Given what has happened, here is what I hope ultimately becomes the key pull from the Rolling Stone piece that hung out Stan McChrystal to dry:

“There’s a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here,” a senior military official in Kabul tells me.

David Petraeus was the only conceivably palatable choice Obama had that could give him instant defense credibility. The choice is as a strong indication of just how severely damaged this president is.

Unlike his Punk President superior, Petraeus is a big boy and above all a patriot. He may not forgive the vitriol thrown at him just three years ago by Obama, Biden, Clinton, and so many others (Why should he? They were wrong, and he was right), but he will not let it affect him.

I don’t think Petraeus takes the job unless he’s been guaranteed everything needed to achieve victory, like the victory we achieved in Iraq. I pray I’m right.

Whoa — just in time for what was supposed to be peak selling season:

Sales of new homes collapsed in May, sinking 33 percent to the lowest level on record as potential buyers stopped shopping for homes once they could no longer receive government tax credits.

… New-home sales in May fell from April to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 300,000, the government said Wednesday. That was the slowest sales pace on records dating back to 1963. And it’s the largest monthly drop on record. Sales have now sunk 78 percent from their peak in July 2005.

Analysts were startled by the depth of the sales drop.

What have these “analysts” been smoking? As Captain Ed at Hot Air pointed out today, mortgage loan applications were already down 40%. So how could a 33% drop in sales be “startling”?

Let’s recite the economic litany of truth for those who still don’t get it:

• The administration’s only hope for a lasting housing market recovery when it took office was a genuine economic rebound.
• The administration’s only hopes for genuine economic rebound were to rely on a combination of tax cuts; bureaucratic red-tape cutting; aggressive, fossil fuel-based energy exploration and drilling; and, more broadly, an “open for businesss” attitude from the top down.
• Instead, this administration has attempted to do a 21st century version of what spectacularly failed in the 1930s in the U.S. and in the 1990s in Japan: woefully inefficient and ineffective government stimulus (inefficient and ineffective even if not corrupt, which it sadly has been); pumping tens of billions into failed institutions (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Chrysler); and temporary gimmicks like the homebuyers’ credits, Cash for Clunkers, and Cash for Appliances. On top of that, it has also conducted a we’re-above-the-law regime of intimidation and plunder against those who get in their way that Michael Barone has correctly characterized as Gangster Government.

This administration is reaping what they’ve sown and inflicting it on the American people –and it’s not just since Obama came into office, or even since the Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007.

It goes back at least to the early 1990s, when Fan and Fred began their perpetration of 15 years of systematic fraud to the tune of hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars on the housing and mortgage-lending industries, the bond rating agencies, and the securities markets.

It compounded on itself in the late 1990s, when Fan and Fred sharply lowered credit score approval thresholds for mortgage loans it was willing to buy.

And finally, it was triggered in the late spring of 2008, when the three leading Democrats and their party officially set the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy into motion in the name of achieving electoral victory.

Given the lessons of history and the seeds sown in advance, it’s fair to ask if this is after the economy that has resulted from these actions is what they really want. In fact, it’s more fair to demand proof that it’s not.

From Naked Emperor News (HT Red State):

Thus, John Kyl, in relaying a conversation he had with the president, is not really telling us anything new:

Partial transcript:

I met with the president in the Oval Office, just the two of us. …

… Here’s what the president said. “The problem is,” he said, “if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform. In other words, they’re holding it hostage. They don’t want to secure the border unless and until it’s combined with comprehensive immigration reform.

Now I explained, “You and I, Mr. President have an obligation to secure the border. That’s an obligation.

Securing the border is an obligation also an inherent part of what Obama swore he would do when he took his oath of office on January 21, 2009.

But no. Obama in essence told Kyl that:

• Even though we could secure the border, we’re not doing it now.
• We’re not going to do it unless and until we get comprehensive immigration reform.
• You can’t make us do it.
• We’re going to willfully continue to jeopardize this country’s security unless we get our way.

Remember this if a domestic terror incident occurs as a result of lax border security. Obama has said he’s willing to impose that price on us and its possible victims.

