Oil & Gas Prices

As media predictably pound the table for Congress to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, an interesting analysis by Washington Post contributor Robert J. Samuelson should raise a caution flag.Higher taxes inhibit couples from having children which in other developed nations has led to longterm economic paralysis.In a western civilization that got drunk on entitlement programs in the previous…

Bad economic news just keeps piling up. Today, the news about jobless claims from the AP:Initial requests for jobless benefits rose last week to their highest level since April, a sign that hiring remains weak and some companies are still cutting workers.The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 479,000. Analysts had…

Editor's Note: For the list of NewsBusters T-shirt contest winners, skip to the end of this post. Click here to enter the contest.Last week we debuted the first installment of "Five for Five," a set of five top five lists comprising the best NewsBusters posts of our first five years. Last week we began on a light note with The Top Five Media Flubs Caught by NewsBusters.We continue on the lighter…

On June 24, 2010, I had a post on BigHollywood that examined Robert Redford’s asinine statements about the Gulf Oil Spill. From his support of a drilling moratorium to the fact that he literally blamed the spill on Dick Cheney to the way he expected George W. Bush to respond instantly to Katrina, while making excuses for President Obama’s slow response to the BP disaster, his words were…

Jon Stewart on Monday asked David Axelrod a truly extraordinary question: has this government proven itself competent enough to regulate industry?Speaking to President Obama's senior advisor on "The Daily Show," the Comedy Central star was in the middle of a rather interesting discussion when he surprisingly said, "It's clear that this administration believes that government can have a stronger…

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Cynthia Tucker believes Americans are the enemy of the nation moving in a new energy direction because of what she called our addiction to oil.As the discussion on this weekend's "The Chris Matthews Show" moved to why President Obama hasn't attacked energy policy much like Eisenhower did the space program, Tucker said, "One of the differences between the '50's…

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) and MSNBC anchor Dylan Ratigan on June 17 joined forces to lambaste "Morning Joe" co-host Joe Scarborough for continuing to defend President Barack Obama's handling of the BP oil spill.Scarborough presented a litany of arguments in Obama's defense, but Giuliani and Ratigan countered with specific examples of the president's failed leadership.…

Plenty of prominent media figures were upset with President Obama over his substandard address to the nation last night (full text). While most are distraught, none seem to be doing what should be the essential journalistic task of the day: pointing out all of the factual misstatements the president made.So, in absence of a serious attempt at fact-checking from the legacy media, let us undertake…

"Obama Chickens Out on Energy," a disgusted Ben Adler argued to Newsweek's The Gaggle blog readers this morning.Adler's chief complaint with last night's Oval Office address: Obama didn't call for massive tax hikes to push Americans to make more politically correct spending choices.The Newsweek writer -- formerly a self-styled "propagandist" for the liberal Center for American Progress -- avoided…

Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann isn't exactly known for her reticence on the news of the day. And when it comes to the White House's handling of the BP oil spill disaster, Bachmann had some harsh words for President Barack Obama. Speaking at the June 25 Bloggers Briefing at the Heritage Foundation, Bachmann pointed out how she thought it was peculiar that all the comments coming out…

With the federal government - both on Capitol Hill and in the White House - beginning to take investigative and punitive action against BP (NYSE:BP), the future of the company, at least in the United States, is in peril. On CNBC's June 14 "The Kudlow Report," John Kilduff, a CNBC contributor and the vice president of MF Global was asked by host Larry Kudlow about a potential debarment from…

Chris Matthews on Friday got himself marvelously smacked down by a Louisiana Congressman.In an at times heated discussion about energy policy with Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Steve Scalise (R-La.), the "Hardball" host continually bashed the GOP."The smartest move for your party is to screw things up for the next couple of years, right through November, get the country completely…

Bill Maher on Friday compared Americans working for oil companies to the vermin creating and distributing child pornography.In the "New Rules" segment of his "Real Time" program, the HBO host concluded with a discussion about the "murderous, hateful" oil industry."You know, it's Washington gospel that jobs in the private sector are better than government jobs," said Maher."But oil jobs are…

Reports are surfacing that BP is finally considering a suspension of its shareholder's dividend, but what could have been done differently to avert the public relations nightmare BP is facing? Two CNBC hosts had some ideas about that, and about what could have happened if BP chose not to play ball. Jim Cramer and Erin Burnett shared their thoughts on the "Stop Trading" segment of "Street…