Posts by Ben Armbruster

Benjamin J. Armbruster is a Research Associate for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress.

Fox News' Fuzzy Math: 193 Percent of the Public Support Palin, Romney and Huckabee (Video)
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on November 24, 2009 at 8:39 AM.

Reporting on the latest Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll last night on Fox News’ local Chicago affiliate, anchor Byron Harlan employed some funny math in asserting that Sarah Palin is leading the pack for the GOP nomination in 2012:

HARLAN: It looks as if the rogue route is helping Sarah Palin. Her book tour has meant new support. A new Opinion Dynamics poll for 2012 shows her on top when it comes to landing the nomination. Palin is at 70 percent, about a third higher than this past July. Mike Huckabee stands at 63 percent. Mitt Romney’s 60.

Those figures add up to 193 percent. An accompanying graphic tried to squeeze the numbers into one pie chart:

In fact, the poll Harlan referred to did not ask Republican respondents to pick their favorite candidate. The numbers he cited merely represent favorable ratings among Republicans surveyed for each individual. Watch Harlan’s report:

GOP Lawmaker Cao: Obama Administration 'Has Been Tremendous' For New Orleans on Katrina Recovery Effort
Posted by Ben Armbruster on November 12, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

Last month, President Obama visted New Orleans for the first time since taking office and touted his administration’s focus on assisting the area’s still on-going recovery effort four years after Hurricane Katrina. “I’m pleased to report that we’ve made good progress,” he said. “We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ve made progress.”

But conservatives such as Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) criticized Obama’s visit calling it a “drive-through daiquiri summit,” while others “criticized the president for not touring the battered wetlands.”

Yesterday during an interview with Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) — the lone Republican to vote for the House health care bill last week — Washington Times radio channeled the GOP criticism. “He didn’t even stick around very long during his trip,” the host said. But Cao defended what the administration has done for the area:

CAO: Well, I just want to set the record straight, that even though the President only visited New Orleans once since his election, it was a brief stay, but this administration has been tremendous for the people of the 2nd district. Secretary Napolitano has been down here three or four times, the secretary of HUD, the secretary of Education, they have been down here numerous times. [...]

So I guess for me, it’s not that important to have the visit of the President, its much more important for me that I have a good working relationship with the administration and have the commitment…from the administration to push all the recovery issues of the 2nd District forward and they have been doing that in the last 9 months.

Listen here:

Paul Rainwater, the executive director of the state-run Louisiana Recovery Authority, agrees with Cao’s approach. “I would say it’s more important to have your cabinet secretaries down here,” he said last month. Indeed, the White House said there were 22 visits by senior administration officials to the area from March to August, 13 of them by cabinet secretaries.

Woops! Bill O'Reilly Doesn't Remember What the Public Option Is Called, or That It's Pretty Popular (Video)
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on November 10, 2009 at 12:14 PM.

Last night on Fox News, host Bill O’Reilly and analyst Brit Hume discussed the prospects for the Senate passing a health care reform bill. After struggling with the terminology for the “public option,” O’Reilly ultimately concluded that “all the polls say” that “the folks don’t want it.”

Hume, a regular Fox News misinformer, surprisingly corrected O’Reilly, noting that Americans actually support the public option:

O’REILLY: They call it, you know, the public sector. What is the –

HUME: Public option, you mean?

O’REILLY: Public option, whatever. The folks don’t want it. … But it looks to me like they have maybe 55 votes to pass it. And that means they could be filibustered and never come up for a vote.

HUME: That’s what it looks like right now. The public option, actually some polls show that the public option standing by itself is not at all unpopular, but it is kind of popular. But that depends on how the poll question is raised. … We don’t need to go into all that right now.

Watch it:

Those trying to derail reform with a public option try to claim that Americans don’t support it. “All the polls now indicate substantial opposition to this particular type of health care reform,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said last night on Fox. But Hume is right. Americans do support the public option, as recent polling shows:

– CNN/Opinion Research, Oct. 30 – Nov. 1: 55 percent support “creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance companies.”

– Ipsos/McClatchy, Oct. 30 – Nov. 1: 51 percent support the “creation of a public entity to directly compete with existing health insurance companies.”

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Bill O'Reilly Goes After Sesame Street: ‘We May Have To Ambush Oscar’
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on November 10, 2009 at 4:30 AM.

During an episode of Sesame Street that was originally broadcast two years ago, a character tells Oscar the Grouch, who happens to be reporting for "GNN" (Grouchy News Network), that she is switching her news viewing loyalties to "Pox News," adding, "Now there is a trashy news show."

Right winger Andrew Breitbart's "Big Hollywood" blog took on the Sesame Street menace last week proclaiming: "Add one more soldier to the Left's war on Fox News: Oscar the Grouch":

If Mom and Dad watch cable news, it's better than 50/50 they watch "POX News." So what gives? PBS -- a network partially funded with my tax dollars -- has the right to tell my kids that their parents watch "trashy" news? The message is clear, I can't even sit my kids in front of "Sesame Street" without having to worry about the Left attempting to undermine my authority.

