By Tom Blumer | December 11, 2015 | 5:37 PM EST

For a change, Martin Crutsinger's coverage at the Associated Press of the federal government's November Monthly Treasury Statement wasn't completely full of rose-colored baloney.

Crutsinger managed to note how auto-pilot entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are bankrupting the country (not in those words, of course). That said, he somehow thought that highlighting a rare and small increase in year-over-year defense spending was worthwhile, while ignoring several other larger percentage increases in other areas. Most importantly, he failed to note that the national debt has increased by far more than Uncle Sam's reported deficits. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

By Tom Johnson | September 7, 2015 | 8:53 PM EDT

The debate rages on as to whether Donald Trump represents the essence of the Republican party. Very broadly speaking, conservatives say he doesn’t and liberals say he does. One liberal, Michael Tomasky, claims that Trump, despite his left-of-center positions on several fiscal and economic issues, nonetheless embodies the “two qualities more than any others [that] have driven conservatism in our time.”

The first quality, wrote Tomasky in the September 24 issue of The New York Review of Books, “is cultural and racial resentment…The second is what we might call spectacle—the unrelenting push toward a rhetorical style ever more gladiatorial and ever more outraged…Trump is conservative resentment and spectacle made flesh.”

By Curtis Houck | June 16, 2015 | 9:13 PM EDT

The top English and Spanish networks refused on Tuesday evening to cover the findings of a federal audit report from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) that concluded that just under $3 billion in ObamaCare subsidies have been unable to be properly verified that, according to the audit, puts taxpayer funding “at risk.” While the broadcast networks ignored this story, the FNC's Special Report devoted a one-minute-and-48-second segment to the IG’s findings. 

By Seton Motley | April 16, 2015 | 9:25 AM EDT

It was the best of coverage - it was the worst of coverage.

By Tom Johnson | January 15, 2015 | 11:01 AM EST

Esquire’s Pierce deems Ryan “the single biggest fake in American public life” and declares that he “should have no more credibility on [fiscal] issues than does Sarah Palin, his predecessor in the second spot on the [Republican] ticket. Any Democratic congresscritter who seeks to make a deal with him should be drummed out of Washington. Any reporter or pundit who takes his plans for the economy seriously should be reassigned to the custodial staff.”

By Curtis Houck | January 9, 2015 | 2:14 PM EST

On Monday’s NBC Nightly News, Brian Williams heaped praise on liberal Democratic Governor Jerry Brown of California, who was sworn in for a record fourth term. Williams hailed Brown as someone who was had “finally been able to turn around California's troubled finances.”

As highlighted on this site Monday night, the State of California’s finances are far from stellar when examined more closely. An article in the Los Angeles Times late Thursday on the Golden State’s soaring health care costs only further expanded on that. 

By Laura Flint | July 25, 2014 | 5:40 PM EDT

According to MSNBC, Republicans are always making things worse. On the July 25 edition of Ronan Farrow Daily, the cable host began a segment entitled “Kinder, Gentler GOP?” after playing a clip of Rand Paul at the National Urban League annual conference speaking of the “poverty problem.” Farrow asked his guests a stream of leading questions insinuating that Republicans are “catering to a demographic that may have lost Republicans the last general election” rather than actually working to aid low income individuals. 

While the president of the National Urban League Marc Morial tried to avoid being too overtly political, MSNBC analyst and former DNC communications director Karen Finney made it clear that Republicans “tend to be policy ideas that actually make things worse, not better.” They oppose “things like an increase in the minimum wage or equal pay for women that we know could actually help communities of color.” (See video below)

By Matthew Balan | November 13, 2013 | 6:48 PM EST

On Tuesday, ABC's World News and CBS Evening News both reported the latest poll numbers from the "respected" Quinnipiac University, as CBS's Scott Pelley labeled the institution, regarding President Obama's "lowest ever" approval rating, along with Americans' dim view of the politician's honesty. ABC's Diane Sawyer noted that "for the first time in his presidency, a majority of American voters – 52 percent...say President Obama is not honest and trustworthy."

Both evening newscasts reported these numbers as they led into their coverage of former President Clinton's recent word of advice to Obama on his health care law – that "the President should honor the commitment...[he] made to those people, and let them keep what they've got." NBC Nightly News also devoted air time to Clinton's remarks, but failed to mention the current President's drooping approval number. [MP3 audio from the ABC and CBS reports available here; video below the jump]

By Tom Blumer | November 9, 2013 | 6:24 PM EST

Assisting the Obama administration in its perpetual flight from responsibility for anything, former Obama campaign manager David Axelrod, who now campaigns from a paid propaganda perch at NBC and MSNBC, tweeted the following on Friday afternoon (HT Twitchy): "Wonder how many Insurance cos that sold junk policies after ACA was signed told customers at purchase that they'd have to eventually switch?"

Yeah, David it was their responsibility to inform their customers about a law whose constitutional fate wasn't decided until June 2012, and about which President Obama issued dozens of guarantees — not promises, guarantees — that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan," as recently as late September of this year. And who believes, if they had tried to communicate the likelihood of cancellation before they legally had to late this year, that the unhinged wrath of the Obama administration and its leftist smear apparatus wouldn't have rained down mercilessly on them? I'll have more on that topic after the jump, but first, let me highlight several choice responses to Axelrod's tweet out of hundreds:

By Paul Bremmer | October 31, 2013 | 3:07 PM EDT

The Daily Beast's Michael Tomasky on Tuesday drew a faulty comparison between the rollout of ObamaCare and the 2005 implementation of President George W. Bush’s Medicare Part D program. The thesis of Tomasky’s article, titled, “Enough Already on HealthCare.gov. Don’t You Remember Medicare Part D?”, was that Republicans should try to help ObamaCare succeed just as Democrats, many of whom had voted against Medicare Part D, tried to help that law succeed after it was passed in 2005.

Riding his high horse, Tomasky declared:

By Tom Blumer | October 14, 2013 | 11:51 AM EDT

The healthcare sector, particular hospitals, is hitting a wall. In a Sunday morning writeup, USA Today reporters Paul Davidson and Barbara Hansen considered this news "surprising," because Obamacare is supposedly going to bring hospitals so much new business.

Well, guys, that new business needs to be profitable. Odds are it won't be. The staff cuts also appear to foreshadow the rationing so many people have predicted would result, and which has resulted under state-run healthcare in U.S. states like Massachusetts and other countries, if Obamacare passed. Of course, the USAT pair didn't recognize that possibility. Excerpts follow the jump (bolds are mine):

By Mark Finkelstein | October 3, 2013 | 2:20 PM EDT

Quick: how much were Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps cut by the sequester? Zero, you say?  Those programs were exempted from sequester cuts, and Medicare was reduced by only 2%? Correctomundo!  

So what was Andrea Mitchell thinking when she claimed on her MSNBC show that the sequester "gutted" social programs? You tell me.  View the video after the jump.