Unemployment

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…

Senate Democrats defeated a GOP filibuster of a $34 billion bill to extend unemployment benefits to 2.5 million out-of-work Americans on July 20, after Obama blasted the Republicans for blocking the bill. Obama tried to cast Republicans in a hypocritical and callous light with his Rose Garden speech June 19: "The same people who didn't have any problem spending hundreds of billions of…

The Obama administration’s policies in steering the auto bailout drove unemployment up, according to an audit by the Office of Special Inspector General for the Troubled Assets Relief Program (SIGTARP).   “At a time when the country was experiencing the worst economic downturn in generations and the government was asking its taxpayers to support a $787 billion stimulus package designed…

Good Morning America's Claire Shipman on Tuesday delivered a one-sided report on unemployment benefits and the fact that they end after 99 weeks. Reporting on those who have reached the limit, the so-called "99ers," she asserted, "...There's no hope in sight right now." Shipman featured three clips of those who are at the cap and one of Democrat Debbie Stabenow, who is advocating for an extension…

After the network pushed Congress for weeks to extend unemployment benefits, CBS's Early Show cheered the expected passage of the legislation on Tuesday. Co-host Harry Smith noted how Democrats "have enough votes to break a GOP filibuster" and White House correspondent Chip Reid later added: "Democrats appear to have won a major battle in the long fight to extend unemployment benefits."Reid…

The New York Times today touted two polls that supposedly demonstrate support for the Democratic position on unemployment benefits. But a further examination of the poll questions reveals that their findings were inaccurate; the questions misrepresented the issues at play, and the Republican position on the matter."Two national polls published last week suggest that most Americans are on […