It’s here at the Washington Examiner’s OpinionZone blog.

I will post it here at BizzyBlog on Sunday (link won’t work until then).

The three fables are:

1. The annual budget deficit is down.
2. The (very modest) increase in federal receipts reflects a recovering economy.
3. Year-over-year spending is down.

Go there to see graphics and content demonstrating why all three are fables.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has taken the “long hot summer” arguments of the 1960s and early 1970s (which were essentially that “if the government doesn’t provide enough urban aid, there will be riots”) to a whole new level.

At least it’s now obvious where he’s coming from:

Excerpt:

(Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf said that) “If we move from that location, the story will be the radicals have taken over the discourse, the headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack. Our national security now hinges on how we negotiate this, how we speak about it. The battlefront is between moderates of all sides… and the radicals on all sides.”

Moving the project to another location would strengthen Islamist radicals’ ability to recruit followers and will likely increase violence against Americans, the imam said.”

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UPDATE, Sept. 10: Taranto at Best of the Web (“Protection Racket”) — “Rauf’s outrageous comments ought to erase all doubt that the construction of the Ground Zero mosque would be a victory for terrorism.”

It’s here.

Sub-headline:

In the Buckeye State, dumb Republicans are ahead, but only because a) it’s 2010, and b) the Democrats have been dumber.

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

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So Ohio is having a “Dumb v. Dumber” campaign this fall, while other states are seeing sensible conservative and even a few leftist insurgencies succeeding or getting uncomfortably close.

Why is Ohio being left behind? I think one of the main reasons is that Ohio’s electoral calendar and procedures are rigged to protect incumbents. Establishment Democrats and Republicans are both perfectly fine with that; in fact, they created the situation.

Start with the calendar. There’s no good reason beyond incumbent protection why Buckeye State party primaries are held in May during non-presidential election years and March during presidential election years. If Ohio’s primaries were held shortly after Labor Day, we would a) see a higher, more informed, and more focused turnout, and b) have more and possibly better challengers willing to run for office because of the shorter time commitment. Presidential primaries could still be held early, but they would be separate elections, as is the case in California and many other states.

The aforementioned advantages are clearly seen as bugs and not benefits by ORPINO (the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only) and the Ohio Democratic Party.

I submit that ORPINO’s ticket would be very different and probably better this November if the Republican primary were coming up next week instead of having been held four long months ago.

The game is also rigged against independent runs. There is no good reason why:

• Independents generally have to come up with higher numbers of signatures than party candidates.
• Independents have to file their petitions six or eight months before the general election.
• The Secretary of State’s office needs (and apparently always uses up, regardless of who is in charge) 75 days before certifying the candidacies of independents. Other states get it done much more efficiently and effectively.

The handicaps on independents clearly serve both party establishments. Note how even some Democrats in states with later primaries are having to deal with insurgent candidates (see Barney Frank in Massachusetts, Carolyn Mahoney in New York).

A bedrock principle of capitalism is competition. One would think that the state’s Republican Party would recognize that as a better and more prosperous economy emerges in an open competitive free market, better candidates and better ideas for governance will over time emerge out of open, competitive primary campaigns. But noooo. This is ORPINO, which as I noted in the column, is a philosophical Seinfeld: i.e., all about nothing (except power, of course).

I’d like to think that perhaps in time for 2014 or 2016, sensible conservatives in the state legislature and (hopefully if elected) Governor Kasich would give scheduling later primaries serious consideration. If there’s no perceived seriousness about that, the Tea Party movement should consider getting behind a ballot initiative to get it done.

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UPDATE: For another example of how early primaries hurt a state’s political culture, see Illinois.

I believe that GOP US Senate candidate Mark Kirk would be in serious trouble right now against a sensible conservative challenger if he had to face a primary fight next week (Kirk is one of eight RINO congressmen who voted for cap and trade legislation). As it is, he was able to sew it up in February (!) before insurgents could gain any traction.

