AP Ignores Mark Zandi's Prediction of Near-Zero Fourth-Quarter Growth
February 4th, 2016 9:49 AM
On Wednesday, Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press was tasked with covering ADP's morning report on January private-sector payrolls. At 8:15 a.m., the payroll and benefits giant estimated that the economy added 205,000 seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs last month.
Rugaber also attended the 8:30 a.m. conference call which followed the report's release. It's clear that he was on it…
Barely News: Big-Rig Orders Are in a Steep, Year-Long Decline
February 3rd, 2016 11:24 PM
One of the economy's more important bellwethers has been on a steep year-long decline which shows no signs of abating this year. It's barely news, and much of the sparse reporting seen has been incomplete and sloppy.
Truckinginfo.com reported today that "January was a tough month for truck manufacturers as Class 8 truck orders were down 35% compared to the previous month, according to a…
Facebook Relying Solely on Snitches to Enforce Gun-Sale Ban
February 3rd, 2016 6:36 PM
A great deal was made of Facebook's announcement last week that it would ban private gun sales on both its flagship website and Instagram.
Readers who only followed establishment press accounts can be forgiven if they came away from most reports thinking that the firm has some kind of algorithm or recognition system for enforcing the ban. That's not so.
Video
ABC Boosts Hillary Giving Volunteers Donuts, Stopping for Coffee
February 1st, 2016 8:28 PM
ABC’s World News Tonight and their fellow newscasts on CBS and NBC went all out on Monday just before the Iowa caucuses, but it was ABC that found it important for viewers to know that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton began her day by giving volunteers donuts and stopping for coffee at a local coffee shop. In Democratic correspondent and Saturday anchor Cecilia Vega’s report, she began by…
AP Acts As If Illinois's Chronic Vendor Delinquency Is Something New
January 31st, 2016 11:36 PM
A Sunday morning report by Associated Press political writer John O'Connor acts as if the the sordid history of fiscal irresponsibility in the State of Illinois is a new development brought on by a stubborn Republican governor in just the past seven months.
What hogwash. The state has had a large backlog of delinquent unpaid bills for a decade, if not longer. Five years ago, a Democratic…
WashPost: Venezuela's Giveaways to Poor Were 'Good Idea in General'
January 31st, 2016 9:04 PM
In trying to explain the current situation in Venezuela, the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien, in a post at the paper's Wonkblog, also inadvertently identified two reasons why authoritarian socialist tyrants like Huge Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are able to achieve and retain power.
The formula is simple: When you first gain power, garner international and media goodwill by giving stuff away, like…
Press Ignores Compelling Reason Why 4th Quarter GDP May Further Weaken
January 30th, 2016 9:24 PM
As has been its habit during the Obama administration when the economy turns in a poor performance, the press's coverage of yesterday's report on U.S. economic growth focused on how much better next quarter's news will supposedly be. Especially in this instance, the beat reporters and pundits should have looked at whether or not yesterday's initial result will hold up, or whether it's likely to…
NYT Endorses Hillary as One of Top 'Candidates in Modern History'
January 30th, 2016 8:29 PM
In what should come as a shock to no one, The New York Times editorial board endorsed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary Saturday afternoon (for Sunday’s print edition) in a glowing piece that gushed in the subhead that Clinton is “one of the most broadly and deeply qualified presidential candidates in modern history.” Additionally, it only mentioned her e-mail server once with nothing on…
AP: 8 Smoking Guns Later, Hillary 'Will Not Be Charged,' Per 'Experts'
January 29th, 2016 11:59 PM
This afternoon, Catherine Herridge at Fox News reported that "the intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails 'too damaging' to national security to release under any circumstances."
This eighth "smoking gun" — on top of the seven an Investor's Business Daily editorial identified last week — wasn't enough to move the Associated Press Bradley Klapper from the AP's default…
Video
ABC’s Nightline Spends Half of 2016 Report on Trump's Debate Boycott
January 29th, 2016 3:17 AM
By virtue of its late-night time slot, ABC’s Nightline received the first crack among the major broadcast networks at reacting to Thursday’s Republican presidential debate and, as per the liberal media’s pattern, made all candidates not named Donald Trump an afterthought as three minutes and 34 seconds out of the six-minute-and-58-second segment were devoted to Trump and his boycott of the debate…
AP Uses the Same Expert For Positive Words on Economy in Two Reports
January 28th, 2016 11:55 PM
The Associated Press may be down to one person in the whole wide world who will tell its economics reporters what they want to hear when the federal government releases economic data. That's what you almost have to conclude after reading the wire service's reports on two of Thursday's major releases, namely last week's initial unemployment claims and December's durable goods orders and shipments…
Nets Waste Nearly 10 Mins on Trump; Barely Preview Actual GOP Debate
January 28th, 2016 8:16 PM
In the latest sign that the liberal media loves the candidacy of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, the “big three” of ABC, CBS, and NBC devoted nearly 10 minutes of their Thursday evening newscasts to capitulating to the “master of stealing the show” in Trump but only one minute and 29 seconds for previewing the actual debate with the top seven candidates that don’t include Trump. …
Fmr. Elections Official: WashPost Gets Va. Voter ID Impact Wrong
January 28th, 2016 4:09 PM
Don Palmer, a former secretary of the Virginia State Board of Elections, has a great piece over at the Heritage Foundation's Daily Signal website about the Washington Post's erroneous reporting about the number of Old Dominion voters supposedly at risk of being disenfranchised for lacking proper government-issued ID.
AP: 'Americans Rushed to Buy New Homes in Dec.' — A Whole 38,000
January 28th, 2016 8:32 AM
The hype machine was in overdrive at the Associated Press on Wednesday as economics reporter Josh Boak covered the government's mid-morning release on new-home sales.
Boak opened by writing that "Americans rushed to buy new homes in December at the strongest pace in 10 months." Good heavens, we're talking about only 38,000 individuals or families, or about 0.031 percent of the nation's roughly…