From Miami, Florida:

Updated 7:56 AM EDT, Mon, Jun 22, 2009

An 83-year-old pilot was forced to land on a busy expressway Sunday morning after experiencing engine trouble.

Ralph Squeglia, who has been flying since 1944, said he was careful to avoid moving cars as he landed the plane on a stretch of the Sawgrass Expressway, just north of Oakland Park Blvd.

“It was a perfect landing,” he said as he stood near the plane waiting for Federal Aviation Administration officials to arrive on the scene to conduct an investigation.

But it was not so perfect once he landed.

“I was rolling straight and my tail wing broke, causing me to veer right,” he said.

“Then the wing hit a light pole and I ended up here.”

The homemade single-engine Hummelbird plane ended up on the side of the expressway as shocked drivers looked on. Squeglia was not injured. ….

Go here for pictures and the rest of the story.

If the recession was the only reason why the welfare rolls are what they are in the various states, you would expect the percentage of the population utilizing the entitlement program, now known as TANF (Temporary Assistance for Need Families), in the various states to have some sort of relationship to their respective unemployment rates.

That is self-evidently not the case. The failure by Sara Murray of the Wall Street Journal to note that sad fact in her Monday article about the program makes her attempt to communicate what has happened with it during the twelve months that ended in May a major disappointment. As you’ll see, she got right to the edge, but didn’t look into it. In the process, Ms. Murray also gave all of the credit for welfare reform to then-President Bill Clinton — a laughably incorrect rendition of what really happened.

Here are Murray’s opening four paragraphs (bolds are mine):

Welfare rolls, which were slow to rise and actually fell in many states early in the recession, now are climbing across the country for the first time since President Bill Clinton signed legislation pledging “to end welfare as we know it” more than a decade ago.

Twenty-three of the 30 largest states, which account for more than 88% of the nation’s total population, see welfare caseloads above year-ago levels, according to a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal and the National Conference of State Legislatures. As more people run out of unemployment compensation, many are turning to welfare as a stopgap.

The biggest increases are in states with some of the worst jobless rates. Oregon’s count was up 27% in May from a year earlier; South Carolina’s climbed 23% and California’s 10% between March 2009 and March 2008. A few big states that had seen declining welfare caseloads just a few months ago now are seeing increases: New York is up 1.2%, Illinois 3% and Wisconsin 3.9%. Welfare rolls in a few big states, Michigan and New Jersey among them, still are declining.

The recent rise in welfare families across the country is a sign that the welfare system is expanding at a time of added need, assuaging fears of some critics of Mr. Clinton’s welfare overhaul who said the truly needy would be turned away.

The historical fact (and frankly, Sara Murray should know this) is that welfare reform was a GOP-driven and fiercely Democrat-resisted initiative from its very inception under Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin years prior to the passage of national reform. Bill Clinton had to be dragged kicking and screaming into signing a GOP-driven bill he had vetoed twice. He signed the law only because then-adviser Dick Morris told him that “a third veto could (have) cost him the 1996 election.” Also, as I recall it, Clinton’s pledge to “end welfare as we know it” was a 1992 presidential campaign pledge, not an utterance heard from him at or around the time of the bill’s 1996 signing.

That’s bad enough, but Murray’s failure to note huge state-to-state differences in their percentages of population on welfare leaves readers with the implied impression that welfare reform has been uniformly or nearly uniformly implemented in the various states. An even cursory look at the numbers tells us that this is not the case.

Take California (please). The charts below show that the Golden State has chronically failed to do anything meaningful about its welfare population since 2002. As a result, as of September 30 of last year, it was to the point where a state with 12% of the country’s population had 32% of its welfare recipients (up from 22% less than six years earlier), and where the incidence of residents on welfare was almost 3-1/2 times that of the rest of the country (Sept. 2008 data is here; an index to prior years is here):

In September 2008, as I noted last week, if California had mirrored the rest of the country, an astonishing 869,000 fewer of its residents would have been receiving welfare; the entire nation’s welfare caseload would be almost 23% lower.

