National Debt

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):

Members of the liberal media continue to pile disrespect on the debt limit as the drumbeat for Congress to raise it grows louder. On Thursday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell called the debt limit “a really dumb idea” and said there was no reason for it. That's right, she wants to get rid of it altogether. Mitchell was talking to Rachel Maddow about the coming debt ceiling…

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,…

Jay Leno took another comedic shot at the White House Thursday. Early in his Tonight Show monologue on NBC, the host said, “President Obama now making his case for raising the debt limit. He said raising the debt limit does not increase debt – you know, like raising the speed limit does not increase speed” (video follows with commentary):

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…

On Friday's PoliticsNation, MSNBC host Al Sharpton complained that the "Tea Party-fueled madness" of the GOP threatening to shut down the government would "take away health care from millions of people." He went on to charge that Speaker John Boehner possesses "genuine political cowardice" because he is allowing the Tea Party to "run this country into the ground." Sharpton began the show:

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News and Thursday's CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes repeatedly played up how an unidentified Republican in the U.S. Senate attacked a House proposal to de-fund ObamaCare as "suicide". Cordes underlined that "Speaker Boehner was forced into the risky strategy by his right flank", and wondered if the plan was "just a recipe for a government shutdown". Norah O'Donnell…

 Chris Matthews on Wednesday continued his assault on conservatives who oppose the funding of ObamaCare in the coming fiscal showdown, sneering that the "looney tunes" Republicans want to "kill the recovery." The Hardball anchor, who recently lost his 5pm slot and now can only be seen at 7pm, also bizarrely linked this to the President of Starbucks asking gun owners not to open carry in stores…

At the Associated Press, aka the Admininstration's Press, reporter Jim Kuhnhenn predictably and dutifully reported that President Barack Obama "reiterated his vow not to negotiate with Republicans over raising the borrowing limit." As usual, the AP and Kuhnhenn didn't look back at how U.S. Senator Barack Obama's debt-ceiling posture in 2006 sharply differed. Today, Mark Knoller at CBS New,…

PBS anchor Judy Woodruff asked a question on Monday’s NewsHour that perfectly captured the modern liberal mentality about government spending and debt. During a taped interview with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Woodruff asked: [Video below. MP3 audio here.]

On CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Tuesday, Sun Microsystems founder and Harvard-trained economist Scott Mc Nealy asserted the Federal Reserve has become a "marketing department" for the government and "shouldn't be in any business at all. They shouldn’t be in the business of taxing people by devaluing the dollar, and they shouldn’t be in the business of setting expectations." He said the Fed should…

A recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll stumbled across a very interesting finding: 44 percent of respondents said they did not think Congress should raise the debt ceiling before the U.S. reaches it in October, while only half as many (22 percent) said Congress should raise it. On Friday, Andrea Mitchell reported that finding on her eponymous MSNBC program Andrea Mitchell Reports, but she…

As has been demonstrated many times, including in its recent cover-up and weaselly non-correction of his "Gulf ports" gaffe, the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, continues to do its level best to keep President Obama's misstatements and misleading statements from wider public visibility. Two such instances occurred in one speech on Friday in Binghamton, New York, where Obama…