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Thanks to year-over-year declines in manufacturing orders, manufacturing shipments, and wholesale sales, along with bloated inventories, apologists for the current condition of the U.S. economy are down to three defenses supposedly demonstrating that all is still really well after yet another rough first quarter (once again excused away as due to supposedly historically awful winter weather).

One of the three is that the housing market, particularly for new homes, is in a genuine recovery. Effective today, we can scratch at least the new-home element of that claim. The Census Bureau told us today that seasonally adjusted new-home sales fell by 7 percent in June, after May's originally strong figure was also revised down by 5 percent. The raw data showed that the number of new homes sold in June — supposedly peak season for new home purchases — was the same as the number sold in February.

One year ago, a British newspaper published a list of President Obama’s ten favorite television shows (the top three, in reverse order: Breaking Bad, The Wire, and M*A*S*H). Not on the list was The Daily Show, on which Obama guested yet again this past Tuesday, but Penn State's Sophia McClennen thinks that if Obama had been more of a TDS fan, he long ago would have realized how irrational his conservative opposition was.

In a Friday article for Salon, McClennen asserted that Stewart and Stephen Colbert “had insight into U.S. politics Obama never seemed to understand. ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘The Colbert Report’ were one of the main sources of truth telling about U.S. politics and the nature of the Republican Party before and during the Obama presidency.” Those programs, wrote McClennen, illuminated “the twisted thinking, hubris, disdain for large segments of society, and closed-mindedness that forms the common, core mind-set of Fox viewers.”

MRC Research Director Rich Noyes appeared on Fox News, Friday, to slam the networks's "pathetic" coverage of the Planned Parenthood scandal. Regarding the undercover sting video of the abortion activists discussing the selling of body parts from aborted babies, Noyes derided, "If this had been something that a hidden camera expo, say of a CEO, if this had been a hidden camera expo, say, of a conservative politician, you would be seeing a lot more [coverage]." He added, "But this is a hidden camera expo say of a liberal group that gets half a billion dollars in federal money and the networks just don't walk to talk about it very much." Anchor Neil Cavuto praised the Media Research Center: "Rich, you helped provide these numbers and thank God for your organization."

At two separate points on the Friday morning edition of MSNBC’s The Rundown, Meet the Press moderator Chuck Todd, NBC News senior White House correspondent Chris Jansing and fill-in host Thomas Roberts joined fellow cable channel CNN in bemoaning the lack of gun control during the Obama administration and especially after Newtown. Speaking in the program’s first hour with Roberts, Todd called on “responsible leaders” to put “everything on the table” to consider whether or not incidents such as the one in Lafayette Thursday night are part of “an epidemic” because “[i]t feels like one.”

Andrea Mitchell apparently had a brain freeze on Friday as she tried to come up with a synonym for the "progressive" policies of Bernie Sanders. While discussing Hillary Clinton, Mitchell stumbled, "It is her trying to walk the line between the far more progressive and far more–  I don't know what to call them other than the progressive policies – of Bernie Sanders which have caught fire certainly in Iowa." Mitchell "doesn't know what to call" the policies of Bernie Sanders?  Bernie Sanders has repeatedly called himself a socialist. So, how about starting there?

Following the tragic Lafayette shooting last night, Boston Globe and Slate freelancer Luke O’Neil took to Twitter to voice his opinion on the matter. Liberals like O’Neil believe that simply banning guns will make them magically go away, along with all the violence committed by gun-carrying criminals. But before all the firearms evaporate, this liberal freelancer would enjoy seeing something else happen first: the mass murder of all 2nd amendment supporters.

In a live interview with Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday’s NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer lobbed a softball about the news that the Justice Department was considering launching a criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal: “As you’ve heard, two inspectors general have called for a criminal investigation into her use of that private e-mail server for sensitive information. As someone who occupies the job and knows what information is handled by someone in your position, is this politics or is she in real trouble?”