Once Morons "Understand" ObamaCare, They'll Be Thrilled
"A lot of people are going to like [the health care bill] a whole lot once they see what's in it. For the first time, it's got some long-term care in it, which everybody is desperate for as the population gets older. It's paid for, totally paid-for long-term care insurance. So, I think that there's a lot in the bill that people are going to like. It's just a question of understanding it."
- ABC's Cokie Roberts on This Week, December 20.
Okay, but Preferred Even More Left-Wing Approach
Anchor Charles Gibson: "Tim, where this stands now, the question that I hear most often is, is this bill, without a public option, without an expansion of Medicare, is it better than nothing?"
ABC's Dr. Tim Johnson: "I would say absolutely, Charlie. We have to remember that doing nothing leaves us with the status quo, a non-system that is headed for financial and health care disaster....I would personally prefer to have the public option and/or Medicare expansion directly challenging private insurance. But what's left is not insignificant."
- Exchange on ABC's World News, December 18.
Shame on "Mean" and "Grinchy" Republicans
Reporter Nancy Cordes: "As he was wheeled into the Senate chamber shortly after 1 AM, 92-year-old Robert Byrd made it clear how he felt about being pulled out of bed to vote."
Byrd, with words on screen as senators applaud: "Shame, shame."
Cordes: "His ire was directed at Republicans who intentionally dragged out debate on a defense spending bill....It's one of several stalling tactics Republicans have employed in recent days, and they're not apologizing."
- CBS Evening News, December 18.
"You guys are going to probably be there late on Christmas Eve....A lot of people say it's the Republicans' fault, that you could easily go ahead and move forward with this legislation. Are you the Grinch that stole Christmas?"
- MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell to Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) during the 1pm ET hour of MSNBC Live, December 22.
"Is it just, at this point, being mean to keep all the staffers here, to force this thing out until Christmas Eve?"
- Daytime anchor Contessa Brewer to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) on MSNBC Live, December 22.
Why Can't We All Get Along - and Pass ObamaCare?
"I feel like right now, in many ways, we're a very angry nation....Maybe I'm naive and idealistic, but you would hope that there could be some conversations taking place where people, you know, really respected one another and talked about the different goals that they had, because I think providing health care for people who can't afford it is something that most people do agree with - that there has to be some kind of alternative other than our national, our nation's emergency rooms for people who need health care. And I read somewhere - I think it was in The New Yorker - that 45,000 people died needlessly because they simply don't have access to health care, and that just seems so unfair and so undemocratic."
- Katie Couric in a December 22 Facebook video chat. The statistic Couric cited, which she also touted on the September 17 CBS Evening News, was generated by the left-wing Physicians for a National Health Program. [Audio/video (0:51): Windows Media [1] | MP3 audio [2]]
Ridiculous of Rush to Say American Health Care Is "Dandy"
Clip of Rush Limbaugh after his heart-attack scare: "Based on what happened to me here, I don't think there's one thing wrong with the American health care system. It is working just fine, just dandy."
Fill-in host Terry Moran: "Now, the delightful irony about that is that Hawaii mandates that employers provide health insurance to their employees...."
National Journal's Ron Brownstein: "What Rush was saying, Limbaugh was saying was great, except for the 47 million people who don't have health insurance....and don't have access."
- Exchange on ABC's This Week, January 3. [Audio/video (0:49): Windows Media [3] | MP3 audio [4]]
Limbaugh = "Like the Bad Fairy at Sleeping Beauty's Christening"
"It's got to be that incredible inauguration of Obama....You started the year with this huge festival of hope and renewal and everything is going to be so different now, and then, like the bad fairy at Sleeping Beauty's christening, Rush Limbaugh utters the words, 'I hope you fail.' 'I hope he fails,' he said, and from that moment, the sort of the Pandora's box opened, and the rest of the year has been just this big discord and toxic atmosphere in politics and partisan divide and people shouting at each other and the Tea Parties and death panels."
- The Daily Beast's Tina Brown announcing her choice for the most important moment of 2009 on NBC's Today December 31, a few hours after Limbaugh went to the hospital with chest pains. [Audio/video (0:52): Windows Media [5] | MP3 audio [6]]
ObamaCare Opponents Are the Real Terrorists
"What would you do, sir, if terrorists were killing 45,000 people every year in this country? Well, the current health care system, the insurance companies, and those who support them are doing just that....Because they die individually of disease and not disaster, [radio host] Neal Boortz and those who ape him in office and out, approve their deaths, all 45,000 of them - a year - in America. Remind me again, who are the terrorists?"
