In a business that is supposed to treat record achievements, dubious or otherwise, as news, it’s more than a little curious to note that the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger, along with Reuters and AFP, all “somehow” forgot to tell readers that March’s reported federal outlays, as seen in the Monthly Treasury Statement released today, came in at an all-time record of $339.047 billion, and that this year’s spending through six months of $1.849 trillion — also an all-time record — is 3.5% higher than last year’s comparable figure of $1.786 trillion ($1.671 trillion plus a non-cash credit of $115 billion explained here last year).

This year’s six-month spending total annualizes out to $3.7 trillion, and amount that is almost $1 trillion, or 36%, higher than fiscal 2007. Though spending is the self-evident real problem, frontline reporters and their bosses would apparently prefer that news consumers not see how ugly those numbers really are.

Reuters and AFP can cop out to an extent by claiming that their reports were short. Crutsinger, who used about 575 words in his dispatch, has no such excuse. Here are selected paragraphs from his rendition, indicating that he preferred to relay days-old shutdown-prevention news over fully informing readers of the Monthly Treasury Statement’s contents:

… The Treasury Department reported Tuesday that the deficit already totals $829.4 billion through the first six months of the budget year – a figure that until 2009 would have been the biggest ever for an entire year. For March alone, the government ran a deficit of $188 billion.

President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans averted a government shutdown last week by agreeing to the largest-ever spending cuts for a single year. But David Wyss, chief economist at Standard & Poor’s in New York, said those cuts amount to a “rounding error” in this year’s deficit.

The cuts include unspent money from the 2010 census, which is completed, and $2.5 billion from the most recent repeal of highway programs that can’t be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. They also include $3.5 billion in unused bonuses for states that enroll more children in a health care program for lower-income families.

Wyss expects the deficit will surpass the record of $1.41 trillion hit in 2009. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office raised its estimate earlier this year from $1.1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. A tax-cut package negotiated in December by Obama and Republicans, which includes a one-year reduction in the Social Security payroll tax, prompted the CBO to raise its estimate.

Sure Marty, it’s all the fault of that “tax-cut package.” Give me a break. Though it did reduce Social Security taxes by two percentage points for this year only, the legislation negotiated in December did not cut federal income tax rates at all. Instead, it avoided avoided tax increases which everyone with a brain agreed would do damage to the historically weak recovery from the recession that ended in June 2009.

Crutsinger also “somehow” forgot that the pile of refuse known at the White House’s February budget projected a fiscal 2011 deficit of $1.645 trillion.

It’s really easy to forget that spending levels should be going down, partially because the economy is sort-of recovering, but far more importantly because the 2009-2010 disaster known as the “stimulus,” which by itself was supposed to have inflated spending by $400 billion in both fiscals years, is basically over. Notice that spending has not only not gone down, it has increased, showing that the “stimulus,” regardless of its alleged intentions, ended up being more about increasing the spending baseline than it was about bringing about an economic recovery.

President Obama, as noted yesterday (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) has decided to recast himself as a born-again deficit-cutter after two months of deliberately sitting on the sidelines with a budget proposal that was absurd on its face on the mid-February day it was issued. His current solutions, predictably, include a trillion-dollar dose of tax increases.

The wire services’ collective failures to report record spending levels plays right into the administration’s desire to put tax increases back on the table. How convenient.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update: In the interest of space at NB, I didn’t go after the following statement by Crutsinger — “Wyss expects the deficit will surpass the record of $1.41 trillion hit in 2009.” That is true of the reported deficit, but emphatically not true of the cash spending deficit, because of the $115 billion non-cash accounting adjustment noted in the body of the post above.

Specifically the cash spending and deficits, as seen in the graphic at my February 16 Pajamas Media column, are as follows:

• Fiscal 2008 (the last year mostly unaffected by the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy — Spending of $3.072 trillion, deficit of $455 billion
• Fiscal 2009 — Spending of $3.407 trillion, deficit of $1.302 trillion
• Fiscal 2010 — Spending of $3.571 trillion, deficit of $1.408 trillion
• Fiscal 2011 (projected by the White House) — Spending of $3.819 trillion, deficit of $1.645 trillion

Real year-over-year outlays and year-over-year deficits have been increasing this adminstration began.

BizzyBlog Update 2: If spending continues at the $335 billion monthly average seen in February and March for the next six months, the year-end total will be $3.85 trillion.

Stock response:

“It is the progressive thing to do.”

The audio is a little annoying, but getting through the vid (HT to an e-mailer) is definitely worth it:

Wrap-up:

“You are trying to confuse me with facts.”

That’s progressivism in a nutshell. It crumbles in the face of facts every time.

According to his University of Maryland faculty bio, Kevin Blackistone “is a former award-winning sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News from September 1990 to September 2006.” He has written for AOL’s FanHouse; his most recent column is here); he was likely released when AOL recently laid off its FanHouse employees as a result of what I refer to as “Huffington’s Heist.”

In a Monday opinion piece at Politico (HT Hot Air) entitled “NFL players need Obama’s support,” Blackistone criticized the President of the United States for not supporting the players in their dispute with the league’s owners, and — I kid you not — said it “differs very little” from the recent public-sector collective-bargaining controversy in Wisconsin. Blackistone even brought Martin Luther King into the mix (bolds are mine):

… President Barack Obama refused early last month to support — or even get involved in — the players’ labor fight against NFL owners. He dismissed the players as millionaires fighting billionaires, saying he was more concerned about Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s attack on state-employee unions.

