Economy

Former Democratic Michigan governor turned Current TV commentator Jennifer Granholm got a much-needed education Sunday about the difference between Mitt Romney's involvement with Bain Capital and President Obama's forays into green energy investment.

"When Bain invested," said George Will on ABC's This Week, "it invests money that it gets voluntarily to be invested. When the president throws a half-billion dollars away on Solyndra, it's money taken away by the police power of the federal government from unwilling taxpayers" (video follows with transcript and commentary)

At the Associated Press aka the Administration's Press on Saturday, Andrew Taylor's "Fact Check" item on President Obama's stump speech claim in Iowa on Thursday dove into the trees without first looking at the forest.

Distracted by ridiculousaurus Rex Nutting's write-up earlier in the week at MarketWatch ("Obama spending binge never happened"), which absurdly claimed that "government outlays (are) rising at slowest pace since 1950s," Taylor spent paragraph after paragraph going into the nuances of "the Wall Street bailout" (really TARP, which wasn't all about "Wall Street," unless GM and Chrysler have recently moved there) and the disputes over who should be responsible for various items of and increases in spending the fiscal 2009. He either didn't understand -- or didn't want to communicate that he really did understand -- exactly what President Obama said, which follows the jump:

Last year New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called for space aliens to invade earth so that the government would spend money to mount a defense thereby stimulating the economy.

As aliens have yet to comply with Krugman's wishes, he advocated on HBO's Real Time Friday that scientists should get together and lie about an imminent attack to boost federal spending (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill Maher is either a blithering idiot, a pathological liar, or both.

On HBO's Real Time Friday, the factually-challenged financier of Barack Obama actually had the gall to say the President didn't support the recommendations of his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (aka Simpson-Bowles) because - wait for it! - Republicans didn't support it (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday blamed the media and "especially" cable television for the nasty tone in politics today.

Such occurred during a discussion with Jay Leno on NBC's Tonight Show (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Dana Bash reported Friday on the irony of President Obama hitting Mitt Romney's connections to Bain Capital when he himself has received donations from Bain employees. CNN has highlighted Obama's hypocrisy on this matter before, but this specific story has certainly not received much air-time – if any at all – in the last two weeks.

"But isn't it hypocritical for the Obama campaign to keep money from employees of a company it goes after as job-killers?" correspondent Dana Bash asked during the segment. Yet this story of Obama's clear hypocrisy has certainly not received the attention it merits on CNN. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

On Friday's CBS This Morning, Jan Crawford spotlighted that "the economic and political climate today is more similar to years when incumbent presidents lost than when they won." The correspondent pointed out the similarity between polling numbers today and in 1992, when George H.W. Bush was running for reelection: "Gallup has asked voters whether they're satisfied with the way things in the country are going. Today, only 24 percent say they're satisfied. That's closest to the 20 percent low in May 1992."

Despite this, anchor Charlie Rose tried to shift the blame away from President Obama: "It looks like this is a situation where President Obama fears most the thing he cannot control, which is the economy."

CNN failed to correct bogus numbers claiming that the growth rate of spending under President Obama is the lowest since Eisenhower. Instead, host Erin Burnett reported the news as something positive for the White House.

While most anyone with common sense would label Obama a big spender, the MarketWatch report – re-circulated by the White House – absurdly claims Obama's "spending binge never happened." And CNN did not discount that argument although they twice reported on it.

Leave it to America's strongest ally in the world to speak the truth.

On Thursday, England's Telegraph published an article with the absolutely glorious headline "Britain Can’t Afford to Fall for the Charms of the False Economics Messiah Paul Krugman":

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney during the previous day's press gaggle cited a bogus MarketWatch report hysterically claiming "Obama Spending Binge Never Happened."

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler looked at Carney's comments as well as Rex Nutting's article Friday and gave their assertions three Pinocchios:

If between now and Election Day unemployment numbers improve, particularly if they dip below the 8% barrier, you know President Obama, with an MSM assist, will be out there pounding his chest about the number of jobs "he created."

