A brief unbylined Associated Press item today with a 9:15 a.m. time stamp, which appears to be based solely on an e-mail to an AP reporter (no other source for the quotes are cited), tells us that Nir Rosen seems to be backtracking from his Twitter claim of being “ashamed of how I have hurt others” in his comments about CBS reporter Lara Logan, who was sexually assaulted by a Cairo mob on February 11.

The report also has an odd final sentence (not in the screen grab which follows) that could reasonably be interpreted as an admission that wire service personnel either saw or knew of what happened to Logan, and failed to report it:

The wire service describes Rosen as having held “a fellowship at New York University’s Center on Law and Security” before he resigned.

In the final paragraph of the report, the AP also seems to be preemptively defending itself against a potential charge of being complicit in covering up the story of Logan’s assault, which CBS kept quiet for four days:

The Associated Press does not name victims of sexual assault unless they agree to be identified.

The New York Post and the New York Daily News appear to be the outlets that carried the first news of the assault on Tuesday.

The likelihood that an AP reporter or stringer saw a part of what happened, or at the very least knew about it, is not small. The wire service’s Sarah El Deeb and Hadeel El-Shalchi were in Cairo on the 11th. Here are samples of what they reported:

Mubarak leaves and Egypt celebrates

One Egyptian kissed the ground. Another rolled in ecstasy in the grass outside a presidential palace. People wept, jumped, screamed and hugged each other with a shared joy they had never known. Cairo erupted in a cacophony of celebration: fireworks and car horns and gunshots in the air.

… “The people have toppled the regime,” chanted protesters, whose 18 days of swelling protests tipped Egypt into a crisis that the autocratic government could not undo.

“This is the happiest day in my generation,” said Ali al-Tayab, a demonstrator who paid tribute to those who died in clashes with police and Mubarak supporters. “To the martyrs, this is your day.

… At a presidential palace in Cairo, where demonstrators had gathered in the thousands, people flashed the V-for-victory sign and shouted, “Be happy, Egyptians, today is a feast” and “He stepped down.”

… Crowds packed Tahrir Square, the scene of massive protests against Mubarak that began on Jan. 25. The celebrations continued early Saturday, with throngs of people milling around in downtown Cairo.

… In Tahrir Square, protesters heard the announcement on mobile telephone radios that they passed back and forth. They broke into cheers and some formed a conga line, winding through the packed area.

… Mohammed el-Masry, who marched to the presidential palace, said he had spent the past two weeks living in the protest encampment at Tahrir Square. He also wept.

According CBS, as quoted in the New York Post, Logan’s assault occurred “in Cairo’s Tahrir Square when ‘her team and their security were surrounded by a dangerous element amidst the celebration. It was a mob of more than 200 people whipped into frenzy.’”

It seems more than a little likely that the AP reporters who we know were in Tahrir Square as well as stringers they may have also used would have seen something. The odd paragraph at the end of the AP report seems to be a backhanded acknowledgment that they did, and failed to report it. If that’s the case, given that their coverage presented an undiluted portrait of a “cacophony of celebration,” that’s negligent journalism, plain and simple.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

John Kasich is in richly deserved hot water for “call(ing) a Columbus police officer an ‘idiot’ for giving him a traffic ticket in 2008.”

Six words, John, that are four weeks overdue: “I was wrong. I am sorry.” From your mouth, not your spokesman’s mouth.

Update, Feb. 18: Kasich did the right thing on Thursday —

Kasich Apologizes to Traffic Cop for Calling Him an ‘Idiot’

Ohio Gov. John Kasich on Thursday personally apologized to the police officer he repeatedly called an idiot last month for pulling him over in a traffic stop three years ago.

“Today Gov. Kasich met with Officer [Robert] Barrett and apologized and that apology was graciously accepted,” Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said in a statement to FoxNews.com. It was a friendly meeting during which the governor reiterated his support for law enforcement officers and for the dangerous and important work they do.”

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Speaking of politicians acting badly:

By a 233 to 199 vote, the House approved a budget amendment stripping funds for the F-35’s backup engine. The vote does not mean that the measure is dead; after the House votes on hundreds of other amendments, the temporary spending measure for this year goes to the Senate. That body rejected the funding last year, but the funding was restored in a compromise budget measure.

Still, the vote threw into sharp relief the power of the new GOP freshman in the House, many of whom were elected with Tea Party support on promises to end earmarks and cut spending. Many also saw the vote as a test of their willingness to reduce military spending.

