Along with playing dumb on the rhetoric of Rep. Allen West in a recent speech (no one believes he was suggesting Democrats should actually leave America when he said they could take their message elsewhere), CNN’s Soledad O’Brien played fast and loose with food stamp usage increases under Bush versus Obama to put Rep. Allen West on the spot.

O’Brien falsely asserted that the number of food stamp recipients rose more under former President Bush than Obama. Not only are her numbers off, but according to The Daily Jobs update, she failed to acknowledge that the respective increases took place over eight years for Bush and only three years under Obama. That alone is hardly an accurate comparison. And it gets worse.

Yes, usage went up by 11 million in eight years of Bush, but O’Brien claims that under Obama, the number of recipients went up 13 million, from 33 to 46 million. That’s incorrect. Obama’s baseline was 28 million, and usage has risen by 18 million to 46 million in just 3 years. (more…)

A recent article by Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic entitled “Why Mitt’s Wealth Matters: It’s Policy, Not Envy” offers a meme that surely will be one line of Democrat attack against Mitt Romney should he happen to win the GOP nomination. Mr. Cohn’s article focuses on a speech that President Obama recently gave at the University of Michigan promoting his program for making college more affordable. What I found fascinating was Cohn’s argument echoing Obama’s not so subtle hint that because of Mitt Romney’s wealthy upbringing, and thus his never needing a student loan, he has no “standing,” for lack of a better term, to be targeting the student loan program for cuts as a part of his total package for reducing discretionary federal spending.

Says Cohn:

“Romney also benefited from the lottery of life – among other things, by being born into a family that could afford to provide him with the very best education at every step of the way. He seems unaware of that fact and the possibility that others, born into less fortunate circumstances, might need some of the government programs he’s promised to undermine.”

In other words, because of Romney’s wealth, he simply does not understand the needs of those who use government assistance. So what is Cohn’s argument, then? That only those who had a hardscrabble upbringing need apply for the presidency?

For a columnist who clearly is in the Democratic camp to offer such a notion is utter hypocrisy. In 2004, the “party of the little guy” offered up as their standard-bearer Senator John Kerry, who was at the time the richest man in Congress. Not only was Kerry fabulously wealthy (~$500+ million net worth), but he didn’t even earn it! He married it. Add to this Kerry’s coiffed and grinning side-kick John Edwards was a sleazy trial lawyer who amassed his own pile of tens of millions by bankrupting obstetricians using junk science, and you hardly have a representation of the 99%. So how come in 2004 the Democrats felt that immense wealth didn’t matter, yet now suddenly it is a legitimate issue? (more…)

The gauzy puffery that the Old Media slathers upon the Occupy Wall Street movement has helped keep most Americans in the dark about how nasty, how violent, how outrageous, and even how incredibly lacking in integrity this movement is. On the conservative blogs the truth is well known, of course, but the fact that few Americans seem to know how bad the OWSers are shows that as conservatives we are not effectively getting our message out there.

We're sure this Occupy Oakland protester isn't vandalizing this building, rather he accidentally fell into this window with a hammer. Repeatedly.

For the initial two years of its existence the Old Media spent its every waking moment destroying, maligning, and out right lying about the tea party movement. Even today you’ll see an occasional swipe at the tea partiers made by some lefty hater and the Old Media is happy to “report” the slander, naturally.

You might remember when Obama operative Anna Park tried to start a counter movement that she prosaically called “the Coffee Party” during the heyday of the tea party. You may also recall that those Old Media mavens, while daily lying and lambasting the tea partiers, fell all over themselves to play up the silly and quickly failed and forgotten “Coffee Party” effort.

Similarly, when the Occupiers hit the scene, the Old Media went into paroxysms of ecstasy over the whole thing. Even today, after conservatives have so effortlessly ripped away the veneer from the absurdity and essential anti-Americanness of the OWSers, the Old Media is still slathering OWS with unearned and illicit praise.

Most Americans are unaware that real communists and socialists and other anti-American groups form the core of OWS. Few Americans understand that these people are drug addicts and criminals that have indulged every imaginable crime at these events. From property destruction to child abandonment to rape to gun crimes, just about every crime imaginable from small to large have been committed at these events. People have even died at these things!

