There are days when I find it difficult to get out of bed and continue covering this chaotic, interminably stupid charlatan. This is what the Commander in Chief tweeted this morning: Just take a moment to absorb this, and remember that this man is the goddamn President of the ...read more
The New Yorker's stunning expose of the server communications between the Trump Organization and Russia's Alfa Bank during the 2016 election is a must-read piece that exposes the tantalizing threads of the Trump-Russia investigation. Reporter Dexter Filkins reaches no hard ...read more
Over the past few days, Republicans have tied themselves in knots to defend Brett Kavanaugh from Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of attempting to rape her when they were in high school. The GOP has trotted out all kinds of excuses, from the letter signed by 65 of ...read more
On Wednesday, the New York Times published an anonymous op-ed by a "senior official in the Trump administration" who claimed to be a patriot protecting America from Trump: But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is ...read more
In response to the shocking anonymous op-ed from a senior member of the Trump administration in the New York Times yesterday, the president failed miserably to keep his story straight. Not only that, other media outlets have confirmed the existence of a network of resisters ...read more
The White House Correspondents Dinner has been a lightning rod for controversy ever since Stephen Colbert mocked the Bush Administration back in 2006. Back then, the press debated about whether he was too mean to the sitting President while forgetting that the purpose of comedy ...read more
Last weekend, a fire broke out on the 50th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan, injuring six firefighters and killing 67-year-old resident Todd Brassner. The President took to Twitter that evening to congratulate the brave firemen who safely contained the blaze. The tragic irony ...read more
I grew up in Los Angeles and now live in Brooklyn, so it's fair to assume that I live in "a bubble." However, I went to college at Northwestern University, right outside of Chicago, and even at a school whose political makeup was mostly center-left, we had quite a few ...read more
Do you think liberals are smug and insufferable? Do you find our know it all attitude irritating? Do you wish we would stop lecturing people on why they're wrong with all of our verifiable facts and data? Do you think we're just as much to blame for the sad state of political ...read more
On Sunday, the New York Times published an article describing life in the White House and it is horrifying. Frankly, the only reason the country isn't in a full scale collapse yet is because of Obama's vastly unappreciated efforts in rebuilding the economy and government after ...read more
Just when you thought The New York Times couldn't sink any lower than their piece lionizing conservative Ben Shapiro, and then another one about Ohio Nazi Tony Hovater (who likes Seinfeld, Applebee's, and ethnic cleansing) their magazine, not to be one-upped, said "hold my beer" ...read more
Here's how the mainstream media normalizes right wing extremism: Instead of talking about how insane, violent, or dangerous the right is becoming, they talk about how just downright normal the right wing lunatics are and how they're just trying to be heard in a country they just ...read more
The Banter Long Read: ...in reporting on this new development, the Post's rival newspaper, the New York Times, has been caught lying about its relevance. Worse, their lies could undermine the legitimacy of the Russia investigation in the minds of the American public and even ...read more
The Banter Long Read: Yesterday, Miramax/The Weinstein Company co-founder Harvey Weinstein was fired effective immediately following the New York Times' report documenting the multiple allegations of sexual harassment against women and the years of cover-ups... To continue ...read more
Yesterday, The New York Times ran a damning expose of film mogul Harvey Weinstein, founder of Miramax and The Weinstein Company, who is being accused of sexual harassment by multiple women. Because Weinstein has also been a Democratic donor throughout the last few election ...read more
With this week's bombshell reports from The Washington Post and The New York Times revealing Felix Sater's efforts in 2015 and 2016 to help Donald Trump build a Trump Tower in Moscow, a simple question needs answering: Where was the media when it came to covering Sater and his ...read more
The Resistance has stopped Trumpcare, but that doesn't mean we can sit on our laurels, even for a day. Put the cork back in the bottle and get to work, because if Vanita Gupta's op-ed from today's New York Times doesn't leave you quivering in your boots, we're in big trouble. Our ...read more
Note: today, David Brooks wrote a new column about how the wealthy are walling off lower American classes from understanding the newest cultural signifiers, which contains an egregious paragraph about him taking his friend to a gourmet sandwich shop that has received ample ...read more
As you may have heard, Sarah Palin is suing the New York Times for defamation due to the publication printing a story that it “knew to be false.” Here's how the Times characterized the story and the impending lawsuit: In the lawsuit, which was filed in the United States ...read more
David Brooks has spent so many years providing ideological cover for Republicans as the conservative movement descended into madness that he clearly started to buy into his own bullshit. Since the election of Trump, he can't quite seem to believe that what we're seeing is the ...read more
The New York Times Editorial Board had some sharp criticism for both Donald Trump and the corporations that are enabling his blatant dishonesty: President-elect Donald Trump would like everybody to believe that his election is energizing the economy by forcing businesses to ...read more
For months, Donald has been trying to walk a thin line between openly appealing to the racism of white people while pretending he's not being racist. He's succeeded only to the extent that the "liberal" press has been extremely reluctant to call out Donald's numerous ties to ...read more
After The New York Times published two women's account of being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for president did what he always does when held to account for his actions and threatened to sue the paper. Trump’s attorneys wrote to the Times ...read more
Timothy Egan at the New York Times sums up Bernie Sanders' stinging loss last night, and urges the Senator to stay in the race as a "statement candidate" to keep Hillary Clinton honest. "To catch Clinton, Sanders needed to get beyond his core of young, college-educated whites. ...read more
When the media worries about what Hillary’s hair looks like or what my hair looks like, that’s a real problem. We have millions of people who are struggling to keep their heads above water, who want to know what candidates can do to improve their lives, and the media will very ...read more
Last week, Washington Examiner White House Correspondent Susan Crabtree weathered a social media beating over her informal manner of addressing President Obama at a White House briefing, referring to him only as "Obama." Crabtree later apologized, insisting that she meant no ...read more
As winter's last gasp blankets much of the country in snow, this week's news cycle continues to be dominated by a blizzard of news about former Secretary of State and future Madame President Hillary Clinton's email account. While the story is not nothing, closer examination of ...read more
This week, the New York Times published a bombshell of an op-ed demanding that the Obama administration "prosecute torturers and their bosses," specifically Bush officials up to and including former Vice President Dick Cheney. It's probably the first time in recent history that ...read more
It's difficult to overstate the kind of authority Bill Carter brings to the New York Times on the subject of television. For more than 25 years, Carter has been one of the most knowledgable TV writers in the country, having exposed the ups and downs, the brilliance and the folly ...read more
(Image credit: FrontPage Mag) If the Middle East is a region we can neither fix nor ignore, what’s left? I’m for “containment” and “amplification.” - Tom Friedman, NYTimes Earlier this month, Tom Friedman solved the problem of the world being 'fast' through cushioning, ...read more
Hamilton Nolan over at Gawker picked this up on Wednesday, but Tom Friedman's latest column at the New York Times is so brilliantly stupid it is worth going over in a little more detail. Why? Because millions of Americans read Thomas Friedman and they should know better. Nolan ...read more
It's shocking to think that Dick Cheney is still in the United States and isn't up against a wall out behind the Hague right now. But given that he is somehow walking around a free man, it's actually not a surprise at all that the House Republicans are seeking his counsel on how ...read more
It's abundantly clear that Bill O'Reilly embraces his status as the elder derp of Fox News' prime time lineup. Many of his rants aren't really political missives, but more like paternalistic scoldings from a 1960s Catholic headmaster battening down the moral hatches as the ...read more