Some of those freshman have aligned with opponents of the extra engine, which include President Obama and the Pentagon, in decrying the engine as a waste of taxpayer money. On Wednesday morning, Defense Secretary Gates reiterated his opposition to the House Armed Services Committee, calling it an “unnecessary and extravagant expense.”

The backup engine is a GE-Rolls Royce project. Bot the Bush Pentagon and the Obama Pentagon have said they don’t need it and don’t want it.

A review of the roll call vote indicates that Ohio’s and Indiana’s entire congressional delegations voted to continue the funding (that’s what “No” meant in this case), apparently in the name of preserving Ohio jobs. That includes alleged fiscal stalwarts like Pence, Boehner, Latta, Burton, Chabot, and Jordan, as well as knee-jerk anti-Pentagon types like Kucinich and Kaptur. Sorry, guys and gals, there isn’t a justification for continuing what the Pentagon says is a totally wasteful effort.

If the reps are smart, they’ll tell GE and Rolls Royce that they gave it their best shot, give up the fight, and hope that no one besides yours truly notices how badly everyone has acted on this.

Update, Feb. 18: From the Cincinnati Enquirer, John Boehner is being smart. Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown aren’t —

But House Speaker John Boehner, whose district is just north of the plant, declined to say whether he’d exert his own pressure to restore the funding.

“I am committed to the House working its will,” Boehner told reporters at his weekly news conference. “This is not about me. This is not about my district.”

… Portman, of Terrace Park, and Brown, of Lorain, said they’d work to restore funding once the spending bill reaches the Senate. It was expected to pass the House late Thursday night or early Friday morning.

”I’m going to continue to fight for it because I think it’s the right thing,” Portman told reporters Thursday. ”Not only because it represents jobs in Ohio … but it’s the right thing for the taxpayers and the right thing for the military.”

Rob Portman apparently knows more than two defense secretaries, Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates — both of whom are opposed to the alternative engine — combined.

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More politicians acting really badly:

The Obama administration’s statement that the government will not be adding to the debt by the middle of the decade clashes hard against the facts, Republicans say, leaving officials straining to justify the budget claim they’ve pushed repeatedly over the past few days.

As it turns out, the administration is not counting interest payments.

… To put the scenario in everyday terms, it’s like a family claiming that they’ve balanced the family finances, but neglecting to mention that they’re taking out a new loan every month to pay off credit-card interest. As a result, the family keeps going deeper into debt.

For an $80 interest payment, that might be manageable. But this is the United States budget. If the government does what the Obama administration is recommending, net interest payments will go from about $200 billion this year to $844 billion in a decade. That’s more than the country spends now on Social Security.

As I wrote in my column yesterday, the White House budget is an “utterly unserious” document.

From Acarau, Brazil:

February 10, 2011 | 6:25 pm

These days, thanks to technological advancements in air and sea travel, crossing the Atlantic is usually no big deal. But crossing the Atlantic by yourself in a kayak? Now that’s still something worth celebrating.

Aleksander Doba, a 64-year-old native of Poland, took off from Dakar, capital of the west African nation of Senegal, back on Oct. 26. After 98 days, 23 hours, 42 minutes at sea, Doba and his custom 23-foot-long, 39-inch-wide human-powered kayak landed at Acaraú, a city on Brazil’s northeast coast. The trip covered some 3,320 miles in all, and Doba became only the fourth known person to accomplish such a feat, and the very first to do it nonstop.

Of course, Doba encountered his fair share of obstacles along the way — age, a broken desalination unit, 20-foot swells and stifling equatorial heat — but none of that would deter him, as he survived on dehydrated food products, candy and fish (which he caught along the way). He also made time to collect rainwater for drinking, communicate by sat phone (recharged by solar panels lining his vessel), and even send out a few tweets. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

The story:

Previous BizzyBlog posts on Logan are here. Those who have followed this blog for a long time are likely aware that I have not been Ms. Logan’s biggest fan. That changed about 18 months ago.

I suspect that the wrath and violence directed at Ms. Logan is not random, but rather about the fact that in Fall 2009, she finally seemed to get it about what is really happening and what really is at stake in the Middle East. I’m quite certain that the Taliban- and Muslim Brotherhood-sympathetic, Israel-despising wing of Islam is not pleased with her.

