Medical Insurance

On Thursday, MSNBC's Chuck Todd, in the introduction to his "Daily Rundown" program, characterized both the response to the Obama administration's barricading of the World War II Memorial and Harry Reid's response to a question about helping children with cancer by funding the National Institutes for Health ("Why would we want to do that?") as "manufactured outrage." World War II ended in 1945,…

Imagine that Jeff Bezos asked his vice-president for sales IT how many people had purchased products from Amazon the day before, and the veep said he'd get back to him "in a few weeks."  How many nanoseconds do you think that hapless employee would last in his job? But on today's Morning Joe, there  was the Obama admin's David Simas, sporting the lofty title of Deputy Senior Advisor for…

Politico's Dylan Byers is determined to tell us that we didn't see and hear what we really saw and heard, and that Matt Drudge is a filthy liar (Update, 8:20 a.m., Oct. 3: as well as Real Clear Politics —"Reid To CNN's Dana Bash: 'Why Would We Want To' Help One Kid With Cancer?") for relaying what CNN's Dana Bash saw and heard — and reported. Today, after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid…

On Tuesday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, during a discussion of conservative figures comparing ObamaCare to drug addiction, guest Joe Madison attacked Rush Limbaugh as a "fat ass," and raised the talk radio host's past addiction to the painkiller Oxycontin as the liberal talk radio host bristled at the comparison of drug addiction to government-run health care. Madison began his rant:

Move over, Lord Voldemort.  Ted Cruz has taken your place as the man so evil he must not be named .  .  . Today's Morning Joe featured a strange trope in which Cruz was being unmistakably referred to by various members of the panel, but, at least in the first hour, never mentioned by name.  Instead, Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle and Willie Geist variously alluded to Cruz as "one Republican…

Alex Rogers and Zeke Miller of Time magazine dutifully hacked out a 16-paragraph item on President Obama's complaint this afternoon that Republicans were the cause of the government shutdown. It was your typical, garden variety bias-by-stenography. Only at the very end of their article did Rogers and Miller mention that the Democratic National Committee is having a fundraising field day off…

Michelle Malkin's Twitchy.com has capsulized the Obamacare exchanges' opening day as follows (links are in the original): "HealthCare.gov tried to kick off the Obamacare marketplace this morning … and failed miserably. The website is an error-ridden mess and users are being asked for their patience as the marketplace works out “known issues” with security. But never mind the pesky bugs…

Seems the shutdown is already frazzling folks.  Though some of it might have been for show, tempers seemed to truly flare on today's Morning Joe. An on-air spat broke out, with Joe Scarborough in one corner, and Mika Brzezinski and the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson in the other.   Fed up with what he described as a "paid advertisement for Obamacare" by Brzezinski and Robinson,…

Calvin Woodward finally got around to "fact-checking" Obamacare's "slippery claims" this morning, 3-1/2 years after the Affordable Care Act became law and the day before open enrollment in its state insurance exchanges was to begin. Way to be there when it matters, Cal. Woodward's report (also saved here for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) also mixed in budget showdown…

Resurrecting an ideological tag from the 1980s media era, on Monday’s CBS Evening News, the network’s chief Washington correspondent, Bob Schieffer, fretted over how “ultra-conservatives” in the House – a label he used twice – are making a mess of things.

Why do Dems need Debbie Wasserman-Schultz when they've got Andrea Mitchell?  There was no mistaking Mitchell's anger on her MSNBC show today as she scolded Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz .  "Get real," reprimanded Mitchell, twice telling Chaffetz the Republican bill delaying the implementation of ObamaCare was "dead on arrival." For good measure, Mitchell put the onus on Republicans to cave…

The list of things on which Barack Obama has been wrong goes on to the crack of doom.  But there's one thing on which the President is surely right. In devising his strategy for dealing with the shutdown, the prez can count on the MSM to blame Republicans. Mark Halperin bared the president's calculus on today's Morning Joe, saying the Obama admin has little incentive to negotiate because it…

Google News really needs to work on its results counter. The first page of its 10:15 p.m. search listings on [Obama "widespread evidence"] (typed exactly as indicated between brackets) tells us that there are "about 90 results," but moving to the second page of listed results shows there are only 11 (technically 13, because the first listing on the first page has three items). Those sparse…