Free Republic

The day after Barack Obama’s largely passed over infomercial is the ideal time to review the George Soros funded Project on Death in America. Soros is a notorious advocate of the assisted suicide campaign. He papers over it with tripe about compassion; in reality, the project is a drive to provide palliative care rather than treatment for gravely ill patients: “Can we afford to care for the dying properly? The number of people dying in the United States currently stands at 2.2 million annually. Increases in cancer and AIDS and the aging of the baby boomers will cause this figure...

A full day’s worth of single-payer friendly health care coverage on ABC was just what President Barack Obama’s doctor ordered. The president hopes to radically change the country’s current health care system, so he enlisted his one of his more powerful constituents -- ABC News -- for help. The network devoted significant chunks of its daily programming Wednesday [June 24] to Obama’s plan to broaden the country’s health care system to cover all Americans without giving opponents a chance to respond. And the president delivered, filibustering the tougher questions during the town hall Q&A and ladling out the kind of...

Despite ABC’s best efforts, Americans stayed away in droves from the primetime healthcare infomercial (h/t Glenn Reynolds): President Obama’s town hall meeting on health care delivered a sickly rating Wednesday evening. The one-hour ABC News special “Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America” (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour (against NBC’s “The Philanthropist” debut and a repeat of “CSI: NY” on CBS). The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network. The special was shot at the White House and...

"ABC News has more than earned the title of the All Barack Channel, they have recklessly fought to achieve it," Media Research Center President Brent Bozell stated in a press release today. The network had promised to deliver a health care presentation that would "not be ‘slanted' in any way - much less a ‘day-long infomercial' or ‘in-kind free advertising'," but not a single expert was offered to counter President Obama's plan to nationalize the nation's health care industry.

President Obama struggled to explain today whether his health care reform proposals would force normal Americans to make sacrifices that wealthier, more powerful people -- like the president himself -- wouldn't face. The probing questions came from two skeptical neurologists during ABC News' special on health care reform, "Questions for the President: Prescription for America," anchored from the White House by Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson. Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge...

In a rare moment of candor, President Obama explained to an audience how government-run healthcare would work in America....Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care.

ABC's White House special struggled for viewers President Obama's town hall meeting on health care delivered a sickly rating Wednesday evening. The one-hour ABC News special "Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America" (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour. The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network. The special was shot at the White House and featured the president answering questions about his health care plan. The president's primary message was that those who like their current insurance will...

[Snip] STURM:My question to you is, outside the medical criteria for prolonging life for somebody elderly, is there any consideration that can be given for a certain spirit, a certain joy of living, quality of life? Or is it just a medical cutoff at a certain age? [Snip] GIBSON: But the money may not have been there for her pacemaker or for your grandmother's hip replacement. [Snip] OBAMA: But what we can do is make sure that at least some of the waste that exists in the system that's not making anybody's mom better, that is loading up on additional...

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/25/obamas-michael-dukakis-moment/ Barack Obama got ABC to move their news division into the White House in order to make the big pitch for his egalitarian, everyone-gets-treated-equally ObamaCare push. Instead, Obama fumbled into a Michael Dukakis moment that exposed him as a hypocrite. ABC itself leads with Obama’s response that he wouldn’t stay within his own plan for his family:

WASHINGTON – A bipartisan group of senators at work on health care reported progress Thursday in holding the cost of legislation to their $1 trillion target, but Republicans quickly added there was no agreement on even the outlines of a bill. "We have options that would enable us to write a $1 trillion bill, fully paid for," Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told reporters. His comments came one week after analysts set the cost of earlier proposals at $1.6 trillion over 10 years. The Montana Democrat provided no details, but others have said the changes made...

He talked for 45 minutes during ABC's "Health Care" infomercial! It's clear to anyone who has ever dozed through an Obama speech that the man likes the sound of his own voice. He's known for rambling, long winded speechifying even in press conferences. ABC's all Obama all day long extravaganza Wednesday was no different. Obama answered one question from the handpicked crew of supporters attending the Town Hall style event on health care with a vague monologue that went on for four minutes and thirty three seconds. No doubt leaving many viewers scrambling for the remote or praying for a...

ABC’s Primetime: Questions for the President managed but a 1.2 demo rating.Full details: Time Net Show 18-49 Rating 18-49 Share 18-34 Rating 18-34 Share Viewers Live+SD (million) 8:00 FOX So You Think You Can Dance? 2.7 9 2.7 10 7.297 ABC Wipeout 2.7 9 2.2 8 7.715 NBC I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! (finale) 1.5 5 1.2 4 4.402 CBS New Adventures of Old Christine (repeat) 1.1 4 0.7 3 4.761 CW America’s Next Top Model (repeat) 0.5 2 0.5 2 1.149 8:30 CBS Gary Unmarried (repeat) 1.1 3 0.7 2 4.373 9:00 NBC America’s Got Talent 3.1...

I've always thought that "national horserace" polls in presidential elections are silly, even though my firm must conduct them, too. We all learned dramatically in 2000 that the popular vote of the nation as a whole means nothing if a candidate doesn't carry the electoral vote -- and that means winning key "swing" states. The same is true for national polls on issues such as healthcare reform. One that caught a lot of flack was a recent New York Times survey. It went to great pains to describe all of the details of a healthcare proposal that might be one...

Senators struggled Wednesday with the possibility that in offering subsidized health insurance to millions of individuals and families, they could inadvertently speed the erosion of employer-provided coverage, which they want to preserve. Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, who is leading efforts to write health legislation, said “much of the discussion” focused on this issue at meetings of senators on Wednesday. And, in the evening, in an indication of how the administration is going all out to sell the need for a new health care system, President Obama participated in a town meeting-style gathering televised by ABC News from the...

I am wondering when the euthanasia folks are going to start touting this one? I mean, it sure seemed to me as if the most caring, most civil, most intelligent president evah just said that healthcare could be cheaper if we don’t give old folks and the infirm the full measure of care they now get. It appeared that Obama said we should just let them die or suffer because they aren’t worth the effort. Imagine if Bush had said something like this? The left wouldn’t have hesitated to call him any manner of names. Obama said during the ABC...

Reporting from Washington -- President Obama suggested at a town hall event Wednesday night that one way to shave medical costs is to stop expensive and ultimately futile procedures performed on people who are about to die and don't stand to gain from the extra care. In a nationally televised event at the White House, Obama said families need better information so they don't unthinkingly approve "additional tests or additional drugs that the evidence shows is not necessarily going to improve care."

Elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance. Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get. The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my...

ABC News: Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance. Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, serving humanity simply by showing up, and he’s not retiring until every American agrees with him, do NOT doubt him, with shrieks of joy at the mere mention of his name...

I am wondering when the euthanasia folks are going to start touting this one? I mean, it sure seemed to me as if the most caring, most civil, most intelligent president evah just said that healthcare could be cheaper if we don't give old folks and the infirm the full measure of care they now get. It appeared that Obama said we should just let them die or suffer because they aren't worth the effort. Imagine if Bush had said something like this? The left wouldn't have hesitated to call him any manner of names. Obama said during the ABC...