GayPatriot

The Internet home for American gay conservatives.

Does CNN spend more time debating Romney’s supposed gaffes than Obama’s actual policies?

by

Yesterday, while doing my cardio at the gym, the TV monitors showed Anderson Cooper devoting the first 35 minutes of his show to a discussion of the “secret” Romney tapes.

It does seem that he — and his fellow CNN anchors — devote more time to covering the Republicans supposed “gaffes” and alleged missteps than they do to covering Obama’s actual record in office.

Now, I don’t watch much TV news — and only catch CNN when I’m at the gym  — but I am wondering whether CNN ever devotes segments to Obama’s gaffes and his administration’s misstep:

And so many other issues. . .

Maybe they have discussed such things and I just didn’t catch ’em.  So, please do supply links to help fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  ILoveCapitalism reminds ms not to “forget Fast and Furious… a.k.a. “Watergate with 300 dead bodies”.  No longer forgotten.

UPDATE:  Why aren’t the media asking why the administration has failed to meet 60% of the deadlines in a bill the president and congressional Democrats championed?

RELATED:  Jonathan Tobin contends that “The reason the video hurts is that it played into Obama’s greatest advantage: a pliant media that is quick to dismiss his blunders but can be counted on to make a meal out of any of Romney’s gaffes“:

This is the same media after all that was faced with a similar gaffe four years ago when Barack Obama was caught on tape at one of his private fundraisers making similarly stupid comments dismissing much of America as “clinging to guns and religion” because of their fears and small-minded natures. While that video did not go unreported at the time, the reaction from much of the press was indifference. Right-wing bloggers and columnists screamed about it but it was not treated as front-page news in mainstream newspapers. The explanation for that is not exactly a mystery. If most reporters and their editors didn’t play it that big it was because most of them shared Obama’s contempt for religion and guns and those that cling to them.

Comments

  2. hmmm….A gaffe is when someone says something that is wrong, silly, inappropriate (i.e. Biden’s “This is f***king great” comment or Reagan’s “We starting bombing now” comment into an open microphone)

    To talk on for several minutes on a single topic, when you belittle and deride 47% of the voting public is a little different, telling supporters that this is how you view your campaign. Well, actually a LOT different.

  4. I think one need only look at how the media covered the whole Ambassador murdered in Libya and muslim riots in Libya and Egypt and then throughout the arab world.

    Somehow all those things weren’t the story, but Romney’s criticism of how the embassy staff and administration allowed a statement the administration later backed away from to stand for hours while our embassies were besieged.

    Also, if I were a reporter I would be all over the fact that Obama doesn’t attend intelligence briefings in light of the clear planning in Libya (and the idiotic denials that it was planned and instead was wholly inspired by a youtube movie).

    Oh, and the fact that the administration seems more inclined to blame the movie than muslims.

    Shoot I could make a long list of things the media should be covereing and asking Obama about relentlessly, but somehow the media doesn’t want to.

  6. Dan, don’t forget Fast and Furious… a.k.a. “Watergate with 300 dead bodies”.

    To talk on for several minutes on a single topic, when you belittle and deride 47% of the voting public is a little different…

    Really, Kevin? Different from this?

    You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone… And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

    Your Dear Reader belittled and derided the voting public of Pennsylvania and the Midwest there, as bitter fools who turn to guns, religion and xenophobia if they can’t find jobs. Different how, Kevin?

    Well I see the differences: 1) Even though He dismissed the voting public of entire regions of America, He said something you want to hear – something to reinforce your prejudices; and 2) it was Him doing it. So, of course you give Him a pass.

    Whereas Romney said something you really, reeeeaaaally don’t want to hear:

    There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what…who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax…

  7. BTW, re: Tobin’s comment: “Pliant” is not the word I would use to describe the media; “brazenly partisan” would be more accurate.

    But, the Obama campaign media can only fool people who want to be fooled.

    And freedom means that, if 50%+ of Americans want to be fooled, then they get to be fooled and deserve to be fooled.

  13. Is this your first election?

    The media only wants a horse race with controversy and intrigue. This is what makes ratings. All of the examples.of ILC posted require nuance and that is not what the media wants.

    This is classic raw unfiltered video. The stuff the youtube generation wants.

    Thus it gets played and discussed so they can get eyeballs so the media can sell ads. Capitalism at its lowest common denominator.

  14. The media only wants a horse race with controversy and intrigue. This is what makes ratings. All of the examples.of ILC posted require nuance

    No mike, they don’t.

    Again: Fast and Furious is WATERGATE WITH 300 DEAD BODIES. You really think there’s only ‘nuance’ there? You sure about that?

  19. The media only wants a horse race with controversy and intrigue. This is what makes ratings. All of the examples.of ILC posted require nuance and that is not what the media wants.

    No they don’t.