(more…)

As reported by Big Government:

Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), who was the subject of allegations of congressional insider trading, has indicated that he will not seek to extend his term as chair of the House Financial Services Committee after 2012.

Progressive media has fought hard against the story of insider trading, first broken by Big Peace Editor Peter Schweizer with his book Throw Them All Out. Leftist media attempted to discredit the sources and blow off the story, but after President Obama mentioned it in his State of the Union Address, the tactic was turned on its ear.

Earlier this week Joel Pollak discussed how the Huffington Post issued a mea culpa after working hard to encourage dismissal of the story:

Give Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post credit: it takes courage to change one’s mind, and to admit an earlier mistake.

Grim has written that he was wrong to dismiss a November 2011 report by 60 Minutes (based on Breitbart editor Peter Schweitzer’s book, Throw Them All Out) on insider trading in Congress:

At the time, I wrongly reported that 60 Minutes’ poor choice of targets for its report, and its clumsy attempt to connect specific trading to specific legislative action, set momentum for the bill back. Instead, in fact, the report propelled the legislation forward.

Grim had initially reported that the 60 Minutes report “falls short.”

What changed?

Much of the left and the left media–including the Huffington Post, Politico, and Media Matters for America–dismissed the issue of insider trading and tried to discredit both the allegations and their source. Now that Obama has taken up the legislation–with its sponsor, Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) obtaining Obama’s explicit commitment to make Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid move it through the Senate–the left is scrambling to catch up.

(more…)

Today, on Fox News Channel’s The Five, liberal panelist Bob Beckel praised President Barack Obama’s efforts at job creation: “One good sign of the economy is there are more manufacturing jobs created in the last two years than the last eight,” he said.

Beckel did acknowledge that American manufacturing was still in a bad state, and lamented that the manufacturing sector “has been bleeding jobs because corporations are going to find cheap labor overseas.”

His conservative colleague, Republican strategist Andrea Tantaros, interjected: “So cut the corporate tax.” Fellow conservative Eric Bolling backed her up–”A hundred percent right, Andrea!”–and added that U.S. corporations pay the highest tax rates in the industrialized world, after Japan recently lowered its rate.

Beckel, on the defensive, retorted: “As much as Botswana?”

Tantaros and Bolling didn’t know what to say, and appeared to concede the point: “Botswana? Botswana is the bar? Botswana?” Tantaros protested. “That was a joke,” Beckel reassured her.

It must have been a joke–because, in fact, Botswana does have a far lower corporate tax rate than the U.S., which has helped propel Botswana to rapid and sustained economic growth. (more…)

Ahead of the opening of Congress and the renewed debt ceiling controversy, National Public Radio is attempting to frame the debate against Republicans by pushing hard on the issue of tax increases.

On today’s Morning Edition, NPR used reports from the ongoing national conference of mayors in Washington, D.C. to target Republicans by suggesting they were denying federal spending to needy cities, and that they were hypocrites for raising taxes in the cities that they govern.

In one news bulletin, NPR reported that mayors–both Democrats and Republicans–were critical of “ideologues” in “Congress” (i.e. the Republican-controlled House of Representatives) over spending cuts.

Steve Inskeep then caught up with Mick Cornett, who is mayor of Oklahoma City and President of the Republican Mayors and Local Officials (RMLO).

Cornett pointed out that much of the spending shortfall had to do with financial problems at the state government level, not in Congress (which has slowed the growth of spending but has not yet cut overall federal spending.

But Inskeep pressed further, pushing Cornett to explain why he, as mayor of Oklahoma City, had managed to raise sales taxes and extend those tax hikes in order to pay for public infrastructure. Cornett gave the reasonable answer that the Democratic Party and the media refuse to hear: the city had kept spending and debt under control, and had spent the money efficiently and transparently for the public benefit–precisely what the federal government, and many state governments, have failed to do. (more…)

I’m from Ozark country and it is against the law for any home south of Rolla to have a Twinkie-less pantry. Alright, so maybe not “against the law,” but I’ve yet to see a pantry without one. All my kin abided by this unspoken rule. Because of my history with the snack cake, I was dismayed, to say the least, when news hit that Hostess was trying to stave off bankruptcy. I was further dismayed that they sort of obfuscated the reason why.

From USA Today:

Hostess Brands is hoping to take a bite out of its high costs as it heads back into bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a decade.

Hostess has enough cash to keep stores stocked with its Ding Dongs, Ho Hos and other snacks for now. But longer term, the 87-year-old company has a bigger problem: health-conscious Americans favor yogurt and energy bars over the dessert cakes and white bread they devoured 30 years ago.

Last year, 36% of Americans ate white bread in their homes, down from 54% in 2000, according to NPD Group. Meanwhile, about 54% ate wheat bread, up from 43% in 2000.

Consumption of healthy snacks is growing, too. About 32% of Americans ate yogurt at least once in two weeks in 2011, for instance, up from 18% in 2000.

I’m sorry, but I call BS.

You’re Hostess. It’s not difficult to sell creme-filled heaven snacks and America isn’t exactly eating healthier. If anything, America is eating leaner because the price of everything has increased eleventy-fold because the cost of energy is passed to us, the consumers. Now for the truth: this is what Hostess cited as the real reason behind their move against bankruptcy.

(more…)

The Shell Game is in full swing.

Watch closely; the hands move quickly and it takes a sharp mind, quick eyes and cat-like instincts to keep up with all the movement going on right in front of us.

Much has been written and will still be written about the way the media is covering the Republican candidates, but while that is going on, Barack Obama is destroying the US military and trashing our Constitution … and who knows what else?

The media has eyes wide shut and can only tell us Mitt Romney is unacceptable and Rick Santorum is un-electable. But skip that for now; there are actually much larger issues.

While the world gets more dangerous under his watch, Obama is cutting defense spending by half a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Oh, the Activist Old Media may give it a passing mention and may even show Obama’s soundbites while saying he is acting in ours, and the worlds, best interest, but if you blink you will miss where the shell is hidden. Obama is now officially more dangerous than Jimmy Carter, and Carter gave us the first “Arab Spring.” (more…)

Here’s a new way to try and hip-up the boring, ages-old, left-wing idea of tax hikes: link it to reality TV star Kim Kardashian. That is just what ABC News tried to do on the Wednesday, January 4th edition of ABC “World News Tonight” when the venerable news program helped advertise an effort by a small group headed by a former Democrat operative that wants to hike California’s income taxes. It is a two-pronged approach of hitching a big government, big spending, high tax agenda to the TV reality show star in order to drag younger people into the left’s class warfare game.

ABC highlighted a California Millionaires Tax policy recommendation from a group called Courage Campaign. The group is headed by Rick Jacobs who is the former head of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign in California, a Huffington Post writer, and leader of this admittedly “progressive” group.

ABC reported that the “liberal group” (and kudos to ABC for actually identifying them as a liberal group for a change) is upset that Kim Kardashian, who made some $12 million in 2011, only paid one percent more than the average middle class wage in the Golden State.

Here is what the extremist high-tax group says on it’s website about this:

Kim Kardashian made more than $12 million in 2010, but she only paid 1% more in taxes than a middle-class Californian. That’s not OK, especially when budget cuts are decimating schools and critical programs for children, the elderly, and the disabled. It’s exactly why Courage Campaign and two dozen other organizations are putting the Millionaires Tax of 2012 on the ballot.

Wow, that tiny, little one percent suuuure seems small, right? But let’s look at the actual payment, shall we? Kardashian paid a tax rate of 10.3 percent and 10.3 percent of twelve million is $1,236,000! And those middle-class folks that paid one percent less at 9.3 percent? Well if the average income in California is $47.000, then they paid only $4,371. Why aren’t these middle-class louts paying their fair share? (That’s called sarcasm, by the way.)

Now, it’s not that I care at all for Kim and her brood — I never watch so-called reality TV and have never seen her show — but this is all really just class warfare. After all, let’s look at the tact here: Instead of actually talking about what Kardashian pays, this ABC flogged extremist group focuses on that “one percent” as if that makes her tax remittance tiny. They mislead the public by purposefully avoiding any mention of the amount she actually paid.