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UPDATE: A journalism prof (he was a journalism prof? That explains a lot) gets richly deserved just desserts (“Leftist Journalism Prof Nir Rosen Resigns After Insulting Sexual Assault Victim, CBS’s Lara Logan”).

What is it about leftist guys and the women with whom they politicially disagree?

It’s here.

The sub-headline:

The current level of federal spending can’t continue. The administration says: “Yes it can. Try and stop us.”

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

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Cutting-room floor items

An e-mailer pointed out that for all the administration’s talk about regulatory relief, it’s increasing enforcement budgets in the Department of Labor significantly (he also tells me they are increasing the number of enforcers).

Don’t be deceived by the trumpeted 5% “cut” at DOL; it’s almost all due to training expense reductions and a transfer of budgetary responsibility over an older Americans’ program, and nothing substantive. Such a budget presupposes that DOL somehow isn’t doing enough to enforce arcane and archaic labor laws. That is far from being the case.

The White House Budget assumes real annual GDP growth of 3.6%, 4,4%, 4.3%, and 3.8% from 2012-2015. Despite the fact that George W. Bush made many of the right moves to get the economy going again after the Clinton/Internet bubble recession (as NBER defines it) of 2001, the highest single year of economic growth during the past decade was 3.6% in 2004. The 1980s and 1990s each had six years of 3.5% or higher annual growth.

Sarbanes Oxley (“Sox”) began taking effect in 2002. The mediocre to barely acceptable growth from 2002-2007 before the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy and its recession came along is not a coincidence. It will be extremely difficult to post four years of 4% of near-4% growth as long as Sox remains in effect even if Obama starts doing some of the right things — which he isn’t doing.

If the President was legitimately interested in regulatory relief, he’d be pushing to repeal Sox, or at least the vast majority of it. He’s not.

As the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin (“Why Have a Press Conference Like That?”) wonders what the President was trying to accomplish in his post-budget release press conference yesterday.

Well, with sound bites like this, he’s not helping himself:

What you have to look at is unjustifiable spending through the tax code, through tax breaks that do not make us more competitive, do not create jobs here in the United States of America.

Tax deductions and tax breaks are the same as “spending”? Heaven help us.

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Speaking of tax breaks, there’s this — (Indiana University and Kelley School of Business Professor Eric R.) Rasmusen Presents “The Lawlessness of the GM NOL Ruling” (HT TaxProf).

It refers to the IRS arbitrarily allowing the General Motors corporate entity that emerged from bankruptcy to take net operating loss (NOL) deductions losses incurred by the pre-bankruptcy GM entity:

… After the government joined private parties in purchasing most of General Motors’s property, the Secretary of the Treasury issued “the EESA Notices” which said that the usual tax rules would not apply and the purchasers could deduct $45 billion from their future corporate income, a tax asset worth an estimated $16 billion. The notice gave no justification for the exception, except that the TARP act gives the Secretary authority to do what is “necessary or appropriate to carry out the purposes of EESA.”

This paper argues that there is no legal or economic justification for the EESA Notices, even aside from the issue of whether the government should have bought the GM property. The scant attention paid to the large wealth transfer of the EESA Notices shows the danger of allowing this kind of tax ruling …

Any cost-benefit calculation concerning whether the GM bailout was worth it must consider this $16 billion break that no one else can get in their analysis, as well as many others, including heavy subsidies given to Ally Bank, the old GMAC. Most won’t.

Someone ought to bring this up to the President or his spokesmouths the next time they lecture us about “corporate tax breaks.” This one doozy probably cost us more than much of what they’re whining about does on an annual basis.

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Marvelous (really): “Wireless advances could mean no more cell towers.” Excerpt: “the wireless industry is planning a future without them, or at least without many more of them. Instead, it’s looking at much smaller antennas, some tiny enough to hold in a hand. These could be placed on lampposts, utility poles and buildings – virtually anywhere with electrical and network connections.”

Somewhat related, in a reader’s note to Instapundit: “Yesterday, about a week after Verizon announced its iphone data plans, AT&T notified me that the size of my data plan was now doubled (2GB up to 4GB) with no rate increase. Wow, this free-market competition stuff kinda works. Someone tell Obama.” He knows. I don’t think he or his FCC cares.

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I’m glad Ann Althouse caught this point about Ray LaHood’s banning of e-cigarettes on airline flights –

(from the related AP item) [Senator Frank Lautenberg, author of the 1987 smoking ban] said there had been confusion over their use and wanted to make sure officials were solidly opposed to opening the door to e-smoking on planes.

