GOP Fiddling With Numbers

As the GOP continues its project to make Barack Obama a one-term president by prolonging the economic misery of Americans, facts increasingly are adjusted to fit predetermined notions.

As Media Matters documents, this discussion recently took place on Follow the Money at Fox Business Network:

BOLLING: All right, very quickly, Z99, guys. This is Harry Reid responding to Senator McConnell's blame-game accusation.

REID [video clip]: The massive layoffs we've had in America today have, of course -- are rooted in the last administration, and it's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers.

BOLLING: First of all, can I just point something out? Public-sector jobs have increased by almost 160,000 since President Obama took office. What is he talking about?

STEPHEN HAYES (Fox News contributor): Yeah, you're going to hear that clip again and again and again.

Gosh, I should hope so- primarily because it's true. A partner organization of Media Matters explains

The chart below, updated with today's report, illustrates the steady contraction of the public sector and the expansion of the private economy since the Recovery Act actually began to reach the economy in early summer 2009. Since that time, the private sector has seen a net gain of 1.4 million jobs; if public-sector employment had just held steady, without any hiring or firing, the economy would have grown by about 2 million jobs over this period. Instead, budget cuts have eliminated 572,000 government workers on net.

And still, Rush Limbaugh in June claimed of President Obama "The private sector middle class is his target. The public sector middle class are his beneficiaries." Thursday, Limbaugh condemned Barack Obama and argued "In percentages, private sector unemployment is down 5.4% since 2007. Government unemployment is down only 1.8% since 2007, and teacher unemployment is down 1.4%."

Someone wake Rush up and remind him that one of his heroes, George W. Bush, was president in 2007 and 2008, during which most of the private sector job loss took place. Public sector employment lags behind private sector employment, and so has dropped in the past two years as state and local tax revenues declined and politicians realized they could make political hay by making public employees pay for the sins of Wall Street.

Limbaugh leans on Thursday's editorial in the Wall Street Journal criticizing Senate Majority Leader Reid, who unfortunately said "It's very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine" before adding " it's the public-sector jobs where we've lost huge numbers."

Census Bureau numbers support Reid's point that the public sector has taken the bigger hit. The pattern continued in August as the number of public sector jobs dropped by 17,000 while private sector employment increased by 17,000. In September, the decline in the number of public sector jobs accelerated, dropping by 34,000 while private sector employment, still insufficient, increased by 137,000. Nevertheless, the Journal's editors- after conceding that private employment lately has been climbing- claim "contrary to Mr. Reid, the real U.S. jobs problem continues to be in the private economy. If private employers were hiring at the pace they normally do in an economic recovery, we might be doing fine."

Except that private sector employment growth has been dramatically outstripping public sector job growth. This constitutes, in Matthew Yglesias' term, The Conservative Recovery, which conservatives are complaining about only "because the President is a Democrat named Barack Obama."

Yglesias is right, except: when it comes to The Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, or a component of the communications arm of the Republican Party, it's necessary only that the President is a Democrat.

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Dobbs, CNN Part

(Cliché alert.)

Some in the left blogosphere are having a field day with the resignation (video below) of Lou Dobbs from CNN.

Under the headline “CNN”s on-air racist, Lou Dobbs, is gone after tonight’s show,” says “the hater is quitting.” “Thers” on Firedoglake sarcastically rants “Given the Harsh Discrimination the Liberal Media inflicts upon angry old paranoid white guys who yell a lot and get stuff wrong, it’s amazing that Dobbs even had a teevee show in the first place.” (I couldn't help but respond.)

Arguably most significant, however, was the glee expressed by Media Matters. President Eric Burns issued this statement:

For too long, CNN provided Lou Dobbs with its stamp of approval as he pursued a dangerous, one-sided and all too often false conspiracy tinged crusade against immigrants. This is a happy day for all those who care about this nation of immigrants and believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.

Media Matters, a very credible blog generally strong on research, trivializes the wide-ranging commentary,some of it conservative and some not, by implying that it all amounted to a “false conspiracy tinged crusade against immigrants.” There once was a time that liberal organizations cared about unfair trade practices destroying American jobs- another of Dobbs obsessions- but, alas, that interest now seems a thing of the past.

More significant, however, is MM’s assertion of "a happy day for all those who…. Believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.” Presumably, this means “the power of the media to elevate the political discourse” harmed by Lou Dobbs, suggesting, not unreasonably, that media liberals/progressives/leftitsts played a primary role in unseating the anchorman. Writing today in The Washington Post, media critic Howard Kurtz noted

Liberal groups such as NDN and Media Matters had mounted a "Dump Dobbs" campaign, and Latino organizations challenged such Dobbs declarations as his 2006 statement that about one-third of the U.S. prison population "is estimated to be illegal aliens"--which the anchor later acknowledged was way too high. ( Included was) The Southern Poverty Law Center (which) asked CNN in July to fire Dobbs over what it called his "racist conspiracy theories."

And Media Matters referred to its

leading role in the Drop Dobbs Coalition (DropDobbs.com) which was launched to call attention to Dobbs' incendiary hate speech and falsehoods, which advertisers were supporting through their sponsorship of his nightly CNN program. The Coalition includes numerous national civil rights and other groups concerned about the kind of hate promoted daily by Dobbs on his television and radio programs. In addition to Media Matters in partnership with NDN, the coalition, representing over two million people, includes the National Council of La Raza, LULAC, National Hispanic Media Coalition, America's Voice, The Hispanic Institute, Southern Poverty Law Center, Netroots Nation, Voto Latino, LCLAA, Center for New Community, Reform Immigration for America, the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the National Puerto Rican Coalition and GALEO.