Seriously, the fact is we could out right confiscate the millions made by the Kardashinas of this country and it wouldn’t make a dent in the hole of trillions of dollars that Democrats have dug for us.

But there is one last thing to ask about this ABC report: I’m just wondering, but has ABC ever highlighted the tax policy idea of some small tea party group that made a video to sell its plan to the people? Why does this tiny, left-wing group in California rate any attention at all in a national news program?

Obviously the answer here is that ABC saw the possibility of exploiting Kardashian and enraging her young fan base in order to drive them to support a left-wing idea. It’s all about branding, you see. If the far left and ABC can leech off Kim Kardashian to sell their creaky old socialist policies, then that’s what they will do.

From Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid:

When Anita Dunn hasn’t been on CNN or MSNBC bashing the Republican presidential candidates and/or praising President Obama, she has been successfully lobbying for a Washington Post subsidiary by the name of Kaplan University.

You may remember Dunn as the Obama aide who once said communist mass murderer Mao and Mother Teresa were “two of my favorite political philosophers.” The Soros-funded Media Matters said she was taken out of context.

Dunn is now claiming that she is not a lobbyist, even though she works for a firm that does lobbying. Will the progressives defend this, too?

We have written in the past about Kaplan, which is the cash cow for the Post Company, whose newspaper has been losing money and readers. Steven Pearlstein of the Post wrote that Kaplan “has provided the handsome profits that have helped to cover this newspaper’s operating losses” and that “Although we in the Post newsroom have nothing to do with Kaplan, we’ve all benefited from its financial success.”

But that success came at the expense of students, including veterans, who got educated through Kaplan and found that some of their degrees were worthless.

After congressional investigations exposed abuses in the $30 billion for-profit education industry, Kaplan and other companies got very concerned that proposed regulations from the Obama Administration would potentially “cut off the huge flow of federal aid” to private sector colleges declared unfit to receive the money, The New York Times reported.

In the end, “after a ferocious response that administration officials called one of the most intense they had seen, the Education Department produced a much-weakened final plan that almost certainly will have far less impact as it goes into effect” this year.

Former Obama official Dunn played a key role in making sure the for-profit education companies will continue largely with business as usual.

Military columnist Tom Philpott, a former Coast Guardsman, has led the criticism of what he calls the “predatory for-profit schools” that “rob veterans of their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits.” He quotes Theodore (Ted) L. Daywalt, chief executive officer and president of VetJobs, an online job search firm for military veterans, as saying that he learned about the problem through working with disappointed vets who thought they had used their GI Bill to earn credible degrees only to learn they were “worthless.”

“The eighth for-profit company among the top 10 institutions getting GI Bill payments is Kaplan, owned by The Washington Post. Its Post-9/11 GI Bill payments climbed in 12 months from $17 million to $44 million,” noted Philpott. These are the payments that help pay the salaries of the liberal editorial writers and columnists at the Post newspaper.

In a sign that some news competition is in play among the big papers and that some criticism of the Obama Administration is still permitted in print, the Times noted the key role played by Dunn, “a close friend of President Obama and his former White House communications director.” She had “worked with” Kaplan, the paper said. “And politically well-connected investors, including Donald E. Graham, chief executive of the Washington Post Company, which owns Kaplan, and John Sperling, founder of the University of Phoenix and a longtime friend of the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, made impassioned appeals,” the paper added.

Dunn had left the Obama Administration to make money at SKDKnickerbocker (SKDK), which describes itself as “a nationally recognized strategic communications consulting firm.” This is what lobbying is called these days. Dunn’s work in the media is highlighted in her bio, where she is described as “a frequent guest on cable and network television, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 60 Minutes, Today, Meet the Press and many more.”

(more…)

Top ten lists at year’s end are always subjective, to be sure, but some lists seem rather obviously out of whack at first glance. Politico’s “Top 10 political blunders of 2011” is one of those lists that is glaring for what isn’t present as opposed to what is. And what isn’t seems to bespeak that Politico wanted to avoid focusing on Democrat failures in a year when there are so many Democrat failures.

Politico bills this list as one of the “worst political strategic decisions” of 2011. Strangely enough, this list contains fully seven GOP “blunders” yet only three Democrat goofs. Some of the GOP blunders are also questionable for any top ten list considering what is missing from the thing.

First we need a rundown on what is on this list, and the order in which Politico places them.

• Obama pivots to deficits
• Republicans vote on the Ryan budget
• Tim Pawlenty bets it all on Ames
• Mitt Romney hides
• Rick Perry debates
• Jon Huntsman returns from China
• Mr. Daley goes to Washington
• Mitch and Haley stay home
• Dems pick Charlotte
• John Kasich pushes S.B. 5

Isn’t it fascinating that some of these “top blunders” did not actually result in a major reversal of great import of some type or another? Take the Jon Huntsman point, for instance. Jon Huntsman is not consequential and his decision to enter the GOP primary race instead of staying in China is not going to make much difference to anyone, anywhere. The Mitch Daniels point is also specious for such a list as Daniel’s decision to sit out 2012 did not necessarily end his career. Further the blunder of Democrats picking Charlotte, North Carolina, while certainly a messy proposition fraught with mistakes, is hardly any kind of end of the world goof, is it?

Now let’s talk about what is not on that list. Solyndra is not on that list. How can this be? This is a political blunder of epic proportions. Even the left-wing Washington Post is saying that the decision supposedly based on science and good economics was instead “infused with politics at every level.” Millions of tax dollars were thrown away during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression at a failing company just to suit Obama’s desire to tout his fantasy of “green jobs.”

If you don’t want to pick Solyndra, why you can reach for the debacle of Fast And Furious for inclusion on such a list. Here we have a program that was supposed to track guns used by Mexican narco-terrorists so that these evil cretins could be ferreted out deep in Mexico. Instead, thousands of American guns sold to these criminals right here in America were lost in the Mexican interior and then were turned to kill hundreds of Mexicans and perhaps two U.S. law enforcement officers. Then, making matters worse, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder — an Obama appointee — has lied repeatedly about what he knew about the program and when he knew it. Now over 90 government officials are calling for Holder’s resignation. If this isn’t a major political blunder, what is? This has made Eric Holder an embattled Attorney General at the least, yet, it merits no spot on this top ten blunder list.

(more…)

Here we go with dog whistle again.

The Nation’s Lizzy Ratner surmises that it’s racist to acknowledge that a record number of Americans are on the government dole.

The deep racism at the heart of conservative food stamp critiques offers at least one clue as to why the Obama administration has been unable or unwilling to champion SNAP as a valuable recession antidote: as the nation’s first African-American president, Obama is vulnerable to racist innuendo, which his opponents are only too happy to exploit. Just two months after Gingrich made his “food stamp president” comment, another would-be president, Rick Santorum, picked up the theme, accusing Obama, absurdly, of “pushing more people on food stamps.”

Lloyd Marcus illustration

Is the below “deep racism?”

The CBO predicted that the US economy will be unsustainable by 2037 on its current path.

The IMF declared two weeks ago that the age of America will end in a decade.

One in six Americans now receive government help. USA Today says more Americans are receiving federal aid than ever. Investors’ Insight says more Americans than ever before are on the government dole.

Lastly, according to our own government statistics, more white Americans receive federal aid than blackAmericans, shattering the stereotype that led Walsh to immediately think “black people” when she heard the words “food stamps.”

Did Ratner bother to actually research welfare statistics before assuming that the critics were “racist” because she stereotypically believes that the majority of welfare recipients are black? Because the majority of welfare recipients are white.

So which is actually racist?

a) Criticizing dependance upon government for personal sustainability or;

b) assuming that all those who are dependent upon government are black?

This is a trend with progressives, this prejudiced association of welfare and black Americans.

(more…)

What a glorious one-liner:

“You are a pyromaniac in a field of straw men.”

It’s Will vs Reich.

Newsbusters has the transcript [bold my emphasis]:

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Can government, should government do what the congressman is doing and allow upward mobility, which stalled?

GEORGE WILL: Big government inevitably exacerbates the problem of inequality. Big government inevitably is a servant of the strong. I’ll give you two examples. The tax code has been changed 4,500 times in the last decade. Every one of those times at the service of a group strong enough and attentive enough and wealthy enough to hire a Washington lawyer to represent them to game the tax code.

The welfare state exists to transfer wealth basically from the working young and retired elderly — working young and middle aged to the retired elderly. The elderly are, according to the CBO study, the net worth of a family of a household on average, household headed by someone 65 years old or older is 47 times larger than that of the net worth of a household of someone 35 or younger. That’s a record, and has doubled in the last five years. Big government is responsive to big, muscular interest groups.

ROBERT REICH: Well, I — let’s just be clear about the facts. I mean, right now, the top 1 percent is claiming in terms of their pay, a larger share of total income than has been at any time since before the Great Depression. And their tax rates — and their tax rates are lower than they have been in 30 years.

You look at that period. I mean, George, you say that, you know, big — rich people and big corporations have undue influence. Yes, I agree with you. But the answer is not to shrink government and not even to have government attempt to invest in education, in job training and all of the ways in which we traditionally have generated upward mobility. The answer is to get money out of politics, to make sure that those who are at the top reaches, that is both individuals and corporations, don’t have the untoward influence they now have.

One final point. In the first three decades after the second world war, we had in this country much more of an equal distribution of the fruits of economic growth. And yet what happened? It turned out that in those days, the economy grew faster than it has grown since. There was, under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, whom nobody accused of being a socialist, a marginal tax rate on the top of 91 percent. I’m not advocating we go back to 91 percent. I’m just saying that for conservatives to say that we cannot tax the wealthy, when all of the nation’s wealth and income, virtually speaking, is at the top, to invest in people and education and training and everything else we need to invest, it’s absurd on its face.

WILL: You are a pyromaniac in a field of strawmen. No one is arguing against government investing in education. That’s not –

CONGRESSMAN BARNEY FRANK (D-MASSACHUSETTS): Wrong. You guys are.

CONGRESSMAN PAUL RYAN (R-WISCONSIN): No, we’re not.

WILL: No, we’re not.

FRANK: I’ll make the point.

WILL: Look, I’m not attacking the elderly. I am elderly.

Reich ignores six decades of tax receipts showing how the “one percent” pay an egregiously progressive amount year after year. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay only a consumption tax, noting on income (further highlighting the need for a flat tax or simple graduated consumption tax to replace our burdensome, economy-killing Rube Goldberg-type system). Furthermore, when rates are cut, revenues increase (see the 1920s, 60s under Kennedy, and 80s). There is a great chance to multiply resources via investment and employment as opposed to the Marxist notion Reich supports: a game of cups, aka wealth redistribution.

Here’s a simple question: if wealth redistribution works so well, then why are record numbers of Russians falling into poverty? Why is China moving (albeit slowly) to a more capitalist-based economic system to combat their high levels of poverty? China arbitrarily defines its own level of poverty because of the UN average was used their poverty numbers would double.

(more…)

Recently, the U.S Census Bureau released a report that creates a new designation of “low income” in order to “better reflect the distribution of poverty in the US.”  The Associated Press ran with a headline, “Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income,” and scores of other media outlets followed suit with equally dire ledes.  In NJ, one outlet reported, “Census: Nearly half of Americans live in poverty,” while Russia Today reported that “Half of America is officially poor“:

“While it’s no surprise that nearly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, new statistics from the US Census show that almost 100 million others are counted as low-income citizens, making half of the population of America officially poor.”

But analysts at the U.S. Census Bureau district office in Los Angeles are reporting today that perhaps journalists misunderstood. and over 300 online news reports simply got the story wrong.

KNBC / NBC in Los Angeles reports:

(more…)

The Left’s propagandists are constantly trying to convince us that there’s no inherent media bias. One of my fellow bloggers at TheRightSphere.com, Brock Boehlert, provides a perfect counter to the liberal noise-machine’s disconnected-from-reality talking point:

Take a look at these headlines:

The President’s Jobless Recovery
Frustrated Job Seekers Cause Jobless Rate To Drop
Economy Adds Few New Jobs
Low Jobless Rate Reflects Lost Hope
US Jobless Rate Drops But For Wrong Reasons

Recent headlines regarding the drop in the unemployment rate from 9% to 8.6% right?

