Unemployment

Geez, can't anybody here play this game? During his visit to Holland, Michigan on Thursday, President Obama spoke with NBC's Chuck Todd. NBC aired the interview on the NBC Nightly News and The Today Show. (On Friday morning, NB's Geoffrey Dickens covered a separate aspect of that interview relating to the recess-appointed Donald Berwick.) In reporting on that interview, the Associated Press…

It's not a stretch to believe that the folks at the Associated Press would rather not report bad news from that communist workers' paradise known as Cuba. Just look at how the wire service has dealt with clearly significant news about the island nation's economy. Though the news, carried originally at the Miami Herald, is three months old, the AP as best I can tell finally got around to writing…

UPDATE, JULY 18: This post was based in an Associated Press's quote of a statement President Obama made to NBC News that "my policies ... got us out of this mess." Subsequent review of the video and transcript of that interview shows that the President really said "my policies ... are getting us out of this mess." I have prepared a follow-up post dealing with this matter and a separate…

UPDATE - 7/15, 7:00 PM: Politico makes a nearly identical argument. Ace tears it to shreads. Details below. The folks at ABC News are confused. Democrats are passing all this awesome legislation, they posit, so why are Americans acting so hostile and looking to hand Congress to the GOP? The key problems, ABC's Z. Byron Wolf deduces, are that Democrats simply have not embraced liberalism enough…

Liberal talk radio host Bill Press says President Obama's poll numbers are down because Americans are spoiled, impatient children that want everything solved yesterday.After describing to his listeners Tuesday all the fabulous accomplishments this president has made since taking office in January 2009, Press admonished the citizenry for giving the White House resident poor grades for his efforts…

On Saturday's CBS Evening News, anchor Jeff Glor decided what should be at the top of Congress's agenda as it returned from the July 4th recess: "Congress returns to Washington next week to face a big backlog of unfinished business, and topping the list is the future of unemployment benefits."In a report that followed, senior White House correspondent Bill Plante chided elected officials for…

While Washington lawmakers may be deadlocked over extending unemployment benefits, the liberal media are picking up the slack and helping unemployed individuals find more government help. In a July 13 story on CNNMoney.com, reporter Hibah Yousuf profiled two individuals who've been unemployed for over 99 weeks, the maximum number of weeks a person is eligible for unemployment benefits. Yousuf…

Channeling her inner Nancy Pelosi, Rachel Maddow on Sunday actually said extending unemployment benefits is "the most stimulative thing you can do" to help the ailing economy.Appearing on the panel discussion of NBC's "Meet the Press," Maddow boldly presented a liberal view of economics that only the current House Speaker would be proud of."I think that most Americans also, though, understand the…

George Will on Sunday accused Barack Obama of being an expert at selling snake oil.As the Roundtable segment of ABC's "This Week" began, host Jake Tapper asked Will if the President's claim Republicans "are peddling that same snake oil that they've been peddling now for years" will resonate with voters this November.Will marvelously responded, "No, because he is an expert on snake oil." "This is…

The time-temp clock down at the bus station here read 104 degrees this afternoon. We can't offer readers cooler weather, but perhaps they'll settle for some comic relief . . . On his MSNBC show this evening, Ed Schultz warned that unless the US pays out more in welfare, we risk becoming a "Third-World country."  Schultz said it twice, so apparently it wasn't a bizarre one-time brain camp. Ed's on…

Recovery summer just keeps getting better and better.  News outlets such as MSNBC.com announce "New jobless claims drop sharply."  Although the unadjusted data reflect an actual increase, the media are reporting a seasonally adjusted drop of 21,000 in jobless claims.  

This morning CNNMoney.com reports "Jobless claims slide in latest week."  The article starts:The number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance fell last week, according to a government report released Thursday.There were 454,000 initial jobless claims filed in the week ended July 3, down 21,000 from an upwardly revised 475,000 in the previous week, the Labor Department…

If you were African-American living in the era of President Barack Obama, would you hate the Fourth of July because it reminded you of slavery and economic inequality?You would if your name was Julianne Malveaux and you were the syndicated columnist that also serves as the president of Bennett College, the historically black women's school in Greensboro, North Carolina.So disdainful of America's…

“The side that talks about the need to rein in the federal government” is “not very rational,” yet “is winning” the debate over whether to pass another “stimulus” bill, Al Hunt regretted on Sunday’s This Week on ABC. The former Washington Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal, who’s Washington Editor for Bloomberg where he hosts Bloomberg TV’s Political Capital show, fretted over how “right…