“Things I‘d Like To Post About Today; But I Don’t Have Any Time ‘4‘”:

• Priceless: Taranto at Best of the Web last Friday, on Obama-Wright — “(Wright is) The man of whom Barack Obama says, “He was never my quote-unquote spiritual adviser,” although he served on the Obama campaign’s quote-unquote spiritual advisory committee.”
• The WSJ told us why the housing bill steamrolling through Congress is Frank-ly disgraceful. Barney Frank-ly.
• Pushback — 64% of Dems say Hillary should stay in the race (HT Instapundit).
• The alleged Obama steamroller tried to get Hillary to quit because a Clinton win by 38% in West Virginia, if it materializes (sorry, lost link to the poll; oh, here’s a reference to one that says 43%), will not be helpful.
• Hmmm — Speaking of Instapundit, those going there will notice in the URL that Pajamas Media is now hosting him.
• Jihad Watch has picked up Patrick Poole’s alarm over Khalid Yasin’s appearance at Sinclair Community College in Dayton on May 16. Go to either link and see why.

I’m going back to this, cuz it’s fun — My irreverent acronym for presidential candidate Barack Obama (”Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” — “Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters“) has the H in it is because “He’s the one … who started it.” — as shown here.

Just a reminder that those trying to claim that use of the candidate’s middle name is a “fear bomb,” or whatever, don’t know what the H they’re talking about.

________________________________________________

The Columbus Dispatch’s Mark Niquette wrote the following without even the tiniest hint of its absurdity about Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s Profiles in Courage Award:

The award, named for (John F.) Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book highlighting political acts of courage, previously has been bestowed on such noted political figures as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Claudia Rossett, someone who should have a Pulitzer but probably never will because she doesn’t cover liberal and PC causes, wrote that in the Oil For Food Scandal Annan “helped Saddam Hussein steal food from babies.” Hussein “by estimates of the U.S. General Accounting Office, fortified his own regime with at least $10.1 billion grafted and smuggled out of Oil-for-Food.”

Other than that, he was an OK guy, eh Mark?

Great company you’re in, Jennifer.

JFK, for all his imperfections, would be spinning in his grave at how the award program he started has descended into the depths of political hackdom.

_____________________________________________

The groundswell of petitioners at Plunderbund demanding that Ohio’s scandalized Attorney General Marc “Gunga Dann” resign has reached 38 as of when this post went up.

Since it only displays the last 10 petitioners’ accompanying messages, we’re left to wonder whether Ohio Daily Blog proprietor and former Wide Open co-blogger Jeff “Dann’s the Man” Coryell is among the signatories.

To be fair, Coryell has written that he wants the “visionary” Dann (cough, cough) to resign.

_____________________________________________

The Invisible Sherrod Brown has actually been mentioned as a Dem VP candidate worth considering a few times over the past several months (here; here; here, though the author notes in a later post that the idea has little traction; and here; HT Ohio Daily Blog).

A selection of Brown by Obama, or by the presidential candidate I irreverently refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton), would have a certain symmetry. According to the Club for Growth’s 2007 Senate scorecard, it would ensure that the top of the Democratic ticket has a couple of complete zeros:

From Bonogin, in Australia (there is also video at the link):

02May08

A MAN being crushed by a two-tonne steel sheet saved his own life yesterday by desperately clawing for his mobile phone and dialling 000.

Then police stepped in, with the first officers on the scene at Bonogin using a crowbar and a wooden plank to prise the sheet off the stricken man, easing the pressure on him until help arrived.

Emergency crews at the scene later said caretaker Graeme Smith was lucky to be alive.

The sheet had pinned him upright to the wall of a concrete trench on a property in Bonogin Road for almost half an hour from 10.15am.

Mr Smith was flown to Gold Coast Hospital with suspected pelvic and internal injuries after fire crews freed him from the pit by using hydraulic equipment.

The caretaker, who is believed to be in his 40s, was alone and appeared to be making cement blocks when the sheet fell across his middle back.

Despite being unable to escape from the pit, Mr Smith managed to reach his mobile phone and call 000 — a move emergency workers credit with saving his life.

Sergeant Sean Miles and Constable Sarah Northcoat of Mudgeeraba police were first on the scene and used a crowbar and a heavy plank of wood to ease the weight of the metal sheet off Mr Smith until fire crews arrived.

