National Debt

On Thursday, I wrote a piece exposing several factual errors in Andrew Sullivan's recent love letter to President Obama. Sullivan responded hours later:

Criticism of Barack Obama came from a surprising source Sunday. Appearing on Meet the Press, former NBC Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw said the President “is going to have to answer for” the explosion in the federal budget deficit that “happened on his watch” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In an op-ed at "Bloomberg View" on Wednesday evening, editor and columnist Michael Kinsley's headline teased that "Maybe President Romney Wouldn’t Be So Bad," before twice urging readers to vote to reelect President Obama, including in the final paragraph after an alleged parenthetical (and obviously mythical) "Pause for reflection." Ha ha. What came in between wasn't very funny at all -- and…

None of the Big Three broadcast networks noted the release Friday of the Congressional Budget Office’s final determination of the fiscal year 2012 federal budget deficit: $1.1 trillion, the fourth year in a row of trillion-dollar deficits. ABC, CBS and NBC’s Friday evening newscasts and Saturday morning news programs were silent about the statistic — even though Obama’s massive spending and…

New York Times White House correspondent Jackie Calmes off lead in Wednesday's edition on Obama's struggle with the federal deficit, "Test for Obama As Deficit Stays Over $1 Trillion." Credit Calmes for the premise and the Times for the prominent placement, but as usual, Calmes waved the blame away from Obama and again clung to the dubious idea that ObamaCare would actually reduce the deficit…

Having spent a considerable portion of their first episode skewering Romney last week, the folks at Saturday Night Live's special "Weekend Update Thursday" program decided to lampoon President Obama, although in doing so, the mockery wasn't as full-throated and nasty as it was against Romney, who was portrayed as a plutocratic racist. Comedian Jay Pharaoh portrayed the president as…

Even though it was near the top of the raw news wire at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, when I saw it, I had to check the date on Tom Raum's item entitled "Why It Matters: Debt." Sure enough, it really does have a September 24. 1:36 p.m. time stamp. That is intensely ironic and somewhat delicious, because the final sentence of Raum's dispatch directly contradicts…

Liberal Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward appeared on the September 17 C-SPAN program Washington Journal to hawk his new book The Price of Politics. In the process, Woodward promoted the same stale narrative that compromise is dead in Washington mostly because of those rascally, conservative Republicans, but sought to import a fair measure of melodrama to the stalemate in…

Whoever wrote the Associated Press's brief dispatch yesterday on the results of the government's auction of 10-year Treasury notes seemed to be stunned and on the defensive about its result. The item, entitled "Weak Demand at Auction of 10-Year U.S. Treasury Debt," began as follows: "U.S. Treasury prices dived Wednesday after an auction of 10-year notes drew very weak demand, signaling a lack…

Bob Woodward singled out congressional Republicans as the main party to blame for the 2011 debt ceiling showdown during an interview on Wednesday's CBS This Morning and minimized President Obama and Senate Democrats's responsibility regarding the looming fiscal cliff: "The Republicans are like a brick wall, and it's very difficult to deal with them." Woodward also bemoaned that the press…

ABC's Diane Sawyer, in a Nightline interview with the Washington Post's Bob Woodward Monday, aggressively defended President Obama from any blame for last summer's debt ceiling crisis. "Barack Obama was hostage to events outside his control" due to a "Republican Congress newly dominated by the Tea Party" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Piers Morgan on Monday picked the wrong guy to toss Democrat talking points at. After the CNN anchor spoke the typical liberal nonsense about Paul Ryan's budget only benefiting rich people, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich scolded, "I do wonder sometimes if you guys all get off in a little club and learn a brand new mantra and then all repeat it mindlessly...You guys almost sound like you'…

A year ago, Standard & Poor's cut its rating of U.S. government debt from AAA to AA+. Very early Monday morning, in what read more like an Obama administration press release than a wire service news report, Paul Wiseman at the Associated Press claimed that subsequent events and other agencies' decisions not to deliver similar downgrades represent a "decisive repudiation" of S&P's call…

New York Times economic columnist Paul Krugman made a statement Sunday about the looming end of the year tax hikes and spending cuts that is likely to raise some eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. Appearing on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, Krugman said, "If Obama’s reelected, I think that there’s a quite good chance that for a month or two we actually will go off the cliff" (video follows with…