Another Week That Reeked at the ‘Administration’s Press’
In the space of seven days, to name just three of the more obvious offenses, alleged journalists at the Associated Press, aka the Administration’s Press, told us that “home construction is near a three-year high,” when it’s nowhere near there; seemed astonished that presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney didn’t serve up any “red-meat conservative policy” in a college graduation address; and wondered whether John Boehner and congressional Republicans are “deliberately stalling the economic recovery to hurt President Barack Obama’s re-election chances.” Oh, and it would appear that the folks at AP are coming down with a developing case of what I would describe as “thin-skin syndrome.”
The “home construction” howler of May 16 came about because AP economics reporter Chris Rugaber, perhaps with help from a colleague who has made the same mistake, seems to believe that “housing starts” and “home construction” are synonymous.
That’s wrong on two levels. First, “residential housing” includes single and multifamily units; “homes” is a word usually reserved to describe “single family homes.” Second, the housing starts statistic, while useful as an indication of where the industry might be headed in the coming months, is arguably the least important of the three items one must consider to get a handle on the current level of “home construction” for comparative purposes. The other two, as seen in the Census Bureau’s definition of “new residential construction,” are “total units under construction” and “units completed.”
So how does the current level of “home construction” as properly defined square with Rugaber’s claim that it’s “near a three-year high”? It doesn’t — at all:
- Single-family starts are indeed higher than they were three years ago. But whether you look at the seasonally adjusted figures or the raw (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) data, they haven’t even hit two-year highs in the past three months –
- The number of single-family units under construction has been scraping along at or barely above its seasonally adjusted all-time low in over 40 years of related recordkeeping for about a year. That didn’t change in April, and the number of units on which builders are working is 25% lower than it was three years ago –
- The number of single-family homes completed during the first four months of this year was also well below levels seen both two and three years ago –
To paraphrase Munchkinland’s coroner in The Wizard of Oz, Rugaber’s statement that “home construction is near a three-year high” is not only merely false, it’s really most sincerely false. If the AP reporter is unhappy with this inarguable contention, my response is: “Too bad, so sad, Chris.”
Lies, Lies, and more lies, About housing construction.
Remember this:
Now tell me again how many jobs Romney and Bain Capital lost.
In related news, Ford had their bond rating raised yesterday to investment grade. Also, Ford will offer more new car models over the next three years than any other automaker, changing 26 percent of its lineup compared with an industry average of 23 percent.
A great example of how private industry can fix their own problems far better than the government can “fix” them.
I’m a dyed in the wool, small-block chevy V-8 hot-rod fan since my teenage years. Chevelle, Camaro, Nova, Corvette.
Plus the cousins: GTO, Firebird, Tempest, Lemans,
Its in my blood, cant get it out
BUT, I absolutely will not ever purchase another GM product again, for as slong as I live.
A Ford Explorer suits my needs just fine these days.
Now that is putting your money where your mouth is. Kudos to you, sir!
Would that more would do the same!
The bonus for you is, now you get to drive good cars.
The route 83, I too was a GM fan and had owned them mostly for 30 years, my wife and I both owned fairly new GM cars (both 08′s) and as soon as this bailout took place we both started looking to trade. We both now have Ford pick-ups, an F-250 and F150. We are very happy with our trucks and will never by another GM product.
Want to read more lies- go to Market Watch & read Liberal HACK Rex Nutting explain how Obama HAS NOT increased debt but is holding tight with the USG money
WHAT A LIAR- i cannot for the life of me understand HOW An Editor can allow such lies
???
Why can’t you understand it? They’ve been doing this kind of thing for many years now. Nobody should be surprised.
Mark
NOT So much suprized but in denial that the Media would CONTINUE To Stoop to levels below Whale Doo Doo, but the hope is Obama’s own party is begining to turn on him & some in Lame Stream Media are as well, REX needs to be GRILLED over his blatent lies & distortions – he is OFF the Charts
Remember this:
Obama:
“Government reorganization for two of the Big Three American auto manufacturers to save them from oblivion.”
A day after Chrysler said it was cutting 800 dealerships,
General Motors Corp. told 1100 of its U.S. dealers they were being shut down.
Now tell me again how many jobs Romney and Bain Capital lost?
During the fall of 1991 I read the New York Times everyday to gather hard information on the military situation in Kuwait. Today, when I read an AP story or see a NY Times by line I am automatically suspicious as to whether the story has any truth associated with it.
If I were an owner or editor at either “news” organization I would be troubled by that statement. I am certain that neither entity will bother to care, which explains much about their financial difficulties.
I am thankful everyday that I can look for information and alternative view points from places like PJ Media, Drudge, Hotair, and Breitbart. I never bother anymore to go to Boston.com or the NYT. I purposefully avoid those entities as the information they select as news worthy is only that which fits into their statist, utopian, progressive, vision. The fact that their reason for existance revolves around the promotion of state, not people, renders them irrelevant.
History is not going to be at all kind to Marxists, or to those water carriers that glorified them. I am looking forward to the AP’s, NYT’s, and Boston Globe’s bankruptcy. Big party and lots of laughs when the dinosaurs go down.
Hope Frank Rich can find a job.
As Ron Reagan said- A Liberal Knows Nothing About EVERYTHING, that is what is happening in the Media, CNN at a 20 year low, Peirs Morgan had just 39,000 viewers. SOON the owners being Greedy Capitalists will begin losing money THEN maybe they will change to HONEST Reporting
NYT’s is a Liberal Rage about to go under- thank god
“NYT’s is a Liberal Rage about to go under- thank god”.
I was going to point out that you probably meant to say “Liberal Rag”, not “Liberal Rage”, but, on second thought, I think what you’ve written is just fine as it is
Samizdat – Ditto. One suggestion: I wouldn’t bother wasting time reading the legacy press. They’re no longer reporting news: It’s all the news we can skew to fit our view.
The only job Rich is really qualified for is cleaning the loo!
Liberals:
Never have so many known so little about so much.
I like that: The Administration’s Press. Very appropriate, sadly.
Just like every other business, “news” organizations have long been aware of “the Metrics”. I can’t cite actual percentage numbers (they can), but a HUGE majority of people reading a “news”paper read the headline and first paragraph, then move on to the next article. The more “serious” news consumer reads through the third paragraph. The percentage of readers that read the entire article is exceedingly small.
Knowing these facts, “news”papers serve their agenda with the headline and initial paragraphs in their articles. They then, sometimes, allow a bit of fact to seep in as the article progresses to the finish. By doing so, the “ombudsman” can “truthfully” state that the article was “fair” and “accurate”.
They’ve gotten their point across in the beginning. The “average” consumer of “news” has been fed the “spin”. Job done.
The important thing is to not spend a cent to buy the Rag….Take it off the top of the wastbasket, or get it on email….but PLEASE do buy it…that is what will bury it…Personally…This is where i get my news, and a few other good web sites…But i will say to anyone that PJM is my favorite…..JK
There has definitely been a sharp increase in the number of apartment buildings under construction–this was reported in MarketWatch and elsewhere.
And that’s because Americans are now renting more and buying less.
BTW: If you’re confident that Romney will win in November, tell all young people to stretch themselves and buy single-family homes. Prices are still depressed–and a reviving economy under Romney will cause those prices to soar.
Just what we need, now that the govt is recycling MBS’ en masse again.
Given the number of defaulted mortgages, there must be a glut of existing houses on the market. Why build a lot of new houses when there are so many empty ones?
“Since we’re dealing with a condescending animal-equivalent reference, when was the last time a report from AP or anywhere else in the establishment press characterized an oration by even the most radical leftist as a “red-meat liberal policy speech”? Searches on that phrase at Google Web, Google News, and the Google News Archive returned no examples showing that it has ever occurred.”
The AP doesn’t have to mention when there is a radical leftist “red-meat” speech. Obama gives them every, single, day. First on his “evolution” on gay marriage, then on his regular “Hate the rich people” mantra, followed by “Let’s be fair to everyone,” in which “fairness” is a code word for socialism. Obama is a walking megaphone for the far left, so there’s never any need to actually send out a press release whenever he feeds to trolls on the far left.
I can’t prove what motives the folks at AP have as they go about their daily tasks. But I can show, and in fact just have shown, that they all too often engage in sloppy, misleading reporting on the economy, and that they have a double standard (whether conscious or not — and does it really matter?) in how they cover political candidates and partisan disputes depending on the political party involved.
Yes, Tom. It DOES matter.
And no, Tom…it is not merely sloppy, misleading…nor does it lack conscious intent.
One could believe the occasional distortion, misstatement, inaccuracy…if they ALL didn’t line up, day after day, month after month, year after year…in precisely the same direction. That isn’t coincidence. It’s conspiracy.
