Bob Franken, Meet Bob Franken
"One quick point is the use
of the word `cut.' He should know that it's not a word that I
use. I use, in fact, `a cutback in projected spending.' That's
usually the term I use."
- CNN reporter Bob Franken responding to a conservative
caller on C-SPAN's Sunday Journal, June 11
vs.
"Skeptics say that's the
sound of Republicans trying to sugarcoat the inevitable cuts in
Medicare spending."
- Franken on CNN's Inside Politics, May 1.
"Democrats are well aware
that Republicans face a furious assault from angry senior
citizens, that they're trying to distract from the inevitability
of Medicare cuts - stalling."
- Franken on Inside Politics, May 2.
"The House Republican
budget bloodletting will infuriate lots of people. Besides the
Medicare cuts, Medicaid, the government health plan for the
poor, loses $184 billion....Domenici's proposal scales back
Medicare to the tune of $256 billion, details to come later. His
plan chops $175 billion from Medicaid."
- Franken on Inside Politics, May 9.
Recession Reactions
Greenspan: Little risk of
recession
- USA Today, June 21
Greenspan hints US may be
sliding into recession
- Boston Globe, same day
Clarence Thomas: One Bizarre Uncle Tom?
"These days Washington
seems to be filled with white men who make black people uneasy,
like Newt the slasher, Bill the waffler, and Jesse the crank -
Helms, that is, not Jackson. But the scariest of all the
hobgoblins may well be a fellow African American, Supreme Court
Justice Clarence Thomas. In the four years since George Bush
chose him to fill the `black seat' vacated by Thurgood Marshall,
Thomas has emerged as the high court's most aggressive advocate
of rolling back the gains Marshall fought so hard for. The
maddening irony is that Thomas owes his seat to precisely the
kind of racial preference he goes to such lengths to
excoriate."
- Time National Correspondent Jack E. White in
a June 26 column titled "Uncle Tom Justice."
"Last month, he issued a
separate opinion suggesting the court took a `wrong turn' in
1937 when it upheld President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal
and gave the Democratic Congress the power to set minimum wages
and regulate the economy. To modern ears, his view sounds
quaint, even bizarre."
- Los Angeles Times reporter David G. Savage,
June 19.
The Keys to Health: More Regulation and Spending
"The laws that protect
America's water, both its rivers and what we drink, are under
assault by lawmakers who think federal regulations are too tough
on industry. But today's findings suggest that millions of
Americans are drinking unsafe water, if anything, because
regulations may not be tough enough."
- ABC's Michelle Norris concluding story on GOP attempts
to reform water regulations, June 1 World News Tonight.
"There are those who hit
balls, sing songs, shoot pucks in New Jersey, and tell jokes
that bring joy, even inspire us. But we can confuse celebrity
with real achievement. By the way, the Republicans plan to cut
exactly the sort of basic research relied on once by a young
doctor named - Jonas Salk."
- Chicago Tribune Washington
Bureau Chief James Warren on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday,
June 25.
It's Okay to Do It, But Gruesome to Show It
"It's against the rules of
the Senate to bring stage props and photos onto the floor
without consent. Did Senator Bob Smith care? Naah. He wanted to
do some gruesome grandstanding against abortion during the Henry
Foster debate. So he brought bloody pictures of dead fetuses and
a plastic fetus doll for his little show-and-tell. Next time,
Senator, bring a dunce cap. You'll need it, at least in my Hall
of Shame."
- Newsweek Washington reporter Howard Fineman
on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday, June 25.
No Need for Guns
"I don't really get it
sometimes because what the Second Amendment really was talking
about was a civilian army and that's not the issue anymore. We
don't really need to raise up a civilian army and given the
trouble that guns are creating in our society, particularly in
cities with the drug trades and the whole bit, I don't
understand why we really are fighting so much about people
having the need to carry guns. It just doesn't seem to make a
whole lot of sense to me."
- Los Angeles Times reporter Sam Fulwood III on
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, June 16.
Christian Coalition: Insular, Not Uneducated
"Indeed, the group was
nothing like the Coalition members uncharitably described by the
Washington Post in February 1993 as `poor, uneducated,
and easy to command.'"
- Time Washington Bureau writer Jeffrey
Birnbaum, May 15 issue.
"Despite its increasing
sophistication and secularization, the movement remains insular,
distrustful, and eager to impose what it sees as a Bible-backed
morality on the public at large."
- Birnbaum, 16 lines later in same story.
Clinton's Brilliant Budget
"Aides said it would be
silly to submit another budget now. Let the Republicans stew in
the harshness of their proposals. But Clinton did and it's
widely regarded as the most reasonable balanced budget so
far."
- Newsweek Senior Editor and CBS News
consultant Joe Klein in an Evening News commentary,
June 18.
PBS: Refuge from Revolting Capitalism
"Isn't it a touch
inconsistent for right-wingers to be launching an attack on
commercial entertainment? Shouldn't those friends of capitalism
be giving out little statues of Adam Smith to the purveyors of
gangsta rap, steamy movies, and television blowups for their
dedication to satisfying consumers, however revolting their
tastes? After all, these entrepreneurs are not trying to edify
audiences, like the elitist do-gooders of public broad-casting,
which the right is naturally out to destroy."
- New York Times television critic Walter
Goodman, June 12.
Makes You Miss John Chancellor
"Here in the West, the
scientific method has fallen faster than the Berlin Wall, as
dead as the Great Society, defunct as the counterculture, as
deceased as a non-essential program. It's been replaced by the
Contract with America. Ironically, for all their vaunted hatred
of the '60s and their self-styled can-do pragmatism, our new
Republicans are acting like a bunch of hippies: ready to believe
any damn thing that pops into their head as long as it helps
further the revolution....If Newt and his crowd can blankly
accuse newspaper editors of being socialists, and anyone who
grew up in the '60s as perpetrators of a failed social
experiment, I believe I'm safe in calling them neo-Stalinists.
Just a word, after all. If I thought over much what words mean, that would make
me an elitist."
- Commentator Ian Shoales on ABC's overnight news
program World News Now, June 14.
- L.
Brent Bozell III, Publisher;
-Brent H. Baker, Tim Graham; Editors
- James Forbes, Andrew Gabron, Mark Honig, Steve Kaminski,
Gesele Rey, Clay Waters; Media Analysts
- Kathleen Ruff, Circulation Manager;
-Eugene Eliason, Melissa Gordon; Interns