From Kansas City, Missouri:

Mar 20, 2011 / 01:06 pm

Once upon a time, a bride-to-be confided her hopes and thoughts on her upcoming marriage to only a few — her sister, a best friend, perhaps only to her diary.

Today, thanks in part to Pope Benedict’s continuous call for both lay people and the Church to use social media to evangelize and spread the Gospel message, on the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops web site, www.foryourmarriage.org, a young couple blogs about their courtship, their engagement and their preparation for Catholic marriage.

Sara Carlson, 24, and Justin Kraft, 35, have just started to blog. In fact as of March 7, their second post was up on the site. Their blog is entitled, “Learning to Say I Do.” The couple met three years ago through a Kansas City-St. Joseph diocesan Young Adult Ministry “City on A Hill” retreat, and plan to marry June 25 at St. Francis Xavier Church in St. Joseph.

Sara grew up in a small town in the Iowa corn belt, and graduated from Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville with a double degree in Business Management and Marketing. During a summer internship in public relations at the amusement park, Worlds of Fun, Sara fell in love with “the hustle and bustle” of Kansas City, and moved here after graduation. She had been active in the Newman Center at NW Missouri State, which led her to work for the church, taking the job as communications coordinator for St. Charles Borromeo Parish.

Justin, a native of South Dakota, served as a Fellowship of Catholic University Students, FOCUS, missionary for four years, before obtaining his doctorate from the University of Alabama. He now teaches exercise science at Missouri Western University in St. Joseph, and serves as faculty advisor for the university’s Newman Center.

The couple is going through the diocesan marriage preparation, in addition to full-time jobs, wedding planning and phone calls to each other every night at 9 p.m.

“Learning to put together a budget for two,” Justin said, “make decisions that aren’t just good for me but good for us, and deal with issues that are a part of marriage, hey, this is everyday life. I’m trying to start valuing my time with Sara as I will when we’re married. And we learn to make accommodations. But I’m gaining more than I’m giving up.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Cindy at Fairly Conservative and Mary at FreedomEden broke this story yesterday. RedState, Gateway Pundit, and Doug Ross, among others, have helped promulgate it. I’d rate the odds of the establishment press doing anything with the information at nearly zero.

I have a potential tidbit to add.

FreedomEden’s Mary writes: “Jake Sinderbrand, son of Judge Maryann Sumi, poses a bit of a problem for his mother.” Sumi is the county judge who on Friday temporarily blocked implementation of the collective bargaining-related law passed by the Wisconsin legislature and signed by Governor Scott Walker.

You see, Jake Sinderbrand is “a former field manager with the AFL-CIO and data manager for the SEIU State Council.” Both organizations have members who are employed in Wisconsin’s public sector.

That’s already a pretty clear conflict of interest, one would think. My tidbit after the jump possibly adds to it:

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While looking into the News Media Guild’s positions in the current standoff between it and the Associated Press, I came across the most recent contract (large PDF file) between the two. It expired this past November; unionized AP employees are continuing to work under the old contract’s provisions.

Many people don’t know that the AP is a “not-for-profit news cooperative” which is “owned by its contributing newspapers (over 1,000), radio and television stations (over 5,000) in the United States.” It would appear to be exempt from paying federal, state, and local income taxes (and perhaps others), and as such would seem to have a competitive advantage over any person or entity which might consider competing with it.

I thought readers might be interested in certain of the expired 65-page Editorial Unit contract’s provisions, and consider how often such arrangements are available in the private sector (56 other pages which follow relate to Technology Unit, whose contract provisions are very similar; bolds are mine):

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The Associated Press’s report on existing home sales carries Derek Kravitz’s byline today. Apparently the byline withholding temper tantrum thrown by the wire service’s U.S. reporters which began last week has ended (further evidence here).

What Kravitz’s story doesn’t carry is the word “existing.” How odd, since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) which produces the report, calls it ”Existing-Home Sales” at the report’s home web page, and labels the data “Existing Home Sales” in two different places in the detailed data.