    I will caveat that they want controversy to cover, but they do not hold Obama accountable for anything. They stroke his ego, fawn all over him, and when something goes wrong they cooperate by directing all the attention away from Obama.

    Has the media even tried to question Obama’s decisions and actions after fast and furious? The dead Ambassador to Libya? Fund raising while ignoring allies?

    Is there anyone who things Bush would have been given these same free passes if it was 2004?

  20. Now that Mother Jones has admitted that two minutes of the Romney tape are “missing” (I.e edited out) from their story, will lower case mike and head case Levi start howling about “selective editing” as the left did with the O’Keeffe videos?

    Ky guess: No, they will not.

  21. The media wants news… that they think will benefit the Democrats. No other kind.

    Does that mean the media go against their financial self-interest, in turning down stories that could sell a lot of papers and air time (but that would harm the Democrats)? Yes, it sure does. And the media companies have the financial results to prove it.

  22. hmmm….A gaffe is when someone says something that is wrong, silly, inappropriate (i.e. Biden’s “This is f***king great” comment or Reagan’s “We starting bombing now” comment into an open microphone)

    To talk on for several minutes on a single topic, when you belittle and deride 47% of the voting public is a little different

    Yes, because what Romney said was not stupid and was true. It wasn’t a gaffe at all. It is people like you, Kevin, who focus on the fact that what Romney said was perhaps insensitive, instead of the problem that he was addressing, that are destroying (or have destroyed) the great country that the United States once was.

  24. You are assuming that Romney’s comments are damaging. Had Romney made the same statements in an open press release the Fascist Media would have buried the story. But since the story was “leaked” the Fascist Media have been all over this. The question now is did the Romney campaign “leak” this story deliberately? Remember, these comments were made back in May. what Romney needs to do is come out publicly and stand by these comments because at the end the day they are accurate.

  27. what Romney needs to do is come out publicly and stand by these comments because at the end the day they are accurate.

    Yes!

    Unfortunately politics is rarely about the politics

    That is true. If people actually payed attention to the substance, and didn’t rely on CNN, MSNBC, the Huffington Post, or Entertainment Tonight for their news, I doubt Obama would have any chance. In fact, I’m sure conservative policies (at least fiscally conservative policies) would be much more popular.

  28. In fact, I’m sure conservative policies (at least fiscally conservative policies) would be much more popular.

    I wish I could agree.

    The truth about the 47% is that they are tied to government welfare in ways they can not escape.

    I am on Medicare and I get to keep about 60% of my Social Security check. I would like to have medical care from the free market and I would rather have invested my Social Security “contributions” privately, but the law of the land says otherwise. So, I have to fight to “save” Medicare for me and hope that the Social Security checks keep coming.

    The point is, that when you change the rules after the game has started, you have to grandfather a lot into the “fix.” However, even that is a misstatement. Clinton started taxing Social Security as income and nobody stopped him. The “cost of living adjustment” has remained static, even though the price of meat and dairy products have inflated 23% since Obama was sworn in. Fuel prices have increased by over 100% during the same period. Like the unemployment numbers, the government gets to choose the “cost of living adjustment” and it fiddles the numbers to its advantage.

    We will not be able to go cold turkey in unraveling the welfare state. Nor should we.

    But, by all common sense, when you look at our balance sheet, no sentient human would dream of slopping Obamacare into the mix.

    So what separates the conservatives from the liberals? The liberals damn the torpedoes and go full steam ahead into dense fog with their eyes closed and slapping their ears and yelling “we can’t hear you!!!”

    Conservatives ask them to be reasonable.

    What, pray tell, is “reasonable” to a blind, deaf, single-minded out of control statist racing to grab other people’s money for his own benefit and amusement?

    Liberals and their dependents are useful idiots who envision Utopia and nothing will stand in their way of ultimate destruction. They are playing by the rules of parasitism by which they nourish themselves while killing the host. They attack and sap the system from within. They steal resources and habitat and corrupt the fitness of the host by specialized pathologies that wear down the defenses of the host. Some parasites in this game are epiparasitic and thrive by exploitation of both the host and other parasites. They are the liberal politicians.

    When 47% of the voters fall into the parasite class, there is not much the host can do to dissuade them from their mutated methods of surviving by killing the host.

    Of course, the host dies first and then the parasites scrap among themselves as they look for something else to latch onto.

  29. “Again: Fast and Furious is WATERGATE WITH 300 DEAD BODIES. You really think there’s only ‘nuance’ there? You sure about that?”

    Yes of course. Long standing government program to track illegal gun trafficking with flawed execution and lots of questions about who knew what and why. Good goals, bad execution and a whole lot of intrigue. I would compare it to bay of pigs, carter’s iranian helicopter plan or something like that. Not secret video of an elitist candidate with a group of super-rich donors writing off 47% of the country’s citizens.

