Late-night talk show host, David Letterman, is the latest addition to the roster of television/mainstream media personalities who will be granted the privilege of tossing talking point related soft-ball questions to President Barack Obama beginning this Sunday. The president’s appearance on CBS’s The Late Show with David Letterman, his fifth overall and his first since September 2008 in the midst of the presidential campaign, is part of the White House’s all-out media blitz, the first since his speech before the joint-session of Congress last Wednesday, in an effort to bolster fledgling support for his public-option health care proposal.
Suggesting David Letterman is a staunch supporter of the president and all the socialist-related causes he stands for would be to put it politely. To date since The One ascended into office in late-January, the CBS late-night personality has made little, if any, effort to criticize the president or his progressive agenda. He has, however, found ample opportunity to harass former-Alaska governor Sarah Palin and her family, including a quip poking ‘fun’ at her daughter being raped by a member of the New York Yankees.
In addition, you may remember Letterman’s obsessive compulsion concerning Senator John McCain in the remaining month of the 2008 presidential contest in relation to his cancellation of an appearance on his show, only to quickly appear with Katie Couric in an interview shortly thereafter. The issue of whether it was right for Senator McCain to ‘lie’ to Letterman about heading straight back to Washington D.C. is irrelevant. It purposely distracted from the fact that McCain did return to Capitol Hill, in spite of being in the midst of a highly contested presidential campaign, to help resolve the nation’s economic crisis. Barack Obama, on the other hand, had to be dragged kicking and screaming by President George W. Bush, after informing him, ‘call me if you need me.’ Goodness knows that Letterman vehemently refused to bring that point up because it would have reminded viewers Obama’s lack of concern for both his constituents and the nation as a whole. It would make him appear to be more desiring of the political title of commander-in-chief rather then helping the American people.
Rest assured, however, this is not about him!
President Obama will speak with David Letterman Monday evening following his tour of the Sunday-morning political talk shows on ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC.
She might not be a real doctor, but she plays one … well, actually, she does not even play one on television. Honestly, it is somewhat understandable to grasp why Eddie Falco was chosen to vouch for Obamacare, but how desperate is the Democratic leadership that they have to seek out dwindling celebrities like Eva Longoria-Parker who do not even pretend to be members of the medical profession to demand public support for their dear leader’s socialist agenda? True, Desperate Housewives on ABC is still a modest hit, but it’s also the only true thing of some merit Eva Longoria-Parker has to her name and even that is no where now what it use to be when it first premiered.
In the article published this past Friday by USA Today, the Desperate Housewives star played the race card, insisting that without “affordable, comprehensible, and accessible coverage,” aka Obamcare, “children of color” will live “with fear.” First off, any one else notice the significant amount of irony this op-ed is tinged with taking into account that it was written by a Hollywood starlet pulling in millions of dollars per year and married to a NBA All-Star who brings in millions more in a column reserved exclusively for minorities talking down to us lowly mortals about discrimination and race? And what’s with the use of the term ‘children of color?’
Most of the ‘facts’ she cites in her ‘article’ are direct talking points from the Hillary Clinton-front group, Children’s Defense Fund. This includes the tired ol’ nine million children are uninsured cliché. What the CDF fails to mention, however, is that eight out of those nine million ‘uninsured’ children are covered; it’s just that their parents haven’t signed them up yet.
Is it safe to assume that Mrs. Longoria-Parker can assure us that the government-run health care system will not discriminate against other individual groups, like the elderly or the young? I didn’t think so either.
As Congress prepares to return from what can only be described as a raucous August recess, Washington, D.C. is about to become a battleground not only over health care reform but over the future - well, at least the immediate future - of the Democrat party. If the White House fails to deliver health care reform in 2009, it can kiss any chances of maintaining a Democrat Congressional majority in the 2010 midterm elections. But, perhaps more importantly, President Obama risks losing the support of his own party for the rest of his term if he cannot rally support for a public option insurance plan when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening.
