...and this is reason #1 why I've stopped watching most news and news programs. 90-99% of the stories are negative, bad news, or good news...but stories. Report the news objectively. If things are going good...say it, if things are bad (truthfully) say it. Don't assume that you need doomsday stories to bring in viewers. More often than not you'll drive them away.

Do you realize how much it costs to run for office? More than any honest man could afford. -Montgomery Burns

This is a little off topic, but the picture! That is hilarious. A little photoshopping and that could be man-bear-pig chasing after a "dissenting" scientist. Sorry, the picture hit my funny bone just right; you'd think it is a Friday before a holiday or something....

 "Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat's dream. If you control carbon, you control life," Richard Lindzen - March 2007.

The "recession" talk will pick up steam in '08 as we approach the election. It will indeed cause what it portends to report, but...If a Republican wins in November, the recession will be short and minor as the various economic policy implementations take effect quickly and serve to stimulate the economy and reduce the deficit spending. If a Democrat wins, the recession will be LONG, deep and pronounced as all the economic policies implemented server to exacerbate the situation and the extra spending sends the deficit out of control as the wealthy 5% flee the country to avoid paying 50% net-worth tax while being villified for being wealthy in the first place.

The day that "politician" became a career choice is the day we started losing the Republic. Let's get it back! Alan Keyes '08.

A definite entry to my list of minor heroes.

I sometimes think the media won't be happy until they completely destroy the USA. Of course then they will point fingers as to who should be tarred and feathered for the destruction, never once looking inward.

Rush Limbaugh stated that of the top 5 Republicans running for the presidency, only one was a true conservative. http://www.fred08.com/ 

I still say that level headed political and business leaders, of whatever political bent, ought to challenge the media this way much more often and more vociferously.

The media have much more influence on society, not just the economy, than people realize.  The problem is that an agenda-driven few have too much control over too large a portion of it - to the point where their influence becomes damaging.  This is what needs to be challenged by the "movers and shakers"...

Since I commented yesterday again in Mr. B's posting on the American economy is recessive, I would like to address the criminal aspect which no one here has even mentioned and that being there are ways to leverage market shares to make money when stocks fall to commodities fall.

This came out after 9 11 when miracle of miracles some groups were making billions selling short on airline and various stocks.......and wonder of wonders the investigations shut down immediately and these criminal economic rapists never were prosecuted for being a part of the 9 11 agenda.

So while Mr. Sheppard people argue about recession or the press causing a recession the fact is as I pointed out that Cargill and the huge grain shippers conned farmers into selling wheat at $4 a bushel this past summer on futures and now are sitting on $10 a bushel wheat which they manipulated the shortage monopoly to make billions.........the same agenda has happened in gold and prices there only spiked when the cartels hedged the market. They will sell off and stick small investors with a debt once they raise the dollar level in a dollar stablizing in a few years.
In the meantime, they are now taking shares to leverage the market for when it will go down as is their dual plan to both install Al Gore as president and make a fortune when they plunge the market on various fronts.

The fact is the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, British and Dutch Royals etc... all make money whether the market goes up or whether the market goes down. As I pointed out, there is no economy as it ceased in the 1970's and has only become a vehicle to move money around to bankrupt one nation against another while shearing the citizens of that nation. There are no longer cycles. There are only scams followed by worthless currency dumped into banks creating an illusion of stability.

This is a criminal mafia worldwide in the few trillions controlled by the Rockefellers to the hundreds of trillions in the European cartels. Sure Putin with his nuclear tantrums uses it to bully his way into oil, gold,diamonds and screwing Iran out of billions which he knows America will blow up and he will then get more billions of American money (China buys Iranian oil with American debt.), but it is all as Eli Wallach said in a fine film, "If God didn't want them sheared, He would not have made them sheep".

This is not the media, but the propaganda steering tool of the cartels herding people to invest where they want the funds gathered, so when the market goes down like in the dotcom maneuvering the small investors loose all and the cartels glean the profits in selling short.

Where are the calls for Congress investigating the Europeans conning American farmers out of billions of dollars and the manipulation of the grain markets. Won't happen as Congress is too bought out and too moronic of economic criminality..........Democrats love Soros and he is the worst of this criminal ilk.

Merry Christ mass though:)

*HIC IACET ARTORIVS REX QVONDAM REXQVE FVTVRVS

I asked my mother yesterday if she thought America was experiencing a Recession and she said yes.  Then I informed her we have had nearly 24 quarters of GDP boon.

My mother believes that the sub-prime lending debacle is at the root of the Recession (along with the Iraq war and price of gasoline).  Then I informed her that sub-prime loans make up 4% or less of the lending market.  (We already had the talk on how the recent decrease in home values is misleading when taking into account that homes rocketed upwards in value by nearly 80% over the past decade or so, an inflated amount now being offset by corrective market decreases of 25% or so.  In other words, she's still up.)

My mother also believes that unemployment is at or near record high levels.  Then I informed her that unemployment is at record low levels.

My mother is (obviously) a Democrat, a lover of all things Clinton, and FDR coud do no wrong either.  She reads the local newspaper, watches local and occasionally network news, the moring shows like Today and sometimes The View and rarely ever pays attention to more that the headlines and first paragraph or two of political stories let alone discuss politics.

In other words, my mother is a typical American of the Democrat persuasion, eating up what MSM delivers.  Her sister is more studied on political events, particularly as they are related on The View, Bill Mahre and his fellow TV idiotbox shows and quite possibly from partisan websites like DKos or HuffPo.  I avoid discussing politics with her out of respect for her as my aunt.

There is some hope though.  My mother thinks Al Gore is an ass, AGW is another way to get more money out of her, Rosie O'Donnell is a mean, loud foul-mouthed pig, Today show's Ann Coury is a phony, Matt Lauer is a bit whiney, John Edwards is a momma's boy that hides behind his wife's skirt and Barrack Obama is bested only by Dennis Kucinich as the worst Democrat candidate.

Now if I could convince her that Hillary wants to pick her pocket too and President Hillary would tilt us towards Recession with her wealth redistribution schemes. 

Killing them with kindness isn't working.  Time to get scrappy with the Donkeys.

They old-time media keeps harping about a recession because *they* are in recession. Just look at their P&L statements and their stock. It's all in the crapper. No wonder they're all grumpy and whining about how bad times are. That's how it is for them, they figure it must be like that everywhere. 

See what decades of unreliable, biased, pandering to liberal causes and alleged journalism have wrought? Nobody believes the papers anymore. It's like how Russians regarded Pravda in the cold war days. It's all BS, they know, we know it, everyone knows it, but no one speaks of it and it continues unchecked.

I think anyone in the news business that actually produced news with any kind of journalistic integrity along with fact checking and a careful approach with regard to their own personal bias would be immensely successful from a business perspective as well as a journalistic perspective. 

if we're going to have a recession, it's going to be media generated as opposed from the economy

Yep, and if we're going to have a Democrat president, it's also going to be media generated.