Sam Stein misleads about Sharron Angle (unemployment insurance "really doesn't benefit anyone")

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post offers "Sharron Angle Claims Unemployment Insurance 'Really Doesn't Benefit Anyone'" (link), a sleazy attack that shows once again that he's just a Democratic proxy and is willing to try to mislead.

In a radio interview on Wednesday, Angle said this:

"People don't want to be unemployed... They want to have real, full-time, permanent jobs with a future. That's what they want, and we need to create that climate in Washington, D.C. that encourages businesses to create those full-time, permanent jobs with a future, and all [Rep.] Shelley Berkeley and [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid want to do is put a band-aid on this by extending unemployment, which really doesn't benefit anyone. What happens is of course that your skills stagnate. You become demoralized yourself, you know, feeling that I can't ever get a job, and these are not the solutions to the problem. We have real solutions, but they won't look at the real solutions."

It should be obvious that she's right about full-time jobs, and it's difficult to imagine anyone disagreeing with her full remarks considered in context. We can disagree about the way she'd create jobs, but not about the fact that having a full-time job is preferable to collecting unemployment insurance. If she were wrong, then we should just extend unemployment benefits indefinitely and everyone in the country can go on them. Obviously, that wouldn't work.

Just as obviously, she doesn't mean that unemployment insurance can't help you survive and pay your bills, although that's the impression that Sam Stein is trying to give, writing:

Until this week, it doesn't appear that she's ever argued that UI doesn't "benefit anyone." -- a rather bold proclamation that even the most doctrinaire of Republicans probably wouldn't make. It's pretty easy, after all, to find people who benefit from unemployment insurance. They're called the unemployed.

Once again, she doesn't mean it in that way. Third graders should be able to figure out what she's talking about: unemployment insurance isn't a long-term option but should just be a temporary stop-gap for the reasons she mentions in the quote. Sam Stein is intentionally trying to start a smear.