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In Early 2007, NY Times Declared a Bogus 'Manufacturing Recession'; Today, With Worse Data, It's Crickets
By Tom Blumer | January 5, 2016 | 11:08 PM EST

On Monday, the Institute for Supply Management's Manufacturing Index for December came in showing contraction for the second consecutive month, and with a slightly worse reading (48.2 percent, versus 48.6 percent in November; any reading below 50 percent signifiies contraction). These two results followed readings which just slipped over the expansion bar (50.2 and 50.1 percent, respectively) in September and October.

The average of the past four months' reading is 49.3. In a situation that was not as bad in early 2007, David Leonhardt at the New York Times declared that "For Manufacturing, a Recession Has Arrived." But after yesterday's ISM report, as readers here would sadly expect, no Times reporter bothered to elaborate on the latest in an awful string of ISM manufacturing reports, instead posting wire service dispatches from Reuters and the Associated Press which appear not to have made the Old Gray Lady's print edition.

Bozell & Graham Column: Burying Negative Polls
By Brent Bozell and Tim Graham | January 5, 2016 | 11:07 PM EST

Network news outlets conduct their own polls. They also bury the poll results when they don’t like them. On PBS on January 1, liberal pundit Mark Shields brought some very bad news for the Left. The NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 73 percent say they want the next president to take a different approach from President Obama's.

So NBC, both the creator of the poll and a relentless cheerleader of Obama, chose not to air that bombshell. Instead, they buried it deep in an article on the Meet the Press website. “This will become a high hurdle for the Democrats at some stage of the 2016 election," Democratic pollster Fred Yang declared in that piece.

ABC, NBC Promote Obama’s ‘Rallying Cry’ for Gun Control; ‘Showdown after the President Breaks Down’
By Curtis Houck | January 5, 2016 | 11:01 PM EST

Tuesday’s editions of ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News aired nowhere near the exhaustive coverage of President Obama’s executive actions on gun control that the CBS Evening News did, but they were not short on fawning language for Obama’s “rallying cry...after years of anger and frustration” in what ABC hyped as “[t]he showdown after the President breaks down.”

Phoenix Suns Owner Lashes out at Millennials, Questions their ‘Toughness’
By Dylan Gwinn | January 5, 2016 | 10:13 PM EST

On behalf of a grateful nation, I thank Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver for saying exactly what so many have been thinking when it comes to millennials and their toughness.

Lefty Professor: During the Obama Years, Fox News Has Changed From a GOP ‘Propaganda Machine’ Into ‘A Cult’
By Tom Johnson | January 5, 2016 | 9:56 PM EST

The left often downplays or overlooks differences among Republicans. For instance, plenty of liberals assumed that John McCain chose Sarah Palin mostly in an effort to attract disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, rather than for the likelier reason that McCain needed to reassure his party’s righty base. Similarly, Penn State's Sophia McClennen lumps Fox News with Donald Trump, whose conservative credentials are more than dubious. The main thing they have in common is her contempt.

“Trump literally embodie[s] everything that Fox News stands for — you know, like making things up and refusing to be questioned, rampant bigotry, misogyny and class warfare,” wrote McClennen in a Tuesday piece for Salon. “Oh, also, favoring cult-like populism over rational democracy; an attitude of bluster, bias and bullying; and a rhetoric of patriotism veiling a politics of elitism.”

CBS Goes All Out for Obama on Guns; Tears Offered ‘Silence More Powerful Than Words’
By Curtis Houck | January 5, 2016 | 9:37 PM EST

24 hours after heralding President Obama revealing specifics on his executive actions concerning gun control, the CBS Evening News offered a full-court press for the President on Tuesday following the announcement that saw the President shed tears that anchor Scott Pelley deemed were “more powerful than words” as “the most powerful man in the world” took “action to stop” gun violence.

Dem Guest to O'Reilly: Gun Registration Would Stop 'Majority' of Mass Shootings
By Mark Finkelstein | January 5, 2016 | 9:12 PM EST

Looking for some comic relief after President Obama's teary announcement of new executive orders on gun control, and Chris Matthews' fawning interview of Hillary Clinton? You've come to the right place.

On this evening's O'Reilly Factor, Dem strategist Nomiki Konst claimed that forcing law-abiding Americans to register their guns would stop the "majority" of mass shootings. You're killing me, Nomiki—you should excuse the expression.

