Bailouts

Last week, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman said conservative views about the debt ceiling should be censored from news reports.

On Friday's "Morning Joe," Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) took this a step further calling on media to stop giving "equal time or equal balance" to Tea Party ideas that people like him consider "absurd" and "not factual" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is not happy with the deal Congress and the President apparently have agreed upon to end the debt ceiling impasse.

In his Monday piece, the Nobel laureate wrote, "[T]hose demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them":

The folks at CNN should be really proud of themselves.

In less than 24 hours, one of their current anchors - Fareed Zakaria - flat out lied about deficits, the debt ceiling, and the U.S. credit rating before a former host - Eliot Spitzer - falsely told viewers of HBO's "Real Time" that George W. Bush "gave us the deregulatory craziness that led us over the cliff" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews Tuesday exposed his own debt ceiling hypocrisy without realizing it.

As he absurdly asked his "Hardball" guests why America isn't having a "big debate" about what the federal government should pay for - like that's not what's happening at the moment! - he relayed how his parents balanced their household budget, but never once said anything about raising revenues. It was all about what they could afford (video follows with transcript and commentary):

The New York Times on Tuesday told its readers, "House Republicans have lost sight of the country's welfare."

In an editorial entitled "The Republican Wreckage," the Gray Lady disgracefully claimed, "They have largely succeeded in their campaign to ransom America's economy for the biggest spending cuts in a generation" dimming "the futures of millions of jobless Americans":

Barack Obama might give Chris Matthews a thrill up his leg, but the bromance MSNBC's "Hardball" host has with former President Bill Clinton knows no bounds.

On Monday's program, Matthews finished by nominating Clinton as Secretary of the Treasury, "Because in many ways it’s a life saver" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski asked the co-host of "Morning Joe" Monday if Republicans holding the line on the debt ceiling are "so stuck to their little contract and the Tea Party that they cannot even think outside the box for the good of the country."

Somewhat less surprising, Joe Scarborough gave a pretty good answer (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews on Wednesday gave a lesson on utterly shameless fear-mongering.

In the final segment of MSNBC's "Hardball," the host said, "Failure to act on the debt ceiling will create a horror for our country, a horror we’ve never seen before" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Martin Bashir Monday falsely accused former Alaska governor Sarah Palin of calling President Obama a sugar daddy.

Not only did the MSNBC host badly misinterpret Palin's words, he clearly doesn't understand what a sugar daddy is (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was the featured guest on both CBS's "Face the Nation" and NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday.

For some reason, hosts Bob Schieffer and David Gregory didn't ask the most important question every person in the world currently following the debt ceiling is dying to know the answer to:

It is truly fascinating how liberal media members will do anything to protect the reputation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

On this weekend's "McLaughlin Group," Newsweek's Eleanor Clift revised history to largely absolve the two government-sponsored enterprises for last decade's mortgage collapse while predictably blaming it on Wall Street and of course George W. Bush (video follows with transcript and commentary):

David Gregory decided to have a very fair and balanced roundtable discussion at the conclusion of Sunday's "Meet the Press" exclusively with the perilously liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and the equally left-leaning Chuck Todd of NBC News.

With the subject being Newsweek's new cover story about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Todd mysteriously made the case for how slim her chances of winning the GOP presidential nomination were by claiming, "Rush Limbaugh is an incredibly influential figure in the Republican Party, and he could never win the Republican nomination" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bob Woodward thinks the world doesn't hold the United States in very high regard anymore.

Appearing on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show" this weekend, the Washington Post's most recognizable journalist said, "I’m not sure the United States has been looked at as the grown-up nation for a long time...You travel around the world a little bit, and, and there’s, there’s not even tough love for the United States" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Eugene Robinson's column in Thursday's Washington Post should have been placed in that paper's funnies section rather than the opinion page.

His solution to our nation's deficit would be laughable if it wasn't so gosh darned scary:

The New York Times on Friday once again proved itself to have absolutely no clue how budgets work.

In its editorial "Negotiating the Debt Ceiling on a Knife's Edge," the Times - like so many other math-challenged "news" organizations in America today - blamed the current debt ceiling woes on the Bush tax cuts and Republican refusal to raise revenues:

Reuters on Thursday issued what it called an "exclusive" report about the Treasury department "secretly" weighing options to avert a default if the debt ceiling isn't raised by August 2nd.