… Obama may have made a politically astute move by not picking a side in pro football’s offseason showdown. But it smacked of disingenuousness after he criticized as “an assault on unions” Walker’s proposal to strip public-sector employees of collective-bargaining rights. The NFL owners’ fight against the league’s proletariat, regardless of the players’ wealth or the public’s perception of it, differs very little from the Wisconsin battle.

… NFL players, like state workers in Wisconsin, deserve equitable remuneration for their labor, safeguards for their future and safer working conditions. Whether workers are pro football players, school teachers or firefighters, collective bargaining provides labor a means to negotiate with management for all concerns — hallmarks of the American working class. None of those concerns were givens; they were won by collective bargaining.

So, to riff on a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., not to stand up for unions everywhere is a threat to unions everywhere. And unions seem to be under siege across the country now.

… It may be that the majority of pro football players are even more in need of union representation than public workers because their careers are, on average, far shorter.

The careers of 50 percent of NFL players last slightly more than three years. Most wind up unemployed and unprepared for what lies ahead.

… someone has to represent players as a collective group,” (former Green Bay Packer tackle Ken) Ruettgers said.

It’s a point lost on too many — including the commander in chief.

It would be interesting to know how widespread Blackistone’s viewpoint is in sports journalism.

It’s also curious that Blackistone, in an unexcerpted paragraph, asserts that 65% of players end up with permanent injuries by the time they leave the game, given that neither side in the current stalemate seems particularly concerned about the plight of many of the game’s old-timers:

(Former Chicago Bears player and coach Mike) Ditka is affiliated with Gridiron Greats, an organization which provides financial assistance and coordinates social services to dire-need retired NFL players who are considered pioneers of the game.

“We’ve got about seven medical complexes around the country that give pro-bono service, surgery and rehab to guys,” Ditka said of Gridiron Greats. “Why can’t the league do that? We did it. Now we’ve got a dental program coming to fix the old guys’ teeth. We did it. Why can’t they?”

In one notable case, that lack of concern extends to shocking (at least to me) indifference:

When the players decertified their union on March 11, Saints quarterback Drew Brees posted on Twitter the motivation of the players to seek satisfaction in the courts rather than through negotiation with the owners.

“Past players sacrificed a great deal to give us what we have now in the NFL, and we will not lay down for a second to give that up,” Brees tweeted. “We have a responsibility and at some point you just have to stand up for what is right.”

However, in January 2009, Brees had a different take on past players and their financial plights.

“There’s some guys out there that have made bad business decisions,” Brees told USA Today. “They took their pensions early because they never went out and got a job.

“They’ve had a couple divorces. And that’s why they don’t have money. And they’re coming to us to basically say, ‘Please make up for my bad judgment.’”

Ditka professed not to be a Brees fan.

“I have no respect for the guy,” Ditka said. “I don’t care how good he is.

Brees’s sentiments are hardly an expression of the kind of solidarity Kevin Blackistone seems to expect from “the league’s proletariat.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Amid the hoopla over a possible government shutdown and the battles over the collective bargaining rights of public sector employees, a very important event slipped through the cracks. March 23rd was the one-year anniversary of when President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law.

Known colloquially as Obamacare, the act’s first year has been a trying one. When the Democrats passed the bill without a single Republican vote and against the will of an overwhelming majority of the public, they were betting that as people began to see the “benefits” of the law, public opinion would turn in support of the bill. In the year that has passed, the Democrats’ hopes have fallen flat. In an April 4th poll, Rasmussen Reports found that 54% of likely voters favor repeal of the law. That is even after the Department of Health and Human Services ran $3.5 million worth of blatantly political ads promoting Obamacare. The popularity of the law has waned so much that Democrat Congresswomen Debbie Wasserman-Shultz asked that members of Congress not refer to the law as Obamacare because it was “demeaning to the President.” You know it is bad when you cannot attach the president’s name to his crowning legislative achievement without it being “demeaning.”

The public’s ire for the law was a large reason for the Republicans’ historic performance in the 2010 midterm elections. As they promised during the campaign, the GOP-run House of Representatives passed a bill that would have repealed Obamacare in its entirety. Unfortunately, the vote failed in the Senate. In the year since, the cost estimates for Obamacare have jumped 8.6% to $1.13 trillion. Beyond the economy-breaking debt that will be incurred from this law, Obamacare is an assault on freedom. Obamacare forces every single American to purchase government-approved health insurance or pay a fine. Where does the government get the power to coerce the people into buying a product? The logic behind forcing every person in the county to be insured is that those who are uninsured pass the costs of their treatment onto those who have health insurance. Thus, if everyone had health insurance, then there would be no “cost shifting.” It is too bad that the whole idea of “cost shifting” is a myth. Three recent studies have shown that the effects of cost shifting are negligible. So even if it were constitutional for the federal government to force you to buy health insurance, doing so would not reduce the cost of health coverage one iota.

