Stimulus

Quoting a British politician who claimed "right-wing nutters" pose the most serious threat to the international financial system, MSNBC's Martin Bashir asked his conservative guest on Monday: "He's right, isn't he?"

The MSNBC anchor posed this question at the end of a contentious interview with Tea Party Nation Founder Judson Phillips, after asking Phillips four times whether he wanted the U.S. to default on its debts.

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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):

Staffing shifts continue at the New York Times. The paper’s chief economics writer David Leonhardt will be the paper’s next Washington bureau chief as of Labor Day, a move confirmed by Times’ media reporter Jeremy Peters Friday morning. Leonhardt will replace Dean Baquet, who is moving to New York to be managing editor under Executive Editor-in-waiting Jill Abramson.

Leonhardt’s columns in defense of Obama’s “stimulus” package and Obama-care health “reform” made him a very popular man at the White House and among congressional Democrats, who passed around his pieces via email and Twitter.

CNN's Fareed Zakaria Thursday called the debt ceiling battle a "sideshow" caused by the Tea Party.

Appearing on "In the Arena" as a supposed "astute observer of the economy," Zakaria proceeded to bungle economic and historic facts like a high school dropout (video follows with transcript and commentary):

At least five MSNBC anchors since Tuesday have promoted a cherry-picked House Democratic Caucus video that distorts President Ronald Reagan's position on the debt ceiling, inaccurately asserting that President Barack Obama is more in line with Reagan than the Republicans.

If any of the anchors had played the entirety of Reagan's 1987 radio address, instead of giving free air time to the Democratic Party's deceptively edited spot, they would have heard Reagan articulate a position on the debt ceiling almost identical to House Republicans' and nearly opposite Obama's: "You don't need more taxes to balance the budget. Congress needs the discipline to stop spending more, and that can be done with the passage of a constitutional amendment to balance the budget." Lo and behold, the House passed a plan last night, "cut, cap, and balance," that contained both spending cuts and a balanced budget amendment.

A compilation video of MSNBC anchors misrepresenting Reagan is below the page break:

As NewsBusters previously reported, Chris Matthews had quite a heated debate with Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) on Tuesday's "Hardball."

Amidst a series of ridiculous questions asked of the Congressman, possibly the most absurd was, "If we have a crisis in August [as a result of not raising the debt ceiling], will you resign?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Today on the 2:00 pm segment of CNN Newsroom, anchor Randi Kaye spoke with CNN political producer Shannon Travis about criticism directed at President Barack Obama:

TRAVIS: Yes, really, really quickly, billionaire Steve Wynn, you've seen his resorts all over Las Vegas. He's blasting President Obama. I'm going to read this quote from a call, an earnings call yesterday. Quote, "I'm saying it bluntly that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business and progress and job creation in my lifetime". Those are from Steve Wynn.

We know there are a lot of businesses who have been on a hiring streak, Randi, but this is what Steve Wynn, billionaire real estate mogul in Las Vegas thinks about the Obama administration.

What hiring streak is Travis talking about?  CNN Money.com reported last week that initial unemployment claims remained above the 400,000 mark for the 14th straight week.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics noted in its June, 2011 report that there are now 14.1 million Americans out of work.  The same agency pegged that number at 11.6 for January, 2009, the month Barack Obama took office.  

With trillion dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see, a balanced budget amendment is sounding pretty good to an overwhelming majority of Americans.

Apparently CBS's Bob Schieffer isn't amongst them, as he actually asked Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday's "Face the Nation," "Why are you wasting time debating that?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It has been widely reported that President Barack Obama walked out of Wednesday night's debt limit meeting, but MSNBC's Martin Bashir on Thursday was in complete denial that the Democratic president, who's merely "exasperated by Republicans playing this dangerous game," would conduct himself in such a way.

During his daily "Clear the Air" segment, Bashir offered mounds of incredulity but not a shred of evidence to contradict numerous reports of Obama abruptly and prematurely terminating the meeting:

Hmm, I'm not so sure about that...The president losing his temper, abruptly, and rudely cutting short the conversation? Running from a room inside the White House? Does that sound the like president that we've gotten to know during the last two and a half years? Or is that the kind of behavior we've now come to expect from Eric Cantor over the last few weeks?

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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):

James Pethokoukis of Reuters published a chart Tuesday demonstrating exactly why all the hysteria about a debt default or missing Social Security check payments is a bunch of nonsense.

If America's news outlets were actually interested in disseminating the truth rather than fear-mongering, this chart or something like it would be part of every report involving the debt ceiling:

CNN's Anderson Cooper and Gloria Borger took turns casting President Barack Obama as the centrist 'adult' in a room teeming with unruly Republican children who would rather invite economic calamity than compromise on a debt-reduction plan.

Discussing a topic that would have made a perfect "Keeping Them Honest" segment, Cooper insisted, incorrectly, on Monday's "AC 360" that the Democratic president has never raised taxes since taking office in 2009: "Now, in fact the stimulus was about one-third tax cuts. So in fairness, he did not raise taxes. He and Congress later passing a payroll tax holiday that is in effect right now. A year later he and Congress did approve tax breaks to help employers hire more people."

According to Politifact, Cooper is way off base in claiming the president "did not raise taxes."

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:

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):

Democrat strategist and ABC contributor Donna Brazile on Sunday predictably blamed the current debt ceiling impasse on Republicans and their refusal to raise taxes.

This led George Will to state what would be obvious to all media members if they weren't so in the tank for Barack Obama, namely that he and his Party have been kicking the deficit can down the road so long they're guilty of "can abuse" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

You knew when you saw conservative author Ann Coulter was pitted against far-left MSNBC contributor and Nation magazine editor Christopher Hayes on HBO's "Real Time" sparks were going to fly.

Such occurred when Hayes told the panel that his mother works for the government prompting Coulter to respond, "She is a drain on society" (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:

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 Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams praised China's high-speed rail system and lamented that United States had not done the same: "China is rocketing ahead of the U.S. with high-speed rail. And it has a lot of people wondering how long we can keep chugging along the same old track."

Touting the completion of a new rail line between Beijing and Shanghai, Williams proclaimed: "Which raises again the question, when it comes to trains, why is America, home of the iron horse and the golden spike, still on the slow track?" Correspondent Adrienne Mong filed a report riding the rails across China, touting the high-speed system as "smoother, sleeker, greener than a jet plane."

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.

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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":

Unfortunately for Dylan Ratigan, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

The MSNBC anchor nearly stumbled onto a valid point on Thursday's "Dylan Ratigan Show" – reporting that California's new Internet sales tax could cost thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue – until he proposed solving this dilemma with a national Internet sales tax.

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):

The "NBC Nightly News" mentioned the corporate jet tax loophole twice in its report concerning Barack Obama's press conference Wednesday.

Unfortunately, Brian Williams and Chuck Todd neglected to inform viewers that this loophole was part of the President's stimulus package in 2009 (video follows with commentary):

MSNBC's Martin Bashir, who once argued Sarah Palin's bus tour was in "breach of federal law," attacked Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Wednesday, wondering if the 69-year-old Republican is "suffering some kind of mild dementia or long-term memory loss?"

Excoriating McConnell for rejecting tax increases as part of a potential budget deal, the former ABC "Nightline" anchor regurgitated a litany of liberal talking points about the Bush years on his eponymous program:

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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):