We know what’s good for you:
“You’ve got 47 percent of the people at our NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll who have health insurance who don’t like what the president’s doing. The problem he’s got, 47 percent of the people who have got coverage don’t want change. They don’t like what they’re hearing. Now, they may not know what’s good for them, but the problem is that he always knew he was going to have to persuade people with insurance.” –NBC’s Andrea Mitchell
“So many people are working to bring down health-care reform because it has a negative impact on their little corner of the world, or they’ve got a partisan interest in hampering President Obama’s agenda. … And most are pretty heartless about the more than 40 million uninsured, thinking that those people should do something for themselves and not drain resources from the rest of the system. This is what Obama is up against.” –Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift
Time for re-education camps:
“The insurance industry and some of the medical moguls continue to demonize health care reform as ‘socialism.’ The broadcast wing of the Republican Party, led by Rush Limbaugh, is pumping out fear-mongering falsehoods about health reform. I am concerned that members of the House and Senate who favor reform have a massive task ahead of them during their August break: They need to re-educate the public about what reform will do — and what it won’t.” –looonggg-time journalist Helen Thomas
Why the scare quotes?:
“It’s happening almost everywhere Democrats are trying to defend health care reform. Angry protestors … against what they called ‘government-run health care’…. Avoiding this kind of uproar is partly why Democrats wanted to pass health reform before the August recess. Democrats are now out there without a final bill to defend, but facing opponents trying to kill what they call ‘ObamaCare’ with a show of August heat.” –CBS’s Wyatt Andrews
Just raise taxes already:
“Nothing has been more damaging to rational discourse about economic policy than the notion, peddled relentlessly by Republican conservatives and accepted by too many centrist Democrats, that raising taxes is always and everywhere bad for the economy.” –Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein
When sexism is okay:
“I think that often where I am is just in the middle. The middle is often the common-sensical place to be. The notion that one side is right and one side is wrong is generally, as one finds in life, not the case. Women tend to be a lot more common-sensical than men are. In fact, when the Mark Sanford thing broke, I went tearing into my husband’s office and said, ‘Okay, that’s it. Women just are better. Men are just lesser beings.’ He couldn’t argue at that point.” –ABC and NPR news analyst Cokie Roberts
Obamedia:
“I personally encourage the president to establish a White House commission on public media. … A truly free and independent press is the red beating heart of democracy and freedom. This is not something just for journalists to be concerned about, and the loss of jobs and the loss of newspapers, and the diminution of the American press’ traditional role of being the watchdog on power. This is something every citizen should be concerned about.” –disgraced “journalist” [and we say that cautionistly] Dan Rather
