Tag Archives: jessica-yellin

CNN: Keeping Current Tax Rates is Increasing Government Spending

On Tuesday's Newsroom, CNN tried to spin the proposed compromise between President Obama and congressional Republicans to keep the current tax rates as a ” package that increases spending dramatically .” Correspondents Jessica Yellin and Joe Johns forwarded the liberal talking point that the Republicans were breaking their campaign promise to reduce government spending with this proposal. Yellin appeared with anchor Brooke Baldwin just after the bottom of the 3 pm Eastern hour. After playing a montage of several clips of President Obama promising to “roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans,” Baldwin stated that “it's not just the President, as we saw in the montage, breaking a promise. It's also- correct me if I'm wrong- the Republicans breaking a promise as well .” The liberal CNN correspondent replied with the faulty concept that letting taxpayers keep more of their income is government spending (thus treating all income as if it belonged to the government): read more

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CNN: Keeping Current Tax Rates is Increasing Government Spending

Rick Sanchez: Fox News ‘Essentially the Voice of the Republican Party’

On Tuesday’s Rick’s List, CNN’s Rick Sanchez again bashed Fox News and the conservative media, two of his favorite subjects of ire. Sanchez stated that President Obama was being “dogged” and blamed ” conservative talk radio hosts … lambasting this man 24/7 …. [and] Fox News, which is essentially the voice of the Republican Party, whose job it is to make this man look bad no matter what he does ” . The CNN anchor brought on political correspondent Jessica Yellin at the bottom of the 3 pm Eastern hour to discuss the President’s town hall meeting on Monday. After playing a clip of Velma Hart, an Obama supporter who bluntly told the chief executive that she was “exhausted of defending” him, Sanchez asked Yellin for her take on whether “others out there are thinking in many of the ways that she [Hart] expressed herself.” The liberal correspondent spouted the current administration talking point that “clearly, President Obama inherited this terrible economy and we’re still working our way out of it,” but continued that “the White House, at some point, has to be looking back and questioning their strategy both within Washington and their larger communication strategy outside, and how they’re messaging to the broader public. And it would seem that they’ve made crucial missteps on both fronts, and they have to take some blame for that.” Later, Yellin looked to the last Democratic president as a possible example for the current administration: YELLIN: [Y]ou’ve got to ask, is he messaging correctly? And, you know, with Bill Clinton out on the scene so much lately, it’s a reminder of how effective he is at hitting emotional chords, using anecdotes to help you relate to where he’s coming from, and help you understand his approach to policy. Whereas, President Obama tends to focus on these little examples or- you know, brass tacks sort of technician-type details of what he’s done, instead of giving you this overarching emotional frame. So you don’t end up connecting to it, and that’s one of the ways he seems to be misfiring on this message. Sanchez responded to this with his attack on his regular foes: SANCHEZ: All right- good stuff. It’s an interesting conversation, and I bet you it’s the kind of stuff that people are talking about. And then, of course, there’s the fact that- you know, he is dogged. There’s no question. You’d have to be a fool to not look at the landscape and see conservative talk radio hosts- YELLIN: Of course- SANCHEZ: Literally lambasting this man 24/7. And then, there’s Fox News, which is essentially the voice of the Republican Party, whose job it is to make this man look bad no matter what he does. So, you know, it’s a difficult thing that- YELLIN: Well, this is the time for political jujitsu. SANCHEZ: What’s that? YELLIN: It’s the time for political jujitsu. SANCHEZ: Yes (laughs)- YELLIN: You know, use it against them, right? So, effect- if he could do that- right. SANCHEZ: It all depends on how well he’s able to fight that. And, you know what? He’s got to do it, if he wants to survive in this, certainly up until November. Good conversation, Jessica. Exactly a year ago, on September 21, 2009, the anchor hinted that Fox News wasn’t a “real news organization,” and questioned his competitor’s legitimacy on August 2 of this year. On August 18 , Sanchez labeled Fox News ” way, way, way to the right ,” while putting his own network in the ” middle .” Earlier this summer, the CNN personality, along with guest Roland Martin, targeted Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh .

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Rick Sanchez: Fox News ‘Essentially the Voice of the Republican Party’

Rick Sanchez Apologizes After Labeling Obama the ‘Cotton-Picking President’

CNN’s Rick Sanchez quickly apologized on his Rick’s List program on Monday after inadvertently labeling Barack Obama the ” cotton-picking president of the United States .” Sanchez used the racially-tinged term in response to the President recently addressing the significant percentage of American population who believe he is Muslim or was born outside the U.S. The anchor raised President Obama’s recent comment about his birth certificate with correspondent Jessica Yellin 21 minutes into the 3 pm Eastern hour. Yellin explained that “this is the first time he’s talked about it since the polls showing how many Americans believe him to be Muslim came out” and that “you get the sense that he’s been sort of through this. He wants to set the record straight, but he really does seem to accept that he’s not going to convince everyone, and he’s not going to spend a lot of time and energy on something that’s not going to change.” Sanchez replied to Yellin full of frustration: ” I’m just sitting here just shaking my head. He is the cotton-picking president of the United States! ” He continued with another slighter gaffe: ” If the president of the United States doesn’t have enough of a bully pulpit to convince people of a lie- that a lie is a lie, I should say, then- you know, where are we? What kind of planet are we living on? What the hell is going on here? ” To her credit, the CNN correspondent brought up the many people on the left who refused to believe Obama’s predecessor: “The assumption is there are a certain number of people that just don’t buy it. You know, there are people who didn’t think George Bush was telling the truth. You know, there are all those bumper stickers that said, ‘George W. Bush is a liar.’ ” Even with this, Sanchez continued with his frustration: “Here’s the point. I can understand 5%. I can maybe understand 10%. I can maybe understand 15%. We’re talking about- what was the latest number? A third of the American people or more?” Moments later, after taking a commercial break, Sanchez came back with an apology, crediting his Twitter followers for spotting his error: SANCHEZ: This is great. This is what works about having a conversation with my viewers throughout this newscast, because you know that I’m here on Twitter and I read what you write during the commercial breaks. And many of you are pointing out a fault that I just- a faux pas that I just made, and I want to apologize for it, because I obviously didn’t mean any disrespect or anything when I said that . But I was having that conversation with Jessica Yellin, and I think I said something to the effect- it’s so frustrating that people are lying about the president of the United States, that people are saying these things and it seems like he is defenseless to try and deal with it- although this weekend, the President came out and defended himself . And we had a very ample conversation about what it is that the President did, what he didn’t do, what his detractors say about him and what he can or can’t do. In the middle of that conversation, at one point, I said, why can’t the president of the United States seem to figure this out? After all, he is the cotton-picking president of the United States. Well, soon after I said that, I started getting some Tweets from some of you, saying, you just said ‘cotton-picking president of the United States’ about the first black president of the United States? Without even realizing it? I’ve was just saying ‘cotton picking’ because it’s a term that I’ve used because I grew up in the South. It’s a point that’s often used to illustrate frustration- not in any way shown to use- used to show any kind of disrespect. However, I apologize nonetheless for using it, in case it was taken by anyone as an act of disrespect . So, there you go. And, by the way, thank you! I got about ten Tweets right away from people on Twitter saying- hey, be careful using comments like that. So I do, and I apologize for it. This isn’t the first time Sanchez had to apologize for something he said on the air. On October 16, 2009, the CNN anchor gave an on-air apology for running an unconfirmed quote attributed to Rush Limbaugh earlier that week . As for other on-air gaffes, just during the course of 2010, Sanchez wasn’t sure who was protesting at the annual March for Life , misidentified the Galapagos Islands as Hawaii , “joked” that it was “too cold” in Iceland “to have a volcano there,” and incorrectly guessed that the Nixon/Kennedy debate took place in 1962 . The transcript of the relevant portion of the segment from Monday’s Rick’s List: SANCHEZ: Take us now through what is being described as the President becoming defensive this weekend in that interview with NBC. I mean, not only did he talk about- look, what do I have to do? Go around with my birth certificate on my fore- pinned to my forehead, to get people to stop believing that I’m a Muslim? JESSICA YELLIN: Right- SANCHEZ: And then he also addressed the Glenn Beck rally- YELLIN: Right. SANCHEZ: This group of people who got together for Glenn Beck up in Washington. What did he say about that? YELLIN: Well, first of all, on the Muslim question, this is the first time he’s talked about it since the polls showing how many Americans believe him to be Muslim came out. And so, these are the first comments from him. He is right. It came up a lot during the campaign. I was covering him and there were endless e-mails voters were getting from- you know, a friend who was e-mailing something that another friend had sent, saying that he’s Muslim, and people would come up to me and ask me about it on the trail. So you get the sense that he’s been sort of through this. He wants to set the record straight, but he really does seem to accept that he’s not going to convince everyone, and he’s not going to spend a lot of time and energy on something that’s not going to change- SANCHEZ: But that- you know that- YELLIN: There’s a certain amount of the American public that’s going to believe- go ahead. SANCHEZ: I’m just sitting here just shaking my head. He is the cotton-picking president of the United States- YELLIN: Right- SANCHEZ: If the president of the United States doesn’t have enough of a bully pulpit to convince people of a lie- that a lie is a lie, I should say, then- you know, where are we? What kind of planet are we living on? What the hell is going on here? YELLIN: Well, there will be a certain, I suppose- the assumption is there are a certain number of people that just don’t buy it. You know, there are people who didn’t think George Bush was telling the truth. You know, there are all those bumper stickers that said, ‘George W. Bush is a liar.’ SANCHEZ: Yeah. YELLIN: So maybe there’s a certain amount of the population- they accept- that just, you’re never going to reach them and that’s how it is. SANCHEZ: But- you know, but- but here’s the point. I can understand 5%. I can maybe understand 10%. I can maybe understand 15%. We’re talking about- what was the latest number? A third of the American people or more? YELLIN: I think- there’s- it depends who you ask. I think our polling had 18%. Look, we keep reporting- he keeps saying, it’s something that you’ve got to just sort of accept at some point is, and move on. We tell the facts. We’ll continue to tell the facts like they are. SANCHEZ: Yeah, yeah. Well and- look, it’s- as much as it is our job, it’s also the White House’s job, right? I mean- I guess it comes down to this question, and this is just a matter, I suppose, of common sense that people can figure out. I don’t know. I’ve never been the president of the United States. (Yellin laughs) I know what it’s like to be lied about. People lie about me every single day, and it just comes with being a public figure. But if I was the president of the United States and someone was just making a bald-faced lie like that one about me, would my impetus be to have a news conference to stand on top of the highest mountain, as my Mom and Dad always used to say, and just tell the truth? And it’s frustrating- as Americans, as we look at all of these things, whether it’s a lie about a Republican or a Democrat or whoever the heck this is going on about, it’s difficult to look at it and say what a shame that it can’t be remedied, that it can’t be fixed. You get my drift? YELLIN: I do. I do. You know, they blame us for talking about it so much. So go figure. (laughs)