Obamacare attempts to make health insurance affordable. It does this by providing subsidies to families with income of up to 400% of the federal poverty level. I do not see why a family making $88,000 needs a subsidy from the government. While that family is by no means rich, they should have enough income to pay for their own health insurance and not have to rely on you and me, the taxpayers. On a related note about the subsidies, they will discourage people from working and contributing to the economy. Under Obamacare, a family with an income of $55,000 would get $10,432 of subsidy. Add the family’s income to the subsidy and you get $65,432. However if one of the family members decides to work overtime and earns an extra $5,000, the family would lose all subsidies and would therefore would only have $60,000. The family would be $5,432 worse off if they decided to work overtime. What is the point of working extra if you are going to be worse off for it? The subsidies in Obamacare will make people refrain from working. In order to grow the economy, we need to use all of the resources, including human resources, in the most efficient way possible.

While its proponents claim that Obamacare will reduce the cost of healthcare, it will actually do the exact opposite. Obamacare will increase the cost of healthcare because it equates health insurance with healthcare. While many people use the terms interchangeably, there is a distinct difference. Healthcare is the actual medical treatment that you receive whether it is an MRI, a surgery or a prescription drug. Health insurance is a product you buy that covers some of the costs of healthcare. Healthcare is expensive is because of health insurance. The reason that health insurance causes healthcare to become more expensive is because it disconnects the consumer from cost of treatment. With the current system, the consumer, i.e. the patient, feels no effect of the cost. Therefore they can spend with impunity. To think of this another way, pretend that you had a “food insurance” policy and went to restaurant. You could have anything you wanted on the menu and you only had a co-pay of $25. Because you do not feel any of the cost of the meal, you would have no qualms about ordering the Kobe steak with a side of Maine lobster. In addition, the restaurant would be free to charge whatever it wanted because it would not lose customers because of price. Replace the food with healthcare and the restaurant with doctors or hospitals and you have the reason health insurance causes the price of healthcare to rise. In order to truly make the cost of healthcare go down we need patients to say, “I’ll go to Dr. Smith for the MRI because he charges $50 less than Dr. Martin.” In other words, we need to create an environment where doctors compete against each other for patients. This competition will lower the cost of healthcare.

It is too bad that Obamacare guts the one thing that allowed market forces to act in the healthcare market. Health Savings Accounts allowed people to put money away tax-free so that they can pay cash for medical services. Because it is their own money in the account, individuals had an incentive to economize on their healthcare purchases. Obamacare makes it so that any money left in a HSA at the end of the year is taxed as ordinary income. This makes HSAs less attractive so less people will use them.

The biggest shame about Obamacare is that it may very well destroy the greatest healthcare system in the world. In a report about health in the United States in 2009 released by the Centers for Disease Control, the life expectancy rose .2 years from 2008 to 78.2, the infant mortality rate hit an all-time low of 6.42 per 1,000 births and the five-year cancer survival rate increased to 66%, the highest in the world by far.

The fact that Obamacare tramples on our liberties, discourages people from working, will increase the cost of healthcare even more, and may very well destroy the greatest healthcare system in the world, is why it must be repealed. But do not expect that to happen while the current president is sitting in the Oval Office. That is why the 2012 election will be one of the most consequential in the history of this nation.

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Robert Roll is a freshman majoring in Finance at Ohio Northern University.

In the opening of a Wall Street Journal editorial yesterday:

Governor Pat Quinn recently added to his reputation as America’s most taxing politician by signing a law applying the state’s 6.25% sales tax to Internet purchases made in Illinois. Within hours, Amazon, the online book and merchandise seller, announced it would discontinue using any of its 9,000 Illinois small business affiliates to avoid having to collect the tax. Congratulations, Governor.

Regardless of where one stands on taxing Internet purchases (I’m against it unless the states lower their sales taxes across the board to compensate, and then put a hard cap on them, which of course none of them will do, especially Illinois), it’s interesting how the left doesn’t denounce Amazon for moves such as this one, given that it’s avoiding collecting millions in taxes by doing so and hurting lots of “little people” to perpetuate that avoidance. Is it because the company is an Internet darling, because it doesn’t make messy, gooey oil, or what?

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Joe Nocera, in a New York Times op-ed, properly calls out the NCAA for hypocrisy:

I don’t know about you, but I had a hard time stomaching the sight of Jim Calhoun holding the championship trophy after Monday’s final game of the N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.

… To put it more bluntly: UConn cheated. Among the punishments meted out was a three-game suspension for Calhoun.

… Calhoun’s suspension was (of course!) deferred until next season … One of his own players described the school’s penalties as “a slap on the wrist.”

… (Meanwhile, the NCAA suspended Baylor freshman) 19-year-old Perry Jones III … literally hours before the team’s conference tournament. Without Jones, Baylor lost big.

… Jones’s main crime was that he is poor.

Jones was in 10th grade when he supposedly broke the N.C.A.A.’s rules. (That’s right. You can break N.C.A.A. rules years before you become part of the N.C.A.A.) His mother, a cafeteria worker, has a heart condition so serious that she will likely need a transplant. Sometimes she’s confined to a wheelchair, causing her to miss work. During one such period, she got behind on her rent.

Three times, she asked Jones’s A.A.U. coach, whom she’d known for years, to lend her $1,200 to pay the rent. Each time, she repaid the loan as soon as she got her paycheck. That, believe it or not, is Jones’s transgression.

