Author: Marc Jampole

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Posts by Marc Jampole

Palin’s “despicable” illiteracy serves as the “inception” of thousands running to the dictionary.

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I subscribe to Merriam-Webster’s online unabridged dictionary, which contains the definition and spelling of more than a million words and also gives me access to a myriad of online resources that are helpful to a writer, including the Collegiate Dictionary, Collegiate Encyclopedia, Thesaurus, Atlas, medical dictionary, style guide, French-English dictionary and Spanish-English dictionary.  It’s a […]

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AP puts a big lie about climate change in its headline about a story about the Old Farmer’s Almanac

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Earlier this week the Old Farmer’s Almanac came out with its prediction that the United States will have a colder than average winter this year.  An Associated Press article by Russell Contreras is the version of the news that most people will read about this annual rite of fall, mainly because for most non-business, non-local […]

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Wall Street Journal gives right-wing economist Robert Barro a platform to jigger the numbers on unemployment benefits.

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One of the most important principles of logic, employed by scientists, historians and most other researchers, is that things that correlate do not necessarily have a causal relationship.  Now that’s a mouthful, but it’s really a simple concept:  Just because two things happen at the same time or happen to the same person or nation […]

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Robert Reich identifies inequitable distribution of wealth as a major problem, but his solutions avoid the issue.

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Someone in the mainstream news media is talking about what has been a major theme in this blog for some time now: the need to foster a more equitable distribution of wealth and income in the United States.  (see blogs for November 10, 2009 and June 14, June 15, June 17, June 18, July 22 […]

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Mainstream news media ignores study proving that immigrants increase both overall wages and productivity

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Once again, the mainstream news media is ignoring, at least so far, a study that demonstrates that a common right-wing myth is false. In this case, it’s the myth that immigrants are bad for the U.S. economy.  Two days ago, the highly reputable Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco released a study by University of […]

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Why won’t the mainstream news media give us a firm number for the Beck rally at the Lincoln Memorial?

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It seems odd to me that in general the mainstream news media seems so reluctant to report a substantial number for those in attendance at Glenn Beck’s rally dedicated to the care and feeding of racial code words.    To my mind, how many people attended would be the most important news about the rally […]

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The news media keeps busy covering celebrity worship and parents trying to game the educational system.

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A while back I wrote about Parade’s use of the July Fourth celebration as a platform for worshipping celebrity culture.  As I said then, it’s the “modus operandi” (the way it works) in the mass media.  This past Sunday, Parade once again reminded us to worship actors and entertainers, this time as part of the […]

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Much feature news in the business pages of the newspaper are really little PR packages for products or services.

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Yesterday I analyzed an article by Ron Lieber in the Saturday “Business Day” section of the New York Times. I want to take a broader look at the entire section today, because it exemplifies what has been the norm in business feature reporting for decades. The business section of virtually all American newspapers and news […]

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Financial columnist offers advice on love to the frugal: spend more money on your dates if you want to impress.

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Once again we can count on the New York Times Ron Lieber to present the assumptions of the American ideology of consumerism as facts in an effort to convince readers that the way to happiness is to participate in the great American potlatch and spend lots of money, hopefully beyond your current means. Several months […]

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Wal-Mart makes it official: helicopter parents are a demographic group.

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For the first time ever, I’ve spotted a TV commercial that focuses on helping the helicopter parent.  So let’s give Wal-Mart the credit it deserves for being the first to go after this upscale target market. I’ve defined helicopter parents before.  They’re the ones who take absolute control of the lives of their children, especially […]

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