ABC’s ‘The Bachelor’ Does an Excellent Job of Being Both Respectful and Weird. It’s Respectably Weird.
By Dylan Gwinn | January 5, 2016 | 9:07 PM EST

Somewhere in the midst of 20 or so airline stewardesses, dentists, math teachers, chicken enthusiasts, and estheticians (whatever the heck that is) fighting it out to see who was going to dress to impress and win the “First Rose” from Bachelor Ben Higgins, ABC’s The Bachelor actually put together a decent show.

Halperin: ‘I Am Touched’ by Obama’s Tears on Gun Control; ‘Proud of His Ability to Show It’
By Curtis Houck | January 5, 2016 | 8:42 PM EST

Offering his thoughts on Tuesday’s With All Due Respect concerning President Obama announcing his executive actions on gun control, Bloomberg TV/MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin declared that he was “touched by” the President’s tears and was “proud of his ability to show” his emotions on something that’s “a national crisis that needs to be addressed.”

NPR Insults MSNBC: 'Brian Williams Got Sent Back to the Minors'
By Tim Graham | January 5, 2016 | 8:32 PM EST

MSNBC knows who listens to NPR. For years, they’ve advertised their programming on the NPR website. But in a new listing of “What Mattered in Media 2015,” NPR TV critic Eric Deggans dissed the Lean Forward Network. It was a big story when Brian Williams “got sent back to the minors."

Matthews Serves Up Roughly 20-Minute Softball Interview with Clinton; Trump Talk Dominates Much of It
By Ken Shepherd | January 5, 2016 | 8:22 PM EST

In his much-hyped exclusive sit-down interview with Hillary Clinton, MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews treated the former secretary of state to a softball chat that was heavily dominated by Donald Trump.

The toughest portion of the interview was when Matthews pressed Clinton to explain the difference between your garden-variety Democrat and self-avowed socialists like Bernie Sanders. All in all, however, it was a neatly-wrapped late Christmas present for the Democratic frontrunner.

CNN Boosts Guest's Racial 'Double Standard' Claim About Anti-Federal Protest
By Matthew Balan | January 5, 2016 | 6:43 PM EST

Tuesday's CNN Newsroom gave a platform to left-wing commentator David Love, who asserted in a Monday column for theGrio.com that "if Black Lives Matter protesters were to take over a federal building armed to the teeth with firepower — and they certainly would not do this — they would wind up dead or in prison for life on terrorism charges." Love criticized the handling of an armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon: "It seems that this country has a double standard. I would say it's a color-coded system when it comes to defining terrorism."

Matthews: Everyone Believes Hillary Was 'Shocked' by Lewinsky Affair
By Mark Finkelstein | January 5, 2016 | 6:28 PM EST

Not merely does Chris Matthews claim that Hillary Clinton was "shocked" to learn that Bill was having an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Matthews can't imagine anybody thinking she wasn't shocked.

On today's With All Due Respect, Matthews said "I don't think anybody thought that she wasn't shocked when this Monica thing came about. You just look at her face in the old clips. You can see she couldn't believe it had happened." Of course. After all, Monica is on record in the Starr Report saying that Bill confided to her that he had "hundreds" of affairs before the age of 40. That's on top of the hundreds of affairs that Dick Morris says Clinton had while in the White House. So naturally Hillary "couldn't believe" that Bill would fool around with a zoftig intern. Right.

AP's Scott Bauer Has a New Obsession: Negatively Describing Ted Cruz
By Tom Blumer | January 5, 2016 | 5:31 PM EST

At the Associated Press, Wisconsin-based reporter Scott Bauer, who has spent the better part of the past five years describing Badger State Governor Scott Walker as "polarizing," has been given the opportunity to get involved with 2016 presidential campaign coverage. Walker convinced voters to unite behind him to lead Wisconsin by significant majorities three times in four years (with victory margins of 5.8 percent, 6.8 percent, and 5.7 percent, respectively), including a recall election orchestrated by sore-loser union-backing Democrats.

Leftists and Democrats rarely earn negative descriptors in Bauer's reports, while Republicans and conservatives receive them routinely. Now that he has been tasked to cover Ted Cruz, Bauer has been using a scattershot approach, employing a plethora of negative terms, apparently in search of one or two which will cast the the Texas Senator in the most negative light possible.

WashPost Wonkblog: 'Ban the Bikini Body'
By Ken Shepherd | January 5, 2016 | 5:30 PM EST

Being early January it's both the dead of winter and New Year's resolution season. A common one is to lose some weight in the cold winter months to be ready for the beach in the summer. But as goes the Washington Post's Wonkblog, they've got a rather different resolution: health magazines should "Ban the Bikini Body."