Jones says he had no idea his mother was borrowing money to pay the rent, which is completely believable. If you needed a short-term loan to keep from getting evicted, would you tell your teenage son?

What an outrage.

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Bookmark this: “The New Weathermen.” It’s an excellent history of the self-dealing frauds and phonies in the globaloney movement, with links and references galore. It wraps with this assessment of its advocates:

Some are credulous do-gooders who truly believe in the delusion of global warming and will fudge or obscure the facts they find inadmissible in order to preserve their messianic agenda. Soothsayers with an ostensibly noble mission whose auguries are constantly trumped by reality, they are impervious to doubt or reason — just as in the 1970s when they were earnestly warning that the earth was about to freeze over and we should all stock up on parkas and Coleman heaters. These poor people stagger around like late-night party-goers with a pre-dawn hangover, squinting into the unaccustomed light.

But the majority, I suspect, are out-and-out schemers and defalcators who have stumbled on a growth industry and have no intention of getting off the gravy train, which they wish to render, as in a recent movie, unstoppable. They will not surrender the advantages and remunerations that accrue to their shady and canting profession and will fall back on every means at their disposal to stay in business. They will suppress countervailing data. They will slander their opponents. They will “disinvite” authoritative scientists from climate conferences. They will caulk the leaks continually springing in their theories rather than engage in reconsideration. They will cook the books. They will close the scientific journals to their critics. When challenged, they will simply double down in their dividends and gratuities like badgers comfy in their setts.

And they will do everything in their power to instill fear in the multitudes, resembling nothing so much as terrorists armed with improvised statistics. They will detonate data bombs to terrify the unsuspecting. They will lay ambushes on the road to truth. They will plant explosive media devices packed with spurious details to gain their objectives, all the while inundating us with propaganda. They will labor tirelessly to establish the dictatorship of the climatariat. And they will not be deterred from carrying out their subversion of truth, common sense, and society as we know it.

In short, they are the new Weather Underground.

This is as succinct an explanation as any I’ve seen demonstrating why they must be marginalized.

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Apparently, the New York Times won’t correct the following grievous errors in an early-April David Callahan op-ed identified by Mark V. Holden, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Koch Industries, Inc. (HT Powerline; bolds are mine):

First, Mr. Callahan’s description of what the United States Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allows is completely incorrect and his entire analysis seems to rely on his erroneous understanding of this case and its effects. 501c4 groups have always been permitted to accept unlimited corporate, union, and individual contributions without publicly revealing their donors except to the Internal Revenue Service. Further, these groups could spend unlimited amounts on lobbying, grass roots activities, voter registration and other advocacy. In fact, as the Times reported at the time of the Citizens United decision in January 2010, the Supreme Court decided by an 8 to 1 majority to uphold the Federal Election Commission’s disclosure requirements for 501c4 groups like Citizens United.

Second, contrary to what Mr. Callahan suggests in his opening paragraph, donors cannot deduct their contributions to political activities. Such a fundamental error in the opening paragraph calls into question everything that follows. In fact, Mr. Callahan compounds his errors by equating philanthropy and political giving, as evidenced by his second sentence in the sixth paragraph.

Third, Mr. Callahan failed to check his facts when he declared that Charles and David Koch have contributed funds to FreedomWorks. As noted in past stories in the Washington Examiner and the Washington Post, Koch companies, the Koch foundations, Charles Koch and David Koch have no ties to and have never given money to FreedomWorks.

The Times may offer the defense that Callahan’s piece is an op-ed and requires no fact-checking. Horse manure. When fundamental facts are wrong, the Times, now shown to have incredibly ignorant editors (or editors who don’t even bother checking what’s about to go into their newspaper) must correct the record. Otherwise, people will erroneously trust Callahan’s blatantly wrong assertions.

If the Times fails to make the necessary corrections, it will expose itself as every bit as fundamentally dishonest as Mr. Callahan.

From the “Poor Baby” Dept. — “‘I miss being anonymous’: President Obama laments life in fishbowl.” Voters can address the Whiner-in-Chief’s lament 19 months from now. Democrats really should work on ensuring that it happens sooner.

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PC Gone Wild (HT Aaron Worthing at Patterico’s place) — “Easter eggs renamed spring spheres at Seattle school.” And it’s a private school.

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Sadly, this kind of labeling bias caught by Doug Ross last week is routine at the Associated Press — “Style Note to A.P.: It’s Not ‘Tea Party Purists’ — It’s ‘Constitutional Conservatives’”

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Relative to the previous item, here’s an AP item about “fracking” for natural gas — “Fracking shale for gas brings wealth, concerns.” The underlying article is entirely about alleged environmental safety issues, and contains no reference to the economics (capital investment, revenues, costs, etc.) of fracking. The only reason for such a headline is to build resentment on the part of those who will only read the headline that somebody, somewhere is actually doing well.

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From the “This Cannot Work Out Well” Dept. — “Microsoft Reaches Out to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

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Unlike the orchestrated campaign against Toyota, this problem isn’t made-up: “Chevy Recalls Cruze After A Steering Wheel Falls Off.” Video is here.

