If you ever need an example of how the media swallows whole every right wing talking point, here it is. Norah O'Donnell uses John Boehner talking points about "contraception" to attack President Obama's stimulus plan as if it's the absolute truth. And of course everything else that republicans don't want in the bill is just plain old pork.
Norah: With all due respect isn't that a bunch of pork in here and how is that exactly stimulus?
I take your point Congressman. but go ahead and answer what Congressman Boehner said. How can you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives. How does that stimulate the economy?
Well, let me ask you that then, do you think 200 million dollars essentially contraceptives is wasteful spending?
You get my point, (scowl on her face) there is going to be since this is over 800 billion dollars there's going to be a lot in there that people are going to raise questions about in the long run about wasteful spending, whether it's democrats efforts just to HUGE massive, unprecedented spending bill to put stuff and get stuff paid for that they haven't been successful or paid for in the past.
She even used the now discredited talking point about the CBO. Now we have a real CBO report that says: CBO Report Confirms Economic Recovery Act Provides Immediate Stimulus to Help Create Jobs.
It didn't matter what answer Chris Van Hollen gave Norah, she wasn't buying it. Suddenly John Boehner is a source of incredibly non partisan information. Oh, I forgot, he's a republican. I thought when the nation voted in the Democratic Party to take over, they would write bills and govern on their beliefs. That's why they were elected. OK, to debunk the "contraceptives" talking point which is an attack on Nancy Pelosi, Elanor Shor writes:
The Drudge Report and Politico are breathlessly repeating Republican talking points that accuse House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) of hijacking the stimulus bill to promote contraceptive use...
First of all, the family-planning program that Pelosi supports expanding in the stimulus bill was created in 1972 under the leadership of Republican president Richard Nixon. What's being proposed is an expansion in the number of states that can use Medicaid money, with a federal match, to help low-income women prevent unwanted pregnancies...read on.
The media are going to be the death of this country. It was bad enough when they were too dumb to know (or care) that the Bush administration was marching us off to war for no good reason. But at least that made a certain evil, emotional sense. People have often gone to war because they got all excited over snappy uniforms and killing people.
Watching them deal with something complicated like our economic crisis is enough to make your head explode.
Boehner's cute soundbite about contraceptives is, of course, nonsense. The money he's talking about is for medicaid, which is desperately needed at a time when people are losing their jobs --- and, by the way, will help stimulate the economy by paying the doctors, pharmacies and hospitals for the (much increased) care they give, something that is a big problem at a time when states are going broke.
Norah O'Donnell later ripped Democrat Chris Van Hollen a new one on that issue because he wasn't prepared and he ended up pretty much endorsing the idea that spending should all be on infrastructure after she perfectly parroted all the conservative talking points and successfully framed all expenditures that aren't tax cuts and bridges as pork.
Oh Lord, please help me. Then I watched Chris Matthews actually quote Limbaugh by name saying that the stimulus plan is just party politics for poor people and thought the use of contraception was just like China counting babies. The media has no shame. No shame I tell you.
Media Matters is covering the media and their insanity very well also.
