Oft-Documented LIAR Brian Williams Going To Liberal Haven MSNBC Just Proves My Thesis: Liberals Are At HOME With Liars And Their Lies.

The usually leftist Daily Beast has a title that at least ASKS the right question:

Why Is Brian Williams Good Enough for MSNBC, but Not NBC?
The suspended ‘Nightly News’ anchor is reportedly staying at 30 Rock—but going to work for NBC News’s ratings-challenged corporate sibling. How the move raises even more awkward questions.
Lloyd Grove  06.18.151:38 AM ET

For whatever reason, Lloyd Grove never actually bothers to answer his own question.  He merely reports the awkward factoid that:

Multiple spokespeople at NBC News and MSNBC were contacted by The Daily Beast on Wednesday night but either didn’t respond or declined to comment. Williams’s agent/attorney, Washington lawyer Robert Barnett—who according to CNN’s Brian Stelter had been spotted in meetings with NBC execs in recent days—didn’t reply to an email seeking comment.

Grove at least provides a partial listing of the sins against all credibility that Williams inflicted on his own reputation:

The leaks, which at times seemed orchestrated from within the NBC executive suite at 30 Rockefeller Center, concerned his on- and off-air exaggerations of a helicopter ride during the Iraq War and his anecdotes about witnessing a suicide, seeing a floating body during Hurricane Katrina, and looking Egyptian thugs straight in the eye as they whipped protesters in Egypt’s Tahrir Square during the Arab Spring, among other tall tales reportedly uncovered by an internal NBC News investigation.

Williams initially offered an on-air apology February 4 after being caught in an exaggeration by the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes, when he claimed erroneously on his newscast that during a visit to Iraq in 2003, he was a passenger in a helicopter that was hit and forced to the ground by a rocket-propelled grenade. It turned out that Williams—who told the same war story on CBS’s Late Show With David Letterman as well as on actor Alec Baldwin’s interview program on WNYC radio—was riding in a helicopter that took no fire and was some distance away from the action, according to multiple Iraq War veterans who were on the scene and spoke to Stars and Stripes.

So, given the fact that we at least have a darn good question but nothing close to an answer, would you like to hear the answer I literally gave back-to-back two days in a row just over the last three days?  On June 16 I wrote and on June 17 I quoted myself as having written the following – with the caveat that on both occasions recent events gave me ample evidence to state it as a FACT – that gets you to the heart of why THE network established to be THE Democrat Party mouthpiece would hire a documented liar as a “reporter”:

It’s really beyond amazing, now, the willingness to be deceived and to engage in self-deception the way the left is.  Everything under the sun is just an atheist-driven postmodernist and existentialist-based “social construct” with them, whether it’s the humanity of a baby in the womb or the nature of male-female relations and God’s created order or transgender identity or now even something as physically obvious as race: If Rachel Dolezal thinks of herself as black, well, she’s clearly got to be black, then.  If Bruce Jenner thinks he’s a chick, well, it would be intolerant to say he’s NOT a chick.  No matter what the hanging down parts say to the contrary because that’s only a “fact” and these people don’t give a flaming damn about facts or truth.  If I say that I’m the President of the United States, I ought to be able to kick Obama’s skinny ass out of the White House and put my feet up on the desk in the oval office, because if I think it, it’s got to be accepted as true, dontchaknow.  If I can be a woman because I say I think I’m a woman or a black woman because I say I think I’m a black woman, then why the hell shouldn’t I be the damn president because I say I think I’m the damn president???

Progressive liberalism is intrinsically fascist, and fascism is the rejection of reason.  Nazism was the rejection of reason and the embrace of raw, naked hate emotion: and that is precisely what we are seeing unleashed from the left as cities burn down and every single encounter with a black person by the police becomes the next reason to riot.  In the same manner, conservatives are persona non grata at virtually any college or university because they will be screamed down by a gauntlet of leftwing hate or worse yet banned by the universities themselves while liberal intellectuals decry the very freedom of speech itself.  And the rabid rejection of actual reality is rampant with these people: Bruce Jenner is a woman even though HE is clearly not a woman.  Rachel Dolezal is black even though anybody who isn’t blind can immediately see that she is white in spite of her black-face and her hairdresser-induced Afro.  Truth doesn’t matter; truth has nothing whatsoever to do with these people.  Progressive liberals aren’t people who listen to the truth; they are the kind of people who chant or rant or scream slogans in the faces of people who try to explain the truth to them.  Which is why the most intolerant places on earth today are the universities where leftist faculty and administrators got their foot in the door and then slammed that door shut on anyone who doesn’t think exactly like they do.

In the same way, the black leftists who are so damned fast to scream “racism” are pathologically racist themselves by their own demagoguery.  Or let me put it thus: where is the “Pan-Anglo Congress“???  Where’s the “National Association for the Advancement of Caucasian People“???  Where’s the “Congressional White Caucus“???  Where’s the “United Caucasian College Fund“???  Where are the “historically white colleges and universities” where white kids get preferential treatment for their race and receive scholarship from the aforementioned United Caucasian College Fund???  Where’s the “National White Chamber of Commerce” focused on advancing white-owned businesses???  Where are all the “historically white denominations“???  Where are all the white looters and rioters targeting black businesses for destruction as whites erupt in race riots in cities across America???  Where are the white people playing the race-game of “black bear hunting” the way black thugs do by playing their “knock-out game” of “polar bear hunting“???  If white people did what black people do on a massive scale, leftist black people would be demonizing us and slandering us and tearing their robes and pouring sackcloth and ashes over their heads as they wept and wailed in the streets.  But these same people are FINE being so racist it’s beyond unreal.

Because facts don’t matter to such people.  A demonstration and documentation of rabid hypocrisy doesn’t matter.  They are ONLY capable of seeing the speck in their brother’s eye and NEVER the giant log in their own eyes.  And every single one of these black organizations makes it official that black leftists utterly reject the teachings of Jesus and are determined to find the speck in their brother’s eye while they ignore the giant damn logs in their own.

Liberals are pathological hypocrites in so many ways that its beyond unreal.  But one of the very worst ways is their hypocrisy on free speech.  After being allowed a voice on the basis of what they claimed was an innate right to free speech, the left now demands that free speech be destroyed lest any other voice have any other right to any kind of legitimacy.

I am beyond sick at the toxic, racist and race-baiting moral filth that comes out of the pathologically hypocritical leftwing and the Democrat Party who marches to their drumbeat.

Every single day I’ve got new evidence to factually demonstrate that the heart of the Democrat Party and of liberalism is a hatred of God and a rejection of the truth and a willingness and desire to believe lies from the father of lies.

Allow me to summarize my point yet again: there is something about the perverted worldview of liberalism that not only opens them up to being deceived but literally makes them hunger for being lied to and deceived the way a baby hungers for his mommy’s milk.  Liberals and Democrats will hungrily devour lies and reject anything that smells like truth or reality or actual facts.  They are pathologically immune from truth.

And so it is actually quite simple to understand why a dishonest and depraved network perpetuating a dishonest and depraved worldview would rush to gobble up a dishonest fabricator like Brian Williams much the way that the goldfish in a restaurant pond would rush to gobble up a bratty child’s gob of spit.  They literally cannot help themselves.

 

NBC Pollsters ‘Are Concerned’ With Obama’s Low Approval

This blatant demonstration of media bias and lack of objectivity is what “concerns” me.

From Real Clear Politics:

Posted on September 7, 2011
NBC’s Chuck Todd: “Our Pollsters Are Concerned” With Obama Approval

“Now this has taken a hit on the president politically. 44-percent approve of the job he’s doing, all time low of his presidency. A more important number that our pollsters say is in there is this idea that is this a long-term setback for him or a short-term one? 54-percent said long-term. Our pollsters are concerned. That’s kind of numbers you have when the public starts to give up on a president as a problem solver,” NBC’s Chuck Todd said on the “Nightly News.”

[See Real Clear Politics for the video]

Here’s your challenge, lefties: show me ANYWHERE where NBC pollsters were described as “being concerned” over George Bush’s poll numbers tanking.  You know, if you’re going to comment to this article suggesting that the media ISN’T in the fish-tank-biased to the left and you don’t expect me to laugh you right off planet earth.

I was glad I wasn’t drinking milk when I read a couple of takes on this story from Free Republic:

The public is giving up on Obama as a problem solver?  Pontiac wrote:

“The only problem that Obama has been working on is his golf swing.”

McGruff zeroed in on Chuck Todd as a leftwing media whore and hearkened him to Monica Lewinsky:

“I’ll bet Todd has a blue dress in his closet.”

I sincerely hope I never see Todd in that dress.  That gives me yet one MORE reason to keep NBC off my list of channels.

You kind of have to figure that NBC anchor Brian Williams has a presidentially-stained blue dress in his closet, too, given that it appears the man wishes he’d worn it to his fluff interview with Obama:

Obama bows down to foreign dictators, while the mainstream media bow down to Obama.

You see NBC, CBS and other “blue-dress” mainstream media networks selling their messiah’s memorabilia like the bunch of little Goebbels that they clearly are.

Which reminds me of a classic Goebbels quote:

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

That was true in socialist Germany; and it is every bit as true in socialist America.

NBC is worried.  They’d better redouble their propaganda efforts.  Obama was elected on the basis of gigantic lies; that’s the only way in hell the fool would ever be re-elected.

Biased Mainstream Media Yet Again Proven To Be In The Tank For Obama, Democrats

A couple of links scream about the rabid left wing media bias.  The first:

Diane Sawyer Steals Hannity, Fox Credit on Wright
By Jeffrey Lord on 6.2.11 @ 8:59AM

It was so brazen it was amazing.

ABC Anchor Diane Sawyer sits across from Bill O’Reilly last night and casually says that ABC broke the story about the tapes featuring the sermons of now radioactive and decidedly ex-Obama pastor Jeremiah Wright.