Thursday night on Fox News, host Bill O'Reilly picked up on Big Hollywood's rant and couldn't resist defending his network against the smear merchants at Sesame Street. "Say it ain't so. Sesame Street trashing Fox News!" O'Reilly complained. After airing the segment in question, O'Reilly said wryly, "We may have to ambush Oscar." Watch it:

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CBO: Repubs' "Alternative" Health-Care Plan Would Leave 52 Million Uninsured in 2019
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on November 5, 2009 at 7:22 AM.

Last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its analysis of the House Republican alternative health care bill. While the CBO determined the GOP bill’s 10 year price tag to be $61 billion — far less that the Democrats’ proposal — the score also found that the their bill would have little effect on nearly 46 million uninsured Americans:

By 2019, CBO and JCT estimate, the number of nonelderly people without health insurance would be reduced by about 3 million relative to current law, leaving about 52 million nonelderly residents uninsured. The share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage in 2019 would be about 83 percent, roughly in line with the current share. CBO and JCT estimate that enacting the amendment’s insurance coverage provisions would increase deficits by $8 billion over the 2010–2019 period.

The CBO found that the Democrats’ bill, however, would cover 36 million more Americans and “reduce the number of nonelderly Americans without coverage to around 18 million over the next decade.” Yet, just before the CBO scored the GOP bill, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) falsely claimed their alternative “will cover millions more Americans” than the Democrats’ bill.

Last night on Fox News Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) dodged a question about how many uninsured the GOP plan would cover and instead railed at the Democrats for “trying to get at this business of universal coverage”:

PENCE: We believe you get at the coverage issue by lowering the cost of health insurance. … So Republicans by focusing on the cost of health insurance believe that we are going to take our country in a direction where we also deal with the tens of millions of people and employers that struggle with providing insurance.

Forbes Bows to Beck After He Complains About Being Named One Of Magazine's 'Scariest People'
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 29, 2009 at 4:31 PM.

To commemorate Halloween, Forbes magazine announced its picks “for the scariest people of 2009” and included caricatured masks of the honorees, which included Rod Blagojevich, Bernie Madoff, Michael Moore, Kanye West, Roman Polanki and radical Fox News’ host Glenn Beck. “This cable-news demagogue commands big ratings, an army of fans and crocodile tears on demand,” Forbes magazine said of Beck.

Beck hosted the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief — and one-time GOP presidential candidate — Steve Forbes on his radio show Wednesday and complained about the award. “[You're] making me the number one scariest man in America?” Beck asked. “People always want to be at the top of our list,” Forbes replied. “Not this one,” Beck bemoaned. Forbes then started sucking up to Beck:

FORBES: It was a mis — it was a miscommunication. We were going to put you on the most admired, most beloved, most reasonable, most enlightened list.

BECK: Right, right.

FORBES: But we figured if we did that, it would yeah, we wanted to put a mask on you so you wouldn’t get killed by the liberals.

BECK: I mean, here’s the competition: Rod Blagojevich, Bernie Madoff, Michael Jackson, David Letterman, Michael Moore, Roman Polanski. You’ve got a rapist who is nine slots lower than I am ….

FORBES: We normally would put you on the 400 list but we respect your privacy.

In fact, after the show, Forbes went back and amended the original article to be more flattering of Beck:

By Steve Forbes
I hereby amend Halloween Masks — The Scariest People Of 2009

“Glenn Beck is the scariest person to big tax; big government; big spend; and weak defense liberals.”

Salon’s Alex Koppelman observes, “The idea that your outlet’s owner could decide he disagreed with something you wrote — something that had already been published — and then just blithely go in and change it is pretty scary. There’s an ethical problem involved, certainly.”

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Even Pat Buchanan Thinks Obama/Nixon Comparisons Are Idiotic
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 22, 2009 at 9:00 AM.

Taking cues from their communications shop over at Fox News, GOP Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) yesterday attacked the White House’s campaign against Fox’s unethical journalistic practices by comparing President Obama to President Nixon. “Let’s not start calling people out and compiling an enemies list,” Alexander said, touting his days as a junior staffer in the Nixon White House as credentials for his charge. Gregg said he was “fascinated” by Alexander’s criticism and wondered if Obama is “Nixon-fying” the White House. But yesterday on MSNBC, top Nixon aide Pat Buchanan dismissed out-of-hand any comparison of Obama to Nixon:

BUCHANAN: It is the most idiotic comparison I’ve ever seen. Barack Obama won 95 percent of Washington DC, he comes in with both houses Congress behind him, the media love him, the country loves him. Nixon came in with both houses of Congress against him, he probably got 8 percent of the vote in Washington DC, the media loathed him. … I don’t see any comparison between Obama and Nixon whatsoever. … [T]here’s no comparison. Barack Obama’s got enormous press support, he’s got problems with Fox News but for heaven’s sakes there is no comparison here.

