It’s February. Americans are losing their jobs at a rate almost none of us have ever seen. The economy is collapsing in a deepening tailspin of fear and gloom. Wallets are shut. Companies are closing. And in Washington, the “debate” over what makes a stimulus bill stimulating drags on.
Republicans have won the spin war hands down. The stimulus bill has been successfully reframed as a pork-filled mess. And as the Senate works today to get something passed Republicans and their media friends continue to pick out specific items in the …

American journalism is dying.
Newspapers are shedding reporters or shutting down entirely. TV stations are dropping correspondents (tell me about it!) and cancelling shows. News web sites have yet to find any way to make enough money to support actual reporting. The wheels have come off and no one knows if there’s even a vehicle on which to put them back on. So what to make of Newsweek Magazine’s attempt at a web-based reality show? How about WTF?
Earlier this week Newsweek launched a new web-only “reality” show called “The District” which …

Having just wrapped up a round of radio interviews with stations around the country it looks like the proverbial “Is the honeymoon over?” story is gaining traction. The cumulative effect of a badly marketed (and some say badly devised) stimulus plan coupled with his nominees’ tax problems is that Barack Obama has used up a fair amount of his political capital in a few short weeks.
Of course Obama started with more political capital than any President since FDR so he’s still got plenty of it and his mea cupla yesterday …

The always snarky and starkly conservative New York Post editorial page presented a doozy today — in part because the piece on the stimulus package was correct about a few things. How out of character!
While the Post predictably rolls out the Republican talking points — the package is a “spendfest” with “no defined goals or objectives” that hands out money to undeserving “folks who may or may not pay any income taxes” — it makes a very good point about a critical Obama campaign promise and a missed opportunity.
Briefly to …

This Sunday morning’s chatterfest was filled with deep and informed discussions about the relative merits of cutting taxes versus spending tax money as a way to get the economy on track.
OK I’m lying. From one gasbag to the next politicians and their economic enablers were allowed to make rather grand statements without worry of being confronted with any facts about what history has shown to be most effective.
On Fox News Sunday Senator John McCain said, “We need to make tax cuts permanent, and we need to make a commitment that …

You gotta hand it to the New York Post. Perhaps even more so than it’s conservative corporate cousin Fox News the Post will apparently do anything to find and promote only the facts that support it’s masters’ editorial positions. The Sunday front page is a classic example:

The Post finds the one national poll that actually gives John McCain the lead. Reporter Ginger Adams Otis’s story notes that “A Zogby tracking poll, taken Friday, shows McCain with a 1-point lead over Barack Obama, 48 to 47 percent.” After a number of …