The black guy played golf in 2013 again!

You guys! Guess what party the McClatchy Washington Bureau is arriving late at:

WASHINGTON--On a windy winter day in 2013 at one of Florida’s top golf courses, President Obama and Tiger Woods played a friendly round together for the first time.

Some 44 months later, the president’s trip to Port St. Lucie, Florida, has been revealed: $3.6 million.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article111163862.html#storylink=cpy

Strictly speaking, no. As the fourth graf suggests, the trip was "revealed" in (ahem) 2013. (Fox, usually better at chronicling the usurper's hijinx, caught up the following day, though it had borrowed a precede from the Daily Caller earlier.) Perhaps we meant the cost had been revealed?

... The GAO report was requested by Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article111163862.html#storylink=cpy

That's a relief. I thought for a moment there it might be someone who didn't already have a Washington bureau to call their own. Anyway, now that McClatchy has awakened to the scope of the Kenyan menace, could we suggest some stories to catch up on?

Obama uses first-person pronouns!
Hillary wrote a paper about ALINSKY!!!!!
Obama wants the Marines to wear girly hats!
BENGHAZI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obama sat next to an Arab guy at dinner this one time!
Hillary is running for office, with politics!


Let me know if I can help.

* McClatchy could also take a note from the follow-up -- just like in the textbook, kids! -- pointing out that Obama didn't seem to have learned much.

Elongated predatory felines

What do you call a mountain lion on second reference?

It was an even bigger deal when the photos hit social media. Suddenly, it seemed Kansas was over-run with the tawny-colored predators.

But wait -- there's more!

... So, is Kansas becoming overrun with the large, predatory felines?

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/sports/outdoors/article110088707.html#storylink=cpy

Not only a double helping of Elongated Yellow Fruit, but a coin toss on hyphenating "overrun.

(h/t the Bremner Editing Center, world clearinghouse of the popular orange vegetable)

The black guy's playing golf again

How are we going to shift the focus of the campaign back to those all-important policy issues, The Washington Times?

A “boys’ weekend” of golf with Tiger Woods in 2013 was fun for President Obama, but it was a triple-bogey for taxpayers.

The Government Accountability Office reported Wednesday that the departments of Defense and Homeland Security spent more than $3.6 million in travel costs and other expenses for Mr. Obama’s getaway weekend with Mr. Woods and other golf partners at an exclusive resort in Florida.

And how did this come to light?

... The performance audit, which took about 20 months to complete, was requested by Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican. The report said the true costs of the president’s golf weekend cannot be known because some of the Pentagon’s expenses are classified.

... “At a time when the government was tightening its belt to prepare for sequestration, President Obama had such little disregard for the taxpayer that he spent millions of dollars to play golf with Tiger Woods,” Mr. Barrasso said. “This arrogance is par for the course for the Obama administration.”

And how do you conclude a story like this?

... Mr. Obama has played more than 300 rounds of golf during his presidency, the vast majority of them on courses in the immediate Washington area.

How will The Washington Times look when white people reclaim the White House? Let's see if Thursday's online edition holds any clues:

A woman introducing Hillary Clinton at a campaign event conspicuously removed the words “under God” from the end of the Pledge of Allegiance, prompting the Democratic primary front-runner to laugh.

Let's go to the videotape on that:

The New York Post may have caught Hillary Clinton in a little white lie told on a Spanish-language network program.

Asked for her favorite food while appearing on Wednesday’s edition of Univision’s “El Gordo y La Flaca,” the former secretary of state said “I think it would be Mexican food.”

Aside from Mrs. Clinton’s surreptitious April 2015 visit to a Chipotle outside Toledo, Ohio, however, there’s little evidence to back up her claim.

It's going to be a long four years on New York Avenue.

Eyes 1, Brain 0, top of the eighth

And what does Drudge's top story have to do with Sen. Clinton's taste in beer? Let's see!

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.


Oh.

For more on the headline-countdown effect, let's flash back to earlier in the week:

 

It's a wonder some people even manage to crawl out from under the bed, isn't it?