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Rick Sanchez Apologizes After Labeling Obama the ‘Cotton-Picking President’

MRC’s Tim Graham Addresses ‘Mainstream Media Meltdown’ on Fox & Friends

MRC Director of Media Analysis Tim Graham appeared on Saturday morning’s Fox & Friends to discuss the emerging examples of liberal “mainstream” media meltdown over the Democrats being abandoned by the voters – and how the public is now a collection of “spoiled” brats , according to liberal talk show host Bill Press. Fox also highlighted Washington Post columnist/blogger Ezra Klein suggesting the voters are “schizophrenic” when they say they trust Democrats more on issues like the economy, and then say they’ll be voting for Republicans in the fall. What the Post actually found is the full sample trusted Democrats more, 42 to 34, but among likely voters it was 40 percent trusted Republicans more to 39 percent Democrat. Tim suggested Press and others were already sounding life the aftermath of the 1994 elections, when then-ABC anchorman issued a radio commentary denouncing the country being a “nation of uncontrolled two-year-old rage.” (Audio here .) As Tim said, Press was so unhappy with the current mood of the electorate that he said neither Abraham Lincoln nor Franklin Roosevelt could govern this bitter crowd. Democrats are starting to look like losers, and perhaps dramatic losers. This could be a remarkable year to mock the folks who suggested “reality has a liberal bias.” The shoe is on the other foot, and liberals look like the ones denying reality, insisting the economy is terrific, the Gulf will soon by squeaky-clean, and their political fortunes are fantastic.

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MRC’s Tim Graham Addresses ‘Mainstream Media Meltdown’ on Fox & Friends

