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If it's Sunday, it's another episode of Dancin' David Gregory inviting Republicans to come on his show and rattle off their talking points without fear of contradiction. Karl Rove's dance partner allowed House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy to attribute a very famous statement by Dick Cheney's (that "deficits don't matter") to President Obama! He also said that Democrats are the ones responsible for racking up the majority of the debt we've been dealing with ever since President Obama took the oath of office.

We've been through this here so many times I've lost count, but for anyone who hasn't already seen these charts, President Obama is not the one responsible for the policies that added to most of the deficit during his first term in office.

And pardon me if I'm sick to death of the party that brought us two wars left off the books and the theft of God knows how many of our tax dollars with those debacles, a prescription drug plan that wasn't paid for, the Bush tax cuts, the bailout of the Wall Street gamblers that took down our economy, having the damn nerve to complain about our debt and deficit.

Gregory couldn't be bothered to point out that not only is our deficit shrinking considerably under President Obama, but it's also shrinking at the fastest pace in modern American history.

Transcript below the fold.

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Democratic strategist and CNN contributor Paul Begala participated in a debate with The Daily Caller's Tucker Carlson at the Conservative Political Action Conference this Thursday. He actually got in some good shots at Carlson when he called out the Republicans' hypocrisy with their carping about our debt and deficit.

BEGALA: Let me quote a conservative hero, Dick Cheney, who said Ronald Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter. As he was about everything, Dick Cheney was wrong. He was wrong then and he's wrong now. Of course deficits matter, but any one of you who supported the Bush tax cuts, the Bush war in Iraq, or the Bush prescription entitlement plan, has no business talking about debt. Now sit down, shut up and let the grown ups handle it.

You're welcome. I helped Bill Clinton balance the budget and build a surplus -- why? Because we had good economic times. In good economic times you pay down the deficit, as Clinton did, but Reagan did not and Bush did not. In bad times, you do have to stimulate in the near term, as thank God President Obama is doing.

But any of you who caused this deficit, this debt and deficit... no, no. You forgot the rule. You have to hush up if you supported creating the deficit. It's like listening to lectures on hygiene from Typhoid Mary.

For the most part, this debate of theirs was a good reminder of why Crossfire is no longer on the air and left me pining for Jon Stewart to intervene.

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It looks like Bill O'Reilly still isn't finished spreading the same lies he was telling when he had his meltdown on air with Alan Colmes last week, because he decided to devote his Talking Points Memo and the opening segment of his show this Monday to defending and repeating those same lies -- and as Media Matters noted, despite getting his facts wrong again, O'Reilly claimed his "righteous anger" elevated the conversation about the debt.

The only thing we see Bill-O "elevating" in this segment is his ego. We've already been through the litany of B.S. O'Reilly was shoveling in the previous post here, so I'm not going to rehash that, but my fellow contributor here at C&L, Ellen at NewsHounds took the time to break down the segment above and I'll share just a bit of that here: O’Reilly Justifes His Meltdown With Alan Colmes: I’m Looking Out For You:

You don’t need to be a psychologist or a body expert to figure out that Bill O’Reilly’s justifications tonight for his bullying attack on Alan Colmes last week are a lot of hooey. In fact, there was so much hooey, I’m not sure I can catch it all in one post. But for starters, there was the hooey that O’Reilly likened Colmes’ “lie” about federal spending cuts to the danger posed by Al Qaeda (which included the hooey that Colmes had his facts wrong in the first place), plus the hooey that O’Reilly attacked Colmes out of a public-spirited desire to draw attention to this big danger, plus O’Reilly’s "admission" that he shouldn’t have called Colmes a liar – even though he immediately afterward described Colmes as lying. And my favorite hooey: O’Reilly said he’s not in his job for money or fame, but to look out for us.

Sure he is. How could anyone ever get the idea that O'Reilly was just all about the money or fame? Go read the rest for more of Bill-O's hackery and the back and forth during the panel segment, and as she noted, Mary Katharine Ham and Juan Williams did nothing but suck up to O'Reilly and reassure his poor bruised ego that he's really just a nice guy, no matter how badly he treated Colmes the previous week. I don't know about anyone else, but watching those two during this segment reminded me of a couple of battered wives telling their abusive husband that they still love him.

For anyone that missed it, former Sen. Alan Simpson, one of the co-chairs of the President's now defunct deficit commission, appeared on The Daily Show earlier this month and as Sam Seder rightfully pointed out in the clip above, the interview was just awful. Stewart allowed Simpson to get away with a ton of lies on everything from who owns our debt, to whether we're in danger of becoming like Greece where no one wants to loan us money any more, to the Peterson Foundations' lies about Social Security.

Sam's exactly right here and if Stewart was going to allow Simpson on his show, he should have done a better job doing his homework first. It's really just unacceptable that he allowed his audience to listen to this much garbage out of Simpson without more of it being debunked right on the spot.

