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This morning, the Census Bureau, in its advance report on retail sales, revealed that seasonally adjusted July sales were "virtually unchanged" from June. Expectations were for a 0.2 percent gain, supposedly with "solid upside" potential. Oops. June's result stayed at its previously reported 0.2 percent increase. Reuters did the "U-word" honors this time out: "U.S. retail sales unexpectedly…

On Wednesday, NBC's Today devoted a nearly four-minute segment to promoting a fawning interview that Wired magazine conducted with NSA leaker Edward Snowden. Despite introducing the story by labeling Snowden as "the man U.S. officials have called a traitor and a coward," co-host Willie Geist went on to proclaim: "Out from the shadows...in front of the flashbulbs. Appearing at times exhausted,…

Russell Brand’s hatred for Fox News is so intense he couldn’t get through his eulogy of Robin Williams without taking a shot at the network’s “angry” viewers. In Tuesday’s online edition of The Guardian, Brand tried to find deeper meaning in the death of Williams as he pondered how “we live in a world that has become so negligent of human values that our brightest lights are extinguishing…

What's more important? The ongoing slaughter of refugees in a rapidly deteriorating Iraq or the December 2015 Star Wars film? According to  the journalists at Good Morning America, the answer is Star Wars. The ABC program on Wednesday devoted 55 seconds to discussing a film that is 16 months away from being released, but only 33 seconds to the desperate situation in Iraq.  News reader Amy…

At MSNBC, many are rallying behind Barack Obama’s foreign policy, despite his seemingly aimless goals. On the August 12 edition of The Last Word,  host Lawrence O'Donnell mentioned Hillary Clinton's comments about the President's foreign policy, in which she claimed that ‘don't do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle. O’Donnell couldn’t help but defend Mr. Obama, even if it meant…

On Wednesday, August 13, all three network morning shows did their best to minimize the conflict between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama following Clinton’s criticism of the White House’s handling of the militant group ISIS.  The “big three” (ABC, CBS and NBC) networks all played up how Clinton plans to “hug it out” with President Obama when they meet at a party…

President Obama is more "forceful" and "stubborn" about playing golf than he is about pushing through his policy agenda.  That was Dana Milbank's take on today's Morning Joe.   As Joe Scarborough described it, earlier this week the normally left-leaning Milbank enjoyed a "12-minute honeymoon" with conservatives after his Washington Post column called Obama's decision to go golfing while the…

 It’s the terminus point of modern feminism: make the deeply personal very publicly political, and get someone else to pay for it! If one man is keeping you in the style to which you’re accustomed, you’re a kept woman – perhaps even [shudder] a stay-at-home mom. But if your sugar is funneled from thousands of hapless tax payers through a legion of faceless bureaucrats, you’re  a tower of…

We don’t know who’d win a presidential race between Thomas Jefferson and Richard Nixon, but apparently we could be almost certain of three things: Jefferson would campaign ethically; Nixon would play dirty; and the media would have no problem with Nixon’s sleazy tactics. The above scenario is extrapolated from Paul Rosenberg’s Salon article last Saturday in which Rosenberg argued that liberal…

On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported the death of former CBS News political editor Dotty Lynch at age 69. Lynch had a long resume in liberal Democratic Party politics, so it wasn’t unusual at all that she would then be directing CBS political coverage. She was an obvious example of the revolving door between the Democrats and the "objective" media. “She proposed stories for Dan Rather…

So what's more newsworthy: A white, privileged, female lawyer wearing pink shoes whose filibuster failed to stop abortion restrictions from taking effect in Texas, or a an African-American female state representative who sponsored and helped successfully shepherd a similar law through Louisiana's legislature — with overwhelming support from Democratic legislators? If you think it should be the…

Given a national platform on tonight's All In with Chris Hayes, Democratic State Senator Jamilah Nasheed (Mo.) charged that the shooting death of  teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer was an "execution-style" killing. [WATCH video and READ the relevant transcript following page break] At no point, however, did host Chris Hayes object to such rhetoric and protest that…

During Monday's edition of The View, Sherri Shepherd -- who had served as a co-host on the ABC weekday program for seven years -- gave an emotional farewell in which she declared she is “so thankful for the group of friends and family that I have made and that have supported me” throughout her tenure. Shepherd also acknowledged the criticism she'd received over the years from Fox News…

Rush Limbaugh has this pronounced tendency -- annoying to liberals, endearing to conservatives -- of remembering things from long ago that left wingers would prefer remain forgotten, thanks very much. El Rushbo did this yet again on his radio show in response to the startling news that President Obama ordered military strikes in Iraq, after maintaining for more than a decade that American…