Wednesday, January 11, 2017

Obama Farewell Speech and the Haters

MP Obama Speech and Hannity Response
"At the end, you seemed to describe Hannity as a journalist. Journalists strive to objectively describe what is happening in the real world. Hannity is employed as an entertainer, feeding the far right red meat to sustain their hate. He lacks objectivity and wants to impose his view of how he would the world to be on reality.

And Hannity was an active participant in getting Trump elected. Anyone who does that shows their bias, just as sports columnists are expected to be cheerleaders for the home team. That Fox allowed that divided loyalty reveals the joke that it has become." Joel S.
Oops...  I accidentally lost the comment I submitted over there...  Hope it makes it past the moderator ...  Probably faster to re-create it here...
"I agree, Hannity is not a Newsperson... He is more of a column writer like Eric. :-) Some facts and a lot of opinion...
"Obama took office when the U.S. economy he inherited from George W. Bush (a name Hannity managed to not mention during his diatribe) was in the deepest recession since the Great Depression. The unemployment rate was 9.3 percent. The most recent rate is 4.9 percent. That’s a pretty steep drop. A rate below 5 percent is what economists call “full employment.”  
Of course it’s true that the unemployment rate doesn’t measure so-called “discouraged workers” who have stopped looking for a job. And the rate of “discouraged workers” has risen steadily during the Obama years. So, if you want to make Obama look bad, you ignore the unemployment rate (Hannity never mentioned it) and cite the rising number of discouraged workers. It’s the opposite of honest. It’s pure bias." Eric's comment
Assuming that Obama focused on the positive and neglected to note the people who have given up looking, the under employed, etc Was he being less than honest?" G2A
By the way, I agreed with most everything Obama said in the speech and think Hannity / Ingram were very unprofessional.


CNN Obamas Last Speech 

5 comments:

Laurie said...

I place a great deal of blame for the coming disaster on right wing media.

and speaking of (one aspect of) the coming disaster:

Why Most Economists Are So Worried About Trump

btw, I thought Obama's speech last night was fantastic, though it is very disturbing that this is the speech he needed to give.

John said...

What do you know... My original comment showed up !!!

"I agree that Hannity is less of a News person and more of a column writer like Eric... :-) Some facts, some opinion, a definite bias, etc.

"So, if you want to make Obama look bad, you ignore the unemployment rate (Hannity never mentioned it) and cite the rising number of discouraged workers. It’s the opposite of honest. It’s pure bias." Eric

What puzzled me about this was did Obama mention all those people who have given up looking, who are under-employed, etc? Or did he stick to the points that supported his opinion. Was he being the opposite of honest by doing so?

I was fine with Obama as a President, since the GOP was there to constrain his more Liberal leanings. However I would say he was not bad or great... Just well spoken and okay."

John said...

Laurie,
I agree... It is so sad that so many liberals stay in their bubbles and left leaning news sources... :-) Maybe they should come out to the real world and get their hands dirty fixing or assembling something. :-)

Anonymous said...

Yow, that poor Mr. Black is suffering badly. I hate to pile on a fellow that is so clearly not in his right state of mind, but veritas demands it. Since the minnpost website declines to post uncomfortable truths, I offer the following observation for consideration here.

Mr. Black said: Of course it’s true that the unemployment rate doesn’t measure so-called “discouraged workers” who have stopped looking for a job. And the rate of “discouraged workers” has risen steadily during the Obama years. So, if you want to make Obama look bad, you ignore the unemployment rate (Hannity never mentioned it) and cite the rising number of discouraged workers. It’s the opposite of honest. It’s pure bias.

If the difference between the two rates is too hard for Hannity to grasp, he might just like to know that during the Obama years, the economy added 10.7 million jobs. So, obviously, more formerly unemployed workers have gotten jobs during the Obama years than have gotten discouraged.


The observant reader will notice, right away, that since Mr. Black declined to provide his readers the BLS U6 unemployment stats we cannot know that the 10.7 million jobs exceed the number of discouraged workers.

Was this blatant omission the result of Mr. Black's obvious mental distress, or deliberately biased fake news? Unfortunately, since as I say, the minnpost will not publish my question we will have to rely on our own conclusions.

For that purpose, I quote directly from the BLS:

U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force

Dec.2015 - 9.9%
Aug.2016 - 9.7%
Sept.2016 - 9.7%
Oct.2016 - 9.5%
Nov.2016 - 9.3%
Dec.2016 -- 9.2%

As you can see, true unemployment is stagnant. Perhaps that is why Mr. Black declined to give us the facts, and is why the minnpost can be comfortably described as a leftist fake news site.

John said...

Fred,
You might get the fake news or maybe misleading data designation...
Let us expand the time frame

Then if we throw in the record stock market and increase in baby boomers this all gets a bit fuzzy.