It’s starting to feel like we’ll be bombarded with exit-poll ephemera until Campaign 2020 begins in earnest the day after Trump is sworn into office. The news media have become so addicted to political gossip, and to foisting it off as hard news, that they may have lost their ability to discern what constitutes real news.  Note to managing editors: We are all experts by now on why Trump won and Hillary lost, and listening to your talking heads deconstruct this topic ad nauseum only reinforces our collective awareness that the experts have nothing to say that we don’t already know, or don’t care to know.

The worst part of it is that the punditry’s non-stop flatulence will continue to find its way onto the pages of local newspapers, since most Town Criers, Morning Gazettes and Evening Heralds have mutated into daily digests of whatever it is the Associated Press happens to be reporting at the moment. In the meantime, and for one, the well-connected thugs at Goldman Sachs, which has recently gotten immersed in public/private partnerships to build toll roads, or to turn free roads into un-free ones as has occurred here in Denver, will continue to get away with murder, as will deal-crazy politicians who never seem to meet a real estate developer with whom they cannot do business under the table. Medicare and Social Security will continue their headlong plunge into bankruptcy, public pensions will continue to take an increasing share of our savings, and the national debt will continue to climb even as the ability of reporters to ferret out instances of egregious waste and corruption at all levels of government continues to atrophy. With Huffington Post, the L.A. Times, Washington Post and the New York Times now operating as a liberal mafia that is more or less oblivious to what goes on in the real world, Drudge Report could surely use some help getting out the news.