Blogs

Well, we can stop worrying about the economy now. Write it down. Chris Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, tells readers today that the business cycle has been repealed. That's right. As of now, "Gone are the fears that the economy could fall into another recession."

Even giving him the benefit of the doubt that he only meant to refer to the short- or intermediate-term, it takes a mountain of chutzpah to make such a declaration after a quarter during the which the economy grew at an annualized 0.4%, i.e., an actual 0.1%. It's doubly hard to take because the press, led by the Associated Press, feared that a recession was around the corner virtually every month or quarter from the time I began blogging in early 2005 until mid-2008, when the National Bureau of Economic Research defied the normal person's definition of recession (i.e., two consecutive quarters of contraction) and decided that a recession began in December 2007, seven months before it really did.

For a long time now, it’s been apparent to social conservatives that the gay-marriage lobby is not a movement of tolerance. It won’t be satisfied with Supreme Court-imposed homo-nuptials in 50 states. If groups like GLAAD are the rule, they work to ban the social conservatives out of the “respectable” circles in the media, and make “homophobia” a hate crime.

But you can’t make this argument at the Daily Kos, where “LeftHandedMan” responded to this argument with a “GFY” and a rant about how conservatives should all bend over and “fist” each other with spiked gloves:  

At the Weekly Standard's blog today, Daniel Halper relayed a pool reporter's notes from the Easter service President Barack Obama and his family attended this morning. The highlights from the Rev. Dr. Luis Leon's sermon" included the following statement: "It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back ... for blacks to be back in the back of the bus ... for women to be back in the kitchen ... for immigrants to be back on their side of the border."

What follows the jump is the report on the event from Stacy A. Anderson at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press (produced in full for fair use and discussion purposes):

The latest estimate of economic growth for the final quarter of 2012 published by Uncle Sam's Bureau of Economic Analysis on Thursday told us that the economy grew at an annualized rate of 0.4%. Not annualized, that means it actually grew by 0.1%. A $100,000-a-year business doing that "well" during a quarter would have seen its sales increase by $25 (.001 times $100,000 divided by 4).

CNNMoney.com was so happy with that revised result that it presented the following headline and graphic to its readers:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is at it again, telling us peons that we're not deserving of our full measure of yet another freedom, this time to express ourselves.

As reported by Dana Rubenstein at CapitalNewYork.com (HT The Blaze), "As it turns out, Bloomberg, the highest-profile cheerleader for New York City's burgeoning tech scene, doesn't really like the social media revolution upon which much of it is premised." Excerpts after the jump reveal that Bloomberg wants tech, but only on his terms:

Sometimes one learns interesting things perusing stories at tech web sites.

A report by Michelle Maisto at Eweek about Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has one nugget of information which has been out there for a while, and another which I believe hasn't been and still isn't widely known about both Mayer and her former employer Google. Both items indicate to me that Mayer as a woman and the two tech companies involved are getting free passes from the press which a male CEO and non-tech would likely not receive. Excerpts follow the jump (internal link is in original; bolds are mine):

Searches at the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times done at 9:30 p.m. on "Obama Arafat" (not in quotes) returned nothing relevant to the matter I am about to note. A Google News search on the same term (sorted by date) returns only about a half-dozen relevant items (another very recent one is missing, and I'll get that one in a later post this evening).

On Thursday in Ramallah, as Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard blog noted, U.S. President Barack Obama "addressed the assembled journalists while standing under a Yasser Arafat banner." Arafat is rightly considered the “father of modern terrorism.” Since U.S. establishment press coverage is non-existent, I'll take readers to an outraged Nile Gardiner at the UK Telegraph to express how utterly offensive Obama's silently condoning Arafat's legitimacy really is:

In a brief item Friday at Politico, Donovan Slack reported that President Obama has withdrawn his nomination of Caitlin Halligan for the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.

Concerning Republican senators' opposition to her nomination, Slack said it was "because they said she had a record of advocacy and an activist view of the judiciary" without citing specifics. It's almost as if Slack knew he had to write something, but wished to keep a rare Republican success at stopping an objectionable court nominee as vague and quiet as possible. In early March, the folks at Eagle Forum compiled a useful list of how awful Halligan would have been had her appointment made it through the Senate (bolds are mine throughout this post):

As hard as the establishment press has worked over the years to make certain politicians appear to be somehow out of touch with the situation of average Americans, you might think that two legislative leaders complaining about cuts in their Congressional offices' allowance might be news. One whined that her aides, some of whom "earn" in excess of $100,000 per year, are being "priced out" of a good lunch on Capitol Hill.

Don't be silly. The press only cares about making Republicans and conservatives appear out of touch. The complainers in question are Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who also heads the Democratic National Committee, and longtime Democratic Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia. The Washington Examiner's Paul Bedard noted Schultz's and Moran's whining on Wednesday:

Today, on the third anniversary of the enactment of state-managed healthcare, aka the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka ObamaCare, it's worth noting a precursor of what we can expect from the establishment press as the law's implementation presses on. It can be summed up in eight words: "Hype the alleged good. Ignore the obviously bad." Distilled in four words: "Toe the administration line."

Two examples of how the press is ignoring the obviously bad came from the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, in its March 6 caoverage of the contents of the Federal Reserve's "beige book" released that day. The Fed's report contained five specific comments, four of them negative and one neutral, about the current and imminent impact of ObamaCare. None made it into either AP report. Many other outlets also ignored or minimized those comments.

Kossacks, of course, love to trash prominent Republicans -- freshman Texas senator Ted Cruz came in for some notable abuse this past week -- but they by no means neglect the party's rank and file and in some cases identify them as the root of the GOP's supposed madness.

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym. Daily Kos Week in Review will return in two weeks. Happy Easter!

Much of the press is describing the EU's demand that Cyprus seize a portion of bank account holders' deposits, a demand rejected yesterday by the island nation's legislature, as a "tax."

I think it's reasonable to suggest that this characterization is designed to minimize the frightening authoritarianism the EU has just attempted. In a bit of a pleasant surprise, one organization openly calling the move an attempt at "seizure" is the Associated Press.

Regular readers of NewsBusters are by definition familiar with liberal media bias. For Kossacks, however, the concept is a non sequitur, since they consider the mainstream media to be water-carriers for corporatist, right-wing Republicans. Go figure.

As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

This posts builds on another by Noel Sheppard which appeared earlier today at NewsBusters. At ShowBiz411.com, Roger Friedman, who worked at Fox News for a decade until he was fired in 2009 over alleged film piracy, claims that Brooke Shields is “Likely” to join “The View” as Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck depart. "Likely"? Wow, Rog, way to put yourself on the line.

Friedman went heavy on praise for Shields and took shots at Hasselbeck. Commenters certainly aren't supportive, as will be seen after the jump.

Being that March is Women’s History Month and March 8 is International Women’s Day, what better time to showcase a prominent female journalist being treated poorly by her male colleagues, particularly ones from the "war on women" network itself, MSNBC.

Speaking with the liberal Huffington Post, CBS This Morning co-host Norah O’Donnell describes a not-so-pleasant experience with former NBC colleagues Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann back in 2008:

President Obama's sequester-related press briefing on March 1 contained the usual fibs. Examples include but are certainly not limited to the following: "We've already cut $2.5 trillion in our deficit," when the entire amount involved is something which might happen in the future; his claim that his State of the Union laundry list "is the agenda that the American people voted for," when many of the items involved were never mentioned during the 2012 campaign; and that the sequester is "happening because of a choice that Republicans in Congress have made," despite the fact that his advisers with his personal approval originated the idea in 2011 and the reality that he was under no compulsion when he signed the bill setting it in place last week.

Since then, while the establishment press has largely ignored it, the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler has twice honed in on a relatively small but clearly refutable statement Obama uttered that day: "Starting tomorrow, everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol ... they're going to have less pay. The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they've got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real." No it's not.

CNN, which if I recall correctly severed formal ties with the Associated Press some time ago, quoted former congressman Joseph Kennedy II's reaction to the death of Venezuela's authoritarian leader Hugo Chavez as follows: "President Chavez cared deeply about the poor of Venezuela and other nations around the world and their abject lack of even basic necessities, while some of the wealthiest people on our planet have more money than they can ever reasonably expect to spend" ... There are close to 2 million people in the United States who received free heating assistance, thanks to President Chavez's leadership. Our prayers go out to President Chavez's family, the people of Venezuela, and all who were warmed by his generosity."

Here is how Christine Armario at the AP, with the help of Steve LeBlanc in Boston, sanitized Kennedy's remarks:

During a panel discussion on Tuesday's NBC Today about whether websites should prevent people from commenting anonymously in order to reduce offensive rhetoric, attorney Star Jones made an over-the-top comparison: "I equate it a little bit to what the KKK used to do, in terms of being under the mask....Well, the mask of the web is giving anonymity to these kinds of people, and it's time to take the hoods off." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Fellow pundit Donny Deutsch proclaimed: "I actually think any media outlet that allows that [anonymous comments] is being irresponsible."

