Associated Press

Here's something you don't see every day. A video report about last night's riot in Oakland related to the shooting death of an unarmed man at the hands of a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer actually calls it .... a riot. What's more, the reporter notes, as is really often the case in situations such as these, how people he characterized as "professional protesters" egged others on…

In a like vein as the story I posted a few days ago showing Reuters helping cover for Obama by lowering expectations, a trio of stories -- two from McClatchy and one from the AP -- prove to be little more than empty Obama boostering with little worth as news, though the AP piece at least comes close to being newsworthy. Unfortunately, this is the sort of empty reporting that has become du jour…

The main stream media is continuing a fervent assault on Sarah Palin, covering the mundane, the non-existent, and the factually devoid news stories of the day.  Problem being, when those dramatic news stories become less sensational due to the latest revelations, the media is not as excited to report the correction. There's been no secret that the media has been salivating over the chance to link…

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, "inexperienced is as inexperienced does." At least that is what comes to my mind when hearing that Barack Obama has picked the inoffensive, completely inexperienced and unqualified Leon Panetta to be the new director of the CIA. Really. Leon Panetta? The onetime director of the Office of Management and Budget Panetta, that Leon Panetta? This old Clinton partisan has…

There's just so much hope and change already taking place in America that it's hard to keep up.  The mainstream media is doing an exemplary job of keeping us up to date with news that really matters, such as articles like the Associated Press's "Web site lets women register their inaugural dress" and "Hairdressers Want Chance to Style First Lady."  Then there are the penetrating analyses like "…

Associated Press writer Will Weissert apparently thought that the Communist government in Cuba wasn't doing a good enough job of white washing and glorifying Fidel Castro's legacy and decided to try his hand at it. Thus he wrote a little piece describing the humble hut that Castro used as a head quarters during his Communist rebellion:Before he was Cuba's unchallenged "Maximum Leader," Fidel…

While, instead of simply reporting the news, the Associated Press spends its days looking for every which way it can find to attack George W. Bush, Governor Sarah Palin and any number of other conservatives or Republicans, it has a corresponding penchant to go easy on The One and his Democrat cohorts. Nothing is a better illustration of the difference between the AP's treatment of the right and…

The Associated Press is classy, indeed. They can't even keep sniping at Sarah Palin out of a story announcing the blessed birth of her grandson. Ah, but wait, it gets even more annoying because not only did the AP snipe at Palin in its first birth announcement story, once called on it the AP went back twice to rearrange the piece rewriting history to make it seem as if they never sniped at her in…

Al Sharpton and Caroline Kennedy have lunch at famed Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem, December, 18, 2008.  (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews)

Looking for your own financial bailout?Well, the unprecedented decline in gasoline prices the past five months is actually giving regular Americans a much-needed boost to their balance sheets possibly greater than what the government is doling out to the financial services and automobile industries.New data just released by the Oil Price Information Service reveals that we're currently spending $…

Here are the key numbers (in red) in Uncle Sam's November Personal Income and Outlays report (the July : Common sense says that the chart's results after adjusting for inflation are more important (identified as "Chained [2000] dollars") than those in current dollars. Consmers' disposable income went up 1.0% in real (after-inflation) terms in November after a 0.7% increase in October. It took a…

I held this item for a couple of days after I found it because I didn't want to spoil Christmas. Readers can fairly criticize me for waiting. It is truly astonishing how little attention this two week-old story has received (Warning: Very disturbing content; the underlying news at caritas.org is here; bolds are mine) Out of food, Zimbabweans eating cow dung Harare, Dec 10, 2008 / 08:01 pm --…