Leftover CPAC Blogger Crashes White House Briefing to Ratfuck Obamacare

Slow clap for Peter Boddie, aka "Pundit Pete," for crashing Monday's White House daily briefing in order to push another bogus Obamascare story. Fresh off of the annual CPAC shitshow, Pete stayed in town an extra day to attend a White House briefing, and use a well-honed technique to get a question in at the tail end of Jay Carney's presser.

You've sincerely got to give the guy props, because there are reporters who raise their hands every day for months, and never get a question in, while Pete is two-for-two using his "Hey, can a humble guy from flyover country get a break?" technique. Last year, he used it to pretend he gave a shit about black people (his is a satire site, you see). and this year, it was to ratfuck Obamacare by pushing his own version of Obamascare.

Carney fell for it again, but seemed to wise up quickly, telling the assembled TV crews to make sure Pete was getting his closeup. Boddie used his time to claim that his wife had lost her health insurance due to Obamacare, and now had to pay "double," but as with most tales of horror from the privileged, doesn't say what the old plan did or didn't cover, or provide any detail at all.

What is clear is that the "getting charged double" claim is new, or at least wasn't worth mentioning at the time the transition occurred. Colorado's health care exchange offers plans starting at $311/mo. for a 54 year-old, though, so if the old plan was $155 bucks a month, it's a pretty good bet that it didn't cover much.

Since Pete's blog is self-described satire, there's no reason to believe any of what he says anyway, but from a performance art standpoint, this is spot-on.

Unfortunately for Pete, Jay Carney has the facts on his side. Every poll has shown that the majority of Americans don't want Obamacare repealed, and most either support it or want it to be even more liberal. As for Pete's claim that most of the people enrolling are folks who had insurance before the ACA, there aren't any solid numbers, but considerable evidence that the opposite is true. In any case, even the folks who had their plans cancelled must be making out pretty well under Obamacare, since the only ones you ever hear complaining are people who don't know, or won't tell, the truth about their own health insurance.

Transcript:

 Peter Boddie: Jay, one more question from Colorado?

MR. CARNEY: Colorado, what do you got?

Peter Boddie: Okay. I just wanted to follow up on that one about Obama -- well, the Affordable Care Act. And you mentioned that the Republicans are giving this pitch to, I guess, repeal the bill. And so my question --

MR. CARNEY: Surely your reporting reflects that.

Peter Boddie: What’s that?

MR. CARNEY: I’m not misstating --

Peter Boddie: No, no, no, it was the reasons you gave that I wanted to ask you about. And the last time I was here, I asked you a question and you didn’t really answer it, so I hope I’ll have better luck this time. (Laughter.)

MR. CARNEY: I think he’s waiting for his -- have you got the camera on him? Go ahead.

Peter Boddie: And I saw you using notes, so I’m going to use mine as well.

MR. CARNEY: Go for it.

Peter Boddie: When the law was first debated and passed -- and we’re talking about the Affordable Care Act -- the polls showed a majority of the people were not in favor of that, and yet it was pushed through. And so in terms of this pitch, the President continued to pitch to get it passed using statements like “you can keep your plan.” And, by the way, I know that’s not true because my wife lost her insurance because of the Affordable Care Act -- that you can --

MR. CARNEY: What’s your question, sir?

Peter Boddie: Well, I’m getting to it.

MR. CARNEY: Okay.

Peter Boddie: We don't get here very often from out in middle country, so when you get your chance, you got to ask.

MR. CARNEY: You’re welcome. Sure.

Peter Boddie: Okay. So anyway, the President’s pitch was that you can keep your plan, that your costs will go down, and I know that not to be true. So my question is: Will the President accede to the greater majority of Americans now who want it repealed?

MR. CARNEY: Well, actually that's not --

Peter Boddie: Why won’t he listen to the American people?

MR. CARNEY: You obviously haven’t seen the data because the majority of Americans do not in any poll want it repealed. The majority supports fixing it and improving it, not repealing it. I would ask you to check your data.

Secondly, the President made that pitch. Republicans in Congress fought it tooth and nail. It went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld it. It was the principal argument in a presidential election. The President won reelection.