For two dozen years, since Ronald Reagan’s 1986 amnesty for about 2 million illegals, which was done based on promises that the bureaucracy and law enforcement would start doing their jobs, Washington, through administrations of both parties, has demonstrated that it does not have the will to carry out its constitutionally mandated duty to secure the borders. But we’re supposed to believe that the government will “somehow” discover that willpower if comprehensive immigration reform (i.e., yet another amnesty, but this time for about 12-20 million) becomes law.

Horse manure.

Here’s the deal for President Obama and the Beltway’s bipartisan cabal of open-borders advocates: Unless and until you secure the borders, there’s no discussion to be had. When you secure the borders for a long enough period of time to prove that you’re serious, we can talk about what to do about the people already here. If you continue in your determination not to secure the borders, the American people will have to find legislators, executives, and law endorcement officials who will.

From the Institute for Justice, on the five-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Kelo v. New London ruling (direct YouTube link):

A more complete treatment is at this Institute web page, with a capsule summary here. The capsule has this summary of how what the Supreme Court called a “a carefully considered development plan” has worked out:

And what now stands on the land where 75 homes once stood around Susette Kelo’s little pink house? Nothing but barren fields, weeds and feral cats. Ten years lost and more than $80 million in taxpayer money spent. Even Pfizer, which received massive corporate welfare to move to New London and sparked the abuses of eminent domain, has now announced that it will close its research and development headquarters and leave New London.

The press has consistently avoided revisiting what happened with the taken properties in the aftermath of the Kelo ruling. I’d like to be proven wrong, but my guess is that we’ll see very little if any coverage. The nation as a whole would benefit from knowing, and the vast majority do not.

An index to BizzyBlog posts during the first year or so after the ruling, up to and including the final settlement with holdouts Susette Kelo and the Cristofaro family, is here. This BizzyBlog search link will take readers to more recent posts about the events that occurred after that point.

While there has been a great deal of beneficial pushback against Kelo, especially in Ohio, where previously one could only fight to get back a condemned property after first being forced give it up (!), I’m less optimistic than the Institute about the whether it has been enough. Ensuring fundamental property rights in accordance with the real meaning of the Constitution throughout the nation is a federal matter, and Congress has never acted to legislatively overturn Kelo. The Tea Party movement and voters in general should consider the support of such legislation a pre-condition for endorsement of and support for any candidate for national office.

___________________________________________________

Update: The Pfizer campus being abandoned by the pharmaceutical giant as its tax-abatement period ends is being sold:

Electric Boat Buying Pfizer Headquarters In New London, Adding 700 Jobs

Electric Boat, the Groton-based submarine maker, said Monday that it would buy the pharmaceutical giant’s 750,000-square-foot building for its own engineering and research operation, one likely to employ at least 3,000 people, including hundreds of workers yet to be hired.

The companies declined to disclose or comment on the sale price prior to closing, but a New London city official said the price was about $50 million — or less than 20 percent of the $300 million that Pfizer paid to develop the property a decade ago. EB President John Casey said he anticipates a closing within two months.

Yes, it’s nice that New London appears to be on track to get as many as 3,000 jobs, though this New London Day editorial says it “space for 2,200 workers.” But the editorial also notes that Electric Boat’s move comes at yet another steep price:

For the next five years, EB will enjoy the same 80 percent abatement on real and personal property taxes that enticed Pfizer to build in the first place. In the best-case scenario, the revenues generated for the city by the research-and-development buildings will stay the same. Connecticut is also providing a $15 million grant to EB, and other incentives are possible.

The Institute for Justice video cites an $80 million figure for what the city and state has previously spent in the area. Now it’s pushing $100 mil, if not exceeding it. It just, never, ends.

From Rome:

Jun 23, 2010 / 01:21 am

Archaeologists and restorers working at the Roman catacombs of St. Tecla on Tuesday announced the discovery of the world’s oldest known paintings of the apostles Peter, Paul, Andrew and John.