It has probably gotten even worse. Even though TANF rolls nationwide have increased, a graph at the Journal indicates that the number of families on welfare was in California was 520,000 in May. Compared to May 2008′s 490,604 and mid-2007′s 460,000 (per the graph) that’s a one-year, 6% increase and a two-year, 13% increase in an already ridiculously bloated number. And they want the rest of the country to bail them out? Zheesh.

Looking at other states using May 2008 numbers from the government along with the estimated May 2009 changes contained in Murray’s report (plus a couple of other states selected by me for which May 2009 data was not noted), you’ll see that any attempt to tie the size of welfare rolls to statewide population or to changes in unemployment is an exercise in futility (MI comparison is April 2009 to April 2008):

The chart gives rise to all kinds of questions as to why some states are outperforming others that Murray never really explored.

As noted, Murray did get to the edge of the problem when she noted downward welfare recipient moves in states where one might have expected them to go up. But, in the case of Michigan’s downward move, she only weakly cited “Some advocacy groups …. (who) complain that strict front-end requirements” are forcing people to try to find work where there supposedly is none before applying for benefits.

The much better question is how much relative effort states have been putting into welfare reform’s real goal of reducing dependency during all these years. The obvious answer is that these efforts have varied widely — and that difference in effort, much more than the current condition of the economy, is a bigger factor in explaining why each individual state is where it is.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update, June 23: Lack of time prevented me from elaborating on this yesterday, so I’ll make these points now –

• Even the admittedly incomplete data on the chart, WSJ’s headline (“Numbers On Welfare See Sharp Increase”) is questionable at best. Ignore basket case California’s increase, and the changes in the rest of the states listed where comparison is possible net out to a grand total of less than +17,000, or roughly +2%. That’s a “sharp” increase? The figure quoted doesn’t include New Jersey; Murray reported a decline in recipients in the Garden State but didn’t give us a percentage to work with.
• Florida’ increase of 14.1%, prominently placed in the WSJ’s graph, is off of a very low base of less than 78,000 recipients. Touting that change as some kind of major barometer is the equivalent of headlining a 14% increase in sales of Mitsubishi’s cars when the rest of the industry is in the tank.
• Since so many are so willing to make excuses for California, let me remind you, as shown in my related June 14 post, that California’s disgraceful welfare dependency rate has nothing to do with illegal or other immigration (look at FL above), the economy in general (look at MI’s decline), or the high cost of living in some areas of the state (look at NY).
• Closer to home, somebody ought to ask Governor Ted Strickland and his Ohio Department of Job and Family Services why Ohio’s welfare recipient rate is about 50% higher than the national average and heading upward, while much worse off Michigan’s is coming down.

Noteworthy Net-Worthies:

What motivated Barack Obama’s teleprompter to get off the dime and tell the boss to say something beyond the pap level about Iran may have been the scolding (HT Hot Air) administered by John Nichols Friday at the far-far-left Nation Magazine — “President Obama’s tepid response to the evidence the Iranian election was stolen from the people of that country by current president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his thuggish allies is disappointing.”

Of course, as explained here last night, as with almost everything else, the election-stealing was orchestrated by the guy with “virtually limitless authority,” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

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What a pathetic Associated Press headline in the circumstances — “Documentary draws ire of Dole after plot thickens.” Readers who don’t get past the headline will think that another eeeeeevil corporation is objecting to a courageous filmmaker’s work.

Hardly, as the second paragraph notes: “…. Fredrik Gertten’s film “Bananas!” might now be more appropriately punctuated with a question mark after a judge declared its star, a Los Angeles lawyer, a fraud for recruiting plaintiffs to lie.” The verdict was noted here back in mid-May.

Then there’s this incredible sentence: “The fraud was not uncovered until the film was finished, and questions are swirling about whether the filmmaker has an ethical obligation to change the documentary.”

