Economy

During the roundtable segment on Sunday's Meet the Press, NBC's Andrea Mitchell typically acted as Barack Obama's press secretary defending the President from any and all criticism lodged by other panelists. Apparently having witnessed enough shameless advocacy from a so-called journalist, when Mitchell used the Occupy Wall Street movement to defend Obama's economic policies, former…

Academy Award-winning actress Kathy Bates wants President Obama "to stand up on his hind legs and fight these rat bastards." When asked by the host of CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight to elaborate, Bates said Friday, "I think he has got to indict these guys from Wall Street. Somebody's got pay for that mess" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There was a truly marvelous exchange between syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer and NPR's Nina Totenberg on Friday's "Inside Washington." When Krauthammer pressed her on why President Obama didn't embrace the Bowles-Simpson plan to reduce the budget deficit, Totenberg replied, "Don’t make me the spokesman for the White House," leading him to deliciously ask, "What would be new about…

The easy catch in former Obama administration economic adviser Austan Goolsbee's Thursday interview on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," as reported by the Politico's Tim Mak, is that he believes that "if given a second chance he would not have backed the Cash for Clunkers program or the home buyer tax credit." Goolsbee's excuse for his changed position -- that the administration didn't think the recovery…

In June, when yours truly last blogged on a Glenn Kessler piece (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" was calling Barack Obama's claims about the accomplishments of the auto-company bailouts "one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech." He gave Obama's claims three Pinocchios ("Significant factual error and/or…

The Occupy Wall Street protests marked off a full month of occupation Oct. 17, and the network news media continue to gloss over protesters calls for "revolution" as well as the socialistic mentality espoused by many of the protesters. One protest speaker was videotaped saying, "Long live the revolution! Long live socialism!" Others in Chicago and Philadelphia marched with Communist flags.…

The rising cost of college has put a damper on many students' educational plans, but in an effort to continue attracting students, many schools have begun turning their campuses into miniature resorts. From upscale dining facilities to rock climbing walls, it turns out that some of the costs of college have nothing to do with learning, and much of the bill is still left for the taxpayers to…

An exasperated Barbara Walters on Wednesday aggressively objected to token conservative Elisabeth Hasselbeck highlighting the high unemployment under Barack Obama. In a condescending tone, Walters insisted, "Well, darling, he inherited a very bad situation." Walters' annoyed comments came after this remark by Hasselbeck: "11.7 percent of veterans out of work, no jobs. Right now, we have the…

CBS's Early Show on Thursday stood out as the only Big Three network program that covered what anchor Jeff Glor labeled as Vice President Biden's "controversial comments linking rape and the jobs bill," where he attacked the GOP for opposing the legislation. ABC and NBC's morning shows on Thursday didn't air anything on the story, and none of the networks' evening news shows on Wednesday…

Multimillionaire Occupy Wall Street supporter Russell Simmons made the media circuit in recent weeks bragging about how he wants the government to raise his taxes. Yet on MSNBC's PoliticsNation Wednesday, the hip-hop mogul told Al Sharpton, "I don’t pay taxes...I won’t give my money to war machine and to other things" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Readers participating in the real world will be quite surprised to learn that, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, "It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine." At The Hill's Floor Action blog, reporter Pete Kasperowicz, writing as if the world began in early 2010, supported Reid's contention: "Private-sector jobs have increased over the last 19 months,…

Concerning President Obama, his obviously most important quote of the past 48 hours is his statement to ABC's Jake Tapper (transcript here) that concerning the economy, "I believe all the choices we've made have been the right ones ..." Clearly, such a remark, if widely known, would be problematic for the President among quite a number of unemployed and underemployed Americans. In the New…

CBS's Early Show on Wednesday somehow couldn't find time for any Republicans to comment on the most recent GOP presidential debate, and instead, brought on David Axelrod, the chief strategist for President Obama's reelection campaign, to bash the GOP. Anchors Erica Hill and Jeff Glor gave Axelrod the kid glove treatment, instead of pressing him about the issues that may negatively affect the…

The headline and opening sentence in Derek Kravitz's Associated Press report this morning on the Census Bureau's homebulding industry data release gives readers the impression that industry activity increased impressively during September. It increased a tiny bit, but certainly not by the percentage indicated. The headline ignorantly assumes that a double-digit increase in housing starts is…