For those attempting to figure out what is in the Senate ObamaCare bill, you are in the company of 99 U.S. Senators who have not seen the bill. At least that is what today’s New York Times is reporting:

“frustration has been growing among some lawmakers over the delay, especially as they are asked repeated questions about a bill they have not yet seen.

“I don’t think the bill text is being shown to anybody,” Mr. [Senator] Nelson said last week.”

According to CNN: “In fact, no one has seen the Senate bill.”

They a have a phrase out West for this — all hat, no cattle.

I call it a vapor bill — all hype, no bill.

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Dem Senators are peeling off of President Obama’s government takeover of health care and its liberal fantasy land that spends more than a trillion and contains hundreds of billions in new taxes.

As James Carville told CNN, President Obama only has 57 votes.

Reuters James Pethokoukis is reporting that Senators Liberman, Landrieu and Nelson are at NO, and Bayh maybe too. Pethokoukis is reporting the same thing Hammond said in his memo, that reconciliation is a no-go. (Politico is reporting, correctly, that reconciliation rules would strip the Stupak amendment.)

As we all know, no 60 votes, no laundry. (Senator Reid needs 60 votes to break the filibuster on the motion to proceed to consider the bill. If he does not get 60 votes, ObamaCare never comes up on the Senate floor.)

There are whispers in Washington watering holes that some Dem Senators are quietly hoping Senator Nelson will vote against cloture on the motion to proceed. This will let the Senators who are up in 2010 off the hook from the nightmare of proceeding to this politically toxic bill.

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You know, flipping the channels tonight and seeing on twitter that CNN failed to run live with the Ft. Hood press conference, I think they should put me in the 8pm time slot. Their ratings suck because the network does. All of its major personalities are on the left, except for Lou Dobbs, who is a populist, not a conservative. They need a voice on the right willing to cover the news no one else at the network seems willing or interested in covering.

Consider this an overnight open thread.

Here is what is phony.

Rick Sanchez quoted Rush Limbaugh on CNN and the quote was fabricated. The racially insensitive quote attributed to Limbaugh was made up on the internet and not uttered by Rush.

Sanchez has refused to apologize for using the quote in a hit job on Limbaugh designed to destroy Limbaugh’s bid for the St. Louis Rams.

Here is what is real.

Rick Sanchez ran over a man and left the guy for dead.

It was December 10, 1990. Sanchez was leaving a Miami Dolphins game when he ran over a man. Sanchez fled the scene for two hours.

Finally, Sanchez came back. Two hours after the incident, Sanchez was still drunk — well above the legal limit. But Sanchez was a well known Miami reporter with lots of friends on the police force. He was never charged with the hit and run. He just pled no contest to DUI.

The man Sanchez hit and ran away from? He died in 1995, paralyzed and in a nursing home.

This is the guy who decided to take to television this week and moralize against Rush.

You may remember Susan Roesgen as the woman who rather notoriously played the role of Obama stimulus apologist while carrying a CNN microphone at the April 15th Chicago Tea Party (she was also the subject of some now-vanished Jon Stewart scorn over her coverage of a Fargo flood, but that’s a different story).  Well, it seems that she’s become an unemployment statistic:

Breaking: TVNewser has learned CNN correspondent Susan Roesgen’s contract will not be renewed and she will be leaving the network.

[snip]

When TVNewser asked whether Roesgen’s comments at the Chicago tea party rally had anything to do with her not being renewed, a CNN spokesperson said, “I can’t comment on personnel matters.”

In other words, Roesgen’s comments at the Chicago Tea Party had something to do with her not being renewed. See also Ed Driscoll, who revisited Ms. Roesgen’s adventures in advocacy in his report on the July Tea Parties; Founding Bloggers, who had the video that CNN rather badly wanted to go away; and Hot Air, which is openly wondering when MSNBC will offer her a job. Given the way that the two networks are hacking each other into bloody gobbets to claim the #2 spot in cable news, they may have already.

I don’t know who gets to keep this (metaphorical) scalp; but I think that the Tea Party movement can certainly claim it.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

The poll is dated June 26-28, with a 3% +/- margin of error.

The CNN poll question and answers are:

If Obama’s health plan passed, your family would be…

20% Better Off

35% Worse Off

44% About the Same

Promoted by Erick

Those old enough to remember the days when the grip the major networks had on news dissemination was firm and confident also remember the rise of upstart CNN. Ted Turner dared to challenge the network Powers-That-Be for market share and influence and won.