It would be one thing if Kravitz were, as he may be, “merely” trying to keep his bad-news report from being found by search engine users looking for related sales news; a search on “existing” at the AP’s home site does not return Kravitz’s report. But his dispatch’s headline is unclear as to which type of sales are even involved (new or existing?), and his repeated use of the term “previously occupied homes” instead of “existing” might lead some readers to believe that the data involved exclude homes which have been vacant for some time, which is not the case.

Here are excerpts from Kravitz’s crummy job, which also contains something that is more predictable than the weather, i.e., a weather-related excuse:

Home sales fell 9.6 pct. in February

Fewer Americans bought previously occupied homes in February and those who did purchased them at steep discounts. The weak sales and rise in foreclosures pushed home prices down to their lowest level in nearly 9 years.

The National Association of Realtors said Monday that sales of previously occupied homes fell last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.88 million. That’s down 9.6 percent from 5.4 million in January. The pace is far below the 6 million homes a year that economists say represents a healthy market.

… Winter storms also hampered sales in many parts of the country, including five inches of snow in Dallas-Fort Worth area just before this year’s Super Bowl. That was nearly twice the metro area’s annual average.

Still, housing has been weak for some time. Millions of foreclosures have forced down home prices and more are expected this year. Tight credit has made mortgage loans tough to come by. And some potential buyers who could qualify for loans are hesitant to enter the market, worried that prices will fall further. High unemployment is also deterring buyers. Job growth, while expected to pick up this year, will not likely raise home sales to healthier levels.

The median price of a new home is now 45 percent higher than the median price for a previously occupied home, the Realtors group said. A more normal difference is about 15 percent, an indication that old homes on the market are being sold at comparatively cheap, and affordable, levels.

As is the case with so many other business beat reporters from the AP and others, Kravitz didn’t compare, and should have compared, the raw sales numbers for February 2011 to February 2010. February 2011, at 293,000 came in 2.3% lower (7,000 units) than February 2010.

All told, Kravitz used the term “previously occupied” three times, and had about a half-dozen opportunities to employ the word “existing,” resisting each time. This is especially odd, because the wire service examples (examples here, here, and here) hasn’t demonstrated any noticeable allergy to the word. Excuse me for suggesting that Kravitz’s word avoidance during a month that “just so happens” to be the worst in almost nine years might be about more than variety in vocabulary.

Looking ahead, actual sales of existing homes in March 2010 were 429,000. I hope I’m wrong, but it seems that the market will be hard-pressed to replicate or exceed that result in March 2011, given current conditions.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

The incomparable Victor Davis Hanson, at Pajamas Media last night (links are in original):

President Obama ran on promises of a new respect for the law. [1] But the law is now malleable and predicated on its social utility. [2] The government, along with the nation of Mexico, sues the state of Arizona for trying to craft legislation that enforces federal immigration statutes. The government takes over Chrysler and then violates the contractual obligations to its debtors. [3] We announce that the careless BP simply put up $20 billion to ensure proper cleanup of the Gulf. [4] The Defense of Marriage Act is the law, but deemed unconstitutional by the administration and thus by fiat not enforced, in the manner of the abandoned prosecution of the Black Panthers whose violations of election laws were considered not violations.

If we think the country is topsy-turvy, the president offered an explanation the other day to a group of donors and supporters:

The first time around it’s like lightning in a bottle. There’s something special about it, because you’re defying the odds. And as time passes, you start taking it for granted that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States. But we should never take it for granted.

In short, all of the above was “special” because it “defied the odds” and was brought to us by “a guy named Barack Hussein Obama.” [5]

My notes:

• [1] — And a new level of transparency.
• [2] — As is the promise of transparency; a Washington Examiner editorial Thursday correctly asserted that the administration’s record makes a mockery of the President’s transparency promises.
• [3] — This also occurred at General Motors. GM’s and/or Chrysler’s “success” at emerging from bankruptcy and becoming profitable will never, ever be fully legitimate. GM alone has depended on at least $80 billion of direct government aid, a loss-carryforward tax break worth up to $45 billion, and ongoing heavily subsidized access to low-cost capital to finance vehicle loans.
• [4] — And then the Justice Department sues BP anyway.
• [5] — It’s all about us getting used to and making grudging psychological peace with the idea that our country is run by an insufferably narcissistic Punk President and a lawless Gangster Government. Never, pal.

