re: #12 researchok

Agreed.

Also, it seems at times every reasonable argument Maddow makes is undermined by another outrageous one- as in the US has no debt crisis. That puts her at odds with

MSNBC .
New York Times.
Washington Post .
LA Times .
Reuters.
CNN .
Business Week.
NPR.

Had she stuck to her union talking points, she’d have been a lot more credible, IMO. Why she got on the Michale Moore bandwagon is beyond me.

I only went through the first four links, but they don’t refute the statement “the US has no debt crisis”, and for that matter, that tends not to be Maddow’s message.

Generally, she says that the union-busting measures in Wisconsin and elsewhere “aren’t about the budget” and in general she is right. (They are, in the main, about defunding a Democratic constituency.) Often, you see proposed budget cuts paired with or following tax cuts that help create the budget hole. Assuming that the “US” you refer to is the United States government, the precise nature of its fiscal situation is the subject of considerable debate. There are many that say cutting the deficit NOW is a terribly bad idea: we can service that debt for almost nothing, so we ought defer deficit cutting to a time when it is less likely to negatively impact jobs and the economy. (I’ve posted material about that here from time to time.)

Further, her “it isn’t about the budget” theme is also employed to note that the people who went to Washington because the electorate wanted them to work on the economy and job creation have instead worked on anything BUT that, instead filling their days with bills about Planned Parenthood and NPR, holding hearings designed to harass Elizabeth Warren for her crime of looking out for consumers, voting against science, and the like.

Does she bat 1.000? Nope. But find me someone who does much better than her. She can be annoyingly smug, but she is good on the facts.