If there’s a reason why Dayton Daily News staff writer Drew Simon wrote his Tuesday morning story (“Seniors fear losing Social Security checks”) other than to scare the elderly, I don’t know what it is.

Nowhere in his report did Simon say who was the first person to invalidly raise the specter of Social Security checks not going out on August 2 (it was President Barack Obama, in case you missed it). Nowhere did he mention that the likelihood is extremely remote, and that if it happens it would only be because the Obama Treasury Department decided to let it happen. Messy items like that distract from the main purpose. Oh, but Simon did get an apparatchik from AARP who also should and probably does know better to chime in on his behalf.

Here are a few paragraphs from Simon’s stench:

Seniors fear losing Social Security checks
One Dayton woman wonders how she will survive without it.

Trudy Steineman of Dayton receives $1,078 each month from Social Security, which represents about half of her monthly income.

Should Congress fail to raise the debt ceiling by next week and the government halts the distribution of Social Security checks, she wonders how she will survive.

“I wouldn’t be able to live,” said Steineman, who moved in with her youngest son Matt in December. “I have medical bills I’m trying to pay off.”

The 61-year-old Dayton retiree said she suffered two seizures and has back problems. Workers’ compensation contributes to the other half of her monthly income.

… More than 2 million Ohio seniors would be affected if Social Security checks are halted Aug. 2, according to Kathy Keller, associate state director of communications for AARP.

“What we’re doing is making sure that our congressmen and senators know that this is unacceptable,” Keller said. “For about one-third of the Ohioans who get Social Security checks, its 90 percent of their income. Those are the people that are going to be hurt the worst.”

As Dean Clancy at RedState explained: “… since those checks only cost $50 billion, compared to $170-200 billion coming in, there will obviously be sufficient funds to mail them.” Of course, you can’t rule out the Obama administration failing to send them (actually, in most cases, to electronically transfer them) to make a political point.

But that’s my point. Simon’s fact-free, blame-free, scare-tactic reporting is irresponsible, and conveniently implies that Congress and not President Obama, Tim Geithner, and their merry band of bankrupters will be to blame if the funds don’t go out.

One wonders how many times Drew Simon’s effort is effectively being duplicated in local papers, web sites, and broadcast outlets around the country. The answer is probably “way too darned many.” Oh, and there’s hardly a chance in Hades that Simon would have ignored what President Obama said if a Republican or conservative president had said it.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Just go here (“‘I’m just quitting’: A scene right out of ‘Atlas Shrugged’ in Birmingham”; HT Instapundit). Also be sure to read the de facto POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy testimonials in the comments.

The country approached the tipping point in early 2007 when statist Democrats took control of Congress. The roof collapsed in May-June 2008 when it became clear that a hostile, hardened, progressive redistributionist had a better-than-even chance of winning the presidency.

If you somehow still don’t understand why the economy hasn’t recovered and why employment growth is stalling — and why they won’t legitimately recover until Barack Obama and Harry Reid are either marginalized or removed from the powerful perches — read the comments at the post. If you still don’t get it after that, I really don’t know if you can be helped.

In progressive la-la land, this will of course be cured by a bunch of new tax increases. Sure, guys.

In the BBO Era (Before Barack Obama), June was usually the best month of the year for new home sales.

Now it’s just another month on the calendar (Census Bureau release):

June’s actual sales of 29,000 is the second-worst on record for any June going back as far as records go (1963). Only last year was slightly worse, when the semi-defensible excuse was that the Homebuyers Credit had expired in April.

(Not pictured) The Northeast’s seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 16,000 homes sold (as you can see above, only about 2,000 were actually sold) is lower than any other June on records going back to 1972 — by more than half. June 2010, 2009, and 2008 were 33K, 34K, and 34K, respectively.

Nothing a bunch of tax increases can’t cure. (/sarc)

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UPDATE: From Zero Hedge — “May Case Shiller Composite Misses Expectations, Yearly Drop Biggest Since November 2009.”

Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion had a strong rant last night on certain dingalings who call themselves Republicans taking up space in the state legislature in Columbus.

The latest example is Jarrod Martin, who has been cited for OVI-DUI-DWI … whatever they call “driving legally drunk” these days. Okay, he’s innocent until guilty, but how do you get yourself even close to having a problem with this?

The best question Matt asks is: “Anybody STILL think having a BAR at the statehouse is a good idea???” My answer, to paraphrase U.S. House Speaker John Boehner, is “Hell no I don’t!”

Look, I understand the deep human desire to pop a cold one or two as much as anyone, but whose ridiculous notion was this? Clearly, too many of these folks are already drunk … with power. The Buckeye State somehow survived 208 years without a bar at the Statehouse. Board the darned thing up — now.

At the current rate of about one per week, all the Democrats need to do to regain the majority is sit by and watch the Republican side implode.

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I knew it was only a matter of time before “the other Lee” in the U.S. House of Representatives weighed in with her “wisdom” on the federal debt situation.

Ten days ago, Houston-area Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee said that Republicans were resisting raising the debt ceiling because of Barack Obama’s race — which she apparently thinks is African-American. Sorry babe, it ain’t so; Obama is “50% Caucasian from his mother’s side. He is 43.75% Arabic, and 6.25% African Negro from his father’s side.”

“The other Lee” is California’s Barbara Lee, who is the only congressperson to vote against the post-9/11 war resolution authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan. Her take on the debt situation:

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) released a statement Monday saying the “debt crisis” has been “manufactured by House Republicans” who are “attempting to advance an extremist agenda.”

Yeah, and S&P and the ratings agencies are all in on the conspiracy. You go girl. (/sarc)

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Via Reuters (HT Zero Hedge): “China’s effort to muzzle news of train crash sparks outcry” –

Government directives demanding journalists not question official accounts of a deadly high-speed train crash in eastern China are fueling public anger and suspicion about conflicting details of the accident, such as the death toll. The department also told media not to “investigate the cause of the accident”, and reminded journalists that “the word from the authorities is all-prevailing.”

Accounts of the media controls soon found their way onto the Internet, sparking debate and demands from ordinary Chinese for answers to questions not found in the official accounts.

“We have the right to know the truth!” wrote one microblogger called kangfu xiaodingdang. “That’s our basic right!”

Despite the directives, Chinese journalists chased after the Railways Ministry spokesman, Wang Yongping, after he tried to slip away after a 45-minute briefing on Sunday.

Chinese journalists are showing more courage — heck, even more basic curiosity — than America’s beat journalists are about the next item I will cover.

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Last Friday, in a mandatory read-the-whole-thing item for those who need to quickly catch up, Rodger Hedgecock chronicled the human and diplomatic carnage at Human Events (bolds are mine):

It looks like the Obama regime financed (partly with “stimulus” funds) an $80 million program to allow straw buyers to purchase hundreds of weapons from federally licensed gun shops in Southwest states, over the objection of the shop owners, and then allowed these weapons to “walk” across the Mexican border into the waiting arms of the murderous Mexican drug cartels.

At first, Justice Department spokesmen said it was a “sting gone wrong.” Then, when many pointed out that the ATF had no jurisdiction to follow the guns across the border to make arrests, the cover story fell apart.

… The explosive revelations continued. (Acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Ken) Melson told the investigators that during operation Fast and Furious, guns were bought by and sold to individuals connected with the Mexican cartels who were also paid informants for the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration. American taxpayers are funding all sides of this war.

The Mexicans are furious about all this. The Mexican congress has opened an investigation under the assumption that Obama’s operation was an act of war on Mexico. More than 200 Mexican law enforcement and military personnel have been killed in the last year by guns traced back to Gunwalker.

These guns, traced by serial number, have tragically also turned up at the scene of the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Jaime Zapata by cartel gunmen.