    Fast and Furious is the type of thing that gets fleshed out over a long conversation / investigation / TV show like “24” or something like that.

    This is a short simple sound bite coming from the horses mouth, kind of grainy and obviously a private moment that was not supposed to be seen.
    The public enjoys watching that kind of “reality show” stuff and thus it gets played because its good ratings.

  30. “But, by all common sense, when you look at our balance sheet, no sentient human would dream of slopping Obamacare into the mix.”

    I disagree. When looking at the balance sheet you need to understand the root cause of poor numbers, and come up with long term goals. Some companies espouse the quick turnaround and cut everything until the sheet looks better than do a quick sale of the company before its realized the company has become a hollow shell. Others invest to correct the long term issues. Unfortunately the quick and easy “cut it” is not possible for the well thought out reasons you list you above AND the population recognizes that this country should not allow people to die when care is available.

    The goal of Affordable Heath Care plan is to make sure all Americans are covered and costs are shared on the front end where its cheaper. The alternative is expensive emergency room visits which nobody pays for and thus that costs gets shared to everyone who has legitimate insurance anyway. A 2ndary goal of the program is to ensure that costs are cut over the long term. Thus making the program more sustainable as time goes on.

    That is the goals anyway, and its 100% likely most on this site do not like the plan. But even if you hate it, I think most non-kneejerk folks think something similar needs to be instituted on a national level otherwise costs will continue to be out of control and health care will be the #1 reason bringing people into bankruptcy / poverty. That would be truly unsustainable.

    Obama’s plan is not perfect by any means, but its a start that will get us to where we need to be.

  31. Ah, mike, an excellent repeating of Obama talking points.

    Now, let us discuss actual facts and research.

    Your claim:

    The goal of Affordable Heath Care plan is to make sure all Americans are covered and costs are shared on the front end where its cheaper. The alternative is expensive emergency room visits which nobody pays for and thus that costs gets shared to everyone who has legitimate insurance anyway.

    Unfortunately for your argument:

    1) The most frequent and regular users of emergency rooms are those with government insurance.

    LaCalle and Rabin noted that “many studies on frequent ED use have considered the influence of insurance status and have found this patient population to be predominantly covered.”

    Much of that coverage, however, is provided through Medicare and Medicaid, and frequent ED users are more likely to be enrolled in those programs. “Among those patients who can be characterized as ‘occasional’ users, 36% are publicly insured,” the researchers found, “versus the 60% of frequent users who carry Medicare or Medicaid.”

    One national survey cited by the researchers found that the odds ratio for patients with government insurance being frequent users was 2.1 (P<0.001).

    2) Uninsured patients not only use emergency rooms at a much lower rate than do government-insured patients, but also actually pay the amounts they owe more fully and often.

    A 2007 study in the Annals of Emergency Medicine looked at charges and payments for 43,128 emergency department visits between 1996 and 2004. “What surprised us was that uninsured patients actually pay a higher proportion of their emergency department charges than Medicaid does,” reported co-author Reneé Hsia, a specialist in emergency medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. “In fact, 35 percent of charges for uninsured visits were paid in 2004, compared with 33 percent for Medicaid visits.”

    3) Health insurance mandates demonstrably INCREASE use and costs of emergency care.

    As John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis has often pointed out, in Massachusetts, where an individual mandate was instituted in 2006, emergency room traffic is higher than ever before. Indeed, between 2005 and 2007, Massachusetts ER visits rose by 7 percent, and the state’s costs of caring for ER patients rose 17 percent between 2007 and 2009.

    And what does Obamacare do?

    Put in a mandate and push more people into government insurance — both of which have been shown to increase costs, unnecessary use of emergency rooms, and expenses for people with legitimate insurance.

    The facts demonstrate that your pushing Obamacare was a stupid decision, mike, inasmuch as every portion of it has been demonstrated previously to RAISE costs and expenses.

    But you did it because you are a mooch who wants free stuff and wants other people to pay your bills for you.

  32. The major flaw with Obamacare is that it was written by Fascist, who see Government control as the only solution to every problem.

    Obamacare only addresses at the demand side of the heath care equation; ordering insurance companies and health care providers to provide care on Government terms. It does nothing to actually increase the amount of health care available. In effect, it rations the existing supply.

    Progressives, most of whom are as economically retarded as lower case mike, are offended at the notion that anyone should profit from providing health care. In fact, if the real goal was to make health care affordable, then it should be a hugely profitable industry. Profitable industries draw the most innovative and ambitious people, resulting in innovation and competition. (Is Apple evil because they make huge profits providing products and services people like?)

    Instead of controlling and restricting the supply of care (as fascists do), the Government should have adapted policies that encouraged more doctors, more nurses, more hospitals, and more insurance companies to enter the field. (Malpractice reform, tax incentives, reduced regulation). Moe competition would have lowered prices and made health care more affordable.

