John Stossel deserves some sort of medal for voluntarily subjecting himself to Michael Moore’s latest pile of tripe.  I will observe, however, that remarking on Moore’s intellectual incoherence is a bit like noting that the sun rose in the east.

Of all of the manifestations of the Cult of Obama, this one has to take the cake: not only do you have these brainwashed kids warbling hymns to Dear Leader, but they were invited to do so on the set of CNN (last seen fact-checking a Saturday Night Live comedy skit that cracked wise about this administration’s incompetence).

(Yes, you read that correctly: CNN actually fact-checked a comedy skit.  Because it was critical of Dear Leader.  And now they’re providing a platform for and coverage of brainwashed schoolkids crooning paeans to him.)

Unbelievable.

For all the urine-stained hysterics in the media and among the left-wing commentariat about how the townhall meeting rowdiness amounted to the mainstreaming of hate:

That’s the full list of documented violence from the August meetings. In more than 400 events: one slap, one shove, three punches, two signs grabbed, one self-inflicted vandalism incident by a liberal, one unsolved vandalism incident, and one serious assault. Despite the left’s insistence on the essentially barbaric nature of Obamacare critics, the video, photographic, and police report evidence is fairly clear in showing that 7 of the 10 incidents were perpetrated by Obama supporters and union members on Obama critics. If you add a phoned death threat to Democrat representative Brad Miller of N.C., from an Obama-care critic, the tally is 7 of 11.

Read the whole thing.

The ululating of the San Jose Mercury News editorial board in support of ObamaCare is as predictable as it is tedious, and today the editors emerge from their creche of Bay Area conformity to exhort the president to keep on keepin’ on with the “public option” despite mounting political opposition:

President Barack Obama is making a huge mistake to cave so easily on a public option as part of comprehensive health care reform, as he appears to be doing this week.

America’s employers and employees have a common interest in driving down health care costs — keeping businesses competitive and workers healthy and productive in today’s global market. That won’t happen if there is no government-run insurance option.

Obama needs to hold firm and better educate the public about why it’s so important…

Obama started out working for a bipartisan consensus, which was the right thing to do. But now it’s clear that Republicans have no interest in bipartisanship. They’re not going to support real reform, no matter how many concessions Obama makes to them or to the talk-radio puppets who disrupt town hall meetings.

Let’s make note of all the nonsense packed into these paragraphs: that it’ll be impossible to control healthcare costs absent some kind of government-run insurance program; that this relentlessly partisan ”I won” administration has now or ever worked earnestly for a bipartisan consensus; that Republicans won’t support “real reform” (as if only liberal policy amounts to “real reform”); that the people attending town hall meetings to voice displeasure with their congresscritters and with ObamaCare are disruptive “talk-radio puppets” rather than, in the main, voters with legitimate concerns.

Also amusing is the subtext that hardening Republican opposition to the plan is going to force the Democrats to go it alone.  Reality check — Democrats enjoy untrammelled power in Washington, right now.  They control the presidency, have a 60-seat majority in the House, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  Anything they want, they can get right now without a single Republican vote (hence the administration’s aforementioned “I won” attitude).  The sturm und drang over healthcare reform exists not because of anything the minority party is doing, but because the various reform proposals under consideration are deeply unpopular with the electorate, particularly in the swing congressional districts that, in 2006 and 2008, elected moderate and conservative Democrats to break Republicans’ control of Congress.  To put it another way, the problem is that Democrats are being forced to choose between their majority and healthcare reform: to keep the former they probably have to give up on the latter (at least in significant part, anyway).  Moderate and conservative Democrats who help ram ObamaCare through Congress are going to get killed in the 2010 midterms.  That’s the political dynamic, here, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with Republican obstructionism.

But the real “what planet are these people living on?” moment comes at the end of the editorial:

A public option would utilize the government’s immense negotiating and buying power to drive down rates. Medicare operates with just 8 percent overhead and cares for the vast majority of senior citizens of this country. Why isn’t that the theme of town hall meetings?

Uh.  Medicare is currently facing $74 trillion in unfunded liabilities, according to the program’s trustees.  To put that in perspective, total U.S. GDP is approximately $14 trillion.  In other words, to dig Medicare out of the fiscal hole it’s in, we would have to spend every penny of value of everything produced anywhere in the United States for five straight years.  Notwithstanding the government “using its immense negotiating and buying power to drive down rates” — in other words, using political influence and monopoly power to lowball healthcare providers — Medicare is not able to care for the vast majority of senior citizens of this country without burdening future generations with crushing debt.  The idea that the program has in any way, shape, or form controlled healthcare costs is positively delusional.

Appropos of yesterday’s post on Eric Holder’s “nation of cowards” remarks, the Weekly Standard points out the conspicuous absence of any outraged coverage compared with Phill Gramm’s “nation of whiners” remark back during the presidential campaign.

But there is no such thing as media bias.