Unemployment

With almost exactly one month left till the election, the government reported Oct. 5 the unemployment rate plummeted to 7.8 percent in September. While media outlets like The New York Times called the number “unexpected good news for Obama,” both liberal and conservative economists were quick to tear it apart. The labor force jumped in one of the two government employment surveys – “the…

Apart from bias, which is obviously the bigger problem, the establishment press's tendency towards unforced errors in business news reporting has grown over the past several years. So when I received the following email from USA Today this morning (available here without subject line), I thought it surely must be mistaken. Well, the item I thought was a mistake wasn't one, while the one I…

From the Department of Damned if You Do, Damned If You Don't . . . The MSM delighted in raking Mitt Romney over its coals [solar cells?] for his 47% remarks.  So how do they react when Romney issues an ad saying that whereas both he and President Obama care about the poor, his plans will actually help them?  With scorn, of course. Check out the headline from today's Morning Score at…

He clearly doesn't suffer from a shortage of chutzpah. According to the Politico's Josh Gerstein, President Barack Obama was asked the following question by The View's Barabara Walters in a Monday appearance to be broadcast on Tuesday: "What would be so terrible if Mitt Romney were elected? Would it be disastrous for the country?" His response: "We can survive a lot. But the American people…

"When your guy left town, Dubya - who nobody asked him to come back by the way at the Republican convention - unemployment was well past ten percent and skyrocketing." So falsely said MSNBC's Chris Matthews to conservative talk radio host Roger Hedgecock on HBO's Real Time Friday (video follows with commentary):

Both the headline and opening sentence at Christopher Rugaber's Associated Press report on today's unemployment claims release from the Department of Labor tell readers that initial unemployment claims fell by 3,000 during the most recent week. Though Rugaber acknowledged that last week's initial figure was revised up, he didn't say by how much (3,000, from 382K to 385K), and of course didn't…

"Compared to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, Obama has been more fiscally conservative than any other president in recent history, with the exception of President Bill Clinton." Despite over $5 trillion in new debt created by the 44th president, so hysterically wrote Barbra Streisand at the Huffington Post Tuesday.

Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan made a statement on Fox News's On the Record Tuesday that is guaranteed to raise eyebrows on both sides of the aisle. Speaking with host Greta Van Susteren about how Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's remarks concerning the 47 percent of the nation that don't pay federal income taxes were spot on, Buchanan called Barack Obama a "Fabian Socialist"…

NBC Tonight Show host Jay Leno made a joke Monday about President Obama and the economy that would be funny if it didn't hit so close to home. Talking about how the unemployment rate only fell last month because of the number of people that dropped out of the labor force, Leno quipped that the President is "encouraging more Americans to give up looking for work so the numbers will come down a…

Tonight, Barack Obama will make his seventh appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, his second as Commander-in-Chief. This is a man who can’t make room in his busy campaign fundraising schedule for critical intelligence briefings, or his jobs council, or even a sit-down with the Prime Minister of Israel while Iran’s uranium centrifuges are whizzing away toward Armageddon. Instead…

In her writeup covering the Census Bureau's latest release of income and poverty data, Hope Yen at the Associated Press quoted University of Michigan economist Sheldon Danziger, who specializes in "Applied Policy, Labor Markets, Poverty and Social Welfare," describing the news that the official poverty rate was statistically unchanged, moving from 15.1% of all Americans to 15.0%, as "good news…

Former Democratic governor of Pennsylvania turned MSNBC contributor Ed Rendell said something on Tuesday's Hardball that is going to make a lot of jaws drop. "Even people who lost their jobs are better off" under Obama (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Poll cooking season is officially in full swing. The headline today at the Washington Post reads: "Among likely voters, Obama-Romney close." Dan Balz and Jon Cohen report that in a September 7-9 poll, "the (presidential) race remains close among likely voters, with Obama at 49 percent and Romney at 48 percent, virtually unchanged from a poll taken just before the conventions." Ah, but Obama…

"The Romney campaign slogan should be the title of Paul Krugman’s book which is 'End This Depression Now' because these are depression level [employment] numbers. And, if the Republican Party cannot win in this environment, it has to get out of politics and find another business." So said George Will on ABC's This Week Sunday (video follows with transcript and commentary):