“You’re talking to the network…Obama White House remembers this… that broke the Jeremiah Wright tapes.”

The implication?

ABC News was Johnny-on-the-spot on the story of then-Senator Obama’s now infamous — and ex — pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. In March of 2008.

Remember that date. March — 2008. Here’s the link to the story, filed on March 13 by ABC’s Brian Ross

This remark came about in the course of a conversation with O’Reilly in which Sawyer, discussing the role of ABC News in the last presidential campaign, insisted that her network was not populated by liberals who tilted the news leftward. O’Reilly had cited a study from the Center for Media and Public Affairs on the network news coverage of the Obama-McCain campaign that showed the tilt in favorable coverage for Obama over McCain as follows:

Obama   McCain

CBS 73% 31%
NBC 56%   16%
ABC 57%   42%

ABC had fared best of the three broadcast networks, but the point of liberal media bias — the kind of reporting that dates as far back as the 1960 Kennedy-Nixon campaign — stood. So O’Reilly persisted.

And out popped the above statement on Jeremiah Wright.

Let’s be clear here. Sawyer used the word “tapes” — and strictly speaking she is correct.

The problem comes with the context — in which she is clearly trying to imply that ABC was the proverbial dog with a bone in uncovering the relationship of Wright to his famous congregant, and what the implications might be for the country if a man who sat in Wright’s pews for 20 years listening to Wright’s leftist political rants were elected president.

Bluntly put — this is poppycock.

The man — and the network — that did the background research on this was, yes indeed, Sean Hannity and Fox News.

On February 28, 2007 — over a full year before ABC first aired its Wright story — Hannity had located columnist Erik Rush, who had written an article on Senator Obama and his church. He put Rush on the air that night.

The very next night, Hannity had managed to corral Wright himself on his Fox show with liberal Alan Colmes. Here’s the clip.

Out poured the tale of Wright’s devotion to Black Liberation Theology and the radical writings of James Cone and Dwight Hopkins. From this initial work the connections of Wright to Louis Farrakhan and Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi were uncovered and more.

And on it went.

The role of ABC News here?

Zip, nada, zero.

And yet plain as can be, there sits Diane Sawyer, the anchor of ABC News, on the set of Fox’s O’Reilly Factortrying to pretend ABC was a prime mover in Hannity’s story — a Fox story that surely would never have seen the light of day anywhere had it not been for Hannity’s tenacity in digging it out and putting it on TV. And, as regular viewers will recall, being snickered at while doing it — snickering that stopped when Obama finally felt so much pressure on Wright he stopped going to the church and felt the need to publicly rebuke the man he had once said was like an “uncle” to him.

Ms. Sawyer insisted her network would be providing “fantastic coverage” of the 2012 race, citing the liberal ex-Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos as a key member of her team.

If this is an example of the work to come from ABC News on the 2012 presidential campaign… well, we report, you decide.

The second:

BILL O’REILLY, HOST: In the “Back of the Book” segment  tonight: As we reported last night, elements of the national liberal media have  begun their campaign to re-elect President Obama. The attacks on Fox News are  being stepped up, and we used an example of NBC News correspondent Andrea  Mitchell deriding Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for criticizing Mr.  Obama.

Here now to talk about the Obama advantage in the media, Fox News political  analyst Charles Krauthammer, who is in Washington this evening. So how much of  an advantage? Because in my lifetime covering politics, 35 years now, I’ve never  seen a media as rabidly invested in a president as the liberal national media is  in Mr. Obama. Have you?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I  think that is true, and you can see it in a Pew study, Pew Center for Excellence  in Journalism that they did in 2008 election. They found that of the three cable  networks, Fox played it absolutely right down the middle, the same amount of  favorability to McCain as to Obama. CNN three times as favorable to Obama as to  McCain; MSNBC 5 to 1. So, I mean, and that was four years ago. Interesting, to  give you an idea of how biased the media is, when it issued a press release on  that study, Bill, it played it as CNN was the cable norm, with MSNBC on one side  and Fox on the other deviating from the norm. The norm being the pro-Obama bias  of CNN, rather than the norm that any objective American would say, which is  what Fox has done, which was to play it right down the middle.

O’REILLY: Sure. Now, there was another study done by the  Center for Media and Public Affairs that showed the network broadcasts — CBS,  ABC and NBC — were 68 percent positive for Obama, Senator Obama, then-Senator  Obama, 32 percent negative. For John McCain, it was the reverse: 36 positive, 64  negative. So, my contention is that nothing is going to change this time around.  That the national TV media and the big urban newspapers, like The New York  Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, will all be trying to get  President Obama re-elected. So the question then becomes: How much of an  advantage is it for the president?

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, it’s a major advantage, but you’ve got to  remember this. The left, the Democrats always have the press on their side.  They’ve had it for 40 years. Nonetheless, the Republicans have won the  presidency seven out of the last 11 elections, and that’s because what  Republicans have, what conservatives have is the country, which is a  center-right country, has remained so almost unchangingly for four decades. So  what the media bias does is it slightly — it gives an advantage. It’s a major  advantage, but it’s undoing the deficit that Democrats and liberals already have  because it’s a country that is not essentially conducive to a liberal  message.

And as bad as it appears to be with the tilt in favorable coverage for liberal Barack Obama for, well, somewhat less liberal John McCain – (and here is the result of the study again):

Obama   McCain

CBS 73% 31%
NBC 56%   16%
ABC 57%   42%

– I believe it is actually FAR worse than that.

The reason I say that is there’s an implicit assumption that isn’t true; namely, that both John McCain and Barack Obama had exactly the same negative baggage or positive qualities.  As an example, if Tom and Dick had pretty much the exact same record, and the press covered Dick more favorably than Tom, you’d certainly be able to show bias.

But what if Dick had a long history of radical associations, beginning with communist Frank Marshall Davis, and including racist un-American bigots such as Jeremiah Wright and terrorists such as William Ayers?  What if Dick had all the political baggage of a Chicago thug, including dirty deals with criminal scumbags such as Tony Rezko?  What if Dick’s wife had all KINDS of dirty baggage?  What if Dick could be documented to have a radical history of being a communist?  Just as a couple of examples?  Would it be fair or legitimate to expect the coverage to be evenly “favorable” versus “unfavorable,” or would FAIR and OBJECTIVE coverage have skewed dramatically against Dick???

In the case of Barack Obama, the guy who deserved virtually ALL the negative coverage got virtually NONE.  Versus war hero John McCain who should have received very little unfavorable coverage and got virutally nothing BUT???

And that same overwhelming media bias that got Obama an undeserved victory and the presidency in 2008 is just as biased today in defending the failure’s record.

Obama And Liberal Democrat Ally General Electric Paid NO Taxes Last Year And In Fact Was GIVEN Money By Government

Before we get to our main story, let’s do a little recent historical review.

First of all, G.E.has been a key Obama ally, and GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt is basically even working for Obama:

Obama Names GE CEO Immelt As Economic Adviser
January 21, 2011

President Obama wants to cast some light on economic success stories in the shadows of a slow recovery. And he is looking to find some more.

On Friday, the president travels to Schenectady, N.Y., birthplace of the General Electric Co., to showcase a new GE deal with India and announce a restructured presidential advisory board to focus on increasing employment and competitiveness.

Obama is naming GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the head of a Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. The panel replaces Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which had been chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker. Obama announced late Thursday that Volcker, as expected, was ending his tenure on the panel.

Then there’s the fact that G.E. has been a MASSIVE beneficiary of the Obama- and Democrat-imposed radical so-called “green” agenda:

Undisclosed NBC Conflict of Interest Again Arises in Annual ‘Green Week’
By Lachlan Markay | November 16, 2010 | 16:47

On Sunday, NBC Universal launched its annual “Green Week,” as part of the company’s “Green is Universal” environmental awareness campaign.

As NBC embarks on yet another week of “environmentally themed programming,” it falls to media watchdogs to point out the massive conflict presented by NBC parent company General Electric’s significant financial interests in the policies “Green Week” indirectly advances.

GE stands to make millions from Democrats’ “clean energy” agenda. The company has invested massive amounts of money in technology that can only be profitable through government intervention or subsidization.

Put these two facts together and what do you get?

Now consider this, stupid, depraved fools (i.e., anyone who calls themselves a “Democrat” and says that evil corporate greed comes from Republicans:

G.E.’s Strategies Let It Avoid Taxes Altogether
By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Published: March 24, 2011

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

That may be hard to fathom for the millions of American business owners and households now preparing their own returns, but low taxes are nothing new for G.E. The company has been cutting the percentage of its American profits paid to the Internal Revenue Service for years, resulting in a far lower rate than at most multinational companies.

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.’s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world’s best tax law firm. Indeed, the company’s slogan “Imagination at Work” fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

While General Electric is one of the most skilled at reducing its tax burden, many other companies have become better at this as well. Although the top corporate tax rate in the United States is 35 percent, one of the highest in the world, companies have been increasingly using a maze of shelters, tax credits and subsidies to pay far less.

In a regulatory filing just a week before the Japanese disaster put a spotlight on the company’s nuclear reactor business, G.E. reported that its tax burden was 7.4 percent of its American profits, about a third of the average reported by other American multinationals. Even those figures are overstated, because they include taxes that will be paid only if the company brings its overseas profits back to the United States. With those profits still offshore, G.E. is effectively getting money back.

So we’ve got a giant mega-corporation whose top leadership is clearly in the pocket of the Democrat Party and which has clearly benefitted from the Democrat Party agenda.

And lo and behond, it turns out that not only do these piles of quivering un-American slime at GE not pay taxes, but Obama actually has the naked chutzpah to reach into the American people’s pocket and say, “We owe you this, Mr. Immelt.”