When we catch them time after time after time being the Propaganda and Lies Ministry, when they form a JournOlista cadre of over 450 conspirators, when they redden the eyes and photoshop covers of magazines, when they forge documents, when they begin the DAY AFTER a Presidency to start anew with the haranguing on “the homeless” or some other leftist class warfare, racial warfare, ethnic warfare, gender warfare, sexual orientation warfare meme…it is not sloppiness, it is not unintentional, it is not because they live in a cocoon and don’t know any better.
It is because they are traitors against the American people and traitors against the truth.
It is high time we stop giving them a pass or even asking the question about intent any longer….in effect lending credibility to their camouflage and masking of their evil.
We aid and abet them by those questions. Intent and motive have been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. We should stop focusing on their wording and start focusing on their sentencing.
Well said. Ask yourself, can you recall an AP story that leaned too far right? I documented bias in my local newspaper for two years, most of it attributable to the wire services, and occurring on a nearly daily basis. I found one story that might have been biased right. On the issue of sloppiness, recall that Jon Stewart, in a discussion with Bill O’Reilly, posited that the press wasn’t biased, it was lazy. Both can be true; reporters may be less careful in vetting facts that match their ideology. Folks who are interested in media bias, as I am, will really find Groseclose’s book “Left Turn” a must read.
I get what you’re saying. My point was meant to relate to the impact of bias on readers, where the motive of the writer doesn’t really matter in whether a reader is successfully deceived. Motives (and competence) do matter in terms of whether the writers deserve to remain in their jobs.
Tom, allow me to clarify.
I’m not saying YOU did anything untoward here…I’m just saying that it is time for ALL OF US to stop giving them the out they so richly do not deserve.
I didn’t mean for it to come off as only directed at you. The days of wondering if they are merely incompetent and sloppy…are over.
This is malicious intent, purely and simply, not up for debate or questioning any longer. They are the enemy of truth.
APPLAUSE!
One word occurs in the story far too many times for my comfort: “I”. The entire article reads like the proverbial pissing contest. The links alone make that clear: “when I questioned”, “I really wrote”, and “I pushed back”.
Please, stick with facts and leave the ego trip for the likes of Olbermann.
Well, the word “I” appears nine times, plus a “yours truly.”
Seven of those nine instances occurred in three of the last four paragraphs describing where a person from AP directly communicated with “someone” (that would be me), and “someone” (that would be me) responded. It’s more than a little difficult to avoid the first person when the matter directly has to do with oneself.
congressional Republicans are “deliberately stalling the economic recovery to hurt President Barack Obama’s re-election chances.”
Yeah, and they deliberately caused the big crash in 2008 to hurt McCain and lose control of Congress.
Strong horse, weak horse. I’ll stick with the strong horse who could stall the economy than with the weak horse who couldn’t do a thing to get the economy moving, who is losing the “good” war, who kowtows to Putin and Chicom, who can’t list a thing he has done that could be called a success, who still blames his predecessor for his failure. In other words, I would rather side with the “all powerful” Republicans than a powerless President.
This goes right along with the other thing I heard on the radio news update yesterday. Did you know that a majority now approve of gay marriage? Now I ask, there is a recent poll that says that now a majority are pro life, which is a conservative stance, how can we be both a liberal and conservative majority at the same time? Someone is full of BS.
I like the way you asked the q….The written media, or 97% of them is pure trash……What keeps them in business is beyond me…..Trash….to be used as tol. paper, if you run low on huggies….jk
Ignore all polls. Years ago they genuinely tried to reflect public opinion. Now they try to influence that opinion. It’s easy enough to do — cherry-pick the respondents, ask loaded questions, etc.
For me the clincher was in 1995, when a nearby county’s school board tried to jam a $100 million bond issue down the taxpayers’ throats. About a week before the referendum, the county’s liberal fishwrap trumpeted a poll they’d taken showing 48% in favor of the bonds, 40% opposed and the rest undecided. VOTERS LEAN TOWARD BOND”, the headline blared. The actual vote: 3-to-1 against!
Folks, there is simply no way an honest poll could be that grossly wrong. It was a blatant attempt to discourage the “antis” into staying home. A letter to the editor a few days later asked, “Who did you guys poll, the teachers’ union? Was (the superintendent) helping with the phones?” The writer was being sarcastic, but likely he was close to the truth. Or perhaps the question was something like, “Are you a heartless, evil, mean-spirited, child-hating racist, or do you support next week’s school bond issue?” It’s also possible the paper took an honest poll, shredded it when they saw the overwhelming opposition, and published a fake poll with made-up numbers.
