Anthony Weiner Smacks Down Peggy Noonan On Health Care (video)

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http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/anthony-weiner-smacks-down-peggy-noonan-on-health-care.php?ref=fpblg

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) appeared on Morning Joe today, and things got a bit heated when he told Wall Street Journal columnist and former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan that her criticisms of President Obama and health care reform were some "of the most cliched, hackneyed assessments of this thing."

Noonan started off by stating that Congress was already "one of the most unpopular institutions in America before they went through this dreadful process, with all of the buying of Congressman and the buying of the Senators."

She also claimed that President Obama "misunderstood what history was asking of him" when he started the push for health care reform, and that it was "fatally off-point."

Instead, she said, the President should have been focusing on jobs and the economy.

Weiner was not having any of this: "These are two of the most cliched, hackneyed assessments of this thing. One, that this was not a good process. It went through five committees. The most open process I can imagine. Every single Republican amendment was considered."

(snip)
Weiner wasn't done:

Would you stop, one-year tangent? Health care's 20% of our economy and it's a tangent? This is the problem -- we've got to solve the problem but let's do it some other time. For eight years in this country this problem was festering. Incomes were flat. Why? Cause every single spare dollar an employer had had to go into health care, not into wages. Our wages are down, our economy's at a standstill because of health care. And we're fixing that problem because your team didn't do it.

Here's the video. The fireworks start at around the 8-minute mark:
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/anthony-weiner-smacks-down-peggy-noonan-on-health-care.php?ref=fpblg

[blogslut]

1. Damn, that was delicious

Noonan's debate style is to condescend in a buttery voice while repeating the same tired lines spewed by every other wingnut hack. She deserves no deference and I'm glad Weiner gave her just that.

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2. "Because your team didn't do it."

There, is that so hard to say? That the Republicans governed like they did for six years, and they were finally turned out of office for failing to address anything real, instead ginning up the fear machine and chasing their global war on terror (which just coincidentally put a whole lot of money into the pockets of their campaign benefactors). And real people, real Americans, all over the country, were impoverished, died due to lack of health care, and watched employers go bankrupt because the Republicans couldn't be bothered with anything except the bottom line for Blackwater, Halliburton and KBR.