Perhaps using a preemptive strike to help combat the May jobs report to be released on Friday, MSNBC has already found an excuse for lost jobs, and an increased unemployment rate: storms, tornadoes, and flooding.  According to a business report:

…homes or places of business have been destroyed in this year’s wave of storms, tornadoes and flooding. That means thousands of workers in the South and Midwest could be out of work for some time, potentially pushing up the nation’s jobless rate and further taxing financially strapped state unemployment funds.

Yet in 2004, when reporting on an October jobs report in which hiring had increased at the fastest pace in seven months, MSNBC somehow managed to find analysts who said the jump in hiring was due mainly to another form of natural disaster: hurricanes.  The business report at that time read:

Some analysts were skeptical about the latest surge of hiring, pointing out that much of the unusually large jump in October stemmed from cleanup and rebuilding in Florida and other states that were ravaged by four hurricanes…

That assessment is buoyed by an accompanying CNBC video (seen below) in which Senior Economics Reporter, Steve Liesman, asks President Bush’s economic adviser, Gregory Mankiw, about the “Hurricane Effect” on a jobs report: (more…)

From the “figures lie, but liars figure” department we find that left-leaning cable newser MSNBC reported that the main reason Obama’s job stats are tumbling and unemployment is so high is because of the harsh tornado season and other natural disasters we have been experiencing over the first half of 2011. Yet, hypocritically, if we take a peak back to the unemployment rates reported by MSNBC in 2004, during Bush’s era, his jump in hiring was called false because of — you guessed it — hurricanes and other natural disasters.

That’s right, folks, MSNBC is using natural disasters to explain away Obama’s high unemployment rates when they used the very same excuse, natural disasters, to say that Bush’s rise in employment was false.

Talk about tailoring the “news” to fit the ideological objective that MSNBC wants to push, eh?

Rusty Weiss has a lot of details from Monday, but I want to focus on two examples.

On Monday, MSNBC contributor Eve Tahmincioglu lamented that, “Disasters wipe out jobs along with lives .” In her piece, Tahmincioglu blamed job loss directly on the tornadoes and floods that have bedeviled the central US.

The hardest-hit states already are seeing claims pour in for unemployment benefits. Since a deadly wave of tornadoes swept through Tuscaloosa, Ala., and other Southeast towns in late April, more than 6,000 people have applied for disaster-related jobless benefits, said Tom Surtees, director of the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations. Typically about 24,000 people file for jobless benefits each month in the state, where the jobless rate is 9.3 percent, a bit above the national average.

Might make sense, of course. If your towns have been wiped out by natural disasters, well, it might stand to reason that jobs would be wiped out, too. This might help explain the sad jobs picture during this, the Obama administration. MSNBC would love if it were that simple, love to have something other than Obama to blame for the high unemployment figures, certainly. (more…)

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann broke from his self-described pattern of not offering commentary, and called for an end to the media’s self-imposed editorial silence concerning the U.S. government’s response to a terrible natural disaster.

Okay, it was a different disaster during a different administration. But did you hear what he said? A week into the Hurricane Katrina recovery he declared that,

But now, at last, it has stopped getting exponentially worse…and having given our leaders what we now know is the week or so they need to get their acts together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned should come to an end.

As the chaos of recovery efforts in and around New Orleans became the big story, old media commentators fired barrages of harsh rhetoric toward President Bush and members of his administration directly involved with disaster relief. Never mind what part of that criticism was justified, and what part was driven by political preferences. It was a blend. (more…)