Blogs

Participation in youth football is down. As economic ignoramus David Leonhardt of the New York Times explained yesterday at the paper's "The Upshot" blog, this is particularly pronounced in "the highly educated Democratic-leaning areas of major metropolitan areas." Yesterday, as he was interviewing Leonhardt about his post on NPR's "The Takeaway" program, John Hockenberry asked, "Are you…

New Jersey Governor Christie rebuked a heckler during his visit to the area affected by Superstorm Sandy on Wednesday. His rebuke is still a major headline item at ... the Weather Channel. The headline ("Gov Loses It During Speech") also makes a claim not supported by the circumstances, or Christie's history of dealng with such critics:

An unbylined "Q&A" column at the Associated Press yesterday began with the following false declaration: "The $4 trillion experiment is over." That just isn't so. Maybe the Federal Reserve is done building up its debt holdings — that is by no means certain — but the "experiment" known as "quantitative easing," or "QE," won't be over until the Fed fully unwinds those balances. In the meantime…

M.D. Kittle at Watchdog.org's Wisconsin Reporter scooped everyone covering the Badger State Governor's race on Tuesday when he reported that Democratic candidate Mary Burke's resumé is not what her campaign's web site says it is. Burke's campaign bio claims that she "played a central role in Trek’s expansion as the Director of European Operations." Kittle found "multiple former Trek executives"…

On Saturday, Erika Rawes at USA Today's Wall Street Cheat Sheet engaged in some impressive gymnastics as she discussed the middle class and identified seven things its members "can't afford anymore" (the headline) or that "a larger percentage of people have trouble paying for" (the content). It's a sloppy list. One of the items — debt — isn't a "thing" at all, but rather the result of buying too…

Apparently Ann Romney believed that no one was going to call Democrats and the press onto the carpet over their disgraceful conduct and non-reaction, respectively, after South Carolina Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen called incumbent Palmetto State Governor Nikki Haley a "whore" — and failed to "apologize" for it for four days. Mrs. Romney, sadly, is presumptively correct.…

In late September, Charlie Baker, the Republican who is the party's gubernatorial candidate in Massachusetts, told female reporter Sharman Sacchetti, who had already asked him a series of questions: "OK, this is going to be the last one, sweetheart." That was enough to send the press into a tizzy. Jack Coleman at NewsBusters noted how Rachel Maddow at MSNBC turned Baker's statement into proof…

Earlier today, South Carolina Democratic gubernatorial candidate Vincent Sheheen "apologized" for telling supporters last Thursday that if he defeats incumbent Republican Nikki Haley, "we’re gonna escort whore out the door." Sheheen's "apology" is far from satisfactory, especially given the point NewsBusters commenter "Rio5" made at last night's post, namely that "As my father always said, 'If…

Did you hear about Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott in Texas saying of opponent Wendy Davis, "We need to keep the whore away from the door"? Of course you didn't. We know that if Abbott had said anything like that, it would become national news story more important than even Ebola within minutes. So why is it only news at about a dozen web-based center-right outlets that Democrat…

One can only imagine how much grief the national press would have given Laura Bush had she gone on the midterm congressional campaign trail during her husband's presidency and mispronounced the name of a Republican senatorial candidate, or if she had presented part of the bio of a Democratic opponent as that of the incumbent Republican for whom she was stumping. First Lady Michelle Obama has…

Imagine the pile-on that would be occurring from other members of the nation's establishment press if a Republican or conservative U.S. Senate candidate went after an individual member of the press as Alison Grimes just has against NBC/MSNBC reporter Chuck Todd. The "How dare you?" cries would be everywhere. It's hard to see how employing such a tactic works to get votes, but Grimes, the…

Taking the web site even further down the path of useless, pretentious collection of hackery than it already is — and that's quite far — Vox.com has tweeted (HT Twitchy) that "Our obsession with the Ottawa shooter's religion reveals more about us than about him." It must be a shock to their system to learn that a lot of "us" would rather not be cut down by a member of the alleged "Religion of…

Here's the first sentence from an Associated Press dispatch relating to a breaking news story out of Israel: "OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Israeli police say they have shot a man whose car slammed into a crowded train stop in east Jerusalem, in what they suspect was an intentional attack." ("OCCUPIED JERUSALEM"" Really? — Ed.) The story goes on to note that nine people were wounded.

Elizabeth Williamson's coverage at the Wall Street Journal of the latest WSJ/NBC News poll has a very strange omission. It contains a graph showing "right track/wrong track" polling percentages heading each midterm election going back to 1990. But Williamson, while addressing why the American people feel as they do right now in larger historical context, never commented on the graph's specific…