Wire Services/Media Companies

On Friday, the government reported that the nation's economy, as measured in its real gross domestic product, grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent during last year's final quarter, sharply trailing analysts' consensus predictions ranging from 3.0 percent to 3.6 percent. As is the case after the first version of every GDP report, economy watchers have been trying to estimate the effect other…

It only took about 15 seconds into a live segment NBC aired from the White House kitchen before Sunday's Super Bowl for President Barack Obama to commit a historical gaffe about the very place where he resides. He told the network's Savannah Guthrie that "We make beer — The first president since George Washington to make some booze in the White House." Heavens to Betsy. The White House's…

The Seattle Seahawks yesterday - in a moment of profound foolishness - forsook Beast Mode for Least Mode.  And it cost them the Super Bowl.   But they can take ever so slight solace - the Media has been in Least Mode for decades.  This has been on prominent display throughout the Barack Obama Administration - and certainly when it comes to the Administration’s many, MANY unilateral power grabs…

Yesterday's government report on the economy's growth, which told us that the nation's gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.6 percent during the fourth quarter, sharply underachieved analysts' expectations of an annualized 3.0 percent to 3.6 percent. The stock market clearly reacted negatively to the downside surprise. Bloomberg's take at the end of the day: "U.S. stocks fell Friday…

Former Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran, who alleges he was fired from his position solely because of his Christian beliefs, has filed a religious discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. That's not news at the Associated Press's national site, and it appears that the AP has not even carried a local story about Cochran's EEOC complaint — omissions that reek of…

Even Charles Babington at the Associated Press, for once not the completely beholden Administration's Press, seemed to be having a hard time buying what Democrats at a meeting in Philadelphia were selling. Unfortunately, he decided to let Joe Biden's direct contradiction of his party's congressional delegation's sunnyside-up stance on the economy go unreported. In a video carried at the Weekly…

If someone fools you once, shame on them. If they fool you with the same trick a second time, shame on you. If they "fool" you a third time — well, you must be in on it. That's my take on Bloomberg News's virtually euphoric reaction to yesterday's new-home sales release from the Census Bureau. The wire service's Shobhana Chandra celebrated how seasonally adjusted December sales were at "the…

Ever since the publication "Earth in the Balance" in 1992, we've seen the press minimize the public's exposure to the more outrageous ideas and quotes emanating from former Vice President Al Gore. Concerning that original book, Gore's statement that "The internal combustion engine is the greatest enemy of mankind" and his contention that it could and be eliminated in 25 years are hardly known by…

On Friday, Melissa Quinn at the Daily Signal, after the release of the government's "Union Members -- 2014" report, uniquely observed that the unionized percentage of the public- and private-sector nonagricultural wage and salary U.S. workforce had reached "its lowest rate in 100 years." From what I can tell in web and news searches, despite the fact that virtually any 100-year record is…

In her Tuesday item, the AP's Kimberlee Kruesi repeatedly emphasized the ideology of opponents of proposed legislation in Idaho that would "create protections for gay and lesbian people." Kruesi underlined that the state legislative committee that held the heading was "made up some of the Statehouse's most conservative lawmakers and only a handful of Democrats." However, she failed to give…

In a report on the upcoming Greek elections, an unbylined Friday afternoon Associated Press report dusted off words seldom seen in their dispatches, using the term "radical left" twice and the word "radical" separately once for good measure. The almost never seen terms — virtually invisible in decades of descriptions of longtime radical leftists like Fidel Castro, the late Hugo Chavez or lefty…

Someone looking at the annual "Union Members" report released this morning by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics would logically conclude that 2014 was a year organized labor would rather forget. While average nonagricultural wage and salary employment increased by over 2.32 million from 2013 to 2014, union membership only went up by 48,000, or about 2 percent of the nationwide…

A week ago, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a Democrat, called homelessness in his city and the rest of King County a "full-blown crisis." Based on the numbers presented in coverage of the area's situation, we can certainly add the Emerald City to the list of areas where homelessness has been on the rise. Odds are that many readers here didn't know that, because the national press hardly ever pays…

The leftist press's truth squads apparently believe they have successfully intimidated any news organization which henceforth wants to be considered respectable from ever again referring to any Muslim-heavy enclave in Europe as a "no-go zone," regardless of the facts and circumstances. Snopes.com, the self-appointed, almost invariably left-driven debunker of supposed "urban legends," doesn't…