Fox results link; ABC results link.

12:05 a.m. — Holy moly. With 84% counted, Hillary is up 66.8 - 26.0 - 7.2 over Obama and Edwards.

Forty. One. Points.

That is almost without doubt the most lopsided loss by an alleged presumptive nominee in all of American history.

Tomorrow morning’s relentless Old Media spin will be “big freaking deal.” Despite that, you’d better believe Mountaineer State Democrats have sent a message to their party that it isn’t over, and it shouldn’t be over. My prediction as to how many times you’ll hear the actual vote percentages read: Absolutely zero.

Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot says this:

Obama received glowing, it’s-over-he-is-the-nominee coverage for the past six days, and that amounted to nothing in West Virginia. One has to wonder if the giddy praise and tingling feelings jolting up the legs of the Chris Matthewses, Keith Olbermanns and the cable news “Wright-free zones” of the world amounts to a hill of beans out in Exurban America.

Actually Jim, the Old Media favoritism may have been worse than nothing, as it may have created a backlash.

If you assume that WV’s 3.5% African-American population made up only 5% of the Dem primary electorate (it was probably closer to 6%), and that African-Americans voted 90% for Obama (it was 91% in NC and 90% in IN last week), my calcs indicate that Obama got an unfathomable (I can’t believe I’m typing this) 22.5% of the non-African-American DEMOCRATIC vote. Tweak the numbers to 6% of the turnout and 90.5% of the vote — both realistic possibilities — and it drops to 21.7%. I’ll finalize this in the morning when 99% - 100% of the ballots are counted.

But, of course, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Rezko, et al don’t matter (/sarc).

10:30 p.m. — Hillary is up 65-28-7 over Obama and Edwards with 56% counted. What’s stunning to me is how a state that was reliably Democratic, except in GOP blowouts (For Clinton in 1992 by 13%, in 1996 by 15%; for Dukakis in 1988 by 5%; for Carter in 1980 by 4%, won in 1976 by Carter) is now considered a total “who cares?” write-off by Obama Democrats. In 2000, Bush got only 52% of the vote, but in 2004, he got 56%. All of this has occurred while the state’s demographic makeup has, I believe, not changed that much.

Will be back at about midnight …..

10:20 p.m. — Fox has more complete results, and shows that Edwards is getting the other 7%. If it’s a protest vote, which one is it a protest against?

9:40 p.m. — Clinton is up 63%-30% on Obama with 23% of precincts counted. Who in the heck is getting the other 7%?

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I’m saving my posts on Wright, Obama, and Trumpet Newsmagazine until tomorrow, so the West Virginia primary will be out of the way when they post.

Mrs. Clinton is expected to win in a landslide, and Old Media says it will mean nothing — just like the fact that Obama couldn’t get more than about 35% and 41% of the non-African-American Democratic vote last week in North Carolina and next-door Indiana, respectively, mean nothing.

Uh-huh.

As explained previously, this is a near-dead thread because Democratic Party rules enable even pledged delegates to change their minds at the August Democratic Convention.

I’ll check in at about 9:30 to see how much has been counted, and then again when the large majority of ballots are in.

How do you write an article about Uncle Sam’s April financial results without telling readers how much money came in and went out — especially if what came in was an all-time record?

Yesterday and today, many journalists have shown us how. Two of them are Martin Crutsinger of the Associated Press and Michael M. Phillips of the Wall Street Journal.

Crutsinger’s AP report actually made it appear as if collections is the problem area. In fact, as you will eventually see below, April’s result had nothing to do with “dampening” revenue growth, and everything to do with exploding spending.

Crutsinger began as follows:

Federal government surplus for April shrinks

The federal government ran a budget surplus of $159.3 billion in April, smaller than a year ago.

The Treasury Department reported Monday that the budget surplus for April was 10.4 percent lower than in April 2007.

The government traditionally runs a surplus in April, the month that tax returns are due. However, the weak economy has been dampening growth in revenues this year.

Crutsinger avoided mentioning April’s all-time record tax collections (April 2007 was the previous record), and the potential implications:

As I wrote on April 29 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), when it first became clear that a record month for federal receipts was in the making, one key element of this supply-side stunner of a result may be a positive leading economic indicator:

The unexpected increase in this not-withheld category consists mostly of final payments that accompany individual 1040s for 2007, plus first-quarter 2008 estimated payments. The increase may not only reflect that entrepreneurs and the self-employed had pretty decent years in 2007, but that many of them are thinking, in the face of relentless media harping to the contrary, that 2008 will be at least as profitable.

For some reason, the WSJ’s Phillips focused this morning on one line item that makes up less than 15% of total receipts, saved the really good receipts news for his fifth paragraph, and didn’t recognize just how good it was:

U.S. Receives Less From Corporate Taxes

With turmoil rocking financial markets and housing woes slowing the economy, corporate tax revenues are falling and leaving big holes in the federal budget.

The Treasury Department reported Monday that corporate income-tax revenue over the first seven months of the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, was $171.1 billion, 14.7% lower than during the same period a year earlier. Meantime, government outlays rose 7.3%, to $1.7 trillion, and the federal deficit ballooned to $152 billion, 88% higher than the same period last fiscal year.

….. One slight bright spot is that while growth in revenue from individual income taxes has slowed, it has held up better than expected. That includes taxes paid by individuals on April 15, which reflect economic activity in calendar 2007, and those withheld monthly by employers, which reflect current business trends. Overall individual income-tax receipts reached $748 billion over the first seven months of fiscal 2008, up 6% from the period in fiscal 2007.

The decline in corporate tax collections, using Phillips’s 14.7% decrease, is about $29 billion. His “slight bright spot” from individual taxes, using his reported 6% increase, is over $42 billion. As you can see from the table above, the not-withheld portion of those collections, which is heavily influenced by tax payments from entrepreneurs, partnerships, and Sub-S corporations, was up $33 billion in April alone. For the first seven months of this year, those receipts (excluding refunds, which have not changed in an amount material to the gross collection numbers) are up by 12.3% over fiscal 2007.

(To verify, go to the Daily Treasury Statements for April 30, 2008 and April 30, 2007. Then compare the totals of the line item of the same description, plus a later, much smaller item called “Individual Income Taxes.” April 2008’s total is $357.6 billion [$342.0 + $15.6]; April 2007’s is $318.3 billion [$306.1 + 12.3]. $357.6 billion is 12.3% greater than $318.3 billion.)

As for the deficit, here is the clearly gloomy comparative news for the month of April and year-to-date (source: April 2008 Monthly Treasury Statement):

AP’s Crutsinger avoided mentioning spending, where Uncle Sam’s problem so obviously lies, until the seventh of his eight paragraphs. This later placement increases the likelihood that the spending news won’t appear at all in many edited reports at AP-subscribing publications.

To his credit, Phillips got spending into his second paragraph, but “somehow” never got around to enumerating April’s or fiscal 2008’s receipts.

Interestingly, if you follow the WSJ link from a Google News search on “treasury receipts” (not in quotes) done at about 10 a.m., you end up at Phillips’s article, which does not contain the text relating to receipts and disbursements shown at the search result (link not provided, as results on the same search done now may be different):

This search result, obtained by clicking on the “all 135 articles” link pictured above, and then viewing results “with duplicates included,” clearly shows that Crutsinger’s narrative dominated the coverage of yesterday’s Treasury report.

This would explain why you probably haven’t seen or heard anyone mentioning the April collections record.

Mission accomplished, eh Martin?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.