In a final public relations push on this weekend’s Sunday talk show circuit, White House senior adviser David Axelrod and press secretary Robert Gibbs were in full spin mode but spent most of their airtime sending mixed signals reflecting continued indecision within the White House on the President’s support for the public option.
On NBC’s Meet the Press, Axelrod faced surprisingly tough questions from a usually friendly David Gregory.
MR. AXELROD: You know, he certainly believes that a public option within this exchange would be important. Let’s, let’s, let’s focus on what the issue is. There are 10…
MR. GREGORY: He said it must be included, David. He said it must be included.
MR. AXELROD: He said there must–he said there must be a, an exchange where people can get insurance at a competitive price. He believes in competition and choice. The public option is a, is an important tool to help promote that where there is no competition. He still believes that. But here’s the problem, David. If you don’t have insurance today, if don’t have insurance through your employer and you need to get a policy, it costs you three times as much, on the average, as it would if you had employer coverage. People simply can’t afford it. One of the ways–so we want to create a pool in which people who don’t have insurance, and small businesses, can go and get insurance at a competitive price. And a public option would be a valuable tool within that group, that package of plans that would be offered, private and public.
MR. GREGORY: I just want to be clear here because in his statement, he was unequivocal. He said it must be included. A public plan must be included. Is he now signaling that he would compromise on that if you could still have some measure of competition?
MR. AXELROD: Well, first of all, you’d have to take the whole statement. He believes that a health insurance exchange where people can go, small businesses, people who don’t have insurance can get insurance at an affordable price is still essential to any health reform and he believes a public option would be an important part of that package. He hasn’t changed his view.
Since taking over as host of Meet the Press, Gregory has gone to great lengths to establish himself as a credible political analyst worthy of the seat Tim Russert filled for 16 years only to become a mouthpiece for the most liberal wing of the Democrat party. His grilling of Axelrod had to please the House Progressive Caucus and its leadership as they prepare to meet with Obama to back up threats they made to block any attempt at passing reform that does not include the public option.
Any bill that does not provide, at a minimum, a public option built on the Medicare provider system and with reimbursement based on Medicare rates-not negotiated rates-is unacceptable.
The Progressive Caucus’ 81 House votes is no trivial matter given the deep divisions among Democrats over health care reform and a statement from Speaker Nancy Pelosi prior to the long weekend seemingly only strengthens their bargaining position.
A bill without a strong public option will not pass the House. Eliminating the public option would be a major victory for the insurance companies who have rationed care, increased premiums and denied coverage.
Meanwhile, over on ABC’s This Week, Gibbs managed to get backed into a corner over whether the pubic option was a deal breaker for Obama when questions from anchor George Stephanopoulos turned to a potential veto of a bill that didn’t include a government insurance plan.
STEPHANOPOULOS: “The president, from what I can hear, is going to make the case for the public health-insurance option — for a form of the public health-insurance option — on Wednesday, but he is not going to say: If you don’t bring me one, I veto the bill.”
GIBBS: “I doubt we’re going to get into heavy veto threats on Wednesday. We’re going to talk about what we can do, because we’re so close to getting it done. He will talk about the public option, and why he believes, and continues to believe, that it is a valuable component of providing choice and competition, that helps individuals and small business, at the same time provides a check on insurance companies, so they don’t dominate the market.”
STEPHANOPOULOS: “Even though he knows that means he is not going to get Republicans on the bill?”
GIBBS: “Well, we haven’t closed the door on Republicans that are ready, able, and willing to work with the president to try to provide a solution for this.”
The question many are asking as they await Wednesday evening’s address is whether President Obama will try and have it both ways. In what could just as easily be seen as a political stroke of genius (if it succeeds) or a complete lack of leadership (if it fails), Obama is expected to promote a compromise that would see additional regulation placed on private insurance companies for a period of time with a “trigger” that would launch a public option if private insurers fail to meet quotas designed to provide at least 95% of Americans with affordable (and presumably meaningful) health insurance. The compromise is a “put up or shut up” strategy that could back some free-market Republicans into a corner if the imposed quotas are realistic.
