Nancy Pelosi, October 22, 2009 (video at link), when asked whether Obamacare was constitutional:

“Are you serious? Are you serious?”

Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a “serious question.”

“You can put this on the record,” said Elshami. “That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.”

Yesterday, Federal judge Henry Hudson said in effect — “Uh, yes it is, and the answer is ‘no’”:

U.S. District Judge Henry E. Hudson said the law’s requirement that most Americans carry insurance or pay a penalty “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.”

Apparently, Pelosi has a hard time believing that there are any “constitutional boundaries of congressional power.” If the government can make you buy something that clearly has nothing to do with protecting the health or financial well-being of others (that’s the only reason why it can make you buy car insurance), it can make you do just about anything.

We also shouldn’t forget that to make their argument work in the run-up to the law’s passage, the administration and other Democrats ridiculed anyone and everyone who argued that the amount people have to pay the government if they supposedly can afford health insurance but don’t buy it is a form of taxation. Obama infamously criticized George Stephanopoulos for using the dictionary as a resource (the nerve!). In court, the administration is now arguing that what is involved is a tax, but that it’s not a penalty.

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Conveniently timed for Friday, December 10 at 10:16 p.m. by the Associated Press — “President Chavez seeks decree powers in Venezuela.”

There’s also some bitter comic relief in reporter Fabiola Sanchez’s coverage:

In his nearly 12 years in office, the leftist leader has been granted temporary decree powers three times by lawmakers – in 1999, 2001 and 2007.

The last time, he enjoyed special legislative powers for 18 months and used them to seize control of privately run oil fields, impose new taxes and nationalize telecommunications, electricity and cement companies.

It was unclear how long the decree powers could last this time, but they could allow Chavez to pass laws for months bypassing congress.

Uh, how does someone with decree powers “pass” laws? He just, well, dictates them, like, well, a dictator.

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Speaking of the Associated Press, the wire service’s David B. Caruso is actively engaged in the Ground Zero Mosque imam’s whitewash campaign, as carried at USA Today:

(Imam Feisal Abdul) Rauf says he hopes to use the platform he gained through the angry debate to turn his small non-profit group into a global movement celebrating pluralism.

Caruso waits until Paragraph 9 to tell us that “the developer of the (Ground Zero Mosque) site has said groundbreaking is probably three years away.”

He also never tells us that said developer Sharif El-Gamal is behind on the site’s property taxes to the tune of well over $150,000 (even after a partial payoff).

He also “forgets” that Rauf wrote an article for an Arab publication entitled “The Most Prominent Imam in New York: ‘I Do Not Believe in Religious Dialogue,’” and that he said the following shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to Ed Bradley of CBS News:

Imam ABDUL RAUF: I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened, but the United States policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

BRADLEY: OK. You say that we’re an accessory?

Imam ABDUL RAUF: Yes.

BRADLEY: How?

Imam ABDUL RAUF: Because we have been an accessory to a lot of — of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, it — in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.

Caruso also conveniently omits the fact that on CNN in September, Rauf played a de facto blackmail card:

In an interview with guest host Soledad O’Brien, the Imam laid out his latest argument for the American people and his words can have only one meaning: Build this mosque or face the wrath of radical Islamists.

… he tells an international audience that if his plans don’t go forward, America’s national security will be at risk.

This also didn’t get into Caruso’s report: “58 percent of Arabs (living abroad) think the construction should be moved elsewhere.”

Pluralism, shmuralism. If built, the Ground Zero Mosque would be correctly, inarguably be seen as a victory mosque.

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John F. Cogan at the Hoover Institution: “The Obama Stimulus Impact? Zero.” Presidents Herbert Hoover and Franklin Delano Roosevelt also tried stimulus. It also didn’t work. So did Japan. As a result, it became a zombie economy; two decades later, it has failed to return to anything resembling its previous might.

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A court of Military, er, Marsupial Justice is expected to rule against “an Army doctor charged with refusing to deploy to Afghanistan because he says he doubts whether President Barack Obama was born in the U.S. and therefore questions his eligibility to be commander in chief.”

Well of course they will, because Lt. Col. Terrence Lakin, an 18-year-Army veteran, won’t be allowed to present the relevant evidence:

In September, a military judge ruled the president’s birth certificate is irrelevant in Lakin’s case. His lawyer will therefore not be able to raise the issue as a defense for why Lakin, a flight surgeon, did not report for what would have been a second tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Look, I think that Obama was born in Hawaii, but the idea that Obama’s actual contemporaneously-generated birth certificate is irrelevant to the doctor’s defense is complete horse manure.

That’s why I called the judicial venue a court of marsupial justice, i.e., it’s a kangaroo court.

From Milford, Connecticut:

Dec 13, 2010 / 01:19 pm

When Jane Holler and her husband, Daniel Marecki, first visited Africa in 1997, their five-star tented camps were so luxurious “that we had no idea about the poverty that was all around us,” she said.

“Everything was like a Disney World kind of safari,” Ms. Holler recalled. “We didn’t see local people, just those in the tourist camps.”

But that all changed when St. Gabriel Parish in Milford, Conn. established a relationship with St. Brendan Parish in Tanzania and priests began coming to visit their seaside parish.

“I made a point of entertaining them and getting to know them, and as a result, my husband and I have made several visits to Tanzania and Uganda,” she said, adding that they slowly were immersed in the impoverished culture, the people and their needs.

The result is Uganda Farmers Inc., a nonprofit the couple started in 2007, that already has raised thousands of dollars for people in Uganda to buy goats and provide water to one village.

“We realized that we could tap into our parish only so much, so we started the nonprofit to help out our friends in Uganda,” said Ms. Holler, who shares a law partnership with her husband in Milford.

Now, after a visit this past summer from Father Emmanuel Kakaaga Byaruhanga, rector of a minor seminary with 250 students, the couple is working to raise $26,000 for his villagers in Uganda to drill a well for water.

Father Byaruhanga said his small village of Rwesigiire has no water or electricity. Villagers have to walk two miles each way to the nearest spring to collect water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and watering animals.

Initial plans for the water project, which will benefit 300 people, call for a borehole to be drilled in the center of the village for manually pumped water. If engineers need to go beyond 300 feet, additional funds will go toward the purchase of a generator for pumping water at deeper levels.

Ms. Holler insisted that their fund-raising is well worth the effort.

“We’ve been so blessed to be involved in this project,” she said. “Every time we go to visit Africa, the people are so kind and grateful for all the assistance.

“It’s so beautiful to see,” she continued. “The people were so thrilled to show us their progress, and get all dressed up to express their respect and thanks. They’re just such kind people, and work together as a community to benefit all. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

A useful guideline in evaluating the significance of a national security-related news story first revealed by someone in the establishment press is whether other media outlets pick it up. If they don’t, it’s probably significant.

Such is the case with the Washington Post’s Saturday story about Venezuela acquiring 1,800 Russian antiaircraft missiles. That appears to be 1,700 more than originally thought.

The story has gone through two additional overnight news cycles. Yet it appears from relevant site searches that both the Associated Press (searches on Venezuela, Venezuela missiles [not in quotes], and missiles) and the New York Times (Venezuela, “Venezuela missiles,” and missiles) have chosen to ignore the story.

The news relayed by the WaPo’s Juan Ferero seems objectively very significant, and more than a little worrisome, based on the bolded paragraph in the following excerpt:

Venezuela acquires 1,800 antiaircraft missiles from Russia

Russia delivered at least 1,800 shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles to Venezuela in 2009, U.N. arms control data show, despite vigorous U.S. efforts to stop President Hugo Chavez’s stridently anti-American government from acquiring the weapons.

The United States feared that the missiles could be funneled to Marxist guerrillas fighting Colombia’s pro-American government or Mexican drug cartels, concerns expressed in U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and first reported in the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

It had been unclear how many of the Russian SA-24 missiles were delivered to Venezuela, though the transfer itself was not secret. Chavez showed off a few dozen at a military parade in April 2009, saying they could “deter whatever aerial aggression against our country.” A high-level Russian delegation told American officials in Washington in July of that year that 100 of the missiles had been delivered in the first quarter of 2009.

Then earlier this year, Russia reported to the U.N. Register of Conventional Arms, which records the transnational sale of weaponry, that the deal totaled 1,800 missiles.

So why isn’t this news at the AP or the Times?

The Times has a threadbare non-excuse, namely that it is carrying a link to the WaPo story at the paper’s “Times Topics” page for Huge Chavez. The AP doesn’t even have that.

The wire service’s failure is far more troubling. As the provider of content to thousands of subscribing smaller papers, radio stations, and TV broadcasts, the Associated Press is in large part how the relatively disengaged 85% of the population gets its news. If it doesn’t make the cut, you can pretty much rest assured that the disengaged won’t hear it. It’s hard not to believe that the self-described “Essential Global News Network” knows darn well how troubling the WaPo story would be to the average person if he or she were to see or hear it. If so, its reasonable to contend that the AP seems not to want to create any more trouble for the U.S. president it generally adores than he has already brought on himself, and is disgracefully doing what it can to prevent that from happening. If ever called on the carpet, the AP’s response would likely be: “What’s your problem? The Washington Post already covered it.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

How did the nation ever survive without the government telling its schools what foods they should serve?

This is one of many questions the Associated Press’s Mary Clare Jalonick did not explore in her brief de facto press release this morning trumpeting the wonders of the “nutrition bill” President Obama is signing into law these days (presented in full for fair use and discussion purposes):

KTXS News in Abiliene, Texas refers to the legislation as “the healthy, hunger free kids act” (without capitalization). According to reporter Jacqueline Hince, “One big change could be offering dinner to needy students.”

Lord have mercy.

Would it be rude to point out that many “needy students” are in families already receiving Food Stamps, and that feeding them lunch and dinner at school (even breakfast in many cases) duplicates benefits already paid out through that program, which as of the end of November had over 42 million recipients, “or around one-seventh of the U.S. population”?

Oh wait. Maybe there’s a sliver of sanity in all of this. After all, according to this item at the Los Angeles Times:

President Obama … said the money for funding the increase came from cuts in the food-stamp program ….

Sorry, no such luck. Finishing the sentence:

… but that he was committed to working with Congress to find a way to restore those funds.

Even if the funds aren’t restored, increases in the level of Food Stamp benefits, which I have repeatedly noted over the past several years were previously pegged at roughly the level of what the USDA has called a Thrifty Meal Plan, have far outpaced increases in the cost of food. Specifically, the benefit levels and increases in what are known as the Maximum Monthly Allotments and the net benefits paid (after deductions for income and assets) were as follows as of October 1, 2008 and October 1, 2009:

Though the USDA did not increase the Maximum Monthly Allotment for fiscal 2011, that’s hardly a consolation, given that net benefit levels are already 43% higher ($130 divided by $91) than the formerly mostly reasonable levels of 2007. Food inflation during the 12 months ended October 2010 was only 1.4%, hardly making a dent in the clearly unjustified increases of the past two years.

Food stamp-receiving families have already been getting 26-31 meals in benefits for their kids (depending on whether they access free breakfasts) for 21 weekly meals. If dinner is added to the, uh, menu, make that 31-36 meals. When do we ever get to a point where the blatant waste gets called out?

The power grab the AP’s Jalonick blandly identified in her final paragraph is even more important. Where in the Constitution does the government get “the power to decide what kinds of foods may be sold in schools”? And it’s worse than the AP reporter indicates. There’s every reason to believe that, if so inclined, federal nannies/ninnies could start dictating what gets sold at athletic and other school events (say good-bye to Coke and Pepsi), even if the sellers are volunteer fundraising groups. Bake sales? Better get used to croissants, because those doughnuts, brownies, and cupcakes could be forbidden.

As is the case with so much other legislation which has delegated power to bureaucrats, the misnamed “nutrition” bill can and likely will be used as a disqualifying wedge against disfavored groups. In this case, it seems likely that the food police will give rich public schools, private schools, and charter schools a much harder time, while leaving favored public schools mostly alone. It’s also not inconceivable that determined apparatchiks might decide that the legislation gives them the authority to harass families who home school their kids by monitoring their every meal. Why not?

The legislation is a classic example of supposedly good intentions getting hijacked for statist purposes. Don’t expect to read that take in the establishment press any time soon.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

At Investors Business Daily (“Who Owns Us? Congress? Or Ourselves?”):

What’s moral and immoral conduct can be complicated, but needlessly so. I keep things simple and you tell me where I go wrong.

My initial assumption is that we each own ourselves. I am my private property and you are yours. If we accept the notion that people own themselves, then it’s easy to discover what forms of conduct are moral and immoral.

Immoral acts are those that violate self-ownership. Murder, rape, assault and slavery are immoral because those acts violate private property. So is theft, broadly defined as taking the rightful property of one person and giving it to another.

… [L]et’s ask: Where does Congress get handout money? One thing for sure, it’s not from the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus, nor is it congressmen reaching into their own pockets.

The only way for Congress to give one American one dollar is to first, through the tax code, take that dollar from some other American. It must forcibly use one American to serve another American.

… Some might argue that Congress forcing us to help one another and forcing us to take care of ourselves are good ideas.

But my question to you is: When congressmen and presidents take their oaths of office, is that oath to uphold and defend good ideas or the U.S. Constitution?

When the principles of self-ownership are taken into account, two-thirds to three-quarters of what Congress does violate those principles to one degree or another as well as the Constitution to which they’ve sworn to uphold and defend.

… If we accept the value of self-ownership, it is clear that most of what Congress does is clearly immoral.

He wants us to tell him where he’s gone wrong. He hasn’t.

David Axelrod, as quoted by the Associated Press: “He says the ‘biggest lament’ he hears from Democrats is ‘you’ve done so much, how come people aren’t responding?’”

Oh, the people have responded, David — to the tune of 63 Republican Congressional seats, six Senate seats, five governorships, hundreds of seats in state legislatures, and even longtime African-American Democratic politicians and officials leaving the party.

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At the Politico — “John Boehner: Obama disrespectful to me.” That line’s pretty long, John.

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Speaking of the GOP House, this comment seen at my Friday Pajamas Media column hopefully reflects a condition that Speaker of the House Boehner will change:

So, D.C. based Liberals use stimulus to “build the backbone of their DNA”. Interestingly, (it) seems that D.C. Based Republicans construct their DNA entirely devoid of backbone.

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Michelle Malkin has it right when she asserts that “Homegrown Hate Crimes Against Our Troops” by Muslims represent a big problem, and that they aren’t getting the attention or outrage that they deserve. An establishment press corps in denial is an important part of the explanation.

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Great editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette — “Tax relief is not an ‘expense.’”

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Correct framing via Susan Hiller at Hot Air — “Unemployment Benefits Being Held Hostage by Dems.”

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Sometimes, it’s the little things that make another person’s motivations painfully, irrefutably obvious.

Here’s an example:

Mark Levin told his radio audience that Palin’s answer to Barbara Walters’ … question on ABC’s “10 Most Fascinating People of 2010″ (about what books she had recently read) was edited to remove his best-selling book “Liberty and Tyranny.”

For Walters, this is a three-fer:

• She gets to keep much of the public unaware of Levin’s “dangerous” book, which is by far the most important American political work published in the 21st century thus far.
• She keeps Palin from building credibility with the nation as a genuine, sensible, grounded conservative.
• She gets back at Levin for his on-air criticisms of her  and “The View.”

This episode teaches all who are aware of it that Walters is first and foremost a hopelessly biased leftist jerk who deserves no place in legitimate journalism. Stick with vapid celebrity interviews, babe.

From Boston:

Dec 11, 2010 / 07:39 am

The authentically Catholic university helps students resist “secularist dictatorship” by keeping Jesus Christ at the center of its mission and by exposing the moral bankruptcy of contemporary culture, Cardinal Raymond Burke said Dec. 4.

The cardinal’s comments came in an address at St. Thomas More College’s annual President’s Council Dinner, held Dec. 4 at the Harvard Club of Boston.

In a lengthy discussion of the nature of Catholic higher education, he said that a Catholic university faithful to its identity will help students give an account of their faith and help them resist “the secularist dictatorship which would exclude all religious discourse from the professions and from public life in general.”

He also declared Jesus Christ, the “fullness” of God’s revelation, as “the first and chief teacher at every institution of Catholic higher education.”

“A Catholic college or university at which Jesus Christ alive in His Church is not taught, encountered in the Sacred Liturgy and its extension through prayer and devotion, and followed in a life of virtue is not worthy of the name,” he told attendees.

Jesus’ presence is not something “extraneous” to the pursuit of truth because he alone inspires and guides professors and students to remain faithful in their pursuits and not “fall prey to the temptations which Satan cleverly offers to corrupt us.”

Cardinal Burke lamented the fall of many American Catholic colleges and universities that have become “Catholic in name only.”

Citing Pope John Paul II’s ad limina address to the U.S. bishops of New York, he said that the service of Catholic universities “depends on the strength of their Catholic identity.” The Catholic university was born from “the heart of the Church” and has been “critical” to meeting the challenges of the time.

The Catholic university is needed more than ever in a society “marked by a virulent secularism which threatens the integrity of every aspect of human endeavor and service,” he said.

“How tragic that the very secularism which the Catholic university should be helping its students to battle and overcome has entered into several Catholic universities, leading to the grievous compromise of their high mission,” he commented.

The American-born cardinal said that rather than exemplifying secularism, the Catholic university’s manner of study and research should “manifest the bankruptcy of the abuse of human life and human sexuality … and the bankruptcy of the violation of the inviolable dignity of human life, of the integrity of marriage, and of the right order of our relationship to one another and to the world.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

One of the press’s longest campaigns to systematically obfuscate the truth about a specific government program is the one that has protected Social Security from reasonable scrutiny for most of the 75 years of its existence.

The Associated Press’s Stephen Ohlemacher did his part to continue the misdirection in his coverage of the possible effects of the payroll tax cut President Obama and congressional Republicans have proposed.

To Mr. Ohlemacher, the Social Security system has this huge, “guaranteed” trust fund. I can almost stop there, but readers should buck up and see the following excerpt as an object example of the falsehoods fed to the public for so many years (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

Payroll tax cut worries Social Security advocates

President Barack Obama’s plan to cut payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers, but makes Social Security advocates nervous that it could jeopardize the retirement program’s finances. [1]

The plan is part of a package of tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers’ share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would get a $1,000 tax cut; those making $100,000 would get a $2,000 tax cut.

The government would borrow about $112 billion to make Social Security whole. Advocates and some lawmakers worry that relying on borrowed money to fund Social Security could eventually force it to compete with other federal programs for scarce dollars, leading to cuts. [2]

Social Security taxes “ought to be held sacrosanct,” said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., [3] chairman of the House Ways and Means subcommittee on Social Security.

“When you start to signal that the (Social Security) tax levels are negotiable, you end up in long-term trouble, I think, in terms of making absolutely certain that the entitlement funding streams are secure,” Pomeroy said. [3]

… The proposal requires the Treasury Department to replenish Social Security with other government funds, which would have to be borrowed. [4]

“The payroll tax cut has absolutely no effect on the solvency of Social Security,” [4] said White House economic adviser Jason Furman.

Social Security has accumulated a $2.5 trillion trust fund since the 1980s. But the government has borrowed that money to pay for other programs. The Treasury Department has issued special bonds to Social Security, guaranteeing the money will be repaid, with interest. [5]

As aging baby boomers start to retire and strain the system, advocates worry about future benefit cuts. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes. Without changes, Social Security’s trust funds will run out of money by 2037, according to the trustees who oversee the program. [6]

Notes:

• [1] — Actually, starting to effectively pay benefits out of “general revenues” has been a long-term goal of the left. Decoupling tax collections from benefits paid would ensure that the program turns into just another welfare program whose benefit levels are determined by public noise, not financial realities.
• [2] — Sadly, Social Security benefits have a better chance of being preserved at unrealistic levels if it is “competing with other programs” for money instead of being limited by the public’s and employers’ willingness to tolerate directly related payroll tax increases.
• [3] — Mr. Pomeroy demonstrates why he won’t be missed after he leaves Congress in defeat a few weeks from now. Pomeroy’s MC Hammer imitation (“U Can’t Touch This“), also imitated by many other departing congresspersons, is why the system is in terrible shape to the tune of a $7 trillion-plus actuarial liability.
• [4] — Memo to Mr. Furman, who I believe really knows better: Treasury’s “replenishment” of Social Security by definition negatively affects the solvency of the federal government. Therefore, the payroll tax cut has an effect on the solvency of Social Security. This is not arguable.
• [5] — The government “guarantee” that “the money will be repaid, with interest” means nothing if the government doesn’t have the ability to repay. There is growing doubt that the government will be able to meet its obligations. Since when can Stephen Ohlemacher or anyone else pretend to know whether a government that is already almost $14 trillion in debt — and which is increasing the level of debt at a rate of well over $1 trillion per year — will be able to pay up when it has to?
• [6] — Hey Steve, you just got done saying in item [5] in the excerpt that money that should be in the “Trust Fund” has been borrowed. Uh, that means the “Trust Fund” has no money — right freaking now, in 2010. We don’t have to wait until 2037 for that to happen; we’re already there. As you acknowledge, the program is paying out more in benefits and administrative costs than it is collecting in taxes. The only reason full benefits are being paid is that the government is willing to pay money it doesn’t have to partially sustain them. This problem will only get worse in the next 27 years as the Social Security system attempts to collect on its “guaranteed” bonds.

Fabrications and falsehoods such as those purveyed by Ohlemacher have been part and parcel of reporting on Social Security for as long as the program has existed. Those who know the truth must continue to challenge the misinformation until the public understands what a mess “progressives” have made of things.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

A New York Times “Learning Network” graphic informs us that under the proposed Obama-GOP tax and spending compromise, “rates will not change for at least two years for anyone.”

Wow. Somebody at the Learning Network needs to tell the Old Gray Lady’s beat reporters, editorial board, and opinion columnists. Just today, reporter Helene Cooper, in noting how Vice President Joe Biden is playing a “bigger role” in the administration (translation: picking up the pieces from President Obama’s disastrous ongoing alienation of anyone and everyone, friend and foe alike), twice refers to the compromise as involving “tax cuts.” Cooper’s defenders may claim that the Times reporter is partially referring to the proposed one-year reduction in the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2% to 4.2%, but that’s not a contentious issue at the moment (though given how broke the Social Security really is, it should be). Federal income tax rates for 2011 and beyond are.

Anyway, as far as the Learning Network is concerned, so far, so good. But then it commits its own unforced error:

Who Benefits? All taxpayers, but especially high-income households, which had faced a new, higher rate.

Gosh, it’s as if no one but “high-income households” would face “a new, higher rate” if nothing is done between now and the end of the year. Not only is that not true, but the rate increases at lower income levels would hit them proportionally harder:

• The lowest current rate of 10% would rise to 15%. Household affected by this “new, higher rate” would see their tax bills rise by 50%, and the additional money sent to the government would be much more likely to cause those households to have to make difficult spending choices relating to what most people would see as “necessities.” Even far-lefty Lawrence O’Donnell at MSNBC understands this.
• By contrast, the rate on higher incomes would rise from 35% to 39.6%, a 13% increase. Obviously, more dollars are involved here, and there would be no shortage of required spending cutbacks; but the point is that this “new, higher rate” is not a unique problem for “high-income households.”

Not to say that the impact on high-earners is unimportant, but in terms of their percentage effect on tax bills and their impact on household spending decisions, the “new, higher rates” that would apply to everyone if nothing is done would hit lower- and middle-income taxpayers harder.

If this is the best the Times’s Learning Network can do, the teachers relying on the information and the schoolchildren receiving said “learning” are better off looking elsewhere for accurate guidance.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s in their DNA.

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Note: This item appeared at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

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Sometimes, a little delay can be a good thing.

In preparing this column, I was ready to tentatively accept the idea that NASA scientists had indeed discovered “A Bacterium That Can Grow by Using Arsenic Instead of Phosphorus.”

Only days after the supposedly earth-shaking news appeared, it turns out, upon further review (“This Paper Should Not Have Been Published”), that the scientists’ claim seems to have as much credibility as the global warming nonsense emanating from NASA’s James Hansen, the wealth redistribution advocate who masquerades as a serious scientist. So it looks like it’s back to the drawing board in finding a form of life which uses something other than phosphorous to, per Slate’s Carl Zimmer, “build the backbone of its DNA.”

Here’s my suggestion: Move the search team from Mono Lake in California, where the highly suspect results originated, to inside the Washington, DC Beltway. Then take a really close look at the DNA of the hard leftists and policymakers who reside there. Start with those in the White House, the Congress, and the Federal Reserve, up to and including President Obama and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. I believe you’ll find that their DNA has dispensed with the need for phosphorous, and that it completely depends instead on “stimulus.”

No matter what economic problem presents itself, their answer is always the same: more stimulus.

Congressional Democrats and the White House, including what remains of the president’s economic team, have fed on the never-ending continuation of unemployment benefits since the second half of 2008, when the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate first reached 6%. That time period just so happens to be when the ill effects of what I have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy began to really take hold.

As of when I transmitted this column, the proposed framework for allowing the current tax system to stay in place for everybody during the next two years included yet another unemployment benefits extension, this time for 13 months. According to Nancy Pelosi, distributing unemployment checks is “one of the biggest stimuluses to our economy.” Stimulus-dependent politicians believe that the otherwise broke unemployed will immediately run out and spend it all, which will supposedly make the economy grow, and cause businesses to have to hire more people to meet the demand.

Tell that to the economy in which we phosphorous-dependent life forms actually live. In the real world, this move won’t do much if anything to stimulate demand, but will instead induce deliberate and inadvertent dependency:

• Those who have figured out how to game the system while pretending to look for work will continue to do so. Additional others who are so inclined will learn the necessary tricks.
• Those who need a little nudge in the form of imminently ending benefits to get cracking and find an alternative line of work won’t have any incentive to do so. I have heard enough stories of employers who need people right now getting turned down by prospective employees who tell them that they would rather wait a few weeks until their benefits run out before they start — and, without saying so, gamble on whether Congress will further extend benefits — to believe that this is a sadly widespread phenomenon.
• Employers saddled with funding “their share” of the exorbitant costs of funding the unemployment comp system will continue to find their related tax bills shooting through the roof. That’s not a recipe for more hiring.
• Taking on new, unproven employees is the last-resort response of employers facing the brief increases in demand that stimulus-based economic efforts represent, simply because doing so is a very expensive proposition. As we have seen since the POR economy began, companies first attempt to get by with their existing, already-trained staff, whose overtime hours if needed will normally be more productive per dollar spent than those put in by newbies. If that’s not enough, they’ll try the temporary help market; it’s not a coincidence that temp agencies have represented a disproportionate share of new private-sector jobs created since the recession as normal people define it ended.
• Finally, stimulus-based life forms seem to either not understand or not care about the concept of uncertainty. During the POR economy, they have, in so many areas — energy, banking, health care, and taxation, to name just a few — left employers unable to determine what their costs will be even a short time down the road.

Conversely, employers who believe that they are dealing with a long-term, sustained increase in demand will recognize the need to hire good people to serve their customers. Such sustained increases in demand often occur because of wise government policies that create an atmosphere of reduced uncertainty, lower taxes over the long-term (the proposed two-year extension of the current system doesn’t qualify), and less onerous, non-whimsical regulations. The 1980s Reagan recovery, during which post-recession growth was more than double what it has been thus far during the current alleged recovery, is one such example.

Then there’s Fed Chairman and Chief Stimulator Ben Bernanke.

Left to face the economy alone by a Congress and White House which abandoned him this summer, the formerly phosphorescent Fed Chairman has been transformed into a politically-driven, stimulus-based stooge. His program of “quantitative easing” (QE), known to the rest of us as “creating money out of nothing,” was supposed to lower interest rates, create corporate demand for loans to expand, and lead to greater employment. Round One of QE didn’t accomplish much. The pressure on interest rates since “QE2″ officially began has clearly been upward, as legitimate fears of inflation and even of ultimate government default have arisen.

Washington’s stimulus-based life forms are feeding economic arsenic to the rest of us. Though their proposed deal with Obama may be the best they can do politically until they officially take control of the House in January, Republicans and the few phosphorous-based Democrats who remain must put a stop to the poisoning before it becomes permanent.

How can you cover a story about Uncle Sam’s November Monthly Treasury Statement and the proposed Obama-GOP compromise on taxes and unemployment benefits without using the words “spending,” “receipts,” any form of “collect,” or “unemployment”? It’s a neat trick, but the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger pulled it off in his Friday afternoon dispatch shortly after the government report’s release.

Instead of communicating apparently boring facts, Crutsinger concentrated his fire on the “tax-cut agreement” with a supposed “cost (of) $855 billion over two years” worked out by President Obama and Congressional Republicans. In doing so, he “somehow” failed to mention that the proposal includes a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits.

Based on a comparison to this detailed analysis at the Hill, which reported yesterday that the proposal’s “cost” is really $857 billion over 10 years, Crutsinger’s two-year, $855 billion “cost” assertion, which does not include a detailed breakdown, appears to be wildly inaccurate.

For the record, since the AP reporter failed to relay it, the government took in $149.0 billion in November and has collected $294.9 billion through two months, up $25 billion or 9.7% from the same time last year. It also spent $299.4 billion in November and has burned through $585.7 billion in two months, up $20.2 billion or 3.6% from a year ago. Crutsinger did deign to tell us that the November and year-to-date deficits were $150.4 and $290.8 billion, respectively.

Here are excerpts from his report, with misleading language in bold:

November federal budget deficit highest on record

The federal budget deficit rose to $150.4 billion last month, the largest November gap on record. And the government’s deficits are set to climb higher if Congress passes a tax-cut plan that’s estimated to cost $855 billion over two years.

For the first two months of the current budget year, which began Oct. 1, the deficit totals $290.8 billion. That’s 2 percent less than for the same period a year ago. And economists had been estimating that the full-year deficit would decline after two years of record highs.

But analysts say the tax deal President Barack Obama reached with Republicans this week will give the 2011 budget year the largest deficit in history – $1.5 trillion, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase. It would mark the third straight year of trillion-dollar-plus deficits.

Under the tax-cut plan, JPMorgan economist Michael Feroli said he expects a $1.5 trillion deficit this year to be followed by a $1.2 trillion gap in 2012.

Many economists had expected Congress to extend the tax cuts that were enacted in 2001 and 2003. And they had included those extensions in their deficit forecasts for coming years. But they hadn’t factored in other parts of the tax-cut plan, notably a 2 percentage-point cut in workers’ Social Security tax for next year. That will cost the government an additional $112 billion over the next year.

Thanks to Crutsinger’s poor reporting, readers will believe that the entire $855 billion “cost” involves “tax cuts.” That’s simply not true, on at least three counts:

• Continuation of the tax structure that has been in effect for the past eight tax years (2003-2010), wherein federal income tax rates will be the same in 2011 as they were in 2010, is not a tax cut.
• Since there has been no death tax during calendar 2010, the proposal’s reinstatement of the tax, even at lower rates and with higher asset exemptions, is a cut-and-dried, drop-dead obvious example of a tax increase, not a cut.
• The unemployment benefits extension clearly involves s-s-s-s … spending, not taxes.

As noted several times before, the AP’s news narrative drives the news reporting by its thousands of subscribing outlets, including very many local TV and radio newscasts. If you hear “tax-cut deal” or a similar term over the airwaves during the next several days, there’s a good chance that the misleadling raw material came from the AP and writers like Martin Crutsinger. Their net contribution to a constructive dialog about taxes, spending, and deficits is clearly negative.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Vatican City:

Dec 10, 2010 / 12:26 pm

Pope Benedict XVI has advanced the sainthood causes of 16 Catholics. The announcement was made following the Pope’s meeting with Cardinal Angelo Amato, head of the Vatican’s office for the causes of saints, Dec. 10.

The Church’s newest saint will be Blessed Guido Maria Conforti, a missionary order founder and Italian bishop who died in 1931. The Pope has authorized a miracle attributed to Bl. Conforti’s intercession, the second needed to affirm his sainthood.

He founded the Pious Society of St. Francis Xavier for Foreign Missions, the Xaverian missionaries, who through his guidance brought about a renewal of the missionary spirit at the turn of the 20th century. The missionaries first spearheaded evangelization efforts to China. They are now present in a variety of countries throughout Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas.

While his most recent miracle was not described, the first miracle attributed to Blessed Conforti came about in 1965. After prayers for his intercession from Xaverian sisters in Burundi, 12-year old Sabina Kamariza was cured of pancreatic cancer. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1996.

In addition to the miracle attributed to Bl. Conforti, the Pope has also authorized miracles attributed to an Italian priest, the Spanish foundress of a religious institute, the Portuguese foundress of an order of hospitalier sisters and a Brazilian sister who died in 1992. They will all be beatified for miracles attributed to their intercession.

Further papally-authorized decrees will recognize the martyrdom of German Father Alois Andritzki killed in the Nazi’s Dachau concentration camp in 1943 and six Spanish priests who all died for the faith during their country’s civil war in 1936. No dates have been released yet for the ceremonies that will recognize them as blesseds. …

Go here for the rest of the story.