From the Daily Caller (links were in original):

Fresh off his presidential campaign announcement Sunday, Herman Cain sought to push back against criticism from some prominent GOP opinion leaders. Karl Rove, for example, called him a “talk radio guy” and Charles Krauthammer said his candidacy was for “entertainment.”

“Karl Rove, I respect. Krauthammer, I have a lot of respect for — he’s one of the thoughtful conservatives out there,” Cain told The Daily Caller.  “My response is … I’m not running to become president of the establishment. I am running to become president of the people of the United States of America.”

Perfect. Response.

It’s sad that after two years of the Tea Party movement, establishment people like Rove (who has worked to co-opt instead of advance the movement) and conservative establishment commentators like Krauthammer (who, when it comes to assessing political candidates has acquired a serious case of Beltaway disease) still don’t get it.

If a non-establishment candidate becomes the nominee, history will never, ever forgive either of these two if they choose to undermine that person in the general election.

UPDATE: As seen here, the very earliest AP reports appear to have identified Edwards as a Democrat (the age of the item may not correspond with when the AP subscriber actually received it), but the latest ones, including this item found at AP’s home site (as of 12:59 p.m.), do not.

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In their 11:29 a.m. report (saved here in case it gets updated, and for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) on the apparently imminent indictment of 2004 and 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, Associated Press reporters Mike Baker and Gary D. Robertson did not identify Edwards as a Democrat, nor did they identify any of his campaign associates (e.g., Andrew Young, Fred Baron) as Democrats. No form of the word “Democrat” appears in the report as it was posted at 11:29 a.m.

Here are the first seven paragraphs of the AP pair’s effort:

AP source: Edwards could be indicted within days

Federal prosecutors have completed a wide-ranging investigation into John Edwards’ political dealings and could indict the two-time presidential candidate within days, a person familiar with the matter said Wednesday.

Edwards could still strike a plea deal to avoid an indictment, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the case’s sensitivity.

Federal investigators have been probing Edwards for two more than years. Their interest has spanned much of Edwards’ political career, looking into issues such as whether he did anything improper during his time in the U.S. Senate. And it looked into a network of organizations connected to Edwards, including a nonprofit, political action committees and a so-called 527 political group.

Much of the investigation, however, focused on money that eventually went to keep mistress Rielle Hunter in hiding along with former campaign aide Andrew Young, who claimed paternity of Hunter’s child in 2007 so that Edwards could continue his White House campaign without the affair tarnishing his reputation. Investigators have been looking at whether those funds should have been considered campaign donations since they arguably aided his presidential bid.

Justice Department officials in Washington had been reviewing the case in recent weeks.

The U.S. attorney in Raleigh declined to comment Wednesday. An Edwards spokeswoman did not immediately return a message seeking comment, though his attorneys have said they are confident the former North Carolina senator did not violate campaign finance laws.

Young has said that Edwards agreed in the middle of 2007 to solicit money directly from Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the 100-year-old widow of banking heir Paul Mellon. Young has said he received hundreds of thousands of dollars in checks from Mellon, some of them hidden in boxes of chocolate.

A few hours earlier, though it did take them a while, and they did so a bit cryptically, ABC News at least tagged Edwards as a Democrat in their report’s fifth paragraph when they referred to “his pursuit of the 2008 Democratic nomination for president.” They could easily have done so in the report’s first sentence (“The United States Department of Justice has green-lighted the prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards for alleged violations of campaign laws while he tried to cover up an extra-marital affair, ABC News has learned”).

Baker and Robertson have blatantly and inarguably violated of AP’s stylebook standard (cited here and on several other occasions) for identification of party affiliation, which states:

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

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

For the excuse-makers: Don’t try the “everybody knows” garbage around here. Even if that’s true now, part of the reason for failing to tag Edwards as a Dem would appear to be the hope that as time goes by, he’ll be forgotten, and future researchers into political crime and corruption won’t cite him as a Democratic Party, example because they won’t find him in related Internet searches.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update: I can’t prove it with screen shots, but an earlier version of the first paragraph at this Google AP item referred to Edwards as “the two-time Democratic presidential candidate.” When I refreshed the item, the word “Democratic” disappeared from view.

BizzyBlog Update 2: To those who argue that Edwards’s picture caption IDs him as a Democrat — sorry, that doesn’t compensate for the non-presence of any variation of the word “Democrat” in the hundreds of words in Baker and Robertson’s story as it is currently being carried.

BizzyBlog Update 3: As just before 3:00 p.m., these searches brought forth the following results –

• Google Web, in quotes, “the two-time Democratic presidential candidate within days” — 470 results.
• Google Web, in quotes “the two-time presidential candidate within days” — 1,210 results.
• Google News, in quotes, “the two-time Democratic presidential candidate within days” — 64 results (I should also note that the vast majority of the news sources are Canadian).
• Google News, in quotes “the two-time presidential candidate within days” — 166 results.

Your results will vary if you look at these searches much later than 3 p.m. on Wednesday. I intend to come back to this later this evening and see if/how the balance has shifted.

Also, I believe readers will find that the actual stories found at many if not most of the Google Web and News results containing the word “Democratic” do not now contain the word, i.e., the AP has scrubbed the word, but they can’t change how the items originally appeared when Google’s web and news crawlers first found them.

BizzyBlog Update 4: Well now, that’s somwhat better —

It’s weird how they go back to 2004 in the second paragraph without bringing up 2008.

Yours truly won’t take credit for the change, but … it is a heckuva coincidence.

“Gangster Government.”

God bless Michael Barone for formulating the term when he saw what was done to certain disfavored creditors during Chrysler’s bankruptcy proceeding, and continuing to call it out when he sees it.

He sees it again in Obamacare’s waivers, the IRS’s sudden application of gift tax laws to political contributions, and the National Labor Relations Board’s unprecedented action against Boeing for daring to want to expand in South Carolina instead of Washington State:

In his new book “The Origins of Political Order,” Francis Fukuyama identifies the chief building blocks of liberal democracy as a strong central state, a society strong enough to hold the state accountable and — equally crucial — the rule of law.

One basic principle of the rule of law is that laws apply to everybody. If the sign says “No Parking,” you’re not supposed to park there even if you’re a pal of the alderman.

Another principle of the rule of law is that government can’t make up new rules to help its cronies and hurt its adversaries except through due process, such as getting a legislature to pass a new law.

The Obamacare waiver process appears to violate that first rule. Two other recent Obama administration actions appear to violate the second.

One example is the National Labor Relations Board general counsel’s action to prevent Boeing from building a $2 billion assembly plant for the 787 Dreamliner in South Carolina, which has a right-to-work law barring compulsory union membership. The NLRB says Boeing has to assemble the planes in non-right-to-work Washington state.

“I don’t agree,” says William Gould IV, NLRB chairman during the Clinton years. “The Boeing case is unprecedented.”

The other example is the Internal Revenue Service’s attempt to levy a gift tax on donors to certain 501(c)(4) organizations that just happen to have spent money to elect Republicans.

… They look like examples of crony capitalism, bailout favoritism and gangster government.

One thing they don’t look like is the rule of law.

That’s because they’re not. The three examples cited and so many other examples of Gangter Government largely explain what economist left-leaning economist Robert Samuelson somehow cannot comprehend. Samuelson doesn’t understand why, with so many positive factors in place (I think he exaggerates, but work with me on this), the economy isn’t growing faster. In a syndicated Washington Post op-ed this past weekend, he wrapped with the following paragraphs:

The greatest barrier to recovery now could be psychology — stubborn gloom — which conditions household and business spending decisions.

There is a curious role reversal. Foolish optimism led to the financial crisis and recession by assuming things would work out for the best.

Now, reflexive pessimism weakens growth by ignoring good news or believing it can’t last.

Some of “the reflexive pessimism” is surely related to tangible problems like high energy costs and the potential inflationary monster Ben Bernanke may be creating. But those Keynesian, consumption-based explanations are far too narrow.

I maintain that the bulk of the “reflexive pessimism” is on the supply side of the equation.

It’s there when employers decide to hire temporary instead of permanent help, or decide not to hire at all, because (among many other potentially negative factors) they don’t know when an arbitrary government action or bureaucratic decision will come along which will either punish them, reward a competitor, or do both.

It’s there when firms’ owners and/or their potential/current investors decide not to launch a new idea or product line because its market acceptance might run afoul of a currently entrenched, crony capitalism-favored firm. Imagine you have an idea for an energy-saving light bulb that will eliminate the hazardous waste problems with current CFL bulbs. It’s hard enough to beat General Electric on a level playing field. When you also realize that your invention will cause you to run afoul of the special relationship between GE’s Jeff Inmelt and Barack Obama, you’re likely to say, “Never mind.”

It’s there when you want to expand your business if you operate in a high-cost, union-contract situation. If you can’t make money or achieve the kind of return on investment shareholders who are risking their capital desire in your home state, are you going to try to expand into a state where labor costs and management flexibility are greater and risk butting heads with the NLRB? Chances are, you won’t — and you’ll decide not to expand.

A government descending ever more deeply into lawlessness and abuse of the law freezes an economy’s players in place. Rather than set their sights high, its players muddle through and keep their heads down, hoping to escape the notice of those with the power to harm them. What Samuelson is really seeing when he cites “stubborn gloom” and “reflexive pessimism” is really something I’ll call “the Gangster Government” effect, which for starters I’ll define, with etymological credit to frequent commenter Joe C (who has defined “the Democratic Effect“), as “the rational response by firms and individuals to a business environment featuring government hostility and lawlessness, arbitrary and virtually insurmountable regulation, litigation, and current and/or threatened punitive taxation.”

The only way to get the kind of growth Samuelson and everyone else would like to see is to rein in this country’s Gangster Government. More than likely, that will involve removing the gangsters from power.

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UPDATE: The results of Gangster Government can be seen in a term which is frequently employed around here — The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy.

From Vatican City:

May 21, 2011 / 04:02 am

Pope Benedict XVI’s planned satellite address to the crew of the International Space Station is a reminder of the humanity of astronauts and of the God-given curiosity that drives mankind to explore, Vatican astronomer Br. Guy Consolmagno, S.J., said.

“The astronauts are not just robots collecting data; they are people, people like us. And we human beings are motivated to study the universe, and to live and explore in new and exciting places, precisely because of our very human desire to know about and enjoy this creation,” Br. Consolmagno told CNA on May 20.

The Pope’s address reminds us of “the wonderful human side” of exploring astronomy and space, he added.

Pope Benedict will address the space station at 7:11 a.m. Eastern Time on May 21. He will particularly address the two Italian astronauts, Paolo Nespoli and Roberto Vittori. Vittori arrived at the station on the U.S. space shuttle Endeavour, which launched its final mission on May 16.

The event will be streamed live on the internet at the Vatican Radio-CTV website.

Br. Consolmagno said the broadcast had precedent in Pope Paul VI’s direct television linkup to the Apollo 11 astronauts who landed on the moon in 1969.

Though the Vatican astronomer was unsure whether the message was delivered directly to the astronauts, the Pope’s speech read:

“Honor, greetings, and blessings to you, conquerors of the Moon, pale lamp of our nights and our dreams! Bring to her, with your living presence, the voice of the Spirit, a hymn to God our Creator and our Father.

“We are close to you, with our good wishes and all our prayers. Together with the whole Catholic Church, Pope Paul the Sixth greets you.”

The Jesuit astronomer noted Pope Benedict has previously discussed his predecessor, Sylvester II, an astronomer and notable mathematician of the tenth century. Sylvester introduced much Arabic knowledge into the Christian world, including Arabic numerals, the abacus and the armillary sphere.

Br. Consolmagno explained that the desire to know and explore is at its base “a hunger for God.”

“Curiosity is a gift of God, and the ability to satisfy that curiosity with our ability to do science is a particularly human gift,” he said. “St. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans that from the beginning of time, God reveals Himself to us in the things he has created. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

The Charleston Daily Mail writer and blogger found Paw-lenty of errors in the AP’s coverage.

Final score: Pawlenty 6, AP 2.

Excellent job — by Don. Absolutely pathetic and sadly typical performance by AP.

