Howard Kurtz With A Conflict Of Interest?

How blue is the moon?  Here is a good point from Media Matters on the eternally conflicted Howard Kurtz, who attributed the latest uptick in birther coverage on cable to Chris Matthews:

First, here is Howard Kurtz of the WaPo and CNN on the birther coverage:

I don't understand why this has gotten so much prominence, particularly on cable television in the first place if we make a judgment as journalists that this is basically a lot of garbage, then why do we have to spend a lot of time flogging this horse?  The guy who has been flogging this the most, it seems to me, is Chris Matthews on MSNBC. 

And Jamison Foser of Media Matters:

No mention of CNN.  No mention of Lou Dobbs.  No mention of Jonathan Klein's defense of Dobbs.  Instead, Kurtz singles out Chris Matthews, who has been debunking the birther nonsense, as the person primarily responsible for it, rather than Lou Dobbs, who has been promoting it.

And, as I'm sure you know by now, CNN pays Howard Kurtz a nice chunk of change.  Might that have anything to do with his refusal to hold CNN -- whose president, Jonathan Klein, defends Dobbs' promotion of birther conspiracy theories -- responsible for their conduct?

Over to Mickey!

Comments

[Thomas Collins]

I think Kurtz is being clever. He gets to fill up pixel space by tut-tutting a topic in which folks are interested. Sure beats analyzing the medical care actually received by poor folks in countries with socialized medicine.

[Little Hugh Hewitt sat in a corner.]

You can add dunce to psycho and racist as the pejoratives heaped on birthers. This one from Hugh Hewitt, who ought to know better than to talk so coneheadedly.

[Or is Fitz Andrea's Dory?]

Kurtz, bah, Plame, humbug. I'm waiting for the Attorney General to get his pal's attorney a pardon from Obama for that lone felon in the Plame case. It might be a shot across Fitz's bow, too.

[Pofarmer]

Instead, Kurtz singles out Chris Matthews, who has been debunking the birther nonsense,

Seems that demagoguery would be a better term.

[Pofarmer]

So, is the media fracturing a little over Obama coverage?

[Assinine Assimilator]

See yglesias

" If, for eighty-seven years, every attempt to enact federal voting rights legislation had been blocked in Congress, most of the more significant of these bills had been blocked in the Senate, for it was in the Senate that the power of what had come to be called the “Southern Bloc”…was the strongest. … Hundreds of pieces of legislation had been proposed–bills to give black Americans equality in education, in employment, in housing, in transportation, in public accommodations, as well as to protect them against being beaten, burned, and mutilated. … Exactly one of these bills had passed–in 1875–and that lone statute had later been declared unconstitutional.

And as Ryan says, this is the appropriate context in which to consider the Senate’s role in health reform:

But all of this is a long way remarking on the fact that the structure of the Senate – with its self-imposed requirement to have 60 votes to move on virtually anything – seems to be giving Senate Republicans and moderate Democrats just enough rope to hang themselves with. Indeed, Senate Republicans and a handful of moderate Democrats seem exceptionally committed to ensuring that history remembers them as it remembers the Southern Bloc of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: as principled defenders of the injustice of the status quo. Today, as the Senate Health Committee reported out what is perhaps the most progressive health care reform plan, the Senate Republicans rushed to hold a press conference denouncing the plan. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell issued a statement, saying, “Americans want us to take the time necessary to make health care less expensive and more accessible, while preserving what they like about our system.” For McConnell, 75 years isn’t quite long enough."

Endless mush on birthers displaces salient issues.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/07/our-enemy-the-senate.php

Has the 'cooling saucer' of Law, gone tepid?

[BB Key]

Cost Saving Digital Medical Records = Online Long Form Birth Records

[Assinine Assimilator]

Readers' essays, poems and commentary inexpensive, healthy meal ideas Weblog & New Media: Marketing in Crisis over 400 recommended books and films free stories and novel excerpts

The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash

July 29, 2009

The expansion of health insurance and government entitlements created "free money" and thus the explosion of healthcare costs. The solution is simple and "impossible": we all pay cash.

