Budget

After hyping the "draconian" sequester cuts set to take place March 1, CNN kept up its frenzy on Tuesday afternoon by spreading government hysteria over the $85 billion spending reduction. Headlines sounded alarms like "Medicine, Food at Risk," "Travel Nightmare In the Making," and "U.S. justice system in jeopardy." "President Obama is warning of dire consequences for all of us if lawmakers…

It appears not everyone in America is as enthralled with Barack Obama's economic policies as his fans in the media. When NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno made a joke about the president not understanding economics, the studio audience cheered, applauded, and whistled (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is starting to get completely unhinged. On Tuesday's Hardball, he accused Republicans of using "Cold War CIA tactics to destabilize our own country" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Even though the upcoming sequester cuts amount to only $85 billion, compared to $16 trillion of U.S. debt, CNN hyped the deleterious effects of the cuts to the economy by comparing them to the recent asteroid that just missed earth. "Watch out. Like the asteroid headed to earth, they're coming. $86 billion in automatic budget cuts," anchor Carol Costello warned. And "draconian" was in the…

During yesterday’s edition of Fox News Sunday, Washington Post editor Bob Woodward, who wrote the book "The Price of Politics" on how Obama handled the debt-ceiling fiasco in 2011, explained again to his media colleagues that it was a White House initiative to use a hatchet with these budgetary matters in the form of sequestration. When Fox host Chris Wallace suggested the news media would…

Liz Sidoti's offering this morning at the Associated Press, which is clearly a serious competitor for Worst AP Item Ever, carries the "column" label. As such, I suppose we're expected to accept the idea that the "analysis" offered is hers alone. But you would think that the self-described "essential global news network" would have enough business judgment to review a reporter's work to make…

Syndicated columnist George Will appears all for Congress allowing sequestration to reduce spending on March 1. Appearing on ABC's This Week Sunday, Will said it would be appropriate given the "utter contempt with which Washington treats taxpayers' money."

Anyone who thinks that setting a parody site of PolitiFact would be a good idea should reconsider. The site already parodies what a true fact-checking effort would look like on a nearly daily basis. On Tuesday, the site's Molly Moorhead evaluated Marco Rubio's claim during his State of the Union response speech that spending cuts involved in sequestration were originally the idea of President…

On Wednesday, the New York Times published a News Analysis of the President’s State of the Union address entitled “In Age of Spending Cuts, Making a Case for Government.” While the author, Richard Stevenson, makes a correct argument for how the President is pushing for larger government despite a shrinking federal budget, he ignores how there is no actual reduction in federal spending. In…

Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Tex.) looks mighty good for a woman who has to be at least 148 years old. My take on her age is based on a statement the Congresswoman made today while objecting to impending spending reductions relating to sequestration  in which she characterized herself as "a freed slave." Slavery as a legal institution ended in the U.S. in 1865 at the end of the Civil War. Here is…

Kirsten Powers is definitely liberal, but not blind. Here's her take on President Obama's State of the Union speech last night as expressed in her Wednesday USA Today column, with an added bonus of a delicious potshot at the sycophantic press: "It was so hackish, so devoid of any theme or purpose, that it makes one wonder whether part of Obama just wants to see how bad he can be before his…

NewsBusters readers know that one of my guilty pleasures is exposing Bill Maher's lack of knowledge on subjects he pompously pounds the table about. On Tuesday evening, Maher gave me a doozy when he wrote on Facebook, "Wow, what a shameless liar this Marco Rubio guy is - Obama created more debt than Bush? Well, if you don't believe in science, why not math too?"

Last night in his State of the Union speech, President Barack Obama claimed: "Nothing I'm proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime." Even considering the inclusion of "should" as a wiggle word, that's a laughable claim. Politico's Glenn Thrush is one among what will surely turn out to be a legion of pundits and reporters who will ignore Obama's deficit promise while…

Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) gave the Republican response to the President's State of the Union address Tuesday, and not surprisingly, he came out swinging. Maybe his best comment was, "Mr. President, I don’t oppose your plans because I want to protect the rich. I oppose your plans because I want to protect my neighbors."