Promoting the new season of his ABC sitcom Last Man Standing, actor and Republican Tim Allen joined Thursday’s Hannity on Fox News Channel (FNC) to blast the federal government over reckless spending, the national debt, and a culture of political correctness that he tries to rebuke on the show where he plays “a very smart Archie Bunker.”
Economy
By Tom Blumer | September 25, 2015 | 10:56 AM EDT
Thursday morning at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Christopher Rugaber opened his coverage of the Census Bureau's New Residential Sales report as follows: "Buoyed by steady job gains and low mortgage rates, Americans purchased new homes in August at the fastest pace in more than seven years."
Sorry, pal, it was the "fastest pace" in — wow — three months. The bureau's not seasonally adjusted home sales table told us that:
By Curtis Houck | September 24, 2015 | 10:39 PM EDT
In the litany of network news coverage Thursday night on Pope Francis’s address to Congress, ABC’s World News Tonight largely stayed away from the Pope’s comments about abortion and traditional marriage by relegating them to vague references while CBS and NBC did their due diligence and mentioned them amidst their continued obsession over the Pope’s liberal positions.
By Tom Blumer | September 24, 2015 | 1:48 AM EDT
The competition for the most annoying aspect of establishment press business reporting is fierce. One which immediately identifies a reporter as hopelessly biased and ignorant is any reference to "laissez faire" as a condition allegedly present in any modern economy anywhere on earth.
"Laissez faire" is an economic concept involving "an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government interference such as regulations, privileges, tariffs, and subsidies." There are no true "laissez faire" economies of any meaningful size, because they are all regulated to some extent. As we will see shortly, some in the press even employ the obviously absurd term "laissez faire regulation."
By Tom Blumer | September 23, 2015 | 10:46 PM EDT
It would appear that Hillary Clinton's act is wearing thin even among the people at that liberal bastion known as NPR.
Tuesday afternoon, the headline at an NPR story about Mrs. Clinton's sudden decision to publicly announce her opposition to the Keystone XL Pipeline project indicated that her announcement was deliberately timed to coincide with Pope Francis's visit to the United States (HT Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media):
By Jeffrey Meyer | September 23, 2015 | 11:54 AM EDT
In the wake of the ongoing controversy surrounding Volkswagen’s diesel car emissions controversy, MSNBC reporter Tony Dokoupil wildly proclaimed that Republican politicians were cheering on the German car maker for deceiving the Environmental Protection Agency. Dokoupil appeared on All In with Chris Hayes Tuesday night and insisted that “[i]f you’re a Republican, if you think the EPA goes too far on stuff like this, this is almost like a heroic act by Volkswagen.”
By Tom Blumer | September 23, 2015 | 11:16 AM EDT
Word on the street is that ESPN is planning to lay off "200 to 300" employees in the coming months.
The go-to euphemism surrounding the impending layoffs, according to Variety's Brian Steinberg, is "the changing media landscape," primarily the "cord-cutting" phenomenon. In July, the Big Lead blog, in discussing Keith Olbermann's expected departure from ESPN, explained that "millennials are eschewing expensive cable TV bills and streaming everything online." While that might explain flat viewership or even a modest decline, cord-cutting is only a minor part of the problem. Someone needs to explain why ESPN's ratings have fallen by a stunning 30 percent in the past 12 months.
By Julia A. Seymour | September 21, 2015 | 10:17 AM EDT
Pope Francis is kicking off his American tour and attracting attention not just from Catholics, but the liberal news media that love everything the pope does that they agree with.
If history repeats itself journalists will praise the pope for every liberal thing he says during the visit, especially about the economy, capitalism and wealth. The networks have called him “a different kind of pope” and one “breaking the mold” that view has been evident in their news coverage of Pope Francis since he was named pope March 13, 2013.
By Tom Blumer | September 19, 2015 | 10:51 PM EDT
The business press just can't understand why the Federal Reserve decided not to raise interest rates on Thursday. After all, these alleged journalists have been telling us for months bordering on years that U.S. economy is really in good shape. So it should be able to handle a rate hike, especially after over seven years of rates at essentially zero. The problem is that they now believe their own bogus blather. The U.S. economy is not in good shape, and data seen during the past several weeks show that the situation is deteriorating, not improving.
Excerpts from an early Friday report at the Associated Press by Josh Boak illustrate how out of touch the business press really is (bolds and numbered tags are mine):
By Tom Blumer | September 19, 2015 | 10:02 AM EDT
The business press is trying to convince readers, listeners, and viewers that Janet Yellen's Federal Reserve kept interest rates at zero not because of U.S. economic conditions, which supposedly "look good" with "steady economic growth." No-no. She stayed the course because of the troubled tglobal economy.
Thursday evening, Reuters wrote that the Fed failed to move "in a bow to worries about the global economy, financial market volatility and sluggish inflation at home." Bloomberg directly blamed "China growth concerns." The Associated Press's Martin Crutsinger cited "a weak global economy, persistently low inflation and unstable financial markets." None of the three noted the deteriorating situation in the U.S., and the only item I could find which cited the Fed's full set of pathetic annual U.S. growth projections was a Wall Street Journal editorial.
By Tom Blumer | September 18, 2015 | 10:53 PM EDT
In the pre-social media days, we endured "threats" from various people, mostly celebrities with far-left political views, that they would leave the country if a Republican presidential candidate won election or reelection. Late director Robert Altman, actor Alec Baldwin, actress Kim Basinger, singer Barbra Streisand, and others threatened to leave the U.S. in 2000 if George W. Bush won that year's presidential contest against Al Gore. Though Altman left us permanently in 2006, none of the luminaries just named carried through on their threats to move elsewhere when Bush won.
Now it's apparently a bit of a sport on social media to threaten to leave the country if Donald Trump wins the presidency. On Tuesday, clearly otherwise out of story ideas, Paul Singer at USA Today treated a "content analysis" firm's compilation of such desires expressed on Twitter as news. It's also comedy gold (HT Gateway Pundit; bolds are mine):
By Curtis Houck | September 18, 2015 | 11:55 AM EDT
In a near 180-degree reversal to his interview the previous evening with MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, Democratic presidential candidate and socialist Bernie Sanders found himself on Friday’s CBS This Morning being repeatedly slammed from the right by co-host Norah O’Donnell on his far-left tax plans and hope for a universal health care system.