Amazingly, Herman Cain is getting grief, even apparently from the network itself, over his Fox News Sunday interview (video and transcript).

As far as I can tell, the two main complaints are that:

1. He didn’t know what the Palestinians’ right of return demand is.
2. He wouldn’t articulate a strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

As to Number 1, the “right of return” demand hasn’t exactly been front and center during the past few decades except among the talking-to-themselves press, basically because it’s a stupid topic as long as Hamas and the Palestinians won’t concede that Israel has a right to exist.

But the important thing here is that Cain demonstrated his instincts, and got it right. Once he understood the nature of the demand, he said:

Yes. But under — but not under Palestinian conditions. Yes. They should have a right to come back if that is a decision that Israel wants to make.

Back to — it’s up to Israel to determine the things they will accept.

Bingo.

Now, you could argue that Cain’s nearly next statement that “I don’t think they (the Israelis) have a big problem with people returning” is a gaffe. No, it just shows that Cain doesn’t realize how many Palestinians are involved, because if he did, he’d know that the Israelis aren’t keen on getting outnumbered. But again, Cain’s deference to our ally Israel is the ruling principle.

As to Number 2, here’s Cain’s allegedly problematic response:

WALLACE: We have been at war in Afghanistan for almost 10 years. And yet you say — and you say it quite proudly — you have no plan for what to do in Afghanistan. You’d have to wait until you got into office, until you met with the experts, until you met with military officials and then you decided.

Don’t you owe to people who are thinking of voting for you to give them some idea about what you would do about a major U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan?

CAIN: I do. And here’s what I owe them — I owe them the right approach to the right decision such that we’re not there 10 more years.

WALLACE: So, what is the right approach?

CAIN: The right approach is: the day I’m elected president, I will start on that plan such that the day I was sworn in, I will be able to implement the plan.

WALLACE: But that doesn’t tell anybody what you’re — I mean, do you support counterinsurgency or counterterrorism?

CAIN: Chris, let’s go back — let’s go back — let’s go back to the fundamental question. We’ve got to work on the right problem. I think it is disingenuous to tell the American people what I would do when I don’t have the intelligence information. I don’t have all of the factors that are affecting this particular situation.

I owe the American people a responsible decision and a responsible plan. And I don’t think any candidate can responsibly say what they would do if they are elected president.

How refreshing to see someone who’s willing to say, “Hey, I don’t know because I don’t have access to the necessary information,” instead of watching people who don’t know anything act as if they do. What Cain did is what adults do when they don’t know the answer to something they can’t possibly know: They admit that they don’t know the answer because they can’t possibly know. I’m told that even the people at Fox are having a hard time accepting Cain’s perfect answer, which means they too need to get out more.

If these are the worst raps people can pin on Herman Cain, the children who criticize him are in for a long 18 months.

Today’s information from the Census Bureau on actual monthly home sales tells us that for first time since records have been kept, and certainly for the first time since World War II, sales of new single family homes during the most recent twelve months came in at less than 300,000:

The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy continues to set previously unimaginable records.

Investors Business Daily employs a very apt term in the final sentence of its very strong editorial:

Big Surprise: AARP Joins Waiver-gate

The seniors group that lobbied heavily for ObamaCare and stands to profit handsomely from it now has its own waiver. As the White House picks winners and losers, AARP wins and the rest of us lose.

Although not specifically mentioned by name in the rate review rules finalized last Thursday by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the rule that exempts Medigap insurance providers is clearly designed to benefit the largest seller of such policies and the biggest lobbyist for ObamaCare — the American Association of Retired Persons.

So you can add AARP to the list of favored unions, corporations, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s constituents and even entire states such as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s Nevada that have received exemptions or waivers from various requirements of ObamaCare.

… A recent report released by GOP members on the House Ways and Means Committee, “Behind The Veil: The AARP America Doesn’t Know,” says AARP may have been on board simply because it was a good deal for the organization, as well as a good investment.

That report also documented how ObamaCare would produce a billion-dollar windfall for AARP by forcing millions of seniors to lose or drop their Medicare Advantage plans they were promised they could keep, plans that were the only real competition to the Medigap policies AARP provides or endorses for a fee.

