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…)

Buried in the middle of this article posted at ABC’s The Note, you will find, in my humble opinion, the real news in this story, and it’s likely buried because it’s horrible, terrible, not-so-very good news for the MSM’s Precious One:

CNN/ORC poll asked voters who they saw as best able to “get the economy moving.” Just 40 percent chose Obama, while 53 percent picked Romney.

This is major news for two reasons. First, Barack Obama sits at a lowly 40% on what is going to be the most important question of this campaign. Secondly, Mitt Romney, the GOP frontrunner, is polling over 50% on this question. 

What else is 2012 going to be about? I know the MSM is going to try and sell what’s left of their souls to make it about anything else, but good luck with that.

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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:

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On NPR’s Morning Edition recently, senior news analyst Cokie Roberts told host Renee Montagne that President Barack Obama had sent “signals” to the debt supercommittee in support of a deal–even though he was on his way out of the country at a critical time.

For weeks, Democrats had predicted–and hoped–that the supercommittee would fail, so that President Obama could continue his attempt to win a second term by running a Harry Truman-style campaign against a “do-nothing Congress” (even though his party controls the upper chamber).

Roberts suggested that a deal might be possible, because just as Democrats were starting to realize their scare tactics on Medicare and entitlement programs could backfire, Republicans who want the economy to fail are starting to worry that they would bear the blame (audio at 2:22):

Republicans who might have wanted to keep the economy bad to skewer the Democrats are now worried it could affect them and it could affect some of their key constituents, and they’re not so sanguine about letting it get worse. And Democrats who wanted to just, sort of demagogue against Republicans on Medicare cuts are worried it might all backfire.

Robert’s claim relied on a false equivalence–not only because Democrats have no intention of backing off their “Mediscare” tactics, but because there is not a single congressional Republican who wants the economy to fail. (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.

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“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…)

The mainstream media knows better than anyone that the key to Obama’s re-election is to distract from Their Precious One’s failed economic record and to keep the focus of the narrative on whoever his GOP challenger is. Obama’s record is indefensible. He is a failed president by every economic and domestic measure, and he does not deserve re-election. Furthermore, he can’t win a second term based on his record, which means he has to destroy his opponent, something he’ll only be able to do if his MSM Palace Guards roll up their sleeves for the dirty work.

Today, by making standard operating procedure in political advertising The Big Political Story Of The Day, the media might have actually done the GOP a favor. A year out, and they’ve given us a hearty taste of what they have planned for us:

1. Amplify every mistake, real or perceived.
2. Make the mistake, no matter how big or small,  the story.
3. Use the mistake to put the Republican on defense.
4. Make the story about anything but the bigger point the Republican meant to make.
5. Question the Republican’s honesty, etc.

Watch Romney’s ad again. The point wasn’t “look at what Obama said!” The point was that the statement about talking about the economy is true when it comes to Obama.  You could add the full context and it might even hit Obama harder because of the obvious irony. Moreover, campaigns do this kind of thing all the time.

It’s just a fact that Obama doesn’t want to talk about the economy and that Obama’s Media Palace Guards don’t want to talk about the economy. But they sure are willing to talk all day long about who did and didn’t say who said they didn’t want to talk about the economy.

Because it’s a distraction.

And do you think the MSM found this all on their own?

Remember, Obama can lie and make gaffes all day long. The corrupt MSM’s response to those, however, is to hardly mention them and to make damn sure they don’t become narratives. Republicans, though, are held to unobtainable standards and not because the MSM suddenly believes that politicians should be 100% accurate and honest.

This is purely a political tactic.

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Protection from the activist old media when scandal hits is a great deal when you can get it.

Political figures know that a Republican who sneezes sideways gets blasted non-stop, and a Democrat can stand on top of the local Clock Tower picking off the public with a high-powered rifle and the people will be blamed for getting in the way of the bullets.

This is the way the game is played, and everybody in the media and in politics knows it. Fortunately, the public is becoming more aware of this all the time.

You think I’m being extreme? Take the case of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

Corzine ran MF Global. That company just filed for bankruptcy, meaning investors have lost as much as $700 million dollars. Corzine is a Democrat–a big Democrat. It’s hard to find that fact in the stories being done on the collapse of MF Global, if Corzine’s name is even mentioned at all. Democrat Corzine may have also transferred investors’ funds days before the collapse to avoid detection by authorities. If this were a Republican, Joe Biden would call this a big ‘effin deal.