Did you ever mean to say "If you are shy then I have an acre of land in the Everglades." and have it come out "If you're bashful I got a snake sitting under my desk here"? I mean, those sentences are so close to being identical, and these kinds of misstatements happen all the time, right?

Well, that's what you have to believe if you're still a defender of Connecticut legislator Ernest Hewett, who said the latter on February 20 to a 17 year-old girl at a public hearing and is now saying he meant to say the former. Most press covereage of Hewett's obviously lewd remark has done an acceptable job of tagging him as a Democrat, with a notable exception being Ken Dixon at the Connecticut Post (HT Hot Air via Instapundit; bolds are mine throughout this post):

This past week, Kossacks cheered the televised trashing of Sean Hannity and jeered another media personality, Bob Woodward, for questioning President Obama's sequester narrative.
 
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

Hold the presses! The far-left blog Daily Kos is insisting that liberal reporter Bob Woodard, in doing his job as a journalist, has gone “full Breitbart” with his coverage of sequestration. Just a few short years ago, the Kossacks loved when reporters "spoke truth to power" in confronting Republicans in the White House. But now that Woodward has gone on record saying that he received threatening emails from senior Obama administration officials, well, that's a far different story.

On the February 27 broadcast of The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Woodward said:

The rogue collection of bureaucrats known as the Environmental Protection Agency continues its lawless ways. The establishment press continues to serve as enablers.

In January, a federal court vacated the EPA's regulations mandating the use of cellulosic biofuels which weren't produced at all until last year, and barely exist now. In response, the agency, directly defying the court, increased the production requirement of these fuels for 2013. In covering the story, as I noted at NewsBusters on January 31, the Associated Press's Matt Daly only wrote that "An oil industry representative said the Obama administration was thumbing its nose at a ruling last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia" -- as if the agency's action was only a matter of some eeeevil oil guy's opinion.

At the Hill on Monday, Pete Kasperowicz, employing the establishment press's usual "mean Republicans attack" spin, is packaging something first aggregated on Friday at Michelle Malkin's Twitchy.com exclusively as an accusation coming from GOP Congressman Steve Stockman of Texas.

Malkin's credit-denied crew, with the help of citizen activists who did much of the dirty work, detected what I will call "Astro-Tweets," a Twitter-driven variant of the campaign tactic known as "astroturfing," which aims, using a variety of means, to create the illusion of public support for a cause where little or none exists (bolds are mine throughout this post):

On Wednesday, the New York Daily News reported that Rob Morrison, an anchor for CBS's New York City affiliate WCBS, had quit his job after being arrested the previous weekend for an alleged assault on his wife, CBS MoneyWatch anchor Ashley Morrison. While this news story has been picked up by CNN, the New York Times, and UPI, CBS's own morning and evening newscasts have yet to report on it.

By contrast, CBS This Morning devoted several news items to the arrest and trial of Fox News correspondent Douglas Kennedy in 2012. During a April 4, 2012 report, then-anchor Erica Hill pointed out his affiliation with the news outlet before interviewing the journalist's attorney:

Kossacks are rarely short of hostility and condescension for Republicans, but their blasts at the Grand Old Party and its members seemed especially abundant this past week.
 
As usual, each headline is preceded by the blogger's name or pseudonym.

Liz Sidoti's offering this morning at the Associated Press, which is clearly a serious competitor for Worst AP Item Ever, carries the "column" label. As such, I suppose we're expected to accept the idea that the "analysis" offered is hers alone.

But you would think that the self-described "essential global news network" would have enough business judgment to review a reporter's work to make sure it doesn't talk down to the general public and indict its own reporting on the economy at the same time. You would be wrong, as will be seen after the jump.

It's always interesting when liberals disagree on something because each one believes he or she is always 100 percent correct on any issue, a stance that often leads to fiery confrontations and personal attacks.

The latest example of this concept is the angry Twitter debate between Buzzfeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall over an article entitled “7 Things Democrats Would Have Freaked Out About if Bush Had Done Them.”

My review of previous NewsBusters posts relating to "Bill Nye the Science Guy" indicates that he's an atheist who doesn't think creationism should be taught in schools and, more pertinent at the moment, such an avid believer in "global warming" aka "climate change" that he believes those who doubt it or that it's caused by human activity are "unpatriotic."

Nye's belief in what I prefer to call "globaloney" appears to be based far more on faith than sound meteorological knowledge, given the alarming ignorance he expressed recently on MSNBC about the origins of the past week's snowstorms in the Northeast. Washington Post Weather Editor Jason Samenow ripped into Nye at the paper's "Capital Weather Gang" blog yesterday (HT Yid With Lid via Instapundit; links are in original; bolds are mine):