Did you search for “arugula liberal policy speech” or perhaps “Kobe beef liberal policy speech”?
“Kobe beef” ??? Surely you jest. Obama eats DOG, remember?
Obozo himself had it written for him, so it must be true!
And the MSM reported that, so that doubles the truth ?
How does truth double, you ask? Easy. When BO speaks!
Sometimes then, it even triples, or more. BO is the New Left’s
Magician Of Truth. Watch his lips move, multiplying the truth
of everything! Oh yes, he’s from Harvard: Motto “Veritas”! LOL
cfbleachers:
Greetings, brother.
I work in grassroots-level Israel advocacy. I’ve been doing this for more than a decade. I’ve watched our local media here in the form of one major local newspaper deteriorate, and I also keep tabs on national level media to the extent that my stomach and nerves can stand it.
You could not be more correct, sir. But when I say things like what you so rightly point out below to my colleagues in leadership positions in the Jewish community here – all very fine, intelligent, terrific people, mind you – the eyes start to roll. “There he goes with his conspiracy theories again…” being the unspoken – and sometimes spoken – sentiment.
We have confronted the editor of our local print daily a number of times over outrageous treatment of Israel, and again and again, we get lies, empty promises of “fairness” going forward or the oppportunity to get our point of view in there (repeatedly reneged on), and denials of knowledge of even what is going on, as if they are not even paying attention to what is going on at their own newspaper (“Oh my! I didn’t see that particular editorial”…IT’S YOUR NAME ON THE F****** MASTHEAD! HOW CAN THAT BE?)
And I ask my colleagues, how many times can these media people be “lazy”, “sloppy”, “ignorant”…IN THE SAME DIRECTION, EVERY TIME, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES WE ‘ENLIGHTEN’ THEM??!!
Really and truly, with the PARTIAL exceptions of FOX/WSJ, plus conservative talk radio, all other national level print and broadcast news media are no better than the controlled press of the Cold War-era Soviet Union. That is not hype. That is reality.
It is scary and depressing. I wish more people would wake up and come to grips with what is going on. Only then can this be confronted effectively. What will it take?
Robman, if anything, Israel has it possibly worse than the US.
The BBC is a slander factory, the UN is a corrupt and despicable agent of hate, and the AP, CNN and our alphabet networks along with our Daily Duranty and campus cohorts are equally horrendous when it comes to Israel.
I’m ashamed to say it, Robman, but we currently are not much of an ally to Israel.
Not the people, mind you. Israel is strongly defended and vigorously shielded from the slings and arrows of our leftist rulers and their minions and lackeys in the Propaganda and Lies Ministry, academia and Hollywood.
But, you have no friends in this administration and very few in our leftist enclaves.
Leftists have turned and turned hard against Israel.
What will it take to cure that?
Both Israel and America have to love the truth and despise the lies…more than they fear the rolling eyes and shunning by leftists. This is harder than it sounds, Robman. Indoctrination and peer pressure create an inertia of lies and distortion. We MUST stop giving them a pass. Fight as if your life depended upon it. For Israel and America, it just might.
You just can’t make this crap up – yet the MSM laps it up like puppies eating kibbles and bits. Zero keeps telling lie after lie and the MSM hands out his ‘pass’ on each of them.
Where is the next Jack Anderson or Andrew Breitbart when you need them?
I don’t think they can help it. It doesn’t make it right, of course. It just points to there level of intelligence, where intelligence is marked by one’s self-awareness. And that is not even the worst of it. The worst part is that they are most likely corrupt in a very ‘deniable plausibility’ sort of way. This would seem to suggest self-awareness, thus indicating intelligence, but it is just an illusion. It’s also a paradox, as far as their awareness goes. It is understood better with an analogy. If I give a person a piece of paper and ask them to draw a square in a specific spot of specific dimension, and they proceed to fill up the page with markings of everything except what I have asked the square will eventually emerge. The square represents Journalism.
‘Their’, there. Dang.
When your only credential of intelligence is blindly swallowing 20 years of leftist dogma from K through journalism graduate school, you are not being biased, you are simply an obedient running dog lackey. And it is indeed a conspiracy. We’ve all witnessed how the talking point of the day races like wildfire through the MSM. But the tide is turning and the dinosaurs are dumbly oblivious of their pending extinction.
Come back when GM stock is not down from the IPO that our tax money paid, and when GM starts paying taxes, and when the entire loan is paid back.
But you give me millions in loans, and raise millions in stock for me, I could keep any company afloat for a long time.