Kevin McCarthy

After smiling on Republicans who stepped away from Grover Norquist's no-tax hike pledge, CNN pressured the GOP House Majority Whip to raise income tax rates on Monday's The Situation Room.

Anchor Wolf Blitzer suggested a tax hike on those making over $250,000 a year, noting "those families and those small businesses did quite well during the years of the Clinton administration when the rate was 39.6. Why not go back to that?"  [Video below the break. Audio here.]

It's official -- I'm an Ed Schultz fan.

OK, well, "fan" isn't exactly the right word. Let's just say I'd be crushed if MSNBC canceled "The Ed Show." After all, nowhere else on cable does one find such a consistent stream of idiocy that never fails to amuse. Not even from Schultz's colleague Al Sharpton, though the man is certainly a contender. (video after page break)

One more data point demonstrating the leftward tilt of the purportedly non-partisan Politico:

In his Playbook of today, Politico's chief White House correspondent Mike Allen depicts a "grand bargain" on the credit ceiling, which inevitably would include huge tax increases, as an "historic achievement" for which President Obama and House speaker John Boehner would "rightly get credit."

In contrast, Allen suggests that Republican leaders Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy are refusing a grand bargain out of petty political ambition.

Read more after the jump.

"Why can you not get this deal?"

That was the attitude of CNN's Candy Crowley on yesterday's State of the Union. She acted like if only the Republicans were "reasonable" and accepted some "revenue" enhancements, then a deficit deal could be cut. House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy set her straight on why the deal as presented was unacceptable. Oh, Candy tried and tried to make a deficit deal agreement seem reasonable but McCarthy kept knocking her assertions out of the ball park as you can see in the interview video below the fold. Candy led off by accusing House Speaker John Boehner of engaging in a "bargaining ploy" instead of serious negotiation. McCarthy hit that accusation out of the ballpark while simultaneously stressing the sad state of the current unemployment situation in this country:

NBC's Meredith Vieira, on Tuesday's Today show, demonstrated just how out of touch she is on the Tea Party and the economy as she questioned GOP House members, "Are you worried about the influence of the Tea Party?" and even doubted the positive effect tax cuts can have on creating jobs as she questioned: "What's so good about them?" [audio available here]

On to promote their new book Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders, Republican Congressmen Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy were on hand to school the Today anchor, with Cantor having to explain to Vieira that "the last thing you want to do in an economy like this with 9.6 percent unemployment is have a big tax increase on small businesses," as seen in the following exchange:

VIEIRA: One of the key issues also heading into the midterm elections, is this expiration of the tax cuts, Bush's tax cuts. Over the weekend, your leader I guess, your boss, Minority Leader John Boehner said that he would support tax cuts for just middle income earners, if that was his only option. Yesterday he took that back, he did an about-face. Why?