“The gentleman was pinned across the chest with a steel plate against his back,” said Sgt Miles.

“He was swearing a lot, let’s put it this way. We just did what we could and found a crowbar and a piece of wood and sort of jammed it down to try to take the pressure off him.”

Sgt Miles said he was exhausted after spending about 10 minutes easing the pressure with his colleague.

“It’s pretty heavy after about five or 10 minutes,” he said. “My legs were giving out at the end when the firies arrived to give me a hand. My legs were shaking pretty much.”

Robina fire station officer Steve Lohmann said firefighters arrived to find the police officers struggling with the steel sheet.

“On arrival we saw that QPS (police) had arrived just before us and were at the scene trying to stabilise the steel with a crowbar with not too much success,” he said.

“We instantly went into action with our hydraulic spreading gear, which we use for road crash rescue, to take the pressure off the patient.

“There was no room for anyone to get in there and we couldn’t allow the paramedics to actually enter the trench to assist the patient until we’d stabilised it.

“After we stabilised it slightly we went into action for major stabilisation for the large plate of steel, which allowed paramedics to access the patient inside the trench.”

Officer Lohmann said the fact Mr Smith was able to call for help on his phone had potentially saved his life. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Apparently BB was down for about three hours while I was out and about.

We’re back up, and I’m annoyed, but won’t bore with details. Those details will keep me from getting to the Trumpet post I planned until tomorrow.

I’ll just put these up without commentary beyond the title because of a time crunch.

The results are derived from April’s final Daily Treasury Statement, along with the April 2008 Monthly Treasury Statement, which was released at 2 PM this afternoon.

Here’s how the receipts came in compared to a year ago:

The $400 billion-plus collected is an alltime one-month record.

Here’s how Uncle Sam’s April collections and spendiing came in, and how the year-to-date situation has turned out thus far:

RELATED POST (in progress, will go up in late PM): As Media Ogles, Stanley Kurtz Trumpets the Obama-Wright Connections

___________________________________________

The Cover Guy

The Trumpet Newsmagazine cover Stanley Kurtz of the Weekly Standard is looking for is here (click here or on the pic to enlarge in a separate window):

It’s the March 2007 issue. The cover image was found in the March 11, 2007 Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) bulletin.

Topics on the cover of this issue of Trumpet are:
- Barack Obama: History in the Making
- Africans in Disapora, Part 2 (in the United Kingdom)
- A Woman’s Worth, as Seen in the Eyes of Angela M. Brown, Cheryle Robinson Jackson, and Rhoda McKinney Jones
- Rear View: Abortion

Other Covers

Here’s an Obama-Wright bonus, as found in the December 26, 2004 TUCC bulletin (graphic is not clickable):

In this case, the topics are very difficult to decipher; Because of blurred pixelation, I can’t even tell what the issue date is. Since the Trumpet shown in the previous week’s bulletin had a different cover, I would guess that the above Obama-Wright cover is from January 2005.

As to topics, I can’t tell at all, except for the obvious “Yes We Did!”

Finally, there’s one more cover where Obama makes an appearance. It was found in the February 12, 2006 TUCC bulletin (click here or on the pic to enlarge):

As with the previous blurred cover, I can’t tell what month it relates to. But I can read its title (”The Legacy Lives On”), and I believe I am correct in recognizing Obama, Wright, and Louis Farrakhan in the second row from the bottom. Positive IDs of the others would be useful.

Kurtz Is Right

The three Trumpet covers shown here may not represent all where Obama made an appearance, as my 125-plus collection of TUCC bulletins only represents about 65% or so of those I would expect to have been issued over the period from late May 2004 until late March 2008.

Kurtz writes that “efforts to obtain that (March 2007 Obama cover) issue from the publisher or Obama’s interview with the magazine from his campaign were unsuccessful.” I would suggest that it’s because it would, as does what’s on display at this post, give further support to Stanley Kurtz’s prime contention, which, based on his investigative work and the most rudimentary application of common sense, is this:

To the question of the moment–What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?–I answer, Obama knew everything, and he’s known it for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah Wright’s disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack Obama must have long been aware of his pastor’s political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year’s worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine, Wright’s glossy national “lifestyle magazine for the socially conscious,” makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise.

Memo to CNN’s John Roberts, who says he has established a “Wright-free zone” on his program: Wright-free, schmight-free.

