Budget

Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan and the Daily Beast’s Eleanor Clift got into quite a heated debate about the government shutdown on PBS’s McLaughlin Group Friday. At one point, Buchanan said Obama “wants to maximize the pain in order to maximize his political gain…It is a sinister and sadistic tactic” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It’s becoming quite apparent the American people aren’t as concerned about the government shutdown as the Democrats and their media minions would like people to be. On the CBS Late Show Friday, when host David Letterman asked the studio audience if they were worried about the shutdown, they collectively said “No” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

White House staff aren’t the only ones looking for sob stories about folks affected by the government shutdown.  The media are doing what they can to assist. Columnist Phil Kadner of the Southtown Star, a publication of the Chicago Sun-Times, lends a hand with “Shutdown becomes real for local residents.” The article begins: Edgar Mullins, of Richton Park, and Justin Jones, of Chicago Heights…

Republicans are godless anti-government zealots responsible for a federal government shutdown that will literally kill people, MSNBC's Martin Bashir charged in the closing "Clear the Air" commentary on his Friday, October 4 program. But in a not-so-clever twist, the ever-sanctimonious Bashir -- who has a penchant for selective Bible-thumping to push liberal agenda points -- sought to enlist the…

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, George Will has joined Fox News. In his first comments on the network, Will said on Friday's Special Report, "The President’s rather enjoying this [shutdown], and if the emblematic statement of the first Obama term was 'A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,' this term defined after just nine months is 'A crisis is a beautiful thing to create'” (video follows…

If Republicans were smart (I know, but stay with me) their focus during the Obamacare debate should have been less on blocking its implementation and more on a page they might have taken from the Democrat's playbook, which is to rally the country to its side by use of sentimentality and the threat of impending doom. The good news for Republicans is that there's still time. It's a sure bet…

The political stalemate leading to the so-called shutdown of the federal government has shown with devastating clarity how official Washington is consumed with symbolism over substance. The symbolism begins with the word shutdown itself. Despite the noise and fury in Washington, the vast majority of Americans haven't noticed any change in their daily lives because most of the federal…

On Thursday's NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams introduced a full report on cancer research at the National Institutes of Health being stopped under the government shutdown: "And there are the millions who are feeling the impact of this shutdown very close to home and across this country, including some for whom this standoff feels very much like a matter of life and death for them." In…

The Morning Joe crew, along with much of the liberal media, has lately been ringing the debt-ceiling alarm, saying that a failure to raise the debt ceiling by October 17 would cause a default that would devastate the U.S. economy. But on Friday’s Morning Joe, CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera stepped onto the set and took a wrecking ball to the wall of hysteria surrounding a possible default.…

In a piece filed today, Associated Press reporter Bob Christie and his editors provided a textbook example of how to use loaded language to tilt coverage while still being entirely accurate with the facts. Covering a controversy in Arizona over the federal government’s closure of the Grand Canyon National Park and the state government’s attempts to keep it open, Christie painted the conflict as…

Are you happy now, Republicans? You went and forced the president to cancel his trip to Asia and with it an important foreign policy overture. That's the message Time magazine is sending readers with Michael Crowley's October 4 post, "Shutdown Dents Vital Obama Foreign Policy Goal," which was plugged on the Time.com front page with a photo of a frowning President Obama given the teaser headline…

CBS This Morning has a long established history of conducting softball interviews of liberal/Democratic guests, while unleashing on conservative/liberal ones. But on Friday, the morning newscast surprisingly hounded Rep. Nancy Pelosi on the ongoing government shutdown. Obama supporter Gayle King repeatedly pressed Pelosi about "people [who] are just saying...work it out....both sides have to be…

Appearing as a guest on Thursday's PoliticsNation, during a discussion of the government shutdown, MSNBC's Krystal Ball characterized congressional Republicans as "tak[ing] the whole government hostage," and "threaten[ing]" the "constitutional balance." After host Al Sharpton fretted over the operation of FEMA and the National Hurricane Center during the government shutdown, Ball responded:

While the media are busy painting Republicans -- particularly Tea Party-friendly conservatives in the House -- as the legislators who are ultimately responsible for the government shutdown, they are failing to note that "[t]he Democrats and the president have offered nothing" as a counteroffer on the continuing resolution to fund the government, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell noted on the…