By John Johnson 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
Tag Archives: Jonathan Karl
Networks Promote White House Fearmongering On Sequester Cuts, Ignore It Was Obama’s Idea
The NBC, ABC, and CBS evening newscasts on Tuesday all recited the same White House talking points as anchors and correspondents wrung their hands over the upcoming sequester budget cuts set to take effect on March 1. While all three broadcasts touted President Obama using “dire language” to warn against the cuts – only amounting to less that three percent of the federal budget – none of them noted that it was the President’s idea in the first place. [Listen to the audio]
At the top of NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams sounded the alarm: “Deep impact….deep budget cuts poised to have a major impact on the military, law enforcement, even food inspection.” In the report that followed, correspondent John Yang fretted: “Through 2021, it means cutting $85 billion a year, half from the Pentagon, half from non-defense programs. Everything from education to national parks to Meals on Wheels.” Yang failed to mention the current annual federal budget is around $3.5 trillion.
After Yang hyped the cuts, an exasperated Williams turned to chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd and proclaimed: “Do you wonder why people are so deeply angry, cynical, and checked out of our politics?”
On ABC’s World News, anchor Diane Sawyer touted Obama going after congressional Republicans on the issue: “…the President came out swinging today about the effect on American families when the budget axe falls in less than two weeks….the President likened it to a meat cleaver.”
Chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl actually noted the planned cuts were “less than 3% of the budget,” but then continued to parrot administration spin: “…but the White House says virtually everybody will be hurt, and we’ll see long lines as TSA agents are furloughed, 1,000 FBI and other law enforcement agents forced off the job, and 70,000 preschoolers dropped from the Head Start program.”
Read More at The Media Research Center . By Kyle Drennen.
Why Republican Compromise Is Always A Defeat
I like Paul Ryan. He seems like a great person. I think he’s sincere about wanting to set America back on the right course. But, like so many other so-called “conservative” Republican leaders, he doesn’t understand political strategy for turning around a country headed for unmitigated disaster.
Let’s take what he had to say about the immigration issue on ABC’s “This Week,” for example. Asked by Jonathan Karl, sitting in for George Stephanopoulos, about what Barack Obama had to say about it in his State of the Union address, here’s how he responded:
“I really don’t enjoy saying this. I did think that his words were measured and productive in the State of the Union. But putting this – leaking this out does set things in the wrong direction. Look, the question that we always have to ask ourselves, particularly with this White House, is the president looking for a partisan advantage or is he looking for a bipartisan law? And by putting these details out without a guest worker program, without addressing future flow, by giving advantage to those who cut in front of line for immigrants who came here legally, not dealing with border security adequately, that tells us that he’s looking for a partisan advantage and not a bipartisan solution. There are groups in the House and the Senate working together to get this done and when he does things like this, it makes that much more difficult to do that. And that’s why I think this particular move, very counterproductive.”
Read More at WND . By Joseph Farah.