Economy

George Will and Donna Brazile had a telling exchange on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. After Will listed all the excuses President Obama makes for the poor economy, Brazile said, "I thought you were going to mention media" leading Will to smartly retort, "They're not his problem" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

When I first saw a brief Associated Press report asserting that Rick Perry, at an event in Des Moines, Iowa today claimed, in AP's words, that "he's created 1 million jobs while governor of Texas," I thought to myself, "Wow, that's a pretty egotistical thing to say -- as if he did it all by himself." Then I remembered that I was reading an AP report. Of course Perry didn't say that, and,…

In the view of the perilously liberal syndicated columnist Mark Shields, nothing good ever comes from corporate America. On PBS's "Inside Washington" Friday, Shields told his fellow panelists, "If one waited for all the great social improvements of this country to come from CEOs, we would still have child labor at 8 cents an hour working at mills and looms and lathes" (video follows with…

Republican presidential candidates are meeting too many businessmen in their travels and too few unemployed folks or working-class wage earners, at least in the eyes of the Washington Post. Post staffer Philip Rucker lamented in his 23-paragraph August 25 story that in a recent "50-minute session" with voters in New Hampshire that former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.) -- who "is campaigning to be…

President Obama often tells us that his No. 1 focus is creating jobs, but his record makes you wonder what he might have done differently if his goal were to destroy jobs. Those who've examined Congressional Budget Office data have calculated that each job allegedly created by Obama's stimulus — and this is if you accept the fantastically generous guesstimates — cost between $225,000 and $600…

It often amazes that liberals in this country revere New York Times columnist Paul Krugman as being an expert economist. Take for example Friday's intellectually challenged piece entitled "Bernanke's Perry Problem" in which the Nobel laureate accused prominent Republicans such as the Texas governor and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan of preventing the Federal Reserve chairman from enacting…

In his coverage of the Department of Labor's weekly report on unemployment claims this morning, the Associated Press's Christopher Rugaber, after noting how initial claims filed by Communications Workers of America members who are on strike against Verizon (more on that later) inflated this week's and last week's results, wrote that "excluding the work stoppage, layoffs appear to be stabilizing…

Alas, we lost a most desirable candidate for the White House this week, one that is not charismatic, did not write (or have someone else write) his memoir, has displayed no jump shot in public and did not leave important documents on his desk while gallivanting around the country in campaign mode and heading for vacation on Martha's Vineyard. In the first instance, I am talking about…

To you or me this commercial is a pitch for a smartphone being sold by Verizon Wireless. To the Washington Post it may be the subtle racism of typecasting Asian actors into tech-wiz roles. Reporter Paul Farhi expended 26 paragraphs on how Asian actors are "shown as intellectuals, but some resent the stereotyping":

One of the greatest perversions of statism is the use of taxpayer money to push for ever more government spending and more government intervention. A casual listener to the far-left end of the FM dial, National Public Radio, will quickly conclude that NPR is one of America's leading offenders in this perversion. Let's just take one show, the August 22 evening newscast "All Things Considered…

To borrow from a certain president's former preacher, the "chickens are coming home to roost" in Social Security's disability program. It's nearly bankrupt, and set to run out of cash by 2017. In the Associated Press's writeup ("Social Security disability on verge of insolvency") of the situation occasioned by a congressional report repeating the obvious, Stephen Ohlemacher surprisingly and…

It's got to be the hat . . . In an entertaining interview with Tamron Hall on MSNBC this afternoon, Dem congresswoman Frederica Wilson of Florida cited "racism" first among causes of high black unemployment.  She also: called for a second stimulus; said now is not the time to criticize President Obama; took a sideways swipe at Maxine Waters; and asserted President Obama would be defeated for…

On Saturday's NBC Today, White House correspondent Kristen Welker fawned over President Obama's 10-day excursion to Martha's Vineyard, declaring: "...his first public outing...A bookstore in Vineyard Haven where he, Malia, and Sasha bought eight books." A crowd outside the store could be heard chanting: "Four more years! Four more years!" Welker noted how "no cameras were allowed when the…

"The FCC gave the coup de grace to the fairness doctrine Monday as the commission axed more than 80 media industry rules," Politico's Brooks Boliek reported this afternoon: