Sean Davis: The Top Ten Underreported Stories of 2017

Spoiler alert: Most involve good things happening under Trump, or bad things happening with Obama protecting Hezballah's cocaine smuggling operation.

As Mollie Hemingway said (in a different context), maybe the media's view of these stories was blocked by a white truck.

Here are just the first four:

1. "Russian collusion" charges were a dud

Despite a year's worth of investigation into the matter, zero independently verifiable evidence of alleged illegal collusion between Donald Trump and the Russian government has been offered to the public. In fact, there's far more evidence that President Obama's Department of Justice colluded with a shady DNC-funded outfit - Fusion GPS -- to cook up a pretext for spying on the administration's political opponents. The anti-Trump collusion hand played by Trump's detractors is so far a complete bust. The real story is a journalistic jackpot that for some reason nobody wants to claim.

2. The economy roared

The U.S. economy came roaring back in 2017. GDP growth is strong and steady, and the unemployment rate now approaches lows not seen since the early 2000s. The economy has added over 1.9 million payroll jobs this year. Consumer confidence is at a 17-year high. The 2017 economic recovery is nonetheless a major story widely ignored by the political press.

3. The stock market boomed

It's not just the economy, though. The stock market, following a lost decade of equity returns, also came roaring back over the last year. Although New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predicted after Trump's election that the stock market would "never" recover, the exact opposite has happened, with the Dow Jones industrial average repeatedly posting record highs throughout the year.

4. Islamic State was crushed in Raqqah and Mosul

A year ago, the Islamic State wasn't just on the rise in the Middle East, it was firmly in charge, with wide swaths of the region under its control. But in October, U.S.-backed forces completed the total liberation of Raqqah, the Islamic State's Syrian capital. That followed the liberation of Mosul, a major Iraqi city captured by the Islamic State in 2014. In less than a year, Trump and his national security team accomplished what the previous administration suggested was impossible.

posted by Ace at 06:16 PM

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