Stop the presses! Stop the presses! Bill Maher on Friday actually said something well-reasoned and intelligent that conservatives - including members of the Tea Party - might agree with.
"We have 23.5 percent dirt bags in America," the HBO Real Time host surprisingly said. "It just seems like there’s less people pulling the wagon and more people in the wagon, and at some point the wagon is going to break" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday marvelously exposed NPR's Nina Totenberg as one of President Obama's shills in the media.
When Totenberg - appearing on PBS's Inside Washington - tried to make excuses for why Obama is totally in favor of raising the debt ceiling today despite having voted against doing so when he was a senator, Krauthammer scolded, "Don't cover for him" (video follows with transcript and commentary, file photo):
NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno took a fiscal poke at President Obama Thursday.
After mentioning that it was Michelle Obama’s birthday, and that she told reporters that she wanted “a nice gift from Barack, but nothing extravagant,” Leno quipped, “Oh, don't worry. Obama is very responsible when he's spending his own money. Don't have worry about that. No problem there” (video follows with commentary):
The perilously liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is not pleased with the President's handling of the fiscal cliff negotiations.
So angered is the Nobel laureate that he wrote at his blog Wednesday, "[If Obama doesn't] finally stand up for his side...nobody will ever trust him again, and he will go down in history as the wimp who threw it all away."
New York Times columnist David Brooks made an astonishing observation about President Obama on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday.
"Sometimes he governs like a visitor from a morally superior civilization" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Here’s something I bet you thought you’d never see at the perilously liberal Huffington Post.
In a Dean Baker article published Tuesday with the astonishing title “There Is No Santa Claus and Bill Clinton Was Not an Economic Savior,” the second sentence read, “Just as little kids have to come to grips with the fact that there is no Santa Claus, it is necessary for millions of liberals, including many who think of themselves as highly knowledgeable about economic matters, to realize that President Clinton's policies sent the economy seriously off course.”
Jay Leno said a really inconvenient truth about the fiscal cliff negotiations on NBC's Tonight Show Wednesday
"John Boehner told Congress to prepare for plan B," Leno teased during his opening monologue. "You know what that means when Congress talks about plan B? The rest of us end up with plan F and U. Okay? That's the plan we get, F and U."
It appears as though NBC’s Andrea Mitchell has sided with the unions in the latest battle over workers’ rights, this time in Michigan.
Appearing on Tuesday’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, Ms. Mitchell took it upon herself to hammer Governor Rick Snyder (R-Mich.) over his decision to sign a bill making Michigan the 24th right to work state. She later followed up the Snyder segment with a friendly chat with liberal columnist Ruth Marcus and later with a softball interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and a United Auto Workers union boss. [See video below page break. MP3 audio here.]
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich on Sunday gave Lawrence O'Donnell a much-needed education on the economic impact of the Bill Clinton tax hikes in the '90s.
As O'Donnell precipitated the exchange, he perfectly demonstrated why MSNBC commentators are far too liberally biased to be invited on NBC's Meet the Press (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Where’s my bacon, Obama? That's the attitude of Councilwoman JoAnn Watson, who said that in appreciation for Detroit having voted for the president, Obama should bail out the financially insolvent.
In fact, Watson says, “that’s what you do” when your friends help you out. Alas, the country sees the incompetence and the entitlement that has ruined Detroit. Just because you helped get the president re-elected, doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed loans to save your city. In fact, if such a list existed, I’d bet that most of California’s municipalities are probably in front of you, Ms. Watson.
Actor and activist Ed Asner is the narrator of a new video called “Tax the Rich: An Animated Fairy Tale.”
It was produced by the California Federation of Teachers (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):
While it's not fair to criticize the press's coverage of November's vehicle sales as unfair or not balanced, it would be more than fair to say that the press is either ignoring or minimizing the impact of two important influences which have been at work all year. The first is the continued loss of combined market share at the industry's two US-headquartered makers, General Motors and Ford (Chrysler, the other member of Detroit's "Big 3," is owned by Fiat).
The second is that 2009 government bailout beneficiary GM continues to "channel-stuff" its dealers with vehicles they won't sell for four months or longer -- and that's if the economy doesn't slow down or go into a recession. Dealer inventories are now twice as high as they were three years ago -- and no, GM's sales haven't doubled in the meantime -- which makes one wonder, especially this fall, if it was being done solely to make the government and President Obama look good.