Here's why healthcare (a.k.a. sick-care) costs cannot be reduced; the entire system is based on vast pools of "free money." The corporate-America or union/government employee who goes to the doctor pays a few dollars for a visit and drugs; the "real cost" is of no concern. Ditto the "real costs" charged to Medicare and Medicaid.

The link between the "consumer" of healthcare and the provider has been broken for decades. There is no "free market" in healthcare--there isn't any market at all. We live in a Kafka-esque nightmare system in which "some are more equal than others" and hundreds of thousands of dollars are lavished on worthless tests, procedures and medications for two reasons:

1. because there's "free money" to pay the bills

2. so-called "defensive medicine" in which worthless tests are administered to stave off random (sometimes valid, sometimes nuisance) malpractice lawsuits.

There is a solution so simple and so radical that it is "impossible" (and of course you're reading it here): shut down insurance and all government entitlements, and return to the "golden era" of the 1950s when everyone paid cash for healthcare.

Here are the costs of childbirth as of 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital:

Here are the costs of childbirth as of 1952 at one of the finest hospitals on the West Coast, The Santa Monica Hospital:

And here are the obstetrical rates:

Having a baby cost $30, which is today's dollars is $244. A private deluxe room cost $23 or $187 in today's dollars. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistic's inflation calculator, $1 in 1952 is $8.14 in 2009 dollars.

http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html

[Tailgunner]

Garbage.

Nationalized healthcare is a DEATH SENTENCE for tens of thousands and maybe more in Europe and Canada who were DENIED lifesaving care by rigid and arbitrary statist decrees.

In these regimes, denial or placement on long healthcare waiting lists are not just setbacks forcing you to find other financing.

There is no other method of obtaining healthcare except through the state. You can't pay for it yourself and providers can't accept the money anyway.

If one does not have the money to fly, as innumerable thousands have done, to another country (especially the US) to have the procedure done...then you DIE. Period.

Obamacare will KILL thousands and thousands of Americans.

Most of them will be the mindless, blissfully ignorant sheep he and his statist pals are now leading to the slaughter.

Can't say we didn't warn you.

[Homophobic]

"Can't say we didn't warn you."

Did you publish the warning?

[Righteous Christianist]

"Most of them will be the mindless, blissfully ignorant sheep he and his statist pals are now leading to the slaughter."

your empathy is compelling, to say the least.

[Porchlight]

From HoKu:

if we make a judgment as journalists that this is basically a lot of garbage,

Don't you love when journalists make a judgment that something is basically a lot of garbage? Like with the John Edwards affair.

[Righteous Christianist]

"Like with the John Edwards affair."

I guess your definition of 'garbage' differs from most. What do you serve for breakfast?

[matt]

what mischief is Obama getting up to while we are all distracted by the birth certificate brouhaha? That is the question.He and Emmanuel are very good at bait & switch.

[Porchlight]

I guess your definition of 'garbage' differs from most. What do you serve for breakfast?

Hey stupid,

What I object to is being told by my supposed betters in the media that a story is "garbage" - meaning not true - when it is in fact true. Like the John Edwards affair story. I dislike being lied to by people who think they are some kind of above-it-all filter. Got it?

Or are you suggesting that like the John Edwards affair story, the Obama birth certificate story is also true, but too tawdry to be discussed in mainstream news outlets?

[Sue]

What do you serve for breakfast?

Righteous Christianists

[Righteous Christianist]

"What do you serve for breakfast?

Righteous Christianists"

Come to think of it, that IS garbage.

[Sue]

Come to think of it, that IS garbage.

You think?

[Sue]

What the hell is a "Christianist"?

[Buford Gooch]

A Christianist is a made up word trying to associate Christians with Islamic Jihadi types. I believe the self-righteous Mr. Sullivan is the main source of the word.

[narciso]

Kurtz, seems very frankly disingenuous about the birther thing, but that's not the first time, he's acted this way. In the LUN, an interesting little video that's been 'memory holed' because I would like to call it the "Kodiak brief"

[Pofarmer]

as principled defenders of the injustice of the status quo.

What's so bad about defending arguably the best health care in the world?

[Pofarmer]

Little mo small pond bass fishin.

LUN.

[Pofarmer]

I put a few summer pics in this album. The farm dogs are in there. A few haying pics, a couple crop pics. I really need to take some more.

