….. the Democrat going up against Sherrod Brown.

I caught the last couple of minutes of Savage’s discussion of Merrill Keiser Jr. It seems that he was reading from this WorldNetDaily item, though it may have been from this blog, which went to the trouble of retyping most of a Sandusky Register article that apparently was not posted on the web.

Say what you will about Mr. Keiser’s views, at least he knew how to go about getting enough signatures to get on the ballot, and probably hasn’t overseen the dumping of raw sewage into the Ohio River — unlike (ahem) this other Democrat candidate.

I just called Time Warner Cincinnati with a question.

After navigating the voicemail maze and turning down the chance for a return phone call, I was told that I would be on hold (give or take a couple of minutes) “between 4 hours 10 minutes and six hours 17 minutes.”

After staying on the phone for about 10 minutes to make sure it wasn’t some kind of dumb glitch, I hung up.

Has anyone ever heard been advised of a possible hold time of that length?

As far as I know, Time Warner is the only cable game in town in Greater Cincinnati. I’ll bet this wouldn’t happen in Columbus (OH), which has two cable companies.

Even if you think a guest worker program is a good idea (I don’t, not as it’s currently planned), you have to be totally divorced from reality not to realize how negative the reaction will be to calling whatever form of identification comes out of it a “Gold Card” (HT Michelle Malkin).

That there is a politically correct sickness at The Associated Press that seems to congenitally prevent it from reporting news that would put anyone who is left-of-center in a bad light is nearly an article of faith.

Todd Manzi at Townhall has the latest proof (bolds are mine) that the belief is justified:

The Associated Press reached a new level of incompetence, and the “news” industry they serve doesn’t seem to care. If you want political opinion, you’ll find it in Associated Press dispatches. If you want news, you might have to read conservative opinion columns.

On February 22nd, Walter Williams, a Townhall.com columnist, scooped the mainstream media. Williams reported that high school teacher Jay Bennish lectured his geography class stating:
1) “[President Bush’s State of the Union Speech] sounds a lot like the things Adolf Hitler used to say.”
2) “Bush is threatening the whole planet.”
3) “[The] U.S. wants to keep the world divided.”
4) “Who is probably the single most violent nation on earth? The United States of America.”
5) “[The U.S. has engaged in] 7,000 terrorist attacks against Cuba.”
6) “Capitalism is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion and at odds with human rights.”

….. On March 2nd, eight days after Williams’ column, The Denver Post covered the story. The Post story carried quotes 6, 1 and 4 listed above. It also linked to a tape of Bennish’s lecture recorded by one of his students.

The same day, Sean Hannity and many other talk radio hosts devoted large portions of their shows to the topic, and they played audio clips of the above quotations.

….. At 2:16 a.m. on March 3rd, the AP issued a dispatch on the Bennish story. Their lead paragraph:

“About 150 high school students walked out of class to protest a decision to put a teacher on leave while they investigate remarks he made about President Bush in class, including that some people compare Bush to Adolf Hitler.”

None of the Bennish remarks were in the AP’s dispatch. By then end of the day, a Google news search of Bennish generated 302 hits, 107 of which were pick-ups of the above dispatch.

The AP incompetently reported the story and positioned it about students protesting a decision to put one of their teachers on leave because of comments he made about President Bush.

….. The AP and the mainstream media control the news. They set the agenda. They determine what will be a story and what will not be a story. They determine how the story will be spun. Nobody is holding them accountable. The MSM would be all over a teacher who made a disagreeable comment about women, gays, minorities or Democrats. But, geography teachers who attempt to indoctrinate their students toward socialism while deriding capitalism get a pass.

In September 2004, John Hinderaker at Powerline, reacting to my exposure of AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven as a political hack who carries water for her husband’s environmentalist causes, and whose husband was John Kerry’s presidential campaign spokesman on environmental issues, wrote this:

The Associated Press has become a very sick organization. If you go to the AP’s website, you find this self-description:

Founded in 1848, The Associated Press is the backbone of the world’s information system serving thousands of daily newspaper, radio, television and online customers with coverage in all media and news in all formats. It is the largest and oldest news organization in the world, serving as a source of news, photos, graphics, audio and video for more than one billion people a day.AP’s mission is to be the essential global news network, providing distinctive news services of the highest quality, reliability and objectivity with reports that are accurate, balanced and informed.

Earth to the Associated Press: you are not high quality; you are not reliable; you are not objective; you are not accurate; you are not balanced; you are not well informed.

The Associated Press is in the same position as CBS News: it must clean house, now, or face a permanent loss of credibility.

The AP obviously hasn’t cleaned house. Hacks like Jennifer Loven still cover the White House while the organization’s credibility continues to erode. The AP is no longer entitled to any presumption of accuracy, balance, or credibility.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

________________________

UPDATE: A previous BizzyBlog post on Jennifer Loven’s bias is here.

In a must-save-to-the-hard-drive piece, Popular Mechanics has done an incredible job of investigating and documenting the truth about the handling of Hurrican Katrina.

It starts thusly:

Now What? The Lessons of Katrina

GOVERNMENT RESPONDED RAPIDLY
MYTH: “The aftermath of Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.”–Aaron Broussard, president, Jefferson Parish, La., Meet the Press, NBC, Sept. 4, 2005

REALITY: Bumbling by top disaster-management officials fueled a perception of general inaction, one that was compounded by impassioned news anchors. In fact, the response to Hurricane Katrina was by far the largest–and fastest-rescue effort in U.S. history, with nearly 100,000 emergency personnel arriving on the scene within three days of the storm’s landfall.

It gets better from there. Read the whole thing.

Who would have thought when I made this suggestion back in October that the Democratic side of the 6th District congressional race in Ohio would become so, uh, entertaining?

S.O.B. Alliance member Lincoln Logs has been all over the story of Democratic frontrunner Charlie Wilson’s petition debacle, where Wilson failed to obtain enough signatures from people who actually live in the 6th District, forcing him to campaign as a write-in on the Democratic side. Linc’s latest post notes that The Big Cahuna himself, Rush Limbaugh, has picked up the story of “Ohio 6th Petitiongate.”

Despite the petitions problems, observers still believed that Wilson, who is the preferred candidate of the Ohio Democratic Party, will still prevail in the Democratic primary, even as a write-in.

Note that “believed” is past tense. Confidence in Charlie Wilson has to be quite shaken now (HT - no kidding - Drudge; oops, I also just caught the fact that Lincoln Logs posted on the story today), because of a past problem that may make Petitiongate look like child’s play (bolds are mine):

The National Republican Congressional Committee is wasting no time targeting Charles A. Wilson Jr., a Democratic write-in candidate for the 6th Congressional District, one of the few open U.S. House seats in the country.

Wilson’s “questionable past” includes his concerns about how the dumping of raw sewage into the Ohio River more than a decade ago would impact his political career, said Ed Patru, an NRCC spokesman.

Wilson, of St. Clairsville, a state senator, is running as a Democratic write-in candidate for the 6th Congressional District after failing to get the required 50 valid signatures from registered voters on his nominating petitions to be on the May Democratic primary ballot.

There are two Democrats whose names will appear on the ballot. But Wilson is expected to spend whatever amount of money it takes to win the primary and has the support of the Ohio Democratic Party.

The nominating petition debacle is no surprise when you consider Wilson’s past, Patru said.

“He has a record that sends shivers down the spine of environmentalists and parents,” he said.

Specifically, Patru points to Wilson’s tenure on the Eastern Ohio Regional Wastewater Authority in his home county of Belmont from 1985 to 1996.

Wilson and others acknowledge that the authority dumped raw sewage into the Ohio River during that time. Until 1964, the county didn’t treat its sewage.

Wilson said the dumping occurred during heavy rainfalls. But David Charvat, the authority’s superintendent from July 1994 to September 1995, disagrees.

Fired in September 1995, Charvat successfully sued the authority, saying he was wrongfully terminated because he discovered the raw sewage problems and other violations, and his concerns fell on deaf ears when he informed the board.

In court documents, Charvat says he discovered that an authority employee cross-connected the sewer plant system with the public water supply, leading to the raw sewage problem. Also, Charvat said in court documents that after Wilson and the rest of the board was informed, the agency didn’t report the violation to the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency.

The board contended Charvat was fired over poor job performance. Wilson, who headed the board at the time, abstained from the vote to fire Charvat but couldn’t remember why he did so. Court records state Wilson didn’t vote because he testified at a hearing to terminate Charvat.

An Ohio Environmental Protection Agency investigation showed that the plant illegally dumped sewage into the river in the early to mid-1990s, according to a Jan. 23, 1996, article in the Dayton Daily News.