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Break out Darth Dilbert’s “Reasons to Home School” graphic (scroll down a little at link) for this one: “Chicago school bans some lunches brought from home.” Instapundit gets it: “More and more, it seems like parental malpractice to let your kids go to public schools, where they seem to be viewed as state property, and guinea pigs for social experimentation.”

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The aforementioned “Reasons to Home School” graphic gets another workout: “Teachers support cop-killer.” Specifically, “The California Federation of Teachers has adopted a resolution of support for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Unreal.

From Augusta, Georgia and Japan (HT Daryn Kagan):

April 8, 2011

Despite being a small nation, Japan has top athletes competing around the world in a variety of sports, including Major League baseball and World Cup skiing.

These athletes have expressed sympathy and concern about what’s happening in their homeland, following the March 11 earthquake, tsunami, and subsequent nuclear crisis. Japan Tour golfer Ryo Ishikawa, who’s playing in the Masters golf tournament in Georgia this week, is no exception. And he’s taking it a step further.

Last week, Ishikawa announced that he would donate all of his 2011 golf earnings to the victims of Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. He also wants to donate a set amount for every birdie he makes this season on the Japan Tour and in other pro events, like the Masters.

Ishikawa is a nine-time winner on the Japan pro golf tour and made his US debut in 2009 at the Northern Trust Open in Los Angeles, Calif.

On Thursday, Ishikawa posted a one-under par in his first round at Augusta National, with four birdies. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Ishikawa finished tied for 20th at Augusta with a 72-hole score of 285, three under par. Japan’s prize for ishikawa’s performance was roughly $100,000.

I sure hope that the Associated Press’s Jim Kuhnhenn has been working out, especially in his upper body. The volume of water he’s having to carry for the Obama administration as a dutiful member of the state-compliant establishment press has to be getting very heavy.

This evening, Kuhnhenn and his wire service are expecting the AP’s readers — and ultimately its subscribing media outlets’ readers, listeners, and viewers — to believe that President Obama, who, with plenty of help from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, will have run up over $4 trillion of steadily rising federal government deficits by the time we get to September 30, the end of the current fiscal year (after making appropriate adjustments to reverse obfuscatory accounting entries designed to mask the truth), has now seen the light, and is on board with the idea of serious long-term deficit reduction (certain bias words bolded by me; numbered tags are mine):

Obama’s debt cutting plan: Everything on the tablePresident Barack Obama, plunging into the rancorous struggle over America’s mountainous debt, will draw sharp differences with Republicans Wednesday over how to conquer trillions of dollars in spending [1] while somehow working out a compromise to raise some taxes and trim a cherished program like Medicare.

Obama’s speech will set a new long-term deficit-reduction goal and establish a dramatically different vision from a major Republican proposal that aims to cut more than $5 trillion over the next decade, officials said Monday.

Details of Obama’s plan are being closely held so far, but the deficit-cutting target probably will fall between the $1.1 trillion he proposed in his 2012 budget proposal and the $4 trillion that a fiscal commission he appointed recommended in December.

The speech is intended as a declaration of Obama’s commitment to seriously tame the deficit [2] while outlining his long-term budget principles – key components of his campaign for re-election in 2012. After gingerly avoiding any discussion until now of cuts in the government’s massive benefit programs for the elderly and poor, Obama will acknowledge a need to reduce spending on Medicare and Medicaid while at the same time tackling defense spending and calling for increased taxes on the wealthy [3], White House officials said.

If that sounds like a reprise of last week’s budget fight that barely avoided a government shutdown, it isn’t. The stakes are far higher, the political risks greater and the goals more ambitious. At issue are long-term budget deficits and a $14.3 trillion national debt that many say could threaten the nation’s economy.

The mind reels at the audacity. I could have tagged 10 items in just these few paragraphs. I’ll stop at three:

• [1] — Obama created most of the trillions of dollars of spending that have led to the recent years’ trillions of dollars in deficits. Additionally, he has created the pervasive, administration-induced business uncertainty which has, among many other things, caused the economy to add 508,000 jobs at temporary help services in the seven quarters since the recession ended — while losing (yes, losing) 263,000 non-temp jobs.
• [2] — Obama and the White House had their chance to demonstrate a “commitment to seriously tame the deficit” two months ago. It was known as the President’s budget. It was almost universally derided by conservatives and liberals as an unsustainable, gutless exercise. The idea that he deserves a complete do-over is hard to accept. The idea that his attempt at a do-over is sincere is even harder to handle.
• [3] — Ah yes, the predictable bromides. Cut defense spending even while creating a third war zone, and hike taxes on the “wealthy,” which in reality (Kuhnhenn please note) means increasing taxes on those with high incomes, who may or may not be particularly wealthy.

This kind of image shift worked in the mid-1990s with Bill Clinton. But after getting burned in his attempt at statist health care, Clinton became more interested in staying in office than in accomplishing anything serious, and liberals were reluctantly okay with that, given that the economy was in fairly good shape and that the agenda of supposed devil incarnate Newt Gingrich was the alternative. Clinton was also lucky that deficit-cutters like current Ohio Governor John Kasich and the welfare-reforming Republican Congress ended up (with media assistance of course) making him look good.