___________________________________________

ADDENDUM: There are a lot of “interesting” people gracing the Trumpet Newsmagazine covers I have seen. I will get to them in a later post.

“Things I‘d Like To Post About Today; But I Don’t Have Any Time ‘4‘”:

• Gosh, how DO these radicals, including the guy talking with Hamas who was thrown under the bus once caught, get into the campaign of the presidential candidate I refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) in the first place? A better question: How many would get into influential government positions in an Obama Administration?
• NixGuy caught news that Airbus is in deep, deep trouble, thanks partially to the strong Euro and weak dollar. That, and it’s a multigovernment-owned enterprise that is all too often more concerned with pleasing politicians and running a jobs program than competing with Boeing.
• Hmmm …. “Perhaps 60% of oil prices today pure speculation.” Another person who has followed this more closely has a credible theory that while Bush opening up the Strategic Reserve wouldn’t affect the underlying supply-demand equation much, it might burst the speculative runup. That’s worth considering.
• Eco-anxiety on the rise — Like someone else, I blame the Pelosi Premium.
• Just what we need — a Gong Show revival. But a traveling Gong that followed the two Democratic presidential candidates around — one that would get struck every time they fudge the truth, or get into personal attacks while pretending they’re above all that — might not be a bad idea.
• Patrick Poole wants to know how a misogynist, intolerant, probable-scam artist (and so much more) gets invited to speak at Sinclair Community College. Good question.

From Belfast, Northern Ireland:

Saturday, May 03, 2008

Royal Navy war hero Terence Robinson saved the life of his ship’s cook — by diving into the icy sea to rescue him.

And now he is being honoured not just for his amazing career background but because this week he had reached the age of 90.

Terence Robinson, who will always remember the day he put someone else’s life first ahead of his own, is a true hero of Northern Ireland.

For it was Operation Coca Cola, based on his wartime exploits, that pushed the Lambeg-based bottling plant to the forefront of Ulster industry.

And as every day young and old refresh themselves with a glass of coke they should remember him as the man who helped his father Tom Robinson introduce Coca-Cola to Northern Ireland.

Coca-Cola Bottlers (Ulster) Ltd are today celebrating Terence Robinson’s life — commending his tireless work and contributions as Non-Executive Director of the Lisburn bottling company, on his 90th birthday.

Born April 22, 1918, he is the son of Tom Robinson, who introduced Coca-Cola to Northern Ireland in 1939. His legacy with Coca-Cola began when he returned from World War II and become an influential driving force behind the business and remained at the helm of the company for some 50 years, until his retirement in 1989.

An inspiring business man, Terence has held the posts of Managing Director, Executive Chairman and more recently Non-Executive Director of Coca-Cola Bottlers (Ulster) Ltd.

Mr Robinson said: “Thank you. I’m delighted to be here today with my family, friends and Coca-Cola colleagues to celebrate my 90th birthday. The company has been an integral part of my life since I first started selling Coca-Cola to hotels around Belfast from the back of an icebox fitted moped during the 1940’s.

John Barrett, Executive Director at Coca-Cola Bottlers (Ulster) Ltd, presented Mr Robinson with a commemorative bowl to mark the milestone occasion and to acknowledge his continued long-standing service to the company and local community.

Mr Barrett, said: “Terence has devoted his life to creating and developing the excellence of the Coca-Cola brand in Northern Ireland and although he retired in 1989, he continues to play an important role in the company’s future.”

And it was on February 15, 1942, that he saved the life of his ship’s Cook, diving into the icy water to rescue him after he fell overboard. For this act of bravery, he was awarded the Royal Humane Society Testimonial on Vellum. In 1945 he returned to Belfast, beginning of ‘Operation Coca-Cola’. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, when incumbent Vice President Dan Quayle made a spelling mistake, the New York Times was all over it. It’s clear from the Times’s story that the rest of the media was also in full pursuit:

So Jay Leno has a week’s worth of new Dan Quayle jokes. At a school here, everyone was quite hush-hush the day after the visiting Vice President spelled potato wrong while directing a spelling bee.

….. Reporters stood around today for hours outside of the house where 12-year-old William Figueroa lives. He has become a national celebrity for having spelled the word correctly on the blackboard, only to have Mr. Quayle, holding a flash card with the word spelled incorrectly, encourage him to add an E at the end.

