From Rome, and St. Petersburg:

Jun 23, 2011 / 01:50 pm

The mayor of St. Petersburg, Russia has granted permission for the first Corpus Christi procession to take place in the city since 1918.

The announcement was confirmed by the Archdiocese of the Mother of God in Moscow, reported Vatican Radio. The procession will take place on Sunday, June 26, through the Prospettiva Nevsky Avenue, the city’s main street.

The avenue has traditionally been called the “way of confessional tolerance,” as it is lined with Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran and Armenian churches. According to archdiocesan officials, the last time a Corpus Christ procession took place on the avenue was in 1918. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

It took well over a year, but New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has gotten his way.

Covering the story for the New York Times, Richard Perez-Pena seemed to alternate between shock and “Awww.” His biggest journalistic distortion was understating the degree to which Christie needed — and got — Democratic Party help to pass legislation which, in Pena’s words, “will sharply increase what state and local workers must contribute for their health insurance and pensions, suspend cost-of-living increases to retirees pension checks, raise retirement ages and curb the unions’ contract bargaining rights.”

The shock and “Awww” at the Times extends to the difference between the item’s browser window title (“N.J. Legislature Moves to Cut Benefits for Public Workers”) and the article title, which readers will see after the jump (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

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(originally posted at about noon; revised significantly at 3:15 p.m.)

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All right, that does it. Gloves off.

I just heard audio of Democratic Senators Chuckie Schumer and Dickie Durbin accusing the GOP leadership in Washington of wanting the economy to tank in the name of electoral advantage.

Erik Wasson covered this utter crap at the Hill yesterday:

Schumer argued Republicans are focusing on the deficit at the peril of the economy, and that infrastructure spending and support for clean energy are other stimulus measures that should be considered by Congress.

“It is hard to figure out why Republicans would say no for three reasons: It’s pro-business, it’s a tax cut, and many of them have supported it in the past,” he said.

Schumer suggested that opposition to the stimulus proposal could come because the GOP deliberately wants to scuttle the economy in order to prevent Obama from being reelected.

Here’s a direct Durbin quote recorded by Greg Sargent at the Washington Post’s Plum Line, also from yesterday:

Today Senate Dems went there: They accused Republicans of deliberately sabotaging the economy in order to further their own political interests. And a senior Dem Senate aide tells me that Dems will not shy away from making that case in the weeks to come, if the Republicans keep blocking their efforts to spur job creation.

Senators Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin made the charge in remarks to reporters today. Durbin said: “Unfortunately our Republican colleagues in the House and Senate are driven by putting one man out of work — President Obama.”

Schumer seconded …

Bleep both of you, Chuckie and Dickie — and your little party too.

Perhaps the two pathetic progressive senators can explain how it is that the states identified below with conservative Republican governors have been the predominant job creators in the economy this year. In fact, the named states are mostly doing the things Schumer and Durbin despise: Cutting or holding the line on taxes, cutting spending, and doing what they can about excessive regulation and bureaucracy.

Gosh … that’s what the GOP in Washington wants to implement nationally. In other words, they want to do at the federal level what has been working at the state level. If the GOP is determined to tank the economy (which has never really left the tank, in case you two haven’t noticed), they have a funny way of trying to make it happen, don’t they, Chuckie and Dickie?

Here are the facts, in case you fools give a damn:

Fact 1: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in the first five months of this year (pending revision), the economy has added 783,000 seasonally adjusted jobs.

Fact 2: The following eleven states with Republican governors, most of whom (where described) have replaced Democrats or proven RINOs, have added a total of 445,000 jobs (full graphic off all 50 states and DC is here):

• Texas, 118K
• Ohio, 70K (John Kasich defeated incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland in 2010 and took office in January 2011)
• Florida, 60K (Rick Scott replaced proven RINO and one-man disaster Charlie Crist in January 2011; Florida’s economy, after growing 29% from 2001-2006 under the marvelous Jeb Bush, contracted by 4.4% from 2007-2010 under Crist; only Michigan and Nevada fared worse during those years)
• Virginia, 37K (Bob McDonnell replaced Democrat Tim Kaine in January 2010)
• Michigan, 32K (Rick Snyder replaced Democrat Jennifer Granholm in January 2011)
• Wisconsin, 28K (Scott Walker replaced Democrat Jim Doyle in January 2011)
• Arizona, 25K (Jan Brewer replaced Janet Napolitano in January 2009)
• Oklahoma, 24K (Mary Fallon replaced Democrat Brad Henry in January)
• Louisiana, 21K (Bobby Jindal replaced Democrat Kathleen Blanco in January 2008)
• Utah, 16K
• Nebraska, 14K

Fact 3: These states have only 32% of the nation’s population.

