GOP Wants to Impeach Obama Just for Being Black
“Ten years ago, Barack Obama came upon the American public as a breath of fresh air. He spoke in ways that awakened our hopes, broke through the clouds of cheap politics and stormy rhetoric....But how many other Americans saw a different reckoning, when confronted with that name, ‘Barack Obama,’ right there on the ballot in front of them — how many saw that name and that face and that man with dread?...Check the numbers: 57 percent of the Republican Party wants this man run out of office and thrown to the curb. They can’t come up with a reason he deserves impeachment, but that’s not their fault. Not really. You see, they never went looking for a reason. They never needed one. It was not what he did. It was, from the outset, who he was.”
— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on the July 28 edition of Hardball, recalling the 10th anniversary of Obama delivering the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention.
Uncaring Paul Ryan Trying to Sell a “Turd in the Punch Bowl”
Host David Gregory: “Let’s talk about your own attitudes about people who are poor and their views on government. You were on this program in January of last year and you said the following:”
Clip of Paul Ryan from January 27, 2013: “We don’t want a dependency culture. Our concern in this country is with the idea that more and more able-bodied people are becoming dependent on the government than upon themselves for their livelihoods.”
Gregory: “It doesn’t sound like there’s a lot of sympathy for people you think need the government’s help.”
— Setting up a question to Ryan on NBC’s Meet the Press, July 27.
“[Congressman Paul] Ryan’s new plan takes power away from the federal government and gives it to private companies....Ryan is out there selling the turd in the punch bowl, trying to tell us that, ‘Oh, if we give all of this power to the states, Americans are going to be just a lot better off.’ Really? Backed up? Local elections with Citizens United? You’re going turn these kinds of decisions over to the locals? Ain’t going to happen and it should not happen. Ryan is as radical now as he has ever been....”
— Ed Schultz on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, July 24.
No “Humanity” in GOP’s “Naked Abuse of Politics”
Co-anchor Chris Cuomo: “Where is the humanity in this? How did kids get lost in partisan politics?... I think it’s just one of the most naked abuses of politics I’ve seen, in terms of saying something is important, but not even going and dealing with it.”
Co-anchor Kate Bolduan: “Some of them are trying to, and they’re not even being allowed in.”...
Cuomo: “You spend weeks subpoenaing e-mails on, you know, on — what’s going on with the IRS, but you’re really not going to fight your way into see these kids? It’s ’cause you don’t want to.”
— Discussing GOP congressional critics of Obama’s handling of the border crisis on CNN’s New Day, July 14.
Jorge Hits Hillary from the Left: “Do You Have a Latino Problem?”
“Do you think you have a Latino problem?...Because recently you said about the Central American children coming to the United States that we have to send them back....Don’t we have a responsibility if something happens to them? I mean, I think no government should be in the business of deporting endangered children.”
— Univision anchor Jorge Ramos to Hillary Clinton in an interview shown on Fusion’s America, July 29.
Rick Perry, Just a Texas Version of Vladimir Putin?
“Rick Perry sending 1,000 National Guard troops to border to shoot small children. Could make good headlines — in Russia.”
— Tweet from Politico’s chief political columnist Roger Simon, July 21.
Impeding Illegal Immigration = Supporting Segregation
“Rick Perry was preceded in his call to send armed troops to confront children by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus. He, of course, called the National Guard to stop the Little Rock Nine from their first day of school at Central High. The presence of children on buses integrating Boston schools in 1974 didn’t stop white crowds from confronting them with slurs and threats of violence, nor did it give pause to the adults who hurled objects and insults at six-year-old Ruby Bridges on the day she became the first African American child to desegregate an elementary school. And so when we look to children seeking safety at our borders and see instead an invasion to be defended against, a contagion to be contained, or a drain on resources that we just don’t want to share, that is a side of history on which we are choosing to stand.”
— MSNBC weekend host and Wake Forest University professor Melissa Harris-Perry on her eponymous show, July 26.
Has Obama Been “a Little Slow” on World Crises?
Host Bob Schieffer: “Kim, do you think the administration was a little slow to recognize the gravity of this?”
Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel: “A little? I mean, the President talked about how this [shootdown of a Malaysian passenger jet] should be ‘a wake-up call.’ The wake-up call should have been when Russia annexed the Crimea months ago.”
— CBS’s Face the Nation, July 20, talking about the ongoing crisis in the Ukraine.
AP Has Second Thoughts About a Biased Tweet
“As much of world watches Gaza war in horror, members of Congress fall over each other to support Israel: http://apne.ws/1pnTgIG [1]”
— Message posted July 29 by the Associated Press’s official Twitter account.
vs.
“Many U.S. lawmakers strongly back Israel in Gaza war (revises wording in this @AP tweet: http://apne.ws/Uzxs1v [2])”
— Message posted about 4 1/2 hours later from the same account.
Journalist Thinks Good Coverage = Israel “Losing the Media War”
“I think our network, this time around, and I think the media more generally — and now I’m talking about the New York Times and other places — have been doing a much better job in this conflict. I think the image that most Americans are seeing from this conflict, by in large, are images of the destruction in Gaza. I think that’s been the defining feature of this, and in fact, there’s all these people talking about how the Israelis are losing the media war for the first time.”
— Host Chris Hayes on MSNBC’s All In, July 22.
Chris Fumes: It’s “McCarthyism” for Cruz to Criticize Obama on Israel
“Let me start tonight with this return of McCarthyism. I speak of the behavior of Senator Ted Cruz, who now accuses President Obama of undermining the U.S. alliance with Israel, of blackmailing and wielding an historic punishment on the Jewish state....Is Senator Cruz trying to mimic the headline grabbing of the bad old days, or is he just so ignorant of what those tactics have done to this country that he’s not aware of what he’s committing: the horror of McCarthyism all over again....Have you no decency, Senator?Apparently not.”
— Host Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, July 24.
How Objective: Starting Interview by Reading Laudatory Poem
“Few people have spent the past 20 years in the public eye as much as she has. She has been First Lady, United States Senator and then Secretary of State....Maya Angelou, the late Maya Angelou wrote a poem about her during the 2008 presidential campaign. It contains these lines: ‘There is a world of difference between being a woman and a being an old female. If you’re born a girl, grow up, and live long enough, you can become an old female. But to become a woman is a serious matter. A woman takes responsibility for the times she takes up and the space she occupies. Hillary Clinton is a woman.’ Some say she may be the first woman in the White House. I am pleased to have Hillary Clinton back at this table. Welcome.”
— Host Charlie Rose setting up an interview with Clinton on his PBS program, July 17.
Linking “Right-Wing Hatred” with JFK’s Death
“The right-wing hatred for John F. Kennedy was in some ways as extreme as the hatred for Barack Obama and nowhere was it more energized than Dallas in 1963....So why bring this up today?...Unfortunately, the venom, the incoherent conspiracy-mongering, the visceral loathing still exist. In fact, in one of the most obliviously obtuse acts of sacrilege imaginable, Dealey Plaza is now the regular site of open-carry demonstrations. That’s right, a group of looney gun proliferation activists meet regularly on the site of one of the most notorious acts of gun violence in the nation’s history to spout right-wing conspiracy theories about the President while ostentatiously waving around deadly weapons.”
— Salon writer Heather Digby Parton in a July 25 article. JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was a communist who had defected to the Soviet Union.
Global Warming Causes Forest Fires and Bumpy Airplane Rides
“Tonight, most of California is a tinder box; 216 wildfires scorched the state just last week....Crews call this the front lines of climate change, a longer more destructive fire season.”
— NBC correspondent Miguel Almaguer on the July 29 NBC Nightly News.
“Twenty people were hurt overnight — two seriously — when a South African Airways jetliner hit severe turbulence on its way to Hong Kong....One British study predicts that this kind of turbulence will increase significantly in the future because of climate change.”
— Anchor Scott Pelley on the CBS Evening News, July 16.
From “Old-Fashioned Journalist” to Obama-Biden Mouthpiece
“Right after the election in 2008, I was the Washington bureau chief for Time. And I was an old-fashioned journalist, not an advocate, didn’t take sides in my job. But I was extremely excited personally about the Obama-Biden victory....”
— Jay Carney on CBS’s Late Show July 30, telling host David Letterman how he went to work as Press Secretary for Vice President Biden and later President Obama.
Conservatives Just “Love Seeing Arabs Get Killed”
“Do conservatives defend Netanyahu bc they share same values or because they love seeing Arabs get killed? Trick question: It’s both”
— July 25 Twitter posting from comedian Dean Obeidallah, a Daily Beast columnist and onetime CNN.com contributor. Five days later, Obeidallah removed the tweet and apologized.
Maher vs. Maher: ObamaCare Better than Moon Landing...
“I always hear that the moon landing was the last great thing that America did. I think the last great thing America did was giving health care to 30 million people. [applause] I find that to be so much more of a significant achievement than landing on the moon.”
— Host Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, July 25.
...But “Liberals Are Just Sometimes Useless Obama Hacks”
“There was a study done this week, found out that online conversations that were intercepted and stored by the NSA, nine out of ten were not from foreigners — they’re from ordinary citizens....And I just want to say, if this was happening under Bush, liberals would be apoplectic. I’m sorry, but liberals are just sometimes useless Obama hacks without a shred of intellectual honesty.”
— Host Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, July 11.
PUBLISHER: L. Brent Bozell III
EDITORS: Brent H. Baker, Rich Noyes, Tim Graham
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