ABC, CBS, WaPo, NYT Use Loaded Poll Questions to Tout Dem Unemployment Agenda

The New York Times today touted two polls that supposedly demonstrate support for the Democratic position on unemployment benefits. But a further examination of the poll questions reveals that their findings were inaccurate; the questions misrepresented the issues at play, and the Republican position on the matter. “Two national polls published last week suggest that most Americans are on [Democrats’] side of this debate,” wrote Dalia Sussman . How she knows that fact is a mystery, given that the GOP argument — that benefits should be extended and paid for with unused stimulus funds — was never offered as an option to those polled. Both polls asked, essentially, if respondents thought it was more important to extend unemployment benefits, or to preserve PayGo rules. Majorities said they thought extending benefits is more important. But under the GOP plan, the two are not mutually exclusive. Nowhere in either poll were respondents asked whether they would favor paying for extended benefits with unused stimulus funds. Neither the Times nor anyone else can accurately claim that voters favor one approach over the other since the GOP position was not an option. The first poll , conducted by the Washington Post and ABC, asked the following question: Because of the economic downturn, Congress has extended the period in which people can receive unemployment benefits, and is considering doing so again. Supporters say this will help those who can’t find work. Opponents say this adds too much to the federal budget deficit. Do you think Congress should or should not approve another extension of unemployment benefits? First of all, there are no opponents of an unemployment benefit extension. The only difference between the two parties’ positions on the issue is that Democrats want to borrow more money to pay for the extension while Republicans want to use unspent stimulus funds. It’s an outright falsehood that the GOP opposes extending unemployment benefits due to concerns about the deficit. The second poll , conducted by CBS News, asked: Do you think Congress should extend unemployment benefits for people who are currently out of work, even if it means increasing the budget deficit, or shouldn’t they do that? As in the previous poll, this question misrepresents the potential options before Congress. It offers a yes or no question on the Democratic position, but does not offer the Republican alternative. You can bet that if the questions had been framed accurately, so as to actually present the Republican position on the issue, the results would have been far different. Both polls should have asked, “Congress is going to extend unemployment benefits. Do you think the government should borrow more money to pay for those benefits, or use unspent stimulus funds?” Does anyone seriously doubt that a majority would prefer the latter? Unlike the Democrats’ position on the issue, the GOP favors both extending benefits and avoiding an increase in the federal budget deficit. And according to this same CBS poll, less than a quarter of Americans believe the stimulus created jobs, while almost half think slashing the deficit should be the federal government’s economic priority. The GOP position seeks to extend unemployment benefits while addressing two other pressing national economic concerns — the failure of the stimulus package and the skyrocketing national debt. But the Republican option was not presented to respondents by either of these polls, so neither they nor the New York Times can accurately present those polls’ findings as endorsements of the Democratic alternative.

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ABC, CBS, WaPo, NYT Use Loaded Poll Questions to Tout Dem Unemployment Agenda

CNN’s Rick Sanchez: Nixon/Kennedy Debate Took Place in 1962?

Rick Sanchez stumbled again on-air on his CNN program on Monday, getting the year of the famous Kennedy-Nixon television debate wrong by a margin of two years. Sanchez, who was trying to describe South Carolina Democratic senatorial candidate Alvin Greene’s first public speech as the “converse” of the debate, initially guessed 1962 as the year of the debate , but then broadened his answer to ” early ’60s ” . The anchor, who misidentified the Galapagos Islands as Hawaii during CNN’s live coverage of the February 27, 2010 Chilean earthquake, and “joked” that it was too cold in Iceland for volcanoes on April 15, brought on correspondent Jessica Yellin to discuss Greene’s speech. Twenty-one minutes into the 4 pm Eastern hour, Yellin mentioned how she had “talked to the audience [at the speech] beforehand….Every single person I spoke to was a skeptic before, and almost all of them said they’d vote for him afterwards or support him.” This detail surprised Sanchez, who then launched his comparison between Greene’s speech on Monday and the historical Nixon/Kennedy debate: RICK SANCHEZ: Really!? YELLIN: Yeah- SANCHEZ: You know, this is like the converse of the Nixon thing. Remember how people watched the speech there after Nixon- YELLIN: Right. SANCHEZ: Debated Kennedy- 1962? Nineteen-sixty- anyway, early ’60s . Yellin smiled and nodded uncomfortably after her CNN colleague gave that wrong answer, but didn’t explicitly correct his gaffe afterward. Sanchez continued with his recollection of history: SANCHEZ: When Kennedy debated Nixon, everybody who was in the audience said- oh, my God, Nixon killed him- just destroyed him, wiped the floor with him. Yet, everyone at home said- no, Kennedy won that by a mile, and it’s because they could see Nixon’s perspiration, and the camera goes in so tight, and you saw the stubble and the- you know, the five o’clock shadow- YELLIN: (unintelligible) (laughs) Right. SANCHEZ: Well, we were watching this guy here on television and he did come across- jumpy, nervous, jittery, inexperienced, and sweating like he was- like, sweating too much. YELLIN: Right. You know, it was- SANCHEZ: Is that what’s going on here? The CNN anchor, who sparred with this author after the Iceland “joke” back in April, did get a kick out of a Tweet I made after correspondent Brooke Baldwin spilled her secret about her recent engagement, ” stealing [his] thunder ,” as I put it. Sanchez read and displayed my Tweet on-air after a commercial break. Here’s looking at you, Rick!