There is no “controversy” here; the only question is whether Gertten will do the right thing. If it means throwing “Bananas!” away because its claims are irretrievably rotten, so be it. Then he should ask himself why he was so gullible.

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Football Hall of Famer Jim Brown will blast Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods for their alleged lack of social activism in an interview that is to appear on HBO’s “Real Sports” Tuesday night.

Four things, Jimbo.

First, self-described Cablanasian Woods is a once-in-a-century talent in a line of work demanding steely concentration who could put up a Grand Slam victory number that no one will ever touch by the time he’s done. Only Tiger knows how much distraction he can afford without diluting that effort (not to mention family obligations, which to his credit he appears to take pretty seriously). How dare you pretend to be better able to make that judgment?

Second, how do you know what Woods and Jordan are or aren’t doing already?

Third, maybe they’re not as convinced as you are that there is pervasive social injustice that demands “activism” as you define it.

Fourth, what would you do if Woods’s and Jordan’s definitions of “social activism” don’t jibe with yours? Maybe theirs would involve marching in Tea Parties, because they realize that if it weren’t for their fabulous wealth, their kids and grandkids would be crushed like almost everyone else’s kids and grandkids will be with the national debt and unfunded liability burden that mismanaged “social activism” has primarily caused?

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Taegan Goddard at CQ Politics (HT California Conservative) says that Ted Strickland is “in trouble” in the 2010 Governor’s race. Only three weeks after John Kasich formally announced his candidacy, the incumbent Democrat has a 44%-42% lead, compared to 50%-32% not that long ago. And it’s likely that half the state doesn’t yet know who Kasich is.

Given that low name recognition, Turnaround Ted’s poor economic stewardship, and Kasich’s compelling deficit-cutting story as illustrated below and discussed here last week, Kasich’s numbers would seem to have a lot of upside potential:

Maybe there really is a T-Shirt shop in Ted’s near future.

Update: As expected, Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion, Third Base Politics, and Invincible Armor have more.

From New Providence, New Jersey:

6/21/2009

Less than six months after Tom Vitale went into cardiac arrest on the front lawn of his New Providence home, the 44-year-old father of two played an impressive round of golf with the physicians who saved his life at Overlook Hospital.

On Monday, June 15, Mr. Vitale joined 154 golfers participating in the 19th Annual Overlook Foundation Golf Tournament at Canoe Brook Country Club. Wearing an internal cardiac defibrillator, Mr. Vitale not only proved he was back in the game, but that his game was better than average. He scored “closest to the pin” among the 19 foursomes playing Canoe Brook’s South Course and won a new pair of golf shoes.

“I had a great time,” said Mr. Vitale, “and feel very fortunate to be here today. I’m living proof of the excellent care that is available at Overlook.”

On December 20, Mr. Vitale went into cardiac arrest on his front lawn, following a morning of sleigh riding with his children, then ages 3 and 6, and his next-door neighbors. His neighbor performed CPR on Tom’s lifeless body until New Providence police arrived on the scene with an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). They administered a shock to his heart and managed to restore a faint pulse. When paramedics transported Mr. Vitale to Overlook’s Emergency Department, he was alive, but in a comatose state.

According to the American Heart Association, 95 percent of cardiac arrest victims die before they reach a hospital. It was then that Dr. Daniel Schwartz, the attending cardiologist, ordered a relatively new procedure – a hypothermia induced coma – to prevent damage to Mr. Vitale’s brain.

During the procedure, patients are wrapped with an external cooling device, which lowers their body temperature to approximately 92 degrees. Cooling down the body and the brain reduces the brain’s demand for oxygen and facilitates the healing process following cardiac arrest. The heart can survive a loss of oxygen for 20 minutes; the brain only four minutes.

Only 15 percent of hospitals nationwide offer therapeutic hypothermia for cardiac arrest patients. Eight patients have been treated with this procedure at Overlook since September 2008, five of whom were discharged fully functional but would have died without the therapy, according to Steven Sheris, M.D., Chief of Cardiology at Overlook Hospital.

Tom Vitale woke up from his hypothermic coma in Overlook’s Cardiac Intensive Care Unit on Christmas Day, surrounded by his family, friends and college fraternity brothers from Lehigh University. “I remember waking up, and hearing people on the Today Show shouting Merry Christmas,” recalled Vitale. “I thought Christmas was still a week away.”

Although Mr. Vitale had no symptoms of cardiac disease and tests revealed no blocked arteries, Dr. Schwartz suggested that he have an implantable cardiac defibrillator (ICD) implanted in his chest. The device, which he will wear the rest of his life, is about the size of a small pager with two leads connected to his heart. If it detects a rapid or irregular heartbeat, it sends a low-energy shock to restore Vitale’s heart to a normal rhythm. Mr. Vitale has been back to work as a management consultant since March and has resumed his full schedule of activities without complications.

Teeing off at the Overlook Foundation Golf Tournament on June 15 with the physicians who saved his life not only brought Vitale’s whole experience full circle, but also underscored the advancements that have been achieved in cardiac care over the past four decades. ….

Go here for the rest of the story.

It struck me, in reading this AP dispatch from Tehran by Nasser Karimi and William J. Kole, that the political and media establishment has, in the two decades since the death of the very visible Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeni, allowed Ali Hoseyni Khamenei, his successor as the Supreme Leader of Iran, to fade comfortably into the background, while still pulling all the meaningful levers of power in that country.

Only now, with Tehran in turmoil, and of all things during an attempted media blackout, do we directly learn from Karimi and Kole that election winners are in most meaningful ways mere puppets who serve at Khamenei’s pleasure, and that the elections themselves are mere spectacles designed to convince the populace, and perhaps more importantly the West, that Iran, though Islamic fundamentalist to the core, is still somehow a sort-of democratic country.

It is, of course, anything but that. I daresay that most in the West, up to and including many politicians and establishment media elites, and even presidential candidates, haven’t even the faintest appreciation of this fact.

In their report, Karimi and Kole communicated the essence of Iran’s reality in one concise phrase, referring to “the virtually limitless authority of the country’s most powerful figure.” Now they tell us.

Here are some key paragraphs from the read-it-all AP report, time-stamped at just after 10 a.m. Eastern Time on June 21 (bold is mine):

In Tehran, an eerie calm as death toll jumps to 17

An eerie calm settled over the streets of Tehran Sunday as state media reported at least 10 more deaths in post-election unrest and said authorities arrested the daughter and four other relatives of ex-President Hashemi Rafsanjani, one of Iran’s most powerful men.

The reports brought the official death toll for a week of boisterous confrontations to at least 17. State television inside Iran said 10 were killed and 100 injured in clashes Saturday between demonstrators contesting the result of the June 12 election and black-clad police wielding truncheons, tear gas and water cannons.

Police and members of Iran’s Basij militia took up positions Sunday afternoon on major streets and squares, including the site of Saturday’s clashes, but there was no immediate word on whether protesters were gathering.

Iran’s regime continued to impose a blackout on the country’s most serious internal conflict since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

….. But fresh images and allegations of brutality emerged as Iranians at home and abroad sought to shed light on a week of astonishing resistance to hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

The New-York based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran said scores of injured demonstrators who had sought medical treatment after Saturday’s clashes were arrested by security forces at hospitals in the capital.

It said doctors had been ordered to report protest-related injuries to the authorities, and that some seriously injured protesters had sought refuge at foreign embassies in a bid to evade arrest.

….. Thousands of supporters of Mousavi, who claims he won the election, squared off Saturday against security forces in a dramatic show of defiance of Khamenei.

Underscoring how the protesters have become emboldened despite the regime’s repeated and ominous warnings, witnesses said some shouted “Death to Khamenei!” at Saturday’s demonstrations – another sign of once unthinkable challenges to the virtually limitless authority of the country’s most powerful figure.

Khamenei’s out of sight, out of mind “strategy,” which could in fact be a personal preference for reclusiveness, has clearly worked to shape the perception of his country’s political situation and the nature of its “government.” Until this weekend, few even knew who he is.

Intentionally or not, news reports over the years have facilitated this ignorance. A Google News Archive search on “Ali Khamenei” (in quotes) from 1/1/1989 through 12/31/2008 returns about 33,000 items. That might seem like a lot, but it’s less than 1,700 per year. A Google News Archive search on “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” (also in quotes) from 6/1/2005 (about two months before he became “President”) through 12/31/2008 returns almost 99,000 items — over 27,000 per year during 3-plus years.

At a minimum, Karimi and Kole’s “revelation” unmasks the reality that the very idea of “meeting with Ahmadinejad” accomplishes nothing. It demonstrates that as long as a Supreme Leader is in control in the “Islamic Republic,” an Iranian “President,” whoever he might be, it best seen as the equivalent of a diplomat with no real authority.

Perhaps inadvertently under the stress of current events, the AP writers performed a useful service in reminding us of that. More frequent reminders of that from establishment media reporters would be very useful. If Khamenei and Ahmadinejad politically survive the current turmoil (and I fervently hope they don’t), I recommend that phraseology on the order of “Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is subservient to the virtually limitless power of Ali Khamenei” become standard fare.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

The subheadline is:

The VP in effect admits that his party risked the economy to pander for votes.

It hasn’t taken too long to generate quite a few comments.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Tuesday (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

Imagine, if you can, that George W. Bush made a clearly and deliberately false statement (by the way, what the left claims are his five major lies weren’t, and still aren’t).

Now further imagine if the Bush administration’s response to criticism of the statement, if not true, had been, “Oh, the president’s rhetoric shouldn’t be taken literally.” The press uproar over such a dismissive response would have been justifiably immediate and furious.

In his address to the American Medical Association this past Monday, President Barack Obama promised that:

…. no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.

Well, Richard Alonzo-Zaldivar at the Associated Press at least noticed that Dear Leader’s promises can’t possibly be kept. But wait until you see his nonchalant reaction to what a conscientious press would immediately decry as a series of obvious falsehoods.

Here are key paragraphs from the AP report (bolds are mine):

Promises, Promises: Obama’s health plan claims

President Barack Obama seems to leave little room for doubt when he promises that his health care plan will let people keep the coverage they have. His vow sounds reassuring and gets applause, but no president could guarantee such a pledge.

….. “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people,” Obama said Monday, addressing the American Medical Association. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

He didn’t let up.

“If you like what you’re getting, keep it,” Obama said. “Nobody is forcing you to shift.”

Yet the legislation the Obama administration is working on with the Democratic-controlled Congress would make major changes in how Americans pay for health care. The goal is to slow cost increases and bring in nearly 50 million uninsured, and the consequences are bound to affect how employers design benefit plans.

….. Earlier this week, a preliminary analysis by Congressional Budget Office estimated that 10 million people would have to seek new insurance under a Democratic plan that a Senate committee is working on, because their employers would no longer offer coverage. Those workers and their families would shop for a plan through new insurance purchasing pools called exchanges. About 160 million to 170 million people now get employer coverage.

Neutral observers are also skeptical. Dallas Salisbury, head of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, called Obama’s promise “an aspirational statement.”

“If he was a king, he would deliver that, but he’s not king,” said Salisbury. His group is a nonpartisan information clearinghouse on health and pension benefits.

White House officials suggest the president’s rhetoric shouldn’t be taken literally: What Obama really means is that government isn’t about to barge in and force people to change insurance.

Oh, so I guess it’s all okay, and no big deal. “Just words,” if you will.

It’s just fine that the President of the United States makes a false “vow” (not an “aspirational statement”) that really “shouldn’t be taken literally” before the nation’s assembled doctors. It’s just fine, thanks to sanitized and gullible news coverage, that the “vow” gets disseminated to the American people initially unquestioned. It’s just fine that after being correctly challenged by outfits like the CBO and the Heritage Foundation, obsequious reporters like Alonzo-Zaldivar let the administration get away with a pathetic “never mind.” And it’s just fine that even watered-down pablum such as Alonzo-Zalivar’s, published on a Saturday, gets ridiculously light distribution, while the AP can risibly claim that they did their journalistic job.

No, it’s not fine.

It’s not fine because the mendacious seed has been planted in the minds of millions of Americans that Dear Leader is the hero and savior who will lower health care costs while not affecting anyone’s coverage or choice of doctor. The White House, for all its feigned irritation, is likely quietly crowing, “Mission Accomplished.”

If Obama and his party get their way — thanks in no small part to “journalists” who initially let blatantly false propaganda slide, excuse it when found, and even decide to serve as prime-time spokesmouths — we will look back and say that “Obama lied; the best health care system in the world died.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From San Antonio, Texas:

Jun 18, 2009 / 06:07 pm

The U.S. Catholic Bishops voted today at their annual Spring meeting to approve a text for thanking God for the gift of human life.

The idea to have a Mass that celebrates the gift of life was first proposed by Cardinal John O’Connor almost 20 years ago.

….. The consensus for having such a text was revealed by today’s vote on the “Mass in Thanksgiving for the Gift of Human Life.” ….

Go here for the full story.

Boy, the press can really do the nitty-gritty detail work (also saved here) when they set their minds to it (graphics at right via West Coast Outpost):

As Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey’s Hot Air has pointed out at his running commentary, this fawning would be a bit more palatable if leftist commentators and comedians hadn’t gasped at and ridiculed George W. Bush hitting a golf shot after commenting about the Middle East and the War on Terror. Do you think Jon Stewart, who thought the golf shot vid was so funny, will find “humor” in the Obamas’ ice cream outing?

Meanwhile, Morrissey notes “The latest unverified/rumored death toll is 150. In other news, Obama ordered a small cup of vanilla” (Twitter death toll link corrected by me).

Patterico has compared the tweets from Tehran with those from CBS’s White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who was on Ice Cream Watch tonight.

Exit question: Who believes that the video of a dying woman Morrissey is carrying at Hot Air (WARNING: Very graphic; direct link here) will appear on an establishment media web site?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update: The YouTube of the dying Iranian woman is below the fold if you’re on the home page (WARNING: Very graphic; other updates, including vids, also follow) –
(more…)

Maybe reporters Brian Faler or Nicholas Johnston at Bloomberg asked Barack Obama some really challenging questions when they had a chance to interview the President at the White House. Maybe they even did some basic fact-checking. If so, there’s precious little evidence of either in their June 16 report.

They allowed the president to blame most of the current year’s deficit on George W. Bush. They let him speak of “robust” growth when the best guesstimates they quoted for the second half of this calendar year and all of next year are anemic — at least as the press benchmarked growth during the Bush 43 years.

The Bloomberg pair also ignored the alarming deterioration in federal receipts from economic activity that has continued into June, one of the four biggest collections months of the year.

Here are key paragraphs from Faler and Johnston’s failed filing (bolds are mine):

Obama Says ‘Robust’ Growth Will Prevent Tax Increases (Update1)

President Barack Obama said he is “confident” that he won’t have to raise taxes on most Americans to close the budget deficit as long as the economy picks up steam.

“One of the biggest variables in this whole thing is economic growth,” the president said in an interview with Bloomberg News at the White House. “If we are growing at a robust rate, then we can pay for the government that we need without having to raise taxes.”

Obama has repeatedly said he would keep his campaign pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of working Americans while rolling back tax breaks for households making more than $250,000 a year.

“I’m confident that we don’t have to raise taxes on ordinary working families,” he said.

The U.S. economy shrank at a 5.7 percent annual pace in the first quarter, reflecting declines in housing, inventories and business investment. Growth is expected to turn positive in the second half of the year, accelerating 0.5 percent from July through September and 1.9 percent in the final three months of this year, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 62 economists. The median forecast for growth next year is 1.8 percent, according to the survey.

Obama warned that if economic growth remains “anemic” and Congress fails to adopt his plans to hold down the cost of health care, work on alternative energy sources and improve the U.S. education system, “then we’re going to continue to have problems.”

He also repeated his promise to cut the budget deficit, forecast to hit $1.8 trillion this year, in half by the end of his first term. The budget he submitted to Congress in February anticipates that the government will still run what would be, by historic standards, large deficits for the foreseeable future.

….. “If my proposals are adopted, then not only are we cutting the deficit in half compared to where it would be if we didn’t do anything, but we’re also going to be able to raise revenue on people making over $250,000 a year in a modest way,” he said. “That helps close the deficit.”

….. Obama said a large part of the current budget deficit was inherited from the administration of former President George W. Bush, his predecessor, and that extra spending was needed to address the worst global financial crisis since World War II.

First, here are direct responses to the bolded items:

• If the President is looking for “robust” growth as the press defined it from 2001-2008, he’ll have to go to calendar year 2011 to find it, based on the economists Bloomberg surveyed. You can take it to the bank that no establishment media reporter would have let Bush or any of his economic advisers get away with characterizing 1.8% growth as “robust” (nor should they have), and no reporter would have used the word “accelerating” to describe 0.5% quarterly growth (nor should they have; not annualized, it’s only +0.0125%). Yet there’s no hint of a challenge from the duo, and Bloomberg’s editors — if they exist — let their adjective describing pathetic growth stand.
• With tobacco tax increases of up to 2173% that went into effect in April, Obama has already broken his promise to cut taxes for 95% of “working Americans.” The Associated Press’s Calvin Woodward, who is one of the few reporters at the wire service successfully avoiding the Obama Kool-Aid machine, made that point when the increases took effect (“PROMISES, PROMISES: Obama tax pledge up in smoke”). Yet — no challenge.
• The “large deficits” by “historic standards” were called “record deficits” during the Bush 43 years, when they were much lower, and were records by much smaller amounts. Yet — there’s the watered down language.
• The “inherited” line would have some credibility if anyone could cite one meaningful instance where Obama opposed additional spending. The only one I can think of is that he may have voted against funding the war in Iraq. But he has long since signed on to continued spending there, proving that any anti-funding votes he may have made while he was an Illinois senator were postures without significance. More currently relevant, Obama actively supported the blackmail-driven bailout known as TARP, and the black-hole bailouts of General Motors (at least $70 billion and couting by itself) and Chrysler. Yet — no challenge.

Then there’s the matter of the possible need for tax increases, which depends more than a bit on how well tax collections are going.

Collections continue to be in the tank, based on comparing the Monthly Treasury Statement of June 18, 2009, to June 19, 2008 (both Thursdays):

As was the case in April and May, June receipts from economic activity are down from the previous year by over 25%, and seem to be a cinch to trail June 2008 by over $60 billion at month-end. If Treasury is really doing its TARP accounting on a “Net Present Value” basis (discussed in detail at link), the much-heralded TARP loan repayments by major banks amounting to $68 billion, though they will reduce the national debt, will not be treated as receipts.

It will take more than the time-delayed, historically ineffective, mislabeled “stimulus” package that nobody read to restore robust growth such as the annualized 4.8% the Bush economy achieved in the second and third quarters of 2007. It will take something different that is the opposite of tax increases.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Atlanta (video is at link):

Updated: Saturday, 13 Jun 2009, 8:02 PM EDT
Published : Saturday, 13 Jun 2009, 8:02 PM EDT

Doctors discover a tumor and fluid around a baby heart while still in his mother’s womb. The unborn child was given little chance to live, but the faith of his mother and the delicate unique surgeries performed by doctors has made all the difference.

His tiny feet and hands — everything about this precious bundle is a miracle.

“I’ll never forget it. They did the ultrasound and everybody in the room got quiet. They got really, really quiet,” said expecting mother, Cristie Gibson.

The ultrasound detected a rare tumor on baby Shedrick’s heart and fluid in his lungs. Doctors gave Shedrick a low chance of survival.

“The fetus had actually developed a significant amount of fluid throughout the body and was in danger of dying in utero, dying before the baby was born,” said Cardiologist Dr. Thomas Chin.

If the baby survived to be born, the tumor could pose significant problems.

Pediatric Heart Institute Co-director Dr. Chris Knott-Craig said, “The lungs can’t develop, the heart can’t develop, (and) the organs can’t develop.”

Gibson said she turned to her faith and never gave up hope.

“I refuse to believe ya’ll cannot do anything for this baby,” said the mother.

An international team of doctors, all with various backgrounds in the medical field, pooled together their expertise and before the baby was born, they performed a unique, delicate procedure. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Question: How do you water down the possible significance of a statement by an Iranian diplomat?

Answer: Wait for an AFP journalist to revise a previous raw report.

A short unbylined dispatch from the wire service reported that the diplomat “apparently misspoke” when he said that Iran has “the right to a nuclear weapon” not long after the incident occurred. (Dictionary.com tells us that “Used before a noun, apparent means ‘seeming.’”)

In a later full story (“Iran denies wants nuclear weapon as insurance”), AFP’s Simon Morgan reassured readers that the statement by Ali Asghar Soltanieh “was clearly a slip of the tongue.”

How can he be so certain?

Here is most of the brief early report after the incident (note that the headline, “Bombshell: Iran envoy in nuclear weapon slip-up,” already had the excuse down pat; bolds are mine):

Iran’s envoy to the UN atomic watchdog caused a buzz among journalists on Wednesday when he apparently misspoke and said his country had the right to a nuclear weapon.

After saying as usual that Iran was only pursuing nuclear energy for civilian purposes, Ali Asghar Soltanieh strayed alarmingly from the Islamic republic’s usual line.

“The whole Iranian nation are united… on (the) inalienable right of (having a) nuclear weapon,” the envoy to the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency said.

He later got back on track, concluding: “We will not deprive our great nation from benefitting from peaceful uses of nuclear energy.”

But in his later filing, Morgan communicated telepathic certainty that Soltanieh didnt’ mean it (bold is mine):

Tehran was simply seeking to have nuclear technology, “particularly enrichment for our peaceful purposes. That is our policy. This is the policy of Iran,” Soltanieh said.

Then, in what was clearly a slip of the tongue, Soltanieh said that “the whole Iranian nation are united … on (the) inalienable right of (having) nuclear weapon.”

Subsequently asked to clarify that remark, Soltanieh insisted that he had not meant to say “nuclear weapon.”

Gee, isn’t it at least slightly possible that Soltanieh’s “misstatement” was “a slip of the tongue” only in the sense that it revealed the nature of private discussions he has behind closed doors with his home country?

Michael Goldfarb at the Weekly Standard surely thinks so. At that publication’s blog, he brought forth a couple of historical reminders Morgan “somehow” forgot to consider that might have forced him to be just a bit less certain (links are in original):

Remember when the Iranians left blueprints for a nuclear warhead lying around, and then told the IAEA inspectors that the regime “received them inadvertently while purchasing its nuclear equipment on the black market decades ago”?

…. Relax, just because they have highly-enriched uranium, blueprints for a nuclear warhead, and an envoy declaring to international inspectors that the regime has an “inalienable right” to build a nuclear weapon, that doesn’t mean anything.

Of course not. Simon Morgan says so. (/sarc)

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.