For those keeping score, the apparently reliable death toll cited above in the government-sponsored murder spree of Gunwalker is more than double that of the unspeakable mass murders committed in Norway.

Where oh where is the outrage?

The Chinese train wreck state censorship situation is awful, but it isn’t the government that’s keeping American journalists from questioning “official accounts” of Project Gunwalker. It’s the establishment press’s blind loyalty to a Punk President and a Gangster Government who have committed more outrages by far during their 2-1/2 years in power than any other president and administration during their full terms, at least in my lifetime.

From Columbia, SC (video at link):

11:32 PM, Jul 15, 2011

You see your co-workers’ faces every morning, but what would you do if one day one of them wasn’t there, and there was no explanation?

For one post office supervisor, a feeling in his gut told him something was wrong and it possibly saved the life of his employee.

Cedric Jackson is a customer service supervisor at the Sandhills Post Office. He got here about five and a half years ago. Six months later, Cornelius Starks came on as a postal carrier.

“He’s usually here all the time. We generally have to force him to take off towards the end of the year,” says Jackson of Starks.

He didn’t show this past Saturday for work. “Around 9 or 9:30, I thought, ‘Wait a minute. Something’s wrong. He hasn’t called,” Jackson explains, “I went out to his home, knocked on the door, and no one answered. But I didn’t think anything was amiss.”

Starks is in his early 50s and in pretty good shape, Jackson says. Maybe he put in for a vacation that Jackson didn’t know about. “He normally comes in around eight on Mondays. I walked by his case, didn’t see him,” Jackson says. Jackson and another carrier went back to Starks’ home.

“I was nervous. I was very concerned, worrying about him. Wasn’t sure exactly what we would find, but I was hopeful,” he says.

This time, they dug deeper; spotting his keys, cell phone and glasses on a table through a window.

They called 911.

“Once they came out, they were able to get in and went inside and found Mr. Starks upstairs,” says Jackson.

Starks had had a stroke on Friday, officials say, and it left him unable to move himself from the floor. Jackson’s actions probably saved his life. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

In his White House speech tonight, President Obama renewed his call for a debt-ceiling impasse solution which requires “the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to give up some of their breaks in the tax code and special deductions.” In other words, he wants tax increases, even though earlier in the day, he backed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s “plan” (using the term loosely, as explained here and here) which, according to two separate reports (USAT; ABC), includes no tax increases.

In other words, the President, from all appearances, changed his mind — again. Calling the President’s performance in the debt-ceiling matter during the past several weeks “Jello-like” would appear to be an insult to the referenced food product.

Two items I’ve seen on President Obama’s speech tonight — David Jackson’s “live blog” item at USA Today and David Espo’s coverage at the Associated Press — did not recognize this seemingly clear point.

Jackson just ignored the Reid no-tax-increase plan’s existence, even though he had written about it just three hours earlier.

Meanwhile, Espo alleged that Obama’s support for the Reid plan earlier today somehow still stands:

… while the president didn’t say so, his embrace of legislation unveiled by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid effectively jettisoned his longstanding call for increased government revenues as part of any deficit reduction plan.

Obama’s openness to a law with no increases must have been emanating in penumbras only Espo could detect.

Speaker of the House John Boehner clearly didn’t catch the totally weird nuance Espo invented, telling the nation in his speech following the President’s that:

The president has often said we need a ‘balanced’ approach — which in Washington means: we spend more … you pay more. Having run a small business, I know those tax increases will destroy jobs.

Here’s more from Espo’s report (bolds are mine):

In unprecedented back-to-back appearances on nationwide television, President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner clashed Monday night over the cause and cure for the nation’s debt crisis. The two men spoke as Congress remained gridlocked on legislation to avert a threatened default after Aug. 2.

Decrying a “partisan three-ring circus” in the nation’s capital, Obama assailed a newly minted Republican plan to raise the nation’s debt limit as an invitation to another crisis in six months’ time. He said congressional leaders must produce a compromise that can reach his desk before the deadline.

