The Esquire blogger argues that Obamacare-hating congressional GOPers still have no interest in actually governing, but they would like to “make a meal of Gruber as a political performance piece.” Pierce also declared that Gruber "is a lot smarter than" congressional critics "like Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, he who clings still to the shreds of his freedom against the onslaught of poor people who now have medical care.”
ObamaCare
By Curtis Houck | November 18, 2014 | 12:16 AM EST
During his MSNBC show All In on Monday night, Chris Hayes unleashed a nine-minute monologue in light of the Jonathan Gruber videos to defend what he saw as an assault on ObamaCare by Republicans and went as far as comparing ObamaCare’s passage to that of the Rosetta space probe that landed on a comet on November 12.
Hayes hailed what transpired in 2009 and 2010 as “a remarkable and improbable legislative success story, possible one of the greatest of our time” and “about as likely as landing a tiny rover on moving comet, hurdling through space hundreds of millions of miles away from Earth.”
By Tom Blumer | November 17, 2014 | 11:42 PM EST
The Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press — the entity which to our great misfortune is considered the de facto news source of record by the nation's establishment press — finally broke down several days ago and mentioned the name "Jonathan Gruber" in a news story.
Of course, the wire service saved Philip Elliott's story for Friday afternoon to minimize its visibility; the time stamp at the AP's national site is 4:20 p.m. ET Friday; that's only a minute later than the 3:19 p.m. CT time stamp found here at the earliest Google News entry I could find. Elliott largely made the story almost entirely about Republicans' and conservatives' reactions to what Gruber has said — as if they're the only ones who should be deeply troubled about Gruber's insulting descriptions of the American people and the fundamental dishonesty involved in drafting and passing the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in early 2010. But he also quite dishonestly tried to claim that Gruber wasn't even an "architect" of the law (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
By Curtis Houck | November 17, 2014 | 10:06 PM EST
On Monday, ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir and NBC Nightly News continued to ignore the news surrounding videos unearthed of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber praising “lack of transparency” as a “political advantage” and insulting voters as stupid regarding the law’s passage and contents. With tonight’s omissions, the blackout of coverage on Gruber from these two programs now stands at ten days.
Thus far, ABC has only mentioned Gruber once since the first video surfaced on November 7 and it was saved for its Sunday morning political talk show This Week with George Stephanopoulos. When it comes to NBC’s total number of mentions, they have only been able to muster two total mentions of Gruber with one on its Sunday morning talk show Meet the Press and another on Monday morning’s Today.
Aggrieved Liberal NYT Columnists Dismiss 'Naked Power Grab by Conservative Justices' Against ObamaCare, Ignore Gruber
By Clay Waters | November 17, 2014 | 9:38 PM EST The Supreme Court's recent surprise decision to take up King v. Burwell, a challenge to the Affordable Care Act, sent former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse on another aggrieved liberal rant against the conservative-dominated Court. Greenhouse failed to mention Obama-care architect Jonathan Gruber's inconvenient gaffes in several clips boasting about the deceitful selling of the program and crediting the "stupidity of the American voter" for its successful passage
Greenhouse's False Claim: No One Is 'Required' to Spend More Than 8 Percent of Income on ACA Insurance
By Tom Blumer | November 17, 2014 | 12:14 AM EST On Saturday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted the hypocritical fury of Linda Greenhouse at the New York Times that the Supreme Court has taken on the King v. Burwell case over the legality of Obamacare subsidies in states which don't have their own Obamacare exchanges.
I need to address another item of Greenhouse gas contained therein, namely her claim that the Affordable Care Act requires no one to "spend more than 8 percent of his or her income of health insurance." That's only true if one chooses not to get covered.
By Tim Graham | November 15, 2014 | 6:31 PM EST
Here’s an easy nomination for the front-page newspaper story most likely to be spiked by the TV networks. It’s on the front of Friday’s USA Today: “Rural hospitals in critical condition: Obamacare critics say law speeding up demise of facilities.”
Reporters Jayne O’Donnell and Laura Ungar began in Richland, Georgia, whose 25-bed hospital had to close, and now the locals have to travel up to 40 miles to other hospitals. How many sympathetic TV stories have we seen complaining about the closure of abortion clinics that cause abotion seekers to drive longer?
By Curtis Houck | November 15, 2014 | 6:06 PM EST
As of Saturday afternoon and a full eight days after the first video of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber surfaced, major broadcast networks ABC and NBC and the Los Angeles Times have persisted in keeping their audiences in the dark on this story.
Over the course of Friday evening and Saturday morning, news outlets that previously had ignored Gruber arrived on the scene included the Associated Press (AP), the print edition of The New York Times, and USA Today. The New York Times posted a second entry on one of its blog sites (known as The Upshot) and published its first print story on A12 of Saturday’s newspaper.
By P.J. Gladnick | November 15, 2014 | 10:01 AM EST
Since Politico was unable to ignore the Jonathan Gruber controversy, they now seem to be switching gears to downplay his role. Politico health care reporter Paige Winfield Cunningham has crafted a story using quotes to demonstrate that Gruber really wasn't an Obamacare architect. Ironically Cunningham herself as recently as July referred to Gruber as an Obamacare architect.
By Tom Blumer | November 15, 2014 | 9:14 AM EST
Linda Greenhouse covered the Supreme Court for the New York Times for 30 years until accepting a downsizing buyout in 2008. She continues to write bi-weekly columns there.
Greenhouse is absolutely appalled that the King v. Burwell lawsuit has gotten to the Supreme Court. As will be seen, she's also quite selective in her outrage.
By Curtis Houck | November 14, 2014 | 5:34 PM EST
During her Fox Business Network (FBN) show on Friday afternoon, Melissa Francis told viewers that she “was silenced” by executives at CNBC when worked there after she criticized ObamaCare on-air and told viewers that the “math of ObamaCare simply didn’t work.”
Speaking in regards to what ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber said about relying on the “stupidity” of voter and the need for lying to get the law passed, Francis opined that while: “It is shocking, but it actually doesn’t surprise me because when I was at CNBC, I pointed out to my viewers that the math of ObamaCare simply didn’t work. Not the politics by the way, just the basic math and when I did that, I was silenced.”
By NB Staff | November 13, 2014 | 10:58 PM EST
On Thursday night, the Fox News Channel’s (FNC) Special Report with Bret Baier spotlighted the latest study from the Media Research Center (MRC) and Newsbusters, which exposed the almost no coverage of ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber telling an audience in a 2013 video that “lack of transparency” and “the stupidity of the American voter” were critical in the law’s passage.
During the show’s “Grapevine” segment, host Bret Baier noted that, while FNC and his program “feel this is something our viewers deserve to know,” the networks of ABC, CBS, and NBC “apparently, disagree.”