Free Republic

This week’s jobless claims came in higher than expected tending to confirm that the recovery is: 1) still very slow; and 2) jobless, despite attempts by the Obamunist-controlled press to paint a different picture.   Politico headlined that unemployment applications “decline slightly” this week.The Associated Press via the Chicago Sun Times- an Obamunist press if there ever was one- also reported that unemployment applications “decline slightly.” Reuters too skewed its headline: “US jobless claims edge down last week,” as did the New York Times: “US Jobless Claims Dip.”Depending on to whom you listened, the stock market was up early in trading...

Has the country gone mad? No need to answer; the question is rhetorical. (In other words, I know the answer, too.) According to the Bureau of Labor, 14 million Americans together make up our dismal national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. That figure doesn’t include the 9.3 million who have uncomfortably settled into part-time work, or the million additional folks who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work altogether. This is a depression. No doubt, some agency of government spares no expense cataloguing the psychiatric records needed to substantiate that diagnosis.President Obama campaigns across the country for his jobs bill...

GARY SHILLING: Here's Why The US Is About To Plunge Into A New Recession Simone Foxman April 20, 2012, 3:48 PM Last week, Gary Shilling wrote a four-part series for Bloomberg View on why the U.S. economy is on the fast track to a brand new recession this year. While he pointed to various data points and recounted a number of anecdotes to prove his point, Shilling's argument was simple: the consumer strength we saw earlier this year was fleeting and highly accommodative policy from the Federal Reserve and the possibility of more quantitative easing are the only things propping...

In a column on Tuesday, Rex Nutting of MarketWatch ran some budget numbers and concluded the following: "Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true. But it didn’t happen...." The shocking, contrarian piece was widely circulated in liberal circles and was even cited on Wednesday by White House spokesman Jay Carney. But there were a few problems with Nutting’s numbers....

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a staunch fiscal conservative and Tea Party favorite, said he is certain that the United States will face another credit downgrade. "S&P's downgrade on us was right, matter of fact we're going to get another downgrade. I can tell you right now, you can have a great legal case for suing the rating agencies for not downgrading us again because we have not demonstrated the political will to solve the problems," said Coburn on CBS's midweek show "Face to Face," posted online Wednesday. The Oklahoma senator told CBS that he has "no doubt" that there will...

Obama: “Since I’ve Been President, Federal Spending Has Risen at Lowest Pace in Nearly 60 Years’ By Terence P. Jeffrey May 24, 2012 (CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama on Wednesday staked his claim to being the most effective fiscal conservative to serve in the White House in more than half a century. “Since I’ve been President, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years,” Obama said at a campaign event in Denver, Colorado. “Yes, we're going to streamline government,” Obama said. “There's more waste to be cut.” Inaugurated in Jan. 20, 2009, Obama has now presided...

Whatever they’re putting in Jay Carney‘s birthday cake, I want some. During a gaggle aboard Air Force One today, the just-47 White House Press Secretary woke up a sleepy press corps with a rant about fact-checking Republican talking points that, relatively speaking, nearly veered into Sam Kinison territory. Quoting from a recent MarketWatch commentary, Carney told the press “do not buy into the BS” about the Obama spending record, and that “doing so is a sign of sloth and laziness.” The substance of Carney’s rant is really quite simple: you see Republican flacks appearing on cable news shows all the...

“[Republicans] run up these wild debts and then when we take over, we’ve got to clean it up.” -- President Obama speaking to donors in Denver touting the fact that federal spending has increased less than 2 percent since 2009.

I have to applaud Rex Nutting over at The Wall Street Journal‘s MarketWatch site. He wrote a piece that explains the budget figures of the Federal government in the United States and, specifically, how those budget figures are influenced by various Presidential administrations. It’s the sort of thing that you take for granted everyone knows then you realize, often with horror, that almost no one knows it. That explains a lot of the terrible thinking you see in the broader population.Nutting examines Federal spending under various Presidential administrations and discusses a fact that is well known to anyone who understands...