On Friday, Barack Obama, as NewsBusters John Stephenson reported, told an Oregon audience that “I’ve been in 57 states, (with) I think one left to go.”

Searches at the Times on [Obama “57 states”] and [Obama “fifty-seven states”] — each typed as indicated — came up with the following results:

But a Times search on “Quayle potato” (not in quotes) from June 10 to November 10, 1992 shows that the Old Gray Lady’s reporters, columnists, writers, and editorialists went back to the story another 38 times between that first story and shortly after Election Day.

Identical Obama-related searches at the Washington Post yielded the following (57 states; fifty-seven states):

The Associated Press? Surely you jest (here and here).

A Google News search on the first of the two terms returned 27 results, only four of which could be considered Old Media outlets: at a Reuters blog; a Bloomberg “Campaign Notebook” item carried at the Houston Chronicle; a Los Angeles Times blog entry; and an MSNBC “First Read” blog entry. Only Reuters gave the story headline coverage.

The others buried it in a series of presidential campaign-related items (”snippets,” if you will). It was the fifth topic at Bloomberg, the third at the LA Times, and made up the last two paragraphs of a 1250-word entry at MSNBC.

(UPDATE: An NB commenter [thanks for catching it!] has pointed out that there is also an LA Times blog entry near the end of those 27 results that has headline treatment. I would suggest that it’s doubtful that the paper has given the "Obama 57" story main-site or print edition treatment. This LAT site search on [Obama "57 states"] would appear to confirm that.)

Old Media’s treatment of the story thus far indicates a strong likelihood that Obama’s arguably dumber gaffe has not found its way into the primary web sites or print editions of most newspapers, and that it never will. Has the flub made it, or will it make it, to network and/or cable newscasts? The prognosis is: Doubtful.

By contrast, a Google News Archive Search on “Quayle potato” for the period from June 10 to November 10, 1992 — likely an incomplete rendering of the news that was available at the time — returned over 850 items (link is to Page 43 of a 20-per-page list). A scan of the results indicates that the press not only went into saturation mode when the story broke, but kept going back to it at a fairly sustained pace until Election Day.

Will anyone in the traditional press corps even allow anyone to mention Obama’s “mis-state-ment” in a month? Will CNN’s John Roberts add “no 57-state zone” to his “Wright-free zone“?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Townhall.com:

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let’s look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore’s hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book “The Doomsday Book,” said Americans were using 50 percent of the world’s resources and “by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them.” In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, “The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000.”

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, “… civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 “… somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

It’s not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was “little or no chance” of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.

But we should trust the alarmists’ descendants today, because they now have Nobel Prizes, and government contracts, and cushy jobs at NASA. Oh, and Old Media treats what they say as accepted wisdom. (/sarc).

From Caledonia, Michigan via the UK Daily Mail:

Last updated at 22:55pm on 2nd May 2008

How many people can explain what it feels like to listen to their own funeral service?
Well, 21-year-old Whitney Cerak can - although, hardly surprisingly, even she struggles to find the words to do so.

One afternoon last August, she sat beside her father at the family dining table and pressed “play” to hear the definitive summing up of her young life.

More than 1,400 people had packed into the church, in the American town of Caledonia, Michigan, to say goodbye to her in 2006, and the proceedings had been recorded. No one could have dreamed that one day Whitney herself would be able to listen to their tributes.

“I can barely describe how it felt,” she says. “Odd. Weird. Surreal. A bit scary. I’m the only person I know who has listened to their own funeral.

“It was as if they were talking about someone else. People were saying wonderful things about me - about how I had touched their lives. I thought, ‘All this? For me?’. That bit was humbling.

“But mostly I found it upsetting. To hear the eulogy, my dad’s voice, my sister talking about all the parts of her life that I wasn’t going to share - that was hard. I don’t think I will be listening to it again.”

It sounds like the implausible plot of some cheap soap opera, but what happened to Whitney Cerak and her family was all too real.

She found herself at the centre of one of the most astonishing cases of mistaken identity ever, when she was wrongly named as the dead victim of a terrible road accident.

Four students and one teacher were involved in the collision in the town of Fort Worth, in April 2006. Five died at the scene and the only survivor - a pretty blonde girl who was discovered unconscious with serious head injuries - was identified as 22-year-old Laura Van Ryn, partly because Laura’s purse was found next to her.

