Matthews: Bush Caused Recession, But Let's Not Quibble Over Which Part

Chris Matthews Tuesday once again showed that his tenuous grasp of reality is getting dangerously weak. During the final segment of "Hardball," the host unequivocally blamed the 2007 financial crisis and resulting recession on George W. Bush just moments before he said, "Okay, Obama hasn't been able to get us out of it yet, but...there’s no sense blaming one Party or the other" (video follows…
Noel Sheppard
June 29th, 2011 1:37 AM

Bozell Column: Jon Stewart vs. Fox Facts

The Republican presidential contest is picking up steam. Obama is consistently polling under 50 percent. This one's a toss-up, and in the thick of it is the Fox News Channel. It's not just their role in hosting and vetting the candidates. It's their role as the chief villain in the eyes of liberal Democrats struggling to push their version of the "truth" about Obama.  Jon Stewart rhetorically…
Brent Bozell
June 28th, 2011 10:58 PM

Case Shiller Home Price 'Boost' Disappears After Seasonal Adjustment

While the vast majority of those in the establishment press doggedly insist on reporting seasonally adjusted numbers in most economic spheres, there is an odd exception: Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. Not that it's completely the press's fault. S&P emphasizes the raw numbers over the seasonally adjusted ones, and for a pretty good reason: The raw numbers represent…
Tom Blumer
June 28th, 2011 9:49 PM

Keith Ellison: Misrepresenting the Pledge of Allegiance

Over the course of the last few months, Rep. Keith Ellison, one of two Muslim members of Congress, has been cherry-picking the Pledge of Allegiance in an attempt to portray prominent Republicans as bigoted islamophobes.  Earlier this year, Ellison responded to the Peter King hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims by saying that conservatives believe in liberty, but are against the…
Rusty Weiss
June 28th, 2011 7:57 PM

Bloomberg Predictably Drops 'Unexpectedly' From Consumer Confidence Re

It looks like someone in the establishment business press might be getting a little touchy about the razzing they continually receive for delivering "unexpectedly" bad economic news. As captured by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit and corroborated in this Google News description, Bloomberg's 10:16 a.m. report on consumer sentiment told readers that "Consumer confidence unexpectedly fell in June…
Tom Blumer
June 28th, 2011 7:06 PM

Chris Matthews Dubs Himself the 'Great Communicator' for Getting Hunts

This may not be the endorsement Jon Huntsman wants. MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Tuesday touted the Republcian presidential candidate's apparent acquiescence to a demand he made in an advertisement for Hardball. The journalist was so pleased, he dubbed himself, "the great communicator." Matthews praised the moderate Republican for answering "the call I made during that promotional ad I was very…
Scott Whitlock
June 28th, 2011 6:00 PM

What Was Chris Wallace Driving At

I was disappointed that Chris Wallace asked Michele Bachmann whether she is a flake, but Wallace's behavior is hardly the most important issue involved. What he was trying to get at is another matter. It is no secret that a good number of people regard Bachmann as a loose cannon who is given to gaffes and hyperbole. And it's not just Bachmann.
David Limbaugh
June 28th, 2011 6:00 PM

CNN Presses Michele Bachmann: Did You Intend to Make False Statements

On Tuesday's American Morning, co-host Kiran Chetry reported that  Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is "prone to misstatements" and posed this question to her: "Did you mean to make false statements intentionally or were you just misspeaking?" "PolitiFact.com, which is a Pulitzer Price winning fact-checking web site examined 26 statements that you made and they found only one to be fully true…
Matt Hadro
June 28th, 2011 5:50 PM

Networks Omit Blagojevich's Democratic Affiliation After Conviction

ABC, CBS, and NBC all failed to mention former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's affiliation with the Democratic Party on their Monday evening news broadcasts and the Tuesday morning shows. Blagojevich was convicted by a jury on Monday on 17 out of 20 charges, mainly related to the attempt to sell the Senate seat of President Obama. Only CBS's Early Show noted his party with a "D" on-screen…
Matthew Balan
June 28th, 2011 5:42 PM

Conservative Blogger Spots 13 Factual Errors in Time Editor's Attack o

Last week my colleague Eric Ames addressed the bias and some misstatements of fact in Richard Stengel's recent attack on the Constitution/defense of ObamaCare here. Today, Aaron Worthing over at Patterico's Pontification's ticked off 13 factual errors in the Time magazine editor's piece and systematically addressed each one. It's an excellent piece. Here's an excerpt that I think addresses…
Ken Shepherd
June 28th, 2011 5:20 PM

NYT Reviews Ann Coulter's Book Cover But Not the Actual Book

The “Inside the List” column for the New York Times’s Sunday Book Review, compiled by Jennifer Schuessler, discussed Ann Coulter’s latest New York Times bestseller “Demonic” under the subhead “Woman In Black.” The first paragraph of the Times’ official Topics page for Coulter describes the author as “ultraconservative,” and Schuessler’s Book Review brief is no less loaded:
Clay Waters
June 28th, 2011 5:11 PM

NY Times Magazine Editor on Vargas Tale: Come On, Lying's Hardly 'Unpr

Over the weekend, NPR’s On The Media found that the New York Times was so fascinated by self-proclaimed illegal alien activist Jose Antonio Vargas and found his story so compelling, the credibility of the author was not an issue. New York Times Magazine editor-in-chief Hugo Lindgren (that "great magazine head") said all the lying about his citizenship is not an issue for journalists: That's…
Tim Graham
June 28th, 2011 4:41 PM

The New York Times's Latest Gas Attack

For a paper so eager to wean us off “our addiction to foreign oil,” the New York Times is pretty squeamish when it comes to the actual alternatives. Ian Urbina’s Sunday lead story was the paper's latest attack on the natural gas industry, “Insiders Sound an Alarm Amid a Natural Gas Rush – Productivity of Shale Wells Is a Concern – Investor Flood Spurs Talk of Bubble.” That was followed by…
Clay Waters
June 28th, 2011 4:35 PM

ABC, CBS Whack Bachmann with PolitiFact, Have Spared Obama Similar Dru

ABC and CBS have both recently wielded PolitiFact as a club to bash Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), yet in the 29 months since President Barack Obama took office – despite 49 "false" ratings in Obama's PolitiFact file – the three broadcast networks have cited the fact-checking website only once to challenge the Democratic commander-in-chief. ABC host George Stephanopoulos on Tuesday…
Alex Fitzsimmons
June 28th, 2011 4:29 PM