Stimulus

In one of the least needed reassurances in modern political history, President Obama's top political man David Plouffe, "told Democrats late last week that the White House would not suffer from overconfidence. 'What I don't want to suggest is that we're sitting around and thinking everything is great,' he said." With the White House's own economists predicting 9 percent or worse unemployment…

Earlier this evening (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I cited a few of very many examples where the press has not hesitated during the Obama years, and really since Barack Obama became the frontrunner for the Democratic Party's nomination in 2008, to engage in uncalled-for creativity to avoid calling a statement made a lie or an unlawful action illegal. One of the lastest: A Raleigh New &…

Bruce Siceloff at the Raleigh News & Observer had the task on Tuesday of writing up the results of his newspaper's follow-up investigation into the safety of bridges in the Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina area after Barack Obama's visit there last week. In a speech there, the President asserted that "In North Carolina alone, there are 153 structurally deficient bridges that need to be…

New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes seemed to like President Obama’s new combative pose over his new big-spending, tax-hiking “stimulus” proposal. Her lead story Tuesday, “Obama Confirms New Hard Stand With Debt Relief,” framed the political battle as a personal conflict as a disrespected president betrayed by House Speaker John Boehner once too often. With a scrappy unveiling…

Let's note the likely reason why what Julia Seymour observed earlier today is the case -- namely, that network news reports have taken to calling the Solyndra situation an "embarrassment." The use of that term probably dates back to September 16, which is as far as I can tell the first time the Associated Press filed a beyond-perfunctory report about now-bankrupt Solyndra, the beneficiary of…

So I figure that I need to catch up on the LightSquared saga. This is the company which, as Fox News reported on Thursday (the URL date is September 15, though the time stamp is the next day) is building "a nationwide, next-generation, 4G phone network." The problem is, as Fox further noted, that there are concerns that "many, including (General William) Shelton, think (the network) would…

Part 1 on the Associated Press's September 16 evening story ("Obama admin reworked Solyndra loan to favor donor"; saved here at my web host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) by Matthew Daly and Jack Gillum criticized the reporters and the wire service for making it appear as if all the findings in the story were the result of original work. Two other paragraphs in the…

The public learned on September 3 from William McQuillen at Bloomberg (possibly earlier elsewhere) that now-bankrupt Soyndra's private investors restructured the company's finances in January by lending the company "$75 million." As a condition of doing so, they convinced the government to give the new loan senior status over all other creditors. Now taxpayers face a likely loss of hundreds of…

CNN's American Morning brought on liberal academic Jeffrey Sachs to analyze Speaker Boehner's jobs plan Friday. Instead of hosting a conservative critic of President Obama the morning after he unveiled his jobs plan, the network actually interviewed the President's economic policy assistant. While Sachs went on-air and criticized the Republican plan as inherently flawed, Obama's director of…

Appearing on Tuesday's The Ed Show, MSNBC political analyst Jonathan Alter urged both liberals - euphemistically calling them "progressives" - and non-liberals to support President Obama's economic plan and advised Obama to "fight, fight, fight," and argue that Republican opposition would mean they are "standing in the way of you getting a job." After host Ed Schultz asked Alter about the GOP…

CNN's business guru Ali Velshi argued that the stimulus did not fail, in a testy exchange Monday with CNN contributor Dana Loesch that followed President Obama's jobs plan speech. "It failed!" exclaimed Loesch when Velshi mentioned the stimulus, to which he excitedly replied that it did not fail. That set off a back-and-forth between the two pundits, where Velshi argued that unemployment…

CBS's Early Show on Monday devoted two segments and a news brief to the Obama "jobs bill," but in none of the three stories did they allow a single Republican to speak. Correspondent Bill Plante filed a report that was almost all Obama soundbites -- and to make the sound of a sales job complete, it even included a clip of a TV ad from the Democratic National Committee to help push the $447…

A day after the New York Times published an editorial praising President Obama for his "ambitious," "robust," and "far-reaching" jobs address the previous evening, the Gray Lady printed a front page story with the shocking headline, "Employers Say Jobs Plan Won’t Lead to Hiring Spur." The first few paragraphs were just as surprising:

America was in a post-stock market bubble bursting recession, had just suffered its worst mainland attack in its history, and New York Times columnist Tom Friedman believes ten years later all would have been made right if the President of the United States on September 12, 2001, had raised taxes. This is what Friedman, in his most recent blame all the troubles of the world on George W. Bush…