At the Washington Post's Wonkblog on Wednesday, Christopher Ingraham claimed that the San Bernardino massacre, which we now know was an act of Islamic terrorism, was the "355th" mass shooting "this year." A Google search on "355th mass shooting this year" (not in quotes) indicates that the stat has become a media meme, repeated at places like the Today Show, PBS, NPR, NBCnews.com, and too many others to mention.

In a New York Times op-ed on Thursday — one which predictably appears not to have made the paper's print edition — Mark Follman, national affairs editor at Mother Jones, of all places, wrote that Ingraham and others in the media, including the Times itself are wrong — by a factor of 89. As consistently defined until very recently, there have been four mass shootings in the U.S. year, and 73 since 1982.

Economic news on Wednesday's pre-Thanksgiving "Getaway Day" was largely dismal. The government's report on October's personal income and outlays headed up the disappointing news. While incomes increased nicely — at a rate which needs to be repeated about two dozen more times before it can be seen as genuinely impressive — spending only rose by 0.1 percent, while prior months were revised significantly downward.

Perhaps because they were all in a pre-holiday hurry, the headline writers at the Associated Press and AP economics writer Martin Crutsinger had fundamentally different takes on the news. Additionally, Crutsinger was apparently in such a rush that he didn't worry about the fact that his first two paragraphs' characterizations of the result disagreed. Finally, the AP reporter failed to note that total consumer spending in October was lower than what was originally reported in September after the previously mentioned downard revisions.

Call it the triumph of the "new normal."

At Reuters today, after today's first revision of third-quarter gross domestic product showed that the economy grew by an annualized 2.1 percent, up from the late-October estimate of 1.5 percent, reporter Lucia Mutikani and Editor Paul Simao demonstrated that they have completely given in to the artificially lowered expectations of past seven miserable years. Despite the fact that annual growth in the U.S. economy averaged 3.4 percent from 1946-2007 — a period which included ten recessions — and that it has seen four-year spurts averaging over 4 percent several times in the past three decades, the Reuters pair claims that its "long-run potential" is now only 2 percent, thus making today's 2.1 percent result "respectable."

Time Warner Cable is trying to be in the news business, and is currently engaging in such efforts in 22 locations in five states.

Unless it wants to be yet another unreliable, hopelessly biased news source, it needs to try harder. Take this November 14 report from north-central North Carolina's Triad area on the city of Greensboro's effort to get residents to turn in unwanted guns. Keep in mind, the reference is to multiple "firearms" (HT Hot Air; presented in full because of its brevity, and for fair use and discussion purposes):

Add what follows to the long list of items we should be reading about in wire service reports but instead must find in the editorial sections of the nation's two leading business newspapers.

An Islamist organization tied to the Muslim Brotherhood is involved in the screening potential Syrian refugees allegedly receive before being allowed to come to the United States. Investor's Business Daily revealed this information, which is in stark contrast what U.S. government officials are telling the nation, in a Tuesday evening editorial (bolds are mine):