As I noted on Tuesday in the tease, I had a few conversations this past weekend about my then-pending Pajamas Media column (now posted here; at BizzyBlog here) which led me to believe that it might generate “a bit of good old-fashioned rancor.”

Well, it did, with lots of strong support and passionate, usually thoughtful objection.

Here are some of the comments (PJM comments are mostly excerpts of longer comments found at the respective links, in order of appearance as of mid-morning today; obviously, merely listing them doesn’t constitute agreement or disagreement):

At the 1389 Blog — What our government has done to us (long-term unemployed), by deliberately destroying one sector of the economy after another, is truly evil.

(PJM) Your article does make sense, and thanks for the reminder that it is the government, not the employers, that is the source of the problem and to recognize that kind of spin.

(PJM) Excellently well put, and terribly depressing for anyone currently on the short end of the economic stick.

(PJM) Tom, you’ve provided a fair and accurate description of the realities of business. The longer this lackluster “recovery” stutters along, the more difficult it will be for the long-term un- and under-employed. And it’s difficult enough as things stand today.

(PJM) I disagree with the generalization that it is bad business to hire the long term unemployed. In my, opinion, it is the HR management theory “flavor of the month” that the long termed unemployed are bad for business.

(PJM) While I agree that government is primarily responsible, business must share the responsibility as well. When you reject someone out of hand, just because they were laid-off (not fired, to be fired is a disciplinary action taken by an employer against an employee for wrongdoing) because the company can no longer afford to keep them, you destroy that person’s humanity a little at a time.

(PJM) It is a crock. The ‘it’s just business’ method of downsizing has as many negative consequences as hiring someone that’s been out of work for an extended period (keeps the peter principle alive and well). It’s self fulfilling to exclude people from work because they’ve been out of work awhile. Anyone with any level of competence can quickly come up to speed and exceed their peers.

(PJM) Your column only adds fuel to the fire and shores up anyone who might have read stories here and there about the unemployed as being part of the new undesirables in the employment caste system of Oabama’s America. Repeat something often enough and it becomes acceptable. You did not do your readership any favors with this. You have injected fear and have more than likely demoralized many who are trying to put their lives back together. And the logic of the argument of some of these employers is mind boggling.

(PJM) You need not have given it your imprimatur.

(PJM) *sigh* The “unemployed need not apply story” has been true for approximately forever and three days, by my count.

(PJM) I’m totally unconvinced, and I don’t believe that there is any other explanation besides superficial thinking. (For the record, I’m not a liberal).

(PJM) thx sadistic Tom, hope YOU never have to sleep in your car after 20 years as a professional in IT with two university degrees…

(PJM) I know a business that made a killing out of hiring talented people with problems on their resumes, such as employment gaps. It was a brilliant decision.

(PJM) Employers resorting to not hiring long-term unemployed people who still have skills and experiences is discriminatory, unacceptable, and absolutely stupid.

(PJM) Let’s face a simple rule of thumb. A good worker is going to find a job within a few months, certainly in a year. So (true or not) most long term unemployed are going to be looked at as losers.

(PJM) I too have been unemployed for over 2 years. I have sent out over 6,800 resumes looking for a job. If I was less qualified I wouldn’t have as much trouble getting a job, or if I was more qualified I would not have trouble getting a job either. I am the “Middle Skilled” worker who used to make about 75-90K two years ago when I got laid off. … We need to make this illegal for companies to do.

(PJM) I agree with this guy 100%..after working at 1 place for 35 years they closed the doors in 2003.For the next year I drew the basic unemployment plus one whole extension. When I went back to work I had a very hard time getting into the work groove again. I know that my attitude about it had changed immensely.

(PJM) Tom, You have proven once again that those who can’t…Teach. The government is not responsible for the unemployment rate, the boys on wall street are.

(PJM) This article is obviously written by one who has never had their livelihood jerked out from under them.

(PJM) I do not see Not Hiring the Unemployed as a new phenomenon. There has always been reluctance by Corporate America to accept or hire applicants that have large gaps in their resume. Business moves so fast today; especially in the IT field that any applicant, current employee, or one who has just been laid off, must stay on the “Tools Treadmill” to remain current in their career path.

(dscott at BizzyBlog) The individual unlike the government has a choice of location. The solution to the over supply of labor in your geographic labor market is to move to one that doesn’t have that problem.

If I had free rein to revise I would probably add the bolded words to one sentence early in the column:

First, let’s grudgingly and reluctantly acknowledge that employers are mostly acting rationally.

I would also have preferred my brief title (“Unemployed Need Not Apply”) instead of the one PJM used, but it’s their site, and their decision.

I’m not happy that employers are doing this (there is no good reason why anyone would think I am). Based on their experience, businesses are doing what they believe they have to do to keep their job searches efficient and effective, thereby in many cases excluding the unemployed from consideration. It’s not a stretch to believe that many of them are not happy to have to do things this way.

But, as several commenters above indicated — as have several others with whom I have separately spoken, though many of them believe that employers are making the wrong call — the reality is what it is, and we shouldn’t be hiding from it.

The ultimate point is that if the Obama administration had embarked on policies designed to generate a legitimate recovery, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Employers would have to abandon their natural inclination not to hire the unemployed to meet increased customer demand for products and services in a quickly-growing economy.

We don’t have that, and it’s nobody’s fault but the creators and perpetuators of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.

Harry Reid doesn’t think we need to do anything about Social Security for 20 years (HT Steve at NRE).

As I noted last Friday, Charles Krauthammer negated this nonsense about a week ago.

Steve also points out that Reid may even be wrong on his 20-year claim. Thanks to the ongoing POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, Social Security’s actuaries have blown their near-term cash flow forecasts by $82 billion, with the system consistently paying out more in benefits than it is collecting in taxes right now. The full impact of this ongoing shortfall was not known when the system’s trustees issued their report last year, when they projected the need for a 25% across-the-board benefit reduction in 2037 if nothing is done. Steve thinks that the year of the draconian benefit cut is now more like 2029. That’s 18 years, Harry.

Beyond that, Harry missed the part of last year’s report where the Trustees said that the Disability Fund would be totally depleted by 2018. That’s only seven years, Harry.

This train wreck has been at the station for well over a year, and Reid’s walking around the debris as if there’s been no damage. The irresponsibility is breathtaking.

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Even libs are having a hard time with our President engaging in bracketology in the current domestic and world circumstances. One of them freely admits the obvious — that if Bush 43 had done so in a similar situation, he “would have gotten more barbecued for this …. Anyone who thinks that he didn’t – he wouldn’t – is crazy.”

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The person or people who issued this threat to serially stalk Ann Althouse and Meade in Madison need to be arrested and locked up.

This would be national news if done by a conservative or Republican person or group.

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Huffington-heisted AOL stock closed at $18.54 yesterday — down $3.40, or 15.5%, from its $21.94 close on February 4, the last trading day before Arianna Huffington became the queen of AOL.

A week ago, the new, improved, HuffPo-energized AOL laid off 900 people (200 in the U.S., 700 in India) — “insiders said most of the (AOL news) sites have been gutted.”

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Michael Ledeen at Pajamas Media — “What Would a Desperate Wimp (President) Do?”

A wimp is a “a weak, ineffectual, timid person.”

Ledeen isn’t name-calling. He’s observing.

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Speaking of reality-based labels, I’ve been meaning to share a couple of comments I found on a lefty web site earlier this month (the site won’t get any traffic from me, but if you need to see the originals, copy about ten words, paste them into a search engine, and you’ll find ‘em; both commenters are clearly active, consistent hardline libs; bolds are mine):

March 7th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
LOL…I now see Barry as a punk guy, who got offered power and took it. He’s workin’ for the other side of midnight…we got duped, and he has no shame or remorse at all. The other one another narcisstic liar and cheater….kchchkcht…spitooey…in their general direction..

March 7th, 2011 at 3:02 pm
That makes at least 2 of us seeing this guy as a punk.
He has no liberal core beliefs as he will compromise these in a heartbeat. He’s a reagan kid trying to gauge what suits his political interest , thus:
Ignore black constituency because they’ll vote for me regardless,
Toss the gays a few bones because there vote and money aren’t for sure,
Say a few nice words about unions but don’t get too passionate about it because a few independents might hate unions,
speaking of independents, better keep some of the bush stuff cause the indies may like it,
Suck up to corporations and the chamber of commerce because mucho moola is always a good thing.

Who said that far-lefties and sensible conservatives couldn’t find common ground? There is clear agreement that our president is a punk.

From Brockport, New York:

Posted at: 03/14/2011 11:07 AM | Updated at: 03/14/2011 5:43 PM

The family cat, a volunteer fire fighter and a miracle — that’s what a Brockport woman says saved her nine-year-old grandson. Their house caught fire this morning. Her 12-year-old daughter made it out okay but the nine-year-old was trapped inside.

Monday morning, Linda Pearl when went to an early morning doctors appointment she left her 12-year-old daughter and her nine-year-old grandson at home. She intended to be gone only 30 minutes but what happened in the next half hour left the family homeless and sent her grandson to the hospital.

“The whole street was just black. The whole sky was just black and fire trucks all over the place.” That’s what Linda Pearl saw as she got closer to the house where she and her six children and grandchildren have called home for three years. It was only minutes after her 12-year-old daughter Kristina called her this morning and said the house was on fire. “Forty-seven years of memories, all my pictures, my kids birth certificates, their baby pictures, everything it’s gone. It’s just gone.”

The damage to the house is extensive. The fire started in the kitchen. Pearl says her daughter forgot to turn off the stove after making some hash browns. “It was an accident but it was all about a hash brown, a hash brown. Because of a hash brown everything is gone, everything is gone.”

The fire could have been much more devastating. Pearl’s nine-year-old grandson Kendran Hall was upstairs and nobody knew it. “If the cat hadn’t woke him up, we wouldn’t have found out until it was too late that he was even in the house. He missed his bus and he never misses his bus.”

The cat died in the fire. “His cat Stitch died to save him, to wake him up.”

Kendran was able to break a window and hang out of it. The 12-year-old girl ran across the street to fire Lieutenant Tim Russell’s house. He didn’t have any breathing apparatus to go in and rescue the boy. His only hope was to jump. It was intense. “I just didn’t want him to panic and I didn’t want him to leave. There was a lot of smoke coming out the window and I was trying to get him to jump.”

The young boy landed in the arms of Russell and a police officer and despite losing so much and facing homelessness, Pearl says, “The kids made it out, even though nobody knew he was in that house, he still made it out alive and I’m grateful for the fact that everybody is alive.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

In the week since Wisconsin lawmakers passed collective bargaining-related legislation, much noise has been made about efforts to recall GOP Senators who supported the measure.

A Google News search on “Wisconsin recall” returns items that are overwhelmingly oriented towards Democrat efforts to recall Republicans. The final sentence of a March 13 Associated Press report by Sam Hananel indicates that “Union officials are also helping mobilize demonstrations in state capitols and spending money on recall campaigns against GOP officials who support efforts to curb union rights,” with no mention anywhere of GOP efforts against “Fleebagging” Dems.

It would be understandable if conservatives and Tea Party sympathizers believe that the Badger State recall momentum is on the Democratic side.

But an email correspondent in Wisconsin who follows matters there closely (Update, 9:00 p.m.: That would be Steve at No Runny Eggs, who has now put up a related post with a polling update) indicates that the split is closer to 50-50 in terms of genuine vulnerability. Specifically, Steve writes (bolds indicating that an atmosphere of leftist intimidation remains quite evident are mine):

(There are) six recalls I’m keeping an eye on. In decreasing chances of success, they are:

• Dan Kapanke (R-32nd) – Given the two college towns (La Crosse, Eau Claire) and the Mississippi River shoreline in his district, I don’t know how he ever won election. Indeed, he was beaten in the Congressional race in November.
• Jim Holperin (D-12th) – His district is the mirror opposite of Kapanke’s. All three Assemblymen in the district are Republicans. It also is one of 4 districts where there is a local effort, and it’s the one that has had the most threats directed against it (to the point where one business ordered the recall organizers to not set up there after receiving threats, and not the boycott variety ).
• Dave Hansen (D-30th) – The district is slightly less Republican than Holperin’s, but once again, all three Assemblymen are Republicans. Again, there is an active local recall committee.
• Randy Hopper (R-18th) – On paper, he “shouldn’t” be vulnerable. In generic terms, the district is middle-of-the-R spectrum. However … Hopper is not particularly well-liked, especially by his soon-to-be-ex.
• Robert Wirch (D-22nd) – Despite the fact that 2 of the 3 Assemblymen are Democrats, this district is a toss-up. The top-line races were virtually identical to the statewide races. Once again, there is a local group at work.
• Alberta Darling (R-8th) – … the North Shore suburbs are a bit “funny”, especially since it is right next to the UW-Milwaukee campus. The main reason the 2008 election was close was Darling had a health issue at a time that was aggressively used against her.

… What complicates getting a sense of how things are going is the intimidation campaign against the groups going after Wirch and Holperin. They’re being tight-lipped on how well they are doing.

The rest of the recalls are wastes of time, though if a local group would have formed in Dem Julie Lassa’s district, it may have had a chance.

Thus, my correspondent indicates that in order of vulnerability, Dems are 2, 3, and 5, while Republicans are 1, 4, and 6. That’s as close to equal as you can get.

To give credit to the New York Times, it is one of a very few outlets to note, as it did in its March 12 Wisconsin coverage, that “eight Democrats — as well as eight Republicans — face recall efforts stemming from the dispute.” But otherwise, you’d never know from reading the vast majority of establishment press coverage of Governor Scott Walker and the Wisconsin legislation that Democrats appear to have at least as much to be concerned about as Republicans.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

If this were the New York Times of 15-20 years ago, it might be worth considering at about half the prices indicated.

Even though the paper’s tone was insufferably arrogant and obviously left-biased, the journalism was often good enough to justify transcending the distractions.

But after Jayson Blair, Rathergate, national security violations, and myriad other offenses far too numerous to mention here, my answer to this offer is “no way — at any price”:

More detail is here.

Pinch Sulzberger’s letter to news consumers is here.

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UPDATE: Ann Althouse thinks subscribing to Times Digital might empower bloggers. I might agree — at about 10% of the price — and there’s a caveat, which is that a reader clicking over to the Times from a blogger’s post burns one of his or her allowed reads.

Thanks to Obamanomics.

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Note: This item appeared at Pajamas Media under the title “Why It’s Bad Business to Hire the Long-Term Unemployed” and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Tuesday.

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Those greedy employers are up to their nefarious tricks again. They’re even being overt about it.

If you’re unemployed, many of them won’t hire you. They won’t even talk to you. They don’t want you to waste your time, or theirs, filling out a job application, or submitting your resume. How absolutely awful of them.

Wrong. The “unemployed need not apply” phenomenon is an all too predictable and awful result of over two years of horribly misguided economic policy.

First, let’s acknowledge that employers are mostly acting rationally.

Especially in this economy, perhaps until recently — and that’s a big maybe — the main focus of many if not most businesses has been to figure out how to stay in business. In an environment where a serious hiring mistake may mean the difference between keeping the doors open or closing them, employers looking for help cannot afford to take unwarranted risks. Before they go into the hiring market, they ask themselves if the old reliables in their current crew can handle the increased workload caused by staff departures. They may also consider whether some or all of the tasks involved can be outsourced, automated, or even eliminated.

If they reluctantly conclude that they must hire someone new, company managers will go through their own internal networks of relatives, friends, and acquaintances to see if they can find someone — employed or unemployed, but largely prescreened — who is up to doing the work. They may also look at the possibility of proactively recruiting people who have impressed them in their business interactions while currently working at customers, suppliers, or competitors.

When the avenues just described come up empty, employers will let the general job market know that they are looking. It is there where the bias in favor of people who are currently employed comes out, and for several valid reasons.

If a person is already working somewhere else, they’re demonstrating that on a daily basis, not in the recent or sometimes distant past, their work habits and output are more than likely satisfactory to someone else. There’s at least a decent chance that this person has kept his or her skills sharp, and has kept up with technological and market developments in the industry. The effort involved in training such a person in their new job will often be fairly minimal. There will also be a lower likelihood that the person will flunk a background check, credit check, or their drug test.

With the unemployed, especially the long-term unemployed, the situation completely flips. Work habits and attitudes, even if once great, become suspect. Skills may have eroded. On the job training efforts are more likely to be substantial, take longer to stick, and are more likely to fail. The chances that the new person will steal because of financial hardship, has gotten into legal trouble while unemployed, or has fallen into substance abuse are all greater.

Employers who are avoiding the unemployed are merely saying, “We only have so much time and energy to put into a job search, and we can’t afford to make a business mistake. So we’re going to avoid considering the unemployed to reduce the chances of making such a mistake.” Contrary to the belief of those who apparently feel that it’s somehow an employer’s duty to hire the unemployed, and despite the fact that bad decisions to overwork current staff or to abandon necessary tasks are often made, there is nothing wrong with this. It’s about survival.

That this is not at all comforting to the unemployed who are aggressively looking for work is undeniable. Those who are in that position through no real fault of their own have every reason to be angry that they and millions of other Americans are in the same position. But they should not be mad at employers. They should be mad as hell at their government. It is their government, under the failed leadership of those who created what I have been calling the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) economy for 2-1/2 years, which deliberately chose to create a high-unemployment economy.

In the 1980s, in the wake of a recession and economic conditions that were in many ways more severe than the 2008-2009 “Great Recession,” President Ronald Reagan chose the path of tax cuts and regulatory restraint. As a result, seasonally adjusted unemployment, which peaked at 10.8% in November 1982, the last month of that recession, fell almost continually during the following two years to 7.2%, and kept falling. Meanwhile, economic growth exploded. Employers, even those who would have preferred not to, hired the unemployed because there was no other way to meet the burgeoning demand for their companies’ goods and services.

By contrast, during the first 20 months after June 2009, the end of the most recent recession, unemployment rose from 9.5% to 10.1% several months later, and stayed virtually stuck at that level for a full year. In recent months, the unemployment rate has finally come down to 8.9%. But that’s largely because there are hordes of potential workers who are so discouraged that they’ve stopped even looking; thus, they aren’t included in the official unemployment statistics. As for economic growth, it’s been anemic compared to other post-recessionary periods, and through six quarters is less than half of that seen under Reagan.

I assert that the administration deliberately chose the high-unemployment option because its economists knew what happened the last time a president tried to bring about an economic recovery using “stimulus.” During the 1930s under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, unemployment never went below 12%. But Democrats in Washington chose Obamanomics anyway.

The long-term consequences of that choice will likely be harder on the long-term unemployed than they were under FDR. Employers today are looking for specific, specialized skills. If you don’t have them, you won’t get hired. If you become unemployed and don’t use them, you can and often do lose them. Getting them back, or building new ones, can be arduously difficult, and prohibitively costly.

Sadly, there are early signs that the government is trying to figure out how to pin the blame for the “unemployed need not apply” phenomenon on employers instead of themselves. Sorry guys. You have overseen the utterly preventable destruction of human capital that is arguably unprecedented in human history — and it’s your fault.

From Catholic.org:

… Along with St. Nicholas and St. Valentine, the secular world shares our love of these saints. This is also a day when everyone’s Irish.

There are many legends and stories of St. Patrick, but this is his story.

Patrick was born around 385 in Scotland, probably Kilpatrick. His parents were Calpurnius and Conchessa, who were Romans living in Britian in charge of the colonies.

As a boy of fourteen or so, he was captured during a raiding party and taken to Ireland as a slave to herd and tend sheep. Ireland at this time was a land of Druids and pagans. He learned the language and practices of the people who held him.

During his captivity, he turned to God in prayer. He wrote

“The love of God and his fear grew in me more and more, as did the faith, and my soul was rosed, so that, in a single day, I have said as many as a hundred prayers and in the night, nearly the same.” “I prayed in the woods and on the mountain, even before dawn. I felt no hurt from the snow or ice or rain.”

Patrick’s captivity lasted until he was twenty, when he escaped after having a dream from God in which he was told to leave Ireland by going to the coast. There he found some sailors who took him back to Britian, where he reunited with his family.

He had another dream in which the people of Ireland were calling out to him “We beg you, holy youth, to come and walk among us once more.”

He began his studies for the priesthood. He was ordained by St. Germanus, the Bishop of Auxerre, whom he had studied under for years.

Later, Patrick was ordained a bishop, and was sent to take the Gospel to Ireland. He arrived in Ireland March 25, 433, at Slane. One legend says that he met a chieftain of one of the tribes, who tried to kill Patrick. Patrick converted Dichu (the chieftain) after he was unable to move his arm until he became friendly to Patrick.

Patrick began preaching the Gospel throughout Ireland, converting many. He and his disciples preached and converted thousands and began building churches all over the country. Kings, their families, and entire kingdoms converted to Christianity when hearing Patrick’s message.

Patrick by now had many disciples, among them Beningnus, Auxilius, Iserninus, and Fiaac, (all later canonized as well).

Patrick preached and converted all of Ireland for 40 years. He worked many miracles and wrote of his love for God in Confessions. After years of living in poverty, traveling and enduring much suffering he died March 17, 461.

He died at Saul, where he had built the first church. …

Can’t wait to see how the press tries to spin this.

Here are the February housing industry numbers released this morning by the Census Bureau:

• Housing starts, seasonally adjusted — annual rate of 479,000. That’s the second-lowest number on record; only April 2009, at 477,000, was lower.
• Housing starts, not seasonally adjusted — 32,700. That’s the worst February on records going back to 1959, is also the second-lowest number on record (only January 2009, at 31,900, was lower), and trailed February 2010 and February 2009 by 20% and 18%, respectively.
• Building permits, seasonally adjusted — annual rate of 517,000, the lowest number in 51 years of recordkeeping.
• Building permits, not seasonally adjusted — 35,900. Lowest ever, for the second straight month (January’s number was 36,000). February 2011 trailed February 2010 and 2009 by 19% and 8%, respectively.
• Units completed, seasonally adjusted — annual rate of 581,000. That’s better than January’s all-time low in 42 years of recordkeeping, but is far lower than any number posted before July 2010.
• Units completed, not seasonally adjusted — 39,700. That was up from January’s all-time low of 35,100, but it trailed February 2010 and 2009 by 13% and 30%, respectively.

The industry continues to contract. Government policies and programs have everything to do with it.

Meanwhile, the administration is focused on shaking down home lenders, and appears to have no interest in undoing its interventionist damage.

Perhaps the rest of the economy is recovering, but in housing, it’s still “Rebound? What Rebound?”

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UPDATE, 1:45 p.m.: Cover your ears first. …

… Okay. The warning came because the following graph found at Zero Hedge is screaming “Rebound? What Rebound?” —

Not enough is being written about the admirable conduct of the Japanese people in a time of disaster.

Investors Business Daily did a good job of partially remedying that in a Monday evening editorial:

If there was ever a more unfathomable disaster than Japan’s huge earthquake, horrific tsunami and nuclear meltdown, we have yet to see it. But the courage and dignity of the Japanese people transcended it.

The world watched helplessly as a 9.0 earthquake hammered Japan’s coast, and a tsunami’s massive wall of black sludge spread its fingers across the northeast coast of Japan.

… Despite the magnitude of these catastrophes, the Japanese so far are surmounting it, showing what hope is.

Common wisdom holds that nations that prepare for earthquakes do better than nations that don’t. But Japan doesn’t have merely good earthquake preparation; it has the best in the world.

None of this mattered in a disaster of this magnitude.

… Japan became the second-richest nation in the world despite being endowed with very few resources. This natural disaster is a cruel reminder that, at least in geography and resources, Japan remains poor.

But it’s that very element of this disaster that shows that the most important aspect of the Japanese isn’t their brilliance or their wealth, but their character.

Indeed.

From Japan:

March 13, 2011 23:51

A rescue team saves a 60-year-old man who survived Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami by clinging to his roof.

A Japanese rescue team Sunday managed to save the life of Hiromitsu Shinkawa, a 60-year-old man who survived Japan’s devastating earthquake and tsunami by clinging to the top of his roof.

Shinkawa was found close to 10 miles out at sea.

“I thought today was the last day of my life,” Shinkawa told his rescuers, reported CNN.

He and his wife returned to their home in Minamisoma after the earthquake to collect their belongings but were then hit by the tsunami that slammed the city. He watched his wife be swept out to sea, but he managed to stay alive by grasping to his home. He drifted in the Pacific Ocean for two days.

Rescuers on a Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer saw him, waving a red flag, and sent a smaller boat to save him.

Shinkawa told workers after his rescue that other boats and helicopters had passed him but had not noticed him among the debris.

He was able to survive on his roof because of the mild weather conditions and calm seas after the tsunami, according to military officials.

Shinkawa’s town, Minamisoma, has been reportedly razed to the ground by the disaster. Parts of the town are now no more than mud and debris. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

No one can fairly accuse whoever wrote the Tuesday evening report on 2010 newspaper industry revenue of looking through rose-colored glasses. The same cannot be said of John F. Sturm, President and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, whose press release today reads as follows:

Quarter after quarter, newspaper advertising has shown signs of a continued turnaround and an essential repositioning. Buoyed by online growth and moderating print declines, these figures point to a continually improving advertising environment for newspapers, with encouraging trends as we progress further into 2011. Online revenues increased 14 percent in last year’s fourth quarter, with 12 percent of all newspaper ad revenues generated from digital platforms.

Newspapers – in print and digital form – remain the largest source of original, high-quality news and information in the United States, reaching nearly two-thirds of all adult Internet users and attracting more than 164 million people who read a newspaper in print or online each and every week.

Despite one half-decent quarter, Sturm’s characterization of the “environment” as improving is deliberate, he surely can’t say that total revenues are improving:

(more…)

You begin to get an idea of how poorly served the news-consuming public is by the Associated Press when you compare its “reporting” on Obama czar Elizabeth Warren’s appearance tomorrow before the House Financial Services Committee to an information-packed editorial — yes, an editorial — in the Wall Street Journal this morning.

You can read all of the over 750 words in the unbylined AP report without learning that Ms. Warren and various state attorneys general are attempting to shake down the banking system for $20 billion. You would think from the wire service’s selective content that it’s only Republicans who have opposed and continue to oppose the broad, unchecked authority her brainchild, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, will have over U.S. banking policy and practices. It ain’t so.

Here are key paragraph’s from the AP’s 5:32 p.m. report (saved here at my host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes):

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