Carl Levin

On Wednesday's Today show, NBC's Matt Lauer invited on Democratic Senator Carl Levin and Republican Senator Susan Collins to have what was, ostensibly, a bipartisan discussion about the Goldman Sachs hearings, but the Today co-anchor tilted the balance of that discussion when he accused the Republicans of trying to have it both ways by claiming they wanted to fix the problems on Wall Street, but kept blocking debate. Lauer even asked Levin, with Collins standing right beside him, "I don't mean this as a personal comment but Senator Levin, it sounds a bit schizophrenic to me. Does it sound that way to you?" [audio available here]

The following segment was aired on the April 28 Today show:

At this point, there should be little doubt that there is a concerted attempt underway to use the war in Afghanistan as a justification for punitively taxing high earners.

Last weekend (noted at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the New York Times discovered that wars cost money. It cited Wisconsin Democratic Congressman David Obey's concern that funding the Afghanistan effort at the level requested months ago by General Stanley A. McChrystal would "devour virtually any other priorities that the president or anyone in Congress had."

Thursday, as reported by AFP (noted last night at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), House Democratic heavy-hitters Barney Frank, John Murtha, and (no surprise) Obey announced the "Share The Sacrifice Act of 2010," an income-tax surcharge that overwhelmingly targets high-income earners.

Now Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin has weighed in. Bloomberg dutifully carried his water, as seen in this graphic containing the first four paragraphs of the report:

Another day with Barack Obama as President of the United States, and another media report on how he is going to save us from ourselves.

On NBC's May 14 "Nightly News," NBC identified a new problem facing society: credit card companies that use marketing gimmicks and low interest rates to lure in young borrowers. The solution, of course, is to continue the evolution toward a government that protects the individual womb-to-tomb.

"It is commencement season, which brings to mind all the joys of college graduation, and these days all the debts," "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams said. "First, the student loans. But so often now, graduates enter the world with awful credit card debt and a chum - a crummy job market. President Obama talked about the problem today, urging Congress to crack down on companies that make the credit cards so enticing to students in the first place."