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Bill Daley: 'Uneven' Recovery Has Only Benefited 'A Small Slice'

April 13th, 2015 4:07 PM
Well, this is awkward. Undermining most of what the business press has done to try to portray the post-recession U.S. economy as performing adequately under President Barack Obama, Bill Daley, Obama’s former chief of staff, told CNBC today that Hillary Clinton "can’t run as the third term of Barack Obama economically," because the recovery has been "uneven" and has only benefited "a small slice…
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AP's Pace: Hillary Hesitated on Run Because of Friendship with Biden

April 13th, 2015 10:28 AM
As we would cynically say back in the good old days in Queens [insert NYC accent]: yeah, right.  On today's Morning Joe, Associated Press White House correspondent Julie Pace claimed that one thing that made Hillary hesitate in deciding to run for president was that she "worried that her candidacy would block out Joe Biden who is quite a close friend of hers."  When Joe Scarborough expressed…
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Press Ignores Obama's Bogus 'Mea Culpa' on Length of 'Recovery'

April 12th, 2015 2:38 PM
Imagine if a Republican or conservative U.S. president told an audience — on foreign soil, no less — that he didn't properly warn Americans about how long it would take for the economy to recover from a recession. "So-and-so Admits He Lied About the Economy" would be headlined everywhere. At the University of the West Indies in Jamaica on Thursday, President Barack Obama essentially admitted…
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AP Report Shows Backlog at VA Hasn’t Improved; Networks Fail to Cover

April 9th, 2015 11:09 PM
On Thursday night, the top English and Spanish broadcast networks made no mention of the latest surrounding the Department of Veterans Affairs scandal as an Associated Press (AP) investigation found that the number of delays for veterans seeking care has not improved as the scandal approaches its first anniversary.

AP Buries, Downplays Grim Wholesale Sales Data

April 9th, 2015 2:07 PM
It took the Associated Press barely 2-1/2 hours to bury the bad news in the Census Bureau's 10 a.m. release on February wholesale sales and inventories. As of 12:32 Eastern Time, Martin Crutsinger's 10:21 a.m. time-stamped story was not present at the AP's Top 10 Business stories page (saved at my host for future reference), making it quite likely that the news won't get much prominence at the…

Rand Schools Media: 'Ask the DNC: Is It OK to Kill A 7-Pound Baby?'

April 8th, 2015 6:21 PM
Newly-declared 2016 presidential candidate Rand Paul took a shot at the media during a Wednesday campaign appearance in Milford, New Hampshire. An unidentified reporter asked the Kentucky senator about a recent interview he did with the Associated Press that centered on the controversial issue of abortion. Paul replied, "Why don't we ask the DNC: Is it OK to kill a 7-pound baby in the uterus?"

AP Covers Up Japan's Likely Slippage Into Another Economic Contraction

April 8th, 2015 10:39 AM

In an early Wednesday morning report containing an undercurrent of amazement and frustration that Japan's journey into Keynesianism and quantitative easing on steroids somehow hasn't worked, the Associated Press's Elaine Kurtenback wrote that a steep "April 1, 2014 sales tax hike ... triggered a brief recession and growth since has been flat." The Land of the Rising Sun with the long-…

Not News: We've Really Had Two Bad Months of Payroll Job Additions

April 7th, 2015 8:25 PM
The business press and the financial analysts and economists they consult continue to mostly blindly rely on the seasonally adjusted figures the government and other economic report generators hand them on a silver platter. If these de facto stenographers had dug just a little deeper a month ago, they might have avoided the serious embarassment of predicting a level of seasonally adjusted March…

New Republic Writer: Rolling Stone Failure Due to 'Rightwing Tactics'

April 7th, 2015 2:49 PM
New Republic staff writer Elizabeth Stoker Bruenig has clearly run out of defenses for the conduct of those involved in the disgraceful, scandalous journalistic malpractice which gave rise to the now-retracted and thoroughly discredited "A Rape on Campus: The Struggle for Justice at UVA" at Rolling Stone. So here's her last refuge: Conservatism deserves some of the blame, because Sabrina Rubin…

AP Finally Admits: Economy 'Has Been Flagging For Months'

April 4th, 2015 10:27 AM
Chickens came home to roost yesterday at the Associated Press. The AP, the economy's most consistent cheerleader when a Democrat is in office, has not only been ignoring and downplaying the significance of disappointing and negative reports for several months, pinning its claim that all is well on the streak of seasonally adjusted 200,000-plus job gains seen during the past 12 months. It has…

Why Bill Maher and Jason Biggs Avoided Trevor Noah’s Vetting

April 4th, 2015 9:29 AM
 It looks like new Daily Show host Trevor Noah will survive his Twitter vetting. The South African comic took some heat immediately after getting the gig earlier this week. Social media users scoured his past tweets, finding a number of jokes targeting women and Jews. Comedy Central rushed to stand by its new hire, and it appears the Stewart-to-Noah baton pass will take place later in the year as…

AP Cribs Paper's Report on Memories Pizza — Except GoFundMe Effort

April 2nd, 2015 6:49 PM
A short unbylined Associated Press report at its national site on the situation at Memories Pizza in Walkerton, Indiana this afternoon made sure to mention that the pizzeria "won't cater gay weddings" (in the headline). It also misstated the owner's statement to a South Bend TV station, claiming, using its own words, that she "said the state's new religious objections law backs their right to…

Not News: Black Church Group Cuts Ties With PCUSA Over Marriage

March 31st, 2015 11:24 PM
On March 18, Associated Press Religion Writer Rachel Zoll covered the decision by the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) "recognizing gay marriage as Christian in the church constitution after decades of debate over same-sex relationships." A search at the AP's national site indicates that the wire service hasn't done a story on the U.S. congregation since then. This means that it has ignored a…

AP Story on Obama Golf Trip Ignores Journos Hung Out at Shed (Updated)

March 30th, 2015 8:00 PM
UPDATE, March 31: This morning in an email, the AP's Lederman pointed me to a Saturday afternoon "Big Story" item time-stamped the day before the report to which this blog post below links. For whatever reason, that earlier "Big Story" item has more detail than what appears, despite the Sunday time stamp, to be Lederman's original report posted at the AP's national site. In that "Big Story" item…