In the piece, the authors shared with readers the amount of tax revenue Treasury projects it will collect in August as well as projected Social Security payments, but conspicuously ignored what the department expects to pay in interest costs on the federal debt:

If you believe every word uttered by hysterical news anchors and political commentators lately, you would think the world ends August 2nd if the debt ceiling isn't raised.

Not only isn't this true, it's another indication of the press's total ignorance about our nation's budget and/or their willingness to lie to the American people in order to get taxes raised.

Let's start our truth dig by looking at the monthly debt payments so far this fiscal year:

On the July 1 edition of "Martin Bashir," the MSNBC anchor after which the show is named made a statement that reveals a great deal about his worldview.

[Video after break]

With a month to go before the next supposedly "drop dead date" regarding the nation's debt ceiling, liberal media members are out in force with hysterical claims about the world ending if Congress isn't free to spend more money it doesn't have.

Ever the faithful shill, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman did his part Friday cautioning that any spending cuts at this time "would destroy hundreds of thousands and quite possibly millions of jobs":

Jon Stewart Wednesday finally stopped responding to the aftermath of his performance on "Fox News Sunday" and tried to make amends with a somewhat bipartisan segment bashing the President for his budget solutions as well as both parties for not getting anything done.

Toward the end of the opening "Daily Show" sketch, after a video clip of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid saying, "My Republican friends seem to be living in a fantasy world," Stewart smartly quipped, "If they were living in a fantasy world, would you still exist?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews Tuesday once again showed that his tenuous grasp of reality is getting dangerously weak.

During the final segment of "Hardball," the host unequivocally blamed the 2007 financial crisis and resulting recession on George W. Bush just moments before he said, "Okay, Obama hasn't been able to get us out of it yet, but...there’s no sense blaming one Party or the other" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Lawrence O'Donnell on Tuesday accused Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) of being a socialist.

"The Last Word" host, who has admitted on national television to himself being a socialist, did so by cherry-picking from an article published at the perilously liberal website "The Huffington Post" (video follows with commentary and full transcript at end of post):

Newsweek's Evan Thomas on Friday tried to float the typical media meme that neither Party is doing anything to solve our nation's budget crisis.

Unfortunately for him, fellow "Inside Washington" panelist Charles Krauthammer accurately noted that the Republicans have offered a proposal to cut $6.6 trillion in the next ten years, "but the Democrats have done nothing except to demagogue the plan and to destroy it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Headline changed to "Goofy."

The next time one of your liberal friends tells you there isn't any bias in the media, show him or her the following headline published Tuesday by CNN Money's senior writer Jeanne Sahadi.

"Wingnut Debt Ceiling Demands" was actually placed directly above a picture of Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, and Florida senator Marco Rubio:

CNN's Eliot Spitzer arrogantly lectured about the benefits of Keynesian economics Sunday while accusing fellow panelists on "Fareed Zakaria GPS" of not knowing what they were talking about because they weren't business owners.

This led British historian Andrew Roberts to point out that President Obama's administration are mostly academics, and Ann Coulter to ask Spitzer, "What business have you ran? You’re a governor" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Early Tuesday morning, David Shepardson and Christina Rogers at the Detroit News ("GM's Akerson pushing for higher gas taxes") reported that General/Multi-Government Motors CEO Dan Akerson "wants the federal gas tax boosted as much as $1 a gallon to nudge consumers toward more fuel-efficient cars."

Later in the interview, Akerson was much more emphatic about what he would like to see done immediately:

"You know what I'd rather have them do — this will make my Republican friends puke — as gas is going to go down here now, we ought to just slap a 50-cent or a dollar tax on a gallon of gas," Akerson said.

The educated guess here is that Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler is currently not the most popular person in the White House.

On Saturday, in a relatively rare rebuke originating from what G. Gordon Liddy has mockingly derided as "Washington's quaint little alternative newspaper" (daily circulation 741,000 in March 2005, 551,000 in March 2011), Kessler ripped into the President's claims about the auto bailout, giving him "Three Pinocchios," which in his ratings system means "Significant factual error(s) and/or obvious contradictions." Kessler found "weasel words," a "misleading figure" (actually, more), and (imagine that) a straw man.

Here are selected paragraphs from Kessler's KO (bolds are mine; internal link was in original):

... What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech. Virtually every claim by the president regarding the auto industry needs an asterisk, just like the fine print in that too-good-to-be-true car loan.