Earlier this week, the White House tried to leak information suggesting that Republican Olympia Snowe had been privately brokering such a compromise with the White House. The rumours surrounding the defection of Snowe, however, proved to be greatly exaggerated after Maine Heritage Policy Center’s Tarren Bragdon questioned Snowe’s chief of staff and senior health care legislative aid and set the record straight in an interview with HealthCareHorseRace.com.
I specifically asked her chief of staff that question. I said from the reports I’m reading, it seems like Enzi and Grassley are not at the negotiating table anymore and that its potentially only Snowe. And, they said “no, not at all”. There’s a conference call scheduled with all of them [today]. People are taking out of context legitimate concerns that each of them have raised at town hall meetings and some of their public comments and ten blown it out of proportion that they’ve stepped away from the table and that’s not the case at all.
At the moment, it would appear that the only Republican currently discussing a trigger option with the White House is former Republican Senate leader and presidential candidate Bob Dole who found himself (along with former Democrat Senate leader Tom Daschle) defending the trigger idea before both Republican Mike Pence AND Democrat Maxine Waters.
In our recommendations, as Tom [Daschle] can verify, we permit a public option after — an option after five years, if the insurance companies haven’t cleaned up their act. Then there is a trigger of sorts, and you could get into a public option.
The political reality is that Republicans seem content to continue to let the Democrats cannibalize both their health care reform bills and their chances at maintaining control of Congress if they cannot come together and pass health care reform over the next several months.
Healthcare town hall meetings continue to simmer across the United States, with some erupting into violence.
A Tucson TEA Party event at Tuscon’s Rincon High School drew one pro-reform protester who apparently turned violent, according to this and other clips (watch carefully, the elbow is thrown in the first few seconds):
The apparent victim then helps walk away other attendees who rush to his defense before the crowd lets the police “do the job that police do.”
Tucson’s KGUN9 ABC affiliate caught another view of the assault and interviewed the man outside, who identified himself as Don Alvarez, said he was threatened before throwing the elbow, and dismissed the TEA Party group as an “angry white mob.” That despite the fact that the meeting was apparently peaceful before his entry.
“Yes we do need health care reform. But let’s not break the backs of the American People,” one attendee tells a KGUN9 TV reporter.
Blogger GatewayPundit has a collection of links related to the incident and a selection of Barack Obama campaign quotes implying that the president approves this kind of behavior.
Meanwhile the Tea Party Express convoy is heading across the nation, planning to conclude in Washington, D.C. Sept. 12. NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday produced an unbiased look at the protesters and their motivations.
Who’s a terrorist?
A California town hall meeting featuring a right-wing protester has gotten liberals outraged by calling himself a “proud right wing terrorist.” Apparently the irony of his appropriating the term liberals have used against protesters is lost on some.
“It’s the White House that accused us of saying “fishy” things,” commenter Txbertie posted on the YouTube video’s comments page. “It’s the left that called us, among many other things, “terrorists” so how does the left miss the joke when we make fun of the outrageous things they say?”
Nice Deb has a fitting tribute to the right wing protesters “you just can’t reach,” on her post LOL:CA Democrat Party Sends Out Urgent Fundraising Letter Over “Chilling” Town Hall Video.
She closes with left wing-nut Keith Olbermann accusing Cong. Wally Herger of being the “Worst person in the world” for applauding that “right wing terrorist.”
ABC News seemed to file a report that refutes the left wing mantra that all the outrage over Obamacare is fake, manufactured, or invented by a “Brooks Brothers rent-a-mob” with coverage of the local folks that confronted Blue Dog Democrat Frank Kratovil (D, Maryland) as he attempted to avoid a townhall meeting on his recess.
Kratovil employed the Democrat’s newest form of avoidance by trying to set up one-on-one meetings with his constituents instead of the regular townhall styled meeting and in that way avoid the confrontations that whip up crowds.
The Democrats are hoping that the less volatile way to meet the folks back home will paper over the outrage so widely felt by voters. They also realize that their members returning home won’t have to see as many of those voters with time consuming one-on-one sessions instead of larger townhall meetings.