I remember being starved for information during the 1st Gulf War. I didn’t have cable TV and satellite TV was still in the SciFi stage. CNN did have some presence on the radio here and there but not in Nashville and satellite radio was further into SciFi than it’s video cousin. But I vividly remember some of the video shots that came out of Baghdad. CNN’s Bernard Goldberg Shaw from a blacked out, downtown hotel room broadcasting to the world as American war-planes bombed the city. Night-vision pictures of anti-aircraft fire directed at those same aircraft from the tops of Baghdad’s buildings. It was, perhaps, the pinnacle of CNN’s journalism.

Once established as a force in the field of journalism, it’s hard to get dislodged. But CNN has proven it is possible. Over the next 20 years, chinks and cracks in their persona allowed the world to look in and see what CNN felt it had to do to keep its place. Stories began to surface of questionable deals made with dictators and despots to keep CNN “reporting” when other news agencies were banned. CNN coverage of the 2nd Gulf War was so slanted it was common to hear those who had access to both CNN and the fledgling FOX News say, “If you watch both channels, it’s like they’re reporting on 2 different wars!” So much so CNN picked up its own insulting version of what CNN stood for. It became for many, the “Commie News Network”.

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So, we are all well aware of the so-called “reporter” from CNN, Susan Roesgen whose on-air haranguing of those she was ostensibly reporting on made obvious her anti-Republican bias. Well, for the past day Americans have been emailing her to let her know how they feel about her unprofessional attitude. Apparently, CNN does not appreciate hearing from its viewers, though, because all of a sudden anyone that sends an email to Roesgen’s CNN email address will have it returned as address unknown!

Conservative New Media reported on Roesgan’s outrageous “interviews” from the Chicago Tea Party later that evening and since the airing of her debating those she was supposed to be reporting on, folks have been jamming CNN’s email boxes with complaints.

It is pretty telling that on-air “reporter” Roesgen’s email address suddenly returns as address unknown, isn’t it? Why is CNN so afraid of hearing from its viewers?

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My RedState.com colleague Jeff Emanuel provided a prime example of just how deep the drive-by media is immersed in the tank for Obama, as CNN’s Susan Roesgen gets in the face of an American citizen exercising his Constitutional rights of free speech and free assembly yesterday.

HotAirPundit has a fine example of Ms. Roesgen’s other side. She was all sweetness and light just three months ago when the protesters were left-wingers:

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From the department of pathetic ignorance or willfully not getting it (not sure which to file this one in yet) comes this clip of a CNN reporter shouting down a Chicago Tea Party attendee for not displaying the appropriate appreciation and gratitude to President Obama for his gift to the state of Illinois of billions in borrowed money and trillions in new debt.

These people simply don’t get the fact that these modern-day tea parties aren’t simply about taxes.

They’re about increased taxes and even more greatly increased debt, yes. But they’re also about the punishment of hard work and success through confiscatory government policy; about the replacement of age-old American equality of opportunity by government-mandated equality of outcome, and — perhaps most importantly — they are about current attempts by liberal politicians to interject government into the daily life decisions of ordinary American citizens.

CNN reporter Susan Roesgen can try to control the focus of these tea parties all she wants by shouting at participants to talk only about taxes, but that just shows she’s missing the boat as badly as folks like Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill (Democrat), who posted to Twitter this afternoon that she was “confused” why people were fed up with trillions in government waste.

It’s okay; these people can not get it all they want. Those who participated (and are participating in) any of the thousand modern-day tea parties being held around the country today get it — and when this movement grows through 2009 and into 2010, and when its momentum is felt at the polls next year, they’ll start to get a clue just what magnitude a sleeping dragon they awoke with their profligate spending, their spreading of the wealth, and their encroachment into people’s personal lives and decisions.

Video Below Fold

It is always interesting to see the Democratic pot calling the Republican kettle black and here we have only the latest example of that with Obama’s top advisor attacking former Vice President Dick Cheney for his outspoken position on the failures of the Obama administration’s early efforts in office. But, even as advisor David Axelrod was attacking Cheney, there didn’t seem to be any memory on the part of CNN or Axelrod of the wild-eyed, fire-breathing attacks made by former Vice President Al Gore on President George W. Bush in the years after the 2000 election.

On CNN’s State of the Union with host John King, David Axelrod scolded Dick Cheney for not behaving like a “statesman” over the former vp’s statements that the country is becoming less safe because of Obama’s policies.

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There is a somewhat amusing article on CNN.com right now. It’s not amusing for it’s witticism but for the fact that Ed Henry and CNN think they need to explain away the “tough exchange” that Henry and Obama engaged in during Tuesday’s press conference. Also amusing is the fact that Henry seems to be apologizing to The One for simply doing his job. Finally, it’s amusing for the fact that CNN and Henry think they are the news along with the president. It’s narcissistic and revealing all at once. On top of all that it is amusing for whom CNN obviously felt the need to explain themselves to because for the last day the left has been outraged over Henry’s gall at asking the president a simple question.

