Paul Ryan

Picking up from flustered colleague Bob Schieffer, who on the April 17 Face the Nation demanded of Congressman Paul Ryan, “Why do these rich people need another tax cut? I mean, they're already rich,” CBS reporter Nancy Cordes on Tuesday night asked him: “Do you think that you would be getting more support out there if you didn't include this big tax cut for the wealthy?”

Cordes insisted “35 percent to 25 percent is a big cut,” though Ryan’s plan is meant to be revenue neutral, or even give a boost, as he explained the rate reduction is “in exchange for losing their tax shelters.”

Cordes pressed Ryan from the left on tax rates after her story featured soundbites of liberal hostility to Ryan and other Republicans at town hall meetings, some clips taken from video posted by a left-wing site, clips which included a woman screaming “your plan screws the next two generations!” and “You're a liar!” before video of a crowd yelling “Hands off Medicare!” and a close-up of this sign: “PAUL RYAN’S DEATH PANEL KILL MEDICARE, SOCIAL SECURITY.”

Once again, a presumably simpatico guest on "The Rachel Maddow Show" undermined a claim she made on the same show.

This occurred twice in the same week back in March, as I described at the time. It happened again Friday night when Maddow talked about Republican congressmen facing constituents angered by the GOP budget plan. Maddow compared this to the contentious public forums on health reform in August 2009.

Here's what Maddow said about the Republican budget's effect on Medicare, followed by her guest claiming something altogether different (video after page break) --

If you had any questions about just how far to the left New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is, they were answered Monday when he expressed enthusiastic support for the Congressional Progressive Caucus's radical tax-hiking "People's Budget."

In his "Let's Take a Hike," the Nobel laureate left no doubt about his desire to swiftly redistribute America's wealth with little regard for the economic consequences:

On the April 21 edition of FNC's "Hannity," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell tackled how the media lapped up President Obama's talking points about the Paul Ryan budget plan and its effect on senior citizens.

"You know, Sean, this is some of the worst fear-mongering I've ever heard, and I think, personally, I find it despicable that this came from the president of the United States," the Media Research Center founder complained, adding:

Are you a Christian who also is supportive of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan? Then you'd best repent of your sin and be renew your mind with the social gospel.

That's the pronouncement of liberal theologian Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite in an April 18 post at the Washington Post/Newsweek "On Faith" website.

Brooks Thistlethwaite -- who previously hit Tea Party conservatives as tribalistic -- apparently believes that politically conservative Christians are trying to serve two masters, Jesus and Ayn Rand (emphasis mine):

For the second night in a row Tuesday, MSNBC's Ed Schultz called Republicans liars.

Also for the second night in a row, he did so moments before lying himself (video follows with transcript and commentary):

This week’s edition of MRC’s Notable Quotables newsletter is chock full of liberal media quotes showing reporters’ slanted approach to the tax and budget issues now at center stage. In fact, there’s so much bad material, we had to add an extra page to our usually three-page newsletter (you can view/download the PDF here).

The whole issue is up over at www.MRC.org. Here’s a baker’s dozen of the worst quotes (including two video clips), all collected in the last couple of weeks:

Days before his 2012 budget was released, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) predicted that he and it would be demagogued by the Left.

Doing its part is the New York Times which began its editorial Monday, "Six months after voters sent Republicans in large numbers to Congress and many statehouses, it is possible to see the full landscape of destruction that their policies would cause — much of which has already begun":

For the second week in a row, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift and National Review's Rich Lowry had quite a battle on PBS's "McLaughlin Group."

This time the fireworks started when Lowry called President Obama classless for the way he treated Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) at Wednesday's speech on deficit reduction which led Clift to ask, "What else would you expect from a socialist born in Kenya who’s hiding his birth certificate?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

“Why do these rich people need another tax cut?” Bob Schieffer demanded of his guest on Sunday morning’s Face the Nation, Republican Congressman Paul Ryan. Conveying his no-so-profound economic reasoning, Schieffer saw a pot of money to be absconded: “I mean, they're already rich. They seem to be doing pretty well as it is now. Why cut their taxes some more?” After Ryan explained his proposal would maintain current tax revenue levels while eliminating deductions and loopholes used by the wealthy, a baffled Schiefier ruminated:

I guess the part that I don't quite understand – and I take your proposal to be a serious one – but the part I don't understand is if the country is going bankrupt, if the country needs to borrow 40 cents of every dollar that it spends, how do you help that by reducing the amount of taxes that the richest people in the country pay? It would be seem to me that's where you get revenue. How do you justify that?

In the next segment, with Senator Mark Warner, Schieffer also hit the Democrat from the left on hiking taxes, after describing him as a “conservative” from “a very conservative state,” even though Virginia voted for Obama: “Senator, you are a Democrat, you are a conservative Democrat from a very conservative state, Virginia. Do you think that we can solve the deficit problem without raising taxes in some way?”