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Newt Gingrich Calls on Republicans to "Repeal" Health Reform if It Passes
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 20, 2009 at 11:14 AM.

Last night on Fox News, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined some of his colleagues on the fringe right and urged the GOP to make repealing health reform the “number one” campaign issue in 2010 and 2012:

GINGRICH: Let me make a straightforward promise. These bills can’t be implemented before 2013. If they pass a bill which is a disaster the number one campaign issue in 2010 and 2012 is going to be repeal the bill.

We repealed the catastrophic health legislation that was a disaster. We can repeal this monstrosity. If they’re determined to put something bad in the country, the country can rise up, defeat the people who do it and repeal it.

Watch it:

Gingrich is referring to the Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 which was repealed a year after it passed because it raised seniors’ Medicare premiums disproportionately to pay for benefit expansions.

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Mitt Romney Pushes Hysterical Scare Tactic About Public Option
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 15, 2009 at 2:43 PM.

Last night on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney propagated a fearmongering claim that a public health insurance option would bring death to the country:

ROMNEY: The right way to have proceeded was to let each state create their own plan, to learn from the laboratories that the states were meant to be, and then adopted the very best in the federal system. But that hasn’t been done. And as a result, you’re seeing Democrats fighting Democrats. And the idea that we’d have — the government get into a — if you will, the public or government option is absolutely death, I think, across this country.

Watch it:

Romney’s hysterical scare tactic has sadly become the norm in the health care debate. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin issued the absurd statement that the House health reform bill would create “death panels” for the nation’s elderly — a claim conservatives advanced with glee despite the fact that it had been thoroughly debunked. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) similarly claimed that reform would “pull the plug on grandma.”

During last night’s segment, Romney touted Massachusetts’ health care system that he helped enact as governor (despite downplaying the plan during his 2008 presidential bid). Romney boasted that the Massachusetts plan is “on budget,” but what he omitted is the fact that when approving the plan, he “deferr[ed] until another day any serious effort to control the state’s runaway health costs” and now “the plan will not be sustainable over the next 5 to 10 years if they do not take significant steps to arrest the growth of health spending.”

The public option of course won’t cause “death” across the country, as Romney claimed, but rather, it would be a key component of bringing down the cost of health care.

Black NFL Players ‘Wouldn’t Play’ For Limbaugh’s Team: ‘He’s A Jerk’
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on October 9, 2009 at 3:13 PM.

Earlier this week, the media reported that hate radio host Rush Limbaugh is involved in a bid to purchase the National Football League’s St. Louis Rams franchise. Many sports media figures lambasted the idea of Limbaugh owning an NFL team, with one writer saying it “would definitely hurt” the Rams while another said his “head exploded after hearing this Limbaugh news” because he is “a pungent bowl of stark raving bigoted lunacy.”

Now, the players themselves are piling on. Specifically, many African-American players have explicitly stated that they would never play for a team that Rush Limbaugh owns. “All I know is from the last comment I heard, he said in (President) Obama’s America, white kids are getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting ‘right on,’” New York Giants defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka told the New York Daily News, adding, “I don’t want anything to do with a team that he has any part of.” Other black players expressed similar sentiments:

[New York Jets linebacker Bart] Scott says players remember what Limbaugh said [about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donavan McNabb], and adds that the NFL would be wise not to allow the nationally syndicated host into the league.

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Steele Agrees That Boehner And GOP Leadership Are 'An Absolute Freakin' Joke'
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on August 24, 2009 at 12:30 PM.

Earlier this year, RNC chair Michael Steele dismissed Rush Limbaugh as an "entertainer" whose "thing" is "incendiary" and "ugly." Steele later apologized to Limbaugh after enormous conservative backlash. (But soon after, Steele said the dust-up with Limbaugh was part of his grand strategy).

Last week, local Missouri conservative radio host Vincent Jericho asked Steele about the confrontation with Limbaugh. "Did you get sucked into that?" Jericho asked. "Absolutely," Steele replied. "In my job as national chairman, I'm trying to heal the party, not create divisions." Yet later in the interview, Steele appeared to create more divisions within GOP. Steele told Jericho he agreed "1,000%" with his assertion that House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and other Republican congressional leaders are "an abosolute freakin' joke":

VINCENT JERICHO: For god's sake's the Republican Party is supposed to stand for something why don't they stand up and lead? Because some of the leadership, with Boehner and some of these other guys, they're a joke. You can't say anything. But they're an absolute freaking joke.

STEELE: I'm with you. I'm 1,000% with you. I agree with you. I absolutely agree with you.

