Barely News: Big-Rig Orders Are in a Steep, Year-Long Decline
February 3rd, 2016 11:24 PM
One of the economy's more important bellwethers has been on a steep year-long decline which shows no signs of abating this year. It's barely news, and much of the sparse reporting seen has been incomplete and sloppy.
Truckinginfo.com reported today that "January was a tough month for truck manufacturers as Class 8 truck orders were down 35% compared to the previous month, according to a…
Facebook Relying Solely on Snitches to Enforce Gun-Sale Ban
February 3rd, 2016 6:36 PM
A great deal was made of Facebook's announcement last week that it would ban private gun sales on both its flagship website and Instagram.
Readers who only followed establishment press accounts can be forgiven if they came away from most reports thinking that the firm has some kind of algorithm or recognition system for enforcing the ban. That's not so.
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Fusion: Cut 'Excessive Defense Spending' to Pay Reparations
February 3rd, 2016 1:24 PM
On Tuesday's America With Jorge Ramos, Fusion's Nando Vila advanced the left-wing cause of reparations to the descendants of slaves. Vila asserted "the moral case for reparations is a clear one. Black people are 16 times poorer than white people, because white people have systematically stolen wealth from black people for hundreds of years — through slavery, Jim Crow, housing discrimination,…
Tampering? Mid-Evening, Politico's Thrush Declared Hillary the Victor
February 2nd, 2016 10:31 AM
In the November 2000 presidential election, the Big 3 TV networks prematurely declared Democrat Al Gore the winner before the polls in those portions of the Sunshine State in the Central Time Zone had even closed. According to one post-election study, the networks' arguably politically motivated calls cost Republican George W. Bush 10,000 votes, led to the most bitter post-election battle over…
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CNN Bests ABC, NBC By Raising 'Big Deal' E-Mail Scandal With Hillary
February 1st, 2016 7:07 PM
On Monday, CNN's New Day put ABC and NBC's morning newscasts to shame by actually raising the ongoing e-mail scandal during their interview of Hillary Clinton. Alisyn Camerota pointed out "the issue that has bedeviled your campaign," and noted that "your opponents have said that this is...a big deal." She asked, "How do you convince voters today not to be concerned about this?" When Mrs Clinton…
AP Acts As If Illinois's Chronic Vendor Delinquency Is Something New
January 31st, 2016 11:36 PM
A Sunday morning report by Associated Press political writer John O'Connor acts as if the the sordid history of fiscal irresponsibility in the State of Illinois is a new development brought on by a stubborn Republican governor in just the past seven months.
What hogwash. The state has had a large backlog of delinquent unpaid bills for a decade, if not longer. Five years ago, a Democratic…
WashPost: Venezuela's Giveaways to Poor Were 'Good Idea in General'
January 31st, 2016 9:04 PM
In trying to explain the current situation in Venezuela, the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien, in a post at the paper's Wonkblog, also inadvertently identified two reasons why authoritarian socialist tyrants like Huge Chavez and Nicolas Maduro are able to achieve and retain power.
The formula is simple: When you first gain power, garner international and media goodwill by giving stuff away, like…
No Ferguson Effect? St. Louis, Baltimore in World's Top 20 For Murders
January 31st, 2016 11:45 AM
Those in the press who have insisted that the "Ferguson effect" is an urban legend will have a hard time explaining why the two cities with the most potential to be affected by this supposedly mythical phenomenon now have murder rates among the top 20 in the entire world.
St. Louis, Missouri, next door to Ferguson, where a leftist-"inspired" campaign of "protests," civil disorder and rioting…
Bloomberg Writer: 'Economic Growth Isn't Everything'
January 30th, 2016 11:56 PM
Observers can be excused for thinking that the politicial establishment is preparing the battlespace to convince us plebes that progress and economic growth are overrated. (That's sort of odd for people who call themselves "progressives," but making sense is not their strong suit.)
How interesting, for example, that Northwestern University economist Robert Gordon's book, The Rise and Fall of…
Press Ignores Compelling Reason Why 4th Quarter GDP May Further Weaken
January 30th, 2016 9:24 PM
As has been its habit during the Obama administration when the economy turns in a poor performance, the press's coverage of yesterday's report on U.S. economic growth focused on how much better next quarter's news will supposedly be. Especially in this instance, the beat reporters and pundits should have looked at whether or not yesterday's initial result will hold up, or whether it's likely to…
Press Drags Out 'Warm Weather' to Excuse Poor Fourth-Quarter Growth
January 30th, 2016 10:25 AM
Friday morning, the government reported that the economy grew at a pathetic annual rate of 0.7 percent in last year's final quarter.
As it did in covering the disappointing Christmas shopping season, the business press partially blamed yesterday's awful result on the weather, i.e., warm weather.
AP: 8 Smoking Guns Later, Hillary 'Will Not Be Charged,' Per 'Experts'
January 29th, 2016 11:59 PM
This afternoon, Catherine Herridge at Fox News reported that "the intelligence community has deemed some of Hillary Clinton’s emails 'too damaging' to national security to release under any circumstances."
This eighth "smoking gun" — on top of the seven an Investor's Business Daily editorial identified last week — wasn't enough to move the Associated Press Bradley Klapper from the AP's default…
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ABC Blends 'Bombshell' Hillary E-mail Development Into 2016 Coverage
January 29th, 2016 11:56 PM
Friday's World News Tonight set aside the least amount of air time to the State Department's revelation that at least 22 of the e-mails on Hillary Clinton's private e-mail server contained top-secret information. The ABC program devoted a total of one minute and 28 seconds to the development. Jonathan Karl folded his coverage of the story into a segment about the Democratic presidential race…
AP Uses the Same Expert For Positive Words on Economy in Two Reports
January 28th, 2016 11:55 PM
The Associated Press may be down to one person in the whole wide world who will tell its economics reporters what they want to hear when the federal government releases economic data. That's what you almost have to conclude after reading the wire service's reports on two of Thursday's major releases, namely last week's initial unemployment claims and December's durable goods orders and shipments…
