White House Hits Palin with Open Hand Slap | TMZ.com.

Just a reminder

People will complain that this is petty and beneath the dignity of the office, but (a) Gibbs partly redeems himself by winking at the ubiquity of their moronic “hope” and “change” buzzwords, (b) Palin is an Al Qaeda accomplice, so she sort of had it coming, and (c) as we’ve discussed before, the White House press briefing is one of the lamest, most useless spectacles in American politics. How can this be beneath the dignity of an office that has no dignity to begin with? The only time the briefing’s worth watching is when Gibbs is forced to defend something especially stupid that Biden said, or when something bad’s happened in the Middle East that sets Helen Thomas up for a “question” about whether we maybe had it coming. Lacking either of those contingencies, if the guy wants to resort to some hackish partisan Mencia-esque schtick to liven things up, I say go crazy.

It is with the greatest regret, on behalf of our Board, that we must announce that Air America Media is ceasing its live programming operations as of this afternoon

via Michelle Malkin » Lib talk radio flops again: Air America goes bankrupt.

Reid brought the bill to the floor in an effort to secure the support of doctors groups such as the American Medical Association (AMA) for the future fight over an overhaul of the nation’s healthcare system.

Reid’s gambit, however, backfired, leaving Reid blaming the AMA for failing to secure GOP votes and the AMA retorting that the leader misinterpreted its pledge.

Reid told colleagues that the AMA said it could deliver 27 Republican votes for the legislation, according to two Senate Democratic lawmakers, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Some Democrats wondered whether it was reasonable to expect that as many as 27 Republicans would support a 10-year freeze in light of the fact that only 17 Senate Republicans voted for a one-year freeze last July. Of that group, only 11 remain in the Senate.

Joe Gandelman has an excellent roundup on this topic

–Ed Morrissey:

Winners take responsibility, while losers look for scapegoats. Last I looked, the AMA doesn’t have any leadership role in the Senate. They don’t “deliver” votes, and it’s not their role anyway. Perhaps a real Senate Majority Leader would have enough pull to count his own votes and make his own case, rather than leave that to a lobbying group and then get shocked, shocked to discover that most Republicans would not allow Reid to play his shell game with $250 billion that should get counted in the full ObamaCare proposal instead of hidden from the CBO.

Besides, let’s not forget that Reid has 60 Democrats in the Senate. Why should the AMA have to deliver any Republican votes? Reid can’t even deliver his own caucus. The cloture vote wasn’t even close at 47-53, which means that a number of Democrats defied Reid and rejected the shell game, too. Reid can sob all he wants about Tonsil Vultures, but the problem is that Reid is pushing legislation so radical and dishonest that he can’t deliver his own caucus.

–McQ:

Vote counting is a tried and true art within legislative bodies and any competent leader would pretty much know what to expect before ever putting a bill or amendment up for a vote. In fact, Reid missed by 27 – just on the Republican side.

Apparently he wasn’t aware of the 13 Democrats who were going to vote against it as well. That’s 40 no votes in a body of 60. That’s a pretty big miss.

Then he whines about things being run by a minority – a game he was more than happy to play when he was the Minority leader.

Harry Reid – incompetent (not that I’m complaining, mind you – just pointing it out), and the opposition’s best friend.

–My DD’s Charles Lemos:

How is it that the nation is being held hostage by a caucus of forty?

Nor is it terribly reassuring that the Majority Leader can’t keep his own caucus in line. A dozen Democrats and one independent crossed party lines and voted with the Republicans on the 53 to 47 roll call. The Democrats who voted against the party leadership were Senators Evan Bayh of Indiana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Bryon Dorgan of North Dakota, Jon Tester of Montana, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Herb Kohl of Wisconsin Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida, Mark Warner of Virginia, Jim Webb of Virginia, Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut also joined the GOP in defeating the measure.

Still it is more concerning that the Democrats are being outwitted tactically by Senator Mitch McConnell.