The badly injured girl was not Laura, however, but Whitney, who was then just days from her 19th birthday.

It was the sort of mistake that would normally be picked up quickly, at least as soon as relatives were involved, but in this case, it wasn’t.

The Van Ryn family - summoned to what they were told was their critically-ill daughter’s bedside - were warned they might be shocked by her appearance and not to expect to recognise her.

There were bandages on her head, and her features were terribly swollen. Not once did they actually question her identity - but, in the circumstances, what family would?

Similarly, the Cerak family, who had been told their daughter was dead, were too deep in grief to question anything. Because of the nature of her injuries, they declined to see Whitney’s body, preferring to remember her as she was.

Unwittingly, then, both families were set on a terrible course, each accepting a fate that was simply not theirs.

What happened next is still unthinkable. For an incredible five weeks, the Van Ryn family kept a vigil over Whitney (whom they believed to be their daughter Laura), willing her to emerge from her coma.

They held her hand, told her repeatedly that they loved her, and willed her to come back to them. They tracked every tiny step in her recovery with jubilant updates on a family internet “blog”, encouraging everyone to pray for her.

Meanwhile, the Cerak family got on with the terrible business of grieving. They buried “Whitney” (though it was of course Laura), filling the church with her favourite gerbera flowers, and having her friends create posters in celebration of her young life.

These and the order of service and hundreds of sympathy cards they received were put away in a drawer for posterity. Little did they realise, their daughter would one day be able to see them for herself.

Had anyone been looking for them, there were hints in that hospital that all was not as it seemed.

“Laura”, by now conscious, was behaving oddly and calling out strange names.

Staggeringly, though, the truth only came to light when she was asked to write down her own name on a piece of paper. She managed just one chilling word: ‘W-h-i-t-n-e-y.’ …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

We are on. Go to Weapons of Mass Discussion’s home page for the “listen live” link. Click on the banner in the right sidebar.

Topics:

• Gunga Dann — Will the Dems actually carry through with impeachment?
• The 57 states of the presidential candidate I refer to a BOOHOO-OUCH (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters).
• Barack Obama’s people are trying to pretend that he never said that he will meet Ahmedinejad unconditionally, while it’s right there on his web site, right now.
• Hamas favors Obama for Prez. Of course it’s John McCain’s fault for pointing this out when an interviewer asks him about it.
• Economy not in recession.
• Obama doesn’t know much about history.
• The Barack Obama lapel pin.
• Happy Mother’s Day to all moms, grandmoms, and wives.

Note: This was originally posted at Pajamas Media Thursday morning under the title “Economy Improves, Old Media Ignores.”

_______________________________________________

Those who are rooting for the economy to go into a tailspin cannot be pleased.

First, the government told us that the economy grew 0.6% in the first quarter.

I wasn’t happy, because I’d like to see the economy get back to at least the 3.2% average growth it experienced from the second quarter of 2003 through the third quarter of 2007.

But many in the business press seemed displeased for the opposite reason — that the number wasn’t negative. Since the everyday working definition of a “recession” is “a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters,” it meant that there is no solid evidence of a recession.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa insisted that “A growing number of economists believe the economy is in a recession and is indeed contracting now.”

Rex Nutting at MarketWatch.com went way over the top, as you can see from these article excerpts:

U.S. could have recession without drop in GDP
Analysis: Growth isn’t everything; jobs and incomes count more

….. the economy may be on track for the first recession in U.S. history without any quarterly decline in growth.

….. GDP is a pretty crude measurement of economic well-being.

….. GDP is a quarterly accounting gimmick that may not be an accurate reflection of the economic reality.

….. With GDP showing a small positive number in Wednesday’s report, no doubt many people will cheer that the economy has therefore avoided a recession. But that’s not what the other economic numbers show.

Nutting, MarketWatch’s Washington bureau chief, quoted no outside economist, analyst, government bureaucrat, think-tank researcher, or anyone else to back up his extraordinary claims. I have never seen anyone call GDP a “crude measurement” or an “accounting gimmick.” If I were working at Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, I’d feel insulted.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the “other economic numbers” that followed last week’s GDP report do not support Nutting’s peculiar notion of “recession with growth.”

On Friday, the government’s employment report showed that the economy added over 700,000 jobs in April.