It’s all just a sneaky Democratic trick to keep their members from being forced to deal with the voters.
The kinder gentler meeting did not work for Kratovil, though, as more and more angry residents showed up forcing him to meet them all at once and boy did they give him an earful.
Kratovil is one of those Blue Dogs that barely beat out a Republican last election and if this is an indication, many residents of Eastern Maryland are regretting having pulled the Democrat lever.
In any case, an interesting aspect of this report is that ABC didn’t find any “fake” protesters but found instead that all the angry attendees were actual voters that actually lived in the Congressman’s district.
There were no lobbyist-funded buses in the parking lot of Mardela Middle and High School on Tuesday evening, and the hundreds of Eastern Maryland residents who packed the school’s auditorium loudly refuted the notion that their anger over the Democrats’ health care reform plans is “manufactured.”
This is, of course, the facts on the ground at every townhall. There are no “manufactured protests.” It is real citizens that are real angry at Obama’s socialist policies.
One of the first things you learn as a political strategist in Washington, D.C. is that the best time to drop a controversial bill or make a controversial statement is on a Friday evening when most Americans have mentally checked out for the weekend. One of the worst times to do the same is on a Sunday morning talk show. So, why was it that two of the Obama White House’s top economic advisers chose the talk show forum to soften President Obama’s “no new taxes” pledge yesterday morning?
On September 12, 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama made the following promise to the American people.
“I want to take a pledge. I pledge that under my plan, no one making less than $250,000 a year will see any type of tax increase. Not income tax, not capital gains taxes, not any kind of tax.” (UPI - “Obama makes his own tax pledge in N.H.“)
That claim has been challenged constantly by conservatives since Obama took office in January - most recently with regard to the trickle-down energy tax passed out of the House last month as cap and trade. But, until this weekend, all the president’s men (and women) have been quick to point out that they’ve not raised taxes one penny on the American middle class. All that changed on Sunday morning.
In an interview with CBS’s Face the Nation, White House economic adviser Dr. Larry Summers refused to rule out a tax increase to pay for healthcare reform while reducing the federal deficit.
There is a lot, though, there is a lot that can happen overtime. But the priority right now, so it is never a good idea to absolutely rule things — rule things out no matter what.
But what the president has been completely clear on is that he is not going to pursue any of his priorities — not health care, not energy, nothing — in ways that are primarily burdening middle-class families. That is something that is not going to happen. (Transcript at CQ Politics)
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner echoed that sentiment when he was backed into a corner by ABC’s This Week host, and former Clinton White House adviser, George Stephanopoulos.
STEPHANOPOULOS: … Even when you look at health care reform again, I know you believe it’s going to bend the cost curve over time, but the Congressional Budget Office says at best the health care reform plans out there are going to be deficit-neutral over the next 10 years.
So to bring the deficits down there’s not enough money in the discretionary budget. We all know that. That means more revenues. The president has said that taxes won’t go up for any Americans earning under $250,000.
But it doesn’t appear he’s going to be able to keep that promise if you’re going to bring the deficits down.
GEITHNER: George, again, we can’t make these judgments yet about exactly what it’s going to take and how we’re going to get there. But the very important thing, and no one is going to care about this more than the president of the United States, is for people to understand that we do not have a choice as a country.
That if we want an economy that’s going to grow in the future, people have to understand we have to bring those deficits down. And it’s going to be difficult, hard for us to do. And the path to that is through health care reform.
But that’s necessary but not sufficient. We’re going to do some other things as well.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So revenues are on the table as well?
GEITHNER: Again, we’re not at the point yet where we’re going to make a judgment about what it’s going to take. But the important thing…
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you’re not ruling it out. You can’t rule it out.
GEITHNER: Well, I think that what the country needs to do is understand we’re going to have to do what it takes. We’re going to do what’s necessary.
The two men were clearly working in concert from an agreed to set of talking points, but the timing couldn’t be worse for healthcare reform as recent poll numbers indicate that pluralities of Americans believe that Democrat prescriptions for reform will translate to higher cost and lower quality. Nor will it do anything for the prospects of Congressional Democrats headed home to their districts to face questions on on how reform will impact their lives at a time when they’d rather be fundraising for their 2010 re-election campaigns.
With little real action on the Hill this weekend and logjams all over congress, the media took to recapping the last week’s action and fights, or in some cases to recapping other media’s re-runs.
ABC’s Rick Klein, in The Note, delivered a rambling roundup of almost every major news source Sunday, offering almost nothing new or original. At least he does provide a pretty coherent narrative.
Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee compiled a flow chart with arrows and multiple colors that they say represents the complicated bureaucracy that would result from the House bill. It has been picked up by several other party members.
“It’s confirmed fears by people of the massive government bureaucracy that will come between them and their doctor,” said Rep. Kevin Brady, Texas Republican and the joint panel’s ranking member.
They wanted to send the chart to constituents, a process involving taxpayer money that requires approval by a bipartisan committee. Democrats blocked it, saying the information is inaccurate.
“Using gimmicks that are two decades old and phony rhetoric spoon-fed to them by an insurance industry benefiting from the status quo won’t do anything to fix the broken system we currently have,” said Doug Thornell, a spokesman for Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Maryland Democrat and assistant to the speaker of the House.
Democrats have responded with a chart of their own: a blank page that they say represents Republican reform proposals.
Bloomberg sticks to telling you what you’ve already seen.
Once again the ratings for President Obama’s latest primetime network appearance were down, but not as badly as some had anticipated. His latest press conference in which he spoke largely about his healthcare reform bill and the need for Congress to ‘get the job done’ brought in 24.7 million viewers. This was down fourteen percent from his last primetime conference on April 29th. While this is certainly not something the White House is excited about, all things considering it could have been a lot worse had it taken place during a different season when it would had to compete against more original programming.
Meanwhile, NBC’s ‘America’s Got Talent’, lacking a more compatible lead-in, suffered significantly in the rating in spite of the exclusive interview with ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ singing sensation Susan Boyle, the main sticking point that forced the White House to move up the press conference in the first place. Although ‘Talent’ was the most watched program in the hour (9pm EST) and for the night, the 11.1 million viewers it did bring in marked this as its lowest Wednesday ever. In addition to a bad lead-in, ‘Talent’ faced a three-way battle with ABC’s ‘Wipeout’, which drew 6.2 million viewers, and FOX’s ‘So You Think You Can Dance?’, which received 7.3 million viewers, for the timeslot.
FOX, which for the second time in a row refused the president’s request for airtime, was the real winner for the night. ‘Dance’ earned a 2.8/10 share in the coveted 18-49 year-old demographic.
It is probably a clear indication that the political honeymoon is over for the Obama administration when a British woman no one had ever heard of several months ago upstages the President of the United States and forces the White House to adjust their schedule to accommodate her highly anticipated interview. That is precisely what happened when NBC balked at Obama’s request for airtime this Wednesday at 9pm EST that would have forced the network, which is dealing with its own series of economic troubles, to delay the high-rated reality program ‘America’s Got Talent’. This week’s episode was expected to bring in an even wider audience as it was to include an exclusive interview with ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ singing sensation Susan Boyle.The White House blinked and agreed to move up the press conference to the less-watched 8pm EST slot. And so Obama’s bad week just got a little worse.
It was this past Friday, July 17th, that President Obama requested airtime from the four major basic cable networks. Wednesday’s primetime press conference, the fourth since he assumed the presidency last January, was to be the culminating point in the administration’s calculated campaign-style media blitz in an effort to bolster American support for the president’s healthcare reform plan at a time when according to the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll it is seriously waning.
