Unemployment

As media make their case to the American people that the Bush tax cuts should expire, one of the strategies being employed is to claim that Republicans are refusing to "pay for" their extension.A perfect example of this tactic was seen on Sunday's "Meet the Press" when host David Gregory badgered House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Oh.) on this subject for over three minutes.After playing a…

For the media, "Mission Accomplished" represents everything that was wrong with the George W. Bush administration and its war policy. The image of Bush declaring unequivocal victory mere weeks after the invasion of Iraq has been ballyhooed as a visual representation of Bush's arrogance, naivete, even dishonesty (the media contrived most of this meme - more on that below).Will Barack Obama have a…

On August 3 ("U.S. To Train 3,000 Offshore IT Workers"), InformationWeek.com's Paul McDougall reported that the U.S. Agency for International Development is operating at cross purposes with the Obama administration's stated goal to keep high-tech jobs in the U.S. USAID has since attempted to do some backing and filling about the assistance it is providing in Sri Lanka, but its arguments may ring…

As media predictably pound the table for Congress to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, an interesting analysis by Washington Post contributor Robert J. Samuelson should raise a caution flag.Higher taxes inhibit couples from having children which in other developed nations has led to longterm economic paralysis.In a western civilization that got drunk on entitlement programs in the previous…

Christiane Amanpour elevated a liberal British journalist, with little U.S. television experience, to the This Week roundtable where she presumed the government must run the economy and distribute the economic pie while she took pot shots at how the efforts to control illegal immigration proves America’s descent into a “culture of hate.” Gillian Tett, U.S. Managing Editor of the London-based…

Despite unemployment sitting at 9.5 percent and over 3 million jobs lost since this President was inaugurated, Newsweek's Howard Fineman says the economic policies enacted by Barack Obama "were good ones and smart ones and saved the day."Chatting with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Friday's "Countdown," Fineman was nicely set up by the shill asking the questions."Does anyone -- can anyone actually…

CNN "Newsroom" anchor Kyra Phillips reported the "breaking news" about July's unemployment data just after 9 a.m. Aug. 6. Misreported would be more accurate. "We begin with the breaking news this morning on a broken economy. We have new evidence of just how feeble the recovery is and how many Americans have nothing to show for it," Phillips said. "The nation's unemployment rate has…

Bad economic news just keeps piling up. Today, the news about jobless claims from the AP:Initial requests for jobless benefits rose last week to their highest level since April, a sign that hiring remains weak and some companies are still cutting workers.The Labor Department said Thursday that new claims for unemployment insurance rose by 19,000 to a seasonally adjusted 479,000. Analysts had…

During the past week, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz had trouble acknowledging that allowing a tax cut to expire, in effect, is a tax increase, as he debated on the Ed Show the issue of whether the tax cuts passed during the Bush administration – due to expire at the end of this year – should be extended beyond 2010. On Tuesday’s show, even while noting that the top marginal rates would increase from 35 to…

So last week, in the Rose Garden, President Obama paraded out three jobless folks, using their plight to implore Congress to extend unemployment benefits. One of them was a delightful woman named Leslie Macko. Here’s what he said about her. “We need to pass it for Leslie Macko who lost her job at a fitness center last year and has been looking for work ever since because she eligible for…

Hey, it's Friday night. Time to kick back and enjoy some—unintentional—humor, courtesy Ed Schultz.Big Ed sees soup lines around the corner if we "continue to follow the Republicans" [sic].  His solution to stave off disaster?  The extension of unemployment benefits. . .  . "endlessly."Say Ed, are you aware that FDR's New Deal socialism failed to dent the Depression?

On June 24, 2010, I had a post on BigHollywood that examined Robert Redford’s asinine statements about the Gulf Oil Spill. From his support of a drilling moratorium to the fact that he literally blamed the spill on Dick Cheney to the way he expected George W. Bush to respond instantly to Katrina, while making excuses for President Obama’s slow response to the BP disaster, his words were…

On Thursday’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, host Behar seemed to suggest that seeing poor whites might make Republicans more compassionate toward the poor as she hosted filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi to talk about her upcoming HBO documentary on the homeless who live in Orange County, California. Behar asked Pelosi – daughter of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – if the reason she interviewed only whites for her…

It is rare that the network news media expose President Barack Obama's hypocrisy on any point, which is why Mark Knoller's CBS story on July 22 was so enlightening. Covering Obama's July 22 signing of a bill "restoring" jobless benefits to roughly 2.5 million Americans who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks, Knoller wrote that Obama "changes tune on paying for unemployment…