LUN.

[Porchlight]

Awesome, Pofarmer! My newly-six-year-old got a fishing pole for her birthday and can't wait to try it out.

[bad]

Great Pictures, PO!! Your fields look great and your son is adorable. Cute dog, too.

[PD]

Greetings from Idaho Falls, ID.

"Christianist" is a word used by people to show how clever and jargon-chic they think themselves. They seem to be unaware that its real effect is to render them loathsome in the eyes of others.

[cathyf]

Come to think of it, that IS garbage.

AhHA!!! Jack Soo! On Barney Miller!

(And they say my mind is going.)

Of course there is the rather uncomfortable notion that I can remember exact lines from TV sitcoms from 3 decades ago, but it takes me 10 minutes of searching to find my purse when I want to leave the house.

[PD]

cathyf, it's that LTM/STM thing.

[Pofarmer]

10 minutes?

Heh, that's pretty good.

[DebinNC]

Fine looking young fella, Po. How Mr. Deb would love driving that behemoth over your beautiful fields.

[cathyf]

I dunno, PD -- the worst is when I get out of the car, drop my keys in my pocket, walk the 30 feet to the front door (30 seconds, maybe 45 tops) and by the time I get there I don't have the foggiest idea which pocket I put the keys in.

So there I am, grumbling about how STM ought to last a minute at least, as I'm frisking myself. It's really bad in the winter when the winter coat adds 10 more possible pockets!

[Ann]

Po,

Those pictures bring back the memories of my youth in Iowa. Of course, mine were fields of corn and I learned how to fish with my favorite uncle in Gull Lake, Minn. But times seemed so simple then and patriotism was in your heart and soul.

I am sure I have mentioned... that same uncle let me drive his car at the age of twelve(?) on country roads at what ever speed I wanted and he would always tell me to go faster. Kinda like the Dukes of Hazard! LOL

No helmets, no seat belts, just the seat of you pants. What has happened to our country?

Love the pictures and your dog. Post some more before they are extinct!!!

[willem]

AA

The 17th Amendment to Constitution of the United States needs to be repealed.

Allowing the direct election of United States Senators has been a disaster. This needs to be returned to the respective state legislatures.

Under the present corruption of the framers intent, direct election of US Senators strips the state government of their direct representation in Congress.

The Senate has deteriorated in to a glorified mauseuleum of self-worshiping zombies; the provincial walking dead. KBH included, including the funereal hair and make up. It's a crypt full of hair spray politicians.

In the meantime our state legislatures have atrophied in importance and popular relevance. They do not attract talent and, compared to their formal role in the national government, they are but eunuchs ignored, even by the likes of Andrew Sullivan.

The 17th Amendment needs to be repealed. The nuevo-Royalists need to be deposed and the senate chambers purged of zombies and the staffers that animate them by remote control.

Hopefully, repealing the 17th Amendment will begin a much needed renaissance and reinvigoration of local government and restore national relevance to service in the state legislatures.

The state legislatures were never meant to have a backwater status, the framers intended the state government be represented by the Senate just as the House represented the counties and people at large.

[Pofarmer]

What has happened to our country?

Nanny state doogoodism, mainly.

[willem]

"compared to their FORMER role in the national government"

[Ann]

Ok, I am posting this here because everyone needs to read it tomorrow. Obama today : Yo mama

But the session at AARP's Washington headquarters was noteworthy for the human touch Obama applied. Fielding a question about insurance regulation, he spoke of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who died at age 53 of ovarian cancer in 1995.

"If you've got a pre-existing condition, insurance companies will still have to insure you," he said. "This is something very personal for me. My mother, when she contracted cancer, the insurance companies started suggesting that, well, maybe this was a pre-existing condition.

"Ultimately, they gave in," Obama continued, "but she had to spend weeks fighting with insurance companies while she's in the hospital bed, writing letters back and forth just to get coverage for insurance that she had already paid premiums on. And that happens all across the country. We are going to put a stop to that."

