D**n, this is awful:

Cornell McCleary, a community activist and businessman who hosted a local AM radio talk show and once ran for Columbus City Council, died today at his home.

McCleary, 55, had battled heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes for several years, and had been in declining health for several months, his sister Karen McCleary, said.

Confined to his East Side home, he continued to work at his business, Pro-Private Police Training Academy, and was busy with his website and blog: American-experience.us.

A longtime critic of Mayor Michael B. Coleman, McCleary had posted comments in recent days critical of the decision to demolish Columbus City Center. McCleary had wanted the city to subsidize the relocation of businesses from poorer communities into a new center named Columbus International Unity Center.

He ran unsuccessfully for Columbus City Council as a Republican in 2001.

He hosted a radio show on 610 AM WTVN for eight years, ending in March 2006.

Karen McCleary called her older brother the anchor of the family.

“He maintained a positive attitude and was very optimistic about his future,” she said. “He had not intended to give up.”

The Rev. John Coats II recalled McCleary as an opponent of Coleman’s policies, but one who would hug the mayor when he saw him.

“He was playful, but he could be the most focused person I have every known,” Coats said. …..

I met Cornell about 2-1/2 years ago (where does the time go?).

There are some people you need to meet and talk shop with only once to know that they “get it.” Cornell McCleary was one such person.

I look forward to seeing what he did to set things straight up there in the community of saints when the time comes.

Just received this e-mail from CNN:

Underlying stories are here for retail sales, which economists expected to decrease by 0.8%, and here for first-time jobless claims, which fell by a lot less than expected.

Better pass that mislabeled “stimulus” package before too many people find out.

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UPDATE: The home-price drop that is supposedly why stocks are down isn’t “news.” The markets basically knew that result already. Take your pick for the real reason: Ongoing pessimism in the wake of Geithner the goof; realities of the larger impact of the mislabeled “stimulus” bill’s apparently imminent passage; or (this is my pick) China’s negative noises.

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• To many, Bob Casey’s vote against rescinding the pro-abortion “Mexico City Policy,” and his bishop’s statement (HT Catholic News Agency) in reaction to that vote, end the argument over whether the Pennsylvania Senator is prolife. Of course he (unlike his heroic late father, who must be spinning in his grave) is not prolife, even though he posed as prolife during the 2006 election campaign. The vote involved merely confirms the obvious. As I noted last summer, the argument over whether Casey is prolife ended when he endorsed radically antilife Barack Obama for president.
• Two of the key principals at Milberg Weiss, convicted criminals Melvyn Weiss and Bill Lerach, that notorious law firm of public-company shakedown artists and heavy contributors to the tort lawyer-friendly Democratic Party, lost money with Bernie Madoff. Words cannot express how little I regret their losses.
• Good find, from Patrick Poole in an e-mail — “Columbus Police Kick CAIR to the Curb.” Now if only Ted Strickland would do the same, instead of giving the organization legitimacy by yukking it up at celebratory banquets. Reinforcement: A Google News archive search on “Strickland criticizes CAIR” without quotes from January 1, 2007 through December 31, 2008 comes up empty.
• I recommend that Jonah Goldberg amend this 2006 post at the Corner giving Hugh Hewitt and others for their support of mislabeled “stimulus”-supporting Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in 2004′s GOP Senatorial Primary.
• Here’s a strong argument that the Obama administration’s Census power grab is unconstitutional.
• Apparently the Obama-driven idea of partying down to show support for the mislabeled “stimulus” bill this past weekend wasn’t that stimulating. Obama’s peeps won’t find this account of what happened at one party very stimulating either.
• Meant to get to this sooner — To the extent any of Ohio Governor Ted Strickland’s 120 proposed fee increases that are supposed to raise $236 million exceed the cost of providing the services involved, they are tax increases. The linked article also says that “The budget as proposed grows by an estimated 4.4 percent. That growth rate is considered historically slow.” Regardless of history, that growth rate is at least a few percentage points higher than it should be.

From Baldwin Wallace College’s web site, posted in early February:

A former teacher of mathematics and German in the Cleveland City Schools, who wanted to be able to thank her alma mater for the opportunities and preparation it provided her, has left more than $2 million to Baldwin-Wallace College.

Laura Bickimer of Cleveland, who never received an annual salary of more than $40,000, died April 7, 2008.  The school received the final distribution this week on a $2,155,600 estate gift that will be used for scholarships and facility enhancements.

Thomas Konkoly ’68, director of development for gift planning, said that she lived frugally and invested wisely. After retiring in 1972 she continued to fill her days with learning and giving to others. “I try each day to do some act of kindness or have some thoughtful communication that will bring happiness or perhaps enlightenment of solace to someone,” she wrote.

Ms. Bickimer grew up in Cleveland and earned an academic scholarship to attend Baldwin-Wallace.  She was valedictorian when she graduated in 1936.  She taught at John Marshall High School (1938-58) and Carl Shuler and Newton D. Baker junior high schools before retiring in 1972.

“B-W taught me more than subject material,” she said on a reunion questionnaire in 2001.  “It molded my philosophy, taught me appreciation for the finer things, and gave me depth, greater sensitivity, and religious insight that shaped my thinking and attitude toward God and man.”

She was the only recipient of the first Ford Foundation Fellowship of Teachers of Cleveland in 1952.  The yearlong sabbatical allowed her to study international education in 14 European countries and enriched her teaching for the next two decades.

When establishing a scholarship at B-W in 2005, she said, “My main goal is to repay B-W for my fine college education.  Inasmuch as one never climbs the ladder of success alone, I pay homage to the schools and good teachers who inspired me, to my supportive parents, and God who always fortifies me.  To them I attribute my appreciation for the best things that life has offered me.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Well, this sports feat is one for the record books.

Not as a legitimate accomplishment, mind you. No, this story is a leading candidate to win the “Biggest Sports Hoax Ever Swallowed by a Wire Service” prize.

Danica Coto of the Associated Press got duped into believing that 56 year-old Jennifer Figge had completed a 2,100-mile swim across the Atlantic Ocean in a jaw-dropping 25 days (HT to JammieWearingFool via Hot Air Headlines):

56-year-old becomes first woman to swim Atlantic
Feb 8, 12:52 pm EST

Jennifer Figge pressed her toes into the Caribbean sand, exhilarated and exhausted as she touched land this week for the first time in almost a month.

Reaching a beach in Trinidad, she became the first woman on record to swim across the Atlantic Ocean — a dream she’d had since the early 1960s, when a stormy trans-Atlantic flight got her thinking she could don a life vest and swim the rest of the way if needed.

The 56-year-old left the Cape Verde Islands off Africa’s western coast on Jan. 12, swimming about 2,100 miles (3,380 kilometers) through strong winds and waves of up to 30 feet (9 meters).

….. “I was never scared,” Figge said. “Looking back, I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can always swim in a pool.”

….. Figge woke most days around 7 a.m., eating pasta and baked potatoes while she and the crew assessed the weather. Her longest stint in the water was about eight hours, and her shortest was 21 minutes. Crew members would throw bottles of energy drinks as she swam; if the seas were too rough, divers would deliver them in person. At night she ate meat, fish and peanut butter, replenishing the estimated 8,000 calories she burned a day.

….. Figge arrived on Trinidad’s Chacachacare Island, an abandoned leper colony, on Feb. 5 at 5:20 p.m.

Chris Chase at the Fourth-Place Medal sports blog pointed out earlier today that there were just a few problems with the story:

….. Cape Verde is at least 2,400 miles, not 2,100, from Trinidad.  And the African islands are about 500 miles off the western coast of the continent, meaning Figge had a huge head start on her trip across the Atlantic. (It’d be like somebody saying they ran across America after starting in Cincinnati.)

Those are trivial though. The real issue stemmed from the fact that swimming 2,100 miles in 25 days is impossible. (Some newspapers picked up on this.) It’s infinitely more impossible when somebody only spends 21 minutes swimming during one of those 25 days. Michael Phelps swimming his fastest would take about 20 days to cover that distance. And that’s his fastest pace, sustained for three weeks, without ever stopping. Impossible.

Yet, somehow, the AP ran the story even though a few seconds of thought and a pocket calculator was enough to disprove it.

AP issued a correction Tuesday:

In stories on Feb. 1, 7 and 8, about Jennifer Figge’s long-distance swim in the Atlantic, The Associated Press reported erroneously that she had swum across the ocean. Figge swam only a fraction of the 2,100-mile journey. The rest of the time, she rested on her crew’s westward-sailing catamaran. Her spokesman, David Higdon, told The AP on Tuesday that her total swimming distance has not been calculated yet, but that due to ocean hazards including inclement weather, he estimates she swam about 250 miles.

I would personally feel better if somone would re-check that stimulus bill that is currently making its way through Congress. I’m concerned that it might involve spending $8 trillion, instead of the somewhat under $1 trillion the AP and the rest of the press have been reporting.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Lost in the overall cratering in the stock market yesterday in reaction to Tim Geithner’s awful “soiled the bed” TARP II presentation yesterday — New York Times Company stock closed at $4.23. As of 3:30 PM today, the stock was up 12 cents.

Yesterday’s close is the stock’s lowest point since the company went public in July 1986 (down over 50% in real terms):

At yesterday’s close, the company was worth just over $600 million, down from over $800 million less than three months ago.

That’s probably less than the value of its stake in the Boston Red Sox (perhaps $150 million) and its Manhattan headquarters building (Business Week estimated it was worth $750 million after taxes in July of last year; even with a horrid real estate market, there’s little chance it’s worth less than $500 million).

This means that the Times Company would have to pay someone to take the Times, the Boston Media Group (including the Boston Globe), and About.com off its hands.

We’re supposed to believe that the Times’s non-stop Bush-bashing that begin in earnest in mid-2002 as that administration made its case for invading Iraq “just so happened” to coincide with the stock’s fall from its all-time high to its current all-time low, and had no actual influence on the stock’s dive:

We’re also supposed to believe that the stock’s loss of over 75% of it value since mid-September 2008 only relates to economic conditions, and can’t possibly have anything to do with its over-the-top Barack Obama cheerleading, cover-ups, and apologetics.

Uh huh.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Commenter #1 claims that the following graph for NewsCorp shows that it “has fared just as poorly” as the New York Times Company:

NYT is at an alltime low, while Newscorp is currently at about twice its alltime low.

Newscorp is about 80% off of its 2000 peak, and well above its IPO debut. NYT is down well over 90% from its 2002 peak, and is at about 70% below its IPO debut.

Newscorp grew in value from 2002-2007 as its New York Post increased its subscriber base and Fox News’s domination of cable news continued and its fair and balanced approach drew more fans. NYT stock consistently fell during that period.

Other than all of that, Newscorp stock “has fared just as poorly” as NYT stock (/sarcasm).

Commenter #1 is clearly in need of vision correction, over and above a major dose of economic truth serum.

Barack Obama, on February 6:

You’ve got some economists and some folks who think they’re economists. By the way, these days everybody thinks they’re economists.

Actually, we’re not all economists, but we’ve had to live in his and his party’s POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy for the past eight months. Given that, we are all at least entitled to our own thoughts and fact-based assertions. Don’t like it? Too bad.

At Rasmussen today:

When it comes to the nation’s economic issues, 67% of U.S. voters have more confidence in their own judgment than they do in the average member of Congress.

Nineteen percent (19%) trust members of Congress more, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fourteen percent (14%) aren’t sure.

I’d say that 33% of US voters are underestimating themselves, especially after yesterday’s performance by Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, who most in Congress and the Senate apparently thought (until Monday night’s laugh-fest) was a pretty competent guy.

As General Motors slides towards epic failure, despite a multibillion-dollar cash infusion from Uncle Sam, Michigan Senator Carl Levin is attempting to insert another GM bailout into the mislabeled “stimulus” bill. This time, according to Bloomberg (HT Red State):

General Motors Corp. may win protection from a tax liability of as much as $7 billion when Senate stimulus legislation moves to a conference committee. …. The liability may be triggered by GM’s plan to offer equity both in exchange for debt and for health-care obligations to union workers as part of the company’s restructuring, a person familiar with the matter said Feb. 1.

There may be merit to this, as it seems a bit hard to take that a company losing tens of billions would have such a liability.

But Congress wrote the tax laws. Foregoing $7 billion in cash to the Treasury just for one company should be a big enough deal to require a bit of discussion and debate, and shouldn’t be just another dead-of-night insertion into an already massively wasteful exercise.

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Fundamental truth of American history, as transmitted in Walter Williams’s latest column:

Roosevelt didn’t have an easy time with his agenda; he had to first emasculate the U.S. Supreme Court. ….. federal courts had respect for the Constitution as late as the 1930s. They issued some 1,600 injunctions to restrain officials from carrying out acts of Congress. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned as unconstitutional the New Deal’s centerpieces such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act and other parts of Roosevelt’s “stimulus package.” An outraged Roosevelt threatened to pack the Court, and the Court capitulated to where it is today giving Congress virtually unlimited powers to tax, spend and regulate.

This act of borderline tyranny, as well as devastating reviews of the New Deal by the likes of Amity Schlaes and UCLA professors Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanianis, explain why FDR’s historical stock on the domestic policy is falling about as fast as Tax Cheat Tim Geithner’s credibility.

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Even without direct competition, Sirius XM Satellite Radio is on the verge of bankruptcy (HT CNet).

This looks to be the near-final result of what Jim Cramer three years ago called “the greatest pump and dump in history.” But Howard Stern got his, didn’t he?

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Ted Strickland opposes the Senate-passed version of the mislabeled “stimulus” bill, because it doesn’t give enough money to the states:

Because the revamped measure reduces money for states, it now threatens Ohio with a tuition increase for 40 percent of public-college students, the loss of thousands of state- and local-government jobs, closure of two “medium-sized” prisons, and 50,000 fewer people receiving mental-health services, the governor said yesterday.

Strickland’s budget calls for using at least $5.4 billion in federal stimulus money: $3.4 billion for general-revenue fund spending, and $2 billion being plugged into federal accounts for Medicaid. That would free up $2 billion in state funds for other spending.

Strickland said in a separate interview with The (Columbus) Dispatch during a trip to Washington yesterday that the new Senate version would hurt Ohio and other states struggling to balance budgets. That’s because it takes what was a $79 billion pot of state stabilization money nationally and cuts it by about half, including $25 billion that governors could use as needed.

Strickland said that means the loss of nearly $1 billion in state budget-stabilization money out of more than $2 billion originally in the Senate bill and a similar amount in the House-approved stimulus bill.

It never fails. A politician threatened with budget cuts makes his own threats to cut the costs that will raise the loudest protests.

Sell the Turnpike, Ted.

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In the midst of an article about another Strickland setback, here is an all-too-typical and predictable story of government excess that crosses two gubernatorial administrations:

The state of Ohio cannot confiscate more than $200 million in tobacco settlement funds that had been dedicated for anti-smoking programs, a Franklin County judge ruled Tuesday.

Common Pleas Court Judge David Fais issued a preliminary injunction preventing Gov. Ted Strickland from using $230 million of the cash that he had been banking on to help underwrite $1.57 billion economic stimulus package he and the General Assembly passed last year.

….. The Ohio (Tobacco Prevention) foundation was created nine years ago with ongoing checks from Ohio’s multi-billion-dollar share of a national settlement with major tobacco companies like Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. The idea was for payments to build an endowment in excess of $1 billion, generating enough investment earnings to keep the foundation operating in perpetuity.

For a short time, the state kept to the path. But when the economy turned sour a few years later, lawmakers began routinely diverting the settlement checks to pay for other health programs and such things as tailpipe emission testing in the Cleveland region.

Mr. Strickland permanently cut off the settlement spigot when he championed the idea of selling off future checks for an upfront $5.5 billion in bonds that are being used to directly accelerate school construction projects and indirectly underwrite property tax cuts for senior citizen and disabled homeowners.

From an endowment, to depleting raids of the fund, to borrowing against future cash flows, in nine short years ….. and it’s still not enough.

Problem is, he didn’t intend it, and the markets didn’t get the joke.

We are in trooooooouble. Tim Geithner has been heavily involved with the bailout since its inception and has known of his nomination for almost three months. Yet on Monday night before Congress, and on Tuesday in front of the world, we got Geithner the Indecipherable.

This seems as good a time as any to remind readers that the POR Economy, benchmarked mostly to June 1 of last year to approximate when it began, has performed as follows:

• Unemployment — was 5.5% as of the May 2008 BLS report); now at 7.6%.
• Dow Jones Industrial Average — was at 12638, closed today at 7889, down 37.6%.
• S&P 500 — was at 1400, closed today at 827, down 40.9%.
• NASDAQ — was at 2523, closed today at 1525, down 37.0% (corrected from a previous miscalculation).
• GDP Growth — was 2.06% in the 12 months preceding July 1, 2008; an annualized -2.15% since (-0.5% in the third quarter, -3.8% advance estimate for the fourth).
• Inflation — was 4.2% in the 12 months ended May 31, 2008; prices have dropped 3.0% in the seven reported months since then, and are up 0.8% in those seven months excluding food and energy.
• Prime rate — was 5.0%, is now 3.25%.

Thanks, guys.

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UPDATE: Proving that yours truly can see a silver lining in any cloud, in the sense that the perps in this case should be and are paying the price for their misdeeds, I’m pleased to report that New York Times Company stock closed at $4.23. This is the lowest share price in the Times’s 23-year history as a pubic company.

Look at what the POR Economy has done to Times stock:

Of course, the Times richly deserves a large share of the blame for being in the tank for the Punk President for so long. But aren’t there laws against doing this to Old Gray Ladies?

Item: “Governor Ted Strickland sees devastation if aid evaporates.”

Answer: Root for the aid to evaporate. Then sell the Turnpike.

A week ago (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), I noted that government bailout recipients General Motors and Chrysler had horrible sales in January, and that their declines are accelerating. GM was down 49% year over year in January, compared to -32% in December; Chrysler was down 55% in January, compared to -53% in December.

Meanwhile, the companies’ main foreign competitors turned in January sales declines of roughly 30% that were just as bad, but at least not worse, than December. As a result, those companies took another 4% or so of market share from their US-based rivals.

Of course, no media outlets attempted to make any connection between the GM-Chrysler declines and the idea that consumers might either resent their bailed-out status, or might be worried about their survival and the potential impact of their bankruptcy or even disappearance on warranty and repair costs. Nor did any media reports that I’m aware of consider the idea that declining sales at those companies might jeopardize their ability to repay Uncle Sam’s bailout “loans.”

Now, despite the cash infusion from Uncle Sam, Reuters reports an analyst’s belief that a bankruptcy filing by GM remains a possibility. More importantly, the wire service also claims that the government is actively involved in exploring that option. Finally (put down your drinks first), we learn that taxpayers aren’t even first in line to get repaid:

A bankruptcy filing by General Motors Corp could allow the struggling automaker to reduce its debt more aggressively than an out-of-court restructuring and might not be as damaging as it would have been just a few months ago, an analyst said on Monday.

“We think the damage to the enterprise of a GM bankruptcy today is notably less than it would have been a few months ago, largely because of public desensitization to a bankrupt carmaker,” JP Morgan analyst Himanshu Patel said in a note for clients.

Patel’s note raises the possibility by a prominent Wall Street analyst of the renewed threat of a bankruptcy by GM or Chrysler, a risk many observers believe had been sharply reduced by the government bailout.

….. Patel said that if GM fails to win substantial concessions from bondholders and the UAW, the bailout could become “a political lightning rod” for the Obama administration.

“We are increasingly thinking that such a development might force the White House to more seriously consider allowing GM/Chrysler to go into bankruptcy,” he said.

….. The U.S. Treasury has retained two law firms with extensive bankruptcy experience and the investment bank Rothschild to advise officials on the taxpayer-backed restructuring of GM and Chrysler. One of the scenarios those advisers will consider will be a government-assisted bankruptcy filing, a person with direct knowledge of the work has said.

Another of the other immediate priorities will be working out an agreement between other creditors and the government that would provide senior status to the public funding, a second person involved in the discussions said.

For all the ink spilled and bandwidth burned in the press’s coverage of the GM-Chrysler bailout in December, how did the fact that Uncle Sam doesn’t have first priority as a creditor apparently escape unnoticed? Did our congressmen and senators even know this?

In any event, it will be interesting to see how the press handles what appears to be the continuing descent into the financial abyss of the two auto bailout recipients. Their “viability plans” are due in one short week.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Newsweek Magazine, referred to frequently by yours truly as “Newsweak,” is deliberately shrinking its circulation base by half, in effect giving up on its formerly mass audience, and going through a top-to-bottom redesign.

As is the case with its fellow declining competitor Time, it never occurs to these people that their legacy of bias, double standards, and inexplicable sloppiness have chased away so many readers that whatever business model they adopt won’t work without an accompanying fundamental philosophical shift towards fairness, balance, and due diligence that is nowhere on the horizon. In Newsweak’s case, all you need to remember is the “Quran flush” debacle of 2005 and Drudge’s trumping Michael Isikoff on Monica Lewinsky in 1998 (with plenty of other examples in between and ever since, as you can see by typing “newsweek” at the Media Research Center’s search page).

Here are excerpts from a New York Times puff piece on the magazine’s plans (the picture at the top right is from that story), including a bizarre new “feature” straight from the “Can’t Make This Stuff Up” Department (in bold at the end):

Newsweek Plans Makeover to Fit a Smaller Audience

Newsweek is about to begin a major change in its identity, with a new design, a much smaller and, it hopes, more affluent readership, and some shifts in content. The venerable newsweekly’s ingrained role of obligatory coverage of the week’s big events will be abandoned once and for all, executives say.

“There’s a phrase in the culture, ‘we need to take note of,’ ‘we need to weigh in on,’ ” said Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meacham. “That’s going away. If we don’t have something original to say, we won’t. The drill of chasing the week’s news to add a couple of hard-fought new details is not sustainable.”

Newsweek loses money, and the consensus within its parent, the Washington Post Company, and among industry analysts, is that it has to try something big. The magazine is betting that the answer lies in changing both itself and its audience, and getting the audience to pay more.

….. Thirteen months ago, Newsweek lowered its rate base, the circulation promised to advertisers, to 2.6 million from 3.1 million, and Mr. Ascheim said that would drop to 1.9 million in July, and to 1.5 million next January.

….. Editorially, Newsweek’s plan calls for moving in the direction it was already headed — toward not just analysis and commentary, but an opinionated, prescriptive or offbeat take on events.

The current cover article argues that America’s involvement in Afghanistan parallels the Vietnam War, and a companion piece offers a plan for handling that country. Newsweek also plans to lean even more heavily on the appeal of big-name writers like Christopher Hitchens, Fareed Zakaria and George Will.

Starting in May, articles will be reorganized under four broad, new sections — one each for short takes, columnists and commentary, long reporting pieces like the cover articles, and culture — each with less compulsion to touch on the week’s biggest events. A new graphic feature on the last page, “The Bluffer’s Guide,” will tell readers how to sound as if they are knowledgeable on a current topic, whether they are or not.

Newsweak’s alleged journalists should have no trouble putting out “The Bluffer’s Guide.” They’ve had years of practice. I would suggest that those who want to build a knowledge base beyond bluffing consider looking elsewhere.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.