporting from Cuba on the January 21 Nightly News.
Overturning Obama’s Unilateralism Makes GOP “Very Far to the Right”
“And then the issue of immigration, that’s something that’s been around for some time here on Capitol Hill. The Republicans are going to move forward with their bill on Wednesday, José. It goes very far to the right — seeks to repeal President Obama’s DACA order from 2012 that he made during that campaign. They also want to repeal the latest executive order.”
— NBC congressional correspondent Luke Russert on MSNBC’s The Rundown with José Díaz-Balart, January 13.
Please, Can You Say Something Nice About ObamaCare?
Host Charlie Rose: “What’s the best thing you can say about the Affordable Care Act?”
Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL): “That it’s forced us to have a debate about health insurance in America.”
Rose: “That’s it?”
Rubio: “Yeah, absolutely.”
— PBS’s Charlie Rose, January 14.
“Pigs” of the NRA = “A Curse Upon the American Landscape”
“There are a few things I hate more than the NRA. I mean truly. I think they’re pigs. I think they don’t care about human life. I think they are a curse upon the American landscape.”
— Former NBC and CBS morning news host Bryant Gumbel, who currently hosts HBO’s Real Sports, in an interview with Rolling Stone posted January 20.
Second Amendment Would Mean “More Carnage” in America
“Just to keep it in perspective, I don’t think we should imagine that the conditions and the threat are exactly the same in the United States as they are in France. They are different. In fact, one thing that’s different here is weapons are universally available, and so — I mean, it is actually a very good thing that the tensions are not exactly the same, because we would expect to have a lot more of that sort of carnage here.”
— The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, January 9, talking about the terror attacks in Paris.
America “Went Too Far” After 9/11
“Do you fear an anti-Muslim backlash? Do you fear that France could go too far? There are suggestions that this country [the U.S.] went too far after 9/11 in some of the security procedures. I mean, there’s been a lot of criticism. How do you achieve a balance and not lose what is sacred in France?”
— Host Andrea Mitchell to French Ambassador Gerard Araud on MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, January 12.
Slamming Murdoch’s “Quasi-Fascist” Fox News Hosts
“To claim that moderate Muslims are responsible — or all Muslims, as Rupert Murdoch in that strange Tweet of his did — you know, we don’t hold Rupert Murdoch responsible for every crazy, radical, you know, quasi-fascist statement made by a television host. Oh, wait a minute, I guess we do in the case of Rupert Murdoch, since he hires most of them.”
— CNN host Fareed Zakaria in a January 21 interview with the Huffington Post Live online video show.
CNN Anchor Trips on His Own Political Correctness
CNN’s Chris Cuomo: “As you see on your screen, three hostage takers dead. That calculus, as far as we know at this point, are the two brothers, who were taken out in a separate assault and a separate standoff in an industrial area, and the African American man who’d been pictured as a suspect in a separate shooting yesterday.”
CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “Not American — the man of African descent.”
Cuomo: “Right — African descent. Thank you. Sorry, Anderson.”
— Exchange on CNN’s @ThisHour, January 9, referring to Amedy Coulibaly, a Frenchman born outside of Paris to parents who had emigrated from west Africa.
“History Will Be Very Generous with Barack Obama”
“It is my view that history will be very generous with Barack Obama, who has compiled a broad record of accomplishment through three-quarters of his presidency....He has incontrovertibly made major progress on, or fulfilled, every one of [the goals he set out]. The horrifying consequences conservatives insisted would follow have all failed to materialize...”
— New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, January 12.
More Kids Just Means More Damage to “Mother Earth”
“Top 10 reasons to have only one child: 1. It’s eco-friendly. You’re replacing two trash-accumulating, water-wasting, gas-burning individuals with one, which means your impact on the environment is drastically reduced. You get to be a mother without destroying Mother Earth.”
— From the January 13 article by “secular-parenting blogger” Wendy Thomas Russell posted on the PBS NewsHour Web site.
Outpouring of Left-Wing Vitriol for Movie About American Hero
“The public reaction to the movie American Sniper also highlights some of the most disturbing consequences of this war, the normalization of Islamophobia....As an American who loves freedom and loves the troops and wants this country to do things right and understand that we have a real role in this world, a moral role, I was disturbed by the movie. I sat there in the movie theater with my wife over the weekend and thought this just underscores how many lives we have ruined because of doing something that was terribly wrong.”
— Host Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, January 19, talking about the movie based on the life of Chris Kyle, a sniper who was awarded two Silver Stars, five Bronze Stars and multiple other commendations from his service during the Iraq war.
“The mere act of trying to make a typically Hollywoodian one-note fairy tale set in the middle of the insane moral morass that is/was the Iraq occupation is both dumber and more arrogant than anything George Bush or even Dick Cheney ever tried....Sniper is a movie whose politics are so ludicrous and idiotic that under normal circumstances it would be beneath criticism. The only thing that forces us to take it seriously is the extraordinary fact that an almost exactly similar worldview consumed the walnut-sized mind of the President who got us into the war in question.”
— Rolling Stone contributing editor Matt Taibbi, January 21.
“American Sniper kind of reminds me of the movie that’s showing in the third act of Inglorious Basterds.”
— January 18 Twitter posting by actor Seth Rogen, referring to a Nazi propaganda film glorifying a sniper.
“My uncle killed by sniper in WW2. We were taught snipers were cowards. Will shoot u in the back. Snipers aren’t heroes. And invaders r worse”
— Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore in a January 18 message posted on Twitter.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
DEPUTY RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Geoffrey Dickens
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