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Prior to President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric wondered what the message of the midterm elections was, to which political analyst Jeff Greenfield replied: "You've got 87 new members of the House, many of whom are fired up with a kind of militancy we very rarely see, even among new members."

MSNBC's Contessa Brewer on Wednesday blamed Republicans for obstructionism, complaining about the "attention grabber" Michele Bachmann and her Tea Party response to the State of the Union. Talking to Democratic strategist Mo Elleithee, she derided, "Mo, is Michelle Bachmann ruining the chances for bipartisanship?" Before playing a clip of Bachmann stating her opposition to excess spending,…

"[F]or all the surface civility [of the State of the Union], Obama wants to pick a fight, or at least draw a stark contrast, between his jobs-centric philosophy and the GOP’s determination to cut government first and ask questions later." That's how Politico's Glenn Thrush and Carrie Budoff Brown described the main difference between the president and his Republican congressional opposition…

Prior to calls for civility and what turned out to be a disastrous "date night" for the Democrats, Barack Obama was nicely set up to catapult himself into a fabulous 2011 approaching next year's reelection campaign with an enviable head of steam. Having been all but considered dead - am I allowed to say that post-Tucson? - after his shellacking at the polls in November, the President eked out…

NBC's Today show, on Wednesday, used the occasion of two responses to Barack Obama's State of the Union speech, by Republicans Paul Ryan and Michele Bachmann, as an opportunity to portray the GOP as a party divided. Despite a historic victory by Republicans in last year's midterm elections NBC anchors, past and present, on this morning's Today show, took pains to portray the Republican Party in…

Leigh Giangreco of The Eagle, the student newspaper at American University in DC, reported that disgraced former CBS news anchor Dan Rather spoke to students on Monday and claimed "The increasingly biased media will threaten the U.S." since "independence" of Rather's self-admiring sort is in short supply. Who keeps letting Rather "inspire" journalism students? It's like inviting Bernie Madoff…

It appears NBC's Matt Lauer is not happy about Barack Obama's failure to exploit the Tucson shooting to push for more gun control as on Wednesday's Today show, he seemingly expressed disappointment to former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani that the President "missed" an "opportunity" to address it in his State of the Union speech. Lauer's anti-gun question to Giuliani came on the heels of…

David Gergen not surprisingly believes that increased federal spending on education - or "investments" as Democrats like to say - is essential irrespective of our nation's current fiscal crisis. On "Anderson Cooper 360" following the President's State of the Union address, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer did his darnedest to explain to the CNN senior political analyst that our…

During coverage of President Obama's State of the Union address Tuesday night, all three broadcast networks, CBS, NBC and ABC, managed to compare the tone of the speech to that of Ronald Reagan. Reporters and pundits uniformly praised the supposed optimism of Obama. [Audio available here] On CBS, Evening News anchor Katie Couric touted how political analyst Jeff Greenfield thought it was "…

ABC on Tuesday introduced Barack Obama with an opening that looked and sounded more like a movie trailer for an action film. As dramatic, pounding tones played throughout, an announcer began, "The State of our Union. We heard this, just two years ago." Then, images of the President, firework-style graphics and people crying appeared onscreen. A clip from 2008 showed Obama proclaiming, "…

In his January 26 article "MSNBC's Sarah Palin Sickness," Hollywood Reporter's Paul Bond tackled the left-lurching network's obsession with the former Alaska governor. "MSNBC’S dependence on Palin was best displayed with the recent shootings in Tucson that left six people dead and Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords critically wounded. MSNBC was crucial in driving the narrative that the killer…

I am not now nor have I ever been Glenn Beck. Please, please believe me! I am NOT Glenn Beck! Such was the tone of the unintentionally hilarious article in The New Republic by contributing editor John McWhorter. Apparently his "thought crime" in the eyes of Jim Sleeper writing in Talking Points Memo was agreeing with Glenn Beck on the social toxicity of Frances Fox Piven:

"We're going to have to out-educate other countries," President Obama urged this week. How? By out-spending them, of course! It's the same old quack cure for America's fat and failing government-run schools monopoly. The one-trick ponies at the White House call their academic improvement agenda "targeted investing" for "winning the future." Truth in advertising: Get ready to fork over more Cash…

National debt is over $14 trillion, the federal budget deficit is $1.4 trillion and, depending on whose estimates are used, the unfunded liability or indebtedness of the federal government (mostly in the form of obligations for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and prescription drugs) is estimated to be between $60 and $100 trillion. Those entitlements along with others account for nearly…