Wrong.

Wrong, indeed. Those headlines are from 2004 when then President Bush was gearing up for re-election and the unemployment rate had dropped to 5.7%. How many millions of Americans would be jumping for joy at that unemployment rate right now? Yet, back then news outlets, including some allegedly unbiased sources like the Associated Press, were cranking out doom and gloom stories about the rate drop actually being bad news.

Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The facts back then were similar to the facts now. The unemployment rate had dropped because over 300,000 had just given up looking for work. Now take a look at some headlines from last week after the unemployment rate dropped from 9% to 8.7%:

Here are headlines from Friday’s job numbers:

Unemployment Rate Drops To 8.6% Raising Hopes
Jobless Rate Drop Could Boost Obama
Obama Gets Economic Indicator He Can Crow About
Good News On Job Front For Obama
Jobless Rate Lowest In 2.5 Years

See the difference? I am not one to go one about “the liberal media.” That would indicate the media as a whole has a sought after liberal agenda (and some of them do but they’re easy to spot). The problem is, most journalists have an inherent bias that affects their reporting. They just don’t realize it. It just comes out naturally. The majority of those who work in journalism are Democrats/liberals.

I’m not as generous as my TheRightSphere.com colleague. I happen to think a lot more journalists intentionally skew the news to push an agenda, but the overall point is accurate. The media is dominated by Leftists and their bias comes out naturally.

(more…)

“That government is best which governs least,” or so Henry David Thoreau believed, at least. Apparently though, Mr. Thoreau would have been at odds with today’s editorial board at the New York Times, for they managed to find a dark cloud amidst the silver lining of the improving November unemployment numbers that only true statists (and also those hopelessly afflicted by self-flagellating “white guilt” that is the hallmark of the left) could divine.

The Times points out that, although 120,000  jobs were created last month bringing national unemployed down by .4% overall, some 20,000 government jobs were sacrificed at the altar of increasing state, county and city budgetary woes. It was the largest drop for any sector of the economy.

To a leftist, for whom the state is ultimate arbiter of economic, moral and social policy, this represents a “troubling trend that’s been building for years.” The Times goes on to lament: “Those layoffs mean a lower quality of life when there are fewer teachers, pothole repair crews and nurses.” It’s said as though these decisions are made in a vacuum that has nothing to do with the shrinking revenue base unable to match increased spending — spending usually carried out by detached bureaucrats whose job it is to walk into their office each morning, snap open their briefcase and proceed to spend other people’s money. Yes, layoffs always hurt. I would rather have three cops walk my street than two. I’d rather have two firehouses than one within a mile of my home. As for teachers, that depends on who’s at the blackboard.

The problem for statists is, as my own Governor Christie will tell you, there are a finite amount of dollars available  to one crafting a budget. States, counties, and cities cannot print their own currency to keep the money flowing, and issuing bonds merely shifts the burden to the next generation while piling on even more debt making the inevitable day of reckoning that much more severe. The federal government, now drowning in $15 trillion of its own mismanaged debt, can no longer extend the lifeline that has served as a substitute for local fiscal discipline. As with other aspects of left-wing big government/low growth models now collapsing under the uncompromising weight of mathematics, what these employment figures show is that the great reset to where 2+2=4 again is now impacting the statehouse and courthouse as well as the White House. (more…)

On November 30, CNN’s T. J. Holmes gave us a great example of how the Old Media is soft peddling the law-breaking going on at the Occupy events in order to make these events seem far less dangerous and illicit than they are. Like many in the Old Media, Holmes seems desperate to give lawbreaking Occupiers as much cover as possible — a benefit they never offered the tea partiers.

In an interview with an L.A. city police commander about the clearing of Occupy Los Angeles, Holmes did his best to minimize the number of arrests of members of the Occupy protest. The actual number of arrests was 200, but Holmes repeatedly characterized that numbers as “dozens.”

Now, I don’t know about you but when I hear “dozens” I think of the number twenty-four. Being generous I might even say three dozen (a healthy 36) could be thought of as “dozens.” On the other hand, when someone tells me “200″ the word “dozens” doesn’t at all come to mind. I just don’t think of 18 dozen as “dozens.” I think of them as hundreds!