The millions forced by ObamaCare to lose the Medicare Advantage coverage will result, the report said, “in a massive migration of seniors to Medigap plans. AARP is the nation’s leading provider of Medigap plans and has a contract in which AARP financially gains for every additional Medigap enrollee.” Cha-ching!

… The amount AARP will gain from ObamaCare, with cost-effectiveness mandates that will lead to rationed care, less medical innovation and health care decisions made by bureaucrats rather than doctors and patients, is staggering.

Equally staggering is the brazenness exhibited by the Obama administration and the beneficiaries of what can only be called crony health care.

Read the whole thing.

It will surprise no one that AARP, in its daily bulletin email, headlined yesterday’s fountain of fibs from the Associated Press about how Americans supposedly think that Social Security and Medicare should be left alone.

From Washington (a fuller review of the exchange is at the Corner via Kathryn Lopez):

May 21, 2011 / 05:41 pm

U.S. bishops’ conference president Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York has praised Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) attention to Catholic social teaching in the federal budget debate, but he emphasized the need for “special consideration” for the poor.

“In any transition that seeks to bring new proposals to current problems in order to build a better future, care must be taken that those currently in need not be left to suffer,” Dolan said in a May 19 letter. While the bishops appreciate assurances that the budget will be attentive to these concerns, their duty as pastors will motivate their “close attention” to the reality of the House’s proposed budget.

Rep. Ryan had sent a four-page April 29 letter to Archbishop Dolan defending the proposal.

“Catholic Americans are blessed to have the social teaching of the Church as moral guidance as we consider legislative proposals such as the Fiscal Year 2012 Budget,” the congressman wrote. He said there was a moral obligation “implicit” in Catholic social teaching to address “difficult basic problems before they explode into social crisis.”

Ryan cited a passage from Pope John Paul II’s 1991 encyclical “Centisimus Annus” which criticized the “social assistance state” for leading to “an inordinate increase of public agencies” dominated by bureaucratic thinking and accompanied by an “enormous increase in spending” and “a loss of human energies.”

Ryan also cited the “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church,” claiming that the House budget was informed by the principle of subsidiarity. This principle holds that higher-level social associations should not do what lower-level associations can.

Archbishop Dolan, who is president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, responded in a May 18 letter saying he “deeply” appreciates Ryan’s assurances of his attention to Catholic social justice.

“As you allude to in your letter, the budget is not just about numbers. It reflects the very values of our nation,” Dolan wrote.

The archbishop also cited “Centisimus Annus,” noting it stated that the poor have a claim to “special consideration” in defending the rights of individuals. He also noted that the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity, the commitment to the common good of all, are “interrelated.”

The archbishop said that the Catholic faith, anchored in the Bible, Church tradition and the natural law, can help guide “solid American constitutional wisdom.” He commended the letter’s attention to the dignity of the human person, the poor and the vulnerable, and the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.

“The principles of Catholic social teaching contain truths that need to be applied,” the archbishop continued, noting the necessity of “prudential judgment” in applying these principles.

Archbishop Dolan wrote that he hoped the exchange of letters will be the beginning of an ongoing dialogue in service of the country and “the religious convictions that have always inspired sound citizenship and generous public service.”

Negotiations in Washington are underway to agree upon a budget in exchange for raising the national debt limit. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has demanded $2 trillion in budget cuts, while Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has said closing tax loopholes should also be considered. Reid’s suggestion aside, Democrats have yet to unveil their own federal budget proposal.

On May 19 Speaker Boehner said that he welcomed Archbishop Dolan’s letter and that he was encouraged by the dialogue between House Republicans and the bishops.

“Our nation’s current fiscal path is a threat to human dignity in America, offering empty promises to the most vulnerable among us and condemning our children to a future limited by debt,” he said.

Echoing Ryan’s letter, he said “Americans are blessed to have the teachings of the Church available to us as guidance as we confront our challenges together as a nation.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

For those who are unaware, because of redistricting in Ohio, which is losing two congressional seats as a result of the 2010 census, longtime Buckeye State Congressman and 2004/2008 unserious Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is considering a run for Congress in Washington State, some 2,000 miles from his current Cleveland digs.