“The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government,” the president said in a hastily arranged prime-time speech. He appealed to the public to contact lawmakers and demand “a balanced approach” to reducing federal deficits – including tax increases for the wealthy as well as spending cuts.

… Responding moments later from a room near the House chamber, Boehner said the “crisis atmosphere” was of the president’s making.

… The back-to-back speeches did little to suggest that a compromise was in the offing, and the next steps appeared to be votes in the House and Senate on the rival plans by mid-week.

Despite warnings to the contrary, U.S. financial markets have appeared to take the political maneuvering in stride – so far. Wall Street posted losses Monday but with no indication of panic among investors.

Yeah, the media/White House “the markets will tank if there isn’t an agreement this weekend” scare tactic of the past two days didn’t work out too well, did it?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Those are my words mimicking John Boehner’s last fall, but that’s in effect what Ohio’s Fourth District congressman has just said in reax to the Speaker’s two-step:

“While I thank the Speaker for fighting for Republican principles, I cannot support the plan that was presented to House Republicans this afternoon.”

“The credit rating agencies have been clear that no matter what happens with the debt limit, the U.S. will lose its AAA credit rating unless we produce a credible plan to reduce the debt by trillions of dollars. Cut, Cap, and Balance is the only plan on the table that meets this standard. Only a Balanced Budget Amendment will actually solve our debt problems.”

“Washington wants a deal. Americans want a solution. The Senate should resume debate on the Cut, Cap, and Balance Act, amend it if necessary, and pass it, so we can provide the American people a real solution.”

Well, I guess you could say, “It’s on.”

Received two hours ago while otherwise occupied (direct link):

Speaker Boehner, GOP Leaders Outline Two-Step Approach to Cut Spending, Avoid Default

WASHINGTON, DC – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) issued the following statement on the two-step approach for cutting spending and preserving the full faith and credit of the United States that GOP leaders discussed with their Republican colleagues today:

“Republicans have put forward a responsible, common-sense proposal that meets our obligations to the American people and preserves the full faith and credit of the United States. This plan is far from perfect, but it adheres to our principles of ensuring that spending cuts are greater than any debt hike and it includes no tax increases. Importantly, it reflects the principles of ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance.’

“Time is running short and it would be irresponsible for the President to veto this common-sense plan and run the risk of default. I would encourage the Senate to pass this plan and the President to sign it.”

NOTE: This two-step approach outlined by GOP leaders today will (1) make spending cuts that are larger than any debt ceiling increase; (2) implement spending caps to restrain future spending; and (3) advance the cause of the Balanced Budget Amendment – without tax hikes on families and job creators. Here is more information on the plan:

• Cuts That Exceed The Debt Hike. The framework would cut and cap discretionary spending immediately, saving $1.2 trillion over 10 years (subject to CBO confirmation), and raise the debt ceiling by less – up to $1 trillion.
• Caps To Control Future Spending. The framework imposes caps on discretionary spending that would establish clear limits on future spending and serve as a barrier against government expansion while the economy grows. Failure to remain below these caps will trigger automatic across-the-board cuts (otherwise known as sequestration).
• Balanced Budget Amendment. The framework advances the cause of the Balanced Budget Amendment by requiring the House and Senate to vote on the measure after October 1, 2011 but before the end of the year, allowing the American people time to build sufficient support for this popular reform.
• Entitlement Reforms & Savings. The framework creates a Joint Committee of Congress that is required to report legislation that would produce a proposal to reduce the deficit by at least $1.8 trillion over 10 years. Each Chamber would consider the proposal of the Joint Committee on an up-or-down basis without any amendments. If the proposal is enacted, then the President would be authorized to request a debt limit increase of $1.6 trillion.

No Tax Hikes. The framework includes no tax hikes, a key principle that Republicans have been fighting for since day one.

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UPDATE: Americans For Tax Reform supports the plan (direct ATR link). ATR’s money quote: “The only reason that tax increases are off the table at this critical juncture in the debt limit debate is because Congressional Republicans have held firm on their pledge to their constituents not to raise taxes.”

George Voinovich, reacting to the results of a straw poll at the annual dinner of ORPINO (The Ohio Republican Party in Name Only), in which Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney garnered 25%, or about 150, of the votes in a straw poll of the event’s 600 attendees:

“The poll was reflective of the feelings that exist in the state of Ohio today,” former U.S. Sen. George Voinovich told The Dispatch. “I think Romney’s paid his dues, he’s been around the horn, and he’s got all that you need to be a great president at a time when the country needs an experienced leader.”

Gag me.

Actually, that’s beyond an endorsement. It’s a man-hug.

Retirement apparently hasn’t done much for George Voinovich’s perspective. He is as at least as out of touch as he was during his last 15-plus years in “public service.” It was in the mid-1990s when Voinovich stopped governing the Buckeye State as a sort-of conservative and went all-RINO, almost all the time, contributing mightily to the go-along, get-along spendaholic atmosphere which pervaded GOP state politics until 2005 (when a somewhat acceptable tax package was enacted, which did the state some good but was too late to do anything about the party’s perceiption) and which allowed a completely unqualified buffoon in Democrat Ted Strickland to shrink the state’s economy by over 3% in four agonizing years.

I feel confident that the sensible conservative majority in the State of Ohio would agree with yours truly: Not This Mitt Again.

You can’t make this up.

You might excuse the Associated Press for engaging in a bit of hyperbole in a Friday item headlined “Northeast braces for temps near boiling point.” After all, it has been miserably hot in many parts of the country, including here in Greater Cincinnati.

But, as readers will see after the jump, the unbylined AP item’s writer clearly doesn’t understand the point at which water boils. Brace yourself (light-blue “highlighting” is mine; HT to a NewsBusters tipster):

(more…)

Two simple graphs on how broke we are at Slate (HT Instapundit).

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On Thursday, Christopher Rugaber, one of my personal faves at the Associated Press (/sarc), actually recognizes what yours truly emphasized in the latter portions of my “Fear-Based Economy” column: “Economy’s spring slump could last through summer … as job market, manufacturing remain weak.” Maybe Rugaber was cribbing from the column.

Anyway, if you think it’s a “slump” now, wait until you see what happens if President Obama and Democrats get their way and increase taxes by trillions. But they keep pushing for that, which tells me that they don’t really care what happens to the economy, or how much the unemployed and their families continue to suffer.

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I’m with Ann Althouse on one aspect of the David Wu situation: If she was over 18 at the time of the alleged sexual assault and did not report it to the police, I don’t see why the press is keeping her name out of the story.

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Apparently the UAW is salivating at the idea of unionizing a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Workers there need to be reminded what happened to the last UAW plant VW had in the U.S. Full disclosure: The first new car I purchased was a Rabbit made at that plant. It was a very good car, but apparently the company couldn’t afford to make them profitably.

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“Rebound? What Rebound?” –the I’ve-lost-count update: In the car business, “We Are Sorry To Inform You That The Big Turnaround Has Been Postponed For Another Year.”

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Speaking of the car business and the UAW: It’s contract-negotiating time with what used to be the Big Three, but which is now Ford, Government Motors, and the $1.3 billion taxpayer loss known as Chrysler, now 53.5% owned by Fiat (Of course, we must never forget that additional billions were illegally extracted from Chrysler’s non-TARP secured lenders).

So Ford gets to negotiate with an entity which owns about 10% of one of its competitors and 40% of another, both of which have agreed to no-strike contract clauses that won’t expire for several years. Don’t think for a minute that Team Obama, which orchestrated what has been proven to be a bogus yet damaging safety scare campaign against Toyota last year, isn’t continuously doing a cost-benefit calculation on forcing a strike at Ford.