On the Democratic side, there’s Alexi Giannoulias. Thanks to the barrage of corruption-related stories about Mr. Giannoulias and his family that have come out in the past seven months, I believe that he too would be very vulnerable to a September primary takedown by a reform Democrat.

I don’t think it’s an accident that one of the most corrupt states in the union happens to be one where party primaries are held so ridiculously early.

From Washington:

Sep 5, 2010 / 02:15 pm

Following the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mother Teresa on August 26, the United States Postal Service is honoring her with a new 44 cent stamp. It was issued in a special ceremony today at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Postmaster General John Potter dedicated the stamp Sunday along with other officials from both the postal service and the Catholic Church, including the Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Auxiliary Bishop of Washington Barry Knestout, Monsignor Walter Rossi of the national shrine, and Sister Leticia, MC, provincial superior of the Missionaries of Charity.

During the ceremony, Potter explained that it is important for the government agency to “focus attention on subjects our country regards with respect and affection, and that is certainly true of Mother Teresa, who believed so deeply in the innate worth and dignity of humankind and worked tirelessly on behalf of the poor, sick, orphaned and dying.”

The postmaster added that he is “very proud” for the U.S. to be “honoring Mother Teresa with such a lasting memorial.” Collectible first-day postmark editions of the new stamp will be available directly through the U.S. Postal Service.

Mother Teresa died in 1997, and was beatified by the Church as “Blessed Teresa of Calcutta” in 2003. Born in Albania, she founded the Missionaries of Charity in India in the late 1940s, where she resolved to work among the “poorest of the poor” for the rest of her life. The Missionaries of Charity have continued her mission among the sick and destitute in India, and now serve those in extreme need in countries throughout the world.

Blessed Teresa received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1979 and was made an honorary citizen of the U.S. in 1996, as an acknowledgment of her remarkable and persistent efforts to relieve the suffering of the very poor.

Although she was appreciative of these honors, and spoke highly of many values expressed in America’s founding documents, Mother Teresa also directed blunt criticism toward the materialism and “spiritual poverty” of Western countries, conditions which she believed led to a particular and systematic neglect of the unborn and the elderly.

Prior to receiving her honorary American citizenship, she summed up her message to America in her letter to the Supreme Court:

“I have no new teaching for America. I seek only to recall you to faithfulness to what you once taught the world. Your nation was founded on the proposition—very old as a moral precept, but startling and innovative as a political insight—that human life is a gift of immeasurable worth, and that it deserves, always and everywhere, to be treated with the utmost dignity and respect.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

For the record, here are the first and fourth sentences from the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book released earlier this afternoon:

Reports from the twelve Federal Reserve Districts suggested continued growth in national economic activity during the reporting period of mid-July through the end of August, but with widespread signs of a deceleration compared with preceding periods.

… However, the remaining Districts of New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Atlanta, and Chicago all highlighted mixed conditions or deceleration in overall economic activity.

It may be fair to describe the detail in Atlanta’s section of the report as “mixed” (it’s a borderline call; the opening paragraph from that District’s report will appear later). But Richmond’s section is clearly one of deceleration, which brings us to today’s clearly needed geography lesson for Jeannine Aversa and/or a headline writer at the Associated Press.

What follows is a graphic containing the headline at Aversa’s 2:45 p.m. story (since updated here), and her first few paragraphs:

That’s clever.

By isolating slower growth to the “East” and “Midwest” (really “decelerating,” a somewhat stronger term that implies a trend of ever-slower growth instead of a onetime event), the AP’s headline writer would appear to be attempting to limit the full brunt of the Beige Book’s relatively bad news. The fact is that the declining Richmond District includes Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia, many of whose non-DC Beltway residents would be surprised to learn are considered “East” by the AP’s headline writer.

The opening paragraph about Atlanta is mixed, but contrary to the AP’s communicated geography, some of the bad news is neither in the “East” nor the “East Coast,” no matter how far you try to stretch the definition (bold is mine):

Sixth District business contacts indicated that the pace of economic activity continued to slow in July and August. Retailers reported a decrease in traffic and sales, and their outlook was less positive than in previous months. Reports from the District’s tourism sector were mixed as contacts outside of the oil-spill affected Gulf coast experienced positive growth, but areas from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle saw significant declines in visitors. Residential real estate contacts noted that the pace of new and existing home sales slowed, and their outlook remained pessimistic. Nonresidential real estate activity remained weak. Manufacturers reported that the pace of new orders growth slowed. Banking credit conditions remained constrained and loan demand was reportedly weak. Labor markets improved modestly, but most businesses maintained a strong preference for increasing the hours worked of existing staff and expanding their use of temporary hires rather than for hiring permanent employees. Transportation and material prices rose slightly, but most firms expressed limited ability to pass increases through to consumers.

The bolded item would seem to indicate that contacts actually in the Gulf didn’t see growth in the tourism sector. That would include Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, none of which have recently been known to be located in “the East” or “East Coast.”

Additionally, the two tidbits that follow in Atlanta’s section of the report allude to other forms of deceleration occurring in those decidedly non-”Eastern” states:

• “areas from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle saw significant declines in visitors.”
• “Most District merchants reported that traffic and sales decreased in July and August.”

Jeannine Aversa would have been better off simply publishing the first four sentences of the Beige Book and going home. A public attempting to stay informed would have been better off with a headline reading “Fed releases Beige Book, identifying regional economic trends.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

A read-the-whole-thing (aren’t they all?) Investors Business Daily editorial has some hard numbers on the stimulus that outfits like the Associated Press, even though they have reporters covering the news every day, have as far as I can tell rarely if ever published. It provides critical context in light of the President’s proposal to spend $50 billion more on infrastructure.

Its opening paragraph contains a gutsy question (bolds are mine):

The Obama administration’s latest idea for “stimulating” the economy is — you guessed it — more spending. Is this just a campaign ploy, or is the White House ruining the economy on purpose?

… But why in the world do we need another stimulus when we’re not even close to exhausting the funds allocated for the last one?

According to Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, $275 billion of the initial $787 billion cost of that stimulus remains unspent. And of the $512 billion that has been spent, just $18.5 billion — or less than 7% — has been paid out by the Transportation Department, the main government infrastructure provider.

This is strange, since the stimulus was originally sold to us as a way to create “shovel-ready” jobs on infrastructure. Instead, much of the money was drained away for financially strapped states to keep their public unions and Medicaid programs afloat.

Remember that Ohio Senator The Invisible Sherrod Brown rushed back to Washington from his recently deceased mother’s wake (“White House supplied him plane to whisk him back to cast the 60th vote”) so he could be the final vote for this monstrosity that he could not possibly have read because it just had to be done at that moment. After all (figuratively speaking of course), the shovels were virtually ready, and workers only needed authorization to start digging — or so we were told. Uh, not exactly.

Back to the editorial:

Here’s what President Obama said about the stimulus bill he signed into law Feb. 17, 2009:

“Because of this investment, nearly 400,000 men and women will go to work rebuilding our crumbling roads and bridges, repairing our faulty dams and levees, bringing critical broadband connections to businesses and homes in nearly every community in America, upgrading mass transit, building high-speed rail lines that will improve travel and commerce throughout our nation.”

Sounded great at the time, but few, if any, of those things got done. Moreover, since the recession began, federal employment has jumped by 10%, or nearly 200,000 positions, while private-sector employment has plunged 7%, or 7.8 million jobs. So who really benefited from the stimulus? Big Government and its unions.

This is where it would be tempting to agree with New York Times columnist and pretend-macroeconomist Paul Krugman.

Krugman argued in his column yesterday that the stimulus wasn’t big enough. Based on the above, you could argue that he might have a point.

But even if you buy Krugman’s Keynesian crap (which I don’t), here’s the stronger counterpoint: We have an administration which either deliberately lied to us about how it intended to use the funds and its readiness to do so, or which is so breathtakingly incompetent that it allowed tens if not hundreds of billions to be misspent on handouts that should have gone to infrastructure and shovel-ready projects — or both.

Regardless of whether you pick option A or B (or both), the current bunch has proven that it can’t be trusted do what it says it will do with additional funding. I would argue that this is a problem with government in general when such huge amounts of money are involved, almost no matter who is in charge, but this crew has taken malfeasance and/or incompetence to depths previously not seen.

So as much as Paul Krugman might like to perform his next lab experiment on the rest of us by upping the stimulus ante to wartime levels (which is essentially what he has advocated, and which, by the way, Japan basically did during the latter stages of its Lost Decade of the 1990s — and it still didn’t work), or as much as Barack Obama might plead for yet another $50 billion allegedly targeted for infrastructure, the answer shouldn’t be “no.” It should be “heck no.”

From Rome:

Sep 6, 2010 / 07:57 am

The Minister for Community Development of Papua New Guinea, Carol Kidu, said during a U.N. forum in Melbourne, Australia this week that the religious sisters, priests and Catholic missionaries who work in the health care industry are the “unsung heroes” in the fight against AIDS.

According to Fides news agency, a large number of hospitals in Papua New Guinea are operated by the Catholic Church, and thanks to their efforts, the number of new cases of HIV is being controlled and may even decrease. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

In a Tuesday evening report, Associated Press Writer Jesse L. Holland engaged in a great deal of word massage which appears to have been designed to mislead relative newcomers to discussions about stem cell research.

The news concerned Federal Judge Royce Lamberth’s refusal of the federal government’s request that he lift his August 23 order blocking federal funding for embryonic stem cell research during the appeals process.

Less-informed readers could be excused for believing, at least through first nine of the eleven tortured paragraphs in Holland’s report, that stem cells can only be obtained from human embryos. In Paragraph 10, Holland finally acknowledged the existence of adult stem cells, but then dubiously implied that the litigation was brought solely because the plaintiffs don’t want competition from embryonic research. The AP writer also ignored a fine piece written in early August by wire service colleague Malcolm Ritter (covered at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), who accurately reported that “Adult stem cell research (is) far ahead of embryonic.”

What follows are several paragraphs from Holland’s horror, including a ridiculous title falsely implying that no federal funds are going into any kind of stem cell research (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Judge won’t let stem cell money keep flowing

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to lift his order blocking federal funding for some stem cell research, saying that a “parade of horribles” predicted by federal officials would not happen.

Medical researchers value stem cells because they are master cells that can turn into any tissue of the body. Research eventually could lead to cures for spinal cord injuries, Parkinson’s disease and other ailments.

The Justice Department argued in court papers last week that stopping the research could cause “irrevocable harm to the millions of extremely sick or injured people who stand to benefit … as well as to the defendants, the scientific community and the taxpayers who have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars on such research through public funding of projects which will now be forced to shut down and, in many cases, scrapped altogether.”

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth rejected that argument in refusing to lift the restraining order he signed after ruling that the argument in a pending lawsuit – that the research violates the intent of a 1996 law prohibiting use of taxpayer dollars in work that destroys a human embryo – was likely to succeed.

… The scientists suing to stop the research “agree that this court’s order does not even address the Bush administration guidelines, or whether NIH could return to those guidelines,” Lamberth wrote in his latest order. “The prior guidelines, of course, allowed research only on existing stem cell lines, foreclosing additional destruction of embryos. Plaintiffs also agree that projects previously awarded and funded are not affected by this court’s order.”

(Paragraph 10 — Ed.)

… The lawsuit was filed by two scientists who argued that Obama’s expansion jeopardized their ability to win government funding for research using adult stem cells – ones that have already matured to create specific types of tissues – because it will mean extra competition.

Here are a few paragraphs from the report by Malcolm Ritter that Holland ignored:

For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it’s adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.

… Adult stem cells are being studied in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, heart attacks and diabetes. Some early results suggest stem cells can help some patients avoid leg amputation. Recently, researchers reported that they restored vision to patients whose eyes were damaged by chemicals.