In his coverage of Kucinich’s recent northwestern travels, Carl Hulse at the New York Times characterized the possible long-distance congressional pursuit by the former Boy Mayor, who mismanaged Cleveland to the brink of bankruptcy in the late-1970s, thusly: “It is a somewhat novel idea that could be summed up as: Have seniority, will travel.”

Hulse didn’t follow up on his seniority assertion, but it would appear that if Kucinich were somehow to triumph in an Evergreen State congressional contest, he would retain his status as ranking Democratic member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and his relatively lofty status at the Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Unfortunately, that’s not surprising. Although not directly analogous, in 2005, former six-term Ohio Congressman Bob McEwen, who had resided in Virginia during almost all of the previous 12 years after being ousted in 1992, came close to winning a 2005 special GOP primary for the Buckeye State’s Second Congressional District necessitated by Rob Portman’s departure for the Bush administration. One of McEwen’s major arguments was that, unlike his opponents, he would rejoin the Rules Committee with his years of seniority intact. McEwen lost, and his claim was never tested. But there is nothing I have found in discussions with others or in limited research that would lead me to believe that Dennis Kucinich would lose his seniority if he were to grab the carpetbag and somehow win election as a Washington State congressman.

This strikes me as unfair, especially to longtime Washingtonians who might have to run against Kucinich, and to other House members who have remained loyal to their states but would still have to wait their turn to move up the seniority ladder.

But there it is.

Cross-posted at the Washington Examiner Opinion Zone.

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BizzyBlog Update: Gosh, I just realized that today is the sixth anniversary of this post, which changed the nature of this blog forever, and was the beginning of an ultimately successful effort (with lots of help from other quarters) which kept a certain former congressman from again becoming “my” congressman.

This morning, Associated Press reporters Ricardo Alonso Zaldivar and Stephen Ohlemacher went back to an AP-GfK poll yours truly thoroughly discredited on May 11 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog). That’s when the AP’s Liz Sidoti and Jennifer Agiesta laughably claimed that President Obama’s approval had jumped to 60%.

This time, Alonso-Zaldivar and Ohlemacher didn’t “merely” revisit a poll with an absurd 46%-29%-4% Democrat-Republican-Independent makeup (after classifying leaners). They went further, proving that my characterization of the AP’s polling partnership with GfK North America in a subsequent May 16 column as “Absolutely Pathetic Garbage for Koolaiders,” which makes an utter mockery of the AP’s “Statement of News Values and Principles,” was in no way over the top.  The AP pair went even further  this morning by misrepresenting the relevant questions on Medicare and Social Security in their headline and opening paragraph:

AP-GfK Poll: Medicare doesn’t have to be cut

They’re not buying it. Most Americans say they don’t believe Medicare has to be cut to balance the federal budget, and ditto for Social Security, a new poll shows.

The trouble is, guys, what you’ve reported doesn’t reflect what the poll questions were, as seen in this graphic taken directly from the poll’s full topline (red underlines are obviously mine):

For cryin’ out loud, Alonso-Zaldivar and Ohlemacher turned answers as to whether cuts to Medicare and Social Security can theoretically be avoided (i.e., whether they are “possible”) into hard claims that those polled believe that those programs don’t “have to be cut.” To call this “horse manure” is to be overly kind. The fact that they finally get around to referencing the word “possible” — in Paragraphs 11 and 12 — doesn’t compensate for their opening misrepresentations, given that the text of those paragraphs will almost never hit the airwaves, will be cut from many if not most print and online publications, or will escape the notice of readers who won’t get that far where the full report appears.

While I’m discussing those two paragraphs, perhaps someone can explain how the AP pair reached this (as far as I could tell) not present in the topline conclusion: “Taking both programs together, 48 percent said the government could balance the budget without cutting either one (Social Security or Medicare).”

Properly-worded questions would have gone something like this:

• “Do you believe that Medicare will have to be reformed or restructured as part of balancing the federal budget over the long-term?”
• “Do you believe that Social Security will have to be reformed or restructured as part of balancing the federal budget over the long-term?”

Of course, those answers might have come back with a majority in the affirmative. We can’t take a chance on that happening.

