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Looking for your own financial bailout?Well, the unprecedented decline in gasoline prices the past five months is actually giving regular Americans a much-needed boost to their balance sheets possibly greater than what the government is doling out to the financial services and automobile industries.New data just released by the Oil Price Information Service reveals that we're currently spending $…

Here are the key numbers (in red) in Uncle Sam's November Personal Income and Outlays report (the July : Common sense says that the chart's results after adjusting for inflation are more important (identified as "Chained [2000] dollars") than those in current dollars. Consmers' disposable income went up 1.0% in real (after-inflation) terms in November after a 0.7% increase in October. It took a…

On Monday’s World News, ABC showed a letter written to Barack Obama that made a snide crack charging that President Bush and Vice President Cheney had left Obama a "hell of a mess to clean up," and sarcastically expressing hope that Bush and Cheney would not steal furniture from the White House, as correspondent Kate Snow filed a report about a former school teacher, B.J. Hill, who has spent a…

Sure, its revenues might be plunging along with its share price, but the New York Times is still good for something.  In these somber days of winter, the Gray Lady, her name notwithstanding, can still inject the sunshine of humor—albeit of the unintentional variety.Take its current editorial, Getting Immigration Right -- please. With jobs at a premium and the collapse of the Big Three automakers…

The McClatchy publishing company is more and more beginning to resemble an isolated bunker in the final stages of Götterdämmerung as ugly reality, such as their 99% stock price plunge, closes in on both fronts. Inside the bunker a leader is screaming madly, conjuring up phantom armies to ward off the unpleasant facts facing his company. However, in this case their ranting leader in the bunker…

Imagine there's no religion, it's easy for The New York Times to do -- even in a Christmas Day editorial that somehow forgets that Christmas is about Christ's birth. In fact, the NYT decided that this Christmas was its opportunity to wallow in worse-than-ever sentiments and to bemoan that this year's Christmas isn't as good as it used to be. Oh, they tried to dress it up a bit by saying it is…

I held this item for a couple of days after I found it because I didn't want to spoil Christmas. Readers can fairly criticize me for waiting. It is truly astonishing how little attention this two week-old story has received (Warning: Very disturbing content; the underlying news at caritas.org is here; bolds are mine) Out of food, Zimbabweans eating cow dung Harare, Dec 10, 2008 / 08:01 pm --…

A holiday change of pace from your humble correspondent here. Instead of taking a non-political article and looking for a political theme, I am taking this Slate article about political media divas who refuse to appear with other guests and transferring it to a non-political pet peeve of mine...people in the entertainment industry who have such bloated egos that they never appear on a show with…

Employees of McClatchy publishing in Iraq were in an unusually good mood recently. The occasion was the aftermath of the Iraqi journalist who tossed his shoes at President Bush at a press conference in Baghdad as you can see in these quotes from Inside Iraq, a blog for McClatchy journalists working in that country. The first quote was from McClatchy employee, "Laith," who was talking about his…

If you thought Chris Matthews gets a thrill up his leg when he thinks about Barack Obama, you ain't seen nuttin' yet, for on Christmas Eve, CNN's Bill Schneider practically aired a love letter for the president-elect.Even worse, after gushing ad nauseum about how Obama is "really sweeping people off their feet" -- with statistics to back up his sick-making adoration, of course! -- Schneider…