Now, think about his grandmother. If you care anything about your family and you are in a powerful position as a U.S. Senator, or a Presidential candidate with truck loads of campaign coffers to get you elected the most powerful man on earth, are you not going to help your grandmother with her illness in anyway possible? Wouldn't you bring her to the best hospital and the best doctors that you can find and pay for out of your pocket. Are you going to let your grandmother die in Hawaii my herself, with no one at her side. (Well he was very busy campaigning to ruin the country he hates ) Would you not use your wealth authoring books (by Ayers), your influence of your wife at the University of Chicago Hospital (UCH)

[Ann]

Sorry about that.. I love my iMAC but when they tell you the wireless mouse is out of juice you should replace the batteries pronto. I had to post that unfinished or do it over. I hope everyone thought about what I was trying to say even though it was not finished.

Obama is such a fraud that I really think he could of cared less if his grandmother died and he sure didn't do every thing in his power or Michelle's to better her life. If you haven't read Gatewaypundit's Letter to his mother you should.

There is something really evil about his handling of his grandmothers funeral and his idea of the kill granny bill.

[Jack is Back!]

Ann,

If you are an iMac user are you also an iPhone user? Are you aware of this?">http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20090729121839257'>this?

[custom dissertation]

Excellent Blog every one can get lots of information for any topics from this blog nice work keep it up.

[PeterUK.]

Righteous Christianist is Septic under yet another pseudonym.
You can re-name it but you can't re-brain it.

[PeterUK.]

"A Christianist is a made up word trying to associate Christians with Islamic Jihadi types. I believe the self-righteous Mr. Sullivan is the main source of the word."

Mainly because,as a good Catholic boy,deep down, he thinks he is sinning his way into hell. His only consolation is to demonise the religion he thinks is responsible for that.
Poor boy,it's all in the mind.
Sorry Sully it's the Hieronymus Bosch scenario for you. Can' be worse that SF.

[Rick Ballard]

J.R. Dunn has an excellent piece at AT - Obama Fails. He covers Stim I but he has a lot more in addition. Read it to the end - if for nothing else, for the Northeastern Exquisites line.

The Ogabe Regime is in the process of beating itself to death through ineptitude and incompetence. Dumbo really never made it to Superhero status and the aura of invincibility is as big a fantasy as the illusion of competence.

[fdcol63]

willem,

Unfortunately, we'll probably see the elimination of the Electoral College before we see the 17th Amendment repealed.

[Give me a B. How about an I. I want an R.]

Rick, Barone in a column today, puts his finger on Obama's problem. He's completely inexperienced at actually running legislation through the sausage making process. He's never done it, and is only competent as the cheerleader in front of a home crowd.

[fdcol63]

Obama and the Dems have over-reached, and I think the American people are starting to recognize this.

The harder that Dems pull to the Left, the more the American public will pull things back to the center.

Hopefully.

[Captain Hate]

This one from Hugh Hewitt, who ought to know better than to talk so coneheadedly.

Was this one of Huge Douche's rare moments when he wasn't applying talcum powder to Mitt Romney's posterior or telling boring stories about attending sporting events in California and rooting for Cleveland teams?

[Jane]

Cap'n,

You really have a way with words.

[Rob Crawford]

The only portions of Hewitt's show that are listenable are Mark Steyn, Lileks, and Emmit the All-Seeing.

Oh, and the one day a year they spend at Disneyland.

[Pofarmer]

Ya know, I've been ruminating on this whole birther thing. Didn't big time Bill O'reilly have a sit down with the One? How hard would it have been to have asked the question. "You know, Mr. Obama, you were born both a British and U.S. citizen. You were later an Indonesian citizen. How do you feel that has affected your view of the U.S.?". Then follow up with "When did you give up your Indonesian citizenship?" Those are fair questions that could have gone either way for the candidate, but they were never asked.

[Mark_0454]

I think the comment about Matthews was taken wrong. Kurtz was saying Matthews was keeping it front and center to make Republicans look bad. Matthews was essentially shooting fish in a barrel.

The other day Matthews said he was not aware of anyone who was saying Sarah Palin's youngest son was actually her grandson. I've never seen anyone so dumb.

[Jack]

The time lines, places, actions, motives, when analyzed, support, and are consistent with, what is the answer to the Obama birth puzzle:

Obama’s grandmother is his mother and his mother is his sister.

Think about it. Review all the facts and claims.