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Relating to the previous item and feeding the need for the aforementioned cost-benefit calculation, the fact that the government may have to hurt Ford to prop up GM is evidenced by:

• The presence of 605,000 vehicles in GM dealer inventories as of the end of June, a supply of well over 90 days (122 days in trucks), and a stunning 38% higher than a year ago. Six-month supplies of certain trucks at certain dealers are apparently not unusual.
• The fact that the company has brought back financing arrangements of no payments for 90 days.
• (Informally learned) The fact that the company is more willing to bend the credit rules to approve buyers with shaky — even very shaky — credit.

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At the Wall Street Journal this morning, with perhaps the dumbest argument about a commerce-releated initiative I’ve ever seen (in bold):

McKinsey & Co. made itself the White House’s public enemy number—well, we’ve lost count—after releasing a survey last month showing that nearly one in three businesses may drop insurance coverage as a result of the new health-care law. The real offense of the management consultants seems to be accurately portraying reality.

Consider a suggestive new survey to be released today by the National Federation of Independent Business, the trade group for small businesses. William Dennis, a senior research fellow who has conducted the study for 35 years, reports that 57% of a cross-section of companies that employ 50 or fewer workers and offer coverage may stop doing so. Look out below.

… ObamaCare’s partisans claim none of this will happen because of the social norm theories of behavioral economics. Businesses offer insurance to attract workers, the thinking goes, and it’s the right thing to do. But that assumes utter irrationality—that workers won’t take a cheaper deal when they see it and businesses won’t try to compete against their rivals.

The argument is so dumb that you have to know it’s a smokescreen. Obamacare adherents consider the disappearance of employer-provided health insurance a feature, not a bug — as long as the government effectively takes it all over through its harsh, strangulating regulation of the exchanges.

From a Washington Times columnist, whose primary fire is focused on Barack Obama (“Is Obama a pathological liar?”; bolds are mine):

“The White House had already agreed to a lower revenue number — to be generated through economic growth and a more efficient tax code — and then it tried to change the terms of the deal after taking heat from Democrats on Capitol Hill,” our insider said.

The negotiations just before breakdown called for $800 billion in new “revenues” (henceforth, we’ll call those “taxes”), but after the supposedly bipartisan plan came out — and bowing to the powerful liberal bloc on Capitol Hill — Mr. Obama demanded another $400 billion in new taxes: a 50 percent increase.

The columnist, whose full name as far as I can immediately tell is “Curl,” was very sloppy in making the $800 billion look like new “taxes.” But at least he/she appears to get it. Unfortunately, many others on the center-right won’t, and won’t even try.

What Boehner wanted before “negotiations” (i.e., talking to Barack “Brick Wall” Obama) broke down is a series of downward changes to marginal rates in the tax code offset by unnamed other changes which would have been scored as revenue-neutral by the Congressional Budget Office but whose incentive effects would increase collections in the real dynamic world by $800 billion over 10 years, because they would stimulate something real — economic growth and jobs.

But that apparently wasn’t enough for Obama, who wanted actual tax increases hard-wired into the tax code — whereas Boehner had none.

As he characterizes it, Boehner was correct in telling Fox News on Sunday that his design is NOT a tax increase. “Curl” awkwardly appears to characterize it as such. Untold others on the center-right will more directly say the same thing. Sadly, there are too many people who seem to be a lot more interested in beating up on the Speaker to generate reads and site traffic than they are in understanding and communicating substance, and who are all too willing to believe reports making him look bad from a media establishment whose mission it is to make him look bad. How many times in the past week did the press say a deal was close when it wasn’t?

If/when Boehner sells out, I’ll let him have it with both barrels. As of late last night, it hasn’t happened yet. If it does, some of those on the center-right who should and do know better will have to look in the mirror to find where some of the blame lies.

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UPDATE: Seriously, using the benchmarks some people are applying to Boehner, both the Reagan and Bush tax cuts, which also involved and resulted in increasing collections “through economic growth and a more efficient tax code,” were really “tax increases.” Zheesh.