We’ve been down this road before. Such as in September, when the Los Angeles explained

Responding to a firestorm that raged on conservative talk shows and websites, the White House on Sunday announced the resignation of a top environmental advisor who had made fiery remarks about Republicans and signed a petition questioning whether the U.S. government had any role in planning the Sept. 11 attacks.

Van Jones, a prominent Oakland community activist, issued a statement decrying "lies and distortions" and a "smear campaign" that had been waged against him by the right.

Recently, we have this, again reported by the LA Times (which claims that the subject had joined the administration on the condition that she would stay only a few months):

In an expected development, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn is stepping down after a brief tenure marked by a dust-up with Fox News Channel over its coverage....

Last month, she told CNN that Fox was "part of the Republican Party." She said that the network's practice was to take the party's "talking points and put them on the air. Take their opposition research and put them on the air -- and that's fine. But let's not pretend they're a news network the way CNN is."

That touched off a small-screen feud. A Fox talk show host, Glenn Beck, aired footage of Dunn addressing a high school graduation ceremony in June and describing Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa as two of her "favorite political philosophers."

Beck said on his show: "The guy responsible for more deaths than any other 20th century leader is her favorite philosopher!"

Not to be outdone by Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, and the others on the right intolerant of anyone they disagree with, some liberal organizations appear, at least, to have effected the release from his contract of the man they loved to hate, Lou Dobbs. Not Limbaugh, Hannity, or Beck, for whom accuracy, detail, and dialogue are as unwanted as swine flu, and whose primary goal (in the case of the first two) is to return the Republican Party to power. No, the scalp was to be that of Lou Dobbs, who wants no part of the Republican Party and whom conservatives view with wariness. Congratulations.

Rush Limbaugh, Anti-Soldier

MediaMatters.org has carefully documented the entire Limbaugh-phony soldiers escapade. As indicated by the original transcript, on September 26, 2007 Rush Limbaugh discussed with a caller a call he had taken moments earlier. Speaking of soldiers who publicly have criticized the war in Iraq, the talk show host and his listener from Olympia, Washington stated:


CALLER 2: And, you know, I'm one of the few that joined the Army to serve my country, I'm proud to say, not for the money or anything like that. What I would like to retort to is that, if we pull -- what these people don't understand is if we pull out of Iraq right now, which is about impossible because of all the stuff that's over there, it'd take us at least a year to pull everything back out of Iraq, then Iraq itself would collapse, and we'd have to go right back over there within a year or so. And --

LIMBAUGH: There's a lot more than that that they don't understand. They can't even -- if -- the next guy that calls here, I'm gonna ask him: Why should we pull -- what is the imperative for pulling out? What's in it for the United States to pull out? They can't -- I don't think they have an answer for that other than, "Well, we just gotta bring the troops home."

CALLER 2: Yeah, and, you know what --

LIMBAUGH: "Save the -- keep the troops safe" or whatever. I -- it's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

LIMBAUGH: They joined to be in Iraq. They joined --


Limbaugh and his dittohead apparently were responding in part to an 8/17/07 op-ed in the New York Times written by seven members of the 82nd Airborne Division in which the soldiers criticized American policy in Iraq and concluded by asserting:


In a lawless environment where men with guns rule the streets, engaging in the banalities of life has become a death-defying act. Four years into our occupation, we have failed on every promise, while we have substituted Baath Party tyranny with a tyranny of Islamist, militia and criminal violence. When the primary preoccupation of average Iraqis is when and how they are likely to be killed, we can hardly feel smug as we hand out care packages. As an Iraqi man told us a few days ago with deep resignation, “We need security, not free food.”

In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are — an army of occupation — and force our withdrawal.

Until that happens, it would be prudent for us to increasingly let Iraqis take center stage in all matters, to come up with a nuanced policy in which we assist them from the margins but let them resolve their differences as they see fit. This suggestion is not meant to be defeatist, but rather to highlight our pursuit of incompatible policies to absurd ends without recognizing the incongruities.

We need not talk about our morale. As committed soldiers, we will see this mission through.


On his radio program of 9/28/07, Limbaugh claimed "I was talking about one soldier with that phony soldier comment, Jesse MacBeth." However, given that he said phony soldiers (not soldier) and the remark about MacBeth followed the phony soldiers comment by 1 minute, 50 seconds, Limbaugh's claim is as believable as a blizzard in Phoenix in August.

And Limbaugh dug deeper, as the BaltimoreSun.com reports here, extending his description of phony soldiers to Representative Jack Murtha (D.- Pa.) by contending, as Media Matters reported, "and by the way, Jesse MacBeth's not the only one. How about this guy Scott Thomas who was writing fraudulent, phony things in The New Republic about atrocities he saw that never happened? How about Jack Murtha blanketly accepting the notion that Marines at Haditha engaged in wanton murder of innocent children and civilians?"

If the Democratic Party truly "controls" the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate- rather than merely holding a statistical majority- the leader in each chamber will post a resolution condemning Rush Limbaugh. Repub legislators would face an uncomfortable choice- condemn the influential talk show host and risk his ire- or be exposed as being anti-soldier. And what an ad that would make.