(Althouse’s comment) Opening the door? How dare a politician talk to us like that! The doors are open until they close them with laws.

Well Ann, that’s how it should be. Unfortunately with this administration, that’s not how it is. Who needs to pass laws when you can avoid all the hassles and just issue regulations?

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“Interest”-ing obfuscation at Bloomberg (“Geithner Quietly Tells Obama Debt Expense to Increase to Record”) –

Interest expense will rise to 3.1 percent of gross domestic product by 2016, from 1.3 percent in 2010 with the government forecast to run cumulative deficits of more than $4 trillion through the end of 2015, according to page 23 of a 24-page presentation made to a 13-member committee of bond dealers and investors that meet quarterly with Treasury officials.

Net interest expense will triple to an all-time high of $554 billion in 2015 from $185 billion in 2010, according to the Obama administration’s adjusted 2011 budget.

That’s if the government can continue to borrow at zero-risk rates, which is by no means guaranteed.

But the obfuscation is that despite comparing interest cost to GDP, the deficit itself, and to other countries, Bloomberg didn’t present what most people would want to know, which is what will happen to the percentage of all federal spending that will be gobbled up by interest.

Answer: It will go from about 5.2% in 2010 ($185 billion divided by $3.571 trillion) to 13.2% in 2015 ($554 trillion divided by $4.19 trillion).

Nibbling at the edges of the budget problem will not suffice.

From Tempe, Arizona:

Feb 6, 2011 / 01:15 pm

Choosing to carry an unplanned pregnancy to term almost seven years ago proved to be a life-threatening decision for one young Catholic woman.

Edel Carrick, a Scottsdale Catholic, shared her story during the annual Youth and Young Adult Rally for Life Jan. 21 at the All Saints Catholic Newman Center. The annual gathering, hosted by the diocesan Office of Marriage and Respect Life, marks the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Carrick detailed before a crowd of teens, young adults, “the young at heart,” at least two deacon candidates and a few priests and women religious from throughout the diocese, how a simple encounter at a party led to a sexual assault and pregnancy. Couple that with Carrick’s diabetes and that left the then 19-year-old fighting for both her life and the life of her unborn son.

It started with Carrick’s first ultrasound.

Afterward, the doctor told Carrick that she would resent the baby, and because of the coming complications due to Carrick’s diabetes, it’d be best for her to have an abortion.

“I looked at him and said, ‘You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to help save lives, not kill them, so if you’d like to help the next person, feel free, but I’m done here,’” Carrick recalled.

Further complications sent paramedics to Carrick’s home weekly during her pregnancy and landed her in the hospital when she was seven-and-a-half months along and facing congestive heart failure. Carrick’s son was born shortly after by c-section at 7 lbs., 15 oz.

The baby spent the next month in intensive care.

“I remember saying, ‘I fought for you. You need to fight for me,’” Carrick told an almost spellbound crowd.

Shortly after that, she introduced her 6-year-old son and happily reported that he’s learning to read and excels at sports.

“That little boy is the one who people were telling me, ‘throw him away’,” Carrick said. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Twice on Monday (here and here), I took serious issue with the opening sentences of two Associated Press stories on Uncle Sam’s fiscal situation.

First, there was Martin Crutsinger’s Sunday stinker, which described the level of spending in President Obama’s yet to be released 2012 budget as “$3 trillion-plus,” timed so that early morning news readers, radio listeners, and TV viewers would hear it. Too bad that the real number, which the AP reporter acknowledged later on Monday, is really $3.73 trillion. If you think that’s bad, the administration projects that total spending this year during fiscal 2011 will be $3.82 trillion.

Then there was Monday’s muff by the AP’s Andrew Taylor, who absurdly claimed that the federal government has only had “two years of big spending increases.” It’s actually three out of four if you use Obama-Geithner accounting, and four out of four if you flush their accounting tricks out of the numbers.

The inability to get through an opening sentence without insulting reasonably informed readers’ intelligence seems to have spread to USA Today. Look at how the paper’s Paul Davidson opened his story about what probably ought to be called “Son of Stimulus” in the hopefully unlikely event it ever becomes a reality:

Obama budget plan could create millions of jobs

President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2012 budget is potentially a massive job-creation engine, with plans to generate millions of them by repairing and expanding highways, bridges and railways.

Those who need to take a few moments to do what this graphic shows can be forgiven. In fact, I need to take a timeout myself …

… Okay. I would say that Davidson’s report went downhill from there, but I would be wrong. Having hit rock bottom with his opener, he basically stayed there the rest of the way. Here are a few more paragraphs, including a really pathetic misinterpretation of an already laughable claim made by a couple of deluded economists last year:

But the spending plan also heralds an outsize political battle as it reignites the type of Republican skepticism over the effectiveness of such outlays that characterized the 2009 economic stimulus.
More critically, it’s fuzzy on how the $556 billion in projects over six years will be funded. Experts say that makes it unlikely to pass a deficit-obsessed Congress.

… The plan calls for $53 billion to build a high-speed rail system, $336 billion for highways and a “national infrastructure bank” that would combine public and private money to build national or regional transportation systems.

Associated General Contractors (AGC), a trade group for the construction industry, estimates the plan could create about 5.4 million construction jobs and 10 million more jobs in related industries and the broader economy.

… The blueprint is certain to set off political battles. Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, says infrastructure improvements not only create construction jobs but improve transportation systems to increase U.S. economic competitiveness. A study co-authored by Zandi concluded the economic stimulus, which included $135 billion in infrastructure spending, generated 8 million additional jobs in 2009 and 2010.

Yet Republicans ripped the stimulus for not cutting unemployment.

Someone needs to tell Davidson that the reason “Republicans ripped the stimulus for not cutting unemployment” is, well, because the stimulus didn’t cut unemployment. The USAT reporter also badly misinterpreted Zandi’s and co-author Alan Blinder’s July 2010 claim, which, according to the New York Times, was that “there would be about 8.5 million fewer jobs” if President Obama’s stimulus plan hadn’t been enacted. In other words, Zandi is claiming on balance that 8.5 million jobs were saved. That’s a crock too, but Davidson took it a level further, asserting that 8 million jobs were “generated,” which I interpret in context to mean the same as “created.”

Recently, Cincinnati TV station WLWT went looking for stimulus jobs created in the local area, and literally couldn’t find any (bolds are mine):

News 5 Investigates Whether ARRA Money Created Jobs

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act brought $65 million in road projects to Hamilton, Butler, Warren and Clermont counties. The main goal of ARRA was “putting America to work.” But did it work?

… News 5 conducted a month-long investigation into the stimulus money that poured into the Tri-State. Of the projects that received $65 million in funding, most have been completed. So where did the money go?

… Because the ARRA money had to go to road projects that were considered “shovel ready,” paving jobs won the majority of the money. Two paving companies in particular came out on top, receiving nearly 70 percent of the federal money that came to the Tri-State — John R. Jurgensen Company received nearly $23 million while Barrett Paving got more than $21 million.

While Ohio Department of Transportation numbers show that 627 jobs were impacted by the money, News 5 learned that neither company hired a single employee with the nearly $44 million they received.

News 5 repeatedly requested interviews of executives at Jurgensen and Barrett, but they declined. In a statement, the Human Resources Director for Jurgensen said, “The money didn’t create new jobs, but it kept people from losing them.”

When pressed about how many jobs were kept, he responded, “Had we not had the ARRA projects, some paving crews might not have been recalled.”

News 5 found a similar story at Barrett Paving.

So the best that can conceivably said about what WLWT found is that some jobs were saved.

If Paul Davidson comes to Cincinnati in search of any of those 8 million jobs “generated,” he’s going to leave sadly disappointed. Step away from the Kool-Aid, Paul. If the original stimulus didn’t accomplish anything — and it didn’t — why should anyone think that “Son of Stimulus” would do any better?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Calling it as they see it — and as it is (election strategy-related bold is mine):

The White House’s new budget is far worse than merely bad. By not attacking the underlying cause of our debt explosion and by raising taxes, it will lead inevitably to a weaker economy and perhaps even default.

Numerous studies show that if you cut runaway spending in a serious way, the deficit will disappear. Oblivious to this fact, President Obama in his new budget chooses to make puny cuts and instead to focus on tax hikes — the last thing our stumbling economy needs right now.

All told, the new taxes total $1.5 trillion over 10 years — ranging from new levies on small-business owners and corporations to taxes on energy and banks. Passed as is, the Obama budget would make economic stagnation and 9% unemployment the status quo.

… Obama seems to be playing a political game of chicken with the Republicans — betting they won’t have the guts to make the cuts that he refuses to make. And if they do, he’ll blame them for the pain that results.

No doubt that’s why he totally ignored his own “bipartisan” deficit-cutting commission, which in December recommended big spending cuts and entitlement reform to reduce future budget shortfalls. Obviously, Obama took his copy of the report and shredded it.

As the budget debate heats up, Americans will hear that, as bad as Obama’s plan is, the GOP “hasn’t come up with an alternative.” But that’s a bald lie.

Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, has issued an extensive, detailed blueprint that would sharply reduce deficits and reform entitlements — and put America back to work again.

The only question is, will Congress have the guts to pass it? And if so, will American voters be smart enough to embrace it?

Read the whole thing.

There may not be another chance to get it right. Obama won’t. Congress must.

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UPDATE: Yuval Levin at the Corner (paragraph break added by me) –

Until the last few weeks, there might have been room to wonder whether President Obama might respond to the 2010 elections by moving to the center and seeking some politically advantageous but meaningful middle ground — offering tax reforms, perhaps even some Social Security reforms, and orienting the next two years around the question of who can provide a more appealing, more optimistic, and less painful set of solutions to our enormous fiscal challenge and the coming debt crisis.

This budget puts an end to that possibility. The president appears to have decided to spend the next two years pretending there is no problem to solve, and therefore that Republican proposals to rein in spending are just mean-spirited cuts offered up for kicks.

Oh, how I hope that Jennifer Rubin is correct (HT Hot Air Headlines) about the impact of CPAC on Mitt Romney’s presidential prospects:

… if there is one point of consensus among plugged-in Republicans on the 2012 field, it is that Romney can’t win unless he does a mea culpa on RomneyCare. Since he didn’t and he won’t do that, he’s not going to be the nominee. Other than Romney admirers (and even some of them!) it’s hard to find serious Republican players who disagree with that.

And so when Romney ignored the topic at CPAC, he hardly did “no harm.” To the contrary, he simply reinforced the notion that he has an insuperable problem.

Please, please, PLEASE: Not This Mitt Again

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The Drudge tease for this story says it’s “shocking.” If only it were really so:

The latest information about the salaries and benefits of each San Jose city employee was posted online Friday in an effort to maintain transparency in the city’s government.

… Former police Chief Robert Davis had the highest total compensation – more than $534,000 in salary and benefits – for the year, according to the report.

Those who contended that Bell, California was hardly the only example of excessive salary largesse in the formerly Golden State weren’t kidding.

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Two key paragraphs from a New York Times report about auto industry salaries should raise eyebrows:

G.M. last week said 26,000 salaried workers in the United States would receive bonuses, generally ranging from 4 to 16 percent of their pay but that several hundred employees would receive bonuses of more than 50 percent of their pay.

I guess in ObamaLand, there are good bonuses, and bad bonuses.

Now let’s look at line workers’ profit-sharing. The Times, having earlier told readers that GM workers are getting $4,000 amounts, had this gem (this paragraph appeared before the previously excerpted paragraph):

G.M. is not adding a bonus to the checks, as the Ford Motor Company is in giving its hourly workers checks averaging $5,000 each … Chrysler is voluntarily paying its workers $750, even though it lost money in 2010.

Wow, it’s not a lot, but still, it takes a lot of nerve for a company seriously indebted to taxpayers to pay out bonuses when it’s losing money. Oh, and following last year’s TV sting catching Chrysler workers drinking and smoking pot over lunch, there’s been another similar incident at the same plant.

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I suspect that most Chicago residents are less than pleased that slavery reparations is considered an important issue in the mayor’s race.

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Al Gore is wrong. That’s not exactly news. But the fact that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the one saying Al Gore is wrong (“IPCC says global warming is NOT to blame for snow”) is.

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At the Hill — “(Harry) Reid calls on Republicans to completely rule out shutting down the government.”

Harry apparently doesn’t understand a couple of things:

• If the House and Senate pass an appropriations bill that would keep the government running and the President vetoes what they have passed, it’s the President who has shut down the government.
• If the House passes and appropriations bill and Reid’s Senate stops it, he’s the one who has shut down the government.

That’s how it works. All the posing in the world doesn’t change that.

To be clear, it was Bill Clinton who shut down the government in 1995, and it was Ronald Reagan who shut down the government in the early 1980s.

From Windsor, Ontario:

Leamington Court Retirement Suites was the scene of a momentous birthday celebration for Elmer Frederisy, who turned 100 years old on Jan. 14.