Whether Barack Obama can set aside the hard-core ideology for longer than five minutes is an open question, but even if he can, the landscape is different. The economy is not in good shape now, and could get worse if gas really does get to $5 a gallon by Memorial Day as predicted. Also, as much as Democrats and the press may try to paint John Boehner as the next source of all that is evil, thus far the Speaker has avoided making it about him (Gingrich’s biggest shortcoming), and has stuck to the agenda of making it about what the American people who gave his party the House majority want. The Speaker also has the advantage of having a credible agenda in the form of Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan’s long-term proposals. Finally, there is a clear understanding not present during the mid-1990s that the status quo is not acceptable. Even USA Today’s editorial board acknowledges that hard reality.

Media apparatchiks like Jim Kuhnhenn seem to believe that their instant makeover effort will pan out as it did with Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Whether it can or will remains to be seen. The AP vet’s first attempt is so embarrassing that I expect many subscribing outlets laugh it into the trash can, be it the metallic ones at their desk or the ones on their computer desktops.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

In a Wall Street Journal editorial –

The Tea Party’s First Victory
Obama opposes spending cuts right up to the time he calls them historic.

This is getting to be a habit. President Obama ferociously resists tax cuts, trade agreements and spending cuts—right up to the moment he strikes a deal with Republicans and hails the tax cuts, trade agreements and spending cuts as his idea. What a difference an election makes.

This is the larger political meaning of Friday’s last minute budget deal for fiscal 2011 that averted a government shutdown. Mr. Obama has now agreed to a pair of tax cut and spending deals that repudiate his core economic philosophy and his agenda of the last two years—and has then hailed both as great achievements. Republicans in Washington have reversed the nation’s fiscal debate and are slowly repairing the harm done since the Nancy Pelosi Congress began to set the direction of government in 2007.

This is nice, but “slowly” isn’t good enough, as readers will see here and elsewhere this week.

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An indication that the Journal’s take in the previous item is correct:

White House: Obama to lay out spending plan

A top White House political and economic adviser says President Obama will lay out new plans this week to reduce the federal deficit.

Obama adviser David Plouffe, speaking Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” says Obama plans to offer ideas for what Plouffe calls “long-term deficit reduction” as Congress begins to debate raising the nation’s debt ceiling.

Plouffe is giving few specifics on what Obama will announce, but he says that the president believes taxes should go up on higher-income Americans.

What a joke.

They’ve had two chances to deal with this already: the Deficit Commission Obama pointedly ignored, and the delusional, unsustainable, gutless piece of garbage he put out in mid-February.

My words aren’t too harsh. By coming out with another plan now, Obama and the White House are admitting that the mid-February piece of garbage was indeed a piece of garbage. On top of that, just four months after giving in on letting the current tax system continue because the economy would tank if taxes were hiked, AND throwing in a 2% Social Security tax CUT, Plouffe is out there trying to cool down the President’s Kos-kook base by talking up tax increases.

These guys are flailing. The tide may indeed be turning.

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Further evidence supporting the first two items — After watching others at the wire service go through post-shutdown prevention weekend first trying to portray Obama as the facilitating hero (gimme a break), then calling it a draw, Charles Babington at the Associated Press now says that:

Republican conservatives were the chief winners in the budget deal that forced Democrats to accept historic spending cuts they strongly opposed.

Imagine that.

What this represents is a typical AP propaganda operation: Get the lefty spin out to the relatively disengaged in the immediate aftermath, and then correct yourself for the historical record so you can say you really got it right.

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Johann Hari: We’re not being told the truth on Libya.

It’s more like we’re not being told anything about Libya, which General Barry McCaffrey has called “a Bizarro World military operation.”

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Savor the pictorial headline at Ann Althouse’s place: “Kloppy beats Prosser.” Not.

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Note to Ohio lefty bloggers: Make space in your calendar for this week’s White Privilege Conference in Minneapolis. After all, “white privilege” is the reason, seemingly transcending all other considerations, why Barack Obama got your guilt-ridden vote in 2008, and the only conceivable reason, accordingly to the egregiously misnamed Tim Wise, why the presidential election in 2008 was even close. “White privilege” rendered any and all arguments about Obama’s inexperience, his racist and radical ties, his socialist views, his unacceptably aggressive anti-life positions, his anti-Second Amendment history, and his personality traits (punk arrogance, hypersensitivity) irrelevant.

I’ll help you guys and gals with your prep. Here are “46 types of circumstances in which white skin is an unearned advantage,” along with a free bonus: “8 areas in which being heterosexual is an (unearned) social asset.” Zheesh.

From Lima, Peru:

Apr 8, 2011 / 06:08 pm

Archbishop Javier del Rio of Arequipa, Peru recently stated that Catholics cannot vote for presidential candidates who support abortion.

“In no way can one vote for a candidate who has explicitly stated his or her intention to go against marriage, human life and the family,” the archbishop told CNA in an April 7 interview.

The country’s presidential elections will take place Sunday, April 10.

“An informed Catholic can never vote for a candidate who supports these kinds of policies, because that is expressly stated in the compendium of Social Teachings of the Church,” he explained.

Catholics have a duty to participate in the political life of their country and to inform themselves about the positions of those running for office, he continued. “We must not be influenced by whether we like or don’t like a candidate, but rather we must conscientiously study their plans for governing,” the archbishop said.

The backgrounds of the candidates must also be evaluated, he added, including their “credibility, their dedication to work, their seriousness and their honesty.”

“This, together with the Social Teachings of the Church, should form the basis for our vote,” he explained.

Bishop Miguel Irizar of Callao, Peru told CNA that voters must pray for discernment in choosing the best candidates.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Reasonably astute readers will catch the falsehoods and fallacies inherent in the following statement made by President Obama last Wednesday at the town hall meeting held in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania:

But here’s the thing about oil. We have about 2, maybe 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves; [1] we use 25 percent of the world’s oil. [2] So think about it. Even if we doubled the amount of oil that we produce, we’d still be short by a factor of five. [3]

The average Associated Press or other establishment media apparatchik following Obama around as he embarks on his 19-month reelection campaign has apparently given these statements little if any thought, simply assuming that they’re “obviosuly” true. Each of the President’s three key number-tagged assertions is either demonstrably false or seriously misleading. Each is badly in need of a specific refutation.

[1] — “We have about 2, maybe 3 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves.”

The President is wrong on this one, but in a direction that would appear to reinforce his ultimate point. The 2010 CIA Factbook, which is based on data as of the end of 2009, says that proven reserves in the U.S. amount to 19.12 billion barrels. Wikipedia’s related link calculates the percentage of worldwide proven reserves correctly at 1.37%, which places the U.S. fourteenth in the world. The proven reserves figure is lower than the 22.3 billion barrels published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in November 2010. The higher figure only changes the worldwide share to about 1.6%.

But Jeff Dunetz at BigGovernment.com (and many others, I’m sure) points out that proven reserves is not the correct frame of reference in measuring truly available resources:

The number is America’s proven reserves where we are already drilling. It does not include the 10 billion barrels available in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It does not include most of the 86 billion barrels available offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, most of which President Obama has placed under an executive drilling ban. And it does not include the 800 billion barrels of oil we have locked in shale in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado. Those shale resources alone are actually three times larger than the proven reserves of Saudi Arabia, so the claim that the U.S. only has 2% of the world’s oil is clearly false.

In the sense that Obama defenders can say “Well, he was talking about proven reserves,” Obama is technically correct. But in context, Obama is trying to convince Americans that the rest of the world has 30-50 times more oil than we do and that we therefore can’t possibly produce our way out of our current situation. That just isn’t so, especially when one realizes that the correct figure for shale oil alone may be more like 2.5 trillion barrels instead of Dunetz’s 800 billion barrels (though I’m not clear on its degree of recoverability).

[2] — “We use 25 percent of the world’s oil.”

That was the big campaign theme in 2008, wasn’t it? We have only 5% of the population greedily burning through 25% of the world’s oil. It’s just so unfair.

Well, the percentage has gone down:

• An article at Ritholtz.com berates the U.S. for consuming 25% of the world’s oil production. But the actual numbers on the map shows the U.S. consuming 18.686 million barrels a day, with the world consuming 84.077 million. Uh, that’s actually 22.2%. These numbers agree to those found in a spreadsheet I found at BP’s web site here.
• 2010 U.S. consumption averaged about 19.145 million barrels today, per Table 4A at the EIA’s March 2011 Short-Term Energy Outlook (large PDF). Table 3A at the same link shows worldwide consumption as average of 87.18 million barrels during 2010. U.S. consumption was 21.96% of worldwide consumption.
• From the same report as in the previous bullet, project 2011 U.S. daily consumption is 19.28 million barrels. Worldwide, it’s 88.2 million. That works out to 21.86%.

All three percentages are closer to 20% than 25%, eliminating any potential “well, we were just rounding up” excuse. The President, who is supposed to be up on these things, doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt on this one. He’s relying on old data, and should stop using the 25% canard; the press should stop assuming the canard is true.

[3] — “Even if we doubled the amount of oil that we produce, we’d still be short by a factor of five.”

This is by far the biggest howler of the bunch, and is easily disproven.

Obama’s math-challenged calculation simply multiplies the proven reserves number of “2%-3%” by two to arrive at roughly 5%, and then claims that this result is only one-fifth of our 25% share of world consumption. Thus, we’re supposedly “short by a factor of five.”

Lord have mercy. Let’s look at some real numbers:

• As seen above, our 2009 daily consumption was 18.686 million barrels. A preliminary EIA document for that year which likely changed very little indicates that our daily production was 5.31 million barrels. Double that to 10.62 million a day, and we’re short by a factor of 1.76 (18.686 divided by 10.62). That’s nowhere near in the neighborhood of five.
• The EIA report previously cited says that our 2010 daily consumption was the 19.145 million barrels a day seen above, and that our daily production per Table 1 was 5.51 million daily barrels. Double that to 11.02 million a day, and we’re short by a factor of 1.74 (19.145 divided by 11.02). That’s also nowhere near five.
• The EIA report also estimates that our 2011 daily consumption will be the 19.28 million barrels seen above, and that our daily production will come in at 5.40 million daily barrels. Double that to 10.80 million a day, and we’re short by a factor of 1.79 (19.28 divided by 10.80). Again, that’s nowhere near five, but the administration is slowly but surely working on getting it there. 2012 production is predicted to drop another 2% or so to 5.27 million barrels a day.

