Two CNN anchors channeled the supporters of Michael Brown's family on Tuesday's Early Start, as they played up how St. Louis County, Missouri Prosecuting Attorney Robert McCulloch presented the Brown case to a grand jury, instead of pursuing charges himself. Chris Cuomo pointed out that "the prosecutor could still bring charges even after the grand jury." Deborah Feyerick later forwarded her colleague's point: "Could the prosecutor...basically, overrule the grand jury and say, charges should be filed?"
Poverty
By Matthew Balan | November 25, 2014 | 3:50 PM EST
Rudy Giuliani fired back at Michael Eric Dyson on CNN's New Day on Tuesday for the MSNBC analyst's "white supremacy" attack on the former New York City mayor. When anchor Alisyn Camerota raised Giuliani's supposedly "controversial comments" from Sunday's Meet the Press on NBC, the former Republican politician underlined that he had "said the same thing the President of the United States said, and I was accused of being a racist."
By Tom Blumer | November 24, 2014 | 6:16 PM EST
As of 5:30 p.m. ET today, a search on "Koningstein" at the Associated Press's national web site returned no results.
That's an indication that the wire service's globaloney-believing pseudo-science reporters are still trying to figure out how to respond to a November 18 article in the IEEE Spectrum by Ross Koningstein & David Fork, a pair of Google engineers tasked by the company in 2007 to "tackle the world’s climate and energy problems." The pair, whose active work on the project at Google ended in 2011, have concluded, as succinctly stated in the UK Register (HT Instapundit), that renewable energy sources "will never permit the human race to cut CO2 emissions to the levels demanded by climate activists."
By Tom Blumer | November 11, 2014 | 8:50 PM EST
Far be it from me to talk a leftist columnist out of an ignorant, self-satisfied position which might, if anything, cause his fellow travelers to hit the accelerator a little less aggressively in future political campaigns.
At the Atlantic on Monday afternoon, Richard Reeves, policy director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, claimed that the left shouldn't be so glum after Tuesday's election results, because "progressive policies are working." His very first graph makes a mockery of his claim:
By Tom Blumer | October 5, 2014 | 2:09 PM EDT
On Thursday, President Barack Obama did something Republicans have inexplicably been reluctant to do. He nationalized the impending midterm elections by telling a friendly audience at Northwestern University that "I am not on the ballot this fall ... But make no mistake: These policies (of my administration) are on the ballot -- every single one of them."
That evening on Fox News's Special Report hosted by Bret Baier, in video seen after the jump (HT Real Clear Politics), George Will was ready with some facts and a deadly redistributionist riposte on how Obama's policies have worked out in the real world, including in the President's home state, during the past six years:
By Matthew Balan | October 2, 2014 | 12:44 PM EDT
Brian Palmer revealed what many secularists feel about Christian missionaries in Africa in a Thursday piece on Slate, especially the role on the front lines of the ongoing fight against Ebola. Palmer acknowledged how "missionary doctors and nurses...have undertaken long-term commitments to address the health problems of poor Africans," but added that "for secular Americans...it may be difficult to shake a bit of discomfort with the situation....It's great that these people are doing God's work, but do they have to talk about Him so much?"
By Tom Blumer | September 18, 2014 | 12:09 AM EDT
As been its habit since Barack Obama took office in 2009, the Associated Press has, whenever possible, considered the impact of news developments on the President and his party as far more important than what's actually happening in the lives of real people.
The latest example is the wire service's coverage of Tuesday's Census Bureau report on income, poverty and health insurance coverage in the U.S. Nothing — not even fundamental accuracy, as will be seen shortly — was more important to reporter Jesse J. Holland, the AP's "Race and Ethnicity writer," than telling readers that a half-point fall in the poverty rate from 15.0 percent to 14.5 percent constituted "a bit of encouraging news about the nation's economy as President Barack Obama and Congress gear up for midterm elections." The fact that the Obama Era has brought us levels of poverty not seen in 20 years — this year's figure matches 1994's — apparently doesn't matter.
By Tom Blumer | September 9, 2014 | 2:11 PM EDT
The press is good at putting the most positive spin possible on the monthly job-market news. But at the same time, many of its members still claim that food stamp enrollment remains as high as it is because of the lingering effects of the (Bush did it) recession.
On Friday, following the release of August's employment numbers, Obama administration Labor Secretary Tom Perez celebrated how "businesses have added more than 10 million jobs over the last four and a half years," and have done so for "54 consecutive months of private-sector job growth, the longest streak on record." All true, though average job growth during that time has resembled an underperforming baseball player who somehow manages to go 1-for-5 or barely better every day. Meanwhile, food stamp enrollment has increased by 6.8 million.
By Tim Graham | August 19, 2014 | 12:58 PM EDT
Time magazine used one of the biggest basketball stars of all time to fan the flames of Ferguson. It posted an op-ed titled “The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race: Ferguson is not just about systemic racism — it's about class warfare and how America's poor are held back, says Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.”
“Race war”? Is Time borrowing from conspiratorial ranters like Alex Jones? Abdul-Jabbar began by suggesting that the Ferguson rioting might end up a historical footnote because it wasn’t about white people dying. Kent State is remembered from 1970, but Jackson State was not:
By Tom Blumer | August 11, 2014 | 1:30 AM EDT
Fort Thomas Independent Schools in Northern Kentucky have decided to get out of the federal school lunch program, specifically because of the requirements imposed in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by First Lady Michelle Obama. Simply put, the district is tired of being forced to give kids food they won't eat.
Until it ran into problems, HHFA was seen as Mrs. Obama's signature achievement, and the press fawned over its alleged awesomeness. Now that the program has encountered fierce real-world resistance, her association with it seems to have vanished from many press reports. One such report was filed by the Associated Press last month from the School Nutrition Association's annual convention in Boston. A local example appeared in the Cincinnati Enquirer Saturday evening. Excerpts from that report by Jessica Brown follow the jump (bolds are mine):
By Jeffrey Meyer | July 27, 2014 | 1:37 PM EDT
Meet the Press moderator David Gregory did his best to condemn Congressman Paul Ryan’s new anti-poverty proposal during an interview on Sunday, July 27.
The NBC host played a clip of Ryan from 2013 in which he criticized a “dependency culture” in America which Gregory interpreted as not sounding “like there’s a lot of sympathy for people you think need the government's help. What you seem to be saying is that people have a problem with their own dependency here the government is only furthering.” [See video below.]
By Curtis Houck | July 24, 2014 | 9:25 PM EDT
Ed Schultz spent a portion of his opening monologue on his MSNBC show Thursday attacking Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and his latest policy proposal to reform government welfare programs, declaring that Ryan is “more radical than ever” and he’s “out there selling turd in the punch bowl.”
After trumpeting the long-standing liberal policy of increasing the minimum wage (which never works), Schultz moved to attack Ryan and a speech he made Thursday in which he offered, among many topics, plans to consolidate government welfare programs and reform federal education spending. [MP3 audio here; Video below]