Welfare
The front page of the Saturday Metro section of The Washington Post offered breaking news on Christian attitudes. “Christians are far more likely than non-Christians to blame poverty on a lack of effort, a poll found.”
This poll from the Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation is three months old, taken from April 13 to May 1. This is not just a poll question; it’s begging for overgeneralization, with “the poor are mostly lazy” being judged by liberals as akin to “Muslims are mostly terrorists” or “Catholic priests are mostly child abusers.”
On Sunday's PoliticsNation on MSNBC, during the show's regular "Gotcha" segment, host Al Sharpton was imagining racist dog whistles as he complained about "unmitigated, racially-tinged cruelty" from Congressman Steve King, and suggested that those who think like the Iowa Republican are "evil."
On Wednesday's New Day on CNN, during a discussion of how to pay for President Donald Trump's proposed border wall, co-host Alisyn Camerota seemed taken aback that Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King suggested shifting money from the food stamp program to help pay for the wall. Camerota fretted: "You want to take food from people that are s -- the people who are on the lowest rung in terms of the nation's safety net and their children -- in terms of food stamps, you're happy to take -- you're willing to take money from them to build the 1.6 or to give the 1.6 billion to the border wall?"
As Saturday's CNN Newsroom with Fredricka Whitfield devoted a segment to the issue of women becoming more politically active after Donald Trump became President, CNN's Jodi Enda never applied a "liberal" label to the left-wing causes supported by recent women protesters even as she asserted that the current Congress is "quite conservative."
Appearing as a panel member on Wednesday's CNN Tonight, CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley was negative on Republican efforts to replace Obamacare as he called the effort a "tar baby" for President Donald Trump and asserted that it would "gut" Medicaid and "leave 20 or 22 million people without health care." Former RNC official Mike Shields was left as the only one of four guests to offer a right-leaning point of view on the issue with the other three guests leaning left.
On Friday's The Last Word on MSNBC, it was the place for demonizing Republicans as regular MSNBC guests Joan Walsh and Nancy Giles called Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan a "monster" and declared that the way Senate Republicans had handled health care reform has been "criminal."
On Friday's Real Time show on HBO, liberal comedian Bill Maher derided the Senate Republican health care plan as being like "a manifesto from the Zodiac killer," and trashed Republican Senator Ted Cruz as someone who does not believe the bill is "mean" enough, and who has experience at "making people sick." He ended the show with a commentary in which he encouraged his audience members to reproduce less and snidely portrayed children as "resource-sucking, waste-making human beings" who are bad for the environment.
As Montel Williams appeared on Friday's CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin to discuss his recent USA Today article attacking Republican plans to repeal ObamaCare, the former talk show host accused congressional Republicans of not caring about their own family members and of supporting a plan that would send their relatives and 140 million other Americans to "death." Williams: "They are going to be looking for somebody to give them medication and health care. And what this bill does is sends them all to death. ... This Congress is the richest Congress we've ever had in history. They can afford premium health care. They don't care about even their own family members -- their cousins, their aunts or uncles or nieces who they all know have just been sentenced to death."
Appearing as a guest on Friday's All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson slammed the Donald Trump administration's accomplishments so far as a "debacle" and declared that the Republican budget has "savagely" taken money from poverty programs and education. Abramson: "I think both of the scenarios, Chris, that you just laid out equal debacle because, you know, he has done quite a bit, but I think what he's done has been, you know, altogether damaging both to the country and internationally. ... A budget that has savagely taken money from housing programs from the poor, federal money for the schools."
As the Reverend William Barber appeared as a guest on Saturday's AM Joy on MSNBC to give his religion-based views on current events, host Joy Reid at one point seemed to worry about not being able to talk more about Republican Rep. Steve Scalise's conservative views and his history on "race," as she recalled the discredited story that the congressman spoke to a white nationalist event 15 years ago.
During Barack Obama's presidency, we were constantly assured by the administration and its press apparatchiks that deportations had greatly increased during his tenure. So it's more than a little strange that the Associated Press is now worried that because of President Donald Trump's "crackdown on illegal immigration," fewer people who are genuinely eligible for "federal food assistance" are opting out "because of the perceived risk" that parents and guardians of eligible children and dependents will be deported.
On May 12, California Governor Jerry Brown, during a visit to that state's Orange County, said, "The freeloaders — I’ve had enough of them." His statement came during what the Orange County Register called "an impassioned defense" of the state's recently passed "road-improvement plan. The "freeloaders" he targeted with his remark are the state's taxpayers, those who wish to recall a tax-supporting legislator, and Republicans involved in putting the tax on November ballot. The rest of California's press, as well as key national press outlets, have not taken note of Brown's remark.