If you’ll recall, on Tuesday (March 24) CNN’s Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry asked Obama why he waited days to react to the outrage over the AIG bonuses that Treasury Sec. Geithner wrote into the bailout plan. Avoiding the question, Obama replied with a surly “Because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.” This exchange had the extremists at DailyKos and the profane folks at Wonkette as well as the rest of the left-O-sphere worked up into a frothy lather over Henry’s low down, hornswoggling ways. How DARE he ask the Obammessiah a pointed question! Why it’s sacrilege, surely!

So CNN has dutifully whimpered no maas and tried to smooth the waters with this odd article explaining away why that darned ol’ Ed Henry had the temerity to ask The One a question. It’s an obvious effort to appease the gods of the left-O-sphere and other zealots of the Obamanation. Henry must want a talisman to warn off the lefty heebie-jeebies awfully bad to go this far.

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I wanted to tell you about what “liberal talk show host” Stephanie Miller said on Larry King the other night, but my ADD got the better of me as I was typing the title to this post, and I started thinking about just what a “left-wing talk show host” actually was, and wondering whether, much like the tree falling in the remote woods, if a liberal goes on talk radio to host a show, and nobody tunes in to hear it — as happens with pretty much every lefty who tries to harness that medium — did it really happen? Just some food for thought on this first Friday in March…

Anyway, back to the story: so-called “liberal talk show host” Stephanie Miller, who may or may not actually be such, because there may or may not be a single American who has actually heard her program, was on Larry King Live Tuesday night, where she called Rush Limbaugh’s dissent against the Obamadministration’s Obamagenda a “treasonous” act.

Miller, like so many other hard-lefties, may be a little dizzy from the hairpin turn she and her colleagues made at breakneck speed from rooting all-out that the President and all his policies fail (and he and his administration be arrested and “frog marched from the White House”) to declaring that any dissent at all from the Presidential line is “treasonous.”

Fortunately, we’re here not only to prevent that prior position from being memory-holed, as so many lefties so desperately want it to be, but also to send their own slogan right back at them:

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Of course, CNN being what it is, no mention of that was made in the firing show cancellation announcement, which blamed the termination of D.L. Hughley’s weekend talk show on “budget constraints.”

The statement continued:

D.L. approached CNN about being permanently based in Los Angeles, where his family lives. To accommodate this, we agreed upon a new role where he will be a contributor for the network based in Los Angeles. We are eager to continue our relationship with D.L. who is a tremendous talent and a valued colleague.

Why is it not surprising that CNN would be “eager to continue [its] relationship” with a man who had the following exchange with RNC Chairman Michael Steele last Saturday night:

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This post is mostly for the bulimics out there who need some help throwing up tonight.

Toby Harnden has some of the quotes from David Gergen and Gloria Borger lamenting Tom Daschle’s withdrawal.

Gergen and Borger are typical Washington insiders who have lost all disconnect from the real world outside the beltway. Borger claims Daschle’s withdrawal was somehow partisan — not the criminal reality that it was.

Gergen thinks Daschle is just so smart it is just so upsetting. Never mind that Daschle was making huge money trading favors. Never mind that Daschle didn’t pay his taxes. Never mind that Daschle was potentially heading to a cabinet position that would oversee the very people who were paying Daschle lots of money.

That’s so typical of Gergen who probably does the same thing and probably ought to be audited himself.

ALSO, America apparently the land of permanent racism

I am wondering if CNN was out of the country last November 4? Maybe it missed that McCain lost the election because, once again, CNN trotted out an Old Media campaign lie aimed at making John McCain “as bad as” the Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright by using the talking point that in Reverend John Hagee McCain had a “controversial” pastor, too? Not only did CNN fall back on the lie that Hagee is somehow just as bad as Wright — and thereby smearing John McCain with Wright’s racist hatespeak — but CNN got a twofer with this piece by again portraying America as the land of permanent, unrelenting racism by hinting that Obama will never get a chance because he’s black.

News flash to CNN: Barack HAS gotten a chance. He was elected with a comfortable majority of votes.

If anyone wonders what any criticism of Barack Obama will be termed by the Old Media, CNN’s headlined “Will Obama have to be better because he’s black?” seems to answer to that question. You see, Obama won’t be given a chance, CNN tells us, because he’s black. Any failure will be made larger because he’s black. And any criticism of him is just racism forcing Obama to “work harder than whites” at his job.

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