Note: This post originally and unintentionally went up in a different form earlier this morning. There was an error between the operator (yours truly) and the keyboard. Apologies to all who came in from elsewhere expecting something different.

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Well, this is cool, and a bit odd.

Yours truly made a URL appearance in the first item at Rush Limbaugh’s Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page on Friday (link will become inaccessible this coming Friday afternoon) when he linked to my December 2008 NewsBusters post about Associated Press reporters withholding their bylines:

Later Friday afternoon, with absolutely no idea that Rush had commented on the situation that day, I put up a new post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) on the latest round of AP reporter byline withholding.

I’ll have more related to goings-on at AP later today.

From Litchfield Township, Ohio:

Posted: 03/07/2011

A Medina County priest said he is blessed by all of the support he has received since falling into a river and being rescued over the weekend.

Father Ned Weist of Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church in Litchfield Township fell into a river behind the church on Norwalk Road while inspecting the damage to a dam and bridge.

“The outpouring of support that I have received from the Northeast Ohio community has been a blessing. I am very grateful that I didn’t have more severe injuries, and that God sent so many wonderful people to my rescue,” said Father Weist in a statement sent to media outlets Monday.

Terry Leahy, a church member who does maintenance, tried to help the priest by holding his head out of the water until emergency crews arrived. Emergency crews said Leahy was treated and released at the scene.

“I would like to extend a special thank you to the Wellington Dive Team, Litchfield Fire Department and Terry Leahy for rescuing me. Terry, our maintenance man at Our Lady Help of Christians Catholic Church, kept my head above water for nearly an hour until emergency crews arrived and lifted me from the creek. He was my guardian angel. I also would like to thank the staff at MetroHealth for the extraordinary care they have provided,” said Father Weist. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

At the Politico (HT Strata-Sphere):

Mullen: Mission isn’t about seeing Qadhafi go

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, in a series of Sunday morning television interviews, stressed that the U.S. military mission in Libya is “limited.”

But he also indicated that based on his orders from President Barack Obama, the mission can be considered “accomplished,” even while Moammar Qadhafi remains in power.

“That’s certainly, potentially, one outcome,” Mullen said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Certainly, the goals of this campaign right now are limited, and it isn’t about seeing him go,” Mullen continued. “It’s about supporting the U.N. resolution, which talked about eliminating or limiting Qadhafi’s ability to harm his own people.”

O … M … G.

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UPDATE: Way too little …

Mar 20, 5:27 PM EDT

Obama: Iran’s government leading campaign of abuse

President Barack Obama says the Iranian government cares more about preserving its own power than respecting the rights of its people.

Obama delivered that message in taped remarks to the Iranian people on Nowruz, the Persian new year. Obama says Iran has engaged in a two-year campaign of intimidation and abuse that shows fear on the part of the government, not strength.

Obama singled out the young people in Iran, saying they are the ones who can break that cycle and determine their country’s future.

… almost two years too late.

UPDATE 2: Well, at least the Arab League is behind the Libyan effort … Oh, wait (Arab League retreat noted here ["volte-face"] — HTs Hot Air, Da Tech Guy, Instapundit).

It’s here.

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

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More on Sirota: In January 2006, David Sirota was among the many lefty bloggers who, along with quite a few establishment press outlets, shamelessly went after President George W. Bush in the wake of the Sago, WV coal mine tragedy, where 12 miners were killed (11 of the 12 who were trapped, and another killed in the initial explosion). It was almost as if Bush himself sent down the lightning strike which caused 12 miners to be trapped, and all but one to die. (Finding a direct link to an authored post is proving difficult; Sirota and other lefties seem quite disinterested in retaining visible online records of what they’ve written in the past, but I digress).

