Economy

The folks in office administration at the Politico had better put in for extra janitorial help. With all the horse manure their reporters are slinging during the partial government shutdown, it's gotta be getting knee-deep in those hoary halls. One of the more egregious examples of insufferable obsequiousness today came late this morning via Edward-Isaac Dovere and Reid J. Epstein. You see, in…

Corrected from earlier | "After three years of last-minute deals, delayed decisions, and acrimonious finger pointing, the process for one of Congress's most basic functions—spending money—finally buckled and broke down Monday night," the Wall Street Journal's Damian Paletta sighed in the opening paragraph of his October 1 story, "Breakdown Is New Norm in Spending Fights." "Since passage of…

Monday night’s edition of ABC World News was a double dose of advocacy as Diane Sawyer and her team essentially served as a mouthpiece for President Obama’s position on the government shutdown and his health care law. Sawyer led the broadcast, of course, with the government shutdown, which was then only a few hours away. She stated President Obama’s perspective on the matter: “The president…

  ABC reporter Jeff Zeleny on Tuesday afternoon excitedly told viewers that "cracks" are "emerging" in the Republican opposition to the government shutdown. His example of this? A GOP congressman already on record opposing a shutdown. Following live coverage of Barack Obama's speech, the journalist related, "But a couple cracks emerging, including a congressman from Virginia, a military district…

Alex Rogers and Zeke Miller of Time magazine dutifully hacked out a 16-paragraph item on President Obama's complaint this afternoon that Republicans were the cause of the government shutdown. It was your typical, garden variety bias-by-stenography. Only at the very end of their article did Rogers and Miller mention that the Democratic National Committee is having a fundraising field day off…

This weekend’s editions of NBC’s Today show did their best to drive home the message that Republicans would be to blame for the government shutdown that went into effect last night. On Saturday’s Today, CNBC’s John Harwood showed up to analyze the situation. The chief Washington correspondent did not mince words as he told anchor Erica Hill who would be responsible for the oncoming shutdown: “…

Michelle Cottle is no fan of Republicans and certainly not of Tea Party conservatives. But in a sign that some liberal journalists are worried that Democrats may overreach with their alarmist rhetoric, the Daily Beast staffer called on Democrats to cool it a bit with the hyper-partisan invective during the government shutdown. To Cottle, it's okay to call conservatives hijackers and terrorists…

White House press secretary Jay Carney appeared on MSNBC’s Morning Joe Tuesday expressing the typical doom and gloom about what the government shutdown means to Americans and the economy. After he was done, CNBC’s Michelle Caruso-Cabrera told the MJ crew about how the markets were shrugging off the shutdown due to its likely limited impact on the economy and punctuated her thoughts by saying, “…

Chris Matthews just can’t make up his mind about Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.). After telling MSNBC’s Morning Joe crew last week that the Texas Tea Partier is “a problem for our republic,” Matthews on Tuesday said, “I think Ted Cruz is brilliant. I think the President’s met his match in this guy” (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Seems the shutdown is already frazzling folks.  Though some of it might have been for show, tempers seemed to truly flare on today's Morning Joe. An on-air spat broke out, with Joe Scarborough in one corner, and Mika Brzezinski and the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson in the other.   Fed up with what he described as a "paid advertisement for Obamacare" by Brzezinski and Robinson,…

"One reason people think Republicans are to blame for government shutdowns is that so much of the media keep telling them that that's the case." So marvelously stated Brit Hume on Fox News's Special Report Monday (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

If you listened to Obama-loving media members in recent weeks, the end of the world happens midnight Monday if Republicans don't agree to immediately fund the government. Yet with a shutdown only hours away now, the financial markets clearly don't seem to be at all concerned that what is happening in Washington will have much of an impact on the economy.

Bob Woodward broke free from the liberal media template on Monday morning, partially blaming President Obama for the current impasse over government funding and the debt ceiling. Appearing on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the veteran journalist claimed that a potential economic collapse or downturn would fall on Obama’s head. Former George W. Bush staffer Nicolle Wallace and Obama acolyte David…

As NewsBusters previously reported, Tea Party Congressman Raul Labrador (R-Id.) on Sunday's Meet the Press made a fool of MSNBC's Chris Matthews over his lack of knowledge regarding how many times the government shut down when his former boss Tip O'Neill was Speaker of the House. As it turns out, the Washington Post also mocked Matthews for his ignorance last Thursday in a piece deliciously…