And again, Republicans are free to make the repeal argument. My point was simply that when you go to individuals and you ask them, do you want quality, affordable health insurance, or do you want the insurance company to tell you that you’re not going to get coverage for that condition you have because the fine print says you can't. In fact, your sister, we’re going to charge her double even though you have identical medical histories because she’s a woman --

Peter Boddie: Well, my wife is getting charged double now because she lost her insurance.

MR. CARNEY: Well, again, I don't know the circumstances with your wife. And what I can tell you is that the Affordable Care Act provides quality, affordable health insurance to millions of people. They are -- million are --

Peter Boddie: But that's not true. More people have lost their insurance because of the act right now than have been -- didn't have insurance and have signed up. That is a fact.

MR. CARNEY: Okay, well, you’re entitled to your facts, sir. What I can tell you is that you and others who want to campaign on repeal are welcome to.

What I’m saying is that repeal for millions of Americans is not a good option and for all the reasons that I enumerated.

Thank you all very much.

Mark Knoller: One more question from Bethesda?

Watch: Conservative CPAC Speaker Praises Community Organizer

At the top of CPAC 2014's minority outreach panel, moderator Jason Roe seemed to forget that one of the reasons conservatives even need a minority outreach panel is that they've been such huge, ginormous fucking assholes about community organizing.

Instead, Roe filled his introduction of Robert Woodson, founder of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise, with the kind of fulsome praise that earned him a rousing golf clap from the tiny crowd. Now, Woodson does consistently espouse conservative buzzwords like "free market," but his organization's function is, most definitely, community organizing, and includes securing government assistance and funding for those communities.

Nowhere does Roe include terms like "lax-a-daisical," or intimations that community organizing is not real work. If conservatives can admit why that is, they might just solve some of their outreach problems.

Sometimes a Picture Is Worth Only One Word...

Overcompensating.

White Moderator Tells CPAC Minority Outreach Panel That It's the 'Goodies,' Stupid!

The good news is that this year's CPAC minority outreach panel went marginally better than last year's racism panel, but they failed to learn the important lesson of booking a smaller room for these things.

twitter.com/JohnJHudak

They also, apparently, have not learned that when one of your four panelists bails on you, you don't leave a giant empty chair onstage, and use it to buffer your moderator from the panel.

At this year's CPAC "Reaching Out: The Rest of the Story" minority outreach panel, moderator Jason Roe told the panel that Democrats "going into these communities have lots of goodies to offer, and our guys aren't exactly in the offering goodies business."

That trope, echoing the tone-deaf likes of Mitt Romney, the historically illiterate likes of Rand Paul, and the RAF™ likes of Newt Gingrich, was offensive enough to draw some pushback from Robert Woodson of the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise.

"It's not goodies," Woodson said. "It bothers me that people assume that lower income respond to gifts - food stamps, or things that will be given to them. Nobody wants to be dependent."

He then went on to explain, however, that Republicans should be more like former LA Mayor Richard Riordan, and build community centers. That, as any Republican will tell you, is also a "goody," as is any government spending that doesn't benefit rich white people.

"What liberals do is, at least they express their concern," Woodson went on to say. "Whether what they do is helpful or harmful, they show up! If they show up, they win, if we don't show up, we lose."

What liberals also don't do is spend six years relentlessly deriding community organizers, then head up their minority outreach panel with a community organizer. It's the contempt, stupid. If you start by not viewing black people as plantation-bound criminal Food Stamp Pac Men, the policy solutions you formulate will start to make more sense to them.

Ari Fleischer on Morning Joe: Republicans Shouldn't Call the President Weak, But Obama is Weak as Fuck

I know, I'm supposed to be taking it easy and fielding offers, but like a vampire who gets seeds thrown at his feet, I can't help but spring into action when someone says some incredibly dumb shit on TV right in front of me. This is probably not the dumbest thing anyone's said about the crisis in Ukraine (that headline is a slight paraphrase), but there is a valuable lesson in this one.

On Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was saying how people were mean to George W. Bush about Putin, and they shouldn't have been, and now, they should also shut the fuck up and let President Obama go to work. Actually, Scarborough connected Sen. Harry Reid's "loser" and "liar"comments to a President George W. Bush visit to Putin, but the "loser" comment was in reference to Iraq and the economy, while the "liar" comment was in reference to a local Nevada issue, the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump.