This news won’t help the Democrats’ efforts:

Also, career government economists within the Department of Health and Human Services dealt a blow to the House bill Wednesday, releasing a report concluding national health care spending would increase because newly insured people would seek care.

Unlike the analyses produced by the Congressional Budget Office, which looked at the impact of legislation on the federal government alone, the HHS report examined the impact on the national economy. The report complicates President Barack Obama’s pledge to sign a bill only if it slows the rate of health care spending.

via Hot Air » Blog Archive » Hume’s challenge to media: Do you really want the Gibbs Seal of Approval?.

After reading that, take a look at:  Krauthammer Rips ‘Repulsive Audacity’ of White House for Fox News Attacks

“And look, there is nothing illegal about it. It’s not unconstitutional. But it is outside the Democratic norms of our society, which are Madisonian,” Krauthammer continued. “Our idea is that you have as a way to protect against tyranny in governments is to have the growth, the interaction, and the clash of what Madison called ‘factions’ but what we call ‘interests,’ special and otherwise, and you argue, you interact and you clash. But you don’t undermine, delegitimize, and destroy. That is the Madisonian way, and we are getting, instead, is the Chicago way.”

Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –

(Crosstalk)

Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.

Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –

Gibbs: ABC -

Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?

Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.

Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” — why is that appropriate for the White House to say?

Gibbs: That’s our opinion.

Tapper Asks Gibbs Why It’s Appropriate For White House To Decide Who’s A News Organization | NewsBusters.org.

Public Trust in Media Accuracy & Fairness Plunges, Liberal v Conservative Bias Gap at 28 Points | NewsBusters.org.

I guess it doesn’t help that Washington Post.com gives massive 9-12 rally a tiny link

It also might have something to do with running a story calling the marchers a bunch of  uninformed racists, yet not backing up the charge

But probably it has more to do with the fact that they want to carry Obama’s water and not worry about how ridiculous they look

Michelle Malkin » Celebrating the 9/12 rallies.

Livecam of the D.C. rally here. Wow!

via Obama’s Lies Matter, Too: The president pushes back against health care misinformation, then spreads a bunch of his own. – Reason Magazine.

Salon Editor in Chief Joan Walsh could barely contain herself at this nearly Snoop Doggesque display. “‘We will call you out’ on lies,” she Tweeted. “love it!”

It is telling that so many people who claim to be speaking on the side of Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Journalism have consistently focused their outrage-o-meters at individual townhall attendees, political broadcast entertainers, and the lesser lights of a lame (if resurgent-by-default) opposition party, while letting walk nearly fact-check-free the non-irrelevant occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If calling out lies and misrepresentations about a significant policy proposal is such pressing journalistic business—and it should be!—you’d think the watchdogs might start with the guy doing the proposing.

The lies last night began in Obama’s opening paragraph. “When I spoke here last winter,” he began, “credit was frozen. And our financial system was on the verge of collapse.” In fact, Obama spoke on Feb. 24, at least six weeks after credit markets began to thaw, and one week after he proclaimed that the passage of his $787 billion stimulus marked “the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans.” Obama’s speech that day wasn’t about staving off a collapse, it was about cleaning up the mess and tackling long-ignored issues. Such as health care.

It’s never encouraging when a politician who desperately needs to convince skeptical Americans of his fiscal sobriety starts off by slurring his words. As you might then infer, Obama was just warming up. “Insurance companies,” the president announced, “will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies,” in part because such prevention “saves money.” Looks like someone forgot to tell the Congressional Budget Office, or other non-White House sources that have analyzed the cost-benefit of prevention.

Again and again last night, the president’s numbers didn’t add up. “There may be those—particularly the young and healthy—who still want to take the risk and go without coverage,” he warned, in a passage defending compulsory insurance. “The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don’t sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people’s expensive emergency room visits.” No, it means that, on balance, the healthy young don’t pay for the unhealthy old. The whole point of forcing vigorous youth to buy insurance is using their cash and good actuarials to bring down the costs of covering the less fortunate.

