FBN Anchor: Treasury’s Misuse of TARP ‘Outrageous’; a ‘Mess
So what exactly is the government doing with your money? Fox Business Network's Alexis Glick would like to know. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announced Nov. 12 he would be redirecting the $700 billion bailout to focus on propping up financial institutions instead of buying troubled mortgage assets, which was the original intent of the rescue plan. Glick, the host of FBN's "Money for…
DC Auto Bailout Ideas Involve US Equity Stakes, Turn into an Early Chr
Can I have permission to utter the S-word ("socialism")? Ken Thomas's Associated Press report today (link is dynamic, subject to change, and will probably be gone in a week) on auto industry bailout ideas emanating from Washington includes these items, all of which expand soc- ... soc- ... socialism: Legislation proposed by Barney Frank involves the government taking ownership stakes in the…
AP's Auto Bailout Coverage Nearly Ignores Excessive Labor Costs, Omits
Wednesday evening's dour Associated Press report by Tom Krisher and Ken Thomas on the proposed bailouts of General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler acted as if their fates will determine the viability of the entire US auto industry, and waited until the 15th paragraph to name the primary reason why the companies are where they are financially. Beyond that, the AP report did not mention that United Auto…
Friedman: Put 'Government Master' In Charge of Automakers
It's not like Barack Obama is a socialist or anything. It's just that Thomas Friedman wants him to put a "government master" in charge of the country's biggest manufacturing sector. Friedman made his modest proposal in his New York Times column of today, and expanded on it during a Morning Joe appearance. [H/t reader Tom.]Video also available here.I've got three easy reasons why Friedman's idea…
Post-Election News Business Layoffs Begin; Time and Current Lead the C
Well, they held out as long as the could. But now that the presidential election is over, layoffs in the news business have begun.Newsosaur predicted as much on the Sunday before the election, and pointed to a major reason:Public confidence in the mainstream media has been eroding for at least a decade. The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press reported that only 19% of respondents…
CNN’s Rick Sanchez: Does the GOP ‘Have to Be Anti-Abortion
During a segment on Tuesday’s Newsroom program, CNN anchor Rick Sanchez asked South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford if the Republican needed to abandon its social conservative principles in order to be successful again: "Do you have to be anti-abortion, because that's a very important, big topic in the South..?" Sanchez later asked the Republican governor, as well as talk show host Neal Boortz, "…
AP Poll Report Claims Confidence That Obama Will 'Fix' Economy; Actual
Now that Barack Obama has won the presidency, the poll cookers at the Associated Press have dutifully generated a barely-disguised press release for him.A report this afternoon on the results of an AP GfK Roper Public Affairs & Media Poll is headlined "Most in AP poll confident Obama will fix economy " at Yahoo!, Google (shorter report), and the wire service's home site (all are dynamic links…
Softball Spotlight: Lee Cowan, Still Infected
This is the debut video in an occasional series called "Softball Spotlight," which will showcase the softball questions that Barack Obama-loving reporters ask the future president. E-mail your tips to me: dglover-at-mediaresearch-dot-org. Or upload your own videos to Eyeblast.tv. NBC reporter Lee Cowan was quite infatuated with Democrat Barack Obama on the campaign trail.Cowan went so far as to…
British PM Warns Obama on Protectionism, WaPo Buries on Page A
British premier Gordon Brown, a former chancellor of the Exchequer -- analogous to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury -- delivered a thinly-veiled entreaty to President-elect Barack Obama to eschew trade protectionism in a November 10 speech, reports Kevin Sullivan of the Washington Post Foreign Service. Post editors buried Sullivan's 18-paragraph article on page A15: LONDON, Nov. 10 -- Prime…
WSJ Editorial: Paygo is Gone
Showing once again that its opinion pieces serve a dual purpose as a news source, a Monday Wall Street Journal editorial noted that Democrats have quietly dropped a central plank of their successful 2006 effort to gain a congressional majority (HT Hot Air):Late last week the leader of the House Blue Dog Coalition, Tennessee Democrat Jim Cooper, announced that with Barack Obama about to enter the…
Financial Times U.S. Editor Questions Wisdom of GM Bailout
With General Motors in serious trouble, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Harry Reid, D-Nev., are making a push for the government to intervene and rescue the auto giant as they did with AIG. However, Francesco Guerrera, U.S. editor for the Financial Times, isn't so sure a GM failure would be as bad as some are letting on. Guerrera appeared on CNBC's Nov. 10 "Power…
Obama-backing Financial Times Reporter Starting to Show Buyer's Remors
A Financial Times reporter who endorsed Obama but worried about his economic policies has taken a fresh look at the President-elect's post-election economic policy ideas, and doesn't like some of the big ticket items he sees. [See related blog entry by Jeff Poor here] In his November 10 op-ed "The choices that confront America," British journalist Clive Crook reserved some of his harshest…
Maddow Perpetuates Hoary Great Depression Myth
"Rachel Maddow is the smartest person on TV," proclaims The Advocate magazine in a cover story on the newly christened MSNBC pundit and Air America Radio host.That being the case, Maddow ought to know better than make some of the claims she does -- at least when it comes to politics, economics and American history.Most recent example: Maddow's interview on Nov. 5 with former Rhode Island Senator…
Media and Academia, Historical Illiterates du Jour
To show how foolishly hyperbolic the Old Media and the ignorati in our universities are, the Associated Press issued a dire report that breathlessly informed us all that Barack Obama is facing a "nation in crisis" and it's all "just like Lincoln and FDR." The AP even gets an historically illiterate university professor to sonorously declare how Obama is "one step away" from Lincoln and FDR. But…