Of course, Holmes was desperate to make hundreds seem less imposing. So, to him, two hundred arrests became minimized to “dozens.”

It must be pointed out here that even after two years of tea party protests featuring millions of Americans and often seeing many thousands appearing at any given event never saw 200 arrests during the whole time! In fact, there weren’t even 100 arrests in two years with millions of protesters. Not even 50 or 25 arrests, for that matter.

This soft peddling of the Occupy-Whatevers, though, is of a piece with the penchant of the entire Old Media to ignore the lawbreaking going on at the Occupy events. The truth is simply being ignored by the media. A recent tally by John Nolte shows 364 serious incidents to date of criminal actions — one short of one for every day of the year — at the various Occupy events across the country. And this list doesn’t count the many thousands of local laws, ordinances, and permitting rules that have been flouted by these Occupy protests.

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One of the core beliefs of the Occupy movement – the idea of the 99% vs. the 1% — is not only laughable on its face but has been picked up and expanded on by lauded liberals like economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. There are a few different ways to judge the Occupy movement. You can look at the Who; the people in leadership positions for the “leaderless” movement  like Lisa Fithian or Muhammed Malik. You could examine the What; as of this writing, the 350 or so incidents of violence, sexual assault, and property destruction.

Paul Krugman, sporting a blue collar

Bring up either of these to an Occupy defender, however, and you’re sure to be met with the argument that these people and events are isolated incidents and not representative of the Occupy movement. It’s a desperate argument, the philosophical equivalent of the timeless epistemological question “How many facial hairs need to grow on a man before you can say he has a beard?” And just because no specific numeric answer is correct doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as a beard. Occupy passed the tipping point weeks ago, which is why even sympathetic mayors were forced to shut down the lawless tent cities nationwide. However, as easy as it is to criticize Occupy on the basis of its leadership and behavior, it’s more important to attack the “why” — the ideological foundation that the whole mess rests on. Occupy has a number of key ideas behind it that aren’t isolated, concepts that are clear and unique to the Occupy movement. One of those ideas is the “We Are The 99%” slogan and the corollary attack on “the 1%.” (more…)

You couldn’t pay me to go to journalism school, but I imagine they spend considerable time talking about the importance of headlines. Most readers, myself included, simply don’t read much past the headline unless they have a personal interest in a story… or are stuck in a doctor’s office. So, often, the headline is the story or, at least, the story the news outfit wants you to take away.

So, I was struck today to see different news agencies, within minutes of each other, reporting very conflicting news on the same set of facts. First the AP headline:

October durable goods orders fell 0.7 percent

Now, check out the Reuters headline for the very same report:

Durable goods orders ex-transportation up in October

Of course, the Reuters headline is no doubt completely true, but how is excluding a major sector of the economy remotely helpful to readers? Is Reuters now just going to report the bits of the news it likes and ignore the inconvenient bits. It reminds me of the classic Marion Barry line addressing rampant crime in DC:

Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

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“Disgusting,” said Brzezinski after viewing Gingrich’s remarks.

One of the “Morning Joe” panelists had this quip:

“the immorality of income inequality …”

“Income inequality” comes by way of free will. No one forced the students protesting to agree to student loans whose terms they could not meet; no one forced homeowners to agree to home loans they could not afford–the only lack of economic free will which has created any disparity is directly due to the economic policies of an administration whose strategy of shrinking the tax base while increasing the burden of revenue sans cutting entitlements is a no-win situation. But no one is “occupying” the space in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If you want to talk “income inequality” let’s talk about how none of the occupiers are protesting the Obama administration over seizing public capital to unfairly prop up failed energy companies oh, who also donated to Obama’s campaign. Coincidence, I’m sure.

Fascinating: the choice to be productive and successful is immoral yet this is not:

Coast Guard member spit on near Occupy Boston tents: MyFoxBOSTON.com

Redefining greed is a progressive strategy. It is the very definition of greed to expect someone else to provide you your way of life with their capital in which you had no hand producing.
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