That’s right. Here’s the proof:

As you can see, government’s best estimate is that 703,000 more real people were actually working in April than were in March, and that 1,810,000 more were really doing so in April than in January.

If you’re surprised, I don’t blame you. Rex Nutting may be too.

That’s because the “official” jobs increase or decline and the unemployment rate are both adjusted for seasonality, or changes in real employment levels that have occurred in previous years. The fact that the number of jobs added in April 2008 was less than the number added in previous Aprils goes a long way towards explaining why the most recent seasonally adjusted jobs change was a loss of 20,000.

The business press has abused the seasonally adjusted job-loss numbers for the past three months by pretending that they represent actual people thrown out of work. They do not.

The AP’s Aversa was a primary offender last Friday, as she wrote:

Employers eliminated 20,000 jobs in April …..

….. It was the fourth straight month that employers cut jobs — bringing total losses to 260,000.

….. Businesses are handing out pink slips as they cope with an economy that is teetering on the edge of a recession, or possibly in one already.

….. On the employment front, construction companies, manufacturers, retailers, mortgage brokers and temporary help firms were among those shedding jobs in April.

Almost none of what Aversa cited above happened in the real world. Except for manufacturing, every major sector of the economy had more workers in April than in March.

To be clear, compared to previous years, April’s jobs increase was not as great as one would hope to see. But it was at least closer to the previous two Aprils (within 157,000, on average) than January’s decrease or February’s and March’s increases were to their comparable 2006 and 2007 figures. More improvement is needed, but April at least headed in the right direction.

Oh, and April’s unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, fell 0.1% to 5.0%; the unadjusted rate fell from 5.2% to 4.8%.

Finally, the recent news from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has been very good.

Last Thursday, ISM reported that manufacturing’s 15% of the economy, while still slightly contracting, held steady. Its Manufacturing Index came in at 48.6% (any reading above 50% indicates expansion; below 50%, contraction).

On Monday, ISM’s Non-Manufacturing Index, covering the remaining 85% of the economy, including the troubled housing and financial services sectors, leaped into expansion mode with a reading of 52%. That was up 2.4% from the previous month and confounded the “experts,” who had predicted that it would go down.

Then on Tuesday, ISM had the nerve to issue its Spring 2008 Semiannual Economic Forecast, which said: “Economic Growth to Continue Throughout 2008.”

If you think you heard “How dare they!” murmurs from the business press, you may be right.

Though more easily comprehensible, the comical error (or is it what he truly thought?) in Barack Obama’s “57 states” statement (HT Newsbusters’ John Stephenson) is nothing compared to the dangerously wrong “history” he recited in his North Carolina Primary victory speech Tuesday night.

Friday, at Real Clear Politics, Jack Kelly recounted the Illinois Senator’s egregious error, and its frightening implications (bolds are mine throughout):

Obama Needs a History Lesson

In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon.

In defending his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.”

That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.

Then Kelly recited how wrong Obama was about Roosevelt and Truman:

FDR talked directly with none of them (our enemies) before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.

….. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender.

….. Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman’s response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.

….. When Stalin’s (post-World War II) designs became unmistakably clear, President Truman’s response wasn’t to seek a summit meeting. He sent military aid to Greece, ordered the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, and sent troops to South Korea.

….. The closest historical analogue to Sen. Obama’s expressed desire to meet with no preconditions with anti-American dictators such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the trip British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French premier Eduoard Daladier took to Munich in September of 1938 to negotiate “peace in our time” with Adolf Hitler. That didn’t work out so well.

Kelly also quoted a historian who told of how John F. Kennedy’s decision to meet with Kruschev enabled the Russian premier to evaluate him as someone “who would shrink from hard decisions. (Kruschev) came to believe that Americans are ‘too liberal to fight.’” He also quoted journalistic icon James Reston of the New York Times, who once wrote that “when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.”

Kelly’s wrap:

The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it’s dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said:

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Is the Obama campaign going to pass off their candidate’s misguided rendition of history as yet another error resulting from being “tired”? Will Old Media journalists covering him let it slide? Or is Kelly’s suspicion that they didn’t even recognize Obama’s error correct?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It must be nice to be on Old Media’s “free pass” list.

For years, Apple Computer has been on that list (disclosure: yours truly is a 23-year Mac user). Apple has been the cool, innovative tech darling, the noble foil of big, bad monopolist Microsoft.