Whatever, the point stands, when there's a foreign policy crisis, people ought to take pains not to undermine the president, a point with which former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer couldn't agree more. "I didn't appreciate when people treated President Bush like that," Fleischer said. "The person to blame here is Vladimir Putin. He's the one responsible, he's the one who did it."

 He then added "I think there is a case to be made that the President has, through weakness, changed the cost/benefit that Vladimir Putin would go through to decide whether to use force, that's a legitimate issue but it has to be discussed in the proper vein."

 Now, before you go telling Fleischer that you've got his "proper vein" right here, keep in mind, saying dumb shit is what Republicans do, it's like getting angry at the sun for shining, or the New England Patriots for cheating. Think Scarborough saying he wouldn't bring up Monica Lewinsky in "a gazillion years," but also, too, isn't it the solemn duty of the media to bring it up long, deep, and constantly?

No, the real lesson here is in how David Axelrod responded, by sarcastically complimenting Fleischer for his "panache," to which Fleischer essentially replied "Panache? Who the fuck says panache, you pussy?"

That's also a slight paraphrase, of course, but this is the problem with many liberals: they're so convinced of their self-evident cleverness that they don't bother to win any arguments. When a Republican shits on the rug, you need to rub their nose in it, not toss off a good-natured quip. Something like, "Well, gee, Ari, your guy must've been pussy of the year when Putin invaded Georgia, amiright?"

Yeah, it's an obvious point, but it sticks, and the next time one of these guys thinks about saying something stupid like that, they'll remember how it felt to have their own spew forcibly clogging their nostrils.

Chuck Todd Says Fox's Megyn Kelly Part of the 'Conservative Media Complex'

Update: I refused to keep my name on the edits, so the piece has been taken down. This is the original version of a post that has been significantly edited.

Chuck Todd Says Fox's Megyn Kelly Part of the 'Conservative Media Complex'

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly has long been presented as the face of the network's "hard news" side that eschews the partisanship of the channel's opinion programming. On Thursday morning's The Daily Rundown, however, host and NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd casually tossed aside that distinction when he included Kelly's interview with 90s Bill Clinton accuser Kathleen Willey in a list of attempts by the "conservative media complex" to toxify the former President.

"It's been back to the '90s in politics these last few weeks," Todd said, joking "Get the old VCR out and watch Singles, right?"

He detailed the current spate of conservative attacks on Hillary Clinton involving former President Bill Clinton, including Sen. Rand Paul's revival of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the publication of papers by confidante Diane Blair, and "on Tuesday, Fox News aired an interview with Kathleen Willey, who, back in 1998, alleged that Bill Clinton had sexually assaulted her."

Todd added that "The conservative media complex's intent appears to be to knock Hillary Clinton and feed the 'Clinton fatigue' narrative," but went on to theorize that the shorter-term intent may be to neutralize Bill Clinton as a campaign asset for Democrats in the midterm elections.

VIDEO HERE

Todd was referring to Kelly's interview of Willey earlier this week, in which Willey renewed a raft of accusations against Hillary Clinton, including the possible abduction and/or killing of Willey's cat. The bulk of the interview consisted of Willey repeating variations on the theme "Hillary is the War on Women," but toward the end of the nine-minute segment, Kelly did challenge Willey's credibility by pointing out significant lies that she had told to the FBI. Willey admitted to the "mistakes," but told Kelly that they paled in comparison to the allegations she expects people to believe about Hillary Clinton.

Kelly's premise for interviewing Kathleen Willey in the first place is that her name has come up recently in the reporting on the Diane Blair papers that Chuck Todd also mentioned. Those papers were made public in 2010, but were thrust into the current news cycle by The Washington Free Beacon's reporting on them.

Fox News Celebrates Black History Month For Five Seconds

February is Black History Month, which is a lot of territory to cover in just 28 days. Begun in 1926 as Negro History Week, Black History Month was first recognized by the U.S. government in 1976, and its purpose has always been to correct the under-representation of black Americans in mainstream historical narratives. Fox News is doing their part by airing a series of videos honoring important black figures in American history. Here are three of them:

 The 5-second spots honor "Frederick Douglass, Leader anti-slavery movement," "Condoleezza Rice, Former Secretary of State," and "Ray Charles, Winner of 17 Grammys."