Unemployment

Want proof low taxes work? Just take a look at the state of New Hampshire, as MSNBC "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough astutely pointed out. On the Feb. 2 broadcast of his MSNBC program, Scarborough interviewed Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H. Shaheen's home state was hosting a jobs town hall put on by President Barack Obama and Scarborough used the occasion for a teachable moment. "Now, usually…

Historically, there are two kinds of White House reporters: those that confront officials with the strongest critique and demand a response (think ABC’s Sam Donaldson, who dogged Bill Clinton in the late 1990s just as he had Ronald Reagan in the 1980s); and those who see their job as simply repeating the White House spin of the day.Reporting this morning on the Obama administration’s push for…

On Saturday’s Newsroom, CNN’s Don Lemon deferentially took President Obama’s advice and interviewed a stimulus “skeptic” turned “believer,” whom the Democrat cited as an example of the success of the stimulus during his recent State of the Union address. Lemon talked up the stimulus and the Obama administration’s energy efficiency tax credit with his guest Alan Levin, whose company produces…

On Saturday, the Obama administration quietly scrapped the "created or saved" rubric for measuring the president's success in job creation. Covering the story, the Washington Post today also quietly noted the news, placing the story --entitled "Stimulus created 600,000 jobs at the end of 2009, White House says" -- on page A15. The Post's Ed O'Keefe wrote the 18-paragraph story (emphasis mine):

The White House continues to throw out random numbers in their quest to convince the public that their behemoth stimulus bill is saving jobs at a massive rate.  The confusion has even seeped into the President's biggest support group - the media. CNN recently announced how the stimulus plan funded nearly 600,000 jobs this past quarter.  In their article, which parrots the numbers provided by the…

Keith Olbermann should keep a calculator on hand during his broadcasts. If he'd had one, the liberal MSNBC host of "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" could have run the numbers on Jan. 27 following the State of the Union address. Olbermann was recapping President Obama's speech and told viewers: "Among those seated with the first lady in the visitor's gallery ... a man from Arizona whose company…

In an attempt to boost flagging approval ratings, President Barack Obama announced a series of initiatives aimed at helping out the middle class on Jan. 25, two days ahead of his State of the Union address. The networks, which have protected him from public outrage for months, praised the initiative. NBC heralded the move, giving Obama credit for "getting the message" Jan. 25. CBS's Katie Couric…

It was initially thought the election of President Barack Obama was just going to hit your pocketbook in the form of higher taxes. But if the past several days are any indication, the president has found another way to hit it - by attacking your stock portfolio. On CNBC's Jan. 25 "Mad Money," host Jim Cramer advised his viewers to be aware of this and to strategically position their stock…

Is the luster finally wearing off the love affair between the White House press corps and President Barack Obama? It is, if CBS White House correspondent Chip Reid's analysis of President Barack Obama's latest Wall Street proposals is anything to go by. Reid appeared on the Fox Business Network's Jan. 25 "Imus in the Morning" program and offered an update on the president's financial and…

It's amazing how Bernard Condon and Tim Paradis of the Associated Press managed to hang the same label on totally opposite political positions in their report on the situation in the stock market late this afternoon.According to the AP pair, Scott Brown's U.S. Senate win in Massachusetts was due to a "wave of populism," at the same time as President Obama is supposedly planning to use "populist…

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the recovery this week: The U.S. Department of Labor reported on Thursday that initial claims for unemployment benefits jumped "unexpectedly" by 36,000 to 482,000, when analysts had predicted a slight drop. What's more, it turns out that data reported in previous weeks was understated because of "administrative issues" relating to paperwork processing…

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has a brilliant solution for Barack Obama to improve his sagging poll numbers: spend more time blaming George W. Bush for the recession."The Obama administration’s troubles are the result not of excessive ambition, but of policy and political misjudgments," Krugman wrote Monday. "The stimulus was too small; policy toward the banks wasn’t tough enough; and Mr…

The Washington Post publicizing a report by the liberal Economic Policy Institute (EPI), written helpfully enough that the word "liberal" isn’t used, is usually a media-bias staple for economic gearheads. But Friday’s Post report by V. Dion Haynes might be seen by other Obama-helpers in the media as an unwelcome story. The headline: "U.S. unemployment rate for blacks projected to hit 25-year high…

The Federal Reserve of Minneapolis has posted a series of charts (HT Ed Morrissey at Hot Air) comparing the current recession -- as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, not as normal people define it, a point I'll get to later in this post -- to previous recessions dating back to the end of World War II. The charts definitely show how utterly wrong reporters like the Associated…