Recovery Watch: Homeless Problem in LA Is Growing

January 25th, 2015 11:55 PM
As President Barack Obama and Governor Jerry Brown continue to extol the wonders of the alleged economic recovery of nation and the Golden State, respectively, stories of significant growth in homelessness continue to rain on their parades. The latest example comes on the heels of reports on Seattle's burgeoning problem and the city's apparent willingness to allow officially sanctioned outdoor…

Surprise: AP Uses the Term 'Radical Left' in Covering Greek Elections

January 23rd, 2015 6:51 PM
In a report on the upcoming Greek elections, an unbylined Friday afternoon Associated Press report dusted off words seldom seen in their dispatches, using the term "radical left" twice and the word "radical" separately once for good measure. The almost never seen terms — virtually invisible in decades of descriptions of longtime radical leftists like Fidel Castro, the late Hugo Chavez or lefty…

Leftist Daily Beast Writer: 'Three Cheers for the Death Tax'

January 23rd, 2015 5:18 PM
Left-wing Daily Beast columnist Michael Tomasky today took to his keyboard to hack out a defense of the federal estate tax. Tomasky insisted taxation-without-respiration is "moral" and, what's more, agreeable to the Founding Fathers.
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CNBC's Harwood Hails College Savings Tax: 'Redistribution Obama-Style'

January 23rd, 2015 4:55 PM
Appearing on CNBC's Power Lunch at 1 p.m. ET Friday, the business network's chief Washington correspondent John Harwood touted President Obama's proposal to tax 529 college savings accounts: "If you want to change the distribution of income in this country, you've got to take from some to give to the other, and that's precisely what the President wants to do. Middle class families...have…

AP Spins Today's Glum (For Organized Labor) Union Membership Report

January 23rd, 2015 4:46 PM
Someone looking at the annual "Union Members" report released this morning by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics would logically conclude that 2014 was a year organized labor would rather forget. While average nonagricultural wage and salary employment increased by over 2.32 million from 2013 to 2014, union membership only went up by 48,000, or about 2 percent of the nationwide…

Not News: Fewer Than 0.5% Live in Fully Recovered Counties

January 23rd, 2015 9:44 AM
In his State of the Union address — perhaps, based on the recommendations for government involvement and control he made therein, better described as his Statist of the Union address — President Obama referenced the "growing" U.S. economy at least three times, but "recovery" only once. Specifically, he claimed that "thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives." The…
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Steve Rattner: Silver's 100G+ Assembly Pay Wasn't 'Full-Time' Salary

January 23rd, 2015 8:18 AM
On today's Morning Joe, commenting on the arrest of Dem NYS Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver on bribery charges, Rattner claimed that "they don't pay these guys full-time salaries. They pay them, I think, $112,000 a year."  

As Homelessness Rises in Seattle and Elsewhere, National Press Snoozes

January 22nd, 2015 11:53 PM
A week ago, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a Democrat, called homelessness in his city and the rest of King County a "full-blown crisis." Based on the numbers presented in coverage of the area's situation, we can certainly add the Emerald City to the list of areas where homelessness has been on the rise. Odds are that many readers here didn't know that, because the national press hardly ever pays…

Salon: Obama’s SOTU Message Was ‘Bye-Bye, Reagan Conservatism’

January 22nd, 2015 9:46 PM
Elias Isquith contends that “after eight years of George W. Bush,” America “was in such rotten shape that Obama had little time to do more than stave off the next crisis,” but that by this past Tuesday night, favorable economic developments gave Obama “an opportunity to boast of changing the ‘trajectory’ of the country like few presidents before him and none since Ronald Reagan.”
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NBC’s Jansing Gushes Over ‘an Energized, Combative' Obama Post-SOTU

January 22nd, 2015 7:28 AM
NBC News senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing did her best to provide some White House spin during Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, hailing President Obama as “an energized, combative President” whose policies made for a “carefully choreographed, populist message with the details generally panned by Republicans.” Also within her report, Jansing found time to chide House Speaker John…
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Williams: 'A Lot of People Hope' Todd's SOTU Reality Check Is 'Wrong'

January 21st, 2015 5:33 PM
On Tuesday night, NBC News anchor Brian Williams charged that “a lot people hope” a reality check by Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd was wrong in asserting that most of President Obama's initiatives proposed during his State of the Union address won’t become law. “Some people hope you’re right, a lot of people hope you’re wrong,” interjected Williams following Todd’s brief outlook on whether…
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Schieffer Swoons: Obama’s SOTU Was ‘Uplifting’ with ‘Soaring Rhetoric'

January 21st, 2015 1:04 AM
At the conclusion of President Barack Obama’s 2015 State of the Union speech, CBS News chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer offered plenty of praise for the President’s address by proclaiming it as “the best speech he’s made in awhile” with “soaring rhetoric” and being “uplifting at the end.” In the moments right after the speech, Schieffer declared that the…
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Andrea Mitchell: Obama’s Economics Is So 'in Tune With' Americans

January 20th, 2015 11:00 PM
Following President Obama’s State of the Union address, NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell fawned over the President’s liberal economic proposals of tax increases as “so politically in tune with” most Americans. “[T]he economic message, also, is so politically in tune with where the broad specter of the American people are,” Mitchell proclaimed. 
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Chuck Todd: Obama ‘Got the Post-Election Honeymoon' and Not the GOP

January 20th, 2015 8:29 PM
While previewing President Obama’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, NBC Nightly News had on Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, who told viewers that the President will set out to “do a little victory lap about the state of the economy” and opined how Obama “got the post-election honeymoon, not the Republicans” thanks to his moves on illegal immigration and Cuba. Following the move…