I pointed out that mine safety metrics had steadily improved under Bush (deaths, injuries, etc.), after NOT steadily improving in Bill Clinton’s final years. Here is the graphic of coal mining deaths for the years leading up to the Sago disaster that I posted shortly after Sago occurred:

Here is what things have been like in the past four years:

The total of 48 coal mining deaths in 2010 (46+2 in the chart) was the highest annual number in 18 years, and happened during the first full year when the Obama administration had complete responsibility for and control of overseeing mine safety (President Bush’s last appointee stayed on until October 2009). Gosh, how did this not make news? (/sarc)

Is the 2010 deteroriation Barack Obama’s fault? Of course not.

Could it be the fault of a change in regulatory approach from cooperation-based to confrontation-based (the new director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration seems to have a strong confrontation-based mindset)? It’s too early to tell, but it doesn’t look good. If the numbers continue to stay bad, there will be reason to be concerned. Fortunately, 2011 thus far looks it might be much improved, though it’s hard to tell for sure because of time lags in reporting and updating.

I don’t think you’ll be seeing David Sirota launching into a screed on the awful numbers from 2010 any time soon.

The back and forth between Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob (“Jack”) Lew continues. Thus far, Krauthammer has won every both rounds, including his punch-out on Thursday.

It all started on February 21, when Lew issued a “rebuttal” to a USA Today editorial which called for near-term action to deal with Social Security’s structural problems. In it, he claimed, among other things, that “Social Security benefits are entirely self-financing,” and that even though tax collections are now less than benefit payments and will probably remain so indefinitely, the system “will have adequate resources to pay full benefits for the next 26 years.” Ergo, per Lew, “Social Security does not cause our deficits.”

A White House OMB Director issuing such patent nonsense should be news — especially when, as Krauthammer noted in his March 10 column (discussed on March 11 at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), Jack Lew was saying the exact opposite thing (i.e., he was telling the truth) 11 years ago when he was also Director of the White House of Office of Management and Budget during Bill Clinton’s final year. Nope; a Google News search on “Lew Social Security” (not in quotes, sorted by date) returns 66 items (the first page of results says “776,” but it’s really only 66). None of them is a straight news story about Lew’s 11-year about-face.

Among other things, Krauthrammer accurately noted that: “The Social Security trust fund is a fiction”; “the Social Security trust fund contains – nothing”; and “What happens when you retire? Your Social Security will come out of the taxes and borrowing of that fiscal year.” Ergo, Social Security, because of its taxes vs. benefits deficit, is a current fiscal problem, not something to forget about for the next 26 years.

Lew didn’t take kindly to Krauthammer’s slapdown, and went to his OMB White House blog to reply to double down on deception and to play the “it’s Bush’s fault” card one more tired time:

Hammer Misses the Mark

… Social Security benefits are self-financing, paid for with payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers throughout their careers. To prepare for the retirement of the Baby Boom and to keep Social Security solvent, I was part of the bipartisan effort in 1983 that built up trust fund balances to pay benefits owed to current and future beneficiaries.

Krauthammer is correct when he writes that there is no “lockbox” that keeps the money sent in by workers for until they retire. By design, when more taxes are collected than are needed to pay benefits, funds are invested in Treasury bonds and are held in reserve for when revenue collected is not enough to pay the benefits due. Yet these Treasury bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government in the same way that all other U.S. Treasury bonds are, making them anything but ”worthless IOUs” as Krauthammer suggests. The government has just as much obligation to pay back the bonds in the Social Security trust fund as we do to any other bondholders.

Responsibly honoring that obligation – one that we planned for and always knew was there –entails undertaking fiscal policies that would make it easier, not harder, to meet these obligations. When I last was OMB Director at the end of the Clinton Administration, the Congressional Budget Office estimated $5.6 trillion in budget surpluses over the next decade because of fiscally responsible measures that Democrats and Republicans, working together, had taken.

We are now in a very different fiscal position. When I returned to government at the start of the Obama Administration, the country faced projected deficits of more than $8 trillion over the next decade. These deficits primarily were the result of specific decisions made by the previous Administration and Congress to spend money on initiatives without finding a way to pay for them, notably the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and the Medicare prescription drug benefit.

… Krauthammer’s argument is inside out. We should not blame Social Security for our current fiscal problems when it is the irresponsible fiscal behavior of the past that has presented the country with future challenges to fund our commitments, including Social Security over the next two decades.

In his latest column on Thursday, Krauthammer wisely ignored the Bush-bashing, and went to the heart of the matter:

It’s still an empty lockbox

… If Lew’s claim were just wrong, that would be one thing. But it provides the intellectual justification for precisely the kind of debt denial and entitlement complacency that his boss is now engaged in.

… If these trust fund bonds represent anything real, why is it that in calculating national indebtedness they are not even included? We measure national solvency by debt/GDP ratio. As calculated by everyone from the OMB to the CIA, from the Simpson-Bowles to the Domenici-Rivlin commissions, the debt/GDP ratio counts onlypublicly held debt. This means bonds held by China, Saudi Arabia, you and me. The debt ratio completely ignores the kind of intragovernmental bonds that Lew insists are the equivalent of publicly held bonds.

Why? Because the intragovernmental bond is nothing more than a bookkeeping device that records how much one part of the U.S. government (Treasury) owes another part of the same government (the Social Security Administration). In judging the creditworthiness of the United States, the world doesn’t care what the left hand owes the right. It’s all one entity. It cares only what that one entity owes the world.

… Invoking the “full faith and credit” mantra for those IOUs in the trust fund is empty bluster. It does not change the fact that, as the OMB itself acknowledged, those IOUs “do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits.” Yet Lew continues to insist that these “special issue” trinkets will pay off seniors for the next 26 years.

Nonsense. That money is gone with the wind. Those trust fund trinkets are nothing more than a record of pastborrowings. They say nothing about the future.

… As the OMB itself admitted, future payouts will have to be met by future taxes and future borrowings — or by Social Security reform that, by reducing benefits, makes such taxing and borrowing unnecessary.

There is no third alternative. There is no free lunch. And there is nothing in the lockbox.

Krauthammer might have been well-served to tell those who hadn’t read his previous column that Lew was preaching the opposite thing 11 years ago. I’m also not as confident as Krauthammer when he claims in unexcerpted material that the world’s bondholders wouldn’t be shaken up if Uncle Sam were to default or otherwise shortchange the Social Security system’s “special issue” bonds.

But at least he is fighting the good fight against the administration’s serial denial of self-evident reality. The vast majority of establishment press members are disgracefully letting the administration perpetuate the myths, even though many of them surely know better, and even though the administration’s own OMB Director was telling the truth when he held the same job 11 years ago.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

From Eskaton, California:

10 March 2011

“It was love at first sight…for Jim,” explains Elizabeth McCrohan. The two were 17-year-old high school students in San Leandro at the time – the early thirties.

“I didn’t even notice him sitting behind me in history class,” she laughs, while James McCrohan, her husband of 75 years, sits beside her smiling, waiting patiently to tell his side of the story.

“She took me to a sorority, intersociety dance and from that first date on, we were in love and inseparable,” he then explains. The couple dated through college in San Jose and married several years later in 1936. This March 7, the McCrohans celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary.

The McCrohan’s life story is prototypic of the “Silent Generation,” at least in most respects. They worked hard (Elizabeth a teacher and homemaker; James a musician and teacher), survived the Great Depression, raised a family of three daughters, “pinched pennies,” and retired, leaving their Oakland hills home of 20 years for their reward house and small vineyard in St. Helena. Elizabeth enjoys sharing details of family pets, classic automobiles, hobbies, friends, family, and their anniversary party invitation that features a circa 1930 photo of the handsome young couple.

As ebullient as a teenager sharing the latest gossip, Elizabeth pauses to apologize, “I know I talk too much. My friends used to say I must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle.”

