Got busy with business-related matters requiring attention this morning, and dragged into the afternoon under the weather with a constitutional matter unrelated to our founding documents.

The Romney-related post I had hoped to get to will have to wait until tomorrow.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Regional and State Unemployment Data today.

I’m going to concentrate on the seasonally adjusted unemployment rates, because summertime is when the not seasonally adjusted rates jump up and then down at rates that vary widely in different states.

Biggest trends:
- Continued deterioration in California (6.9%, up from 6.8% in May).
- Accelerating problems in Illinois and Ohio.
- In general, how skewed things are.

Skewed? The national unemployment rate is 5.5%, but only 11 states plus DC have unemployment rates above 6% (AK, 6.8%; CA, 6.9%; DC, 6.4%; IL, 6.8%; KY, 6.3%, MI, 8.5%; MS, 6.9%; NV, 6.4%, OH, 6.6%; RI, 7.5%; TN, 6.5%). Did I say that seven of those states have Democratic governors, and an eighth (California) might as well? Take away Cali, the Wolverine State, and the Land of Lincoln (discussed below), and the national unemployment rate would be 5.1%:

Specific comments:

• Ohio has gone from 5.6% to 6.6% in two months. This would not be Bob Taft’s or even George Bush’s fault. Please, Barack, pick Ted Strickland for Veep.
• Ohio’s decline is exceeded only by Barack Obama’s Illinois, which has shot up from 5.3% to 6.8% in two months, from slightly above the then-national average to 5th highest in the nation. Snarky bark: Not even Obama’s move of DNC operations to Chicago, or an Obama paid campaign staff of 2,000 (five times larger than George Bush’s in 2004) could stem the tide.
• Notable improvements: Missouri (down 0.3% to 5.7%); Louisiana (down 0.2% to 3.8%); Florida (down 0.1% to 5.5%, notable because it put a stop to what had been a 1.6% increase during the past year).

Yours truly was interviewed earlier this week by Ed Driscoll of EdDriscoll.com and Pajamas Media for its latest PJM Political podcast. The topic was the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.

That interview is the final segment of the PJM podcast that can be found here. The segment isn’t mentioned in the intro by Steve Green of VodkaPundit, but it’s there at about the 46-minute mark.

The program was broadcast yesterday on XM Satellite Radio, specifically XM Channel #130, POTUS ‘08 (thanks to Ben Keeler for asking). I’ll have to get news about future interviews up a bit more timely.

Note: This post was carried forward from early this morning.

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After the firestorm that erupted Saturday over the Associated Press’s classless story on the death of former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, I was hoping that the possibly-chastened wire service could get through its coverage of his funeral without getting in any gratuitous digs.

In that horrid Saturday story (saved here for fair use purposes in case AP ever takes it down; blogged at NewsBusters and BizzyBlog), the AP’s Douglass K. Daniel, with the assistance of longtime Bush basher Jennifer Loven, felt it necessary, within hours of Snow’s passing, to characterize him as “not always (having) a command of the facts,” questioning reporters’ motives “as if he were starring in a TV show broadcast live from the West Wing,” and turning his briefings into “personality-driven media event(s) short on facts and long on confrontation.” In a further descent into tastelessness, they felt it necessary to tell us what Snow’s salary at the White House was — something I don’t believe I have ever seen written in a story on anyone else’s death.

Covering Snow’s funeral Thursday, AP reporter Ben Feller stayed classy almost to the end. But then he apparently couldn’t help himself, and followed the execrable example of his Saturday predecessors in his story’s third-last paragraph.

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Note: This column appeared at Pajamas Media on Wednesday under the title “Big Brother Doesn’t Want You Eating Burgers in LA.”

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In a proposal that is stunning in both its ignorance and arrogance, a South-Central Los Angeles politician wants to place a moratorium on the construction of new fast-food restaurants in her area.

What is unfortunately not nearly as surprising is how Washington Post reporter Karl Vick let some huge, uh, whoppers go by without challenge when he covered this development.

Here how Vick’s story, as carried at Boston.com, begins (HT Hot Air Headlines; bolds are mine):

Citing alarming rates of childhood obesity and a poverty of healthful eating choices, a city councilor is pushing for a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South-Central Los Angeles.

“Some people will say, ‘Well, people just don’t have to eat it,’ ” said Jan Perry, the Democrat who represents the city’s overwhelmingly African-American and Latino District 9. “But the fact of the matter is, what if you have no other choices?”

The proposed ordinance, which is awaiting a committee hearing, takes a page from boutique communities that turn up their noses at franchises.

It is supported by nutritionists, frustrated residents, and community activists who call restrictive zoning an appropriate response to “food apartheid.”

You would think that there are no grocery stores in South-Central offering all manner of nutritional options that often cost less per meal than fast food. Quite the contrary: Web searches on two chains I’m aware of in the area reveal that there are ten Ralph’s or Food4less stores within four miles of the address of the advocacy group whose Executive Director is quoted in the article, and at least three Vons within a reasonable distance of its zip code. When did eating store-bought food at home become a nonviable option?

Here are some relevant points to chew on:
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From Manitoba and Nova Scotia:

Manitoba man, N.S. woman connect after her stem cell donation cured his cancer

Fri. Jul 4 - 6:02 PM

A 61-year-old Manitoba beef farmer is heading east of Ontario for the first time in his life, travelling to Nova Scotia this weekend for the wedding of the young woman who saved his life — before they ever met.

The story begins in 2005, when Alvin Ross was diagnosed with Stage 4 leukemia. He was given only a few years to live, if that.

“I laughed at (the doctor),” Mr. Ross said Tuesday over the phone from his home in Fisher Branch, north of Winnipeg.

“I’m a Christian. . . . I know doctors do the best they can to help us. I just felt my life was in the hands of God. I just kind of found it amusing, I guess.”

Chemotherapy and other treatments followed, sapping the strength of the big, soft-spoken farmer. His spleen became swollen and his legs wobbled after a few steps.

He couldn’t sleep. He got mad. He wanted to fight people.

The medication left Mr. Ross unable to sweat. He could feel the poison building in his body.

“I could just kind of feel death all over me,” he recalled. “I knew it wouldn’t be long.”

After weeks of treatment, a specialist suggested that Mr. Ross consider a stem cell transplant.

Across the country, in Cole Harbour, an 18-year-old girl was donating blood with her fire captain father. Amanda Carpenter volunteered for a stem cell test as well. Her father Lorne was one year over the cut-off age.

“To me it wasn’t a big decision,” Ms. Carpenter, now 21, said Thursday.

“If you had the opportunity to help somebody, why wouldn’t you?”

Two days later she was told her stem cells might be needed. Within a month she knew they were a perfect match for someone, somewhere. Regulations meant she couldn’t know who the person was.

Ms. Carpenter went to the hospital five hours a day for two days. She was injected with a drug to make her body produce extra stem cells. Those cells were filtered out of her blood and shipped to Manitoba.

Mr. Ross said his bone marrow had to be completely killed off before the transplant, meaning more chemo. Sores formed in his mouth and stomach. His nose bled. Food smelled like plastic.

Finally, Ms. Carpenter’s stem cells were fed through a dialysis-like machine directly into the veins of Mr. Ross’s chest.

It worked. The six-foot-two, 240-pound farmer had been saved by a five-foot-four, 110-pound teenager on the other side of the country. He’s still cancer-free.

Ms. Carpenter was told the transplant had worked, but she had to wait a year to find out whose life she had saved. Both Ms. Carpenter and Mr. Ross agreed to release identities, addresses and phone numbers.

“(I wanted) to have more of a connection to the donation, because to me it was just five needles and two days in a hospital,” she said.

“To me it came as a bit of a shock,” Mr. Ross said. “They had told me they would try to find some old guy my age and my size.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.