Good Morning America ran the story this week on the collapse of MF Global. It was all of 14 seconds long and Corzine’s name was left out. Whoops–didn’t have time to fit that in. Forget mentioning he was a big, lib Democrat, he got the luxury of his name being totally ignored. Hey, it’s a great deal when you can get it. (more…)

We are told Fareed Zakaria is an intelligent man, a man of letters and a journalist. With his latest article in TIME, I’m just not seeing it. It is full of contradictions and transparent attacks on conservatives followed by praise for Ye Olde School conservatives, who espoused more or less the same thing as current conservatives.

Zakaria starts by praising the classical conservatives for basing their ideas on reality, as compared to the Marxists as socialists who start from an imagined society. The great conservative thinkers, he goes on, have tried to understand society, accept it and then help it evolve. He’s one hundred percent correct.

This is the point at which he begins to go wrong. His main claim is that conservatives have moved from the concrete to the abstract and he laments this supposed shift. His first attack is on the idea that Americans are over taxed. While it can be argued that America has a relatively low INDIVIDUAL tax rate as compared to other industrialized nations, he doesn’t take into effect two main points. If one includes State taxes, for those states that levy these as well as other taxes, the mean tax rate on Americans is approximately 40%. More importantly the CORPORATE tax rate on American businesses is the second highest amongst OECD nations, also at about 40%. Zakaria goes out his way to point to Germany as a country that has high taxes while avoiding the same financial issues that we see in the US. That is a debatable issue, one that balances on Germany’s role in the European Union and its control of the Euro, but one thing that the article leaves out is that, in 2008, Germany cut its corporate income tax rate by 8.7%, putting it as one of the countries with the LOWEST corporate income tax rates.

The next straw man Zakaria tries to build is in finding another President who has been as hostile to business as Obama. Yes, Nixon was not a conservative when it came to business. Yes, Nixon presided over 70% tax rates and price controls, but nobody can say that Nixon took every opportunity to bash business, increase the regulatory state exponentially or create such a wide swath of uncertainty in the business markets.

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CHRIS MATTHEWS:  Tonight, Democratic National Committee Chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.  Welcome, Ma’m.  Let’s play hardball.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  Do me a favor, Chris.  Call me Madame Chair, or Chairwoman, or even Chérie.  Not M’am, which I find demeaning.

MATTHEWS:  Ok, uh, Chérie. First up, a small thing: you used to be Wasserman dash Schultz.  Now you’re just plain Wasserman Schultz.  When did you lose your hyphen?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  I was sixteen, Chris, and Billy Collins and I were making out in his car at Lookout Point.  Well, things got out of hand, and . . . .

MATTHEWS:  Never mind.  You wanna make a coupla outrageous claims about Republicans?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  Sure.  Wal-Mart and the Koch brothers plan to lay off 100,000 employees late next year to spike unemployment reports before the election.

MATTHEWS:  Anything else?

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  Rick Perry wants illegals arrested and sentenced to three years hard labor picking cotton for Monsanto.

MATTHEWS:  Muy loco.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  Finally, Speaker Boehner’s proposing that African-Americans provide DNA evidence at the polls to prove they are who they say they are.

MATTHEWS:  Shameless.

WASSERMAN SCHULTZ:  Jesse Jackson told me last week he’s been hearing the voices of long-deceased African-Americans pleading for retroactive enfranchisement.  Oh, if only we still had the House. (more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

In a Tweet sent by White House media official Jesse Lee in direct response to AIM’s coverage of the Politico report on the elusive “green jobs” the President has promised, the press office sent “a few folks who disagree.”

The first item was an image of President Obama at a photo-op with workers at a solar energy plant. The second item is more interesting. Lee Tweeted an article written for CNBC by “freelance journalist” Rob Reuteman which claimed that “everyone seems to agree there will be many more [green jobs] in the coming decades.” Reuteman claims that “market forces” in addition to regulatory mandates are creating such jobs.

Reuteman notes that “twenty-nine states have ordered their utilities to produce up to 30 percent of power through renewable energy in the next couple decades.” This is a mandate, not a market force.

Reuteman reports that the stimulus program “earmarked more than $70 billion in direct spending, tax breaks, and loan guarantees … most of it for ‘green energy.’” This too is not a market force but state intervention.

Reuteman then finds his first “market force,” noting that a for-profit university in Colorado offers a degree in “Wind Energy Technology.” This is the same “Wind Energy Technology” that Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) noted receives “25 times as much [in subsidy] per megawatt-hour as…all other forms of electricity combined.”

(more…)

From Accuracy in Media’s Michael Watson:

While researchers at King Juan Carlos University in Spain found in 2009 that the Spanish “green jobs” program killed over two jobs for every one it created, Politico notes that “the White House can’t point to much solid evidence” that green jobs are being created. Politico states that “Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers suggests 225,000 clean energy jobs were either created or preserved,” but does not acknowledge the follow-on effects identified by the Spanish study.

Politico, which deserves some credit for its open skepticism of Obama administration claims, reports that “White House officials say asking about the connection between the 9.1 percent unemployment rate and the administration’s green jobs campaign is the wrong question.” Instead of looking at macroeconomic effects of policy, Politico notes that the officials would rather show off the “exponential growth” in highly subsidized “clean technology industries.”

The Politico quotes “top Republican” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) as “not seeing [green jobs].” Murkowski said, “I don’t know” when speculating on whether it was premature to judge.

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This is a big week in American history. 150 years ago Tuesday the first shots were fired in the Civil War. The media has been covering the commemorations of the historic battle of Ft. Sumpter that really wasn’t much of a battle at all, the Confederate soldiers from the south took less than two days to defeat the Union soldiers from the north.

I talked about this historic week with a media friend of mine and mentioned how difficult the sacrifices were in this nation at the time. I said, “Republican President Abraham Lincoln was nearly defeated by the Democrat who ran the Confederate States, Jefferson Davis.” First my friend questioned the political party of Davis, then he said, “Why do you always have to enter politics into this?” Hmm, the Civil War was rather political—so I took the occasion to point out how the media likes to ignore the politics when it doesn’t work to their favor, but love to enter politics when it suits their needs. I mentioned the tragedy in Tucson where the media made up its own politics to fit its template.

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Is President Obama really the Deficit-Cutter-in-Chief? After racking up massive deficits through his various Stimulus programs and facing continued losses from Obamacare, the White House is now trying to portray Obama as taking a leading role in solving the problem. Time after time, White House senior adviser David Plouffe told Sunday morning talk show hosts yesterday that Obama’s 2012 budget was already proposing ways to reduce the deficits over the next decade by $1 trillion. Surprisingly, not a single host challenged him on his math.

And the Obama administration strategy seems to be working. A new CNN poll conducted April 9-10 shows that by a 48% to 35% margin Americans think that Obama and the Democrats are more responsible than Republicans for the budget agreement to cut spending.

Mr. Plouffe asserted: “Well, first, on the 2012 budget, that would be $1 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade and lowest level of domestic spending since Dwight Eisenhower. And he said it in the State of the Union, that was just a start.” He told this to Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace, and he repeated it almost word-for-word on NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and CNN’s State of the Union.

Yet, the assertions of bold deficit-cutting are absurd. The Congressional Budget Office just reported in late March that Obama’s newest budget plans will increase the deficits over the coming decade by $1.2 trillion, hardly the $1 trillion cut that Mr. Plouffe claims. The CBO, which has been designated by the White House as the ultimate referee on spending questions, was rather blunt in dismissing the president’s numbers, explaining that he was underestimating the expected cost-increases for existing programs as well as the price-tags of new ones.

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I’ve got your March Madness right here.

We have a Supreme Leader in this country who is living fat off the land while the rest of us struggle through the worst recession in our lifetimes. All of this while the media sings his praises and ignores his opulent spending, vacations, parties, extravagance, golf outings, Kobe beef flown in from Japan, workout coach flown in from Chicago twice a week, and his stone ear to the will of the people.

Aren’t these some of the things that got those dictators in the Middle East in hot water?