Now, this would be loathsome and indefensible enough it GE was a rightwing corporation.  But understand that Democrats are continually demonizing Republicans as being “the party of corporate greed” when in fact THEY are the real winners at the corporate greed game.

Democrats calling Republicans “corporate shills” is like Yassar Arafat calling Ronald Reagan “anti-Jew”; the label only works if you are an idiot on every level imaginable.

Want more?  Feed on this:

Here’s one among thousands of examples: Incandescent light bulbs are far more convenient and less expensive than compact fluorescent bulbs (CFL) that General Electric now produces. So how can General Electric sell its costly CFLs? They know that Congress has the power to outlaw incandescent light bulbs. General Electric was the prominent lobbyist for outlawing incandescent light bulbs and in 2008 had a $20 million lobbying budget. Also, it should come as no surprise that General Electric is a contributor to global warmers who help convince Congress that incandescent bulbs were destroying the planet.

The greater Congress’ ability to grant favors and take one American’s earnings to give to another American, the greater the value of influencing congressional decision-making. There’s no better influence than money. The generic favor sought is to get Congress, under one ruse or another, to grant a privilege or right to one group of Americans that will be denied another group of Americans.

And guess what?  As soon as Democrats took over Congress that’s exactly what they did: they criminalized incandescent light bulbs and made GE’s mercury-laden CFL bulbs the “Big Brother” alternative.

GE gave $20 million to Democrats.  But don’t worry, Democrats took money right out of your and your children and grandchildren’s pockets to pay back their corporate pals with their usual array of shennanigans.

And the only thing that is more despicable than that is that all the while they’re doing all this, Democrats are constantly demonizing Republicans.

Hypocrisy is the quintessential defining essense of liberalism.  Pure and simple.

NBC Discovers That Illegal Immigrants Are Leaving Arizona. And That’s Supposed To Be A BAD Thing

NBC pulled out every single propaganda bomb in its massive propaganda arsenal to depict this as a tragic story of unparalleled human suffering in the face of an immoral state government enacting an immoral law.

The problem was, I kept reading the transcript and thinking, “My goodness, the illegals are actually leaving on their own!  How wonderful!  What a fantastic law!”

The other thing I thought was, “Finally.  A sanctuary state!”  By which I mean, a state finally taking the measures to free itself from the oppression and burden of illegal immigration.

NBC Reporter Discovers New Immigration Law Causing Illegals to Leave Arizona
By Geoffrey Dickens
Fri, 07/09/2010

NBC’s Lee Cowan, on Thursday’s NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams, discovered a stunning result of Arizona’s new immigration policies – illegal immigrants are now leaving the state. Cowan opened his piece noting a long line now “stretches around the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix every day” but noticed a twist, as the line was full of “immigrants trying to figure out not how to stay in Arizona, but how to flee it.” Cowan peppered his story with anecdotes of local businesses losing customers “A look around this once-bustling barrio is telling. The local hair salon has more empty chairs now than customers” and schools losing students as he claimed “School numbers are dwindling, too. This one is 75 percent Hispanic. Since the immigration law passed, they’ve lost more than 100 students.” Cowan even punctuated this factoid with the sob story of a boy being taken out of school by his father to go back to Mexico:

LEE COWAN: For the Bolanos family, they stayed as long as they could.

MARCIAL BOLANOS, ARIZONA RESIDENT: Arizona is a good state, but no more now.

COWAN: He took his 15-year-old son out of school and is headed back to Mexico, which brings Hugo to tears. But you’re really going to miss your friends?

HUGO BOLANOS: Yeah.

While Cowan did air a soundbite of a Republican state senator who pointed out that it was “kind of a novel idea” that people were “actually worried they may be arrested for breaking the law” he concluded his piece by emphasizing the economic cost of Arizona’s new immigration policy: “It may be months before anyone knows for sure just how many illegal immigrants and their business the law has scared away. Supporters say good riddance, but critics fear the damage has already started.”

The following is a transcript of the Cowan segment as it was aired on the July 8 edition of NBC’s Nightly News with Brian Williams:

BRIAN WILLIAMS: Now we turn to Arizona, where the federal government is challenging the state’s tough new immigration law. Arizona’s governor set up a fund to defend the law. As of today, 9,000 people, mostly from out of state, have contributed a half a million dollars to the effort. Some of those targeted by the new law are not waiting for it to take effect later this summer. They’re leaving the state now. NBC’s Lee Cowan has our report.

LEE COWAN: One way to measure the effect of Arizona’s pending immigration law is the length of this line. It stretches around the Mexican Consulate in Phoenix every day, immigrants trying to figure out not how to stay in Arizona, but how to flee it.

LUIS BALENCEA, ARIZONA RESIDENT: There’s a lot of people already leaving for New Mexico, leaving something else, you know.

COWAN: Anywhere but here.

BALENCEA: Anywhere, yeah. Nobody want to stay here.

COWAN: A look around this once-bustling barrio is telling. The local hair salon has more empty chairs now than customers. The owner is even losing two employees.

ROSANA QUINTERO, SALON OWNER: People look very sad. And we feel sad, too.

COWAN: The café next door is even emptier.

MARIA SIERRA, BUSINESS OWNER: I ask the people, and they say they afraid to come out.

COWAN: School numbers are dwindling, too. This one is 75 percent Hispanic. Since the immigration law passed, they’ve lost more than 100 students.

JEFF SMITH, BALSZ SCHOOL DISTRICT SUPERINTENDENT: This is sort of the tip of the iceberg. More are waiting until the law goes into effect, and then we’ll see more people leaving during the summer.

COWAN: To the authors of Arizona’s tough new immigration stance, if there is a mass exodus of illegal immigrants, so be it.

REPUBLICAN STATE SENATOR RUSSELL PEARCE: Kind of a novel idea, you know, people actually worried they may be arrested for breaking the law.

COWAN: The problem is there really are no hard numbers on the issue. So the question critics are asking: Is this exodus a myth or a fact?

BILL HART, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY: We think it’s fact. We don’t exactly know what’s happening, but we know something’s happening on a large scale.

COWAN: For the Bolanos family, they stayed as long as they could.

MARCIAL BOLANOS, ARIZONA RESIDENT: Arizona is a good state, but no more now.

COWAN: He took his 15-year-old son out of school and is headed back to Mexico, which brings Hugo to tears. But you’re really going to miss your friends?

HUGO BOLANOS: Yeah.

COWAN: And your school?

(Hugo nods head)

COWAN: It may be months before anyone knows for sure just how many illegal immigrants and their business the law has scared away. Supporters say good riddance, but critics fear the damage has already started. Lee Cowan, NBC News, Phoenix.

I mean, we’ve continually been told, “You can’t arrest and deport 12-20 million people!”  We’ve been told that we used to be able to put a man on the moon, but now we can’t put a wall on the border.  What this shows is that we don’t have to arrest and deport 12-20 million people.  We can simply start actually enforcing our laws, and watch illegal immigrants deport themselves.

And you know what would be an even BETTER deterrent?  We could adopt Mexico’s immigration laws.

It’s funny how Mexicans and Hispanics call the Arizona law “racist,” when it doesn’t even begin to be as strict as the Mexican immigration law – which is clearly intended to keep Central American Hispanics out of Mexico.

Which is another way of pointing out that the actual racists are the ones who are attacking Arizona.

The people who are opposing the Arizona law – which is nothing more than Arizona making what is already a federal crime a state crime – do not want ANY enforcement of our borders whatsoever.  They want America to be a borderless socialist utopia.  As in “Communists of the world, unite!”

As one example, read the transcript or watch the debate between Bill O’Reilly and Jorge Ramos.  Ramos simply refused to produce any answer whatsoever about what to do with even violent illegal immigrants.  At one point, O’Reilly pointed out, “You’re just dodging the question entirely!”  And later said, “It’s like I’m not even here.”

And it’s the same on the left from the Marxist-in-Chief on down: nobody is saying, “We’re going to secure our borders.”  Rather, at best, we see Obama demagoguing the issue and holding border security – his sworn duty to uphold as president – hostage to his leftists political agenda.

While his Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis, does infomercials vowing to protect illegal immigrants in every way she can.

That the Obama administration is doing everything it can to prevent our federal laws on illegal immigration from being enforced, consider that Obama has shut down workplace enforcement to an astonishing degree.

I would love to see someone start offering free travel to sanctuary city San Fransisco, under the theory that if the city of San Fransisco really wants illegal immigrants, let it have them.  But if someone were to offer free transportation for illegal immigrants to San Fransisco, NBC and the rest of the mainstream media would depict it as analogous to the freight cars that hauled the Jews to their deaths in Nazi Germany.  Even though San Fransisco is supposed to be a socialist Utopian paradise, rather than a death camp, and even though the illegal immigrants would be traveling voluntarily.  Because propaganda is what they do.

And, even funnier yet, the driver of the van heading for San Fransisco would be arrested – on the demand of the left – for transporting illegal immigrants.  The illegal immigrants would be set free; the driver would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the laws of California.  While the media covered every sordid detail to cut and edit into their slanted narrative, of course.

On any issue you want to name, the mainstream media will select the leftist side of a story, and only show the “facts” that support that side.  That’s just who they are.

For instance, the story talks about the hit that some small businesses may take due to illegal immigrants leaving.  But they entirely  omit the huge sums of money that will be saved by the overwhelmed health care system, by the overburdened public school system, and the like.  They also fail to mention that many jobs abandoned by illegals will be taken by people LEGALLY in the country.  Just for a couple quick examples.

The funniest thing of all is that these people – whom NBC depicts as such oppressed victims – are themselves ultimately victims of the media.  It’s not a bad law that’s making them leave; it’s a bad media that is falsely and demagogically depicting the Arizona law as something it isn’t in order to stir up still more fearmongering.

Supreme Court Justice Mouths ‘That’s Not True’ To Lying Obama Speech

Remember Rep. Joe Wilson’s “You LIE!” retort during Obama’s last speech in the Capitol Building?  Wilson’s statement was about the only honest thing said throughout the speech.  And Joe Wilson’s honest rebuke of Obama’s lies netted him at least $2.7 million in contributions.

Well, now we have our new “Joe Wilson” – coming straight from the Supreme Court of the United States.

Watch Justice Samuel Alito’s mouthed response of “That’s not true” to Obama’s demagoguery:

Politico sets up the moment:

POLITICO’s Kasie Hunt, who’s in the House chamber, reports that Justice Samuel Alito mouthed the words “not true” when President Barack Obama criticized the Supreme Court’s campaign finance decision.

“Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections,” Obama said. “Well I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people, and that’s why I’m urging Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to right this wrong.”

The shot of the black-robed Supreme Court justices, stone-faced, was priceless.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) stood up behind the justices and clapped vigorously while Alito shook his head and quietly mouthed his discontent.

Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md) are trying to find a way to legislate around the Supreme Court decision.

Basically, if the Supreme Court says it’s legal to murder 50 million babies, the Democrats claim that the voice of God has spoken – and that ruling cannot be questioned.  But if that very same court says that corporations have a right to exercise free speech, then THAT’S an abortion of justice.

Obama’s denunciation of the Supreme Court in a venue in which they could not defend themselves – and with a line that was intended to generate a Democrat standing ovation all around them – was a despicable disrespect of our separate branches of government as well as being rude.  The Justices showed up for Obama’s speech out of courtesy for the executive and legislative branches; they did not show up to be attacked.

Just as Joe Wilson was CORRECT in his contention that Barack Obama had lied, Justice Alito was correct in pointing out that Obama had not told the truth.  A central claim in Obama’s slanderous attack against the Supreme Court decision was that foreign corporations would be able to influence the political process.  But that isn’t true:

Another area of interest is the possible effect of this decision on foreign political spending in U.S. elections. It is important to note (as much public comment on this decision does not) that under current law, election spending by non-U.S. persons and entities is prohibited under section 441e of the statute, and that prohibition is unaffected by the ruling in Citizens United. Thus, the existing restriction on expenditures by foreign corporations remains in place not because they are corporations but because they are foreign. Further, the U.S. subsidiaries of international companies are already subject to FEC restrictions on spending non-U.S. funds in U.S. elections, or allowing foreign nationals a role in the decision-making process. 11 C.F.R. § 110.20.

An article in Big Journalism sets up the legitimate major issues (as opposed to Obama’s illegitimate demagoguery) surrounding the Supreme Court’s ruling:

Lost in most of the coverage of the decision (and conveniently ignored by President Obama, former “senior lecturer” at the University of Chicago Law School), is that, as Justice Kennedy points out, the ban on electioneering speech never applied to one type of corporation. And what type of corporation would be exempt from laws and regulations that chill the speech of all its corporate brethren? Why, the media corporation, as Justice Kennedy points out on page 35 of the opinion:

Media corporations are now exempt from §441b’s ban on corporate expenditures. Yet media corporations accumulate wealth with the help of the corporate form, the largest media corporations have “immense aggregations of wealth,” and the views expressed by media corporations often “have little or no correlation to the public’s support” for those views.

The law drew a line between two types of corporations: media corporations, and everyone else. Intentionally or not, it tilted political power toward the media and away from every other type of corporation (many of which, as Justice Kennedy observed, have limited resources, unlike, say, CNN). The mere fact that media organizations were able to speak at all in the 30 days leading up to an election gave them an advantage over other corporations. Even if a media corporation tries to be scrupulously fair in its coverage of an election, the inevitable choice to cover one story over another gives an advantage to one side. By removing the government’s muzzle from corporations, the Supreme Court has restored some balance to the playing field.

Surely the little guy has an interest in hearing election messages from corporations. The government gets its message out, and the media gets its message out. Why shouldn’t ordinary, private-sector corporations be able to speak as well? Unless he is a member of  the Civil Service or a public-employees’ union, the little guy’s livelihood is usually dependent on a corporation — not the government or the media. Why shouldn’t he be able to hear that Candidate X’s support for cap and trade will destroy his employer?

Why hasn’t Obama decried that ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, and CNN – corporations all – have exercised their rights to free speech???  Why hasn’t he demanded that THEY be marginalized along with Fox News?  And who do those corporate bastards at the New York and Los Angeles Times think they are spouting their views and influencing our elections?  Do you realize that they depend on advertisements from OTHER corporations that are quite often foreign-owned?

The author of the above article contends that big media will be hurt by this ruling, since presently they are the only corporations that get free speech, and therefore are the only corporations that get to speak for all the other corporations through the filter of their liberal biases.

It’s also more than a little hypocritical for Obama to wax so self-righteous now when he had so little problem accepting all kinds of campaign contributions that in all likelihood included foreign money without every bothering to check.

And, of course, the very big-media corporations who were alone allowed to exercise their free speech never bothered to look at the Obama foreign money issue.

You want to hear the REAL reason Obama is so angry at this decision?  Because he is finally bothered by the notion that one’s chickens can come “home to roost.”

From the New York Times:

But the decision could also have a significant effect on Mr. Obama’s expansive domestic agenda. The president has angered many of the big-money industries — like banks and insurers — that would be inclined to dig deep into their pockets to influence the outcome of the president’s legislative proposals.

Obama has repeatedly demonized entire industries (banks, auto manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, health insurance companies, etc.).  And now a whopping 77% of investors believe that Obama is anti-business.

So it will be something of a textbook case of poetic justice that the businesses that Obama viciously attacked finally get their own shot at being able to attack him for a change.

Obama’s Frightening Disconnect Following Ft. Hood Massacre

This is something.  And, for the record, it’s not the evil Fox News, but the evil NBC telling us that something is seriously wrong with our president:

Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting
A bad week for Democrats compounded by an awful moment for Barack Obama.
By ROBERT A. GEORGE
Updated 9:18 AM CST, Fri, Nov 6, 2009

Updated 9:18 AM CST, Fri, Nov 6, 2009

Getty Images

President Obama didn’t wait long after Tuesday’s devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.

After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.

But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a “shout-out” to “Dr. Joe Medicine Crow — that Congressional Medal of Honor winner.”  Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?

Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That’s the least that should occur.

Indeed, an argument could be made that Obama should have canceled the Indian event, out of respect for people having been murdered at an Army post a few hours before. That would have prevented any sort of jarring emotional switch at the event.

Did the president’s team not realize what sort of image they were presenting to the country at this moment? The disconnect between what Americans at home knew had been going on — and the initial words coming out of their president’s mouth was jolting, if not disturbing.

[Continue reading]

The NBC article concludes by saying:

“Democrats across the country have real reason to panic.”

Well, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have any reason to panic.  But then again, Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have any reason.  Period.

When Obama was elected, unemployment was at 6.6%.  His adminstration promised that his stimulus would prevent unemployment from reaching 8%.  And now it’s 10.2%.  That’s a huge problem.  And their only answer seems to be 1) blame Bush – as though the American people wanted a demagogue rather than a president who would man-up and start actually taking responsibility for the country’s problems – and 2) present a ton of false statistics to “prove” the unprovable (that his stimulus “saved” jobs).

Last Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” David Gregory pointed out that little fact during his interview with Turbo Tax Tim Geithner:

GREGORY:  OK.  What is a saved job?  How do you measure that?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  A, a saved–well…

GREGORY:  It’s not something an economist recognizes as an actual fact.

Note to Gregory: “Actual facts don’t matter to the Obama administration.”

David Gregory had previously put up a quote from an economist at Carnegie Mellon University:

“One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called `jobs saved.’ It doesn’t exist for good reason:  how can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?”

Reality isn’t important to the Obama administration, and neither is history.  What matters is rhetoric, demagoguery, and propaganda.

The giant $3.27 trillion porkulus was every bit the abject failure that conservatives predicted it would be.

And analyst Meredith Whitney – who was one of the few voices predicting the catastrophe we suffered last year – is saying that our joblessness is nowhere NEAR over.  She is predicting that unemployment will rise to 13% OR HIGHER.  Because NOTHING Obama has done has even come close to dealing with the REAL problems that are dragging down our economy.

Get behind that, America.  Obama’s “solution” for Afghanistan is his solution for America: namely, dithering is “change.”

But let us get back to Obama’s bizarre behavior.  First he chose to ignore what was going on in the country, how the people were expressing their mood and their views, and instead narcissistically decided to spend election night watching HIMSELF.

The Obama White House can’t acknowledge the obvious fact that we just suffered the second successful jihadist terrorist attack on our soil since he became our commander-in-chief.  And if even our soldiers on their secure base aren’t safe from these people, just who the hell is?

And now he’s just plain whackjob inappropriate giving “shout outs” only a short time after a dozen of our soldiers are murdered and over 30 more are wounded in that aforementioned terrorist attack.

Obama’s behavior seems to continue the trend with other socialist demagogues: seize power, showing a rare level of understanding of popular demagoguery, and then sink into bizarre behavior as his incompetence to lead becomes increasingly apparent.

The tragic thing is that it isn’t just Democrats who have cause to worry.  Americans have cause to worry that this inexperienced radical is nowhere even CLOSE to being the person we needed to lead us back to prosperity.