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi just pulled her caucus well to the right of President Obama, as she dramatically broadened the scope of her proposal for extending the Bush-era tax cuts. The White House, since Obama took office, has called for those tax rates to be extended only for households making less than $250,000 a year. The president wants the rates to expire for everybody else. But Pelosi, in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner, upped that threshold to $1 million. She urged Boehner to schedule a vote "as early as next week" to extend the "middle-income tax cuts"...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: We're gonna start in Pittsburgh. It's Jim. Great to have out program. You're up first, and welcome, sir. CALLER: Great, Rush. I called Rex Nutting Tuesday night in Pittsburgh. He was on a talk show on that article, and I called him on it. First thing I said is, "They use baseline budgeting." He goes, "What is that?" I explained -- RUSH: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold it a second. Hold it. You...? Rex Nutting was on a show in Pittsburgh last Tuesday. You called the show. CALLER: This Tuesday. And I knew enough by listening to...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I had that story yesterday. In fact, I saw that stupid story yesterday and I sent it to everybody I know. And I said, "We're gonna have to deal with this. This has come out of left field. It's come out of the blue. We're gonna have to deal with this." And then I didn't get to it yesterday. I put it so far down in the stack. It's this story about how Obama's not really spending all that much money. Obama's probably the most fiscally responsible president we've had in 25 or 30 administrations. I mean,...

Obama's campaign manager huddles with Senate DemocratsBy Bernie Becker - 05/24/12 06:27 PM ET President Obama’s campaign manager huddled with Democratic senators on Thursday to brief them on the campaign’s grassroots strategy, according to lawmakers in attendance. Speaking to reporters afterward, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, a former top aide to Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), said he walked the lawmakers through what the campaign was doing on the ground, and senators said the meeting did not spend much time on other hot-button issues — like the private equity experience of presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney. A number of Democrats have...

<p>One of President Barack Obama’s top campaign spokesmen is a private equity manager whose firm has shut down several factories and laid off hundreds of people amid a stalled economy.</p> <p>Federico Pena’s role at Vestar Capital Partners has emerged as Obama’s aides and deputies continue their effort to portray former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney‘s investment career as ruthless, job-destroying, profit-maximizing “vulture capitalism.” Pena has been a partner at Vestar since 2000.</p>

I hate that I feel compelled to say it, but the gentleman most definitely has a point. Some words of wisdom from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.): Coburn: U.S. "should see another downgrade" "S&P's downgrade on us was right, matter of fact we're going to get another downgrade. I can tell you right now, you can have a great legal case for suing the rating agencies for not downgrading us again because we have not demonstrated the political will to solve the problems," said Coburn on CBS's midweek show "Face to Face," posted online Wednesday. ... "We should see another downgrade,...

Budget: You wouldn't think that, after adding $5 trillion to the U.S.' debt, President Obama would seriously claim he's a fiscal hawk. But thanks to a misleading article on CBS' MarketWatch site, that's just what he's doing. 'Since I've been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years," Obama said on Wednesday. "Think about that." Obama didn't turn to his own Office of Management and Budget to support this fact, or even the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Instead, he went to a CBS MarketWatch column by Rex Nutting, which claims spending under Obama has risen...

Since 2009, and since Senate Democrats last passed a budget, the Congressional Budget Office has calculated $1 trillion deficits each year with 2012 being no exception. But now, a new USA Today study shows that last year's budget deficit wasn't $1 trillion....it was actually $5 trillion. The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government's books. It is well known by now that even if...

Spending has skyrocketed under President Obama, but of late some are claiming that the opposite is true. Case in point: MarketWatch columnist Rex Nutting wrote, “Obama spending binge never happened,” and Politifact rated this statement “mostly true.” But Mitt Romney this week said that “Since President Obama assumed office three years ago, federal spending has accelrated at a pace without precedent in recent history.” So who has it right? Mitt Romney. What Politifact must have missed is a very important data point: President Obama signed most of the spending attributed to President George W. Bush’s last year in office, which...

It made the rounds on the blogosphere. It got fact-checked by Politico. White House spokesman Jay Carney cited it. It's the latest left-wing talking point that President Obama has actually put a slow to the growth of government spending. And it's completely false. (This despite Politifact's "Mostly True rating. But who's surprised by that?) Started by Rex Nutting at Marketwatch, the claim goes something like this: Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s. The claim relies on...