A rightie blogger is outraged that Eleanor Clift, best known as the token liberal on “The McLaughlin Group,” is biased in favor of liberalism.

Any faithful watcher of “The McLaughlin Group” knows that one of the most transparently biased members of the antique media over the past two decades has been Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift. Week in and week out, Eleanor rips apart every Republican on the political landscape while oozing nothing but adoration for those on the opposite side of the aisle even when they are found guilty of serious transgressions.

The other regulars, including Tony Blankley, Pat Buchanan, and McLaughlin himself are, of course, the very measure of objectivity. Snort.

Clift’s op-ed posted at Newsweek’s website on Friday is a fine example. After somewhat misrepresenting the seriousness of the recent allegations that have emerged from Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff I. Lewis Libby concerning unclassified information from a National Intelligence Estimate by President Bush, Clift went right into a stump speech: “The only way the American people can stop Bush’s imperial expansion of power short is to turn out in massive numbers to take back one or the other body of Congress from Republican control.”

My goodness, Eleanor: You’re supposed to be a journalist. This isn’t reporting.

Of course it’s not reporting, you stupid twit. Newsweek clearly labels the op-editorial as “commentary” in big red letters. That means it’s the columnist’s personal opinion and analysis.

It won’t surprise you that the blogger who can’t tell the difference between commentary and reporting has dedicated his blog to “exposing and combating liberal media bias.” If you define liberal media bias as “everything I don’t want to hear because it contradicts MY biases,” and you’re an idiot to boot, there’s no question that liberal bias in media is as common as onions. People with functioning frontal lobes might not agree, of course.

The Clift op ed, btw, is pretty good. The first page, anyway. On the second page she devolves into Joe Biden apologia.

Yesterday I commented on this E.J. Dionne column about the ongoing crisis in American conservatism. Well, the same rightie genius linked above came up with this excuse:

I guess E.J. must have written this piece before this morning’s announcement by the Labor Department that the economy added more jobs in the past three months than in any first quarter since before the stock market bubble collapsed, and that over five million jobs have been added since Conservatives fought for tax cuts in 2003.

Conservatism’s dead, E.J.? Hardly.

About that announcement, see Hale Stewart, “Bush’s Job Creation Record Worst of Last 40 Years (Still).”

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research the last recession ended in November 2001. That means we have had 54 months of an economic recovery. First, notice how Bush uses May 2003 as the starting point of his comparison? Why is he doing this? Because May 2003 is the lowest point of establishment job creation in his administration. Since the actual trough in November 2001 Bush’s economy has created 4,083,000 jobs. At the same point (54 months) all other expansions of the last 40 years had created more jobs.

At 54 months,

The expansion starting in February 1961 created 6,550,000 jobs

The expansion starting in November 1970 created 6,240,000 jobs

The expansion starting in March 1975 created 13,565,000 jobs

The expansion starting in November 1982 created 12,366,000 jobs

The expansion starting in March 1991 created 8,718,000 jobs.

Therefore, Bush’s economy would have to create 2,157,000 jobs to be second to last on this list.

There is no way that Bush can create enough jobs to increase his rank to 4th on the list. At this point, he will go down as presiding over the weakest records of job creation of the second half to the 20th century.

The excitement when Bush’s economy squeezes out some jobs is akin to watching, say, a trained pig push a ball with his nose. The wonder is not that the pig is so skilled, but that it can do the trick at all.