- MSNBC's Keith Olbermann in a "Quick Comment" on Countdown, January 5.
Frightened by "Not Fact-Based" Anger of Tea Parties...
"There's an anger out there, and I have not seen it since my very first campaign, which was 1968 and George Wallace. And that is the angry populism which is not fact-based, it's just furious at everybody; angry at Democrats, at Republicans. The Tea Party has higher numbers in our last NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll than either of the other traditional parties. And that is what I think this news cycle which you referred to is feeding into, and that is what does frighten me. This spirit of America is so large and embracing, but there is an angry subtext because of economic dislocation that is very, very worrisome."
- NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell on Meet the Press, December 27.
...But Delighted by So-Far Invisible Success of Obama's "Doctrine"
"I think the doctrine of engagement, on which he [President Obama] campaigned, has borne fruit, but it is not perceived yet. I mean, what he has done is united the world behind the United States."
- Mitchell on the same program.
See George Lobby: "Why Not Tax" Bankers' Bonuses?
Co-host George Stephanopoulos: "Let's talk about the bonuses you mentioned. Is the President going to tell them [bankers], flatly, 'Don't take them?'"
White House advisor David Axelrod: "Well, I think he's going to talk to them about the implications of those bonuses....But our principal focus is how do we get the economy moving again? How do we create jobs? And that means getting credit to small businesses and medium-sized businesses."
Stephanopoulos: "David, why not tax the bonuses? Britain last week announced that they're going to have a big windfall tax, a one-time tax on these big bonuses this year because the banks got so much help. Why not do that?"
- ABC's Good Morning America, December 14.
Obama "a Certified Intellectual" but Palin's a "Blight"
"After all this, there's still more remarkable: The election of a certified intellectual as President. Not to mention an African-American one. There was the ascent of the digital realm with our happy surrender to the omnipotence of Google. And what of those other unlikely innovations and unforeseen blights of the era: small plates, Sarah Palin, Chinese dry wall, jeggings?"
- New Yorker magazine staff writer Rebecca Mead in a commentary about events of the last decade, on CBS's Sunday Morning, January 3.
"Hated in '09: Flabby Thighs...Sarah Palin"
"It's the crossroads of the world. People flock here for the shows, the shopping and the shredding? Right smack in the heart of Times Square, they are purging like mad. This is 'Good Riddance Day,' where before you ring in the new, you say adios to the old....Whatever you hated in '09 - flabby thighs, cheap men, rude people or Sarah Palin - just write it down and rip it up."
- NBC's Jenna Wolfe on Today, December 29, reporting on an end of the year paper-shredding tradition.
For Terrorists, It's Either Miranda Rights or "Torture"
ABC's David Wright: "Do you really feel like President Obama has made the country less safe?"
Former Bush aide Marc Thiessen: "I absolutely do....Why are we taking a terrorist who just tried to bring down a plane and telling him, 'You have the right to remain silent'? That's insane."
Wright: "So you say waterboard him? Torture him?"
- Story about attempted underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on ABC's World News, December 30.
Horrified by Hume's Pro-Christian Opinion
"Is it ever, ever a wise idea for a political analyst to essentially anoint themselves somebody's spiritual adviser, denigrate that person's religion, and do so on a Sunday political talk show?...Doesn't it also denigrate Christianity when you do that on a Sunday political talk show. This isn't church, this isn't some sort of holy setting, this is a political talk show....I do think it diminishes the discussion of Christianity....This wasn't Theocracy Today. "
- MSNBC Live anchor David Shuster January 4, talking about Brit Hume's suggestion on Fox News Sunday that Tiger Woods would find forgiveness in Christianity. [Audio/video (0:56): Windows Media [7] | MP3 audio [8]]
Movie Critic Awards Five Stars to "Rock Star" Gore
"7. An Inconvenient Truth (2006) - Rock star Al Gore takes on climate change. How did this guy not get to be president?"
- Boston Herald movie critic James Verniere designating the ten best movies of the past decade [9], December 29.
ABC News: So Proud of Their Boy Genius
David Pomerantz, high school friend: "George is incredibly smart."
Alexandra Wentworth, wife: "Incredibly smart."
Nancy Brunswick, former high school teacher: "Intellectual."
James Carville, Democratic operative: "I once said, 'If you converted his IQ to Fahrenheit, you could boil water.'"
- From a January 4 Good Morning America profile of new co-host George Stephanopoulos, as explained by the "people who know him best." [Audio/video (0:39): Windows Media [10] | MP3 audio [11]]
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