Apart from these efforts, transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases.

… in the near term, embryonic stem cells are more likely to pay off as lab tools, for learning about the roots of disease and screening potential drugs.

The fact that so much is being accomplished with adult stem cells further buttresses the correctness of Lamberth’s ruling. It’s reasonable to contend that anything embryonic cells may someday in theory be able to do, adult cells are doing now, with the rest to follow in fairly short order. So why do researchthat involves killing embryos at all?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

I don’t know if the President’s assessment about how “interest groups” talk about him is accurate. But in one proven instance, treating him as if he is one has worked pretty well.

Two weeks ago in a Cleveland speech, House Republican Leader John Boehner jerked Obama’s chain by calling on the President to fire his economic team.

What is Obama doing now that Boehner has thrown him a bone? Well, as if on command, Obama is running Pavlov-like to Cleveland to bark out some kind of riposte.

This is no exaggeration. The White House itself is obediently admitting it:

The White House today confirmed that President Obama’s planned economic speech tomorrow in Cleveland can be taken as a direct response to an earlier speech there by House Republican leader John Boehner in which Boehner called on the president to fire his economic team.

Asked at his daily briefing if the White House chose Cleveland for the president’s speech because Boehner had given his own speech on the economy there, spokesman Robert Gibbs said simply, “yes.”

So yeah, in this instance at least, Boehner threw a bone out there, and the president definitely responded as he thinks certain others see him. At long last, our Commander in Chief has a valid point.

I look forward to Obama’s discussing how wondrous, predominantly Democratic Party policies have taken Cleveland from a population of 915,000 in the 1950 to 435,000 today. Will anyone in the press dog him with meaningful questions about that, or collar him when he performs his usual rhetorical dodges?

The more times Obama can be leashed into Ohio by having someone like Boehner throw a tempting bone at him, the better. Nothing will sink Democratic candidates faster than speeches in support of or pics taken with our pug, I mean Punk, President.

It’s interesting, and more than a little frustrating, to see how inflammatory words in speeches delivered by liberal and leftist politicians that might cast them in a bad light don’t seem to make much news.

One such example occurred in a speech yesterday at Cincinnati’s Coney Island, on the occasion of the AFL-CIO’s huge annual picnic there. At that event, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland lashed out at the party of gubernatorial opponent John Kasich as, according to one local reporter, “overrun by extremist elements.”

I don’t know that this is exactly what Strickland said, but it seems highly unlikely that veteran WLWT reporter John London would have strung those words together on his own.

Strickland’s characterization of his opposition as relayed by London, which you will find at this Bing video and also at WLWT’s own web site, “somehow” didn’t make it into the the station’s accompanying text report on the event, which, contrary to what I believe is the norm at the station, doesn’t in any way follow the script of the London’s coverage. The “overrun by extremist elements” reference also was not noted at either of the city’s two other news-following TV stations which covered the event (here and here), nor in Howard Wilkinson’s coverage at Gannett’s Cincinnati Enquirer. Imagine that.

Here is the first 70% or so of the verbiage in the WLWT broadcast:

Strickland (during speech): What we are fighting for is the middle class of Ohio and America!

Jack Atherton (in-studio co-host): Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio. Labor Day usually means you get a day off from work. But too many Tri-Staters are out of work altogether, and the governor was reminded today campaigning at Coney Island.

Sheree Paolello (the other co-host): Now with the poor economy and President Obama calling for another $50 billion program to improve roads and runways, people had a lot to say today, and News 5′s is John London is live with reaction to the Governor’s visit today. John?

John London: Well, Sheree, he gave them matches for the bonfire. He blamed Wall Street greed for the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs in Ohio, declared the Republican Party has been overrun by extremist elements, shouted “Hell no, we won’t give the state over to them!” This was Governor Ted Strickland, gloves off, some three weeks before the start of early voting.

(begin newsreel with John London voiceover) Ohio’s Governor arrived with a four-letter word on his lips: Jobs.

Candidates of every political stripe can’t say it or promise it enough.

Strickland (during speech): What we are fighting for is the middle class of Ohio –

London: But can any of them deliver it?

Erin Kramer, Director, SEIU Local 1: Our members do well when cities do well. And cities do well when people are working.

London: As if to hammer home the point, many of these union workers and their families are suffering: laid-off, worried, discouraged. Here’s what Governor Strickland told us after blasting what he termed “Wall Street greed.”

Strickland: This recovery is starting to take hold, but this is not a guarantee that, that we will not have a double-dip recession.

London: The mood lightens out here if you let it. Pete Wagner’s orchestra sprinkled a little Dixieland into what is a combination event: one part picnic, two parts politics.

Doug Sizemore, AFL-CIO labor leader: The economy that we’re in right now is due to the failed policies of the Bush administration.

London: The Democrat candidates mine this turf each Labor Day — Thousands of union families within campaign reach, perhaps a little fewer this time as mid-term elections approach. As one worker put it: “There have been so many layoffs.”

Strickland: Quite frankly, Ohio is starting to see signs of growth.

London: And what the Governor means by that is that tax revenue in the state is exceeding projections, not by much, but by a little bit. He continues to acknowledge that unemployment remains a huge problem. …

Anyone who knows anything about the hidebound Ohio Republican Party would double over in laughter at any description of them as “extremists.” The ORP was so hostile to and felt so threatened by Tea Party insurgent candidates for statewide office and its Central Committee — candidates who would only be considered unwanted “extremists” by people who also believe this country’s Founders were — that it spent large sums of money on misleading Tea Party-pretentious campaign literature and on Election Day poll watchers who handed out slate cards to defeat them in the May primary.

Much of the rest of London’s report unfortunately segues to what I would describe as a “long hot summer” riff, even though summer is over, the message being that crime won’t come down until employment goes up.

Going back to Strickland — It must be nice to be able to fire up the base mostly without having to worry about whether your inflammatory language will escape the confines of the venue where your speech is taking place. It’s highly unlikely that a Republican or conservative at an open event covered by the press would be that lucky.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Well, the Journal’s editorialists nailed everything except the title, because it’s really the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy. The President couldn’t have done this on his own without the economic vandalism inherent in the legislation passed by Nancy Pelosi’s House and Harry Reid’s Senate.

Otherwise, it dissects, slices, and dices, as only the Journal can.

Read the whole thing. Here are some excerpts (bolds and internal links are mine):

The Obama Economy
How trillions in fiscal and monetary stimulus produced a 1.6% recovery.

… So two months before an election, and 19 months after the mother of all spending programs, President Obama said yesterday he’s rolling out one more plan to stimulate the economy. We’ll discuss the details when they’re released, but the effort itself is a tacit admission that his earlier proposals have flopped.

… never before has government spent so much and intervened so directly in credit allocation to spur growth, yet the results have been mediocre at best. In return for adding nearly $3 trillion in federal debt in two years, we still have 14.9 million unemployed. What happened?

… The explanations from the White House and liberal economists boil down to three: The stimulus was too small, Republicans blocked better policies, and this recession is different because it began in a financial meltdown. …

… On a too-small stimulus, this isn’t what Democrats or most Keynesian economists told us at the time. Even Paul Krugman, who now denies intellectual paternity for this economy, wrote on November 14, 2008 that “My own back-of-the-envelope calculations say that the package should be huge, on the order of $600 billion.” The White House raised him by 33% two months later, but now we’re told that wasn’t enough.

Given that the stimulus program was so poorly structured and so overtly politicized, how do we know that, say, $500 billion more would have made a difference even on Keynesian terms? The money for government spending has to come from somewhere, which means from the private economy. Our guess is that by ensuring even higher debt and implying higher taxes, a bigger spending stimulus would have done even more harm.

… As for blaming the Republicans, with only 40 and then 41 Senators they couldn’t stop so much as a swinging door. The GOP couldn’t even block the recent $10 billion teachers union bailout. The only major Obama priorities that haven’t passed—cap and tax and union card check—were blocked by a handful of Democrats who finally said “no mas.” No Administration since LBJ’s in 1965 has passed so much of its agenda in one Congress—which is precisely the problem.

… the real roots of Mr. Obama’s economic problems are intellectual and political. The Administration rejected marginal-rate tax cuts that worked in the 1960s and 1980s because they would have helped the rich, in favor of a Keynesian spending binge that has stimulated little except government. More broadly, Democrats purposely used the recession as a political opening to redistribute income, reverse the free-market reforms of the Reagan era, and put government at the commanding heights of economic decision-making.

Mr. Obama and the Democratic Congress have succeeded in doing all of this despite the growing opposition of the American people, who are now enduring the results. The only path back to robust growth and prosperity is to stop this agenda dead in its tracks, and then by stages to reverse it. These are the economic stakes in November.

In the case of ObamaCare, the real answer has nothing to do with stages, and everything to do with outright repeal.

As to the unique element of the recession beginning in “a financial meltdown,” it’s important to note four things:

• The jury is out, but there is strong evidence that the crisis atmosphere of September 2008 was contrived.
• Democratic crony companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac directly caused said meltdown over a 15-year period.
• Ben Bernanke’s “quantitative easing” is what has kept its effects from becoming more serious — so far.
• Administration efforts to fend off foreclosures and soften the housing market’s landing have only extended and spread its pain.

The Journal also rips Obama and his administration for “trashing business and bankers as greedy profiteers,” and “spread(ing) fear and … uncertainty.” If Team Obama doesn’t let go of that, very little else of what it does or tries to do will matter. Businesses, entrepreneurs, and investors will continue what has substantively become a two-plus-year slow-motion exercise in “Going Galt.”

(Graphic source: Innocent Bystanders)

Previous posts:

• August 31
• August 25

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Though it’s way too early for overconfidence, so far U.S. Senate candidate and BizzyBlog advertiser Rob Portman has been one of the luckiest guys on the face of the earth. He’s facing perhaps the worst political candidate known to mankind in Lee Fisher, and philosophically, he’s standing on the sidelines in one of the few years when not being a Democrat will in many cases be enough to win (or so it seems).

Ohioans aren’t so lucky. The latest evidence is Portman’s latest ad, where he in essence tells viewers that he really doesn’t have a handle on solutions to the Buckeye State’s economic malaise (bolds are mine):

Jane Portman: “Well, Rob and I met on a blind date.”

Rob Portman: “On a blind date, and I totally lucked out.”

Jane Portman: “We have three kids.”

Rob Portman: “We want our kids to be able to have a future here in Ohio, and we are falling behind. Our unemployment rate in Ohio is now over 10 percent. We’ve got to figure this out, and figure it out quickly.

“I mean, we’ve still got the best work force in the world. And part of the Portman plan for jobs that we’ve laid out is to provide some hope, to let people know there is an alternative. There’s a different way to approach our tax system, our regulation system. You know, there are solutions and there is a better way.

“I’m Rob Portman, and I approve this message.”

“We’ve got to figure this out”?(!)

Silly me. Here I thought the “Portman Plan for Jobs” was a collection of solutions. Now we see that it’s a mere vehicle of “hope.” We were force-fed enough “hope” to last us a lifetime by Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, and look where we are now.

With any other candidate besides Lee Fisher, in any other year besides 2010, this ad would put Rob Portman’s candidacy on life support.

Assuming they can bring themselves to vote for him, sensible conservatives — meaning the large majority of Buckeye State voters — are the ones who will be embarking on the electoral equivalent of a blind date with Rob Portman. Will he turn out to be an ugly RINO like Mike DeWine and George Voinovich, or a genuine constitution-based conservative who will bring government back to its essential role? Though the answer is “No one can possibly know,” Portman’s track record indicates that the likely result will be “closer to the former than the latter.”