Economy

Reporting on the First Family vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, CBS reporter Chip Reid excitedly exclaimed: "One thing that’s going to give a huge boost to the economy is all the Obama paraphernalia...t-shirts, it’s baseball caps and magnets and coffee mugs and glasses. And restaurants are selling the ‘Baracko Taco.’ Bars are selling ‘Ale to the Chief.’ And all of it is selling like crazy."…

On Thursday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Ben Tracy reported on the ending of the problem-ridden Cash for Clunkers car buying program, but spun it this way: "Thanks to Cash for Clunkers, what could have been a dismal summer for car sales now has a Hollywood ending....But now, the wildly successful program that provided up to $4500 per clunker is being scrapped."Tracy visited a Los Angeles…

On Friday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Maggie Rodriguez interviewed commentator Dick Morris about his latest book critical of the Obama administration, Catastrophe. After reading the book’s full title, Rodriguez observed: "This title, though, Mr. Morris, can’t you see a lot of people dismissing it right off the bat as alarmist? It screams at you."In response, Morris pointed out the dire state of the…

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's recent Wall Street Journal op-ed may well have been "in bad taste", ABCNews.com would have its readers believe (see screen cap at right). Emily Friedman devoted an August 14 story mainly to liberal Whole Foods patrons huffing and puffing in disgust about Mackey's op-ed:Joshua has been taking the bus to his local Whole Foods in New York City every five days for the…

The White House's perpetual campaign site, er, home page, currently has rotating messages at the top left. Two of them relate to health care (yellow underlines are mine): The administration would be well-advised to hold back on the blather about "blatant falsehoods" and "misinformation" until their guy in charge stops disseminating them himself.Take Obama's claim that the surgeon's fee for a…

Who says the media are monolithic in their thinking? Yesterday we informed you of the media's serial misuse of an Obama-as-Hitler poster from esoteric left-winger Lyndon LaRouche's website, as outlets like NBC (on their Nightly News and Meet the Press), CNN and MSNBC all ascribed the poster to sentiments roiled up by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh specifically and conservatives generally.  We were…

Does the Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger moonlight as a Code Pink operative? There has to be something that explains what I'll call his Iraqnaphobia. Last month (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the AP reporter erroneously cited the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "major factor" explaining why "the deficit has widened." In a quick review of the related June 2009 Monthly…

Update below the fold.This is just a small entry, a blog-lette, if you will.  Because I happened to have seen this bit of broadcast flapdoodle live, which you now have before you at right (with the audio available here).On this morning's MSNBC News Live, co-host Angela Burt-Murray - the Editor-in-Chief of Essence magazine -uncorks this absolutely wild pitch to Congressman Elijah Cummings (D-Md):…

The media have repeatedly stated how "angry," "hostile" and "ugly" town hall meetings across America are becoming. They are of course largely ascribing the nastiness to conservatives voicing their opposition to (among other things) President Barack Obama and Congress' proposed government takeover of the health care system. The press has been particularly offended by the "extreme" use of…

Lou Dobbs - you can love him or hate, but sometimes he makes a point that will get your attention. The CNN host of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" gave his evaluation of MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann on his Aug. 11 radio show. According to Dobbs, Olbermann was a neophyte until MSNBC gave him a primetime show in 2003. "First, I want to share with you something that just, I mean shocks me," Dobbs…

Ben Bernanke's able use of monetary policy to steer the economy during the current financial crisis sometimes makes it easy to forget that Bernanke helped steer the ship into that crisis early in his term as Federal Reserve Chairman and a member of the Fed's Board of Governors. That's a point Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor) founder and CEO George Friedman made when asked the likelihood of…

Someone forgot to send the CNN health care kool-aid over to the office of Fortune editor at large Shawn Tully in the days leading up to July 24. Tully in turn forgot to toot his own horn, and ObamaCare opponents forgot to take a peek inside what is normally enemy lines to find it. In a must-read special report at affiliate CNNMoney.com, Tully lays bare Barack Obama's core claim, while…

It's no longer just enough to educate people about making healthy decision. You now have to influence them psychologically to effect true change according to CNBC's Jim Cramer. Cramer, during his "Stop Trading" segment on CNBC's "Street Signs" on Aug. 10, suggested eating so-called unhealthy food be demonized, similar to how the tobacco industry has been - through a publicity campaign that even…

State-controlled General Motors issued a supposedly comprehensive 8-K report to the Securities and Exchange Commission last Friday.If you only read the Associated Press's coverage of that document's release courtesy of reporter Tom Krisher, you would at least know that:The company doesn't expect sales to improve during the rest of the calendar year.That the $50 billion in post-bankruptcy funding…