Taxes

As NewsBusters reported earlier, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had quite a heated discussion about the budget, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening. Near its conclusion, Scarborough actually scolded Krugman for pompously behaving like a sighing Al Gore (video follows with transcript and commentary):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and MSNBC's Joe Scarborough had an at times heated discussion about budget deficits, debt, and the economy on PBS's Charlie Rose Monday evening. At one point Krugman got so rattled by the facts that he actually said Scarborough quoting what he had said in the past was making an ad hominem attack against him (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For conservatives, it's been truly delicious the past few weeks watching previously devote Obamaites break ranks with their colleagues to finally tell the world that the emperor has no clothes. A fine example Monday was the perilously liberal economist and media darling Jeffrey Sachs who published an article at the Huffington Post with the headline "How Obama's Politics Led to Sequestration":

"We're all socialists from the day we're born. You know, you don't have to be poor or unemployed to be on Welfare. We're all at the trough. We're all Welfare queens." So said TIME magazine executive editor Michael Duffy on the syndicated Chris Matthews Show Sunday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Chris Matthews asked a question Sunday that should truly offend people on both sides of the aisle. During the syndicated program bearing his name, Matthews asked his panel, "Has President Obama put himself at political risk if the big cuts do not wreak havoc?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Did you know that the mortgage interest deduction was a major contributor to families' distressed circumstances leading to the housing bubble? Or that George W. Bush's (really modest) tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, not the Internet bubble of the late-1990s led the nation from fiscal surplus to deficits? The reason you don't "know" these things is that they're not true. But the Associated Press's…

The Left and their media minions spent a good part of the past two years claiming the rich don't pay their "fair share" of taxes. Not according to the Associated Press which shockingly published a piece Sunday titled "Tax Bills For Rich Families Approach 30-Year High":

Syndicated columnist George Will made a statement on the Laura Ingraham Radio Show Friday that should make people on both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue take notice. "I think the President has at long last so gone over the top in his rhetoric that he’s even losing the mainstream media" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) this week made another in a series of absurd comments actually claiming that 170 million people would lose their jobs if the budget sequester was enacted. NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno actually began his show with Waters’ claim Friday saying that it explains "why we’re in this situation in the first place" (video follows with transcribed highlights and…

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer on Friday perfectly encapsulated the hysteria the White House is trying to gin up regarding budget sequestration. Appearing on PBS's Inside Washington, Krauthammer spoke of Biblical plagues that re-appeared Friday telling host Gordon Peterson, "We have sequestered against the Lord, Gordo, and his wrath is great" (video follows with transcript and…

Conceivably the best line uttered by a member of the media this week concerning the sequester debate came from Fox News's Neil Cavuto Friday In a Your World discussion about the budget deliberations with Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), Cavuto marvelously said, "It seems that your Party lies a lot."

It’s certainly clear to Jay Leno that the Obama administration is fearmongering the budget sequester. On NBC’s Tonight Show Thursday, Leno played a mock White House ad claiming among other things that if sequestration occurs, “Girl Scouts will be forced to sell meth" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Saturday, Washington Post reporters Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane fretted, with the help of several leftists they quoted, that sequestration might not cause enough pain. Given that the so-called "cuts" under discussion are really "reductions in projected spending growth," that is a legitimate fear if your perspective is that government shouldn't ever shrink under any circumstances. Rush…

I presume everyone remembers how when the New York Times published information about a classified program designed to track the movement of alleged terrorist funding through the international banking system Bush administration officials threatened to prosecute Times reporters and management over what they had done? No you don't, because although some conservatives and Republicans thought it…