National Debt

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on PBS's McLaughlin Group Friday voiced predictable praise for President Obama's just released budget claiming you can't "drastically cut a deficit before you invigorate the economy or you’re going to look at a lost decade." National Review's Rich Lowry quickly refuted this nonsense telling his progressive co-panelist, "This isn’t a Keynesian budget. It’s a flat out…

White House reporter Jackie Calmes led Tuesday’s New York Times National section on Obama’s big-spending budget proposal for the 2013 fiscal year, “Military Cuts And Tax Plan Are Central To a Budget.” Calmes invariably sees Obama’s big-spending budgets through rose-colored glasses. This time last year, she was covering Obama's fiscal year 2012 proposal under helpful headlines like this one: "…

Despite the fact that the national debt has topped $15 trillion, the three network morning shows on Monday managed to only provide a total of 47 seconds to the Obama administration's newly released budget plan. NBC's Today gave the most time to the news – a whole 26 seconds – but also completely glossed over criticism of the plan, with news anchor Natalie Morales declaring: "President Obama…

According to the Heritage Foundation Barack Obama’s policies, in just two years, have resulted in the number of Americans who rely on a federal program spiking by 23 percent to 67 million. Yet there was no mention of this grim figure on the Big Three network (ABC, CBS and NBC) evening or morning news programs. Since the study was released on Wednesday only Fox News and CNN have mentioned the…

Oh joy. Today at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, in response to the Congressional Budget Office's release today of an awful 10-year baseline outlook, Andrew Taylor made sure that his first paragraph was only about the projected "dip" in the fiscal 2012 deficit, and dedicated his second paragraph to the bad things that will happen if "the Bush tax cuts" are extended and…

In today's "How Can Someone So Dumb Have His Own Nationally Televised Show" segment, HBO's Bill Maher said Friday the federal debt has only increased by $1.5 trillion since Barack Obama took office (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Newsweek's most recent cover astonishingly asked, "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" This critic of the President analyzed the contents of so-called conservative Andrew Sullivan's piece and has come to the conclusion that it is he and the unashamedly liberal magazine he writes for that are lacking in intellectual capacity and/or integrity. All one needs is…

Even with recent "improvements" which are still weak when compared to other post-World War II recoveries and which, as shown yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), are less substantive than December's two major reported numbers (unemployment rate of 8.5% and seasonally adjusted job additions of 200,000) would indicate, it seems fairly likely that the nation's unemployment rate will be higher…

On December 31, 2003, looking ahead to the upcoming 2004 election year, an Associated Press reporter -- I think it would have been Jennifer Loven at the time -- wrote about how George W. Bush was going to spend as much of the next 10-plus months as possible figuring that "he no longer needs Congress to promote his agenda." Therfore, he would use "aggressive campaign fundraising and use…

There are press memes which won't go away no matter what, and no matter how often disproven. One, repeated in an Associated Press report a couple of weeks ago as our troops were about to leave Iraq, claimed that "No WMD were ever found" there. The truth: Yes they were — along with 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found in Iraq after Saddam was overthrown, specifically “the stuff that can…

As Congresswoman Michele Bachmann made the point on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday that the national debt has increased dramatically under President Obama compared to under President Bush, host David Gregory interrupted and attempted to dismiss that fact: "Congresswoman, that just misstates the record....For accuracy, the debt exploded under the Bush administration." [Audio available here]…

George Will on Sunday marvelously told liberal economist Robert Reich something that many conservatives have been dying to say for years. During a fascinating Right vs. Left debate on ABC's This Week, after Reich predictably pined for higher income tax rates to solve all that ails us, Will struck back with the line of the weekend, "You are a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen" (video follows…

CBS’s Steve Kroft challenged President Barack Obama a few times during the two-part 60 Minutes interview aired Sunday night, but managed to ignore the scandals (Solyndra, Fast & Furious and collapse of MF Global run by ally Jon Corzine) while mostly cuing up Obama to knock down criticism of him or pressing him with complaints from the left that he hasn’t done or gone far enough: “They…

Did you know it was a human right to have a roof over your head? So says schlockumentarian Occupy Wall Street supporter Michael Moore in an absolutely hysterical call to arms published at the Huffington Post Wednesday entitled "The Winter of Our Occupation":