After serving as the virtual mouthpiece for the "there is no crisis!" crowd for at least a decade since George W. Bush's attempt to partially privatize Social Security in 2005, someone at the New York Times has finally recognized that there is one — but still won't level with readers about the system's true condition.

Eduardo Porter "writes the Economic Scene column" for the Times. Before that, "he was a member of the Times editorial board, where he wrote about business, economics, and a mix of other matters." As such, he may well have been the author of some of the Old Gray Lady's opinion pieces opposing any kind of meaningful reform of out-of-control entitlement programs while its reporters gave favorable treatment to demagogues like Harry Reid.

As I noted in a pre-Christmas post, "The desperation is palpable at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, over how the Christmas shopping season is going."

Desperation has clearly descended into outright deception at the wire service, where an unbylined story claims that spending is up 8 percent, but that the source involved "does not include spending by dollar amounts." As will be shown shortly, this is a clear attempt to make this year's Christmas shopping season look more than twice as good as it was expected to be.

The detachment from reality of those who actually believe that the recent international climate agreement in Paris is anything but a dangerous and potentially expensive charade has become especially irritating.

The goals identified in Paris are obviously unachievable, and have no direct tie-in to reducing "global warming." Convincing evidence of the link between carbon dioxide generation and allegedly rising global temperatures doesn't exist. In light of this reality, someone really needs to ask the AP's Karl Ritter how much Kool-Aid he had to drink before he informed readers on Thursday morning that the "PARIS CLIMATE GOALS MEAN EMISSIONS NEED TO DROP BELOW ZERO" — and then attempted to take that goal seriously.

The desperation is palpable at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, over how the Christmas shopping season is going.

Having appearently learned something contrary to the "consumers will catch up with their spending" we've been hearing from the National Retail Federation and others so far, AP Business Writer Joyce M. Rosenberg shifted gears and decided that consumers are spending less this year on individual gifts because, well, "Cheap is the new chic." Having spoken with one of Rosenburg's sources, readers can be assured that "chic" has absolutely nothing to do with it.

As Curtis Houck at NewsBusters reported this evening, the Washington Post published "a disgusting GIF early Tuesday evening depicting (Ted) Cruz’s young daughters as toy monkeys being played with" accompanied by a pathetic two-paragraph justification by cartoonist Ann Telnaes as to why Cruz's daughters "were fair game."

The Post withdrew the cartoon and the justification within a few hours, but not before the leftists at the Politico played their mean-spirited, agenda-driven hand, going into predictable passive-aggressive "Republicans/conservatives attack" mode while making it appear as if Cruz was making much ado about nothing: