Recession

Economist Ben Stein had some harsh words for Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry on "CBS Sunday Morning."

Responding to comments the Texas governor made earlier in the week concerning Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, Stein said, "I hope he'll get some moderation in his speech, and some lessons in economics, and soon" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As government spending supporters in the media press for a new, bolder stimulus plan to get the economy going, they love to refer to the Depression Era Hoover Dam as a shining moment in Keynesian economics.

When this surfaced on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, George Will marvelously noted, "You couldn't build the Hoover Dam today because they'd discover a snail darter in the Colorado River and would stop it" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media have largely been gushing and fawning over the current White House resident taking a vacation on Martha's Vineyard as the economy appears to be heading into a double-dip recession.

Giving an interesting insight into the President's decision to not call Congress back from its summer break to tackle the problems facing the nation was New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd who wrote Sunday:

Establishment press reporters will insist from now until the cows come home that they play it straight. Their actions all too often belie their claims.

One such face-hitting example came yesterday in Associated Press reporter Chris Rugaber's coverage of the government's Regional and State Employment and Unemployment report. If it weren't already given away in this post's title, veteran media bias sleuths would have had no trouble detecting the "clever" technique employed in the following two paragraphs on seasonally adjusted state job gains and losses from Rugaber's risible rendition (key sentences bolded):

Stock markets around the world are once again imploding in fear of a global double-dip recession.

Appearing on PBS's "Inside Washington" Friday, NPR's Nina Totenberg said Barack Obama can cure what ails us with "a lot of very populist rhetoric" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Unemployment is at 9.1 percent, housing and stock prices are plummeting, national debt is exploding, and Medicare is going bankrupt.

Yet MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews' greatest fear is a president that doesn't believe in evolution or climate change (video follows with transcript and commentary):

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus got into a somewhat testy exchange over the President's lack of a jobs plan with CNN's Christine Romans on today's American Morning. "Sounds like you're the one with the talking points," Priebus replied to Romans's assertion that he was just repeating GOP talking points.

Priebus also noted that only congressional Republicans had offered any solutions to the nation's economic problems.  "I don't know if you're paying attention to what is happening in Washington, but it was the Republicans that offered a budget plan that addressed the out of control spending and out of control debt that is looming in regard to Medicare. It was Paul Ryan who presented a plan," said Priebus.

As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media are working overtime examining the records of every GOP candidate for president.

"The bright side though is," conservative author Ann Coulter told Fox News's Sean Hannity Wednesday, "we don't end up with a Republican president who is suddenly having an affair with an intern, or a Republican president who votes present for his entire term as the economy falls into the toilet" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

All joking aside about "if Obama has lost [fill in the blank], he has lost America", there was a stunning display today of a formerly ardent supporter condemning in the most fundamental terms President Obama's failure of leadership.


On Morning Joe, leftist Columbia Prof. Jeffrey Sachs absolutely scalded the president.  Declared Sachs: the stimulus failed.  Three years in, Obama has no plan,  and is providing "no leadership." Ouch. View video after the jump.

The Christian Science Monitor appears to have a problem monitoring its bloggers. Even though it asserts that its "diverse group of the best economy-related bloggers out there ... (have) responsibility for the content of their blogs," the largely respected CSM should understand that Jared Bernstein has just embarrassed it bigtime.

To its credit, CSM describes Bernstein, currently a senior fellow at the very liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Director emeritus: Marian Wright Edelman), as a Biden/Democrat hack: "Jared was chief economist to Vice President Joseph Biden and executive director of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class." But unless CSM wants to be seen as a place like the Huffington Post, where it seems that anyone can throw up anything regardless of its truthfulness (I'm talking to you, Sam Stein), it needs to at least fact-check info with an obvious surface stench -- and I could smell the acrid aroma from Bernstein's item here in Ohio. His woeful Wednesday post goes beyond predictable cherry-picking into the realm of flat-out errors.

At first blush, it might seem hard to imagine how one can contend that a press report describing an industry sector as operating "at depressed levels" and at volumes that are one-half of what "economists consider to be healthy" isn't telling the whole truth. But that's exactly how I would describe Tuesday's writeup by the Associated Press's Derek Kravitz after July's Census Bureau release on housing starts, building permits, homes under construction, and completions.

The problem is, as I separately noted earlier today, that of the sixteen key metrics the Bureau reported, eleven of them were record lows, either for any July on record, or any individual month on record. The other five were either the second-worst or third worst Julys on record. This isn't a depressed market; it's a despondent one. Kravitz only disclosed one of those eleven records, and in a misleading manner.

Liberals need to grow up and stop criticizing President Obama.

So said Fareed Zakaria Sunday on the CNN program bearing his name (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It appears David Gregory is a bit confused about how our system of government works.

During intense questioning of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on Sunday's "Meet the Press," the host scolded his guest for having the nerve to actually care what the American people thought about raising the debt ceiling (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Oh those whacky liberals.

