- The National Journal fact checks and compares Obamacare and Romneycare.

- Hysterical. Jeopardy contestants can’t identify Rachel Maddow:

Obviously they, along with most of the country, don’t watch MSNBC.

- Newt Gingrich isn’t the only thing Marianne Gingrich helped to propel to #1 last week.

- Twitter can now censor Tweets in certain countries:

The social network Twitter is facing a storm of criticism from users, after revealing that it has implemented a system that would let it withhold particular tweets from specific countries.

The company has insisted that it will not use the gagging system in a blanket fashion, but would apply it on a case-by-case basis, as already happens when governments or organisations complain about individual tweets.

The new system, which can filter tweets on a country-by-country basis and has already been incorporated into the site’s output, will not change Twitter’s approach to freedom of expression, sources there indicated.

- Washington City Paper notes the obvious and asks: Where are the women and non-white media critics? The problem? They rattle off a list of known progressive white male critics. When you look at only super far left progressives wherein diversity is a rhetorical device rather than observed practice, of course you’d wonder.

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Let’s commend Jon Chrisos, co-host of Good Day Maine on WPFO Fox 23 in Portland, ME, for posing a simple and direct challenge to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius:

Last night, the President gave his State of the Union speech. We all watched it here in Maine, very anxious to hear what he had to say. It was about seventy minutes, but a lot of people [were] surprised this morning that we didn’t hear much about health care reform. During the speech, the President really only mentioned “health care” or “health care insurance” three times. So, Secretary, my question for you is: if you and the President still believe in this Affordable Care Act, then why was it such a small part of the speech?

Sebelius’s response was less than convincing, or coherent:

…He didn’t focus his time last night on what has already been done, but really on where we need to go in the future–on American manufacturing, on skills for our workers for 21st-century jobs, on a new American energy policy…knowing that part of the middle-class opportunities now will come to fruition with affordable, available health care for all Americans.

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Take note, South Carolina. We know that Mitt Romney has been on all sides of basically every issue, but the broader concern here is:  are conservatives tired of stressing about and being duped by northeastern so-called Republicans and their mostly liberal voting records–leading to political survival in Democrat states.  But, seriously, is anyone else tired of this? And again, I ask,  why is a government-run healthcare lover a GOP frontrunner? Name recognition, gaining independent voters, and anyone but Obama, I get that, but come on already. Romney? I’m not buying the media hype over who can beat Obama.

From Jonah Goldberg:

Romney, the son of a politician, has been running for office, holding office or thinking about running for office for more than two decades. “Just level with the American people,” Gingrich growled. “You’ve been running … at least since the 1990s.”

For some reason, Romney can’t do that. Or at least it seems like he can’t. His authentic inauthenticity problem isn’t going away. And it’s sapping enthusiasm from the rank and file.

Goldberg is right, but the underlying theme that voters need to be reminded of is that during so many important debates from healthcare, jobs, Wall Street Reform, confirmations, recess appointments, to taxes the culprits to invoke cloture or side with the Democrats typically are the same:  Senators Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe,  and Scott Brown–the trifecta of RINOs. All from the northeast, too.  See where I’m going with this?

Frankly, Romney, who the mainstream liberal media would like to see win the nomination, has yet to unite the GOP base.  His used car salesman pitch simply rubs people the wrong way.  We’ve seen this over and over again–even John McCain pointed this out and won in 2007’s primary–and now supports him–that should speak volumes to my point.  Romney has always been dogged by this and this is why we have such a large ‘Not Romney’ camp on the right side of the aisle.

The GOP is also paying the bitter price for not having anyone in line to succeed GW Bush.  The party’s internal tug of war will be an historical teachable moment and prepare the party for future elections.  The one saving grace is that, while the Democrats have Hillary, they have no one to succeed her at this point in time.  I say Hillary because she seems to be the only power broker left untarnished by Obama–even though she is an Alinsky kinda girl.

Additionally, the GOP presidential candidate will have a two-pronged mission as the nominee:  to beat the MSM and Obama.  However, enlightened voters now know for sure the media is mostly state-controlled, Obama was never vetted, and that his radical leftist ideology drives his policies, appointments, and regulations out of the mainstream.

Furthermore, the MSM needs Romney to offset Obama.  The formula is quite simple: RomneyCare is to ObamaCare as Obama’s rhetoric is to Romney’s rhetoric all of which cancel each other out according to how the media sees it.

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Today, the Associated Press and National Public Radio reported on a new study by the federal government that suggests that the rate of growth in health care spending has slowed. Health care spending was up 3.9 percent in 2011 from the year before–still somewhat higher than inflation (3.4%), but relatively low. Health care spending had increased 3.8 percent in 2010.

Both the AP and NPR proclaimed that the new study by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services “provided relief for a jittery White House facing a 2012 reelection campaign in which President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul is a top target for Republicans.” NPR went even further on its health news blog, stating that the new study contradicted Republican claims that ObamaCare would increase health care costs.

The study found that health care spending was largely independent of ObamaCare, because most of its provisions have not been implemented yet. But neither AP nor NPR bothered to comment on President Obama and Democrats’ claims that ObamaCare would “bend the cost curve down.” They simply singled out Republicans.
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This past weekend the Washington Post published a hit piece on the grand opening of a museum in Georgia dedicated to the birthplace of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The paper was desperate to make some grand conspiracy, some lawbreaking evil out of the project. But whatever is going on with the museum, this story was just one more shot orchestrated by the left aimed at forcing Justice Thomas to recuse himself from the upcoming hearings on whether or not Obamacare is Constitutional. Of course, this is all a smoke screen to hide the fact that it is really left-wing darling Justice Elana Kagan that should recuse herself from the case.

The Post story was a mishmash of innuendo, guesswork, and partisan claims, all amounting to much of nothing for proof of wrong doing. The Post even took the opportunity to use the word “whitewashed” when describing the color of the building housing the museum commemorating Justice Thomas’ birthplace. None too subtle, that.

There was plenty of other coverage of the opening of the museum that was positive, of course. Still it is apparent that the left hates Justice Thomas so much that they can’t even stand it that a small commemoration of his place of birth be created.

But real facts weren’t on the agenda for this article on Thomas. This article was meant as yet another slap at Thomas in order to mount pressure against him for the upcoming case against Obamacare. The left has been floating the demand that Justice Thomas recuse himself because his wife has worked as a “conservative activist and lobbyist, where she specifically agitated for the repeal of ‘Obamacare.’”

Contrary to the left’s new attack on Thomas, in America we do not hold the work of a spouse against someone. If we did that, half the members of Congress would have to be removed for the boards, or agencies, or organizations that their spouses work for. The pertinent fact is, though, that Justice Thomas himself was not the one working for any group that advocated for or against Obamacare.

This, however, is not true of another member of the Supreme Court. Justice Elana Kagan was actually involved in advising how to defend against challenges to Obamacare. If that isn’t directly relevant, what is?

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This is classic MSM spin, and it’s important to note the context. “First Read”’s Mark Murray is not saying that the beating ObamaCare took at the hands of Ohio voters yesterday will hurt Governor Mitt Romney in the GOP primary…

He’s talking about the general election:

Not long after it was clear that Ohio voters were going to reject Gov. John Kasich’s (R) anti-collective-bargaining law last night, Republicans began referring to the outcome of a different Ohio ballot measure — over a health-care mandate.

The Republican National Committee sent this email to reporters today:

“[M]ost telling of all was in the battleground state of Ohio where Ohioans voted down a state collective bargaining initiative but overwhelmingly voted to repudiate one of Obama’s signature first term policies in Obamacare.”

The RNC is correct that the health-care referendum — which won by a wider margin than the referendum on collective bargaining — is a rebuke to the kind of individual mandate that President Obama signed into law in 2010.

But it also could be seen as a rebuke to the kind of individual mandate that Mitt Romney — the odds-on favorite to win the

GOP presidential nomination — also signed into law in Massachusetts.

Rubbish.

One of the reasons most MSM outlets, including “First Read,” focused so strongly on Ohio’s collective bargaining referendum (which the spoiled, entitled, crybaby public unions won last night) was to keep everyone’s eye off the ball of Ohio’s Issue 3, a referendum on ObamaCare. By putting all their focus on the union referendum and almost none of it on the ObamaCare referendum, Obama’s Media Palace Guards were able to protect Their Precious One from what assuredly was a blistering off-year election “defeat” last night and a sign of the President’s re-election troubles to come.

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Forget “Sixty Minutes”–it took the geniuses over at Media Matters for America (MMfA) all of about 60 seconds to pounce foolishly on the Breitbart TV video of CBS’ Steve Kroft asking a question of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. MMfA immediately pronounced it a “Right-Wing” smear job.

Right-Wing’s Pelosi Smear Ignores Historic Credit Card Reform Passed Under Her Watch

And MMfA didn’t stop there. It was like watching a one-legged man off to the races, down the track of a newly discovered dastardly Right-Wing smear campaign in action:

Breitbart.tv: “60 Minutes Challenged Nancy Pelosi On Her Conflict Of Interest While Speaker And Facilitating Financial Reform While Being Involved With Credit Card Companies.” The exchange was posted on Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart.tv website, promoting the notion that Pelosi faced a “conflict of interest” while overseeing credit card reform as Speaker:

Fox Nation: “Pelosi Visibly Shaken When ‘60 Minutes’ Confronts Her About Shady Investments.” Fox Nation suggested that the exchange demonstrated that Pelosi had “shady investments”:

From there, MMfA quickly circled the wagons around the former Speaker, desperate to show her as an innocent champion of the people against those evil credit card companies–one of which she seems to have invested with on favorable terms, despite relevant legislation making its way through the Congress she then led.

Wall Street Journal: “Congress And The White House Are Taking Aim At Controversial Credit-Card Practices.” In April 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported:

McClatchy: “Consumers … Would Get Strong New Protection” Under Credit Cardholders’ Bill Of Rights. McClatchy reported in May 2009:

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Michele Norris hosts NPR’s dishonestly named  ”All Things Considered,” one of those insufferable dulcet-toned offerings where very few conservative ideas or pols are “considered” reasonable or sane. The show would be laughable if not for the fact that my hard-earned tax dollars subsidize all the self-important leftist bias and sanctimony.

Anyway, the decision to remove her from the show seems like an overreach on NPR’s part. There’s no reason why what a spouse does for a living should in any way reflect on the other spouse. Husband and wife should be allowed to have their own separate careers, worldviews, and political beliefs without a guilt-by-association conflict of interest dogging them.

NPR, however, says they think differently:

Michele Norris, co-host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” is temporarily stepping away from all her duties and all campaign-related coverage because her husband, Broderick Johnson, has taken a senior advisor position with the president’s re-election campaign.

“After careful consideration, we decided that Broderick’s new role could make it difficult for me to continue hosting ATC,” Norris wrote in a note to NPR staff. “Given the nature of Broderick’s position with the campaign and the impact that it will most certainly have on our family life, I will temporarily step away from my hosting duties until after the 2012 elections.”

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In a single year, health care premium costs have jumped 9% and nowhere in this report does the NBC Nightly News bother to look at the reasons why. All they appear to be doing is trying to scare people … right into the arms of the federal government and ObamaCare.

Furthermore, at no time does NBC even float the idea that maybe, just maybe, the very idea of ObamaCare – the inevitable burdens, costs and mandates just a year or so away  – might have something to do with this jump in the cost of premiums.

My favorite part of the report, however, is when they announce that 31% of those covered by health insurance pay the first thousand dollars of their health care costs out of their own pocket.

Well, gasp and egads.

As far as I’m concerned, out-of-pocket costs are mostly a good thing. And I say that as someone who regularly pays upwards of  $10,000 a year in co-pays and deductibles. But as someone who puts the well-being of his country over his own selfish interests, I realize that one component in bringing down the artificially-inflated cost of  health care is to have the customers incentivized to shop around a little bit — create something along the lines of a free market atmosphere. As things stand now, there’s no benefit to doing that because insurance pays for everything. But if, for instance, you have to pay for your own MRI, you might actually make a few phone calls.

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As a communications professional, my assessment of the Obama Administration’s communications strategy is that it may be the most inept performance I have ever seen of any political regime.

Crisis communications is not a silver bullet.  Some thing simply cannot be repaired.  The whole point of communications in general, however, is that the job should never be challenging if the entity the communicator works for doesn’t provide fodder for the opposition.

The Obama Administration has repeatedly handed its opposition ammunition — not 9mm bullets, but everything from Stinger missiles to bunker-busters.  The result is the appearance, to this citizen, of a White House on the verge of panic.  I’m not the only one.  When legendary far-left blabbermouth James Carville tells the White House it’s time to panic, it’s time to panic (That’s no diss on Mr. Carville.  I love watching him.).

Almost none of this has to do with the truth or facts of any given situation.  It has to do with how it all appears.  Generally, it makes Mr. Obama appear like an amateur politician.

It Started Out So Well!

The Obama campaign had it made in 2008.  The GOP had put up the Grumpy Old Troll against a PR juggernaut — the first viable Black presidential candidate.  Young and slick vs. old and creaky.  The backlash against the Bush presidency had peaked — people were tired of the war in Iraq, gasoline had hit $4, and the mainstream media so controlled the political narrative that it would’ve taken a literal disaster to push the Obama campaign off-message.  Not only did the GOP face an uphill battle anyway, but now they were facing a wave of messaging that was hard to ignore: hope and change.  So powerful was this message that, despite it and the candidate it spoke for being utterly lacking in substance, it swayed enough of the electorate to create an historic moment for America.  The country had elected a God.  I don’t need to tell you how this photo comes off:

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By now we’ve all heard the reprehensible remarks made by Congressional Black Caucus Whip Andre Carson (D-IN) where he told the audience at a CBC Jobs Fair Town Hall in Miami that Tea Party Congressmen would like to lynch black people. Given the opportunity to revise or retract his remarks, Carson instead stood by “the truth” of his comments.

So now it seems pretty fair to say that Andre Carson is a race-baiting bigot who has brought shame upon the U. S. House of Representatives. But any regular reader of Big Government knows that this is not new information. In fact, Andre Carson’s despicable, divisive slander of August 22nd is just the latest of bogus attacks made by the 2nd term congressman against the Tea Party. Andre Carson is the man who told the mother of all race-baiting lies against the Tea Party: That racial slurs were screamed “fifteen times” at he and Rep. John Lewis (D-GA) in Washington DC on the day before the ObamaCare vote in 2010.

The headlines at the time (as well as Topic #1 on cable news and Sunday talk shows) was “Racist Tea Party Yells ‘N-Word’ at Civil Rights Icon John Lewis”. Andre Carson’s name was hardly mentioned in any of the stories. But a Big Government investigation revealed that it was he, in fact, who gathered Capitol Hill reporters around himself on March 20, 2010 and breathlessly told them what had happened “outside of Cannon (Congressional Office Building)” just moments before. (audio courtesy Kerry Pickett, Washington Times)

By now you know the story become part of Democratic Party lore showing up in talking points as recently as just last week as Alan Colmes mangled the “facts” but still was able to perpetuate the lie on Fox News’ “O’Reilly Factor”. You should also know by now that Andrew Breitbart offered a $100, 000 reward for anyone who can produce video proof o the supposed racial hatred. The only videos uncovered were found by the Big Government staff. They show the exact moment Carson described, “down the steps of Cannon”, from four different angles. Not only were there no slurs heard on any of the videos, but the scene is not at all how Carson described it to Capitol Hill reporters.

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INTRODUCTION

I. Whoever Controls “The Narrative,” Controls the National Political Conversation

When it comes to most of today’s mainstream media we are no longer talking about an entity that reports truth or facts. Everything about the MSM is now about The Narrative. Even though they’re supposedly made up of separate and competing newsrooms, there’s a very good reason why the MSM as a whole is usually covering, emphasizing and amplifying the exact same stories. This is what The Narrative is and its usefulness to the MSM is how it pushes particular stories to the forefront of public awareness in order to further a political agenda — an agenda that 90% of the time is meant to aid the Left and damage the Right.

Another part of The Narrative is what the MSM chooses NOT to cover; what they willfully ignore.

You can see The Narrative at work as I write this. The same MSM that assured us that when it came to Barack Obama, the church he attended for two decades didn’t matter, is now obsessing over a church Rep. Michele Bachman’s hasn’t attended in over a year. Here you have two separate (and wildly hypocritical) narratives at work: one meant to protect a Democratic presidential candidate, the other meant to damage a GOP presidential candidate.

On the other hand, you can also see The Narrative working by what’s NOT being covered today. The same MSM that obsessed over the Valerie Plame non-story is currently all but ignoring Obama’s brewing “Fast and Furious” gunrunning scandal –mainly because it’s exactly the kind of scandal that can swamp a presidency into paralyzing, under-40 approval ratings.

II. How Alternative Media Created the MSM’s Need for a Media Matters for America

Prior to the rise of the Internet, the Left almost completely owned the narrative. The simple truth is that before Al Gore’s invention was fully realized, other than a few esteemed columnists, the media had no serious ideological competition from the Right. The rise of the Internet, however, changed all of that as citizen journalists — many of whom are motivated by the MSM’s liberal biases — found this new tool invaluable when it came to both debunking the MSM’s latest lie (the most famous being RatherGate) or reporting on stories the MSM chose to ignore for ideological reasons.

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