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaster/

Hillary Clinton’s confidence could cost her the US presidency, according to a leading American political scientist who claims that Donald Trump is on course to win the US election in 12 days. The warning comes amid concerns from the Clinton campaign team that voter turnout will yet prove critical, despite many polls suggesting that the Democratic candidate is ahead of her Republican rival.

Read more at: https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/world/not-yet-donald-trump-will-win-says-top-forecaste

Modern castle magic

What exactly are they doing over at the Nation's Newspaper of Record when they hit the "play" button?

An article on Oct. 9 about Art Deco Los Angeles quoted incorrectly from comments by the author Marlyn Musicant about the design of Union Station. She said that by utilizing bronze chandeliers, the architects wanted “a more modern influence,” not “a more Spanish influence.”

Here's the offending paragraph, in its corrected form:

“The architects wanted to go with a more modern influence,” Ms. Musicant added, “so instead of utilizing wrought-iron chandeliers, the designers went with bronze chandeliers.”

Some corrections set the mind at ease (next time we'll look up any assertion about Mount Everest; we'll never annoy "Star Wars" fans again; it's Edgar Allan Poe, three A's). Others leave you wondering whether anything else in the quotation actually happened as reported. Guess which kind this is?

Grave league

So did the Fair 'n' Balanced network think "bigly" was an actual directive from the Dark Tower, rather than just a popular misreading of Master's voice? Has the party press decided to dispense with grammar altogether and instead communicate by means of farts and tap dancing? Or is something else afoot?

A U.S. Navy warship on Friday passed through waters claimed by China near disputed islands in the South China Sea, the Defense Department said, drawing Chinese condemnation.

A department spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Gary Ross, said the destroyer ship USS Decatur conducted the transit operation near the Paracel Islands. He said it was done "in a routine, lawful manner without ship escorts and without incident."

Let's not entirely let the AP off the hook. If "drawing Chinese condemnation" is supposed to go with "warship passed through waters claimed by China," the attribution is badly placed. (Since the US and China seem to agree on the basic sequence of events, we could simply leave it until the second graf.) And jargonizing isn't a sign of a healthy, independent press. File "conducted the transit operation" with "executed a search warrant"; if the cops searched a house, say so. But the hed is solely Fox:

A Chinese defense ministry statement called it "a gravely illegal act" and "intentionally provocative." The Chinese navy sent a guided missile destroyer and an escort vessel that "spotted and verified the American ships and warned them to leave," the statement said.

How we got a "'gravely' act" out of that is a question for the ages (though with Halloween at hand, maybe we could ask Sir Graves Ghastly). How we got the morning's top story is a different matter. Fox doesn't seem to know that this is the sort of thing that big powers do sometimes. If China puts up a "no smoking" sign at the Paracels, it should probably expect the occasional destroyer to stand next to the door and blow a little smoke inside. Which seems, literally, to be what got Drudge so excited last week:

Funny, whoever's taunting whom, it's still a sign of the Kenyan usurper's fecklessness. What do you say, Fox commenters?
Read more »

Not so not fast

How are things with that wave of migrants, Nation's Newspaper of Record?

An article on Sept. 20 about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s acceptance of blame for her party’s losses in German regional elections quoted incorrectly from comments by Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who said many Germans felt threatened by the influx of migrants last year. She said, “To many, the German state appeared not to be capable of handling this wave of migrants” — not “ ... not to be capable of not handling this wave of migrants.”

Rotate your tires; buy low, sell high; floss after eating; count those nots. It's like counting your change.

Subject line of the year

It makes you feel better about all those stats classes -- but are you sure it needs the comma?

(Just another promotional email from a publisher, and apologies to Dr. Manly.)

Stop press!

Those email bombshells just keep coming thick and fast, don't they? This was the world's top story at 5 p.m.:

While the media started asking critical questions about The Clinton Foundation when Hillary Clinton launched her presidential bid last year, newly published emails show Chelsea Clinton was digging deeper into the foundation's dealings as far back as 2011.

... In nearly four-dozen emails from October 2011 to February 2012, Chelsea Clinton’s sometimes-abrasive relationship with her father’s top confidant and other key Clinton aides is on full display. 

A mere 14 paragraphs later:

Then Band’s growing frustration spilled out.

“I don’t deserve this from her and deserve a tad more respect or at least a direct dialogue for me to explain these things,” he wrote. “She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she’s doing because she, as she has said, hasn’t found her way and has a lack of focus in her life.”

If only someone had known this eight days ago!

Emails published by WikiLeaks on Monday show Chelsea Clinton was worried about a consulting firm that was founded by former aides to Bill and Hillary Clinton as she clashed with fellow employees of the Clinton Foundation.

..."She is acting like a spoiled brat kid who has nothing else to do but create issues to justify what she's doing because she, as she has said, hasn't found her way and has a lack of focus in her life," Band said of the former first daughter's criticisms.

Hope they get their Internet back soon over at the embassy!

'We define first and then see'

See if you can guess the morning's top story over at the Fair 'n' Balanced Network:

WikiLeaks said Monday that its founder Julian Assange’s Internet link was severed by a “state party” and that “appropriate contingency plans” had been activated.

The website’s announcement came hours after it published three cryptic tweets. The messages referenced Ecuador, Secretary of State John Kerry and the United Kingdom’s Foreign Commonwealth Office. Each tweet was matched with a string of numbers.

What could that mean, do you suppose?

Gizmodo noted that the 64-character codes sparked a whirlwind of rumors that the 45-year-old Assange had died. Rumors on Reddit and Twitter said the numbers triggered a so-called “dead man’s switch,” which could be enacted in case Assange did die. Gizmodo reported that such switches do exist.

WikiLeaks hasn’t tweeted anything else about Assange’s Internet access or how it may have been “severed.”
Read more »

Tyrannosaurus regina

How's that chicken tetrazzini treating you, Nation's Newspaper of Record?

An article on Oct. 2 about chicken tetrazzini misstated part of the title of a play in which the actor Vincent Price appeared in the 1930s. It was “Victoria Regina,” not “Victor Regina.”

Apparently Julie Andrews was not available for comment.

Who's gonna read the second paragraph?

Every now and then, the Fair 'n' Balanced Network just flat-out makes one up:

Top Hillary Clinton aides were upset a Muslim man was publicly named as the shooter in a 2015 massacre that left 14 people dead, and a longtime Clinton confidant even expressed regret that the terrorist wasn’t a white man, according to purported emails released by WikiLeaks on Sunday.

... The email chain began on Dec. 2, when digital operative Matt Ortega forwarded a tweet from MSNBC host Christopher Hayes that named one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., attack as Sayeed Farook. Consultant Karen Finney forwarded the email to Podesta, commenting, “Damn.”

It's a little bit of a stretch to assume "upset" from that sequence, but the pivot foot is still down.

Podesta responded: “Better if a guy named Sayeed Farouk [sic] was reporting that a guy named Christopher Hayes was the shooter.”

It's hard to [sic] a hypothetical, but that's not the point. All he mentions here is a name: not whether a white Christopher Hayes was preferable to a black Christopher Hayes, or former Harvard student Christopher Hayes, or crazed Vietnam veteran Christopher Hayes, or the lot of them. It isn't there. Fox is -- what's that L-word? Right. Lying. Not exaggerating, or ignoring the context, or inferring a worldwide conspiracy from a stray Arabic number in an elementary school classroom. Just lying.

Why lie? A couple of possible explanations. The emails have to be the lede, even if they aren't very interesting.* The story fits into the broad category of stories that ought to be true, even if they aren't. (Especially if most of the newsroom really does think white guys are an endangered species.) And -- OK, let's go to the newsreel on this one:

Hildy: Well, honey, I did that. Right there in the second paragraph.
Walter: Who's gonna read the second paragraph? 

On the off chance some loyal Fox reader gets all the way to the actual quote -- who's going to mind, anyway?

