The Daily Caller Catches a Case of the Stupids While Sticking Up for Limbaugh

Claim That Stock Dropped After Company Stopped Advertising on Rush Is Beyond Moronic, Even for Neocon Apologists

By one recent count, at least 40 advertisers have bailed on Rush Limbaugh following Slutgate. Despite the fact that his royal boorishness has uttered what sounded like an apology (though because he's on radio we can't see if he had his fingers crossed), many companies are heading to the sidelines, at least for now.
Among them is Carbonite, a company that automatically backs up computer files and helps you recover then if they're lost.
Limbaugh may be chastened, but the Dittoheads, as his most fervent listeners (trust me, nothing to be proud of) like to call themselves, are undeterred. Among the apologists is Jeff Poor, who writes for neocon online mouthpiece The Daily Caller founded by Tucker Carlson.
Poor wanted to show that Carbonite paid a price for its folly of leaving Limbaugh. Yet, in the process did a piss-poor piece of journalism, if you want to call it that. The premise of what Poor wrote is that after Carbonite announced its decision on Saturday, it went on to get thumped at the NASDAQ Monday and Tuesday.
The piece, which was unsurprisingly picked up by Fox Nation, doesn't come out and say outright that the stock plunged because of the rush to leave Rush. But Poor wouldn't have bothered with the article if that's not what he and his minders had in mind. The headline "Investors flee Carbonite after Limbaugh announcement" says it all. The only problem: Poor offers nothing to back up that statement. Which is why the story has to be finished before the headline is written. Of course, why let the truth get in the way of a good headline that's bound to get you to the top of search results, right?
The Carbonite stock went down, but there is not a scintilla of evidence that it was because of Limbaugh. If you recall, Tuesday was a bad day for the market. Perhaps it was a worse day for Carbonite, which ranked 18th on the list of biggest decliners for the day. But Limbaugh? Please. If Poor had bothered to do even a sliver of research, he'd know that Carbonite has been on a losing streak. Its $8.35 closing price on Tuesday put it near its 52-week low. The company's been losing a healthy chunk of money. Its 2011 earnings were minus 84 cents a share, which was actually good as analysts were expecting it to be as bad as minus 89 cents a share.
In other words, when the stock market is going to have a bad day, so is Carbonite. And it has nothing to do with not sponsoring the motor mouth of midday radio. If anything, that was a smart busines move.
By the way, Carbonite stock closed today at $8.61 up 3.1 percent. Forgive me if I refrain from holding my breath waiting for Poor to write that story.