But for the first time Obama encountered resistance from one of the Big Three networks, specifically NBC. This is quite a surprise given that one of subsidiaries, MSNBC, which airs Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, is usually one of his biggest supporters. NBC is suffering from a series of financial setbacks, most of which stem from clear mismanagement and lack of leadership on the part of the higher-ups within the company. As its parent company, GE, struggles to reestablish a solid foothold on Wall Street, NBC has just suffered one of its worst television seasons in years, landing dead last in the prime-time sweeps race this past spring. With Universal Pictures, which NBC acquired not too long ago and whose profits account for twenty percent of NBC’s revenue, hemorrhaging money hand over fist from expensive feature films that fail to recoup their production budgets, the network is doing some serious penny-pinching right now.
Summer is usually a slow time for television networks anyway, but even the rosiest prospects this year are looking rather bleak. Television viewership overall is down lower than usual for this of year and with that less advertisement revenue. And with the current economic crisis already cutting significantly into this specific area of the television networks’ profits, companies like NBC are trying to hold their ground as best they can.
Added to this is the growing concern amongst the major basic cable networks is that President Obama is no longer the draw on television that he use to be. His last primetime press conference on April 29th pulled in 28.8 millions viewers, down twenty-nine percent from the previous conference on March 24th and down a rather alarming forty-two percent from his very first one on February 9th.
Of greater concern for the networks is the fact that, given that the theme of this Wednesday’s press conference will be healthcare, President Obama’s last attempt to talk to the nation on this issue fell flat in the ratings, drawing only 4.7 million viewers. The results were even worse considering that the primetime special lost out to a repeat of CSI: NY.
The White House spun the story, of course, arguing that “in speaking with various media outlets, we found that rescheduling for one hour earlier would help us to arrange for as many Americans as possible to hear directly from the President at the press conference,” which is exactly the opposite of what the move actually did.
Health care reform may not be dead yet, but don’t count on a sudden revival - at least if you follow the naysaying of those closely watching the Congressional meat-grinder in action.
Conservatives in Congress are making hay on the setbacks and delays of health care reform, arguing that any delay adds to the defeat-ability of the bill.
ABC’s George Stephanopolous blogs about Sen. Jon Kyl’s (R-Ariz) assertion that they won’t meet the deadline and that Republicans won’t accept a new tax on benefits.
Reuters’ David Alexander picked up the clips and published his own story on how Congress will miss the August recess deadline.
“U.S. lawmakers on Sunday criticized a plan to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for a $1 trillion healthcare overhaul and warned Congress was unlikely to meet President Barack Obama’s goal of passing the measure by August.”
The next four weeks must fall together perfectly, without a hitch or a hiccup.
The number of weeks that’s happened recently? Zero.
On the other hand, Chicago Tribune editorial Rx: Stop the rush calls for a less headlong strategy in reform.
“What’s the rush? When did reforming the $2.5 trillion-a-year health-care system become a sprint?”
To which Brown might answer:
Without a deal by August, the ripple effects could start to endanger the prospect of health care reform this year altogether — chief among them, the closer it gets to the 2010 midterm elections, the harder it will be to get members to make the tough political decisions needed to vote on a bill.
If reform really solved the problems with the current system, don’t you think the public would support it, as well as the representatives who vote for it?
Once again the ratings for President Obama’s latest primetime network appearance were down, but not as badly as some had anticipated. His latest press conference in which he spoke largely about his healthcare reform bill and the need for Congress to ‘get the job done’ brought in 24.7 million viewers. This was down fourteen percent from his last primetime conference on April 29th. While this is certainly not something the White House is excited about, all things considering it could have been a lot worse had it taken place during a different season when it would had to compete against more original programming.
It is probably a clear indication that the political honeymoon is over for the Obama administration when a British woman no one had ever heard of several months ago upstages the President of the United States and forces the White House to adjust their schedule to accommodate her highly anticipated interview. That is precisely what happened when NBC balked at Obama’s request for airtime this Wednesday at 9pm EST that would have forced the network, which is dealing with its own series of economic troubles, to delay the high-rated reality program ‘America’s Got Talent’. This week’s episode was expected to bring in an even wider audience as it was to include an exclusive interview with ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ singing sensation Susan Boyle.