As NewsBusters previously reported, ABC's "This Week" invited on a number of Tea Party Congressman Sunday to discuss the budget debate going on in Washington.

Just before that segment, ABC's John Donvan did a brief report that concluded with him insinuating that this conservative movement is drinking tax cut Kool-Aid and President Obama is having none of it (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, since President Obama once again proposed letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the highest earning Americans, the media have been supporting it almost 24 hours a day.

Doing his part this weekend was Chris Matthews who after the introduction of the syndicated program bearing his name actually began the show, "Why is taxing the rich so hard?" (video follows with transcript and lots of commentary):

Tea Party Congressman Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) had quite an illuminating discussion with Christiane Amanpour Sunday.

As the host of ABC's "This Week" pushed for higher taxes, Walsh correctly pointed out that Barack Obama's first 2012 budget proposed earlier in the year didn't address entitlement programs saying, "The President of the United States ought to be ashamed of himself, and I don't know why your profession hasn't gotten on him more" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

PBS fans love how the show Washington Week is such a peaceful regurgitation of the conventional liberal media wisdom. But there are times in the calm that you wonder what world these liberals are living in. For example, the show's host, Gwen Ifill, seems to think it's plausible that President Obama -- the man who's made trillion-dollar-plus deficits a routine -- could take the "deficit slasher" label away from a conservative. New York Times reporter Jeff Zeleny suggested that seniors might be willing to consider seriously Medicare reforms if they'll help lower the debt.

Ifill replied: "Is that why when we see the president come out this week and make speeches like this, it seems like he was snatching the mantle of deficit slasher from Paul Ryan's hands and saying 'No, no, no -- me'?"

Aside from ABC's Jake Tapper, where were the denunciations from the media of President Obama's uncivil, hyper-partisan speech on the budget the other day at George Washington University (GWU)?

That's a question that NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell asked on last night's "Media Mash" segment on Fox News Channel's "Hannity."

It was a speech that the president invited Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to sit in on, and "then savaged him."

It certainly isn't a surprise that Nobel laureate Paul Krugman was far more pleased with the deficit reduction plan proposed by Barack Obama this week than the one unveiled by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) last week.

In Friday's New York Times column "Who's Serious Now?" the unabashed liberal declared the President's proposal "really serious" and the Congressman's "a sick joke":

The undisguised bias of a dispatch tonight by Associated Press reporter Laurie Kellman, with help from Scott Bauer, about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's appearance before a Congressional committee may have as its source two items found at the Newspaper Guild's web site (seen after the jump).

One is an announcement relating to a possible deterioration in the Guild's negotiations with AP, where union members have been working without a contract since November. Immediately below the announcement is an extraordinarily mean and spiteful cartoon produced by "alternative" comic Tom Tomorrow directed at Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan which has no place at the site of a group wishing to at least maintain a fig-leaf pretense of objectivity.

First let's look at several of the sentences seen in the 10:26 p.m. version of the pair's report (saved here at my host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) -- after the headline ("Wisconsin governor defends hobbling unions'), with which the AP pair may have had help:

CNN's Ed Henry and Ali Velshi both think taxes should be raised in order to help reduce the deficit. However, neither gave any credence to the notion that raising taxes is detrimental in the current economic conditions on Thursday's "American Morning."

CNN's senior White House correspondent Ed Henry, reporting on the President's deficit-cutting proposals, remarked that in order to trim the deficit, both spending must be cut and taxes increased. This would mean that both Democrats and Republicans would be forced to vote for measures they wouldn't normally support.

Co-host Ali Velshi also agreed that higher taxes are necessary, and that since President Obama has had to "compromise," so to will Republicans and Democrats have to compromise on fiscal issues.  "Just as [Obama] has come around despite what happened the last election, despite the end of the year deals, despite his own debt commission and despite the showdown, the President has come around," Velshi said.
 

President Obama is "Mr. Prudent," a grown-up heralding "deficit sanity" in a Washington gone mad with "delusional" Republican plans for draconian budget cuts and tax breaks for the wealthy.

That's the predictable leftist talking point-laden take that Time magazine's Joe Klein had after listening to President Obama's hectoring lecture yesterday at George Washington University (emphasis mine):

Mark Halperin . . . on a roll!

Yesterday, we noted that the MSNBC analyst was surprisingly respectful to Donald Trump.  Today, Halperin offered more refreshingly objective analysis.  Commenting on President Obama's budget speech of yesterday, Halperin observed that if a Republican had called a Dem budget un-American, in the same way that PBO pummeled Republican proposals, the MSM "would be up in arms."

Joe Scarborough added that it was simply bad politics for the president to give Paul Ryan a front-row seat, only to insult his proposals as un-American and lacking courage or realism.

View video after the jump.