    Instead of creating doctors and hospitals, ObamaCare only creates new bureaucracies…. 159 of them, I believe was the number. Layers of bureaucracy do not make health care cheaper; not when you have to pay more people to push paper and have fewer of them to treat patients.

    But Obamacare was never about making health care better; only about putting the Government in control of it.

  33. Let’s not forget that MEdicare a) has the highest rate of fraud (no need to reign it it it’s other people’s money) and b) highest rate of claim rejection.

    Also the effect of Obamanumbers is to completely destroy the ability of the ‘insured’ to find care. When the ‘Docfix’ is not passed (and it is essential to Obama’s numbers for it to not be passed) so many providers will stop seeing government insured people it will make your head spin.

    Sure you have Medicare, get ready to travel 100 miles to see an overworked doctor to use it.

    Then what? You’ll mandate doctors have to see government insured patients? Congratulations, you’ve just reistituted slavery.

    (Standard disclaimer: I work for an insurance company. I don’t speak for them and they sure as hell don’t want me to.)

  34. mike weeps for the uninsured.

    Suppose the Obamessiah had ruled through his puppet Congress that you had to have proof of medical coverage to operate a vehicle, get a credit card, fly on an airplane, cross the border, own a cell phone, use iTunes, go to a movie, buy alcohol, pick your own nose, go to an amusement park, swim, operate a washing machine, live with your mom, or enter a 7-11.

    Then, suppose, that the Obamessiah had a ready-built Obamacare government welfare plan for those uninsured who could not “afford” medical insurance.

    mike would have us believe that the medically uninsured are destitute and medical insurance is beyond their grasp. That dog won’t hunt. Furthermore, mike and his band of parrots will never admit that Obamacare is meant to cover illegal aliens and draw them into the Democrat party.

  35. Actually, it’s kind of funny, heliotrope.

    This week, mike and his ilk are insisting that the uninsured are poor and destitute, unable to afford the most basic of health insurance.

    But then when you look back, mike and his ilk were insisting that the uninsured are “freeloaders” who have the money and can pay for insurance, but are choosing not to and are leeching off the rest of us.

    The last makes mike’s fainting spells over namecalling particularly hilarious; he and his Obama Party are on record as saying that the 60 million Americans they claim have no health insurance are all selfish freeloaders who are dumping their bills onto other people and living off the government teat — while screaming that Romney pointing out how many people ARE on welfare, paying no taxes, and living off the government teat is an insult.

    What one has to realize is what V the K pointed out brilliantly above: liberal initiatives, without fail, are about expanding the power, reach, and intrusiveness of government. And they will say and do anything, no matter how amoral, destructive, contradictory, and false it is, to achieve that end.

    In short, we cannot argue facts with these people. They are not interested in facts. They are interested solely in seizing more power by whatever means necessary. They are the American Taliban, and the god they worship is Big Government, with them set up as the priests in charge and administering their own form of moral law.

    This is why liberals so uniformly loathe religion — not as an intellectual falsehood, but as a challenge to their self-ordained right to dictate the morals and behaviors of others. They project their own addiction to “theocracy” onto others, since they cannot comprehend a life centered on anything other than government power.

  36. I agree whole-heartedly about the government as religion among the vast majority of liberals. I would even go further and posit that true progressives are incapable of a true religious belief system. Nancy (Catholic), Harry (Mormon) and Barack (unknown) rework religion to say what they need it to say to fit their political world view. Furthermore, Levi and less bigoted anti-religion people and atheists know, instinctively, that the liberals referencing religion are just pulling taffy and posing for the voters. They have said as much.

  37. lower case mike has demonstrated, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he is economically illiterate. He really thinks you can force the health care industry to provide more services to more people plus add a few hundred layers of Government bureaucracy to the mix… and somehow it will end up costing less than the existing system.

    Only an imbecile could believe something so insanely stupid and contrary to the laws of economics.

  38. BTW, the whole thing about the uninsured using Emergency Rooms and driving health care costs up is because Congress passed a law forcing Emergency Rooms to treat uninsured people who wouldn’t pay their medical bills.

    Do away with that stupid law, require people to pay for the health care they receive and the problem solves itself.

  39. V the K,

    I was on the board of a hospital for many years. We ran a check on the uninsured who came into the emergency room. If they had the resources, we went after them and garnished their pay or whatever. You should have heard the caterwauling from those with high BMW payments who didn’t have the ready cash for their treatment. Great! We just advised them to slap it on their Visa card along with everything else they were paying to live outside of their income. Then they screamed about the excess cost of minor stuff in the emergency room. Hello? Did we ask them not to go to a doctor? Did we ask them to take their stupid hangnail to the most expensive “clinic” in town?