Economy

At the Associated Press aka the Administration's Press on Saturday, Andrew Taylor's "Fact Check" item on President Obama's stump speech claim in Iowa on Thursday dove into the trees without first looking at the forest. Distracted by ridiculousaurus Rex Nutting's write-up earlier in the week at MarketWatch ("Obama spending binge never happened"), which absurdly claimed that "government outlays…

Last year New York Times columnist and Nobel laureate Paul Krugman called for space aliens to invade earth so that the government would spend money to mount a defense thereby stimulating the economy. As aliens have yet to comply with Krugman's wishes, he advocated on HBO's Real Time Friday that scientists should get together and lie about an imminent attack to boost federal spending (video…

Bill Maher is either a blithering idiot, a pathological liar, or both. On HBO's Real Time Friday, the factually-challenged financier of Barack Obama actually had the gall to say the President didn't support the recommendations of his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (aka Simpson-Bowles) because - wait for it! - Republicans didn't support it (video follows with…

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Friday blamed the media and "especially" cable television for the nasty tone in politics today. Such occurred during a discussion with Jay Leno on NBC's Tonight Show (video follows with transcript and commentary):

CNN's Dana Bash reported Friday on the irony of President Obama hitting Mitt Romney's connections to Bain Capital when he himself has received donations from Bain employees. CNN has highlighted Obama's hypocrisy on this matter before, but this specific story has certainly not received much air-time – if any at all – in the last two weeks. "But isn't it hypocritical for the Obama campaign to…

President Obama, new French President Francois Hollande and other political leaders have called for less "austerity" as a way to help the troubled economies on both sides of the Atlantic. That's the polite way of saying they want more government spending and larger deficits. But U.S. voters have a fundamentally different view. Sixty-one percent believe that cutting government spending is what…

On Friday's CBS This Morning, Jan Crawford spotlighted that "the economic and political climate today is more similar to years when incumbent presidents lost than when they won." The correspondent pointed out the similarity between polling numbers today and in 1992, when George H.W. Bush was running for reelection: "Gallup has asked voters whether they're satisfied with the way things in the…

CNN failed to correct bogus numbers claiming that the growth rate of spending under President Obama is the lowest since Eisenhower. Instead, host Erin Burnett reported the news as something positive for the White House. While most anyone with common sense would label Obama a big spender, the MarketWatch report – re-circulated by the White House – absurdly claims Obama's "spending binge never…

Leave it to America's strongest ally in the world to speak the truth. On Thursday, England's Telegraph published an article with the absolutely glorious headline "Britain Can’t Afford to Fall for the Charms of the False Economics Messiah Paul Krugman":

As NewsBusters reported Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney during the previous day's press gaggle cited a bogus MarketWatch report hysterically claiming "Obama Spending Binge Never Happened." Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler looked at Carney's comments as well as Rex Nutting's article Friday and gave their assertions three Pinocchios:

If between now and Election Day unemployment numbers improve, particularly if they dip below the 8% barrier, you know President Obama, with an MSM assist, will be out there pounding his chest about the number of jobs "he created." But when the unemployment numbers remain weak?  Well, that's not Obama's fault.  Just ask Mike Allen of Politico.  On today's Morning Joe, trying to explain Obama'…

Reuters columnist Chrystia Freeland must have editors who don't question her judgment very much. How else do you account for this gem making it into her final draft today?: Like anorexics, who think they are grossly fat when they are very thin, the American body politic is suffering from a national version of body dysmorphia, with nearly half the country believing taxes are high, when they…

CNN's Soledad O'Brien spun Mitt Romney's words into a dodging-the-question moment for the candidate on the matter of Bain Capital, on Thursday's Starting Point. O'Brien was emphasizing Romney's "reluctance" to mention his days at Bain, which had been the focus of attack ads from the Obama campaign that O'Brien herself justified the other day. Specifically, she took Romney's interview with…

Last week, what the Department of Labor had originally reported as a dip in new unemployment claims the previous week (from 368,000 to 367,000) was revised into an increase (to 370,000). This week, what DOL originally reported was a no-change situation (i.e., 370,000) was revised into an increase (to 372,000). It's getting ever more difficult to accept DOL's ongoing underestimations, which…