With its estimate Tuesday that the $787 billion Obama stimulus package created up to 2.1 million jobs in the last quarter of 2009, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) joined in the near-unanimous chorus of voices proclaiming the package's success. Of course, it wasn't just the overwhelming consensus of economists which concurred that the stimulus saved […]

Throughout the bitter debate over health care reform, talking points about "rationing" and "cuts to Medicare" have been the twin pillars of Republican fear mongering. For example, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in June warned of reform that "denies, delays, or rations health care," only to falsely charge weeks later that Democrats "are going to […]

During their unprecedented televised gathering Friday, 140 House Republicans were intellectually and politically outnumbered by President Obama. Perhaps on no subject was the rout more complete than on the federal budget. Led by Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Republicans touted their own alternative budget proposed by Wisconsin's Paul Ryan. But as Americans should recall, with […]

Shaking his head at the bad economics and worse politics of the White House's proposed spending freeze, Paul Krugman deemed President Obama not a deficit hawk, but a "deficit peacock." "You can identify deficit peacocks," he wrote, "by the way they pretend that our budget problems can be solved with gimmicks like a temporary freeze […]

While legal analysts like Glenn Greenwald and Jonathan Turley lamented Justice Samuel Alito's "serious and substantive breach of protocol" during last night's State of the Union address, conservatives are predictably apoplectic about President Obama's temerity in questioning the Supreme Court's campaign finance decision in that setting. As it turns out, the right-wing hypocrisy in defense […]

During his first State of the Union address Wednesday, President Barack Obama will apparently endorse two bad ideas whose time hasn't come. The first, a freeze affecting $477 billion in domestic spending, has been rightly labeled "appalling" (Paul Krugman), "a mistake on par with John McCain's 'suspending my campaign' gaffe" (Nate Silver), "fundamental unseriousness" (Brad […]

Last year, President Obama kept his campaign promise to cut taxes for 95% of American households. But facing tough reelection prospects in November, a group of House Democrats is getting weak in the knees when its comes to Obama's pledge to reduce the budget deficit by letting the Bush tax cuts expire for Americans making […]

That the Massachusetts Senate race is now a toss up, with some polls now putting Republican Scott Brown in the lead, is rocking the American political landscape. After all, the campaign to replace Ted Kennedy takes place in a state Barack Obama carried by 26% in 2008, one which Gallup last August showed leaning Democratic […]

The preposterous Republican campaign to equate Harry Reid's off-the-record "dialect" comment with neo-Confederate Trent Lott's lavish public praise of Strom Thurmond has shifted into overdrive. But even as Michael Steele, Jon Kyl and other leading lights of the Party of Hate press Reid like Lott before him to surrender his Senate leadership post, they conveniently […]