Government shutdown

"One reason people think Republicans are to blame for government shutdowns is that so much of the media keep telling them that that's the case." So marvelously stated Brit Hume on Fox News's Special Report Monday (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

On Monday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie acknowledged the liberal spin that congressional  Republicans were punished electorally after the 1995 government shutdown was more a matter of faith than fact: "I mean, for 17 years it's been an article of faith that Republicans paid at the polls after the shutdown in the 90s. But these new House Republicans aren't so sure that's true." [Listen to…

If you listened to Obama-loving media members in recent weeks, the end of the world happens midnight Monday if Republicans don't agree to immediately fund the government. Yet with a shutdown only hours away now, the financial markets clearly don't seem to be at all concerned that what is happening in Washington will have much of an impact on the economy.

CNN's Carol Costello went full bore after the Tea Party on Monday morning, mocking the movement as "often ridiculed" and quoting The Daily Beast's John Avlon calling Tea Party members of Congress "extremists." "The Tea Party rises again orchestrating, thanks to large part to Senator Ted Cruz, a spending bill tied to defunding ObamaCare that may well lead to a government shutdown. This from a…

As NewsBusters previously reported, Tea Party Congressman Raul Labrador (R-Id.) on Sunday's Meet the Press made a fool of MSNBC's Chris Matthews over his lack of knowledge regarding how many times the government shut down when his former boss Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House. As it turns out, the Washington Post also mocked Matthews for his ignorance last Thursday in a piece deliciously…

ABC is reporting that it is now almost certain Congress and the White House will not reach an agreement to avoid a government shutdown. On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl said, “I would now put the chances of a government shutdown at 99.9 percent” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's a classic example of the MSM's use of sympathetic individual anecdotes to manipulate public opinion in favor of more and bigger government. Today's Good Morning America segment on the looming government shutdown, narrated by former New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny, offered the stories of just two people, both African-Americans, both of whom might be hurt by a government shutdown. And…

Joshua Freed's Friday afternoon report on the week's results in the stock market at the Associated Press spent nine paragraphs telling readers how the current budget battle in Washington and possible government shutdown are causing stocks to retreat. Though he obviously didn't admit it, Freed's narrative fell apart in later paragraphs as he discussed "mixed economic signals" which aren't mixed…

Melanie Hunter at CNS News reports Al Gore launched some hot rhetoric at the normally sedate Brookings Institution on Friday on the threat of a shutdown over Obamacare. " I think the only phrase that describes it is political terrorism." He spoke in an alleged Tea Party voice: "‘Nice global economy you got there. Be a shame if we’d have to destroy it. We have a list of demands. If you don’t meet…

CNN's Jake Tapper hosted conservative radio show host Mark Levin for a lengthy interview on Friday's The Lead. Levin touched on President Obama's foreign policy, Obamacare, what happens in a government shutdown, and he previewed his forthcoming book "The Liberty Amendments." Levin skewered President Obama for talking with the President of Iran but refusing to negotiate with Congress over…

At the top of Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams issued a dire warning to viewers about the possibility of a government shutdown: "Time running out until a big deadline, now days away, and it's getting ugly in Washington. Tonight, can anything be done to save our government from itself?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Introducing the later report,…

  The journalists at ABC News have not made an effort to hide their disgust with the conservative effort to oppose funding ObamaCare. On Wednesday, Good Morning America's George Stephanopoulos derided Ted Cruz's fight against it as "bizarre." On Thursday night, World News's Jon Karl sneered that it was "absurd." [See video below. MP3 audio here.] Karl described the possible government shutdown…

Appearing on Thursday's NBC Today, Meet the Press moderator David Gregory was already predicting the GOP would get the blame for a government shutdown: "Washington loves to engage in the same kind of destructive behavior every couple years, whether it needs to or not....There's a universal feeling that the party that's more divided, that's Republicans, will feel most of the heat on this from the…

Pundits and politicians are normally so slick that they can weasel their way out of even the most glaring of contradictions. "Depends on what the meaning of is, is," anyone?  So it's particularly delicious, to use Noel Sheppard's trademark phrase, to see a talking head left absolutely cornered, babbling without response, when caught in the hypocrisy of a double-standard. On today's Morning Joe…