Republicans "Reckless" to Oppose ObamaCare?
"You're always honest about both political parties. Governor, do you believe that the Republicans are playing politics here, at the risk of people's health care?...Is it upstaging the need to help people right now? Is this getting to be a little bit of a reckless situation?"
- ABC's Chris Cuomo to Arnold Schwarzenegger on Good Morning America, July 22. [Audio/video (0:45): Windows Media [1] | MP3 audio [2]]
"People are saying that you are playing pure politics with this issue....Are you rallying conservatives to the cause of health care reform? Or are you rallying conservatives to the cause of breaking a President?"
- NBC's Matt Lauer to Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) on Today, July 22.
NBC Doc: "I Was Rooting for Obama to Hit a Home Run"
"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. And frankly, at the end I was afraid that he whiffed on a lot of the things....We're going to pay big time if we don't get this [Obama's health care plan]. I don't think we're going to be a great world power."
- NBC medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman on a special edition of MSNBC's Hardball following President Obama's July 22 press conference. [Audio/video (0:21): Windows Media [3] | MP3 audio [4]]
Is It Finally Time to "Call Out the Lion?"
"Do you think the President needs to call out The Lion? Do you think this takes your wife's uncle, Senator Kennedy? Do you think he needs to get involved for this [health care] to be successful?"
- ABC's Chris Cuomo to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) on Good Morning America, July 22.
To CBS, It's "Incendiary" When GOP Says Obama Risks All...
Correspondent Chip Reid: "In one of the most incendiary comments, Republican Senator Jim DeMint, in a conference call with conservative activists, recently said:
Audio of Senator Jim DeMint: "If we're able to stop Obama on this [health care], it will be his Waterloo. It will break him."
- CBS Evening News, July 20.
...But Not When CBS Asks Obama the Same Thing
"Are you concerned at all that if health care reform fails it will be a huge and devastating setback to your presidency?"
- Katie Couric to President Obama in an interview shown on the July 21 CBS Evening News.
You're as Cool as the Proverbial Cucumber
"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'?"
- CBS's Katie Couric in an exchange with Obama shown on The Early Show, July 22. [Audio/video (0:22): Windows Media [5] | MP3 audio [6]]
Forget the $1 Trillion Deficits - Do It for Teddy
"Today, another dramatic push, this time from an ailing Ted Kennedy, absent from Washington but appearing on the cover of Newsweek and writing: 'This is the cause of my life. We will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not just a privilege.'"
- NBC's Mike Viqueira on the July 19 Nightly News.
"Senator Edward Kennedy, who is battling brain cancer, is too ill to lead the fight for health care reform in person, but he is working behind the scenes. In Newsweek magazine, he writes: 'I am resolved to see to it this year that we create a system to ensure that someday, when there is a cure for the disease I now have, no American who needs it will be denied it.'"
- CBS's Katie Couric on the July 20 Evening News.
Sonia Sotomayor: "More Conservative" than Scalia?
"You know, for a Democrat, she has a pretty conservative record, a very much in the mainstream record....In fact, on a lot of criminal law issues, you could say that she's more conservative than some members of the Supreme Court, including Justice Scalia, perhaps."
- NPR's Nina Totenberg on PBS's Charlie Rose, July 13. [Audio/video (0:30): Windows Media [7] | MP3 audio [8]]
ABC's Jan Crawford Greenburg: "Republicans argued her views on issues like abortion and gun rights, and her controversial speeches, proved Sotomayor was a liberal activist who would rely on empathy. But Sotomayor - calmly, persistently, repeatedly - described herself differently, sounding almost conservative."
Judge Sonia Sotomayor: "The great beauty of this nation: that we do leave those law-making to our elected branches, and that we expect our courts to understand its limited role."
- ABC's World News, July 16.
Liberal Pundits Agree: Obama Is Really "Conservative"
Host Chris Matthews: "Does his temperament strike you as more like a radical like FDR, who changed everything, who wanted radical change, or like a true conservative who wants to basically find a smooth course and retain what's valuable?..."
Ex-CBS anchor Dan Rather: "Conservative, insofar he wants to keep those things - preserving and holding on to - but wants to be known as a bold, transforming president at the same time on a few things...."
