Mauldin echoes recent household conversations, only with hard data:

Few people I know slice and dice the details in the data better than good friend Greg Weldon (http://www.weldononline.com). Let's look at some of the tidbits he found buried in the CPI data.

Food at home prices (different than restaurants) are rising at a three-month rate of over 8.6%, up from only 0.8% in January. Alcoholic beverages (!) are up 7.1% on a three-month basis versus 2% in January (bad news for bud Art Cashin and the Friends of Fermentation at the NYSE). Ditto for meat, poultry, fish, and eggs at 10.1%! Overall, the three-month rate for CPI food has spiked to 6.4% since being at 2.1% in January.

If inflation seems worse than the numbers, this is why.

As any critical reader of news knows, what's reported depends in part on who reports it. Understanding the bias of the reporter or reporting agency should give readers a fuller sense of the event reported.

Or sometimes it just makes you weep.

ELIZABETH M. NUNEZ, Associated Press Writer, reports that "Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched Saturday to support a TV station aligned with opponents of President Hugo Chavez." It's rare, if not totally alien in the US to see this kind of support for freedom of the press. Chavez has done in Venezuela what most dictators do: consolidate power and dissemination of information to make himself look good. Those who marched bravely accepted the risk of jail.

So where does the land of American Idol reprort these events? Yahoo! entertainment news.