Listen here:

Sam Stein reports that spokespeople from both Boehner's office and the RNC "insisted that Steele's comments were directed at the broad direction of the GOP and not the minority leader himself."

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Fox Guest Compares 'Cash for Clunkers' Program to Katrina
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on August 5, 2009 at 8:46 AM.

Last night, Fox News a clip aired of a woman at a Philadelphia town hall meeting over the weekend berating Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) about health care reform. “What I see is a bureaucratic nightmare, senator. … And you want us to believe that a government that can’t even run a Cash for Clunkers program is going to run one-seventh of our U.S. economy,” the woman complained. “I think that there is anger out there, real anger,” said NPR’s Mara Liasson, responding to the clip. She then called the woman’s concern “legitimate” and compared the Cash for Clunkers program to Hurricane Katrina:

LIASSON: I thought that woman actually asked a pretty legitimate question — especially Cash for Clunkers is like a mini- Katrina here. I mean it’s not good to start a program and not be able to execute it.

Watch it:

Nearly 2,000 people died and thousands more were injured or displaced as a result of Hurricane Katrina and the Bush administration’s incompetent response. However, “Cash for Clunkers” — the government program giving people a $4,500 voucher to trade in an old vehicle for a newer, more fuel efficient one — has been so successful that Congress is considering appropriating more money for it to continue.

Even After North Korea Frees American Journalists, Bolton Insists Clinton Trip Was A Mistake
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on August 4, 2009 at 2:40 PM.

Reports emerged yesterday that President Clinton — along with Center for American Progress President and CEO John Podesta — was traveling to North Korea to negotiate the release of two imprisoned American journalists. In an interview with AFP today, super-hawk John Bolton attacked Clinton for “negotiating with terrorists” and “rewarding bad behavior“:

“It comes perilously close to negotiating with terrorists,” Bolton told AFP when asked about Bill Clinton’s trip to secure the release of journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. [...]

“I think this is a very bad signal because it does exactly what we always try and avoid doing with terrorists, or with rogue states in general, and that’s encouraging their bad behavior,” Bolton said.

However it seems Clinton’s trip has paid off. Reuters reported this afternoon that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il granted “a special pardon” and, according to Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin, both would be traveling back to the U.S. with Clinton and his team. Bolton appeared on Fox just after Griffin’s report and despite Clinton’s successes, he still couldn’t bring himself to offer any praise and instead again attacked the move:

BOLTON: But I worry that the outcome is a lot better for North Korea than for the United States. I mean this is a classic case of rewarding bad behavior, the seizure of these two basically innocent Americans. Obviously all of us want to get them out but we want it done in a way that doesn’t increase the risks in the future for other Americans seized by North Korea, seized by Iran, seized by other despotic regimes and then turned into pawns to get senior officials like former presidents to come and legitimize the regime in order to get them out.

Watch it:

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'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Amendment Withdrawn Due to White House 'Pressure'
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 30, 2009 at 9:15 AM.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) said yesterday that he withdrew an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would have weakened the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy because of “pressure” from the White House and some “congressional colleagues.” Hastings’ amendment would have prohibited “spending money to investigate or discharge members of the military who reveal they are homosexual or bisexual.” Saying he didn’t want “to get into names,” Hastings added, “I didn’t talk to Barack Obama.” During an appearance with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow last night, Hastings expressed his agitation:

HASTINGS: If something is bigoted and if your intent is to see to it that it does not continue, then I did not understand the leadership of Congress or the White House in saying that the time is not right. My position is: The president has said he wishes that this matter be repealed. My colleague, Patrick Murphy, now has more than 170 co-sponsors on a measure to repeal it. Secretary Gates has said, I`m glad he is now saying when we change our policy. Last year, he would have been saying “if.” But my view is, that the time is now to eliminate this bigoted law once and for all.

Watch it:

Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters that, until the law is repealed, he is looking at ways to make the application of it more “humane.”

Joe the Plumber Responds to Meghan McCain's "Dumbass" Remark
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on July 20, 2009 at 10:15 AM.

Last week, Meghan McCain responded to Samuel “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher’s claim that he doesn’t want "queers…anywhere around my children." "Joe the Plumber -- you can quote me -- is a dumbass," she said. "He should stick to plumbing." Not taking her advice to "stick to plumbing," Wurzelbacher showed up at an "Average Joes, Powerful Voices" event in Greenville, WI yesterday to speak to those protesting "taxes and government spending." But it appeared that he agreed, at least in part, with Meghan McCain’s criticism:

Wurzelbacher described himself as a "dumb plumber" who nevertheless could understand the Constitution. His themes and complaints in a 13-minute speech were similar to those voiced by speakers before and after him in the two-hour-plus event. He criticized wasteful government spending, lack of accountability, the disconnect between Christian values and politics, and political correctness.

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