….. Charvat recorded a conversation he had with Wilson at the time without Wilson’s knowledge. Wilson’s statement from that conversation is in the administrative law judge’s decision and a copy of it used in a radio commercial by a political opponent of Wilson in 1996 was provided to The Vindicator.

On the tape, Wilson, who used a vulgar term twice, says, “This has Pandora’s box written all over it. … I’m gonna take a fall because of this. … I can’t have my future on the line over the sewer authority. I can’t do that. I won’t do it that way.”

When recently asked about the statement, Wilson didn’t remember saying it.

Wilson said the tape-recorded statement has been used against him every time he’s run for office. He ran and won Ohio House races in 1996, 1998, 2000 and 2002, and was elected to the Ohio Senate in 2004.

….. Patru said the other campaigns using this issue against Wilson were ineffective because they were “Kmart blue-light special, low-budget efforts. National Republicans will drive this message home so [Wilson’s] embarrassed to show his face in public. The facts are very difficult to ignore. Politicians who poison public waters and try to cover it up will be held responsible.”

Suggestion to Ohio Democrats — Find a different horse to ride, preferably one of the two who knew how to get 50 valid signatures for ballot placement, and whose past doesn’t, uh, stink.
________________________

UPDATE: Lincoln Logs likes my last sentence, but I like this sentence from his “Mainstream” post better — “Wilson’s real worry about reporting the illegal dumping isn’t the health and welfare of the people in the Sixth District, but rather himself and his political career.” Does that remind you of someone else who wanted to maintain his “political viability” (4th-to-last paragraph at link)?

Free Links:

• Isn’t this one of the signs of the Apocalypse? The Pope has an iPod (HT S.O.B. Alliance member Large Bill). It was “presented to the Pope on Friday by a group of Vatican Radio employees, according to the Catholic News Service.” He got his later than Queen Elizabeth II, who bought one with more memory than the Pope’s last year.
• This is either really offensive or an urban legend — I vote urban legend, but I can’t be too sure (HT Schneier Security Blog). The story is that by making a $6,500 payment against their credit card balance, a couple triggered some sort of red flag that caused the bank to contact the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who would not release the funds and permit the payment to be credited until whatever the “threat alert” that payment caused was lifted.See for yourself; if you’ve always wanted a copy of your own, the Patriot Act as passed by the House in October of 2001 is here, and the sections supposedly giving DHS jurisdiction are 351 and 352. Of course, there have been amendments to the law and regulations issued since then — Happy hunting.
• French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin wants to prevent privatization (backup link here; HT the on-hiatus EU Rota) of the government-owned electricity company — Nothing like being at least 20 years behind Margartet Thatcher’s UK.
• The Social Security number disclosure mess in Ohio isn’t Ken Blackwell’s fault (HT NixGuy). Blackwell is currently Secretary of State and is running for governor as a Republican, so of course what was revealed was opportunistically pounced upon by his opponents:
  

  Secretary of State Ken Blackwell was accused last week of helping criminals and putting certain Ohio business people at risk by including their Social Security numbers in filings available to the public. The charge is baseless. Blackwell followed the law when he released Uniform Commercial Code Forms, which are used to track debt information for businesses. He cannot be faulted for that.

  There is a problem with the law, however. It should be changed to require the redaction of Social Security numbers from UCC forms. The basic numerical DNA of a citizen should not be available for anyone to see on the secretary of state’s Web site.

  No kidding.

• Pension Tension (HT Don Luskin at PoorAndStupid.com) — The actuarial liabilities of public pensions, even excluding Social Security, probably dwarf those of private-sector companies:
  

  Already facing deficits of more than $110 billion, public-employee pension plans in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the state have overestimated future investment income in a move that could imperil the systems and require taxpayer bailouts, former Mayor Richard Riordan and other financial experts warn.

  Pension systems in California are operating on assumptions of a 7.5 percent to 8.5 percent annual return on investment portfolios, but investment experts say historical trends suggest stocks will increase by only 6 percent to 7 percent annually.

  If you lower the assumed rate of return, you necessarily have to assume that more taxpayer money will be required to meet pension obligations. Or (heaven forbid), you have to start renegotiating overly generous pension promises that should not have been made in the first place, while doing your best not to impact people who are roughly age 50 and older who have might have begun planning on the promises made.

  The article is a bit incomplete; an investment of all funds in stocks would probably yield the 7.5% - 8.5% the funds appear to be assuming, but prudent pension fund management usually dictates that a portfolio should have at least some more conservative investments, such as bonds and money-market funds, included in the mix. Since that should be the case, an assumption of 6% to 7% is more reasonable.

  The bottom line is that public pension managers and their plan sponsors (i.e., the cities, counties, and the state) had better face up to the problem, which grows worse with each passing day.

The Bar Mitzvah part of the story, while remarkable, pales in comparison to the story of how Herman Rosenblat met his wife (HT Good News Blog):

Postponed 63 Years: A Survivor’s Bar Mitzvah
MINEOLA, NY - Monday, February 27, 2006
Herman Rosenblat’s bar mitzvah was 63 years late and not a moment too soon.

A survivor of the Holocaust, Rosenblat turned thirteen in a Nazi concentration camp. He never had a bar mitzvah, never put on tefillin, until this month when Chabad of Mineola, NY, hosted a ceremony in his honor. A feel good moment on its own, the atmosphere at the Rosenblat bar mitzva turned electric when he told the story of how he met his wife. Then Rosenblat’s miraculous life edged a few more degrees toward full circle when the uplifting news of the Chabad of Mineola event went round the world.

In fact, Rosenblat was up in Mineola from his North Miami Beach home to visit his daughter and tell his story for a TV news segment featured on a February 14th broadcast. The producer, a friend of Chabad of Mineola, convinced Rabbi Anchelle Perl to ask Rosenblat to speak at the synagogue. During their conversation, Rabbi Perl discovered that Rosenblat, trying to rebuild his life after the war, had never had a bar mitzvah. “The Rebbe told us that if something good comes to mind, do it right away,” said Rabbi Perl. Within two days, Rabbi Perl arranged for a talit and pair of tefillin for Rosenblat, food, flowers, music, and he alerted his congregation and the media of the event. “People canceled dentist appointments to be here. Those who didn’t are sorry they missed out.”The remorse comes from missing a story that has “Divine providence dripping from every stage,” said Rabbi Perl.

Rosenblat met his wife Roma in a concentration camp, when he was twelve and she was nine and hiding with Aryan papers. One night Rosenblat’s mother, who had been murdered by the Nazis, came to him in a dream and said, “Son, I am sending you an angel.” Days later a girl showed up on the other side of the fence. He asked her for some food. She took out an apple from her warm jacket, and threw it over the fence. “She was feeding my soul,” Rosenblat said.

Night after night, the girl returned with bread and apples, keeping Rosenblat alive for six, seven months. Then terrible news arrived. Rosenblat was to be transported to a death camp. He told the girl not to bother coming anymore. Years later, after escaping certain death – an amazing story unto itself - immigrating to America, enlisting in the U.S. army during the Korean War and being shipped off to Italy, Rosenblat fell in love. But his brothers said, “You left single, come home single.” For some reason, he listened. On a blind date at Coney Island, Rosenblat was making small talk, sharing his wartime experiences. His date spoke of a boy she fed at a concentration camp fence.

“Did the boy tell you one day not to come back?”

“Yes.”

“That was me!” Shocked, exhilarated, certain, Rosenblat told the young lady. ”Now that I found you, I’m not going to ever let you go” and proposed marriage right there. The actual courtship lasted six months more. Herman and Roma Rosenblat married and went on to raise two children, Kenneth and Renee.

….. After living a life that has been admixed with tragedy, triumph, loss and love, what did becoming a bar mitzvah add to Rosenblat’s life? “The reason I went for the bar mitzvah is I felt I am doing something back for my mother and my father that was important to them,” he said.

Before Rosenblat’s father died of typhus in a Nazi ghetto, he bade his son to remember two things: “Don’t hold a grudge in your heart. Tolerate everyone.” When Rosenblat turned from the Torah to face the media – CNN, the Associated Press and Long Island Newsday among them, he used the moment to convey his father’s message. “Do not hate,” if you do “you are hating yourself and you are miserable all your life.” The cameras and print media ate it up.

This is not Rosenblat’s first encounter with media. Oprah Winfrey hosted the couple on her show. Their story was printed in Chicken Soup for the Couple’s Soul. Atlantic Alliance pictures captured Rosenblat’s memoirs in a film “The Fence,” with Hugh Grant’s cousin playing young Herman, which has not yet been released.

The bar mitzvah was carried everywhere from Florida’s Sun Sentinel to Chicago’s NBC 5. Rosenblat remains philosophical about all the attention. “Because there is so much negativity in this world, if something good happens everyone wants to hear about it.”