The questions as formulated by AP-GfK are textbook examples of polling malpractice. By misrepresenting the answers given, the AP reporters have engaged in journalistic malpractice.

This really is a perfect partnership, isn’t it?

Anyone who can stand reading the entirety of the AP item will see that the wire service’s reporters claim that “the Republican Medicare privatization plan” has already “flopped,” that “Medicare seems to be turning into the new third rail of politics,” and that “nearly every solution for Social Security is politically toxic.” If the final claim is true, which I’m not ready to concede, you have to ask: “With poisoned polling like AP-GfK’s — Gee, I wonder why?”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Paul Ryan’s response to David Gregory on Meet the Press (carried at Breitbart) about the popularity of his budget reform initiatives is fine on one level. Ryan basically said that effective, passionate leadership moves the poll numbers.

That’s basically fine, but given that the establishment press often rigs the poll numbers, the completely correct answer for Ryan would have been to say that effective, passionate leadership moves public opinion.

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Football player Ray Lewis says that the National Football League and the players need to come to an agreement, because if they lose the season, there will be an increase in crime:

That’s because, Lewis said, the NFL lockout affects “way more than us” — the owners and the players.

“There’s too many people that live through us, people live through us,” he said. “Yeah, walk in the streets, the way I walk the streets, and I’m not talking about the people you see all the time.”

When asked why he thought crime would increase if the NFL doesn’t play games this year, Lewis said: “There’s nothing else to do Sal.”

Maybe we should listen to Lewis (no, I don’t really believe that). After all, when it comes to crime, he has hands-on experience, including a criminal conviction, as documented here.

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The photo caption here is more evidence, beyond that noted here and here, that the Associated Press is determined to keep Herman Cain’s substantial resume away from the general public:

Herman Cain announces his run for Republican candidate for president at a rally Saturday, May 21, 2011 in Atlanta. Cain has run a pizza chain, hosted a talk radio show and sparred with Bill Clinton over health care. He’s never held elected office. Now the tea party favorite wants to be president.

Sure guys, all Cain did in business was to run some pizza chain.

It would have been very easy in the space available to indicate that “Cain has been a business turnaround specialist, Board Chairman at the Kansas City Fed, and was head of the National Restaurant Association when he sparred with Bill Clinton over health care.” That’s about 30 words, captures all of his business experience, and is about the same length as the AP’s last three sentences, the final two of which were wasteful filler (“tea party favorite” could have been the first three words of the entire item). But see, that would have been fully descriptive, and the AP apparently doesn’t want that.

As to the “problem” that’s he’s never held elected office, Kyle-Ann Shiver, in a brilliant Pajamas Media column on why Cain is able, quotes the Herminator: “Everyone in Washington has held public office before. How’s that working out for you?”

A full report on Cain’s background, experience, and current momentum is here at National Review.

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At Mediaite last Thursday (internal link added by me):

The effort by liberal media watchdog group Media Matters to convince half a dozen leading national advertisers to pull their dollars from the Fox News Channel got a high-profile snub Thursday when Orbitz, the travel company, not only declined to participate, but fired back at Media Matters, calling the “Drop Fox” campaign a “smear effort.”

… Orbitz shot back, describing Media Matters as “a political organization that has been funded pretty extensively to go after one network, and we aren’t going to engage in that fight,” Orbitz spokesman Brian Hoyt told The Hollywood Reporter …

It’s only a coincidence, but I’m glad I used Orbitz for my last two flights.

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This just in:

Hamas condemned President Obama’s AIPAC speech, saying it will not recognize Israel despite the United States president’s demand.

The Obama administration is “not a friend to the people of the region,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told the Ma’an Palestinian news service.

Abu Zuhri said Obama’s continued support of Israel showed that the U.S. is biased, and will “support the occupation at the expense of the freedom of the Palestinian people.”

“The US administration will fail, just as all others have in the past, in forcing Hamas to recognize the occupation,” Abu Zuhri said.

Why does anyone waste “negotiating” with Hamas? Unconditional recognition of Israel’s right to exist must be a precondition for any kind of talks, period. Instead, the pressure is primarily on Israel. Horse manure.