But when the unemployment numbers remain weak?  Well, that's not Obama's fault.  Just ask Mike Allen of Politico.  On today's Morning Joe, trying to explain Obama's early campaign stumbles, Allen declared that certain factors, including the bleak job numbers, were "beyond the control" of Obama.  View the video after the jump.

Reuters columnist Chrystia Freeland must have editors who don't question her judgment very much. How else do you account for this gem making it into her final draft today?:

Like anorexics, who think they are grossly fat when they are very thin, the American body politic is suffering from a national version of body dysmorphia, with nearly half the country believing taxes are high, when they are comparatively and historically low.

Funny she uses that analogy when the Left is hard at work convincing Americans that they are all morbidly obese and in need of national nannying about their overeating and under-exercising. At any rate, Freeland justifies her claim by noting that:

CNN's Soledad O'Brien spun Mitt Romney's words into a dodging-the-question moment for the candidate on the matter of Bain Capital, on Thursday's Starting Point. O'Brien was emphasizing Romney's "reluctance" to mention his days at Bain, which had been the focus of attack ads from the Obama campaign that O'Brien herself justified the other day.

Specifically, she took Romney's interview with Time magazine where he was asked if he welcomed attention about Bain. Romney had answered "of course" and then explained why the American people were more interested in President Obama's record. CNN, however, left out that explanation. [Video coming soon.]

Last week, what the Department of Labor had originally reported as a dip in new unemployment claims the previous week (from 368,000 to 367,000) was revised into an increase (to 370,000). This week, what DOL originally reported was a no-change situation (i.e., 370,000) was revised into an increase (to 372,000).

It's getting ever more difficult to accept DOL's ongoing underestimations, which now run to 60 of the 61 most recent weeks I've been able to track (the one exception was a "no change" situation during the week ended June 18, 2011). In covering today's charade, Reuters, Bloomberg, and the Associated Press (aka the Administration's Press), all failed to note that this week's revision to last week turned last week into an increase instead of a no-change. In what should be seen as only a marginal improvement, two of the three (the AP, predictably, was the exception), headlined this week's small initial reduction from last week -- which seems destined to disappear after revision next week -- as "essentially unchanged." Excerpts follow the jump.

A bogus report published by MarketWatch Tuesday claiming "under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s" has been all the rage at the White House and MSNBC.

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter correctly observed Wednesday:

To be fair, the full text of what Martin Crutsinger at the Associated Press wrote in the first sentence of what I believe was the final version of his report today on the Census Bureau's new-home sales release was that "Americans bought more new homes last month, the latest evidence that the U.S. housing market could be starting to recover." The other "evidence" he cited related to a small bump reported earlier this week in existing home sales and one homebuilder's improved financial results.

That's pretty thin gruel from which to paint a "could be starting to recover" scenario, especially when it's expressed by someone who isn't a housing expert, i.e., an AP reporter. The only expert Crutsinger cited told him that "Housing could be a pleasant surprise this year." Wow. How profound. Let's take a look at some quotes from experts Thomson Reuters was able to find. Readers will note that the variations on word "bottom" occur quite frequently (quotes are not in the same order as they appeared at the link):

Why not just call Romney a racist and be done with it? In the most tortured twist of logic this blogger has seen so far during this campaign, Al Sharpton somehow managed to equate Mitt Romney's refusal to roll over and accept Barack Obama's attacks on Bain Capital with, yes, birtherism.

I know what you're thinking: what the . . . heck?  Don't ask me to explain how or why Sharpton came to his nonsensical suggestion.  Just sit back and watch the Reverend Al at work.  It was too much even for liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank.  View the video after the jump.

Appearing on Tuesday's The O'Reilly Factor on FNC, former FNC anchor - and former ABC correspondent - Brit Hume recounted the liberal bias many journalists exhibit in how they treat wealthy Republicans versus wealthy Democrats.