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CNN’s Rick Sanchez: Nixon/Kennedy Debate Took Place in 1962?

CNN’s Yellin Cites Her Own Liberal Harvard Days in Defense of Kagan

On Tuesday’s Rick’s List, CNN’s Jessica Yellin harkened back to her college days at Harvard as she defended Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan against charges by conservatives that she is anti-military: “When I was at Harvard, a full decade before she was dean of the law school, there was already institutional opposition to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’….it steeps the whole university.” Yellin, actually, was a key left-wing student agitator during her time at the university, as she revealed in several interviews with The Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard. She was labeled a ” prominent feminist activist in her own right ” in a June 10, 1993 profile of Sheila Allen , her first-year roommate and self-proclaimed “dyke of the Class of ’93.” The then-student certainly earned this label, as she helped resurrect Harvard-Radcliffe Students for Choice after a “relatively inactive period,” was a women’s studies major, and, in an April 10, 1992 interview , bemoaned how Harvard was apparently opposed to her feminist agenda: “For people interested in women’s issues or gender studies, this is an overtly hostile environmen t.” In a May 1, 1992 article , Yellin expressed how the acquittal of the four police officers involved in the controversial Rodney King arrest was ” the most blatant evidence of the indelible racism… in this country .” Anchor Rick Sanchez brought on the correspondent just after the top of the 4 pm Eastern hour as the nominee continued her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committe. Sanchez first referenced how Senator Jeff Sessions was “grilling Kagan about banning military recruiters from an on-campus recruiting facility when she was Harvard Law dean.”  He then asked the correspondent, “Is it fair, based, Jessica, on what happened at Harvard, to charge, as Sessions seems to be saying- or alluding to or suggesting- that Elena Kagan has a bias against the military?” Yellin defended  Kagan from the very beginning and immediately cited her time at the Ivy League school: YELLIN: I think that’s apples and oranges, Rick, because, when I was at Harvard, a full decade before she was dean of the law school, there was already institutional opposition to ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ It was alive and well . So, beginning in 1979, when Harvard instituted this no-discrimination policy, there were people in ROTC- the Reserve Officers Training Corps- who could not train and drill on campus because, initially- a holdover from Vietnam- it continued because of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ That was a decade before she was there. Then, when General Colin Powell was invited to speak at graduation in 1993, there were massive protests over ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ I can’t emphasize enough how this- it steeps the whole university . She was continuing with prevailing beliefs on campus, and this whole debate feels very out of context for someone who was at Harvard, because- to suggest this didn’t predate her- saying that’s a left-wing talking point is like arguing that reality is a left-wing talking point. The correspondent does have a personal memory of the 1993 commencement, as she graduated from Harvard that year. The Clinton administration had introduced the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy just months earlier, shortly after coming to office. Later, the CNN correspondent excused Kagan’s open opposition to military recruiters on the Harvard Law campus as merely a manifestation of the left-wing environment at most “elite” institutions of higher learning: SANCHEZ: She was there in 2003. YELLIN: Yeah. SANCHEZ: Isn’t this about the same time, though, that there was a lot of questions? Michael Moore had this movie that came out about that time [Fahrenheit 9/11], as I recall, where a big part of his movie was questioning whether recruiters had a right to go out there and get people to join the military, and that they were, maybe, not being all that honest with them. I mean, if you put it in the context of that time frame, there were a lot of questions being raised about recruiting by the left. YELLIN: There have been since the Vietnam era, when some of these organizations were kicked off of these elite campuses then. I mean, there are a number of colleges that have resisted allowing military recruitment. But that’s hardly unique to Elena Kagan or to Harvard. It might be- you know, some on the right have argued that that’s the culture of elite universities, that are- you know, anti-military in some way. I don’t buy that. I think that there’s a tension there, but this is- the fundamental point here is that it’s in no way special to her , and there were 24 faculties that joined in the lawsuit against this policy of requiring these military recruiters. Hers wasn’t even one of them. So she wasn’t even leading the charge on this.

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CNN’s Yellin Cites Her Own Liberal Harvard Days in Defense of Kagan

Health care co-op supporters don’t know much about health care co-ops

So! Have you heard about these HEALTH CARE CO-OPS? If you watched any news at all yesterday, the answer is yes! And as you heard people on the teevee, attempting to explain what a “health care co-op” is, you might have been left with the strong impression that no one really knew what the hell they were talking about

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Health care co-op supporters don’t know much about health care co-ops