Fact 4: Despite regulatory impediments and downright hostility from statist ingrates in Washington, particularly members of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress, the above states are making meaningful economic headway.

Fact 5: Meanwhile, many blue states, in terms of their seasonally adjusted workforce growth percentage, aren’t impressing (e.g., California, +0.52%; Maryland, -0.28%; Minnesota, +0.34%). Maybe that’s where your “scuttling the economy” is coming from, Chuckie and Dickie. Why don’t you ask them why they’re working so hard to scuttle precious President Barack Obama’s electoral chances?

To be clear, comparing the Bureau’s national and state-by-state data isn’t a clean apples-to-apples exercise. But it should be nonetheless obvious that if it weren’t for the disproportionately strong economic performance of the eleven states listed above, all of which “just so happen” to have conservative Republican governors, the nation’s economy would be in much, much worse shape than it already is.

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UPDATE: The only really strong performer among larger states with Democratic governors thus far is Illinois (+64K, or 1.15% of the workforce, which still trails Ohio’s +70K, or 1.39% of the workforce). This is admittedly odd given the tax increases Illinois just passed. As of course is the case with the 11 relatively stellar states run by GOP governors noted above, we’ll see if it lasts.

UPDATE 2: If all 50 states and DC were replicating the performance of the 11 states above and did so for the rest of the year, the national economy would add about 3.3 million jobs by the end of the year — far more than any of the current predictions, most of which are in the 2 million range. That would still be nowhere near Reaganesque, but it would beat the pants off of what’s happening now.

Really.

From yesterday (HT to an e-mailer):

Questions:

• What possible proof does giving a Social Security number (not a card; Jon Husted only referred to “numbers”) with no other accompanying form of identification provide? (Polling booth personnel have no Social Security records to cross-check, nor should they.)
• Who doesn’t have a photo ID? (I would like to meet them, and if they live in Warren County, will be glad to connect them to someone who will remedy that shortcoming at no charge.)
• In the past few years when the photo ID requirement has been in place, who has come forward and said “I was unable to vote because I had no ID” who couldn’t have easily remedied that shortcoming well ahead of Election Day?
• Absent a photo ID (which itself isn’t foolproof, but a vast improvement over no photo ID), what controls are in place to ensure that the person voting is who they say they are? (I hear crickets chirping …)
• How can anyone provide ironclad assurance that a significant amount of fraudulent voting is not occurring, when so many jurisdictions have more registered voters than adult residents?

In a country with 89.5 million single-family homes, 30,000 new ones were sold in May, according to the Census Bureau.

Here’s what the trailing 12 months’ sales have been since the end of 2008:

We should have bottomed out and started meaningfully heading back up long ago. It’s not happening. Instead, we’re at over 2-1/2 years since TARP and have finally, possibly found the bottom, with little if any prospect for a meaningful rebound.

This isn’t one of those Ben Bernanke “I have no idea” situations. Democratic-driven home lending policies created this mess, and the Obama administration’s mortgage modification and other market-interrupting programs have lengthened it, deepened it, and caused untold large numbers of Americans to needlessly suffer.

From the Department of Labor:

In the week ending June 18, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 429,000, an increase of 9,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 420,000. The 4-week moving average was 426,250, unchanged from the previous week’s revised average of 426,250.

… The advance number of actual initial claims under state programs, unadjusted, totaled 394,925 in the week ending June 18, a decrease of 5,683 from the previous week. There were 427,080 initial claims in the comparable week in 2010.

The revision to the previous week was even bigger than usual, going from 414K to the 420K above. When this week’s figure is upwardly revised next week, it will mean that the four-week average really trended up this week.

The not seasonally adjusted initial claims number is only about 7.5% less than the same week in 2010, which is among the lowest year-over-year drops in some time.

Disappointing, but if you excuse the use of the term, not unexpectedly so, at least around here.

Out there in weak-predicting establishment medialand, it was “more than expected” by about 15K.

From Madrid:

Jun 20, 2011 / 02:01 pm

Nearly 20,000 priests are expected to accompany the young people attending World Youth Day 2011 in August, announced Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco of Madrid, Spain.

“To accompany young people in this great celebration with the Word and with the Eucharist and with devoted pastoral care is the great challenge and opportunity that (World Youth Day) gives us for the present and the future of the Church,” he stated.

Cardinal Rouco said numerous bishops and a “massive” number of priests from around the world are expected to attend the youth event taking place August 16-21 in Madrid. “The number of priests registered has surpassed 12,000 and we expect that number to reach 15,000-20,000,” he said during a Mass for the feast of Jesus Christ the Eternal High Priest, celebrated in Spain on June 15.