Last night (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted the total inadequacy of a correction the New York Times made to a notorious William Deresiewicz op-ed ("Fables of Wealth") published on May 12. Deresiewicz originally claimed that "A recent study found that 10 percent of people who work on Wall Street are ‘clinical psychopaths’ … (The proportion at large is 1 percent.)." The study he cited was really of 203 management trainees, the proportion of supposed psychopaths found was 4%, and the study's authors said that generalizing the results in any way to the overall population should not be done. As I asserted, the Times should long ago have pulled the op-ed instead of trying to cure something which is incurable.

Well, it turns out that Deresiewicz completely blew it in interpreting the rest of the alleged foundation of his op-ed, namely English writer Bernard Mandeville's "The Fable of the Bees," leaving the author utterly without any support for his anticapitalist and anticapitalism screed. At his Chequerboard.org blog (HT John Hinderaker at Powerline), Pejman Yousefzadeh performed the clinical dismemberment:

"Face The Nation" host Bob Schieffer spotlighted the left's talking points on two issues in the presidential race on Tuesday's CBS This Morning. Schieffer tried to play it down the middle when he stated, "I think most people understand that Mitt Romney is not the robber baron that the Democrats would have you believe." But he immediately added, "Nor is Barack Obama the European socialist that the Republicans would have you believe."

The CBS journalist also contrasted the Obama campaign's line of attack on Romney regarding his leadership with Bain Capital, which was ripped by Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker; with how many Republicans condemned "a plan that some Republicans had to launch this race-baiting campaign, trying to tie the President, once again, to Jeremiah Wright."

CNN's Soledad O'Brien has carried water for President Obama before, and her "nothing to see here" attitude on Tuesday's Starting Point in regards to the Obama's blatant hypocrisy made that all the more clear.

The night before, O'Brien's colleague Anderson Cooper grilled the Obama campaign over the President's personal attacks on Mitt Romney. Cooper maintained that Obama is hitting Romney's record at Bain Capital while fund raising from another head of a private equity firm that did business with Bain, thus committing a blatant act of hypocrisy. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Newark's Democratic Mayor Cory Booker started a firestorm Sunday when he said on NBC's Meet the Press the Obama campaign's attack on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's private equity career is "nauseating."

"To continue his damage control efforts," Booker's only interview Monday was with his "good friend" Rachel Maddow, and despite having a twelve minute exclusive with the mayor, the MSNBC anchor never once asked him what his opinion was of private equity (video follows with commentary, full transcript at end of post).

PolitiFact decided to get cute with words and nail an accurate statement by a conservative advocacy group as "Mostly False" for supposed contextual issues. This is not the first time that the fact-checking outfit has labeled an accurate statement "Half True" or "Mostly False," as it did twice to the Romney campaign.

According to PolitiFact's Bill Adair, who appeared on CNN Monday afternoon, the ad correctly asserts that President Obama broke his promise to families making less than $250,000 a year, that their taxes would not go up. However, since the ad stated that ObamaCare alone raised 18 taxes, and PolitiFact determined that only five of those applied to the specific income bracket, they smacked Crossroads with a "Mostly False" rating.

With less than six months to go before Election Day, the Obama-loving media's advocacy has passed shameful and is now approaching downright unimaginable.

On Saturday, the Associated Press actually published a piece with the headline, "Is GOP Trying to Sabotage Economy to Hurt Obama?":

Although it may not surprise NewsBusters readers, it appears MSNBC's Ed Schultz doesn't pay any attention to what he says, what others on his network report, or what is covered by any mainstream media outlet.

What else could be the explanation for Schultz claiming in an interview with Talking Points Memo that the most under-covered story in the country right now is wealthy people not paying their "fair share" of taxes (question in bold):

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Sunday continued his campaign to get Barack Obama reelected by misinforming the public about the economy.

Appearing on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS, the Nobel laureate falsely claimed Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wants to enact Greece's failed economic policies here in America (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"Sometimes you do wonder if [Republicans] are moles, Manchurian candidates for I don't know who, if their real job is to bring down America."

So said New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on MSNBC's Martin Bashir show Friday (video follows with transcript and commentary):