Budget

President Obama today announced $17 billion in "spending cuts" Thursday. Here are the substantive early paragraphs of the the Associated Press's coverage of what the President had to say: Obama sent Congress a detailed budget Thursday proposing to eliminate or trim 121 programs and save $17 billion next year — not a trifle, for sure, but only about half of one percent of the $3.4 trillion in…

Rather than provide objective analysis of President Obama’s performance at Wednesday’s White House press conference, on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, correspondent Bill Plante issued what amounted to a press release and brushed aside criticism of Obama’s expansion of government during the first 100 days: "The President laughed off charges that he's intent on making the government bigger...And said…

Somebody needs to 'fess up. Who put truth serum in Calvin Woodward's coffee this morning?Whoever it is, they're in a heap of trouble, as Woodward produced a fact-checking critique of Barack Obama that is so good you'd swear most of it was ghostwritten by a conservative talk host.It will be interesting to see how much distribution it gets. I would suggest not counting on too much, but being open…

It was just a question of time. While it was hard to know where it would come from (although MSNBC is always a safe bet), someone was going to make the entire swine flu pandemic a partisan political issue.  MSNBC's Ed Schultz on the April 27 "The ED Show" blamed Republicans on two levels for the swine flu pandemic that some think has been a bit overblown. "Well, here we go again - Republicans…

If CNBC on-air talent has really had their hands tied by General Electric and NBC management on criticizing the current administration's economic policy, you couldn't tell it from watching Rick Santelli and Larry Kudlow.  On CNBC's April 24 "The Call," Santelli expressed his frustration with an overreaction by the government to solve the financial crisis when Kudlow asked him about the expansion…

Almost a year ago, I was posting on what I called the "Supply-Side Stunner" (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog).In April 2008, the US Treasury collected an all-time record $407.3 billion ($403.75 billion after subtracting the first $3.35 billion wave of stimulus checks, which really should have been treated as outlays, that went out just before month-end). It was an indication that, as I said at the…

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Lamestream Media The media coverage of the more than 800 Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party protests that took place in all fifty states on April 15 ranged from disdainful dismissal of their nature, significance and import, to outright hostility towards the events and individual participants, to sexual innuendo-based full-on ridicule…

It must be hard to keep a straight face when you report that the President of United States going to cut $100 million from a $3.5 trillion budget and then say he is serious about cutting government spending. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs couldn't pull it off. In the White House's April 20 press briefing, Gibbs was asked by Associated Press reporter Jennifer Loven why the $100-million…

As Tea Parties ensued from coast to coast last week, the Obama administration and their media minions depicted attendees as not understanding that the new president has decreed taxes will be going down for 95 percent of Americans.On Sunday's "Meet the Press," Washington Post business columnist Steven Pearlstein let the cat out of the bag: Tea Partiers are right. Taxes are going up.This revelation…

CNN's Susan Roesgen has had a rough week, what with all the ordinary American/First Amendment practitioners bashing she so passionately and obnoxiously delivered in her TEA Party reporting.Perhaps it was the sniping at the place she twice applied in 2005 - Rupert Murdoch's House of Ratings, otherwise known as Fox News - that put her over the edge.Or whether or not her email box was so overwhelmed…

CNN's Susan Roesgen, whose anti-TEA Party pseudo-reporting made her a legend in her own mind, and a biased Obama-flack hack in ours, is in the news on her own (de)merit again today.One peculiar line from one of her peculiar rant-filled reports was that the TEA Parties were being "anti-CNN" because they were "highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network Fox."Well it turns out she wasn'…

CNN reporter Susan Roesgen became a pseudo-"journalistic" anti-hero yesterday for her obnoxiously belligerent interview of one Taxed Enough Already (TEA) Party participant and her overall assessment of the more than 750 events around the country as amongst other derogatory things "anti-government."  But in another segment, she delved into rank hypocrisy the likes of which we rarely find even in…

The broadcast network evening newscasts on Wednesday provided prominent coverage of the “Tea Party” rallies across the nation with time for the views of participants, but they tried to discredit the protests as a front for “corporate interests” or a “fistful of rightward leaning Web sites” -- a concern for motives and hidden agendas the same programs lacked when championing the 2006 pro-illegal…