Interview With Tim Geithner, Poster Boy For An Administration That Has No Clue

From NBC’s “Meet the Press,” with David Gregory interviewing Treasury Secretary ‘Turbo Tax’ Timothy Geithner.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  You know, what the government did was to step in and make sure we’re providing the tax cuts and investments necessary to arrest the crisis, get credit markets starting to open up again.  And we did that, that plan worked.  But we’ve got a ways to go before…

GREGORY:  But that’s a big question, whether or not–yes, you have growth for the first time in four quarters.  But is any of this growth sustainable without government intervention?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  It will be, it will be.  But what the government has to do in a crisis is to provide a bridge until the economy can repair itself and businesses are confident enough to start to invest again.  And again, you’re starting to see it again.  Businesses now, I think they’ll say–you talk to people across the country, they’ll say that they feel that things are more stable now and for the first time they see orders starting to pick up.  And what’ll happen is they’ll start to invest again, they’ll start to bring people back onto their payroll and this will get more momentum.

GREGORY:  But that happened hasn’t yet–hasn’t happened yet.  We’ll get into that a little bit more in just a minute.

The question about consumer spending that really drove the market down on Friday, it’s off, biggest level that it’s been off in nine months.  Again, people are not consuming.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  There’s nothing new in those numbers on Friday.  They were in the GDP report.  No incremental news in those numbers.  So again, the overall picture for the economy is that consumers are a little more confident now, confident enough to start to spend again, investments starting to spend again. You know, there was another number on Friday that showed business confidence, in the Chicago survey, showing a little more optimism about the future, too. And–but, you know, again, this is a tough economy still, it’s going to take some time.  But we’re committed to making sure we’re reinforcing this progress we’ve seen.

But that is just a load of baloney, as Gregory pointed out.  Here’s a link to an AP article bearing the title, “Consumer Spending At Lowest In 9 Months.”  And the opening paragraph of that article begins with the words, “Consumer spending plunged in September by the largest amount in nine months.” [I used a different article because I know how articles that don’t pitch the Obama line tend to get deleted].

Seriously, exactly which part of that does Mr. Boy Genius Tim Geithner – who was so brilliant that we desperately needed him even though he was too incompetent or dishonest (or both!) to know how to pay his own taxes – fail to understand?  Consumers AREN’T “a little more confident,” Turbo Tax; they’re a LOT LESS confident!

The “growth” in GDP was almost entirely fueled by government spending.  That is a trend toward utter catastrophe and Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation, rather than anything positive.  It is absolutely unsustainable.  It is a terrible sign of artificially-generated growth by debt-fueled spending, rather than a sign for any kind of hope.

When our Treasury Secretary has his head so buried up Obama’s butt that he can’t understand simple realities, we are in a giant load of trouble.  And the anvil is being cued to drop as we speak.

Let’s go on.  Maybe Geithner and the Obama administration have some kind of solution, some kind of plan to help get us out of the problem they don’t even understand exists in the first place:

GREGORY:  Do we need another cash for clunkers program to stimulate the economy?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  I don’t think at the moment–well, let me start this way, David.  About half of the money in the Recovery Act, tax cuts and investments, are still ahead of us.  So there’s a lot of force still moving its way through the system now, and you’re going to see that continue to provide support for the economy going forward.

I interrupt at this point to point out that the Obama administration is literally refuting itself here  Geithner says the stimulus is going to creating beneficial impact.  But Obama’s chair for his Council for Economic Advisers claimed the exact opposite, saying:

“By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to further growth.”

So which is it?

And pardon me while I mockingly laugh at an administration that is publicly literally talking out of both sides of their mouth at the same time.

In any event, when Geithner confidently declares that the stimulus that never really did squat in the first place is going to continue to continue to produce wonderful changes in the first place, you don’t have to go any farther than another key Obama official to see that that just isn’t true.

I’ve also got to point out that it is increasingly obvious that the cash for clunkers program was an unmitigated disaster.  First of all, it is now a documented fact that all the cash for clunkers program did was spur people to buy cars they were already going to buy within a matter of a few months anyway.  All the government did was move 4th quarter car sales into the 3rd quarter.  Second, we now know that the best and most impartial evidence demonstrates that the taxpayers forked out a whopping $20,000 for every car sold under the program.

In other words, it was an even bigger disaster than Republicans predicted it would be when they overwhelmingly opposed the program.

But we continue with Gregory and Geithner:

GREGORY:  Could you have had more impact if more of that money were paid out? You still have about $500 billion of the stimulus that has not been paid out yet.  How long will it take to get paid out?

SEC’Y GEITHER: Actually, I–again, it was designed to pay out over two years, because we knew it was going to take a long time to repair the damage we started with earlier this year.  So it was designed to pay out over this period of time.  And I think it’s actually delivering better results sooner than we would expect.  I think we’re seeing better outcomes in the financial sector, in the economy than many of us would’ve thought when we sat there with the president in Chicago at the end of last year.

GREGORY:  Right.  Well, but that’s not exactly true, because the president’s team said you’d keep unemployment to 8 percent if you didn’t have the stimulus, so.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  No.  No, you’re right, the unemployment is worse than almost everybody expected.  But growth is back a little more quickly, a little stronger than people thought, and growth is a necessary condition.  With growth jobs will come, but growth has to come first.  But just look at the financial sector.  You know, you’ve had banks repaying money with interest. Taxpayers are getting substantial earnings on this big investment in the financial system, and that’s delivering good, good returns for the American taxpayer.

Again, Geithner is utterly filled with fecal matter.

“Unemployment is worse than almost anybody thought”?  That was basically Vice President Biden’s line back in July.  And it was utterly idiotic when Biden said it back then.  Apparently, the Obama administration only has ears that hear liberals’ prognostications.  Republicans widely predicted the stimulus would utterly fail to create jobs.  That was why virtually every single one of them voted against it.  All kinds of economists said it would fail.  But they suffered from the flaw of not being liberals.

When high-level officials like Biden and Geithner say things like, “almost everybody was just shocked,” it shows how utterly insulated and ignorant these clowns who are running our government truly are.

Basically, 47% of the country didn’t vote for Obama.  And the 47% were the ones who turned out to be right.

The Obama administration consists on a bunch of weasels who are trying to dodge their central economic claim.  They said their massive stimulus (which actually cost taxpayers $3.27 TRILLION, by the way) would prevent unemployment from reaching 8%.  They were wrong.  Everything they thought was wrong.  And now “everybody” but them should be held responsible for their failure.

GREGORY:  Let’s talk about claims of success about jobs.  The White House says 640,000 jobs have been created or saved by the $800 billion stimulus.  There are Republicans who say the number is bogus, that it’s just PR.  John Boehner, leader of the Republicans in the House, as you well know, circulated a quote from an economist at Carnegie, Carnegie Mellon University, and I’ll put it up on the screen and you can look at it:  “One can search economic textbooks forever without finding a concept called `jobs saved.’ It doesn’t exist for good reason:  how can anyone know that his or her job has been saved?” You’ve got a lot of experience in the economy.  Is this PR or fact?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  This is fact.  Again, at–when the president took office, this economy was falling at the rate of 6.5 percent at an annual rate per year, fastest rate in decades.  We were losing three-quarters of a million jobs a month.  Now, the pace of job loss has slowed dramatically, the economy’s now growing again.  It’s growing not just because the effects of the Recovery Act.  Many people opposed the Recovery Act, said it wasn’t going to work.  It’s working, it’s delivering what it should result–what it should, it should produce.  Value of Americans’ savings are up almost 35 percent since the beginning of the year.  Interest rates down.  These are substantially powerful returns on the Recovery Act, and they are delivering what they were designed to deliver.

GREGORY:  OK.  What is a saved job?  How do you measure that?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  A, a saved–well…

GREGORY:  It’s not something an economist recognizes as an actual fact.

Thank you, David Gregory.  You must work for Fox News, given the fact that the White House has been demonizing Fox News as a propaganda outlet due to the fact that it presents the facts rather than Obama’s propaganda.

The Associated Press joined Fox News in Barry Obama’s doghouse by pointing out the fact that the administration was playing all kinds of ridiculous shenanigans with their job claims.

And we can go back months into the past and see that the Obama administration has stubbornly insisted as stating as fact what was months ago revealed to be blathering nonsense:

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX): “The administration, including the vice president, has claimed that stimulus policies have added 150,000 new jobs to the level of employment. We see this cited almost daily by the administration. Can you substantiate that claim?”

Mr. Keith Hall, Commissioner Of Bureau Of Labor Statistics: “No. That would be a very difficult thing for anybody to substantiate.”

“Created or saved” is a meaningless superficial category created by meaningless superficial people to advance a meaningless superficial agenda.

It doesn’t matter how deceitful the Obama’s bogus claims are, because they are liars without shame and they don’t give a damn about reality.  And they can’t solve the unemployment problem because they can’t get past their own propaganda.

Gregory goes on a little later and points out:

GREGORY:  Right.  But my, but my point is that this should not be overstated, the impact of the stimulus should not be overstated.  Here’s the facts about how many jobs have been lost since the stimulus:  2.7 million.  And you’ve got 14 states who have double-digit unemployment.  You can look at the top five, with Michigan at the top with 15.3 percent unemployment.  So you say it could’ve been a lot of worse.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  David…

GREGORY:  A, it’s still very bad, and B, the stimulus has had only a minimal effect.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Actually–no, no, I wouldn’t say that.  I said actually, even those numbers understate it, because there’s lots of people who are underemployed, working less they would like.  So again, this is a very tough economy.  It’s only been three initial months of positive growth.  It’s going to take some time for unemployment to come down and for jobs to get created again.  And that’s why it’s important to–for people to recognize that we have a responsibility to keep working at this so we’re reinforcing the recovery.

GREGORY:  How high will unemployment go, do you think?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Don’t know for sure, but it’s likely still rising and it, it probably going to rise further before it starts to come down again.

GREGORY:  Double digits?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Most economists think we’ll probably get there, and–but again, the economists think–and, you know, there’s a lot of uncertainty in this.  Economists don’t know that, don’t know that much about the future, David.  But they say that they think we’ll start to see net jobs created at the beginning of the year, sometime around the beginning of the year, in the first quarter sometime.

