Just over two weeks after the major network evening newscasts spent 24 minutes obsessing on December 8 over Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the U.S., the three programs returned on Tuesday night to devote ten and a half minutes to Trump’s declaration that Hillary Clinton was “schlonged” in 2008 by losing to then-Senator Barack Obama.

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:

Today's release from the government on economic growth estimated that the nation's Gross Domestic Product grew at an annual rate of 2.0 percent in the third quarter, a slight downward revision from November's estimate of 2.1 percent. This continues the economy's dismal, worst-since-World War II growth performance since the recession officially ended over six years ago.

But never fear. According to the Associated Press's headline writers early this afternoon, there is going to be a growth "pickup." Not to be outdone, AP economics writer Martin Crutsinger regaled readers with how the economy will have "stronger growth." Wait til you see what they're talking about. Seldom, if ever, has so much been made of so little (bolds are mine):

NPR’s Steve Inskeep continued his media tour on Monday promoting his fawning sit-down interview with President by appearing with CNN Tonight host Don Lemon and, when asked about the President attacking the media for supposedly overhyping threats posed by ISIS, Inskeep stood up for the President by suggesting that it was “not a very outlandish idea that he's putting out there.”

The business press worships at the altar of seasonally adjusted data. Most journalists covering the economy don't even bother looking at raw, not seasonally adjusted data, which in layman's terms is best understood as "what actually happened." As I have shown for nearly a decade, this is often a big mistake.

On the rare occasions when reporters take the initiative to look at the raw data, they usually ignor it, or fail to grasp its meaning. A perfect example of that phenomenon occurred today at Bloomberg News. The business press is blindly accepting a reported 10.5 percent drop in existing home sales as evidence of all kinds of problems, including — supposedly, but not really — a regulation-driven extension of closing time frames. Though Bloomberg's Victoria Stilwell was astute enough to look at the underlying data, unlike her fellow reporters at the Associated Press and Reuters, she completely ignored how doing so blew up the narrative.