Bottom line: Obama is wrong, by a factor of almost three (2009 – 2.84; 2010 – 2.87; 2011 – 2.79).

Frankly, the problem isn’t that we’re consuming more than our “fair share” of the world’s energy. It’s that we’re not producing energy at an easily achievable level, making this country perhaps the only civilization ever on planet earth to proactively choose not to exploit the God-given resources provided to sustain and grow its economy. We are paying dearly for taking this course.

Barack Obama and his administration want Americans to think we can’t produce the fossil fuel we need, that we can’t afford to keep importing it, and that we must therefore bet the farm on unproven (and in certain cases, disproven) renewables to have any chance at all of avoiding an energy resource calamity. This is irresponsible, clearly media-assisted horse manure.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Back in mid-2008, as gas prices approached $4 a gallon and the first inklings that a real recession would soon be under way were appearing, George W. Bush told a town hall audience questioner who wondered when gas prices might start coming down that it might be time for owners of gas-guzzling SUVs like the questioner to “think about a trade-in.” He also laughed at the questioner’s indication that he had ten children and told him that “you definitely need a hybrid van.”

… Well, of course George W. Bush didn’t say these things. Readers here and anyone else who understands the establishment press know that if Bush or any other well-known Republican or conservative had said these kinds of things, the nation would have been alerted to it quickly and repeatedly. Reporters would have solicited comments from Democratic Party officials, who would have dutifully told the world that such remarks were proof of how uncaring and out of touch the person who made them must be.

President Barack Obama said the exact things mythologically portrayed in the opening paragraph above at a town hall meeting in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania on Wednesday.

Here are relevant excerpts from the White House web site’s carriage of Obama’s remarks (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Q. My name is Jazz (ph). You were talking about the rise of gas prices. … Is there a chance of the price being lowered again?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, let me go over what I said a little bit earlier.

But I’m just going to be honest with you, there’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now. What we can do is, for example, increase oil production here in the United States. …

… the second thing we can do is increase efficiency on cars and trucks, which is where most of our oil is used. (Applause.) Now, I notice some folks clapped, but I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. You’re one of them? Well, now, here’s my point. If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon — (laughter) — you may have a big family, but it’s probably not that big. How many you have? Ten kids, you say? Ten kids? (Laughter.) Well, you definitely need a hybrid van then. (Laughter.)

None of that is going to help you this week, though. So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in.

Of all the potentially controversial content above, only the following made it into the 4:39 p.m. version of the report on the event by the Associated Press’s Darlene Superville, whose narrative was clearly supportive of the President’s handling of the question (HT Instapundit; also noted at several other sites):

Obama needled one questioner who asked about gas prices, now averaging close to $3.70 nationwide, and suggested that the gentleman consider getting rid of his gas-guzzline vehicle.

“If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

Though Superville’s narrative differs slightly from the White House’s (which among other things, doesn’t have the words “only” or “you know” in the transcript), her “Obama said laughingly” observation is crucially and painfully instructive. It wasn’t just the crowd which was laughing at the questioner; it was our president, who was thereby exhibiting clear condescension towards a citizen he is supposed to be serving. Combine this with Obama’s reaction to the fact that the questioner has ten children and his derision of “these big guys” and their “monster trucks,” and his response steps right up to the line of contempt. In my opinion, it clearly crosse that line.

If a conservative or Republican were to say such contemptible things, it would be big news. Not even the most hardened defender of the establishment press would disagree that at a minimum, replies such as Obama’s if made by a conservative or Republican would make their way into subsequent revisions of AP reports.

Not this time. The AP reporter’s 7:33 p.m. update, less than three hours after the report excerpted above, moved on to Obama’s meeting with Al Sharpton in its first two-thirds, but retained coverage of Obama’s Pennsylvania visit in the final third. In what may be a sign that Superville or her editors recognized the toxicity of the portion of Obama’s remarks she originally reported, the final third’s content seemed to overcompensate for what was previously reported:

“I’m just going to be honest with you. There’s not much we can do next week or two weeks from now,” the president told workers at a wind turbine plant outside Philadelphia.

It’s a theme Obama’s struck before as he tries to show voters he’s attuned to a top economic concern with gas prices pushing toward $4 a gallon.

Gee Darlene, Obama didn’t seem very “attuned” when he was ridiculing a fellow citizen with 10 kids who happens to own a vehicle popular with “monster truck” guys which is getting poor mileage, where the cost of a fill-up has doubled for reasons totally out of that citizen’s control.

Now of course material from previous wire service reports drops out in subsequent revisions and updates all the time; that’s the nature of news (though it should be a journalistic standard that all previous renditions of reports that are revised and updated are retained and made accessible). But decisions as to what stays and goes overboard can be pretty clear indicators of bias, as can failures to follow up. I don’t see the press asking Republicans or conservatives what they think of a guy who basically told a fellow citizen, as Mark Steyn characterized it in his column yesterday, that “It’s your fault.” That would extend the life cycle of comments which reflect really badly on Obama. Apparently, we can’t have that.

It’s obvious that if Obama’s arrogant and condescending comments were more widely known, they would be hurting him with voters. But Darlene Superville and her employer did what they could to minimize the damage. This is the way of the state-compliant media as it moves into campaign mode.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.