While the Middle East is on fire, Japan is under water and shaking to its core, Dear Leader is busy filling out his NCAA Tournament Brackets for ESPN. March Madness. This past weekend he went golfing for the 61^st time since he took office and held a basketball party at the White House. Not to mention a State Dinner for a Communist Dictator (oh—I guess I did just mention it.)

Nobody thinks our President should be living the life of a pauper with sackcloth and ashes as his daily garb, but I can’t be the only one out there noticing what’s going on here. Let me make a prediction here, and this prediction comes from three decades in the media. When Obama leaves office the activist old media will let a few stories like the one I’m writing now ooze out there like they had learned this through osmosis, or something. They will even try to take a bit of a hard line mentioning how Obama fiddled while Rome burned, or something similar. Truth to power? Once he is out of power they will have an epiphany. They might even question other ideas with Obama that they dismiss as bizarre conspiracy theories today—-this absolutely will happen and they will act like they knew it all along.

Yes, this is the same Dear Leader who vacationed in Hawaii while the east coast was buried in the worst snow storm in years. As I pointed out in a Big Journalism column earlier this year, the media had the perfect opportunity to draw a contrast/connection between “Obama in the Surf” and “East Coast in the Snow,” and those who strain to make segues sing, choose to do otherwise.

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Okay, I guess I seem a little obsessed by this gas price thing — but I have a couple of good reasons for it.

One, like everybody else I fill up twice a week and I think swear words whenever I do. Two, as a news anchor I was given all those stories to read in 2005 and 2008 blaming George Bush for high gas prices. Seems like these days the media has forgotten to point the finger at the White House. Imagine that?

Journalistic malpractice is everywhere on this story and the activist old media keeps piling it on.

$5.39 a gallon in Orlando and ABC goes after the owner of the gas station. Great job ABC. You find an aberration and try to show your toughness by going after the owner of the gas station. 99.99999% of Americans do not go to that gas station. What about the rest of us, tough guys? Ask President Obama why these prices are so high. You go after the owner of a gas station in Orlando, but let Dear Leader have a pass? What happened to “speaking truth to power?” Now I guess the “power” is the guy who runs the corner gas station.

The media has clearly shown they cannot think for themselves on this issue. They refuse to tell us about the tremendous oil reserves we have in this country spreading from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico. A Federal judge has held Obama in contempt of court for not allowing drilling in the Gulf, but do you think that makes any of their exposes on “Pain at The Pump?” Nope.

“Now the airlines are taking it out on us,” says ABC along with tips on what we can do to save gas given to us from the so-called, “Smart Screen.” They tell us all the time how we can sacrifice and scrimp and save ourselves, without telling us the real reasons why the prices have skyrocketed. Bianna Golodryga told us earlier this week, while standing in front of the Smart Screen, that “gas prices are directly tied to the price of oil.” That’s one Smart Screen there. Brilliant Screen, I would say.

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The excitement from ABC’S Good Morning America could hardly be contained. Oh, it started out on a somber note about the price of everything going up in 2011. Populist concern showed on Robin Roberts face as she said, “The former head of Shell Oil said gas prices may hit $5.00.” She continued to say that the cost of just about everything will be going up.

Hummmm. Where have I been hearing that?

I believe Rush Limbaugh mentioned this a year or two ago. It’s been hard to watch a day of Glenn Beck without him preaching that inflation is going to smack us silly soon and we had all better be prepared. How could they have possibly been so brilliant as to know this? In fact, how could anybody not have predicted this when you look at Dear Leaders economic policies?

The big difference is, Limbaugh and Beck (and other conservatives) have told us why this is happening, ABC, and for the most part, the rest of the activist old media mention inflation without stating the cause, and in fact, in this case, they even said it was a good thing!

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Barely a year after I was trashed on the pages of The Huffington Post, today marks one of those rare occasions when I felt inclined to read a portion of a Fred Goldring article, New Year’s Resolution 2011: Start Supporting President Obama, published on the ultra-liberal web site. Surprisingly, it took only a few moments of reading beyond the headline to conclude that Goldring had gotten something right.

The following accurate statement appeared as the first sentence of Goldring’s piece:

As we approach the end of President Obama’s second year in office, it seems that, despite his numerous major achievements, the President has thus far managed to disappoint just about everybody.

How do I know Goldring was right? Because the results of a new Harris Interactive poll released today prove it.

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