Congress

Touting Sesame Street's newest muppet character, a young girl living in poverty, MSNBC host Martin Bashir on Wednesday slammed Republican efforts to curb spending and urged: "...perhaps they do well to change the channel just for a moment from Fox News to PBS.... on Sesame Street they will see the sad face of a hungry doll whose family doesn't have enough money to buy food." [Audio available…

"Grab a blanket, kids. Congress wants to cut your home-heating benefits," MSNBC's Martin Bashir teased viewers of his October 4 program as he went out to a commercial break with Dean Martin's "Baby It's Cold Outside" playing in the background. Upon his return from break, Bashir tag-teamed with Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) to bash Republicans are heartless…

If you only read Thursday's coverage of Bank of America's decision to impose a $5 monthly debit card fee by Associated Press Personal Finance Writer Candice Choi, you would have no idea that last year's "Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act" triggered BofA's decision. The legislation gave the Federal Reserve the power to limit debit card interchange fees. The Fed's limit…

In an outrageous rant during his 3 p.m. ET hour show on MSNBC on Friday, host Martin Bashir actually attempted to blame budget cutting by Republican lawmakers for a deadly outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe: "John Boehner and his Republican majority decided to gut the food safety and inspection service....Cut, cut, cut. Now the results are in. 16 people have lost their lives." Bashir went on…

UPDATE: John Frank responded to yours truly in an email. Go to the end of the post for the email and my reax. Yesterday, Raleigh News & Observer blog contributor jbfrank, who from all indications is also RN&O reporter John Frank, assured readers that North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue was joking when she suggested that "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress…

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman showed his usual class when discussing Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, whose comprehensive budget plan calls for transforming Medicare into a voucher system in order to preserve the financially imperiled program and to trim the deficit. For his efforts, Krugman claimed that Ryan’s “voucher would kill people, no question.” Krugman featured as a talking head in…

Apparently there's no audio or video of North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue's Tuesday humdinger, namely that "I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won't hold it against them, whatever decisions they make, to just let them help this country recover." -- yet. If none surfaces, that will be too bad, because the guess here is that the…

Both CBS's "Early Show" and CNN's "Newsroom" sought out Rep. Maxine Waters on Monday for her reaction to President Obama's "stop complaining" rejoinder to the Congressional Black Caucus on Saturday, but neither outlet mentioned the continuing ethics investigation into the ultra-liberal Democrat. CNN anchor Suzanne Malveaux even went so far to flatter Rep. Waters as having her "marching shoes"…

Update : Full transcript added. Appearing on Saturday's NBC "Today," MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews proclaimed that efforts by House Republicans to pay for FEMA disaster relief by making budget cuts elsewhere was akin to "what parliaments do right before military coups in other countries." He then declared it was a "Complete disaster, complete failure to do their job." [Audio available…

The media "are so vested" in Obama "not being a failure that it's going to be amazing to watch the lengths they go to protect him," Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.) told NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell in an exclusive for CNSNews.com earlier this week. "There's going to be a real desperation" as the media ramp up their attacks on conservatives who are taking on the president, Walsh noted. That's…

Earlier this evening (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I cited a few of very many examples where the press has not hesitated during the Obama years, and really since Barack Obama became the frontrunner for the Democratic Party's nomination in 2008, to engage in uncalled-for creativity to avoid calling a statement made a lie or an unlawful action illegal. One of the lastest: A Raleigh New &…

A new poll is out showing a majority of Americans blame Barack Obama for the poor state of the U.S. economy. It's no surprise, then, that MSNBC is hard at work trying to turn the public's fire on GOP-run House. [video embedded below page break]

So I figure that I need to catch up on the LightSquared saga. This is the company which, as Fox News reported on Thursday (the URL date is September 15, though the time stamp is the next day) is building "a nationwide, next-generation, 4G phone network." The problem is, as Fox further noted, that there are concerns that "many, including (General William) Shelton, think (the network) would…

Talking to "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory on Sunday's NBC Today, co-host Jenna Wolfe asked about President Obama's proposed "Buffet Rule," designed to increases taxes on the rich, which she assumed "will sit well with the American people overall." David Gregory agreed but lamented: "...the President's got to think about what he can do to actually get some agreement with Republicans…