I have to begin by correcting David Gregory.  He said that Obama had lost 2.7 million jobs since he passed his stimulus.  ABC News, reporting facts from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, had a very different number:

Approximately 3.3 million jobs have been lost since the stimulus act passed, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But what are 600,000 jobs between friends?

And when Geither says that “most economists think we’ll get [to double digit unemployment], realize that we are going to get there VERY SOON.  Geithner is talking about the wonderful effect the stimulus has had on employment even as the unemployment rate is expected to climb to at least 10% when the Bureau of Labor Statistics figures for October come out.

And respected economic analysts such as Meredith Whitney – who accurately predicted the 2008 economic crash when most of her fellows were whistling a very different tune – has gone on the record predicting unemployment rates of 13% or higher in our future.

Okay.  Things are bad and they’re going to get a lot worse.  But the Obama adminstration has some kind of plan, right?  I mean, RIGHT?

Nope.  Beyond “Blame Bush,” they’ve got NOTHING.

GREGORY:  What should the administration be going specifically to reduce unemployment at this point?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  The most important thing is to get growth growing again at a strong pace.

GREGORY:  Right.  But what can the government…

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  That’s the most…

GREGORY:  …what should the government be doing?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  The government’s doing exactly what it should be doing. It’s, it’s making sure that there are tax cuts to business and families, investments in improving infrastructure, creating incentives for businesses to spend again, relief for state and local governments and getting this financial system back on its feet.

Gregory could have pointed out that the government ISN’T actually doing ANY of these things.  Tax cuts?  They plan tax increases.  What the Obama administration calls “tax cuts” have been “redistribution of wealth” as the government takes money away from producers and hands it to non-producers.  And to small businesses?  Are you joking? Geithner claims that stimulus investments have imporoved infrastructure.  The problem is and always has been that not enough of the stimulus program ever went to infrastructure in the first place.  And what exactly what incentives has Obama provided for businesses to spend again?  The fact is, Obama is trying to force businesses to spend more on healthcare, more on job-killing minimum wages, more on electricity, all of which will result in them having a lot LESS to spend on anything else.

That’s okay though, I suppose.  Geithner would have spent the rest of his time quibbling over details and pumping sunshine if Gregory had stopped him at his last paragraph.

What Gregory did was continued to push Geithner for SOMETHING that Obama could offer as an economic solution.  Something.  Anything.  And Geithner had nothing.

GREGORY:  But do you need more stimulus?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  I don’t think we need to make that judgment yet, David. Again, there’s–about half of the money committed by the Congress is still working its way through the system by design.  It was designed to work over two years.  So we’re not in a position yet where we need to make a choice about whether it’s going to take more than that…

GREGORY:  Right.

[Please go back to what I demonstrated earlier, i.e., that Obama’s own chair for the Council of Economic Advisers actually said the precise opposite.]

We now continue the documentary about the fact that Tim Geithner and Barry Obama have absolutely no clue whatsoever how to fix the economy.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  …to bring growth back.  And again, that’s only a bridge. You’re not going to get real recovery until it’s led by the private sector, by businesses.

GREGORY:  So I want to be clear, additional stimulus you don’t think is needed right now.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Not, not yet.  Now, Congress is looking at extending unemployment insurance, some other targeted programs that would expire without additional action.  You’ve heard Congress today–you heard–saw Congress this week start to talk about extending the first-time homebuyer tax credit, some other measures.  We think those will be helpful things for the economy as a whole, and they’ll also provide some added support.

GREGORY:  Let me talk about the deficit and the debt.  These are alarming numbers, you said they are.  Let’s look at the deficit since Inauguration Day: $1.2 trillion, now $1.4 trillion; it’s up 17 percent.  The overall debt, Inauguration Day:  $10.6 trillion, now $11.9 trillion.  What’s it going to be a year from now?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well, it’s going to have to come down.  Now it’s too high, and I think everybody understands this.  You know, we’ve got these two central imperatives:  restore growth, create jobs.  But make sure people understand we’re going to have to bring those fiscal deficits down as growth recovers. First growth, though.  Without growth, you can’t fix those long-term fiscal problems.  But you’re not going to have a recovery that’s going to be strong enough unless people are confident we’re going to have the will to go back to live within our means.

GREGORY:  How do you bring it down, though?  Do taxes have to go up?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well, we’re going to have to do–we’re going to have to make some hard choices.  The–but we’re not really at the point yet, David, we’re going to know what’s going to be the best path forward.  The president’s very committed to bring down these deficits, and he’s very committed to doing so in a way that’s not going to add to the burden on people, people making less than $250,000 a year.

GREGORY:  But wait a minute, though, what are hard–I mean, I think a lot of people, it’s fair to say, what are hard choices?  I mean, what hard choices have been made so far?  Are you going to raise taxes?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  We’re going to have to bring our resources and our expenditures more into balance.

GREGORY:  So it’s possible.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well, again, the president’s committed to make sure we get this economy back on track.  We’re bringing down this deficit over time.  And to do so…

GREGORY:  Mr. Secretary, you talked about hard choices, so why can’t you give a straight answer to whether taxes have to come up…

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Because…

GREGORY:  …when you have a deficit this big?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Because, David, right now we’re focused on getting growth back on track, OK, and we’re not at the point yet we have to decide exactly what it’s going to take.  And I just want to say this very clearly.  He was committed in the campaign to make–he said in the campaign and he is committed to make sure we do this in a way that is not going to add to the burden on people making less than $250,000 a year.  Now, it’s going to be hard to do that, but he’s committed to doing that and we can do that.

GREGORY:  You can do it, but it’s still a chance that you’d have to raise taxes and go back on that if you’ve got a debt this big.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  We’re going to have to do it in a way that’s going to help to meet that test, meet that commitment, the commitment he made, to do it in a way that’s fair to Americans and make sure we do it in a way that’s going to allow–provide for growth and recovery going forward.  But we can do this. You know, this is not beyond our capacity as a country to do.

GREGORY:  But…

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  But first things first.

GREGORY:  Right.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  And unless we have a recovery, our long-term debts are going to be worse.  Now, you didn’t raise health care yet, but what’s happening on health care now is very encouraging.  Because if you look at what independent analysts say now, if you look at these bills moving their way through the Congress, they will make a substantial difference in reducing the rate of growth in healthcare costs over the long term and they will help bring down those long-term deficits.

GREGORY:  But there is going to be a heavy burden on the middle-class through, through health care by taxes going up, by premiums going up.  It will affect the middle-class.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  You know, I, I, I don’t think that’s the way to look at it. The–our tax–our healthcare system today imposes enormous burdens not just on businesses, but on families.  There are very high hidden costs to our current system.  And the best way to add to our long-term deficits, and the best way to add to those burdens is not reform health care today.

GREGORY:  But it doesn’t answer the question about premiums going up with an individual mandate and taxes going up on so-called Cadillac plans and other parts of this bill as they’re moving their way through the process that would increase taxes.

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Right.  Again, I don’t think that’s the right way to think about it.  I think you have to look at the entire system today and the cost that presents.  And if you look at those…

GREGORY:  Well, why isn’t that the right way to look at it if that’s the reality of what the legislation would do?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  No.

GREGORY:  How else should it be looked at?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  Well…

GREGORY:  Yes, there are, there are ballooning costs with the existing system, but the remedy still includes tax cuts–tax hikes, does it not?

SEC’Y GEITHNER:  No.  What the, what the bills moving through Congress do, and these are very important, they expand coverage, they will make care more affordable and they will reduce the rate of growth in healthcare costs.  And in that sense they’re going to provide a more fair system, so families are not going to live with the fear that if they lose their job they’re going to lose health care, they’re going to be denied healthcare coverage and they’re going to be able to afford a basic package of care that’s going to make sure they can provide for their families.

GREGORY:  Just a couple of minutes left…

Gregory turned the discussion to bonuses to AIG executives.

I’m not even going to begin to get into the terrible calamity that Obamacare will be if it passes.  Costs will go up massively.  People will pay more and get less.  There will be rationing.  A lot of people will unnecessarily die early deaths of medical neglect.

In what may be the most frightening thing of all to those who value liberty, the phrase “shall” granting the government sweeping powers and responsibilities appears a whopping 3,425 times.  That’s three thousand, four hundred and twenty-five times the government forces you to do something.  This is legislation that will give the government an all-encompassing mandate to dominate our lives.

And about the taxes Gregory mentioned?  Here’s a fun little trivia fact you can know about the 1,990 page health care bill:

According to that group, along with the word “shall” being used 3,425 times in the legislation, the word “tax” was used 87 times, “taxable” used 62 times, “excise tax” used ten times, “taxes” used 15 times, “fee” used 59 times, and “penalty” used 113 times. They also provided a list of 13 specific tax hikes contained within the bill, and even were so kind to include page numbers.