It's a little long, but well worth the time if you have it to watch it and I'd highly recommend passing it along to anyone you know who might not realize what a load of garbage Simpson and his fellow fearmongers over the so-called bond vigilantes are peddling. Seder also took Simpson to task for his ridiculous “Gangnam Style” ad he's got out there trying to convince kids to buy into this "The Can Kicks Back" campaign of theirs.

Salon's Alex Pareene did a similar take down of Stewart shortly after his appearance which you can read here: Alan Simpson spins Jon Stewart and they've got the full interview posted as well for anyone that might want to watch it.

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Sen. Orrin Hatch continued the whining we've seen from Republicans over the fact that President Obama didn't immediately cave on these so-called "fiscal cliff" negotiations in this week's Republican weekly address. It seems someone needs to explain to the Senator what the definition of "bait and switch" is.

Sen. Hatch: Obama fiscal proposal 'classic bait and switch':

The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee accused President Obama of pulling a "bait and switch" this week with the administration's proposed deal to avert the so-called "fiscal cliff."

"What [Obama] proposed this week was a classic bait and switch on the American people—a tax increase double the size of what he campaigned on, billions of dollars in new stimulus spending and an unlimited, unchecked authority to borrow from the Chinese," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said in Saturday's weekly GOP address.

"Maybe I missed it but I don’t recall him asking for any of that during the presidential campaign. These ideas are so radical that they have already been rejected on a bipartisan basis by Congress."

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was dispatched to Capitol Hill to share Obama's plan with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) The deal included $1.6 trillion in tax hikes, $50 billion in economic stimulus spending and $400 billion in spending cuts. Republicans have demanded more severe spending cuts - including entitlement reform - to begin a discussion on raising taxes. Read on...

As Think Progress noted, Hatch's claim that President Obama did not ask for any of the items they proposed is just not true:

Obama’s proposal — which includes $1.6 trillion in increased taxes on the rich over the next decade, $400 billion in savings in Medicare and other social programs, $50 billion in stimulus spending to begin next year, and an end to current debt ceiling rules — is not new or radical: it reflects the very same same policies Obama advanced for years and promoted extensively on the campaign trail.

For instance, Obama’s FY 2013 budget — released in February 2012 — raised “an additional $1.7 trillion in revenue” and proposed $360 billion in savings from entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid. (Comparatively, Simpson-Bowles called for $2.7 trillion revenue over 10 years, more than what Obama requested). Obama advocated for additional stimulative spending throughout the campaign, calling for a path “forward” that will “continue investing in education and infrastructure.”

Republicans are feigning shock that Obama is proposing to implement the very same policies that Americans voted for in November, as they seek to define his second term agenda and bolster their own negotiating position. Meanwhile, they have yet to offer their own detailed proposal to avert the cliff.

And as they noted in their update to the post, much of what President Obama proposed this week appeared in his 20-page plan, released in October. If there's any party that hasn't negotiated in good faith for years now, it's the Republicans.

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From this Friday's Andrea Mitchell Reports, apparently Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a member of the House Budget Committee, doesn't understand what the debt ceiling is or how it works. Andrea Mitchell explains that to him when he complains that President Obama somehow wants an "unlimited credit card" for the spending he and his cohorts already voted for.

CHAFFETZ: The President said he was going to help curb back the debt and tackle this deficit. Instead the President has the gall to actually go out and suggest that we should get rid of the debt ceiling votes and take away Congress' ability to help put a lid on that. Essentially he wants a limitless credit card. [...]

MITCHELL: Let's talk about the debt ceiling for a second, because the debt ceiling is not more money. It's raising the level to accommodate what Congress has already appropriated. So it's not an unlimited credit card, and most serious economists think that it is an unnecessary act. Why not review the bidding on just how that debt ceiling should be used? Because it's used as a shotgun to the head of either party, either president.

CHAFFETZ: Look, there's got to be some limit to the debt we're putting forward in this country and I believe that we should have that discussion. In the past,it's driven the debate and the discussion about our out of control debt.

Amazing how that concern for the deficit they've got now wasn't "driving the debate" when they were passing the Bush tax cuts, voting for a couple of wars they didn't want to pay for, or a prescription drug plan what wasn't paid for. Deficits didn't matter back then. They only matter when they want to use them as an excuse to destroy our social safety nets.

h/t Dave

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From this Sunday's This Week on ABC, The Nation's Katrina Vanden Heuvel was the one voice of reason, pushing back against the idea that austerity and budget cuts are going to somehow solve our country's economic problems, or the notion that the debt and deficit should be our biggest concern.

VANDEN HEUVEL: I agree with Paul Gigot. Americans voted decisively for fair share taxes on the richest, for protecting Social Security and Medicare, but also for growth and investment. You cannot get growth and investment with the spending cuts as they are laid out in the grand bargain.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And certainly not the sequester.

VANDEN HEUVEL: Certainly not the sequester. So I think part of the problem we're having, George, is the fundamental assumptions overriding this entire discussion. Senator Murray said that we have a big debt and deficit problem -- no, we don't. We have a big public investment and jobs problem.

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEN HEUVEL: Last point. We're not Greece. Austerity, if you believe in evidence-based politics and economics, you look at what's going on in Europe, and austerity, which we may have American-style in this country if we proceed the way we are doing, has led to economic pain, has led to killing growth. Killing growth.

(CROSSTALK)

VANDEN HEUVEL: And debt and deficit.

Amen to that sister. This needs to be repeated as often as possible whenever we hear the fearmongering about falling off of the "fiscal cliff" and the real danger to our economy that austerity measures pose. As she pointed out, the deficit can be taken care of later, but we've got to get the unemployment numbers down first and Americans back to work.

Full transcript of the segment above below the fold.

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Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite caught this gem with NBC's Tom Brokaw playing the good little Republican water carrier and trying to blame the problem with our huge deficit on President Obama -- Tom Brokaw Says President Obama Must Answer For $1.1 Trillion Deficit ‘That Happened On His Watch’:

On Sunday morning’s Meet The Press, legendary newsman Tom Brokaw joined moderator David Gregory in evening out the “specifics” narrative that has dogged Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney by demanding that President Obama give more details about his plan to control the deficit and debt. Brokaw said that in a 2008 debate, then-Senator Obama “was saying, ‘Look, we’ve got a deficit of a half a trillion dollars. I’m going to get that under control.’ Well, this week that deficit is $1.1 trillion and it happened on his watch. He’s going to have to answer to that.”

By the time President Obama took office, however, he was handed a $1.017 trillion deficit by President George W. Bush. [...]

The half-trillion dollar deficit that President Obama was referring to, however, was for the fiscal year ending in September of 2007. The deficit for FY 2008 was $1,017,071. That still leaves President Obama’s promise to “get that under control” arguably unfulfilled, but also dramatically alters the terrain of that argument.

I would add to that, what Brokaw is also completely ignoring is just whose policies have added to the deficit, and as this chart displays, you can place the bulk of that squarely in Bush's lap as well -- Adding to the deficit: Bush vs. Obama.

Transcript below the fold.

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From this Monday's The Young Turks, host Cenk Uygur calls out hypocrite and now Mitt Romney running mate paul Ryan for his hypocrisy on "big government" supposedly being detrimental to people's lives. As Cenk explained, Ryan knows full well that's not true since he himself has either been dependent on or employed by government the better part of his own life.

And after having voted for every budget busting initiative and two wars left off the books under Bush, Ryan now wants to pretend he's a deficit hawk. Typical Republican. I got mine and too bad, so sad for everyone else. I would hope this continues to get some traction in the rest of the media as well. Ryan was happy to have a leg up from the government when he needed it, but now he wants to take those same benefits away for others.

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Since Mike Huckabee pretends to be a religious man and a Christian, maybe someone could remind him of this quote from Matthew 19:24 before he does another show on Fox carrying water for rich people as he did here.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Last I heard it was also supposed to be unchristian to lie a lot as well, but that didn't stop Huckabee from telling his audience this on Saturday evening:

HUCKABEE: President Obama appears to be willing to play chicken with Congress, because he is determined to raise taxes on the people that he's decided are just too stinking rich! Well the trouble is, even The Washington Post, hardly a conservative tool, and FED Chairman Ben Bernanke, who was reappointed by Obama are warning of the consequences of what's being accurately termed “Taxmageddon.”

The combination of the expiration of the so-called Bush tax cuts and the effect that's associated with Obamacare. It's all going to arrive on Dec. 31st, 2012. And if Congress doesn't act Taxmageddon may not adequately describe what's going to be nothing short of an economic apocalypse. The tax increases, almost $500 billion per year, in new taxes. Now that is by far the largest and most encompassing tax hike in our nation's history.

And while the President pretends to be protecting the middle class, the fact is the majority of the tax increases won't hit Obama's despised wealthy class, but will in fact hit 60 percent of Americans who actually got the biggest tax cuts, from the Bush tax plan.

For example, on average, baby boomers are going to see their taxes go up over $4200 per year. Low income families are going to have a gut punch increase of over $1200 per year. Millennials, they're going to get popped with a thousand dollar hit on average.

Now considering that the President's failed financial policies have left us drowning in national debt, with a staggering 8.2 percent unemployment rate and businesses living off life support, not addressing these concerns, well, it's about as compassionate as throwing an anchor instead of a life preserver to a man caught in a rip tide.

The Obama tax increases set to hit January 1st are far more ominous than we even would have feared from the impact of the Y-2K moment of January 1st back in 2000.

Because we really aren't sure and weren't sure then what might happen at midnight that night. And we did all we knew to do to prepare for it.

Never mind that Democrats just voted to extend the tax cuts for everyone's income under $250,000 a year and forget all about that guy named Bush who is actually responsible for running up the deficit we have right now. Those things never happened in Fox world.