James cracks a sly smile as she continues on with stories of their globetrotting travels, seven grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Most readers here aren’t aware that Associated Press reporters began withholding their bylines this week in support of their union’s “quality journalism proposals.” Participating reporters are refusing to have their name placed on AP stories. It appears to apply to stories datelined in the U.S. and not overseas (as seen here).

It is truly a wonder that the world has gone on while AP reporters refuse to tell us who wrote the wire service’s U.S. stories (/sarc).

The byline strike springs from the wire service’s refusal, according to the News Media Guild, the union which represents AP newsroom personnel, to accept a “fixed-cost pension plan.” The AP wants a defined-contribution plan (i.e., something similar or identical to a 401(k)).

Here are some economy, business, and political “gems” appearing at AP during the past few days which can’t be traced to a specific reporter:

March 18, 11:33 a.m. version, “Why inflation hurts more than it did 30 years ago” — the writer asserts that “Social Security recipients have gone two straight years with no increase in benefits.” Well, yeah. That’s because they got a 5.8% increase late 2008 for 2009, because the calculations were based on Consumer Price Index values reflecting sky-high energy costs. The costs came down, but Social Security benefits didn’t. They may not like hearing it, but beneficiaries got artificially high payments during 2009 (to a large extent) and 2010 (to a lesser extent). The jury is out on 2011, as the year has just begun, but in the past two years Social Security recipients and a large percentage of federal, state, and local government workers have been among the relatively few to get benefits and wage payments, respectively, exceeding inflation.

March 18, 3:19 p.m. version, “Activist O’Keefe won’t be videotaped himself” — You would think from the headline that O’Keefe never wants to be videotaped. There was only one incident in question, on Thursday in New Jersey. Somehow we’re supposed to think it’s hypocritical of O’Keefe to make such a decision. The AP reporter involved is either unaware or not at all bothered that this past weekend the Gridiron Club refused to let CSPAN tape the annual dinner held with the President and hundreds of journalists.

March 16, 6:20 p.m. version, “New-home construction plunges in February” — Though the report was about as gloomy as it needed to be, as usual (and to be fair, this is a pervasive problem in the business press), the AP writer stuck to reporting on seasonally adjusted annualized numbers from the Census Bureau and ignored the raw (i.e., not seasonally adjusted) monthly data. As noted here, February’s on-the-ground total of 32,700 was the the lowest for any February in over 50 years of recordkeeping, and the second lowest for any month ever. The 35,900 building permits issued was the lowest for any recorded month ever, lower than January’s 36,000, which was the previous record low.

March 17, 4:32 p.a. version, from the cheerleading section — “Strong economic data points to more hiring.” Key sentence: “Economic data released Thursday suggest that March will be the second straight month of strong job growth.” First, the data isn’t that clear cut (unemployment claims came in at a seasonally adjusted 385,000, while the prior week was revised upward to 401,000), and second, we’re only halfway through the month, making it way too early to break out the pom-poms.

March 17, 1:34 p.m. version, “Consumer prices rise 0.5 pct., most since June ’09 — The reporter reassured us “economists said there is little sign that price increases outside of food and energy will get out of hand,” and quoted one person to support that assertion, with no rebuttal. Meanwhile, over at the more measured Wall Street Journal, Kathleen Madigan wrote that “Price increases have already spread beyond gas and food.”

March 16, 1:54 p.m. version, “Republicans say new consumer bureau too powerful” — Once again, in reporting that “GOP lawmakers also challenged the bureau’s role in a push by federal agencies and the 50 state attorneys general to force five large U.S. banks to agree to make it easier for struggling homeowners to avoid foreclosure and rework their mortgages,” the AP’s reporter failed to identify the shakedown — er, amount — involved. It’s about $20 billion. Readers would be interested in knowing that.

One can clearly see that even as they withhold their bylines, AP reporters aren’t withholding their bias and ignorance.

Certain of AP’s reporters may see the byline withholding effort as a nice thing to hide behind for the time being, and may be relishing not having their names associated with their dreadful work. For that reason, perhaps the impasse will last a while. We shall see.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.