Latest Posts

The rich are "horrible people" -- at least those who lean to the right -- declares economist turned pompous New York Times columnist Paul Krugman in Friday’s “Privilege, Pathology and Power.” The text box: “Can we survive rule by self-centered billionaires?” (Liberal billionaire activist George Soros had no comment.) Krugman channeled opportunistic moralism, citing “science” to confirm his prejudices that rich people who disagree with him politically are bad, bad folks, though Krugman is no prince of humility and civility himself.

As night fell on Christmas Eve, National Public Radio was in its usual holy-day mode, using your tax dollars to mock the traditional Christian creed. This time they promoted an activist movie called The Danish Girl, yet another alleged “true story” about artist Einar Wegener, a married man who wanted to be a woman named Lili. An earlier NPR commercial – sorry, “underwriting announcement” – said he was the first recipient of “gender confirmation surgery.”

Paging Mr. Orwell – it’s NPR on line 1. Focus Features – part of the Comcast “diversity and inclusion” empire of propaganda – is calling this maiming of the male body “gender confirmation surgery.”

The Wall Street Journal ran a blockbuster story Tuesday afternoon ("U.S. Spy Net on Israel Snares Congress") about how the Obama administration's National Security Agency's "targeting of Israeli leaders swept up the content of private conversations with U.S. lawmakers." In other words, the NSA spied on Congress. As talk-show host and commentator Erick Erickson drily observed: "Congress began impeachment proceedings on Richard Nixon for spying on the opposing political party."

Whether or not Congress has the nerve to defend itself and the Constitution's separation of powers, what the Journal reported is objectively a major story. Yet the Associated Press ignored it on Tuesday, and most of Wednesday. Finally, at 7:15 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, the AP ran a story by Erica Werner — about how Republicans are planning to investigate the matter.

On December 22, Kyle Drennen reported  NBC’s Today devoted two full reports to President Obama appearing on Jerry Seinfeld’s web series Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. Once again, Obama plays the part of comedian instead of chief executive, and the networks come running. On December 31 – the day the Seinfeld show was available online – all three networks aired gushy reports.

The longest on Thursday was on CBS This Morning, with Chip Reid reporting from Hawaii with the rest of the “working” White House press corps. It was almost four minutes.

Donald Trump called out Hillary Clinton for hypocrisy in accusing the GOP of being anti-woman, yet relying on serial philanderer Bill Clinton’s help while running for president. But you wouldn’t have learned that until deep into the front-page story in Wednesday’s New York Times. Political reporter Amy Chozick spent the first several paragraphs piling up shallow evidence of the former friendship between Trump and Bill Clinton in order to accuse Trump of treachery, while dodging and ducking the serious sexual accusations long festering around the former president.

Maybe it can be chalked up to a tendency toward reflection at year's end and not the emergence of a refreshing pattern.

This past Sunday on Meet the Press, one of the last people you'd expect to point out that "it's not always policemen" killing black people -- filmmaker Spike Lee -- said just that in plugging his new movie, Chi-Raq, about the endless violence that plagues Chicago.
 

This week, the Associated Press wrapped up a year of largely pathetic business reporting with three items exemplifying the wire service's habits of data-twisting, sloppiness, and convenient omissions.

A deceptive AP post-Christmas story pretended that Christmas-season "spending" was twice as high as anyone else has predicted. A report on pending home sales omitted a concerned comment from a normally incurably optimistic economist at the National Association of Realtors. Finally, the AP appears to have ignored today's Chicago manufacturing report from the Institute for Supply Management, even though it came in at a level which has previously foreshadowed a nationwide recession.