“They’re the oldest images of the apostles and are datable to the latter half of the fourth century AD,” said Fabrizio Bisconti, superintendent of archeology at the catacombs.

According to ANSA, the catacombs are owned and maintained by the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology. They are located about one-third of a mile from the church of St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, where the Apostle to the Gentiles is buried.

The paintings were found on the ceiling of the burial chamber of an ancient Roman noblewoman who commissioned painters to decorate it with Bible scenes.

Previously, the Vatican had reported the archaeologists’ discovery of the oldest known image of St. Paul while doing routine restoration work. On Tuesday, the Vatican team said Paul’s image was part of a ceiling painting that included the full-face icons of the other three apostles.

“The paintings of Andrew and John are undoubtedly the oldest ever,” Bisconti commented. “Some showing Peter have been found that date to the middle of the fourth century although this is the first time that the apostle is not shown in a group but singly, in an icon.”

Barbara Mazzei, chief restorer at the site, said the discovery is evidence that the devotion to the apostles began in early Christianity. She said restorers have been able to uncover the image with the help of a new and sophisticated laser technology that peels off the thick calcium carbonate deposits without damaging the colors underneath, according to ANSA.

Speaking at a press conference to announce the discovery of the icons, President of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi said, “we ought to proceed in a manner that (recognizes) all artworks of this kind have the capacity to speak to the contemporary culture, making their voices resound with their values and all of their beauty.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

It’s here.

I will mirror it here at BizzyBlog on Thursday afternoon (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

Really, where are they? And where is the press, wondering why there weren’t more skimmers out in the Gulf already weeks ago?

From Frances Rice:

Commemoration of Juneteenth – The Celebration of Black Freedom
By Frances Rice

As we celebrate Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, it is fitting that we pause to recognize the origin of this important part of our African American heritage.

June 19th marks the day in 1865 when word reached blacks in Texas that slavery in the United States had been abolished. More than two years earlier, on January 1, 1863, Republican President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

…News of the proclamation officially reached Texas on June 19, 1865, when Union General Gordon Granger, backed by nearly 2,000 troops, arrived in the city of Galveston and publicly announced that slavery in the United States had ended. Republicans had passed the Thirteenth Amendment on January 31, 1865 that was ratified on December 6, 1865 to abolish slavery in the United States.

…Juneteenth commemorations began in Texas in 1866. Within a few years they had spread to other states and became an annual tradition, celebrating freedom for blacks in addition to many other themes, including education, self-improvement, African American accomplishments throughout history, and tolerance and respect for all cultures.

The racial divisiveness prevalent today would not exist if the Democrats in control of the Southern states had left African Americans alone at the moment in history when blacks were freed from slavery and the Juneteenth celebrations began. Instead Democrats set for themselves the horrendous task of keeping blacks in virtual slavery.

Southern Democrats passed discriminatory Black Codes in 1865 to suppress, restrict, and deny blacks the same privileges as whites. The Codes forced blacks to serve as apprentices to their former slave masters.

In 1866, the Ku Klux Klan was started by Democrats to lynch and terrorize Republicans, black and white, and the Ku Klux Klan became the terrorist arm of the Democratic Party.

To counter the discriminatory and terrorizing actions by Democrats, Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and the Reconstruction Act of 1867 that was designed to establish a new government system in the Democrat-controlled South, one that was fair to blacks.

Further, the Fourteenth Amendment pushed by Republicans was ratified in1868 that granted blacks citizenship. The Fifteenth Amendment also pushed by Republicans was ratified in 1870 that granted blacks the right to vote.

Undaunted, Democrats passed discriminatory Jim Crow Laws in 1875 to restrict the rights of blacks to use public facilities. In response, Republicans passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which prohibited racial discrimination in public facilities.

The timeline of events reminds me of Reagan’s words: “The trouble with our liberal friends isn’t that they’re ignorant; it’s that they know so much that isn’t so.” Read Ms. Rice’s entire piece here. It reveals who was sincere and instrumental in advancing a free and equal society for all. Her final words are as overdue as the charge they carry:

As author Michael Scheuer stated, the Democratic Party is the party of the four S’s: slavery, secession, segregation and now socialism.

Democrats have been running black communities for the past 40 years, and the socialist policies of the Democrats have destroyed the economic and social fabric of black communities. A wise man once wrote that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

It is way past time for blacks to end their unfounded loyalty to the Democratic Party, stop having their vote taken for granted and seize control over their own destiny.

Only then will blacks be truly free.

Wow, free from the Democrat Party Plantation…one can only imagine.

Via the Associated Press (link may be dynamic and subject to change):

A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill.

The White House says President Barack Obama’s administration will appeal.

Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.

This later paragraph from AP’s breaking news report explains why I believe Ken Salazar’s dissenting experts from the National Academy of Engineering may have influenced the judge’s outlook on the case:

Feldman says in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium. He says it seems to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

Feldman’s take seems to mirror the language of the dissenting experts.

Investors Business Daily editorialized on Salazar’s moratorium imposition travesty on June 10:

Experts brought together by the Obama administration to review offshore drilling safety were asked to review recommendations in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They did not give their blessing to the six-month drilling moratorium announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and have accused him of deliberately appending their report to make it seem like they did.

According to the New Orleans Times Picayune, Salazar’s May 27 report to the president said the seven experts “peer reviewed” his recommendations, including a six-month ban on drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet. The experts say the report they reviewed suggested stopping only new drilling in waters deeper than 1,000 feet.

The reviewers for Salazar’s report were provided by the National Academy of Engineering. Their joint letter says that while they agreed with the report’s various safety recommendations, “we do not agree with the six-month blanket moratorium on floating drilling. A moratorium was added after the final review and was never agreed to by the contributors.”

One panelist, Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, said in an e-mail: “Moratorium was not a part of the … report we consulted-advised-reviewed.” The academy’s Ken Arnold was less subtle, saying: “The secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions.”

The panelists simply oppose the announced moratorium. “A blanket moratorium is not the answer,” the letter says. “It will not measurably reduce risk further, and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy, which may be greater than that of the oil spill. We do not believe punishing the innocent is the right thing to do.”

Neither do we, and frankly we’re tired of the deliberate manipulation of facts and truth in the name of protecting the environment …

Even the Associated Press finally broke down and covered the dissenters’ outcries yesterday, while still somewhat concealing the full scope of their objections:

The scientists, who had consulted with Salazar on a May 27 report on drilling safety, said the Interior Department falsely implied that they had agreed to a “blanket moratorium” that they actually opposed. The scientists said the drilling moratorium went too far and warned that it may have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy.

A spokeswoman for Salazar said the May 27 report was not intended to imply that all experts from the National Academy of Engineering had agreed to the moratorium.

“By listing the members of the NAE that peer-reviewed the 22 safety recommendations contained in the report, we didn’t mean to imply that they also agreed with the moratorium on deep-water drilling,” said spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff.

Sure, Kendra.

Though it’s only one step, it may very well be that thanks to the stink raised by the NAE experts and outlets like the Wall Street Journal, IBD, and many center-right blogs, the nation might start getting the energy sector of its economy back in gear.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Late last year, a story carried by the wire service AFP reported on an announcement by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez that his government would launch “a new chain of government-run, cut-rate retail stores that will sell everything from food to cars to clothing.” Chavez reportedly said that these “discount socialist stores” would show people “what a real market is all about, not those speculative, money-grubbing markets, but a market for the people.”

This initiative was on top of Chavez’s creation of Mercal (link is to the Venezuelan home page, complete with “The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela” logo), a state-run network of grocery stores, seven years ago.

How is this great leap forward into state control working out? A June 18 Reuters dispatch carried at CNBC reports that the government can’t even keep its food fresh. But that’s okay. The wire service takes a while to get there, and even then a bit of interpretation is necessary, but eventually we learn that the Chavez “solution” to that thorny problem is to seize replacement goods from private merchants:

Hugo Chavez Spearheads Raids as Food Prices Skyrocket

Mountains of rotting food found at a government warehouse, soaring prices and soldiers raiding wholesalers accused of hoarding: Food supply is the latest battle in President Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution.

Venezuelan army soldiers swept through the working class, pro-Chavez neighborhood of Catia in Caracas last week, seizing 120 tons of rice along with coffee and powdered milk that officials said was to be sold above regulated prices.

“The battle for food is a matter of national security,” said a red-shirted official from the Food Ministry, resting his arm on a pallet laden with bags of coffee.

It is also the latest issue to divide the Latin American country where Chavez has nationalized a wide swathe of the economy, he says to reverse years of exploitation of the poor.

Chavez supporters are grateful for a network of cheap state-run supermarkets and they say the raids will slow massive inflation.

Critics accuse him of steering the country toward a communist dictatorship and say he is destroying the private sector.

They point to 80,000 tons of rotting food found in warehouses belonging to the government as evidence the state is a poor and corrupt administrator.

Jose Guzman, an assistant manager at a store raided in Catia, watched with resignation as government agents pored over the company’s accounts and computers after the food ministry official and the television cameras left.

“The government is pushing this type of establishment toward bankruptcy,” said Guzman, who linked the raid to the rotten food scandal. “Somehow they have to replace all the food that was lost, and this is the most expeditious way.”

Brilliant.

The Reuters report goes on to inform readers that “Food prices are up 41 percent in the last 12 months during a deep recession,” that Chavez has “revived threats to take over the country’s largest private food processor, miller and brewer, Polar,” and that “government now controls between 20 percent and 30 percent of the distribution of staple foods.”

A search on “Venezuela” at the Associated Press’s main site indicates that though there are several stories on developments in that country, the wire service has not reported on this latest ratchet-up of the country’s ongoing socialist horror show.

It would be unfair to contend that AP is ignoring Venezuela, but its headlines and/or its dispatches have displayed an annoying tendency to downplay the significance of what should be seen as scary developments.

For example, a June 14 story with a misdirecting headline (“Venezuela takes control of another private bank”) would appear to be about government seizure of a financially troubled enterprise. The real story is that the the bank’s owner/former owner “just so happens” to be “a minority shareholder of Globovision, the country’s last TV channel that takes a stridently anti-government line.”

A June 8 AP report on the country’s inflation casually notes that “The government has sought to confront inflation with a range of measures including recent seizures and shutdowns of businesses that authorities accuse of driving up prices.” Pray tell, what does seizing and shutting down businesses, thereby restricting supply, have to do with fighting inflation?

The wire service also gives a virtual PR voice to Chavez statements that appear at first glance to be ploys designed to position his government as the virtue police. In a deceptively titled June 11 report (“Chavez targets alcohol, smoking in Venezuela”), AP reporter Jorge Rueda uncritically relays Chavez’s assertion that “the transition (to socialism) requires a moral crusade to change Venezuelans’ values.” Readers have to get to Rueda’s final paragraphs before they understand what this appeal to virtue is really all about:

Chavez has also recently used the issue in his criticisms of the country’s largest food producer, Empresas Polar, which sells the country’s leading brand of beer, Polar.

Chavez has ordered the expropriation of some of Polar’s warehouses, and has warned he could decide to take over more of the company. If the government did take over the Polar brewery, it would be shut down, Chavez has warned.

Addressing Polar’s president, Lorenzo Mendoza, during Thursday’s speech, Chavez said: “I don’t know what you’re going to do … with your little Polar.” He used the term “Polarcita,” which Venezuelans often use for the small beer bottles that are popular in the country.

Here’s an idea: If CNN, which yesterday declared its independence and fired the Associated Press, wants to make a mark with its own wire service efforts, it might want to consider dispatching correspondents to Venezuela to catch the world up on the slow-motion horror there that the AP and broadcast TV networks have either ignored or downplayed for years.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Note: This post originally appeared in the very early morning, and has been carried forward.

CNN has announced that it will cease using all content from the Associated Press effective June 30, and from all appearances will take a run at becoming a credible wire service competitor.

Although it would be easy to dismiss this as the blind leaving the blind, this development seems like it has the potential to alter the news landscape and temper some of the worst excesses of press bias and ignorance.

Here are a few paragraphs from CNN’s internal announcement, as carried at Media Bistro:

To: CNN Staff

From: Jim Walton

We are taking an important next step in the content-ownership process we began in 2007 to more fully leverage CNN’s global newsgathering investments. Starting today, CNN newsgathering will be the primary source of all content for all of our platforms and services. We will no longer use AP materials or services. The content we offer will be distinctive, compelling and, I am proud to say, our own.

Beyond the obvious business reasons for this operating shift-the content we spend our money to create should be the content we present, and less reliance on outside sources will mean more to invest in our organization-there are other important motivations. CNN-exclusive content will further differentiate our platforms in the media marketplace. It will provide consumers with the unique news and information experience they expect from CNN. And it will make us more creative, resourceful and collaborative journalists and news professionals.

To support this new model, we are expanding the CNN Wires team and embedding positions with desks and bureaus to speed information to air. Among continuing infrastructure improvements to further our distinctive storytelling, we’re launching CNN Share to aggregate editorial content and facilitate easy distribution and sharing across platforms; launching a new alert system for breaking news; creating newsgathering opportunities across all dayparts; and building tools to expand information gathering from social media and emerging sources.

The AP is not pleased, as its official, insufferably arrogant press release indicates:

We have been unable to reach agreement with CNN on its license to use our content.

It is unfortunate that CNN’s viewers will no longer have access to the breaking news and worldwide reporting resources of The Associated Press, the gold standard in journalism. We will continue to provide AP news to other TV networks and tens of thousands of additional broadcast and cable outlets, as well as newspapers, websites and portals around the world.

Paul Colford

AP Director of Media Relations

With all due respect, Paul, CNN’s defection demonstrates that even those who share your journalists’ leftist biases are getting tired of being fed self-evident untruths, half-truths, and blatant and sometimes seemingly deliberate oversights. CNN is figuring that at worst, if they blow as many stories as the Associated Press has, they can at least take consolation in the fact that they paid their own people to do it instead of throwing money at a motley crew of deluded (“Gold standard”? More like fool’s gold), dysfunctional, ignorant know-it-alls.

Here is a small sample from a very long list of serious errors those who have relied on AP content have had to stand by helplessly and observe:

• Last week, the AP wanted us to think that Ford, General/Government Motors, and Chrysler have all improved the quality of their vehicles during the past year. The truth (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog): Ford has, at a stellar level; GM has declined; and Chrysler, while improving, has merely started to climb out of a very deep basement.
• In May, the AP lazily promoted the falsehood that call center jobs are disappearing in the U.S. in a report on New York Senator Charles Schumer’s proposed call-center tax. The truth (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog): U.S.-based call center employment has grown, even as employment in the rest of the economy has declined.
• An innumerate AP reporter wrote in April that “After losing 400,000 jobs in 2008, bailed-out automakers are rebounding.” The truth (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog): Bailed-out GM’s and Chrysler’s combined U.S.-based headcount was far less than 400,000 in 2008.
• In botching one of the most important stories of 2009 (BizzyBlog; BigJournalism), the AP initially asserted that the thwarted Detroit Christmas BVD bomber “claimed to have been instructed by al-Qaida to detonate the plane over U.S. soil.” Inexplicably, over the next 48 hours, the A-Q connection disappeared from future related AP dispatches. But then, when it came time to do a recounting of events several weeks later, AP reasserted A-Q’s involvement. The effect of all of this was to make it appear that — shazam! — Barack Obama’s insistence on getting the facts had surfaced the A-Q connection that had been known from the very beginning.
• A year ago, the AP swallowed whole claims by a Pew Research Center group that “clean energy jobs” grew much faster than jobs in the overall economy during the mid-2000s. It is indisputable (NewsBusters; BizzyBlog) that they instead grew more slowly.

CNN appears to be trying to position itself as an AP competitor, as this paragraph from a May Media Bistro post foreshadows:

The good news is that the company seems to be having success in driving new revenue streams. Digital advertising and sales (like the CNN iPhone app) account for about 10% of total revenue, the same as CNN U.S. primetime, and the company is looking to grow its wire service this year and next, selling CNN and CNN.com content to affiliates in need of content.

Here is why I think this development could end up being important to those of use who want original news content fed to us straight. When the Associated Press had a semblance of competition in the form of United Press International, its reportage, though on the biased side, was not as blatantly slanted as it generally is today. Having another entity out there with which readers could do side-by-side comparisons acted to prevent much of the potential excess. For all practical purposes, in original news reporting, there is currently no such check on the AP today, especially in national and business news. Maybe CNN, though biased itself, will provide it. Well, we can hope they will at least act as brakes on each other.

If neither service is up to the task of playing it sufficiently straight, those who are building workaround hard-news alternatives will begin to emerge and, if the market for fair and balanced news is what many of us believe it is, take both of them down.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Boston, Mass.:

A firefighter pulled a young Gardner girl out of her burning home Monday and one little signal may have made the difference between her life and death.

Phylissa George, 7, was recovering Tuesday after the harrowing rescue when a firefighter managed to pull her out of her bedroom window.

She was asleep early when flames broke out about 6:30 a.m. in the family’s first-floor Gardner apartment at 56 Nichols St. The fire created dense black smoke and quickly became a three-alarm blaze.

George’s mother was in a panic and couldn’t get the door open to rescue her daughter when firefighters started smashing windows to vent the building.

Fire Lt. Cleo Caouette, a 34-year-veteran of the force, said he was working in a narrow alley between the house and another building when he happened to glance up to see a small hand fluttering from a bedroom window.

“Finally, all of a sudden, the smoke moved just enough so that when I turned around the second time I could see a small hand out the window,” Caouette said.

The lieutenant reached in and pulled the girl out of the burning building. He said he’s no hero, it was just instinct, but it was his first save after three decades on the job. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

If the research holds up, this is big, and will test environmentalists’ sincerity:

Researchers at Stanford University and the Carnegie Institute have just confirmed that high-yield farming, by feeding the Earth’s population from less land, has prevented the release of as much as 600 billion tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s equal to as much as one-third of all the greenhouse gasses emitted by human societies since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1850.

For 50 years, the environmental movement has condemned high-yield farming as unsustainable, poisonous, immoral, and unfashionable. Worst, they said, conventional farming aggravated man-made global warming through greenhouse emissions from its fertilizers, diesel fuel, and pesticides.

Now they must re-evaluate both the virtues of high-yield systems and the value of organic farming.

… Organic farms get only about half the yield of high-tech farming, primarily because they refuse to use nitrogen to tap the full yield potential of their seeds, and secondly because they allow too much pest damage in their fields. Equally damning, organic disallows no-till farming, which cuts soil erosion by up to 95 percent, because it requires herbicides to control competing weeds. Nor have any health or food safety benefits been documented for organic foods.

Now we are learning that organic farming is also worse for global warming than high-tech farming. What’s left for the organics to claim?

I hope I’m wrong, but I would guess that these are the possible answers to the last excerpted question:
1) It makes us feel good, so leave us alone.
2) We don’t make big evil profits like big multinational agribusinesses, so we’re more pure. Now leave us alone.
3) We really don’t believe in any system, even if proven environmentally friendly, that will support a growing world population, because we think the world’s population is too high already. So stop pretending that you’ve proven anything, and leave us alone.
4) Our minds are made up. Facts don’t matter. The evidence be damned. How dare you question our superior wisdom? Now leave us alone.

The problem, of course, is that they won’t leave agribusinesses alone.

As I said, I hope I’m wrong. But I don’t know how you can hold out much hope for people who cling to the wisdom of banning DDT in the face of the facts.

______________________________________________________

UPDATE: I forgot a possible fifth response — “The research was funded by someone associated with big agribusinesses, so even if it’s absolutely correct in every scientific respect, it doesn’t count. Our research funded by environmentally pure people who care is better, no matter how slipshod their work is.”