You want taxes?  Then you’ll LOVE H.R. 3692:

October 29th, 2009 by Legislative Staff

1. SMALL BUSINESS SURTAX (Sec. 551, p. 336) – $460.5 BILLION
   
2. EMPLOYER MANDATE TAX* (Secs. 511-512, p. 308) – $135.0 BILLION
   
3. INDIVIDUAL MANDATE TAX* (Sec. 501, p. 296) – $33 BILLION
   
4. MEDICAL DEVICE TAX* (Sec. 552, p. 339) – $20 BILLION
   
5. $2,500 ANNUAL CAP ON FSAs* (Sec. 532, p. 325) – $13.3 BILLION
   
6. PROHIBITION ON PRE-TAX PURCHASES OF OVER-THE-COUNTER DRUGS THROUGH HSAs, FSAs, and HRSs* – (Sec. 1802, p. 1162) – $2.0 BILLION
   
7. TAX ON HEALTH INSURANCE POLICIES TO FUND COMPARATIVE EFFECTIVENESS RESEARCH TRUST FUND* (Sec. 1802, p. 1162) – $2.0 BILLION
   
8. 20% PENALTY ON CERTAIN HAS DISTRIBUTIONS* (Sec. 533, p. 326) – $1.3 BILLION
   
9. OTHER TAX HIKES AND INCREASED COMPLIANCE COSTS ON U.S. JOB CREATORS – $56.4 BILLION
   • IRS reporting on payments to certain businesses (Sec. 553, p. 344) – $17.1 BILLION
     
   • Delay implementation of worldwide interest allocation rules (Sec. 554, p. 345) – $26.1 BILLION
     
   • Override U.S. Treaties on certain payments by “insourcing” businesses (Sec. 561, p. 346) – $7.5 BILLION
     
   • Codify economic substance doctrine and impose penalties (Sec. 562, p. 349) – $5.7 BILLION
10. OTHER REVENUE-RAISING PROVISIONS – $3.0 BILLION

TOTAL TAX INCREASES: $729.5 BILLION

*Violates President Obama’s pledge to avoid tax increases on Americans earning less than $250,000

My point in bringing this to you was simply to point out that if you have ever seen a circus that featured a bunch of clowns wildly driving around and crashing into each other in little clown cars or tricycles, you pretty much understand what it looks like inside the White House.

These people have no clue.

And the new United States of America under Obama, launched with such great fanfare, is – like the Titanic – on a collision course with a giant iceberg.

Lying, Demagogic White House Finally Gets Its Media Smackdown

I like the title from Moe Lane best: “White House tries to muzzle media; draws back a bloody stump.”

But Allahpundit exposes the true deceit and hypocrisy of the White House that led to its bloody stump:

Decide for yourself what the most disgraceful aspect of this is. Was it the fact that Gibbs told Jake Tapper explicitly on Monday that the White House wouldn’t try to dictate to the press pool who should and shouldn’t be included — before doing precisely that? Was it Anita Dunn going out of her way to say she respects Major Garrett as a fair reporter — before the administration decided he didn’t deserve a crack here at Feinberg? Or was it the repeated insistence by Dunn and Axelrod that of course the administration will make its officials available to Fox — before pulling the plug today?

The other networks deserve the praise they’re getting for standing up to the Baby-in-Chief, but if they had acquiesced in this freezeout, a precedent would have been set that would have been eagerly used by future Republican presidents to close them off too.  And don’t think they weren’t all keenly aware of it.

Hot Air does a very good job of showing what Obama and his cockroaches are full of.

The video is a great watch for anyone who likes to see the good guys win and the bad guys lose:

[Youtube link]

The Hot Air piece exposes the pattern of constant lies coming out of this White House.  They are as dishonest as the sun is hot.

The White House’s petulant demagoguery of Fox News has been utterly great for Fox News as their ratings have gone through the roof.  They nearly outstrip all of their competitors combined.  Even liberals are acknowledging that Fox News has been “undamaged” by the demagogic White House campaign against them.

Meanwhile, only 43% of voters would be willing to re-elect this whiner-in-chief.  And he’s seen the fastest drop in the polls of any president in 50 years.

So you just keep demonizing Fox News, you demon.  I think it’s workin’ just great for ya.

Media’s Bias, Dishonesty Re: Reagan Vs. Obama Unemployment Bodes Ill For America

Our founding fathers believed a free and independent press – which would serve as a watchdog protecting the nation from the lies, corruption, mismanagement, and demagoguery of politicians – would be utterly essential for a functioning democracy.

It would be nice if we had one.

The fact is that going back decades, the media have become anything but either “independent” or a “watchdog.”  Rather than guarding and protecting the truth, they have become the “lapdogs” of the left, licking the faces of Democrats and turning viciously on Republicans, without regard to the truth or the facts.

A study comparing the media’s response to IDENTICAL job loss numbers between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama pointedly demonstrate the deceit and hypocrisy of the mainstream media.  In short, Reagan was given negative coverage 91% of the time, whereas Obama received negative coverage 7% of the time.  For some reason, the same media that has repeatedly claimed that Obama “inhereited” the recession could never bring themselves to make a similar claim about Reagan’s inheritance via Jimmy Carter.

There are some useful charts and videos on the Businessandmedia site which hosts this article.  I cite the article here merely to preserve the record.  My discussion of the ramifications of the article will follow.

Networks Flip Flop On Jobs

Identical Unemployment Numbers ‘Good’ News for Obama, But ‘All’ Bad under Reagan.

Full Report

A study from the Business & Media Institute

By Julia A. Seymour

Executive Summary
PDF Version

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These are tough times. More than 3 million people have lost their jobs just since February 2009 and consumer confidence fell unexpectedly in September. The unemployment rate has spiked from 8.1 percent to 9.7 percent in the first seven months of Barack Obama’s presidency and is expected to climb even higher.

Despite that grim news, the major news networks have spun their unemployment reports into “good news” and presented Obama positively. Journalists tried hard to present rising job losses in the best possible light.

ABC’s Charles Gibson called the loss of 539,000 jobs in April a “marked improvement” May 8, 2009, because fewer jobs were lost than in March. In June 2009, Gibson was talking again about “hopeful” signs in the job numbers as more Americans were out of work.

But flashback 27 years ago to 1982, the unemployment rate was in roughly the same range as it was in 2009. Yet, network reporters consistently presented the U.S. economy under President Ronald Reagan as the “worst of times” by showing people living out of their trucks under a bridge and collecting free food at a food bank.

CBS reporter Ray Brady told a “tale of two cities” on June 4, 1982. He found the “worst of times” in Waterloo, Iowa, where the unemployment rate was the highest in the nation: 25.4 percent. That was nearly 16 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate of 9.5 percent. He contrasted Waterloo’s joblessness with 4.6 percent unemployment in Sioux Falls, S.D. where things were “close to” the best of times.

Brady’s report addressed two very different employment situations, but most 1982 reports focused heavily on places where “desperation has turned to hopelessness.” The unemployment rate under Obama and Reagan was nearly identical, yet they received almost exactly opposite treatment from ABC, CBS and NBC reports. Reagan was mentioned negatively in reports 13 times more often than Obama.

While in Obama’s case, reporters found bright spots – like 25 police recruits’ jobs being “saved” by the stimulus package – during Reagan’s term, journalists found tragedy everywhere. They interviewed a battered wife, a family that had run out of food and many unemployed people. One NBC anchor even warned that suicide and murder rates increase in such hard times.

Although there was a difference between the two presidents in how long they had been in office, the spin was still significant. Unemployment numbers rose similarly under both Reagan and Obama, but journalists continued a long-standing trend of spinning the numbers.

The Business & Media Institute analyzed network unemployment stories on the evenings that data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics between March 2009 to September 2009 and March 1982 to September 1982. There were 66 stories in all – 35 stories in 2009 and 31 stories in 1982.  BMI found that network reports were 13 times more negative in their treatment of Reagan than Obama.  In fact, 91 percent of stories (20 out of 22) mentioning Reagan’s administration portrayed it negatively – while only 7 percent (1 out of 15) of Obama administration mentions were negative. Obama was mentioned positively 87 percent of the time (13 out of 15). There was not a single positive mention of the Reagan White House.

Blame for ‘Wicked’ Reagan, but Praise for Obama’s ‘Important’ Stimulus

In 1982, network reports showed desperation, sadness and tragedy as a result of rising joblessness. NBC pictured lines of people waiting outside a food bank and interviewed crisis counselors in Seattle on May 7.

“More callers talk of despair and even suicide,” Don Oliver reported that night, before interviewing Jim and Pam Smalls. Oliver called them “victims of unemployment depression and anger,” because Pam had to seek help from a battered woman’s shelter.

Another network showed people living under a highway overpass out of their trucks because they couldn’t find work. But under Obama the networks found a man “doing backflips” when he was asked to return to work at a Minnesota window company and another man who was thrilled to be hired by a hamburger stand in Arizona.

Network reports on unemployment were mirror opposites. They made Reagan look bad in a huge majority of stories and conversely made Obama look good.

Broadcasts journalists tied “rising” unemployment to Reagan in 1982 by mentioning him in 71 percent of stories (22 of 31), but linked Obama to the economy slightly more than half as often in 2009 – only 40 percent of the time (14 of 35).

When the respective presidents were mentioned, political attacks on the Reagan administration over job losses were commonplace in the 1982 network coverage. Union leaders, Democratic politicians and the unemployed were all quoted blasting Reagan for his economic policies.

NBC’s Irving R. Levine found a soon-to-be unemployed textile worker who “blames President Reagan” for his situation on March 5, 1982. That worker, Gene Biffle, told NBC, “When he went in there he said it, he was gonna get jobs and help the economy, but don’t look like he’s doing too much about that.”Following Levine’s segment, anchor Roger Mudd took Reagan to task himself by responding to statements from the administration:

“Spokesmen for the Reagan White House are coming to dread each month’s unemployment numbers because it gets harder and harder for them to explain. Economic Adviser Weidenbaum says today the figures may mean the economy may be bottoming out. Communications Director Gergen says that while unemployment may get worse, the recession seems to be bottoming out. Meanwhile, more and more people are getting bottomed out.”

In August 1982, Sam Donaldson of ABC highlighted the “partisan savagery” of Congressional Democrats, including Rep. Parren Mitchell’s, D-Md., claim that Reagan was pursuing “sadistic fiscal policies.”

The dark and gloomy tone of 1982 reports was a near polar opposite of the tenor of 2009 unemployment stories.

In 2009, the networks praised Obama for merely trying to stop rising unemployment – even when he wasn’t succeeding. And month after month reporters tried to find the “good news” or signs of a turnaround.