Such fudges reveal a politician who, for whatever reason, feels like he can’t be honest about the real-world costs of expanding health care. “Add it all up, and the plan I’m proposing will cost around $900 billion over ten years,” he said, trying hard to sound like those numbers weren’t pulled out of Joe Biden’s pants, and won’t be dwarfed by actual costs within a year or two. “We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system–a system that is currently full of waste and abuse,” he said, making him at least the eighth consecutive president to vaguely promise cutting Medicare “waste” (a promise, it should be added, that could theoretically be fulfilled without drastically overhauling the health care system). Any government-run “public option,” he claimed, somehow “won’t be” subsidized by taxpayers, but instead would “be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects.”

And in a critical, tic-riddled passage that many of even his most ardent supporters probably don’t believe, Obama said: “Here’s what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits–either now or in the future. Period.” In case you couldn’t quite read his lips, the president repeated the line for emphasis. Then: “And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”

If that “one dime” formulation sounds familiar, that’s because Obama made—then almost immediately broke—the same promise regarding taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year. Surely the no-new-deficits pledge is headed for the campaign dustbin faster even then that “net spending cut” we’ll never see.

Such bending of the truth-curve matters, I daresay even more than the pressing issue of Marc Ambinder’s “umpiric objections” to having the media take a former Republican vice presidential candidate seriously as a health policy commentator. Aside from the disturbing—if-predictable aspect of a commander in chief falling far short of telling the whole truth, there are practical impacts of presidential prevarications that should worry even those who’d rather live in China than in an America without universal coverage.

As the reform supporter and professional skeptic Mickey Kaus noted before the speech, “Obama doesn’t need to get ‘Republicans on board.’ He doesn’t need to get Blue Dog Democrats on board. He needs to get voters on board.” And if there’s any tactic less effective at wooing skeptics than number-fudging insincerity, it’s number-fudging insincerity coupled with attacks on the veracity, motivation, and worldview of the skeptics themselves.

Again last night, Obama invoked the boogeyman of “special interests” who “lie” in order “to keep things exactly the way they are,” despite the fact that the special interests in this case are lining up to support the president, and that the critics of his plan tend to bemoan, not defend, the status quo. Opponents of his plan, he said, were “ideological”; Ted Kennedy’s support for health care reform, meanwhile, “was born not of some rigid ideology, but of his own experience.” Obama said his door was “always open” to those bringing “a serious set of proposals,” and he slammed that door shut on any attempts to break the almost universally unloved link between employment and insurance. He yearned to “replace acrimony with civility,” then got Democrats stomping on their feet with attacks against the Iraq War and “tax breaks for the wealthy.” The center of the debate, as always, was wherever he chose to stand.

And above all else, Obama chose to shadowbox against the more extreme claims of the Sarah Palins of the world, rather than engage the most serious of the skeptics’ arguments. No, the administration doesn’t “plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens,” but what about the possibility of government cost-cutters frowning upon expensive hip replacement surgeries for the chronically old? No, the proposal doesn’t amount to a complete “government takeover” of health care, but it does continue to expand the government’s role (and, promises aside, expenses) in ways that make a deficit-whiplashed nation nervous. No, “no one would be forced to choose” a public option, but what about the argument that incentives would eventually push Americans from private insurance to the public plan?

The result of this challenge-dodging counterpunch was a speech that pleased Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, but I doubt will sway the many Americans who are both on the fence and off Sarah Palin’s e-mail list.

There was one line in the speech last night that pointed to an alternative, more promising future: “My guiding principle,” Obama said, “is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition.” Unfortunately, the president evinces zero understanding of how increased regulation can reduce consumer choice, even or especially when the government joins the competition. And even if he did see the connection, we’d have good reason to suspect that he wouldn’t talk about it openly with the American people. That, ultimately, worries me more than a senior citizen who wants to keep the government out of Medicare.