* As of this writing, the Iraqi offensive against Mosul is top of the page, and a different story is now the top pick for you emails fans:

Hillary Clinton’s aides and supporters expressed concern about public perception of the Clinton family’s charitable enterprise, with one left-leaning pundit writing that Clinton seemed unaware of the “danger” of her “money problem,” according to purported emails disclosed by Wikileaks on Sunday.

You can see why those things don't have much of a shelf life.

Today in redneckery

Good thing your standard Fox reader doesn't get beyond the headline. First, though, enjoy this bit of Fair 'n' Balanced copyediting:

Bill Clinton suggested this week that GOP nominee Donald Trump's base is comprised mostly of "rednecks."

The story is credited to the Washington Examiner, where the lede is a hair different:

Bill Clinton suggested this week that GOP nominee Donald Trump's base comprised mostly "rednecks."

By their prescriptivism shall ye know them, but the question here is how we got from what the former president said to the Examiner hed:

... to Fox's "new tag for Trump fans." Here -- according to the Examiner -- is the quote itself:

"The other guy's base is what I grew up in," the former president said during a campaign stop in Fort Myers, Fla. "You know, I'm basically your standard redneck."

By the time things reach Drudge, of course, the circle is unbroken:

I suppose there has to be some way to pass the time while waiting for the next explosive email shoe to drop: OMG Clinton thought it would be nice to "see Putin be less defensive toward a relationship with the United States so that we could work together on some issues"! OMG Clinton staffers questioned Master Murdoch's ostentatious piety! OMG somebody called Chelsea a "spoiled brat"! The overall prize, I think, goes to culture war correspondent Todd Starnes:

Mr. President,  I know some rednecks. And you, sir, are no redneck.

Todd? So do I, and yes he is. And if you bring up sweet tea and the Bible again, people might start asking why you and your stablemates listened when Master Trump told you to stop covering a massive slow-onset natural disaster.

Limping, barreling, hammering

Actually, no. Not Thursday, when this one appeared, and not in the month-old bedtime story from Climate Depot that purports to back up the hed:

TAMPA, FL — Speaking to supporters in Tampa, Hillary Clinton says climate change is “wreaking havoc on communities across America.” Clinton warns that Hurricane Hermine “is not the last one that’s going to hit Florida given what’s happening in the climate.” She says, “When it comes to protecting our country against natural disasters and the threat of climate change, once again, Donald Trump is totally unfit and unqualified”.

Drudge, of course, was just getting warmed up for Friday morning:

The real fun -- and please don't think we're minimizing the risk posed by a very dangerous tropical cyclone* -- is in the stories linked from the ear:

Taking us to such tales as (yes, rly):

Read more »

No, but thanks for asking

Stop press!

A potentially legendary photo-bomber has stolen the spotlight from a bald eagle nest live cam in Beulah.

Social media is abuzz recently with a clip from a camera mounted to a tree near the Platte River State Fish Hatchery, about 30 miles west of Traverse City, placed there to highlight a bald eagle nest. In the footage, baby eaglets peep in the nest, while on the forest floor below, walks through what some think is Bigfoot — the never-confirmed, mythological man-ape-like creature that's spawned many an unwatchable cable TV night-vision camera show.

Could it be a mere three weeks since ...

Bigfoot in Michigan? Bear photo spurs debate

Because clearly the previous day's coverage from a fellow Gannett fishwrap wasn't up to standard:

U.P. trail cam photo spurs Bigfoot debate

And a few weeks earlier, the mothership checked in:

Bigfoot hunters to search central Wis.

"On guard for 185 years," says the nameplate. I guess, at least, we're still able to make Bigfoot keep his distance.

That's one way of putting it

Hmm. What do you suppose might happen if you click on the link to read that fifth sidebar -- you know, the one that says "Trump charity ordered by AG to stop fundraising"?

It does indeed appear that something has gone wrong. One hopes it's not the kind of something that leads to free passage in the unheated cattle car to Siberia for the unfortunate Fox staffer who thought the story looked like it might be "news."