All three nightly newscasts mentioned Obama favorably March 6, 2009, even though 651,000 jobs had been lost in February and unemployment had jumped half a percentage point to 8.1 percent from 7.6 percent. And all three of those broadcasts emphasized a mere 25 jobs “saved” by the stimulus package.

NBC’s Chuck Todd gave Obama credit that night saying, “For these 25 new police officers here in Columbus, Ohio, the president’s stimulus plan didn’t create these jobs, it saved them. Without the money these folks would be looking for a new line of work.”

CBS Anchor Katie Couric revealed her faith in Obama’s stimulus plan that night as well saying, “I know the government is going to be creating jobs, as we’ve mentioned, through this stimulus package.”

After the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced May 8 that more than a half million jobs were lost in April, another CBS anchor, Maggie Rodriguez, looked for a ray of sunshine saying, “There is new hope the sun may be starting to peek through those economic storm clouds tonight,” before delivering the news that unemployment had jumped .4 percent to 8.9 percent nationally.

Rodriguez’ optimism led into Anthony Mason’s report. Mason quoted Obama and emphasized his call for education as the solution to joblessness and request that states allow people to maintain unemployment benefits while going back to school.

Identical Unemployment Rates, Opposite Treatment

The unemployment rate reached 9.4 percent under Reagan and under Obama (twice), but received completely different treatment from the networks – and in one case from the same reporter.

In 1982, Dan Rather reported the rate as “9.4 percent and rising.” Dan Cordtz called it “rising steadily” on ABC, while Ray Brady warned that “job loss is still spreading.” NBC found lines at food banks “four times what they were six months ago.”

In 2009, ABC found “glimmers of improvement” for an identical unemployment rate. CBS’s own economic “grim reaper,” Anthony Mason said the “economy’s showed signs of improving.” NBC also found “positive trends” to discuss – specifically mentioning “2,100 new reasons” to be “hopeful” in Georgia.

But Charles Gibson illustrated how dramatically different the network coverage of Reagan and Obama really were.

Gibson, who was a Capitol Hill correspondent for ABC in 1982, told viewers May 7, 1982, “[T]here really isn’t any good news in the statistics. All the numbers are bad.” He then quoted two Democratic attacks on Reagan including Rep. Henry S. Reuss, D-Wis., who charged that Reagan’s “policies aren’t just mistaken, they’re wicked.”

But as an ABC anchor in 2009, Gibson was full of hope. He introduced that night’s story saying “sometimes a bad jobs report can look good.”

“345,000 Americans lost their jobs in May, a big number to be sure. Traumatic if you are one of the 345,000. But the number was smaller than economists had predicted, and that’s good news,” Gibson said before admitting that the unemployment rate of 9.4 percent was “pretty bad.” Neither Gibson, nor reporter Betsy Stark mentioned President Obama at all that night.

On Aug. 7, 2009, Gibson suggested “the economy may be finally turning the corner.”

Methodology

The Business & Media Institute analyzed network unemployment stories on the evenings that data was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in similar seven-month periods – between March 2009 to September 2009 and March 1982 to September 1982. There were 66 stories in all – 35 stories in 2009 and 31 stories in 1982.

A story was counted as a mention of Obama or Reagan if it named the respective president, the administration, the “White House,” or any administration spokespeople. Each mention was then graded positive, negative or neutral based on context.

Conclusion

Despite having similar periods of rising unemployment, Presidents Reagan and Obama were treated very differently by the network news media. This fit the theme of the network news when it came to economic reporting.

Jobs and unemployment have been one of the most significant economic measures because they impacted everyone so directly. Network viewers who watched coverage of unemployment during the Reagan years were consistently told things were bad. For identical numbers under Obama, those very same networks claimed the economy was improving. That was clear-cut bias.

And it isn’t new. The Business & Media Institute released a Special Report in 2004 called “One Economy, Two Spins” which showed the way similar economic conditions (unemployment, inflation and GDP growth) were presented negatively during the re-election campaigns of George W. Bush’s Republican administration, but positively under Bill Clinton’s Democratic re-election bid.

BMI found that jobs stories in particular were positive more than six times as often under Clinton than Bush. The networks continued to distort the good economy under Bush in 2005 and 2006 giving negative stories more air time and using ordinary people to underscore those downbeat reports.

The Media Research Center also reported in 2004 that the news media sought to discredit Reaganomics with their news coverage. Virginia Commonwealth University professor Ted J. Smith III found that out of 14,000 network news stories between 1982 and 1987 the amount of network TV coverage shrunk and became more negative as the economy improved. When one economic indicator got better, the networks covered it less and focused on something unhealthy about the economy.

Recommendations

State the Facts: Unemployment data, like all economic data, should be presented as is without reporter opinions being inserted into the broadcast. Forecasting job losses or gains should be left only to the experts.

Be Consistent: If 9.4 percent unemployment is bad, then it should be treated so regardless of who is president. If the number discredits a Republican administration, it should also discredit a Democrat.

Use History as a Guide: It is up to the networks to ensure that they cover stories consistently over time. A reporter working on a story about unemployment being the worst in 26 years should consult the coverage from that time for guidance.

Don’t Spin the Economy: Reporters should be embarrassed when they highlight 25 jobs gained after telling viewers 651,000 jobs were lost. If a story is negative, then tell it that way. Don’t allow White House spin from either party to distort the final result.

Because of the media’s dishonest and deceptive propaganda, we end up believing half truths that fundamentally amount to whole lies.

As I set up why this propaganda is so fundamentally dangerous, let me quote myself:

When Ronald Reagan took office from Jimmy Carter, inflation was at a meteoric 13.3% and the country was in the throes of a fierce recession.  There was a real question as to whether workers’ wages would keep up with the costs of living, which made people afraid to either spend or save.  And nobody knew how to control inflation – which had risen from 1.4% in 1960 to the aforementioned 13.3% in 1980 – causing a real erosion of confidence in the future.  Jimmy Carter answered a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

Reagan DID have a solution, and the result was the Reagan Revolution.

Unemployment had risen to 11%.  More businesses failed than at any time since World War II.  The picture of the economy was grim, indeed.

And then the Reagan policies – ridiculed by the very same liberal economic theorists whose policies created the inflation to begin with – began to work.  And the result – from such terrible beginnings – was the 2nd largest peacetime expansion in American history.  And now – to prove that there really is nothing new under the sun, liberal economic theorists are STILL ridiculing Reagan’s successful policy over twenty years after its success changed America.

Carter was at a self-confessed loss to solve the problem of inflation that his own administration had created.  It was Ronald Reagan who had the answer to the problem that Democrats had created and which Democrats could not solve.

I refer to the “Network Flip Flops On Jobs” article to evidence the fact that the liberal establishment thoroughly attacked Reagan for his policies.  But history clearly reveals that it wasn’t Reagan who was wrong; it was the liberals who attacked and sought to undermine him.

These same entrenched liberal establishment (and in the case of Charles Gibson, as one example, the very same people) have never learned.  They continue to believe that up is down and that down is up.  As they regard the world through a fundamentally flawed worldview, they simply cannot understand the world as it really is.  Rather, they project a liberal abstract template over the world (such as Marxist or socialist theories) which they continue to believe in — no matter how many times it is refuted by history.

We have a media that keeps seeing “unexpected rises in unemployment” and increases that – while clearly bad in and of themselves – are billed as either “better than” or less than expected” and therefore as good news.

An example of such bias is found in a New York Times article on the result of the Bush tax cuts that liberals have tried to kill ever since.  The article bagan:

WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

They would NOT see that lower taxes stimulated more investment and productivity.  It simply HAD to be something else, something that their liberal filters could account for.

Under Bush, good news kept being “unexpected.”  Under Obama, it’s always bad news that’s “unexpected.”

As one poster put it:

Funny how when unemployment fell under Bush, it was always billed as a “Surprise Drop in Unemployment Numbers” or “New Job Growth Greater Than Experts Anticipated.” But when Obama is President it is always the Job losses and rising unemployment that “surprise” the experts.

In this critical time in our nation’s history – when we are more vulnerable to depression than we have been since the Great Depression itself – it is not merely the media’s bias and unfairness that is at issue anymore, though.  It is the fact that their unbalanced and prejudiced optimism is leading us toward disaster as they continue to support bad policies.

We are now the Titanic about to run full speed into the iceberg that will sink her.  There are icebergs aplenty: icebergs of shockingly high unemployment; icebergs of huge mortgage defaults which will only continue to rise; icebergs of massive and unsustainable debt; icebergs of a devalued currency; icebergs of soon-to-spiral inflation; icebergs of an-out-of-control government that WILL NOT recognize its folly until well after the soon-coming crash that will make the last one look like good times.

Stop and think about it: we’re told that we had a rise in unemployment that was worse than expected.  The median expert forecast had been 175,000 jobs lost; the actual number was 263,000.  Try way, way worse than expected.  The forecasters were a whopping 50% off.  But don’t worry; the mainstream media is still quite cheerful and optimistic.

The same media that unfairly and unrealistically demonized Reagan’s highly successful strategy is now unfairly and unrealistically praising Obama’s badly failing strategy.

The actual unemployment rate is 17%.  And yet the mainstream media presentation (with only an occasional moment to reflect on sobering news) has just been unrelentingly optimistic.  While conservatives and Republicans should rightly be outraged over the media’s bias and propaganda during Republican eras, the greater risk is the destruction that is increasingly likely to occur because the media refuses to critically examine the worsening negative effects of Obama’s policies.

The same people who continued to believe that Reagan was so, so wrong in spite of all evidence to the contrary now just as steadfastly believe that Obama is so, so right.  And that should terrify you.

This isn’t just “emperor’s new clothes”; this is wearing a View Master featuring a scenic roadway while driving the country right off a cliff.