Another free-pass beneficiary is Al Gore, who sits on Apple’s Board of Directors.

Wait until you see what ClimateCounts.org thinks of Apple’s record on “fighting global warming,” especially in comparison to its industry peers (HT InfoWorld via Kevin at Pundit Review):

( Links: Sector Company Scores; Apple’s Overall Scorecard)

According to Apple’s detailed scorecard (PDF), the company scored a zero in 18 of the 22 measurement criteria. Some of them include (bold is mine):

• Item 13 — Has the company achieved emissions reductions?
• Item 5 — Is there external, qualified third party verification of emissions data, reductions, and reporting (where applicable)?
• Item 18 — Does the company require suppliers to take climate change action or give preference to those that do?
• Item 19 — Does the company support public policy that could require mandatory climate change action by business?

In 2006, Apple’s score was “2.” I doubt that ClimateCounts.org has set aside a “most improved” award for the company’s 9-point 2007 pickup.

Note that I do not subscribe to any of this nonsense. “Climate friendliness” is part of the broader, dangerous notion of “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR). As I have noted before, companies that embrace CSR, or cynically give into it in the name of appeasement, are engaging in an an economic and ideological sellout to groups who are, at bottom, hostile to capitalism. The late Milton Friedman was and still is right when he wrote that CSR is a “fundamentally subversive doctrine,” and that “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.”

But, though he is careful about when and where he talks about it (note that his Nobel Prize acceptance speech makes no direct reference to business), Al Gore does subscribe to CSR.

Here’s an interesting possibility: One of the reasons Apple is financially outperforming its peers under Gore’s “oversight” may be that it’s not allowing itself to be overly distracted by CSR, and that Gore’s mere presence on the Board is enabling the company to escape activists’ wrath. If so, how “convenient.”

You would think that journalists who have swallowed whole the gospel of globaloney (my term for the mistaken beliefs that catastrophic global warming is taking place, and that it’s largely caused by human activity) to be giving Apple and Gore some, uh, heat over the company’s “disgraceful” (as ClimateCounts.org defines it) record of environmental stewardship.

But it appears that when you’re on the “free pass” list, all is forgiven.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Baton Rouge, Louisiana:

A construction company owner who lost two homes in Hurricane Katrina claimed a $97 million Powerball prize, a jackpot won off a ticket he bought at a convenience store where he stopped to buy his wife a gallon of milk.

When he turned in the winning ticket, Carl Hunter became the largest Powerball winner in Louisiana’s history. He won the jackpot in January, but the 73-year-old small businessman waited nearly four months to claim the prize.

An avid lottery player, Hunter said he already had bought a Powerball ticket on Jan. 16 at the gas station less than two blocks from his home in the New Orleans suburb of Metairie. But he stopped at the station again that day to buy milk — at the request of his wife, Dianne — and got a second “quick pick” ticket.

“I had some change, and one dollar was used to buy this ticket,” Hunter said Thursday at the Louisiana Lottery Corp. headquarters in Baton Rouge, where he claimed his prize.

“It’s all about milk,” his wife said, smiling.

The couple, surrounded by cameras, was decidedly low-key about the multimillion dollar win, saying they didn’t have specific plans for the money — besides retirement and the rebuilding of a camp lost to Katrina.

“I’m retiring, you know, naturally,” Carl Hunter said.

Hunter took a lump sum payment that will give him $33.9 million after taxes, according to lottery officials. Asked why he waited so long to turn in the winning ticket, Hunter said he wanted to wrap up some of his construction work and finish his outstanding contracts. In fact, Hunter’s wife Dianne said he was still at work this week.

“I don’t think about buying elaborate cars or homes,” Carl Hunter said.

Hunter said he owned two homes that were destroyed in 2005 by Katrina, and he and his wife moved into a Metairie home she owned after the storm, the home that was near the gas station where he bought his winning ticket.

Go here for the rest of the story.

I noted a few weeks ago (at BizzyBlog; at NewsBusters) that Mike Celizic at MSNBC couldn’t get though his article about Jenna Bush’s upcoming wedding without bringing up her misdemeanor arrests from seven years ago.

