Budget

It appears that President Obama is about to approve the extension of the Bush tax cuts and this has sent liberals into a frenzy. How to explain it? Well, Frank Rich of the New York Times has a very creative explanation: a weak Barack Obama has been spiritually kidnapped by Republicans and is now suffering from Stockholm Syndrome which allows him to sympathize with his captors. Here is Rich…

 During a discussion of the agreement to prevent tax rates from increasing in January, on ABC’s World News Sunday, anchor David Muir and ABC’s senior Washington correspondent Rick Klein fretted that the federal budget deficit would increase - against the wishes of the voters - as a result of both the blocking of a tax increase and the extension of unemployment benefits. But neither acknowledged…

New York magazine's John Heilemann said this weekend that President Obama is the only serious adult in the deficit reduction conversation now going on in Washington. This deliciously came seconds before Heilemann told other guests on the syndicated "Chris Matthews Show," "I have been dispirited by the lack of strategy on the part of the White House since the midterm elections...specifically…

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Wednesday evening hit presidential deficit commission co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles from the left, the New York Times left. Without ever raising conservative criticism of proposals to raise taxes, Williams charged: It seems to me there's two arguments. There's what you're trying to accomplish and then there's how you're trying to…

There are times when one has to think the Manhattan building that is the home of the New York Times doesn't have any windows, doesn't have any television sets, and doesn't have any doors that allow employees to venture out and actually see what's happening in America beyond the walls of 620 Eighth Avenue. Consider that after the impact the Tea Party has had on our nation's politics the past…

With all but one of the House races now resolved, Republicans have picked up at least 63 seats, the most in a midterm election since 1938. So, it might be fun on this Thanksgiving Day to recall how, just 18 months ago, Time's Michael Grunwald was arguing in a big cover story that demography and its "extremely conservative" philosophy meant the Republican Party could be on the verge of…

The seemingly endless variety of "name that party" stunts has yet another wrinkle. In this case, Matt Drudge is currently linking to a Des Moines Register story ("Culver OKs state pay raises"; also saved here at host for future reference) about how outgoing Iowa Governor Chet Culver has decided to rush through union contracts granting thousands of state employees 3% raises (before considering…

Very unusually, CBS’s Katie Couric promised a look Thursday night at “how runaway government spending has exploded the national debt,” but between that segment and her show’s lead story, an “exclusive” interview with debt commission co-chairmen Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, Couric illustrated how she and the media are an impediment to rational spending decisions since they paint any decision…

Yesterday the California Supreme Court ruled "that illegal immigrants are entitled to the same in-state tuition breaks that are offered to citizens who attend public colleges and universities." The Associated Press reports that "[t]he high court unanimously upheld a state law that says any student, regardless of immigration status, who attended a California high school for at least three…

Someone must have told New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that he had opened up a can of worms with his call on Sunday's "This Week" to create "death panels" to help balance the budget. Shortly after the ABC program aired on the East Coast, Krugman published the following explanation at his blog:

As a Monday morning treat for NewsBusters readers, here is a sampling of the quotes from the latest edition of MRC’s Notable Quotables newsletter, a compilation of the most outrageous, sometimes humorous, quotes in the liberal media. All of the quotes, plus past issues going back to 1988, can be found at www.MRC.org. Forget What Voters Said, It’s Time for Higher Taxes Host Christiane…

UPDATE AT END OF POST: Krugman tries to clarify what he said. Although he was likely taking a swipe at former governor Sarah Palin with the reference, Paul Krugman on Sunday recommended "death panels" as a means of helping to balance the federal budget. In a Roundtable discussion on ABC's "This Week," the New York Times columnist said of what recently came out of the President's deficit…

Glenn Beck has been a favorite punching bag for liberal media members since he moved from HLN to Fox News and started getting huge ratings. The folks at NBC's "Saturday Night Live" have also been on this Beck bashing bandwagon, which made the following sequence during Saturday's opening sketch rather surprising (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Time Magazine is having some problems with very basic issues of logic. First, it doesn't seem to understand the difference between correlation and causation. The notion that debt is equal to income minus expenditures also eludes the folks at Time. A blog post on the magazine's website on Wednesday alleged that the Tea Party will cause hyperinflation. If that seems counterintuitive, take…