New York Times White House correspondent Helene Cooper: "I think conservative....He's retained the ability to do renditions and a lot of the other Bush-era type policies that the Left really criticized...."
- The Chris Matthews Show, July 12.
Chris on Sotomayor: "I'm Getting one of Those Thrills"
"I heard and saw a picture of a family studying at night, sweating over school work....I'm getting one of those thrills I get about America. I'm sorry, I'm shouldn't say this. And I'm getting it again. When she [Judge Sotomayor] talked about sitting at that table and not being a genius like Barack Obama, not being one of these people that can walk into a college scholarship, who had to sweat for it."
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews during live coverage following Sotomayor's opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee, July 13. [Audio/video (0:34): Windows Media [9] | MP3 audio [10]]
"The very qualities of Sotomayor which is, up from her bootstraps, studying hard, you know bringing yourself up and then this other person [Sarah Palin] that they seem to like based upon no preparation like that. No homework, no scholarships! No effort that's been manifest. What's the story on the Republicans? Why do they like somebody who's shown no sweat equity against somebody who's shown nothing but sweat equity?"
- MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Hardball, July 14.
Celebrating the Media's "Prince of Camelot"
ABC's Chris Cuomo: "It has been ten years since John F. Kennedy Jr. died, along with his wife and sister-in-law in a plane crash off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. A decade later, we remember the prince of Camelot."...
National correspondent Claire Shipman: "John would have been close to 50 today....[Over image of JFK Jr. and the White House] A decade later, it's still the potential we remember, the-what-might-have-been."
- ABC's Good Morning America, July 16. None of the broadcast networks mentioned the 40th anniversary of Chappaquiddick two days later.
Commemorating "Prophet" Jimmy Carter's '79 Malaise Speech
Host Chris Matthews: "It seems to me Carter was dead on, on the need for energy sufficiency and dealing with the energy conservation, putting on a sweater, lowering the thermostat. All of those things made sense. He was right about the problem of nuclear proliferation, of arms getting to countries like Iran. He's way ahead of his time on that. And also his concern for human rights. Right? So he was right, but?"
The New Yorker's Hendrik Hertzberg: "Well he was, in this particular speech...he was sort of a prophet. He spoke as a prophet. And, and I mean by that, not as someone who is predicting the future, but as someone who is diagnosing, diagnosing the national soul."
- Segment marking the 30th anniversary of Jimmy Carter's "malaise" speech, MSNBC's Hardball, July 15.
Sarah Palin Is a Bad Mother
MSNBC's David Shuster: "[Alaska Governor Sarah] Palin holds herself out as essentially putting her family first. What's your view?"
Washington Post's Sally Quinn: "Well, clearly, she has not put her family first....These children have, it seems publicly, to have been exploited by her in a, I think, really unfortunate way....You know, she brings them all to the convention, including Trig, the baby. She brings the pregnant daughter with the boyfriend, who clearly didn't want to be there. She then travels around with the children, using them as sort of photo-ops."
- Exchange during MSNBC live coverage, July 9. [Audio/video (0:48): Windows Media [11] | MP3 audio [12]]
Keith Olbermann's Network vs. "Harsh Political Discourse"
Co-anchor David Shuster: "Remember the old adage about being able to disagree without being disagreeable?"
Co-anchor Tamron Hall: "Yeah, I remember it, but I don't think a lot of people who listen to, maybe, certain radio stations believe that. Well, six months after President Obama took office, a lot of sociologists and analysts believe that harsh political discourse against him really amped up and people started to push the boundaries of what might be considered decency. From talk radio to those tea parties that we saw with some pretty offensive signs folks were holding, even in the presence of children. The anger has certainly intensified."
- MSNBC live coverage, July 17. The on-screen headline read, "Too Much Political Hate?"
Brian Williams: Thrilled Just to Breathe the Air Walter Cronkite Exhaled
"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."
- NBC's Brian Williams phoning in to CNN's Larry King Live on July 17 to remember the late CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite. [Audio/video (1:18): Windows Media [13] | MP3 audio [14]]
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