Julie Mason of the Houston Chronicle also went there in a late Thursday report. She also threw in a number of shots at Jenna’s father, his administration, and his hometown:

Saturday, in an Oscar de la Renta gown with twin sister Barbara at her side, Jenna Bush, 26, will marry 29-year-old business school student Henry Hager at her parents’ Central Texas ranch.

It’s probably as close as Oscar de la Renta will ever get to Crawford.

….. The wedding also is a last hurrah of sorts for Crawford. The town saw its fortunes and profile rise when Bush built his 1,600-acre ranch there. More recently, like the president’s approval ratings, Crawford has fallen on hard times.

….. The White House is being secretive about the ceremony, secretive even by the opaque Bush administration standards.

….. It’s all a far cry from “Jenna and Tonic,” the tabloid sobriquet she earned after two college-era busts for underage drinking. (Ohio University historian Katherine) Jellison said it’s clear Jenna has put some work into improving her public image.

Leanne Italie of the Associated Press (HT Captain Ed at Hot Air) also went to apparent go-to “expert” Jellison, who managed to tie a daughter’s wedding into the Iraq War:

“This is going to be such a different kind of situation,” said Katherine Jellison, an associate professor of history at Ohio University who chronicles the American obsession with marital pomp in her recent book, It’s Our Day.

“Jenna’s father is not running for re-election,” she said. “The frivolity of a big White House wedding in the middle of an unpopular war would have used up what little political capital he has.”

Since all sense of decorum has been abandoned, I hope it’s not too rude to point out that Ms. Jellison has a, uh, unique perspective on weddings, as this Editorial Review of her book, the full title of which is “It’s Our Day: America’s Love Affair With the White Wedding, 1945-2005,” explains (original had no paragraph breaks; bolds are mine):

Love may be the catalyst for the American white wedding, but hosting an elaborate celebration also demonstrates a family’s prosperity and material success, argues Jellison in her compelling economic and social history of how this ritual survived despite the major cultural and political changes of the 1960s and beyond.

Jellison, an associate professor of history at Ohio University, argues that while the white wedding of the 1940s may have celebrated youth, virginity and a patriarchal family structure, Americans have reinterpreted the symbolism of satin and lace: the 21st-century bride evokes the tradition of female-focused celebration and uses the elaborate and costly event as a display of her professional and social success as she marks a life transition.

With chapters on celebrity nuptials, silver-screen I-dos and the latest batch of reality TV brides, Jellison demonstrates how advertisers, media and brides themselves slowly reshaped the white wedding into an act of organized feminism.

Who knew that weddings, of all events, are now celebrations of the sisterhood?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

“Things I‘d Like To Post About Today; But I Don’t Have Any Time ‘4‘”:

• Fabius Maximus delivers a resounding up-to-date debunk (HT Instapundit) of “Peak Oil” (link is to a search on previous related BizzyBlog posts), so I don’t have to.
• From the Useful Reminder Dept. — When people questioned the patriotism of the presidential candidate I irreverently refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters), and he, in his answer, confirmed the validity of their concerns, he turned around and questioned theirs. I thought we weren’t allowed to do that.
• It happened “way back” on Sunday, but Chris Wallace made Howard Dean look like such a fool (because he is), that if you haven’t seen it, you should.
• Oh, how the pro-aborts despise it when they are reminded of what they are sanctioning. Two years ago, a prolife memorial in Northern Kentucky was vandalized. This time, the destruction of a prolife memorial is on tape.
• This story (”10-year-old gives birth in Idaho; Suspected illegal immigrant charged with rape”; HT Stop the ACLU via Ace) made me think of this BizzyBlog post (”The ‘My Culture Made Me Do It’ Excuse for Statutory Rape”) in September of 2006. If the current suspect is indeed illegal and guilty, will he also make the claim that “this type of conduct is legal in his culture”?
• As an equal-opportunity critic: I don’t care that, after several highly-publicized “odds of recession” pronouncements, Alan Greenspan is now changing course, and telling us that “(the) worst of credit crisis (is) over.” He should be keeping his mouth shut, and letting Ben Bernanke do his job. Greenspan should imagine how he would have felt if Paul Volcker had constantly given his opinion after he left the Fed and Greenspan took over.
• Well, of course Code Pink’s witches are resorting to witchcraft.
• A “Why in the bleep do we bother?” moment — “House passes $300 billion housing rescue plan that will allow the government to back loans for struggling homeowners.”