This is so pathetic and predictable, you could almost set your watch to it.

Just ten hours after a government report showed that the economy went into contraction for the first time in three years during 2012's fourth quarter, an item penned "by the editors" at Bloomberg News appeared which scolded us that the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) is an "imperfect measure of progress," and that we really should be looking at indicators of "social progress or human happiness." As usual, when things go bad in Leftyland, the problem is the yardstick, not what's being measured. The first four paragraphs from the editorial, which reads like -- no, make that "really is" -- the text of a leftist political stump speech, follow the jump:

You have to hand it to CNN: Even with abysmal ratings, the 24-hr news network manages to keep things gay. Anderson Cooper officially “came out” in early July, joining fellow anchor Don Lemon on the out-of-the-closet news team.

And it’s not just the on-air talent. CNN has a has a special relationship with Gays and Lesbians Allied Against Defamation (GLAAD), the activist group. CNN parent TimeWarner is a “Platinum Underwriter” of the GLAAD Media Awards. So are the three broadcast networks. What makes CNN special is its give-and-take with GLAAD.

CNN has mentioned or turned to GLAAD for opinions and expertise on gay-related stories at least 41 times in the last two years. That’s compared to just two mentions on the three broadcast networks combined. In many cases, GLAAD’s view was presented unopposed.

We hardly needed more proof of the cesspool that is original programming on the pay cable networks. But just in case: “Game of Thrones” producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have willingly admitted to using a gruesome image of former president George W. Bush’s head impaled on a stake during the HBO drama’s season one finale, “Fire and Blood.”

Bush’s decapitated likeness appeared as one in a row of traitors’ heads on spikes (implication much?) in King’s Landing. When King Joffrey forced his child bride-to-be Sansa to gaze upon her father’s bloody, severed head the camera panned out and revealed a beheaded Bush covered in dirt and draped in long, matted hair.

The modern encyclopedia Wikipedia says, "the term 'mainstream' media denotes those generally reflective of the prevailing currents of thought, influence or activity."

But the opinions expressed by the media are neither widespread nor accepted by the majority of Americans. To call today's national media "mainstream" is inaccurate. They are better described as the "liberal" national media. Regardless, the term "mainstream" should be dropped.

Earlier this week, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell announced he was calling on Congress to investigate Comcast, the parent company of NBC, given the network's malfeasance in the Zimmerman 911 audio editing.

Comcast's "continued silence on how to prevent such malfeasance in the future constitutes a serious breach of public trust," Bozell noted in letters sent to Congress on Tuesday. As the cable giant is "in the midst of a business deal with Verizon requiring approval" by the FCC and DOJ, "the public policy issues related to the approval of this deal are so critical" as to require congressional hearings, Bozell wrote in his April 10 letter to the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights Subcommittee. A similar letter was simultaneously transmitted to the chairman and ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet. You can read those letters here and here.