Stimulus

UPDATE - 7/15, 7:00 PM: Politico makes a nearly identical argument. Ace tears it to shreads. Details below. The folks at ABC News are confused. Democrats are passing all this awesome legislation, they posit, so why are Americans acting so hostile and looking to hand Congress to the GOP? The key problems, ABC's Z. Byron Wolf deduces, are that Democrats simply have not embraced liberalism enough…

Liberal talk radio host Bill Press says President Obama's poll numbers are down because Americans are spoiled, impatient children that want everything solved yesterday.After describing to his listeners Tuesday all the fabulous accomplishments this president has made since taking office in January 2009, Press admonished the citizenry for giving the White House resident poor grades for his efforts…

While Washington lawmakers may be deadlocked over extending unemployment benefits, the liberal media are picking up the slack and helping unemployed individuals find more government help. In a July 13 story on CNNMoney.com, reporter Hibah Yousuf profiled two individuals who've been unemployed for over 99 weeks, the maximum number of weeks a person is eligible for unemployment benefits. Yousuf…

An outraged electorate has just handed Japan's ruling party its hat in elections for half of the seats in the upper house of that country's parliament in a direct reversal of election results from a year ago. Opposition parties made major gains. The results constitute a resounding rejection of a massive value-added tax increase proposed by a guy whose immediate predecessor of the same party…

Channeling her inner Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow on Sunday actually said extending unemployment benefits is "the most stimulative thing you can do" to help the ailing economy.Appearing on the panel discussion of NBC's "Meet the Press," Maddow boldly presented a liberal view of economics that only the current House Speaker would be proud of."I think that most Americans also, though, understand the…

George Will on Sunday accused Barack Obama of being an expert at selling snake oil.As the Roundtable segment of ABC's "This Week" began, host Jake Tapper asked Will if the President's claim Republicans "are peddling that same snake oil that they've been peddling now for years" will resonate with voters this November.Will marvelously responded, "No, because he is an expert on snake oil." "This is…

The Associated Press gave voice to a Repuiblican Congressman today to bemoan what he sees as "poisonous 'demagoguery'" from the usual suspects, including, by the AP's own account, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck.Rep. Bob Inglis, R-S.C., who lost in a primary for the GOP nomination last month, went so far as to claim that heated political rhetoric is "dividing the country into partisan camps that…

While some on the left side of the aisle in Congress are getting all starry-eyed about prospects of more federal stimulus spending, the first round of stimulus under President Barack Obama may have done even less to help the ailing economy than supporters claim. On MSNBC's July 9 broadcast of "The Daily Rundown," co-hosts Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie interviewed CNBC "Closing Bell" anchor…

For the second day in a row, liberal talk show host and MSNBC guest anchor Cenk Uygur pushed the outlandish notion that President Obama is a conservative. Filling in on July 7 for Dylan Ratigan on his 4 p.m. show, Uygur exclaimed, "I didn't realize we voted for a Republican president!"Uygur preceded this statement with a rant on how ridiculous it is for Obama to express concern about the ever-…

This morning CNNMoney.com reports "Jobless claims slide in latest week."  The article starts:The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance fell last week, according to a government report released Thursday.There were 454,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended July 3, down 21,000 from an upwardly revised 475,000 in the previous week, the Labor Department…

West coast viewers got to see a July 4 CBS Evening News on Sunday, and those who tuned in saw CBS's interim "report card" on Congress's performance so far. Under the headline of "unfinished business," correspondent Wyatt Andrews and his sole expert, Politico's Jonathan Allen, both fretted how Congress is now "paralyzed" due to a "growing fear of the deficit."Many Americans are probably wishing…

The June jobs report was released July 2 showing a tiny decline in the unemployment rate to 9.5 percent, but a depressing 125,000 overall non-farm payroll jobs lost. CNN's "American Morning" reacted with an appropriately downbeat report, but the onscreen chyron led with the better news -- showing the lower unemployment rate rather than the job losses. Christine Romans also pointed out that…

In the wake of a European debt crisis, the recent G-20 meeting in Toronto revealed the intention of many European nations to begin dramatically tightening their fiscal belts. The world leaders agreed to cut deficits in half by 2013 and "start to stabilize their debt-to-output ratios by 2016," according to Bloomberg Businessweek. That goal conflicted with President Barack Obama's wishes.…

It's hard to imagine an economist being provocative, but Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner, has managed to do so. In his June 28 New York Times op-ed, Krugman argued that since governments around the world aren't willing to double-down on Keynesian policies meant to stimulate the global economy, the United States and the rest of the world are facing a third depression. But on CNBC's June 28 "…