Economy

On Monday, President Obama announced that 2011's budget deficit is going to be an all-time high $1.65 trillion. In an interview with Fox News's Bill O'Reilly later in the day, ABC's George Stephanopoulos predictably blamed the red ink on former President George W. Bush (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In his lifetime, Princeton economics professor and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman has published 20 books, over 200 papers, and since the year 2000 two columns a week at the New York Times. Clearly without understanding the irony of his question, the man once accused by the Gray Lady's ombudsman of possessing a "disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers" asked his…

It's going to be a long year for those of us who review Associated Press reports Uncle Sam's finances for evidence of bias and ignorance. Sometimes it seems that it would be easier to highlight the rare examples of fairness and balance. Take the first sentence of Andrew Taylor's report on President Obama's 2012 budget (please; that goes for his report and the budget). It, in combination with…

Of the three morning shows on Monday, only ABC's Good Morning America aggressively pushed the Obama administration on a lack of substantial cuts in the 2012 budget. NBC's Today and CBS's Early Show either downplayed the issue or didn't fully explain the President's new spending. ABC's Jake Tapper declared that Obama's plan "shows that the President will not take the lead in any aggressive…

According to a new History Channel special on Ronald Reagan, the profound economic recovery of the early '80s can be credited to "the Reagan tax increases." The February 9 program contained this odd assertion while highlighting the President's path to reelection in 1984. Of course, the Economic Recovery Act of 1981 actually cut the top marginal rate from 70 percent to 50 percent. Despite…

The 2011 budget shortfall, which is the responsibility of the previous Congress, is now projected to be $1.65 trillion. If accurate, this means that since the Democrats took over Congress in 2007, we have posted over $5 trillion in deficits.

Sadly, one could write a term paper identifying and correcting the clever misstatements and obfuscations contained in Martin Crutsinger's Sunday report (since updated; original is still present here) for the Associated Press on the impending submission of the President's 2012 budget by the White House's Office of Management and Budget. Lacking such space, I'll concentrate on what I believe…

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey said Monday that MSNBC's Chris Matthews is slipping out of touch with reality. After reading New York Times columnist Paul Krugman's idiotic piece Friday, I think the same can be said of him:

Civility was in short supply yesterday on "The Dylan Ratigan Show," as the MSNBC anchor after which the show is named used words and phrases such as "moronic" and "dog's ass" to demagogue the GOP's proposal to trim the federal budget. "How can you be serious about cutting spending when your spending proposals are truly a flea on a dog's ass?" howled Ratigan, who went on to demonize…

Sam Kazman's "Drug Approvals and Deadly Delays" article in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (Winter 2010), tells a story about how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's policies have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans. Let's look at how it happens. During the FDA's drug approval process, it confronts the possibility of two errors. If the FDA approves a drug…

NBC's Matt Lauer seemed shocked that Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, during his Super Bowl interview, actually asked Barack Obama about his opponents hating him, as the Today co-anchor, on Wednesday, in an exclusive interview with the First Lady questioned: "Do you think people hate your husband, even on the far right?" Michelle Obama initially deflected the question as she simply responded: "I'm sure…

Do you think you're paying less in federal income taxes than you ever have in your entire life? If you watched Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, or Cenk Uygur on MSNBC Tuesday, you might believe that (video follows with transcripts and lots of commentary):

Reporting on President Obama's speech to the Chamber of Commerce Monday, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer sloppily labeled the Chamber as "conservative" in narrating the conflict between the business federation and the President. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, though it may have enjoyed the "conservative" label in the past, has supported major liberal legislation over the past few years in the name of…

The search for ways to rehabilitate the Obama administration in the eyes of the public is seemingly a never-ending enterprise at the Associated Press. Oh, they slip up occasionally. Late last week (covered yesterday at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in an item primarily about how Congress really, really can't stop planned stimulus spending (uh-huh), the wire service's Brett J. Blackledge let…