Unemployment

According to a Rasmussen Poll conducted last March, over 80 percent of likely U.S. voters see the economy as a “very important” issue going into this November.  A strong economy leads to a strong and prosperous country.  A good indicator of the strength of the economy is the number of jobs created.  Despite the national media’s attempt to spin the numbers, the jobs reports for the last two…

CNN's Fareed Zakaria asked a question this weekend guaranteed to raise some eyebrows not only on both sides of the aisle but also on both sides of the Atlantic. On the program bearing his name, Zakaria amazingly asked Sunday if the economic problems in Europe are caused by democracy and not austerity (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Let's grant that Associated Press reporter Mitch Weiss, in his dispatch Saturday on the headache Democratic National Convention host state North Carolina has become for the left, acknowledged by quoting someone else that "Nobody can sugarcoat the fact that we got problems here." That said, the AP reporter applied quite a bit of sweetener with generous pinches of distortion in several instances…

As Zero Hedge wrote this morning in response to today's initial unemployment claims report and the related press write-ups: "Same Trick Different Week." As has been so typical in analogous instances for the year or so I have been following the weekly claims numbers closely, the Associated Press (aka the Administration's Press), Reuters, and Bloomberg headlined a "dip," a "fall," and a "drop" in…

Last August, Politico revealed that the Obama campaign intended to make Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney "a sort of political Gordon Gekko" if he won the nomination. Right out of that playbook, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Monday compared Romney to the financial villain of the '80s movie classic "Wall Street" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Soledad O'Brien once again jumped to the defense of the Obama campaign, as she tried to argue on Monday that the economy is "trending" in the President's favor. She countered Romney aide Andrea Saul who hit Obama's record of net job loss while in office. "When you say 'hasn't created net jobs,' of course you are talking about there was so much job loss that even started to happen…

An openly gay adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney resigned last week, and the Obama-loving media interested in discussing anything but the poor economy jumped all over it. NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard discussed this with Don Lemon on CNN Newsroom Saturday (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It is more than a little odd that each of the three wire services identified in today's earlier post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), in reporting on yesterday's OMG-awful jobs report, somehow failed to mention something about the data presented. Specifically, at Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Associated Press (here and here), five reporters in four stories somehow avoided using two truly required…

To the extent that it was there at all, there was far too little emphasis in yesterday's wire service reporting on yesterday's OMG-awful jobs report (worse than most believe, as will be shown in a later post) was far less on those who continue to be affected -- like, say, the unemployed, under-employed and discouraged, who should be the object of such news stories -- and far too much…

Is MSNBC's Chris Matthews stupid, dishonest, or both? On Friday's Hardball, the host actually said of today's report from the Department of Labor, "The unemployment rate did drop to 8.1 percent, the lowest rate since President Obama took office" (video follows with transcribe highlights and commentary):

About 45,000 fewer jobs were added in April than economists expected, and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1 percent due to more than a half million people giving up the job search. CNN Money reacted with the headline “hiring fizzles.” University of Maryland Economist Peter Morici wrote in response the jobs report, “The economy added 115,000 jobs in April - much less than expected and not…

Well, we can all stop thinking about the presidential election, because Barack Obama's victory is assured. This morning, Paul Wiseman at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, virtually celebrated analysts' predictions that the unemployment rate will drop a whole 0.3% between now and Election Day to 7.9%. But in searching desperately for a precedent, he claimed that a public…

There's been a lot of bad economic news lately, but the folks at the Associated Press don't care. In their view - or at least in the opinion of those they surveyed - "[h]iring through the rest of 2012...will be strong enough to push the unemployment rate below 8 percent by Election Day" boosting "Obama's prospects in November":

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is doing a television tour for his book "End This Depression Now!" Charlie Rose interviewed him twice, once on CBS This Morning Monday, then that night for the full hour of Rose's PBS talk show. Krugman appeared on Bloomberg TV Tuesday debating Ron Paul, and the friendlier confines of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow show that night. Krugman's economic recovery plan…