Michael Barbaro does it again!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2012

The nation's most pitiful child: In a more serious nation, there would be rioting in the streets about the New York Times' pitiful child, Michael Barbaro.

This morning, the pitiful child is asked to report Romney's Meet the Press appearance. As usual, the pitiful child showcased his skill at discerning a candidate's "tone:"
BARBARO (9/10/12): Adopting a new tone, Mitt Romney on Sunday said he would retain elements of President Obama's health care overhaul, blamed Republicans as much as Democrats for the ''mistake'' of agreeing to automatic cuts in military spending and said Mr. Obama's national security strategy had made America in ''some ways safer.''

The remarks were a marked departure from Mr. Romney's frequently harsh and openly partisan critiques of the president on the campaign trail over the last year, and seemed to amount to a different tenor now that he has officially become the Republican presidential nominee: bipartisanship, of sorts.

They came in a rare interview on the NBC News program ''Meet the Press,'' and not the friendlier terrain of Fox News, on which Mr. Romney prefers to appear.

The approach, however fleeting it may be, appeared to be a direct and deliberate appeal to middle-of-the-road voters who have not made up their minds yet and are likely to decide the race. At one point, Mr. Romney said the speech last week by the country's previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, had ''elevated'' the party's convention in Charlotte, N.C.
Barbaro is very good at discerning nuance of tone and speculating about its genesis. But the pitiful child is very soft when it comes to matters of substance:
BARBARO (continuing directly): Asked by the show's host, David Gregory, what elements of the health care program he would maintain, Mr. Romney said he would ensure that those with pre-existing conditions can obtain coverage, just as the president's plan does.

''I'm not getting rid of all of health care reform,'' Mr. Romney said, while emphasizing that he planned to replace the president's plan with his own. ''There are a number of things that I like in health care reform that I'm going to put in place. One is to make sure that those with pre-existing conditions can get coverage.''
Pitiful! That was Barbaro's full discussion of Romney's comments on health care reform. The very slow child failed to cite the obvious problems with Romney's declaration that he would retain the guarantee of coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.

At the Washington Post, Bill Turque, a big-boy reporter, did a much better job with this topic. He explained the hollowness at the core of Romney's pledge, in the way a big boy would.

To read Turque's big-boy report, click here. To enjoy the mommy-pleasing mind-reading skills of an utterly silly child, continue with Barbaro's worthless report at our most famous newspaper.

34 comments:

  1. Oh this is good:


    Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins on Sunday asked how anyone could vote for a “massively gullible fool” like Mitt Romney who could not see that Mormonism’s founder was a “fraud.”
    “Romney’s prophet Joseph Smith a fraud,” Dawkins said in an hours-long Twitter rant, quoting from the Book of Mormon and adding, “Romney falls for it.”
    “No matter how much you agree with Romney’s economic policy, can you really vote for such a massively gullible fool?” the atheist asked. “He is a Mormon BISHOP!”

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sounds like a good way to lose an election. Richard Dawkins should stick to biology...

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    2. In the end religion, like sporting events and the theatre and films and literature and all other socially-oriented human past times, becomes an excuse to congregate, a means of connecting to and staying connected to one's fellow creatures. Religion hating people on the left would do well to understand that -- you tell them their god is dead, has never existed, and they get angry because deep down, they know that and don't care. With very few exceptions, they aren't in it for god, never were.

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    3. Their actions don't support that. Look no further than abortion and gay rights to see the influence of religious belief on society.

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    4. The right has few assets as valuable as the left's contempt for religion.

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    5. Where do we get this "left's contempt for religion" stuff?

      Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. certainly had no contempt for religion. Neither did Mohandas Gandhi, Father Robert Drinan, the Berrigan Brothers or Dorothy Day or Cesar Chavez.

      Perhaps there is a contempt for modern fundamentalism which defines the earth as 6,000 years old and has a contempt for science far surpassing any supposed "left contempt for religion."

      But I wouldn't confuse all religion with this particular brand of American fundamentalism.

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    6. "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. certainly had no contempt for religion. Neither did Mohandas Gandhi, Father Robert Drinan, the Berrigan Brothers or Dorothy Day or Cesar Chavez."

      All dead, except one of the Berrigans, whom I hadn't heard mentioned in years (I assumed they were both dead until I googled them). There hasn't been a prominent left wing religious figure in decades, as this list of yours demonstrates. There have, however, been films like "Religulous" and the in your face atheist book "God Is Not Great" by that fat, cancer-ridden alcoholic whose name escapes me right now, but who has, thankfully, gone off to meet his non-maker. I wonder if the worms dining on his well marbled flesh find him as brilliant as the Washington-New York elites did.

      Anyway, even in the '60s, religion formed a major part of leftism, but now it is almost entirely absent, and as a result, a large segment of potential supporters (and beneficiaries) starts out alienated. Further, religion adds moral authority to a movement, which ours lacks, so we end up whining about "fairness," (when we talk about it at all) instead of starting from a position where we demand things as moral rights. I'm an atheist myself, but sometimes I go to Catholic services, just because I find it comforting to hear the sermons, which almost always talk about our responsibilities to our fellow man, our moral obligation to do something besides stuff cash in our pockets and build bigger houses and the like. The sentiments in those sermons resonate with me, and many others, but modern leftism has little use for them, so they get left out. Gay marriage, though, abortion, "inclusiveness" (what the fuck does "inclusiveness" mean?) these things are big deals.

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    7. Christopher Hitchens became a right wingnut many years before he died

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  2. Turque quotes Romney spokesman Ryan Williams: "The president's decision to use discredited studies and outright falsehoods to attack Mitt Romnwy is an admission that he can't talk about his record."

    What is the basis for the claims of "discredited studies and outright falsehoods"?

    You'll never find out by reading Turque's "big-boy report".

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    Replies
    1. I too found the Turque report much less than impressive. Better than Barbaro is a low bar..

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    2. Barbaro mentoned what Romney said about keeping the "part" that dealt with pre-existing conditions & that was it. Turque included this: "The Obama campaign disputed some of Romney’s assurances. It said that his plan would cover preexisting conditions only for the continuously insured, excluding those who have never had private coverage or who have lost it because of unemployment." and this "Independent health-care analysts have said that Romney’s promise to retain coverage for those with preexisting conditions would be difficult to keep without enforcing the individual mandate, which the GOP opposes."

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  3. Krugman strikes:

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/10/paul-krugman-republican-party-base_n_1870193.html

    Paul Krugman really appreciated Clint Eastwood's performance at the Republican National Convention, since he thinks it highlighted a larger truth about the Republican Party.

    "The Republican Party is where it is because that's where the base is," Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "And you watched that whole primary process; Republican candidates had to appeal to their base, which is by and large elderly white people arguing with empty chairs."

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. It's not that there are no liberal religious people, it's that certain elements on the left go out of their way to ridicule and demean, as Bill Murray said in Ghostbusters, millions of registered voters. The right is happy to trumpet each outrage to show believers they have only one place to go.

    ReplyDelete
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  15. Pitiful! That was Barbaro's full discussion of Romney's comments on health care reform. The very slow child failed to cite the obvious problems with Romney's declaration that he would retain the guarantee of coverage for those with pre-existing conditions. visit harga glucogen

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