The federal response to the arrival of Ebola cases on American soil reminds Chris Matthews of the disastrous, apparently leaderless rollout of the bug-ridden ObamaCare federal website in 2013.
Obama Watch
By Curtis Houck | October 10, 2014 | 5:20 PM EDT
Appearing on Friday’s edition of MSNBC’s The Daily Rundown, the reporter with The Washington Post who broke the story that White House officials knew that advance team member Jonanthan Dach had a prostitute stay in his hotel room during the 2012 Colombian prostitution scandal joined the program and took to blasting the White House’s numerous claims that no such cover-up exists.
Reporter Carol Leonnig spoke with MSNBC’s Craig Melvin and slammed the Obama administration right from the moment she began speaking for their “red herring” of “the mistaken identity” and that it was “demonstrably false” for them “to say that the only evidence, which is what the White House is saying, that the only evidence involving this guy was that a woman had signed herself into this room.”
By Ken Shepherd | October 9, 2014 | 9:39 PM EDT
Self-proclaimed "victims' rights advocate" and MSNBC contributor Michelle Bernard wasted no time on Thursday's edition of Hardball defending former White House volunteer Jonathan Dach -- now employed at the State Department in the Office on Global Women's Issues -- from charges that he patronized a prostitute while on official business as an Obama advance man in Cartagena, Colombia.
By NB Staff | October 8, 2014 | 10:59 PM EDT
Graham pointed out that when the former Secretary of Defense gave his first interview to CBS’s 60 Minutes, neither one of the other two major broadcast networks (ABC or NBC) covered it and the result was the same with O’Reilly’s interview.
Speaking on how “especially upsetting again” it was that none of the networks joined O’Reilly in asking Panetta about the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 attack in Benghazi. On what Panetta said about Benghazi, Graham thought that “Panetta's answers on that were really weak.”
By Ken Shepherd | October 8, 2014 | 8:37 PM EDT
"The new HealthCare.gov is set to open for broad testing by insurers on Tuesday, but they’re not going to be publicly talking—or tweeting—about it," a Wall Street Journal reporter noted in a story filed October 7, citing a "new confidentiality agreement" that includes "any information describing... the performance or functionality" of the federal ObamaCare Web portal. Naturally the broadcast news programs for Wednesday, October 8, failed to cover the development.
By Ken Shepherd | October 7, 2014 | 9:52 PM EDT
Former CIA director and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta should have at least waited until after the 2014 midterms to publish his memoirs, seeing as they contain sharp criticisms of President Obama, Hardball host Chris Matthews argued on his October 7 program, lamenting Panetta's lack of "loyalty" to the administration. "Why's he doing this?!" Matthews whined.
By Tom Blumer | September 26, 2014 | 10:05 PM EDT
It wasn't that long ago that Obamacare defenders were ridiculing those of us who pointed out that the fully loaded cost of HealthCare.gov would surely top the $1 billion mark.
Well, we were wrong — to be so conservative. The real number is "about" $2.1 billion and counting, according to a Bloomberg report which is mostly being kept out of the non-business press.
WashPost Buries Latest Bad News About Md. ObamaCare Website; Fails to Mention Dem Candidate for Governor
By Ken Shepherd | September 17, 2014 | 4:59 PM EDT Last year the deeply liberal Democratic state of Maryland had an absolutely atrocious rollout of its ObamaCare website. Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown (D), who is running this November for governor, was in charge of the ObamaCare rollout.
The website has since been completely overhauled, at the staggering cost of $40 million, but all the same, health department officials are planning "to limit access... so that any glitches can be worked out and the system won't be overwhelmed with requests," Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post reported today. Editors buried the story on page B5.
By Curtis Houck | September 16, 2014 | 10:46 PM EDT
On Tuesday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report documenting how abortions are being funded by taxpayers under ObamaCare despite a provision in the law stating that abortions will not be covered under ObamaCare insurance plans. When the Tuesday evening newscasts for the major broadcast networks had passed, however, none of them devoted even a second to the story.
According to the report, 28 states (plus D.C.) did not restrict ObamaCare insurance plans that included abortions as a benefit while 23 states did have that restriction in place. In addition, the GAO found that 17 out of 18 insurers sampled did not bill individuals separately for abortion coverage within their plans.
By Ken Shepherd | September 10, 2014 | 11:00 PM EDT
As an MSNBC panel discussed congressional reticence with President Obama's strategy pertaining to ISIS, the Rev. Al Sharpton jumped in with a challenge to John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to call floor votes on congressional authorization for action against the terror group.
By Tom Blumer | September 9, 2014 | 11:25 PM EDT
On August 22 — a Friday, of course — the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services issued a brand-new version of the Obamacare contraception mandate supposedly "accommodating" organizations with religious belief-based objections to providing such coverage.
The new version is a facile variant of the subterfuge the Obama administration failed to slide by the Court in the recent Hobby Lobby case. It now says that organizations which oppose providing their employees abortifacient contraceptive coverage can notify the government of their objections; previously, objectors informed their insurers. The government will then tell the insurance companies to pay any claims involved. Anyone can see that nothing has substantively changed, and that affected employers are still associating themselves with practices they believe are abhorrent. Nevertheless, CNBC's Dan ("Obama-who-cares") Mangan described the administration's move as a "compromise."
By Tom Blumer | September 9, 2014 | 4:13 PM EDT
CNBC's Dan Mangan, last seen at NewsBusters claiming that the American people want politicians to just "shut up about Obamacare," is out with a column today reacting to the Kaiser Family Foundation's latest Affordable Care Act-related polling effort.
Sarah Ferris at the Hill also reviewed the poll, and has two primary messages for readers. First, "support for ObamaCare continues to fall." Second, "Healthcare remains one of the most important issues in midterm elections, ranking only behind the economy and jobs as voters’ top issue." To be clear "the economy and jobs" is considered one issue. So it's really pathetic how Mangan twisted the same poll Ferris covered (bolds are mine):