Cardinal Rouco Varela recalled the long logistical and spiritual preparation for World Youth Day 2011, centered upon “the Cross of Christ, the Cross of the World Youth Days, and the Icon of the Virgin Mary at its side.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

(Graphic found at Libertarian Christians)

When the Associated Press’s Paul Wiseman and Martin Crutsinger team up for a report on the economy, there’s no limit to the comic potential.

Today, in covering what the folks at Zero Hedge described as “Ben Bernanke’s ‘I Have No Idea Why The Economy Will Get Better But It Will’ Speech” (transcript is at link), the AP pair may have set a new world record for most unused words one would expect to be employed in a report on the condition of the economy.

Readers will not find the following words, all of which bear at least somewhat on why the economy currently is failing to live up to expectations and to meaningfully rebound nearly two years after the official end of the recession, in the wire service’s report:

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With the usual caveats (it’s early, seasonal adjustments are quirky, data is subject to revision — and oh yeah, it’s early), here is the list of the top 12 seasonally adjusted job-adding states this year in  terms of percentage added to the workforce:

Well, well — Ohio is Number 4, trailing only oil-booming North Dakota, illegal immigration-reforming Oklahoma, and Nebraska.

Ohio’s seasonally adjusted 70,000 jobs added is the third-highest total in the U.S., trailing only Texas and California (whose 73,000 jobs added represent only a 0.52% increase in the workforce).

Through the first five months of Ted Strickland’s administration in 2007, while the economy in the entire country added 729,000 seasonally adjusted jobs and the nationwide unemployment rate averaged 4.5%, Ohio, which has over 3% of the nation’s population, gained a whopping 8,000 jobs, or just over 1% of the total jobs added. In the first five months of 2010, Ohio added 35,100 jobs, barely half of the current year total.

During May through December of 2010, with minor ups and downs, the Buckeye States lost 4,100 jobs. No one can credibly claim that the outgoing Strickland administration left Team Kasich any kind of momentum.

Thus far, Ohio under John Kasich v. Ohion under Ted Strickland is a rout. The real competition is Ohio vs. the rest of the country.

Why would Ohioans ever want to go back to what we endured during the previous decade?

“Like a thunderbolt out of nowhere” (HT Instapundit; some PG-13 content):

To learn more about Whittle’s reference to “The Foundation Trilogy,” go here.

At Big Government yesterday, Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King compiled overwhelming evidence refuting one key element of a cease-and-desist letter sent to Fox News by lawyers for former Obama administration “green jobs” czar Van Jones. In doing so, they referenced and credited a video I posted in September 2009 of an anti-American rally in Oakland, California on September 12, 2001 where Jones spoke. They pair did a great job, and I appreciate the credit.

I would like to give Taylor’s and King’s work greater visibility, and extend it just a bit, especially because you can virtually bank on the fact that the establishment press won’t touch it — or if they do, they won’t accurately report it.

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On Monday, USA Today compiled a list comparing the economic growth of the 50 states and DC during the past decade.

Two states shrunk up the place — Michigan (-7.1%) and Ohio:

This is a what a decade of blue-state governance will do (actually more, going back to George Voinovich c. 1995). I was heavily criticized in September 2008 when I wrote the following for the New York Post (BizzyBlog mirror):

Move on to Ohio … Though it went for Bush in 2004, state government has mostly acted blue since the mid-1990s, thanks to alleged GOP governors George Voinovich and Bob Taft. The Buckeye State moved from pseudo-red to largely blue in 2006, electing a Democratic governor, who has been aided and abetted by a mostly complacent GOP legislature.

The numbers don’t lie. To Bob Taft, Ted Strickland, and worst of all, the Ohio Republican Party (whose members completely controlled the legislature for the decade’s first eight years, and went the tax-and-spend route during virtually the entire time, and did nothing to prepare the state for hard times): Thanks for nothing.

More later, if time.

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UPDATE: Showing that the Taft administration and the Republican-dominated General Assembly arguably performed worse than the Strickland administration during its six years of complete contol –

Ohio’s economic performance during the last six years under Bob Taft, who had a GOP-dominated General Assembly during his entire time in office, trailed the national average by 12.07 points over six years, a 2.01-point average.

Ohio’s economic performance during Ted Strickland’s gubernatorial reign trailed the national average by 5.0 points over four years, a 1.25-point average.

As bad as the Ohio’s economy was under Strickland (and it was really, really bad, with almost 400,000 job losses to boot), the its economy under Taft and the GOP-dominated General Assembly, when its growth is benchmarked against the rest of the country, was even worse.

Sort of shows why the Buckeye State needed “A New Way, A New Day,” doesn’t it?