The release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl has quickly escalated from a shining example of America's commitment to its military POWs into a relentless political attack on President Obama, with Sgt. Bergdahl as proxy. Fueling the attacks on Bergdahl are accounts, by his former comrades, ...read more
A couple of years ago, The Daily Banter was getting shout-outs in stellar publications like examiner.com. "Some site called The Daily Banter, whatever that is," wrote one of the unpaid conservative columnists, after laying into us for some perceived slight. At that point, we'd ...read more
Tom Friedman makes in excess of $300,000 a year at the New York Times. He also charges $40,000 for speaking engagements. If the market is a true reflection of value, then what Friedman says must be pretty powerful. So when Tom Friedman writes an article on how to get a job at ...read more
It's finally happened. The name of an NSA employee has been accidentally leaked to the public via an NSA document stolen by Edward Snowden. On Monday, we covered one way in which the Snowden leaks have touched off observably negative international consequences. Specifically, we ...read more
Much of the internet has piled onto New York Times columnist David Brooks for his recent musings on 'The Inequality Problem', and deservedly so. Not only was Brooks timing spectacularly bad (British charity Oxfam just released a shocking report showing 85 people have as much ...read more
Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist and master of the completely incomprehensible metaphor is sad. Very sad. On his travels around the world, Friedman gets to see America from other people's perspective, and he doesn't like what he is hearing. In his latest piece for the ...read more
On Sunday the New York Times published a truly fascinating back-and-forth between the paper's former executive editor, Bill Keller, and Glenn Greenwald. It's essentially a conversation -- at times gracious, at times contentious, but always illuminating -- about the future of ...read more
In a review of New York Time's White House correspondent Peter Baker’s book on George W. Bush's presidency ‘Days of Fire’, David Frum concludes that on reflection, the ideology of the younger Bush is wholly preferable to the current incarnation of conservatism: From the ...read more
David Brooks, the man the New York Times drafted in to flatter the upper middle classes has a habit of putting his foot in it. Behind the elegantly crafted sentences that include words like 'invocations', 'accoutrements' and 'cloying' (all in one breath), is a pretty nasty guy ...read more
By Arsalan Ibrahim At least that’s the recipe served up by Brendan Simms of The New York Times. In his recent op-ed, he puts forward his formula for Euro-zone recovery predicated on the notion that Europe is repeating the follies of the Holy Roman Empire. This piece is, on the ...read more
Tom Friedman, The New York Time's meaningless columnist in chief published one of his best pieces yet last week - a true testament to his ability to regurgitate banal pseudo intellectual garbage week after week. The ludicrously highly paid Friedman churns out articles on the ...read more
David Brook's latest NYT column on gay marriage is, well, rather weird. After reading it a couple of times, it's clear Brooks thinks gay marriage is ok, but his argument is so convoluted and condescending it makes you want to dunk his head down a toilet bowl. Brooks ...read more
By Ben Cohen: If you are reading this website, you're most likely to be educated, white and economically middle to upper middle class (at least that's what our demographics tracking software tells us). The opportunities for you in the workplace are probably pretty varied - you ...read more
In an op-ed for the NY Times, well known socialist and anti capitalist Warren Buffett proposes a minimum tax on those earning higher incomes: Between 1951 and 1954, when the capital gains rate was 25 percent and marginal rates on dividends reached 91 percent in extreme cases, I ...read more
This from Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight: It's no wonder the Romney camp is floundering all over the place. The ridiculous attacks on Obama over the Libya crisis are a sign that Romney is getting increasingly desperate and doesn't know how to mount an effective attack on the ...read more
The Daily Banter headline grab (from the LA Times): Gore Vidal, the iconoclastic writer, savvy analyst and imperious gadfly on the national conscience, has died. He was 86. Vidal died Tuesday at his home in the Hollywood Hills of complications of pneumonia, said nephew Burr ...read more
Here's an idea I think could really gain some traction in America, a country reflexively opposed to unionism and worker rights: Linking CEO pay to the minimum wage. Hamilton Nolan wrote a heart felt piece in Gawker yesterday hammering Caterpillar for slashing wages and busting ...read more