Five generations of family joined Elmer on a special day that was highlighted not only by the guest list of dignitaries, but also by a first ever honour given by Maytag Canada.

For 40 years Elmer Frederisy was the Maytag man in Kent/ Essex and the company extended him the first and only lifetime Honorary Maytag Repairman designation. It added a lot of fun to the event and was appreciated by Elmer, who was so dedicated not only to his company, but especially to his customers.

Elmer and his wife, Mildred, will also celebrate their 75th wedding anniversary in August.

Elmer turned 100 and Mildred is 95, so many of us have asked him, “What’s the secret to longevity?” Elmer replied, “It’s partly how you use your body, and partly good genetics.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Back in August and September, Lachlan Markay at NewsBusters did roundups of media infamy in connection with the exposure and subsequent arrests of eight officials and politicians associated with Bell, California. The cases involve abusively excessive salaries and benefits paid and allegedly kept secret from the city’s residents.

During the August episode of media malfeasance when the story was first breaking, Markay found that “of the 351 stories (found vis Lexis Nexis) on the then-brewing controversy, 350 had omitted party affiliations, and one had mentioned they were Democrats only in apologizing for not doing so sooner.” In September, when eight arrests were made, he further noted that “ABC, CBS, the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, Bloomberg, USA Today, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and the San Francisco Chronicle all reported on the arrests today without mentioning party affiliations.”

Naturally you would expect, in reporting some of the seamier details found in court documents filed on Monday, that the Associated Press’s John Rogers would again fail to tag Bell officials as Dems, and of course he didn’t. Too bad — he could have noted how these donkeys described themselves as pigs (bolds, which should not be missed, are mine):

E-mail: City officials joked of acting like pigs

The two top officials in the scandal-ridden California city of Bell illegally paid themselves hugely inflated salaries and created a paper trail to hide their actions while joking that they were acting like pigs, according to a document filed in court Monday by the district attorney’s office.

E-mails and other documents from former Assistant City Manager Angela Spaccia’s computer will show that beginning in 2005 she and former City Manager Robert Rizzo created phony contracts never approved by the City Council that raised their salaries to “outrageous” levels and made it difficult to determine exactly how much they were being paid, according to the 19-page memorandum from District Attorney Steve Cooley.

What’s more, prosecutors said, when the city began receiving state public records requests for the officials’ salaries last year, Rizzo had Mayor Oscar Hernandez sign backdated contracts approving the payments, although Hernandez was not the mayor when the contracts were written.

The memorandum was submitted for a preliminary hearing scheduled later this week to determine if there is sufficient evidence for Rizzo, Spaccia, Hernandez and former Councilman Luis Artiga to stand trial on charges of looting the blue-collar suburb of $5.5 million.

… The document filed Monday called Rizzo a “godfather of sorts” who was able to bilk the city that employed him for years because he used nearly $2 million of public money to make loans to dozens of people, including Hernandez and Artiga, when they were going through hard economic times. In exchange, prosecutors say, the elected officials and numerous other people did his bidding.

… The two (Spaccia and Bell’s former police chief Randy Adams) also joke by e-mail of enriching themselves at the expense of Bell, a modest, working-class suburb of Los Angeles where one in six people live in poverty.

“I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell’s money,” Adams writes at one point, according to the memo.

“LOL . well you can take your share of the pie . just like us,” Spaccia allegedly replies. She goes on to say that one of Rizzo’s favorite sayings is that pigs get fat but hogs get slaughtered.

These donkeys who joked about being pigs didn’t seem to comprehend that they were already living like hogs at the expense of Bell’s taxpayers for years. I hope it’s not considered uncivil (actually, I don’t care) to suggest that a quite a few years in the hogs’ hell known as prison would be useful lesson for these parasites — and other donkeys inclined to imitate them.

As to the AP, for the umpteenth time, here is the Stylebook standard of “The Essential Global News Network”:

Party Affiliation – Let relevance be the guide in determining whether to include a political figure’s party affiliation in a story. Party affiliation is pointless in some stories, such as an account of a governor accepting a button from a poster child.

It will occur naturally in many political stories. For stories between these extremes, include party affiliation if readers need it for understanding or are likely to be curious about what it is.

No one can credibly argue that party affiliation is irrelevant in this story, that readers don’t need to know it, or that they aren’t likely to be curious. It is credible to argue that John Rogers and the wire service would prefer that readers not know that eight of the most crooked pols in recent memory are members of the so-called party of compassion.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.