AP on Rubio Assumes He's Still the One on the Defensive Over Parents

October 25th, 2011 12:12 AM
Despite all the huffing and puffing over Florida Senator Marco Rubio's alleged "embellishing" at the Washington Post, the fact is that his parents were Cuban exiles (meaning number 5 at link: "anyone separated from his or her country or home voluntarily or by force of circumstances"). That fact essentially undercuts everything about the WaPo article except the problem with the opening sentence…

Questionable Polling: GOP Presidential Preference Questions Vary Widel

October 24th, 2011 6:45 PM
Herman Cain has been ahead of Mitt Romney in the most recent GOP presidential candidate polling average at Real Clear Politics by a microscopic margin since late last week. Readers might be surprised to know that the wordings of the presidential preference questions at the various polling organizations differ significantly. In my view, the same person might given a different answer depending…

AP Item About Obama's Upcoming Vegas Visit Calls It ‘Sin City’ Thr

October 24th, 2011 5:13 PM
If you didn't know any better (actually, I think I do), you would think that perhaps Cristina Silva at the Associated Press is doing all she can to minimize the tourism-damaging things President Barack Obama has said about Las Vegas while tasked with reporting on his upcoming visit there. Three times in her short afternoon report -- once in the item's headline and twice in the item's first…

AP Pair Discovers Religion at 'Occupy Wall Street,' Turn Blind Eyes to

October 24th, 2011 4:18 PM
Yesterday (since updated to early morning Monday), in what should be seen as a thoroughly embarrassing report -- but mostly won't be -- the Associated Press's Jay Lindsay in Boston, with help from Karen Matthews in New York, devoted almost 1,000 words to the involvement of various religious clerics in the ongoing Occupy Wall Street activities. Before getting to their report, I'll bring…

AP Report on Dearth of Black Degrees in Math and Science Missing Role

October 23rd, 2011 10:17 PM
At the Associated Press today, National Writer Jesse Washington attempted to dissect the relative dearth of college degrees earned by African-Americans in "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math). Not that anything he reported was particularly wrong, but in my view he missed the largest contributor to the problem, one that apparently can't be mentioned in polite press company. He…

Oct. 13 at At AP: Lech Walesa, ‘Legendary Freedom Leader’; Now: 'L

October 23rd, 2011 2:15 PM
On October 13, Monika Scislowska of the Associated Press reported that a "legendary freedom leader ... says he supports the Occupy Wall Street movement in New York that protests corporate greed," and that "that he is planning either a visit or a letter to the protesters." That leader would be Poland's former President Lech Walesa. On Friday, October 21, at 5:01 p.m., Adam Andrzejewski at…

WaPo's Kessler Exposes Biden's 'Absurd Claims About Rising Rape and Mu

October 21st, 2011 6:07 PM
In June, when yours truly last blogged on a Glenn Kessler piece (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), the Washington Post's "Fact Checker" was calling Barack Obama's claims about the accomplishments of the auto-company bailouts "one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech." He gave Obama's claims three Pinocchios ("Significant factual error and/or…

Obama's 'All the Choices We've Made Have Been the Right Ones' Remark A

October 19th, 2011 9:32 PM
Concerning President Obama, his obviously most important quote of the past 48 hours is his statement to ABC's Jake Tapper (transcript here) that concerning the economy, "I believe all the choices we've made have been the right ones ..." Clearly, such a remark, if widely known, would be problematic for the President among quite a number of unemployed and underemployed Americans. In the New…

AP Confuses Housing Starts with 'Home Building' to Paint Rosy Picture

October 19th, 2011 12:49 PM
The headline and opening sentence in Derek Kravitz's Associated Press report this morning on the Census Bureau's homebulding industry data release gives readers the impression that industry activity increased impressively during September. It increased a tiny bit, but certainly not by the percentage indicated. The headline ignorantly assumes that a double-digit increase in housing starts is…

AP Hit Piece on 'Dominionism' Tries to Tie in Perry, Even With No 'Dir

October 17th, 2011 11:52 PM
This afternoon, Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll devoted over 1,600 words to "dominionism," spending much of it attempting to cast Rick Perry as their guy, even though, as she admitted, "Perry has never said anything that would directly link him to dominionism." Oh, but he's sorta said some things that might hint at such sympathies, and he's been on stage with people who are…

Lowe's Store Closings With 1,950 Job Losses Not Worthy of AP's Busines

October 17th, 2011 2:01 PM
UPDATE, 4 p.m.: NB gets results? The Lowe's story is currently #10 on the AP's Business home page (saved here). It's a good thing I heard this on the radio at about 11:00 a.m., because I might otherwise have missed it. With yours truly's opinion along for the ride, I'll let readers judge whether the news of the Lowe's home improvement chain announcing that it will close 20 stores and cut its…

Clueless AP: Cain's Philosophical Ties to AFP and Kochs 'Could Undercu

October 16th, 2011 7:57 PM
The Associated Press's seeming effort to go after every candidate except the guy who used to be governor of Massachusetts -- and imposed CO2 emission caps when he was -- went a different route tonight with a report by the wire service's Ryan J. Foley that Herman Cain, a believer in liberty and free-market capitalism, "has close ties" with the Koch brothers, who believe in liberty and free-…

Issa's Gunwalker Subpoena a Virtual Non-Story; AP Furiously Spins Fals

October 16th, 2011 10:58 AM
On October 9, an unbylined Associated Press story reported that Congressmen Darrell Issa "could send subpoenas to the Obama administration as soon as this week over weapons lost amid the Mexican drug war." On Wednesday, October 12, Issa did just that. Mike Vanderboegh's Sipsey Street Irregulars blog has a succinct summary (HT Ed Driscoll) of the establishment press's coverage of Issa's…

Unlike Wis. and Ohio, Illinois, the Democrat 'Deadbeat State,' Gets Li

October 15th, 2011 9:29 PM
Sometimes it's really hard to understand why certain events get heavy national press coverage while others which are arguably at least as significant and serious get little if any notice. This is one of them. Scott Walker, who solved a $3 billion projected deficit in Wisconsin, is a media and leftist (but I repeat myself) arch-villain because much of the balancing was done by adjusting public-…