On Sunday's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," New York Times columnist - and, ahem, Nobel laureate - Paul Krugman actually advocated space aliens attack earth thereby requiring a massive defense buildup by the United States that would stimulate the economy (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"I must confess that every time Representative Michele Bachmann uttered the phrase 'as president of the United States' during Thursday's Republican presidential debate I blacked out a little bit, so I'm sure that I missed some things."

So actually began a piece by New York Times columnist Charles Blow Saturday:

In the view of the New York Times, everything that ails our nation is caused by Republicans.

Consider Saturday's editorial disgracefully titled "Magical Unrealism: In the Iowa Debate, Republicans Fled From the Truth About the Damage Caused by Their Party":

As NewsBusters reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Wednesday took some poorly-researched cheap shots at conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh.

Limbaugh responded Thursday explaining that this is borne of frustration over the failure of Barack Obama noting, "The Chris Matthewses and the media are very close to the rioters in London in terms of anger, disappointment" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For some reason, in the middle of a lengthy "Morning Joe" segment dealing with President Obama's obvious failures as a leader, host Joe Scarborough on Thursday felt the need to bring up conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Today CNN's Politics Web site carries the story "Republicans name fiscal conservatives to debt committee," written by Deirdre Walsh and Tom Cohen.  The piece begins:

"Republican leaders on Wednesday named fiscal conservatives for their six picks for a new congressional "super" committee charged with crafting a plan to cut the country's deficit."

OK, the GOP's selections would be seen by most as fiscally conservative.  Senator Jon Kyle (R-AZ), for example, has received an A in the most recent rankings of the National Taxpayers Union and a 97 percent rating for 2009 from Citizens Against Government Waste, as reported by Project Vote Smart.

MSNBC's Thomas Roberts implied Tuesday that members of Congress who oppose efforts to inject more government spending into the economy, as President Barack Obama proposed recently, are committing an "act of treason."

"Why don't people look at that as an act of treason?" the daytime anchor asked the Washington Post's Ezra Klein, who shrugged off the accusation.

"I don't think what happens is Mitch McConnell and John Boehner retire to their volcano lair and plot how to doom the American economy," replied the liberal blogger.

[See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Joe Scarborough on Tuesday told his "Morning Joe" co-host an inconvenient truth that she and most of her colleagues in the media just can't handle.

"A president that cannot control 45 backbenchers in the opposing Party in the House of Representatives is too weak to be President of the United States. It is that simple" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Obama advisers, Democrat senators, and terminally stupid ideologues that for days have blamed Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's debt on the Tea Party are sadly mistaken.

Next to the President of the United States and his Party, those really responsible are members of the media.

Obama advisers, Democrat senators, and terminally stupid ideologues that have been for almost two days blaming Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's debt on the Tea Party have all been ignoring a very inconvenient truth.

According to MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell, "Last week's vote for a debt ceiling increase was the most bipartisan vote to increase the debt ceiling we have seen in a very, very long time" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For over 24 hours, Obama advisers, Democrat senators, and terminally stupid ideologues in the media have been blaming Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's debt on the Tea Party.

On Monday, one of the only sane voices in the mainstream media stood up and said, "If it wasn't for the Tea Party, they would have passed the debt ceiling thumbs up, we would have been rated BBB" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Monday's Early Show, CBS's Norah O'Donnell promoted the left-of-center talking point that Standard & Poor's recent lowering of the U.S.'s credit rating is a "Tea Party downgrade." O'Donnell played three sound bites of notable liberals using this line of attack, versus only one opposing from a center-right politician. She also spun Treasury Geithner's decision to stay as "good news for the President."

The correspondent began her report by trumpeting how apparently, "this was supposed to be a week when President Obama was going to turn his attention toward jobs with a positive message. But instead, he's dealing with this talk of a double-dip recession, that the terrible week in the markets last week, and that credit downgrade."

As NewsBusters reported Sunday, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) set off a liberal firestorm when he called Standard and Poor's U.S. credit rating change the "Tea Party Downgrade."

On Monday's "Morning Joe," host Joe Scarborough told "terminally stupid ideologues" that "really don't understand" anything because they're "so dogmatic [they] can't think for [themselves]" to "stop using the Tea Party as a piñata" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

John Kerry's claim on Sunday's "Meet the Press" that Standard and Poor's U.S. credit rating decision Friday is a "Tea Party Downgrade" is already catching on in liberal circles.

The far-left MoveOn.org has taken it on as a rallying cry:

It wasn't enough for "Meet the Press" host David Gregory to nicely set up Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) to blame Standard and Poor's downgrade of America's credit rating on the Tea Party Sunday.

The producers actually felt Kerry's "Tea Party Downgrade" comment was important enough to replay again at the end of the show (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow was rewarded for lying about Rush Limbaugh on her program Thursday by getting a guest appearance on Sunday's "Meet the Press."

The top brass at NBC should be pleased with their decision for Maddow proceeded to thoroughly misrepresent the reasons Standard and Poor's gave for downgrading America's debt Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary):