From Saturday, October 3′s SNL broadcast — “Two big accomplishments, Jack and Squat“:

Sadly, chronicling the real damage done to this point isn’t funny.

It would have been better if Connecticut TV station WTNH had gotten the spelling of Mike Cristofaro’s last name correct. But the larger point is that nothing has been done in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood that was the subject of the outrageous 2005 Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision in over four years since it was decided, and in over three years since the parties settled.

The station does a pretty good job with the story:

The New London Development Corporation’s (NLDC’s) claim that all would be well if the litigation hadn’t occurred is to say the least extremely dubious. Give me a break. As Mike Cristofaro says on the vid, “They wanted 90 acres cleared to offer to developers. That’s what it came down to. And they don’t want to admit they were wrong.” And “the litigation was (about only) 1.3 acres ….” If the NLDC really had a deal going, they would not have (or should not have) allowed 7 houses near the edge of the area involved get in the way — unless their larger goal was to make an authoritarian point, regardless of the consequences.

It would have been nice if WTNH had mentioned that fundraising efforts for the Coast Guard Museum, which was supposed to be the linchpin of the redevelopment effort, were put on hold in late July.

Related: Condolences to and prayers for the Cristofaros on the death of patriarch Pasquale Cristofaro on September 19.

Follow how he systematically exposes a spam commenter who hurls unfounded accusations at Patterico, and who clearly has a hang-up about Roman Polanski’s supposed mistreatment.

I wonder why? Go there and find out.

Now THAT is entertainment.

The commenter made a very bad target choice.

Those who read the New York Times’s coverage of the unsuccessful results of Barack and Michelle Obama’s attempt to seal the 2016 Summer Olympics bid for Chicago on Friday afternoon (‘For Obama, an Unsuccessful Campaign”) might want to read it again.

If it doesn’t seem the same, it’s because it isn’t.

Blogger Weasel Zippers (HT Hot Air Headlines via Instapundit) caught the Times committing a major scrub of the story. But it’s really worse than that.

An excerpt of the item’s first five paragraphs posted at FreeRepublic at 4:44 Eastern Time on October 2 shows that the article was apparently originally published under the same title with Peter Baker’s byline sometime Friday afternoon.

There are even more substantive differences noticed by Weasel Zippers I will get to shortly, but the first five paragraphs alone were obviously worked over, while Jeff Zeleny’s name was added to the byline.

On the left is the original as excerpted at FreeRepublic; on the right are the first five paragraphs currently at the Times web site (saved here at my host for future reference; click here or on the graphic to view a larger side-by-side version in a separate window):

It’s not too difficult to determine that the revised coverage waters down Baker’s original on-the-scene observations.

Here are other items Weasel Zippers noted:

• The reference to other politicians on the journey in the original (“On Air Force One with him Friday, Mr. Obama brought a couple cabinet officers from Illinois, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Education Secretary Arne Duncan, as well as Senator Dick Durban”) went away.
• An entire paragraph that referred to an Olympic allusion in an Obama campaign speech last year (“And the prospect of winning was too irresistible. After all, Mr. Obama has already envisioned the day when he could welcome the world to his hometown, never mind that small matter of reelection. ‘In 2016, I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president, he told a rally in Chicago in June 2008. ‘So I can’t think of a better way than to be marching into Washington Park … as president of the United States and announcing to the world: Let the Games begin!’”) was flushed.
• An arrogant, victory-lap jab at critics from Rahm Emanuel (“’They shouldn’t try to make politics of this,’ Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff and a Chicagoan himself, told ABC News. ‘I think they should take some pride in the U.S.’s win, and you know, we’ll make sure they get some good seats once Chicago does host the games.’”) was deep-sixed.
• But the Times did find room to note the existence of the president deigning to do his real job for a bit by meeting with the general in charge in Afghanistan (“Mr. Obama also used the opportunity to meet for 25 minutes with his Afghanistan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who flew to Copenhagen from London, where he was on business. ‘The biggest loss of anything on this trip was sleep,’ Mr. Gibbs said.”)

I should also note that a supposedly heroic Michelle Obama quote in the original (“‘Take no prisoners,’ she vowed”) also got the memory-hole treatment.

The change in the dateline location is important to the point of this post. The Washington story is not an hours-later update of an older story; the location change means that it is a new story. Yet it carries the same URL as the older one out of Copenhagen (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/03/sports/03obama.html). There is no journalistically defensible reason for deleting the Copenhagen-based story. Yet it has indeed disappeared. Times searches on word strings deleted from the older item come up empty.

As if the Times needed any more blows to its allegedly still-existing journalistic integrity, this one can’t help but beg the question of who at the White House put pressure on the Times to do what it did. Why would any journalist put themselves in the position of making people wonder if they bow to the wishes of the politically powerful? The answer may be that journalism, once thought to be at least lurking occasionally in its Manhattan hallways, is officially dead at the New York Times.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From LifeNews.com:

October 2, 2009

Top pro-life groups are delighted by the results of the new Pew poll showing double-digit movement from the American public towards the pro-life position on abortion. The poll found an eleven percent shift with support for abortion dropping seven percent and opposition rising four percent.

“Add today’s Pew poll results to the growing pile of evidence that the pro-life position has become the majority position in America,” Marjorie Dannenfelser told LifeNews.com.

The head of the Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life women’s group, said the “politically correct language of ‘choice’ is worn out.”

“This growing intensity amongst pro-lifers should send a clear message to Washington—start representing your constituents, because the Life issue is not going to shrink away,” she said.

As the Pew researchers did, Dannenfelser assigned part of the credit for the pro-life shift on abortion to President Barack Obama.

“As President Obama and his allies in Congress continue to push a radical abortion agenda through health care reform, Americans across the board are waking up and realizing: this is not representation,” she told LifeNews.com.

Dannenfelser encouraged “GOP leaders across the nation” to take note of this week’s poll, and all the evidence leading up to it that show the pro-life position is gaining.” She says it “could strengthen the Republican Party if they would only pay attention.” ….

The Pew poll report is here.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Jim Taranto at the Wall Street Journal’s Best of the Web likes to say that President Obama’s promises come with an expiration date.

In the case of the stimulus, the promise that the unemployment rate would be restrained didn’t even come with a start date. That empty promise has never materialized, and the variance between that promise (dark blue line in the graph below) and reality continues to widen:

(Source: Michael’s Comments)

Assuming they really want to see an economic recovery, they didn’t learn anything from the 1930s, when FDR’s stimulus did nothing but extend the country’s Federal Reserve-engineered, Herbert Hoover-assisted Great Depression.

Again assuming they are interested in a recovery, they didn’t learn anything from the 1990s, when Japan’s attempt to stimulate its way out of a recession did nothing but create a zombie economy that still hasn’t adequately revived.

The evidence continues to build that this administration may simply not be interested in an economic recovery. They’re doing almost nothing that has worked in the past, and almost everything that hasn’t worked. What motivation is there, other than to increase the power of the state, regardless of the economic consequences on everyday people?

Note: This was originally posted at Pajamas Media and teased here at BizzyBlog on Thursday.

Note II: The graphic below on job losses was done before yesterday’s employment report. Updating that data — in the past 12 months (Oct. 2008 through Sept. 2009; graphic here), seasonally adjusted job losses have averaged 482,000).

Note III: A graphic looking at the awful federal collections situation updated by a few days is here.

__________________________

This train wreck is brought to you by those who created the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.

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During the third quarter, it has become dreadfully obvious to anyone looking at the numbers that Social Security has reached the point of crisis.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this soon. Year after year during this decade, Social Security’s trustees told us that while the system’s long-term solvency problems are very real, a cash crunch was roughly a decade away.

But in their most recent report in May, based on the system’s situation as it existed at the end of 2008, the trustees ominously trimmed that estimate to seven years:

Annual cost will exceed tax income starting in 2016, at which time the annual gap will be covered with cash from redemptions of special obligations of the Treasury that make up the trust fund assets until these assets are exhausted in 2037.

This decay occurred because the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy kicked into high (or I should say low) gear. In the middle of last year, the Democratic Party’s terrible triumvirate took the economy down; the only question that remains is whether they were horribly misguided or deliberate.

In the face of $4 gas prices, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harry Reid refused to seriously entertain the idea of additional exploration and drilling, in effect making clear their intention of starving the nation of energy, regardless of the consequences, to support what may be human history’s greatest hoax.

They also promised hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases on the most productive in the name of redistributing the money to everyone else. For the first time in my adult life, a major political party promised actions that anyone with clear eyes knew would seriously damage the economy.

At the time, the economy was modestly growing and had improved from a rough first quarter; nonetheless, it remained fragile. Then Pelosi, Obama, and Reid, did their dirty work. At the time I identified the POR Economy’s inception, I asked these questions:

In this business climate, are you going to hire more people? Replace employees when they leave? Expand your business? Even if demand for your products or services is strong, which is still the case in many sectors, you’re going to try to get through with the resources and facilities you have.

That’s exactly what began to happen, and then some. Entrepreneurs, businesspeople and investors battened down the hatches, expecting the worst.

The worst arrived, in the form of the decades in the making, Community Reinvestment Act-driven collapses of the Democratic Party gravy trains known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These were followed in short order by the bipartisan TARP debacle. Washington’s elites, especially Pelosi, Obama, and Reid, showed anyone who still doubted that they could care less what we think. Sadly, George W. Bush and John McCain were among the crunch-time betrayers. The whole sorry saga convinced just about every business leader who hadn’t figured it out already that hard times, entirely the creation of our governing class, were on the way.

Comprehensively revised numbers for the economy’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) show just how dramatic the POR Economy’s damage has been and continues to be. Second-quarter 2008 GDP, at a revised annualized 1.5% (from 2.8%), was still positive and slightly ahead of population growth. But the third quarter was revised from -0.5% to -2.7%. The economy swung 4.2% in the wrong direction (from +1.5% to -2.7%), despite the fact that June was probably the best month in the second quarter. In fact, the National Bureau of Economic Research, while still incoherently clinging to its belief that the economy has been in recession since December 2007, says that “Estimated monthly real GDP reached one peak in January 2008 and another, higher peak in June 2008.”

The wheels totally fell off during the next two quarters. Annualized GDP fell by 5.4% and 6.4%, respectively, in the final quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009. The POR Economy became the POR Recession as normal people define it. Through the second quarter of this year, the economy has contracted by 3.8% since the POR Economy began.

The effect on employment, and therefore the number of people paying Social Security taxes, has been dramatic. Monthly seasonally adjusted job losses, which averaged 137,000 from January to August 2008, have averaged an utterly intolerable 486,000 during the past 12 months:

Meanwhile, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has risen to 9.7%.

Social Security’s trustees recognized the negative impact of the POR Economy through the end of 2008, which is why the cash breakeven point came back to 2016. But since then, that seven-year cushion has vanished.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts that the system will report what it calls a “Primary Surplus” (tax collections less benefits and administrative costs) of $18 billion during the government’s September 30, 2009 fiscal year, followed by small cash deficits in fiscal 2010 and 2011. Okay, but more recently, as shown here, July had a cash deficit of a relatively small $523 million; August’s deficit of $5.76 billion was far more serious.

September is on track to be even worse than August. Through Friday, September 25, overall Treasury receipts from economic activity were 28.5% lower than they were as of September’s final Friday a year ago:

Social Security taxes represent a significant element of the first and third line items above. September 2009′s Social Security collections will surely trail September 2008 by billions of dollars.

President Obama’s chief economic adviser Larry Summers believes that “The level of unemployment …. will, by all forecasts, remain unacceptably high for a number of years.” Collections will lag for quite a while.

Meanwhile, Social Security payouts have skyrocketed and are locked in to higher near-term levels than were anticipated, thanks to a 23% spike in applications for retirement benefits, many by those in their early 60s who lost their jobs. It seems highly doubtful that the tiny surpluses CBO hopes for during the next two years will materialize. After that, the wave of retiring Baby Boomers will probably send annual cash deficits into triple digits in short order.

Finally, if you’re banking on the $2.4 trillion Social Security “Trust Fund” for relief, forget about it. Contrary to established wisdom, it is not a stash of cash or investment securities set aside to pay future benefits. Rather, as demonstrated previously, it consists almost entirely of IOUs from the rest of the government, which happens to be about $12 trillion in debt. Barring major structural reform, Social Security’s ever-worsening cash shortfalls will of necessity have to be covered either by borrowing more, raising taxes, or cutting benefits.

Aren’t you glad Pelosi, Obama, and Reid thwarted and then applauded the demise of Social Security reform efforts four years ago?

Reviewing September’s detailed sales results in the car business carried at the Wall Street Journal, three things stick out immediately:

• The awful performance at General Motors — down 45% from September 2008.
• Chrysler’s even worse performance — down “only” 42% from September 2008, but a mind-boggling 61% from September 2007 (62,197 in 2009, 156,799 in 2007)
• Ford’s tiny decline of only 6% from a year ago, despite the end of the Cash For Clunkers program in August.

No other major maker had a year-over-year September decline that was even half of that seen at GM or Chrysler.

Yet the press, while beginning to acknowledge serious problems at the companies, both of which were first bailed out by the government  and then taken through government-orchestrated, contract law-violating, UAW-favoring bankruptcies (GM discussed here, Chrysler here), still will not entertain the possibility, despite the evidence, that consumers are shunning them because of their bailed-out status and their heavy-handed tactics in bankruptcy.

What follows are excerpts from three reports that covered September’s industry results.

At the Associated Press, Tom Krisher and Dan Strumpf even went so far as to try to get a comment out of Uncle Sam’s Treasury Department (bolds are mine):

A Cash for Clunkers hangover hit every major automaker except Hyundai last month, pushing down sales and leaving the industry searching for signs of a recovery in October.

U.S. sales of cars and light trucks fell to just under 746,000 in September, down 41 percent from August.

Both GM and Chrysler were the biggest losers last month, while Ford, the healthiest of the Detroit Three, reported the smallest drop of major automakers. Of the top companies, only Hyundai posted higher sales, up 27 percent from September 2008.

…. General Motors Co.’s sales plunged 45 percent while Chrysler Group LLC’s fell 42 percent. The weak results continued a string of monthly sales drops for the troubled pair. Now the question is whether their government-funded recovery plans are working.

…. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury Department, which has provided roughly $65 billion to keep GM and Chrysler going, would not comment on the sales figures.

Including equity that was in effect expropriated from the two companies’ disfavored lenders, the total amount of aid provided to GM and Chrysler is significantly higher than the already huge figure the AP pair cited.

An unbylined Reuters report acted as if the two companies were innocent victims of last fall’s TARP debacle, got a “the sky is not falling” denial out of Chrysler, and noted that GM is significantly increasing production (you read that right; bolds are mine):

Sales in September 2008 were rocked by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crisis, events that pushed both GM and Chrysler to seek a federal bailout. With consumer uncertainty rising, sales in September a year earlier had dropped to a 12.2 million unit rate.

…. “In the short term, I don’t see much of change for GM and Chrysler in terms of sales declines. The No. 1 reason really is their product lineup,” said Jesse Toprak, an analyst at Truecar.com.

“The bigger question is whether they can restructure themselves to make money at lower sales levels — it’s going to be tough, obviously,” he said.

Fiat SpA Chief Executive Sergio Marchionne, who has taken charge of Chrysler’s turnaround plan after the Italian automaker took management control at the U.S. automaker, said reduced incentive spending had contributed to the depressed sales result for September.

“We are not bleeding like people think we are,” Marchionne told reporters.

…. GM said it was sticking with plans to increase production in North America by 20 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter.

…. “Clearly, the economy is starting to gain some momentum,” said GM sales analyst Mike DiGiovanni. “But we know it’s still going to be bumpy and clearly the economy is still dependent on policy stimulus.”

That would be the same “policy stimulus” that Noel Sheppard at NewsBusters noted earlier today was the subject of derisive laughter from CNBC’s Melissa Francis and Lawrence Kudlow when Former Clinton Labor Secretary and current Obama economic advisor Robert Reich tried to claim that “the stimulus package is the thing that is actually keeping the economy up, keeping people employed.”

As to “restructuring to make money at lower sales leves” — uh, I thought that’s among the reasons they went through bankruptcies. Only a few months out, they have to restructure yet again if they’re ever going to make money?

At the New York Times, Nick Bunkley quoted a Chrysler spokesman whining about allegedly tight credit, and noted that GM’s core brands fared almost as poorly as the ones that are going away:

“We believe the remainder of 2009 will continue to be a challenge for the U.S. automotive market,” said Peter Fong, the head of Chrysler’s sales organization. “Credit markets have thawed slightly but still remain tight, and consumer confidence, as we saw in September, is tenuous.”

…. At G.M., which is eliminating four of its eight brands as part of its postbankruptcy restructuring, sales for the four brands that will remain — Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet and GMC — were down 41 percent in September.

But as usual, there wasn’t a word in any of the three reports about what I noted over a month ago at the end of the Cash for Clunkers program:

The big story in vehicle sales ever since the bailouts of GM and Chrysler commenced in December of last year has been how those two companies have consistently lost market share ever since. The press has almost dogmatically refused to consider the possibility that consumers continue to shun now state-controlled GM and shotgun-wedded Chrysler because they refuse to do business with bailed-out companies that gobbled up tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer money, running roughshod over disfavored classes of creditors and violating long-established principles of contract law in the process. Even if the avoidance in some cases isn’t ideologically based, but instead revolves around warranty and other concerns, lost sales are lost sales.

One has to wonder why the government and its car czars and onsite management at the two companies have never entertained the idea that a backlash might occur, and why it never tried to do anything about it once its presence was apparent in the marketplace. It may be that the establishment media’s refusal to take the shunning seriously is contributing to their complacency. If so, they are not doing the companies any favors.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

That’s according to this Wall Street Journal chart.

Chrysler sold 62,197.

I’m educated-guessing that those are the lowest monthly numbers in decades.

Even AP, which has mostly downplayed the historic swoons at the two bailed-out companies, noted the existence of serious problems yesterday:

General Motors Co.’s sales plunged 45 percent while Chrysler Group LLC’s fell 42 percent. The weak results continued a string of monthly sales drops for the troubled pair. Now the question is whether their government-funded recovery plans are working.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Treasury Department, which has provided roughly $65 billion to keep GM and Chrysler going, would not comment on the sales figures.

Just wait until the financial loss results are compiled. I wonder if we’ll be allowed to see them?

I guess I’d better put up my take before it’s announced.

There’s an important rule in diplomacy that basically says, “You never bring the big guy into a situation unless and until you know what the result will be.”

In other words, almost all real negotiations take place before the head of state shows up. The supposed “breakthrough” or “victory” announcements credited to heads of state are almost entirely based on what’s already in place when he or she arrives.

That brings us to the Olympics bid. If Barack Obama’s handlers are smart, they’ve already been tipped that Chicago is going to get the bid. If that is the result, I will assume it’s because they followed that rule of diplomacy, pretty much regardless of the post-announcement hype, because that is how the world works.

If Team Obama is really going into this without knowing the result, they’re taking a risk they should not be taking, regardless of the ultimate outcome. The downside of losing the bid is a needless loss of prestige, and that’s the first thing the handlers should be working to prevent.

The pathetic thing about all of the pre-announcement histrionics is that most of the press knows or should know what I’ve noted here. If the media is orchestrating a golden moment for Dear Leader based on being themselves tipped off to the result, shame on them. Even if they haven’t been tipped, how it’s playing out should tell them that a winning bid should be virtually assured, again unless Team Obama is messing up royally. The meme, based on how it’s playing out and the president’s visible presence, should be that Chicago’s selection is “expected.” Instead, they’re acting as if the magic of Barack and Michelle is what will have won the day. Gag me.

So, let the should-be-preordained games begin.

___________________________________________________

UPDATE (thanks to commenters): From the BBC, which in its last sentence shows that it understands the points I just made above —

BBC News’ Adam Brookes in Chicago: The shock of Chicago’s elimination was greater for the fact that it came in the first round. And greater for the fact that President Obama had taken valuable hours from his packed and tense political schedule to travel to Copenhagen. His legendary powers of persuasion will be said to have failed him, though in reality it will be Chicago’s bid that failed him. Nonetheless, this is a moment which allows the president’s detractors to allege waning prestige on the part of his presidency. And it will raise questions about the political advice that he is receiving.

Headline at Drudge: “The Ego Has Landed.”

UPDATE 2, Oct. 3, 12:15 a.m.: I want to be crystal clear about this. Though I really thought Rio would get the bid because the Games have never been held in South America, and in a sense are overdue to appear there, I wanted Chicago to get the bid. I had business reasons to want Chicago to get the bid. I thought Obama’s appearance signaled its inevitability. I badly overestimated him, his handlers moreso.

I’m a bit miffed at the Obamas because I think their arrogant presence may have alienated may of the balloters. I don’t know what else explains moving from perceived front-runner (overhyped, yes, but still perceived as on top; again, as explained above, he shouldn’t have gone unless this was the case) to first city eliminated.

UPDATE 3, 12:45 a.m.: Maybe Rush cribs BizzyBlog (/absurdity) —

So here he is, president of the world traveling to Copenhagen to give this big presentation and he gets turned down. How could he possibly go over there without knowing this thing was in the bag? This is foolish. Presidents don’t do this kind of thing. You do not go unless you know you have it in the bag. Unless you owe Mayor Daley. I know the ego’s landed, though, Snerdley, got that big ego. I’m sure that he and Michelle thought they were going to pull this off just by showing up over there. Is he such a fool that he doesn’t realize that these people over there hate America more than they like him? Does he not realize that they are delighted to make him look foolish in order to take a swipe at this country?

This is the greatest teaching moment for Obama and he won’t get it.

Well, the prediction as of Wednesday was for 180,000 seasonally adjusted jobs lost, and the result was 263,000.

The unemployment rate went to 9.8%.

If this is a “recovery,” what’s a “boom”? Breaking even? More to come.

___________________________________________

UPDATE: Actually, not that it’s particularly impressive, but there was an improvement over last year in the not seasonally adjusted figures:

That’s the first year-over-year improvement since October 2007. But we’re heading into a period where last year’s comparables are terribly skewed by the impact of the full force of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, the further meltdown in confidence caused by the TARP bailout/sellout, and the intensely negative job-market reaction to Barack Obama’s election.

So of course the next few months on the ground are going to look better than last year. That shouldn’t impress anyone.

This is probably as good a time as any to update the POR Economy job losses vs. the supposedly recessionary previous seven months:

As a reminder, the supposedly recessionary months of December 2007 through June 2008:

• Were marked by average job monthly job losses of 97,000, including December 2007, which shows +120.000.
• Showed combined growth of an annualized +0.8% after the comprehensive revision of Gross Domestic Product (-0.7% in the first quarter of 2008, +1.5% in the second). Also, December, the month when the recession allegedly began, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), was the last month of a quarter where revised economic growth was an annualized 2.1%.
• Were characterized, as the pinheads at the NBER themselves said, as a period where “estimated monthly real GDP reached one peak in January 2008 and another, higher peak in June 2008.” Yet it was supposedly a recessionary period. Give me a break.

In the 15 months of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, which is now the POR Recession/”Repression” As Normal People Define It, seasonally adjusted job losses have totaled over 6.4 million, averaging 427,000 monthly.

Hanky alert. Just watch: