From Denver:

Jul 14, 2011 / 06:12 am

An expert on Pope Pius XII says new discoveries show that the Jewish community strongly supported the pontiff for his stand against anti-Semitism and support for Jewish rights during World War II.

Researcher William Doino outlined evidence that he says makes it clear the late Pope “wanted to break down walls of anti-Jewish prejudice, not erect them.”

Doino shared his his findings exclusively with CNA, pointing to magazine articles from the 1930s that feature Jewish American veterans lauding Pius XII for his deep respect for the Jewish community and their customs.

In April of 1939, just one month after Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli was elected Pope, the U.S. Jewish Veteran magazine called the new Pope’s leadership “a source of great satisfaction to Jews.”

“Pope Pius XII is known as a staunch friend of Jews,” the veterans wrote, noting the success of his election despite the attempts by anti-Semitic Fascists to prevent it.

The March 1939 issue of the magazine also expressed the community’s “fervent hope” that Pius XII would “have a long and successful reign; that he will fill the spiritual vacuum left by the decease of his predecessor, and that he too will be sanctified by the love of his fellow men.”

Doino, who has contributed extensively to an anthology titled “The Pius War: Responses to the Critics of Pius XII” (Lexington Books), said it has long been documented that Pius XII strongly opposed Fascism and Nazism and “abhorred anti-Semitism.”

However, he said, “research in the last decade has revealed more.”
(more…)

At the Associated Press, the task of reporting on the official results of Uncle Sam’s June Monthly Treasury Statement fell to Christopher Rugaber instead Marty Crutsinger.

Next time, Chris, tell us what happened in the month you’re covering instead of going almost exclusively with the federal government’s year-to-date results.

If Rugaber had looked more closely at June, he would have had to relay not particularly pleasant news — or maybe he did look at June, and decided that we didn’t need to know anything more than what the deficit was (possible motivation will be identified later). Although the deficit came in lower ($43 billion vs. $68 billion), the AP reporter “somehow” forgot to tell readers that receipts trailed June of 2010, indicating that whatever economic recovery has occurred is well on its way to fizzling.

Here are several paragraphs from Rugaber’s riff:

The federal budget deficit is on pace to break the $1 trillion mark for the third straight year, ratcheting up the pressure on the White House and Congress to reach a deal to rein in spending.

The deficit totaled $971 billion for the first nine months of the budget year, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. Three years ago, that would have been a record high for the full year.

With three months to go, this year’s deficit will likely top last year’s $1.29 trillion gap, according to the Congressional Budget Office. But it is expected to come in below the record $1.41 trillion reached in the 2009 budget year. The budget year ends Sept. 30.

For June, the deficit was $43 billion, below the $68 billion imbalance recorded in June 2010. Much of the improvement from last year was due to a one-time drop in the estimated cost of education loans.

But the government is also receiving more tax revenue this year, which reduces the deficit a bit. Revenue rose 9 percent, or $137 billion, through June, the Treasury’s report said.

Sure, revenue is up for the first nine months. But in June, which is an important month for collections because corporate and individual estimated payments are due on June 15, receipts totaled $249.7 billion, down from $251.0 billion last year. Sure, the result would have been almost $10 billion higher if the 2% Social Security tax cut Congress and President Obama agreed to last year was not in effect, but:

• Corporate income tax receipts, which are up about 1% over nine months, were down 5% in June ($48.8 billion vs. $51.5 billion in June 2010).
• Total income tax collections, which are up 24% over nine months, were only up by a bit less than 4% in June ($113.0 billion vs. $109.0 billion).
• The “miscellaneous receipts” category included $8.3 billion in payments from the Federal Reserve. These largely relate to the Fed’s quantitative easing and other money supply-controlling efforts and have nothing to do with the government’s day-to-day operations. Last June, receipts from the Fed were $6.8 billion.
• In June 2007, when the country’s economic output in terms of real gross domestic product was barely lower than it is now, collections, at $276.5 billion, were 10% higher (about 6% higher after considering the Social Security tax cut). Receipts from the Fed that month were only $2.6 billion.

Instead of reporting what happened in June, Rugaber spent eight paragraphs describing the current budget-ceiling negotiations — when the AP’s David Espo and Andrew Taylor, Philip Elliott, Laurie Kellman, and Ben Feller are already covering various aspects of that — and five more paragraphs rewriting the fiscal history of the past dozen years, including these two:

The government last recorded a budget surplus in 2001, when revenues were $127 billion greater than spending. The surpluses were expected to total $5.6 trillion over the next decade.

But the country was back in the red by 2002. The deficit grew after President Bush won approval for broad tax cuts and launched the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

Lord have mercy.

The $5.6 trillion estimate of surpluses was published by the Congressional Budget Office in January 2001, before the effects of the Internet bubble-burst were felt and before the economically devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks. In other words, the CBO’s projections ended up being not worth the paper they were written on or the bandwidth they consumed. So there was no reason — except to falsely “blame Bush for everything” — for Rugaber to bring them up in his Wednesday report.

As to the “broad tax cuts” somehow being involved in the vanishing surpluses, the fact is that once Bush got the across-the-board and investment-related tax cuts he wanted in 2003, total federal receipts increased by almost $800 billion, or 44%, during the next four fiscal years. It’s right here in this pretty graph, Chris.

The “Iraq and Afghanistan” meme would seem to indicate that Rugaber is cribbing from Marty Crutsinger, who went to that false well so often that he was still citing the wars as an excuse in September 2009, when Iraq had long since stabilized. Stimulus and other radical spending increases during the first year of the Obama administration were obviously what was sent the deficit into the $1 trillion-plus range for the first time — and even though the stimulus is supposedly over, spending just keeps on rising.

The fact is that Uncle Sam’s financial situation deteriorated badly in June. If that decay were more widely known, it would strengthen the case against the trillion-dollar tax increases President Obama wants. Obama’s desired tax increases are on top of the hundreds of billions in tax increases already built into Obamacare, most of which will take effect beginning in 2013, as the Wall Street Journal helpfully pointed out on Monday. It’s awfully convenient that the AP’s Rugaber failed to tell the wire service’s subscribing outlets and news consumers what really happened in June, isn’t it?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Well, I guess it’s getting serious now in the melodrama known as the Minnesota state government shutdown.

If the Gopher State shutdown goes on much longer, hundreds of bars and restaurants will lose their ability to serve alcohol because they can’t renew their liquor licenses. Worse, as reported by Eric Roper at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, MillerCoors, whose “brand license” somehow expired, will, be forced to “pull its beer from Minnesota liquor stores, bars and restaurants.” The economic ripple effect will have a lot of Minnesotans crying in their beer, if they can find any.

If there’s a less curious reporter than Eric Roper, I don’t want to meet him. I’ve seen pet rocks with more curiosity than the Strib reporter demonstrated in the linked report. Consider the following paragraphs which Roper relayed without any hint of an attempt at follow-up:

Miller Time in Minnesota is over — until lawmakers reach a budget deal.

The state’s government shutdown, now in its 13th day, will soon force MillerCoors to pull its beer from Minnesota liquor stores, bars and restaurants. A state official says the law requires the company to stop selling products like Coors Light, Miller Lite and Blue Moon imminently because their brand licenses expired.

… (Minnesota Department of Public Safety spokesman Doug) Neville says MillerCoors must remove the beer because they did not renew their brand label registration with the state before the shutdown began. By law, brewers must renew those registrations — which show the label on each brand of beer — every three years.

The company tried to renew in mid-June, but the process got delayed when they wrote a check for too much money. Green said they sent in a new check, which the state received on June 27, but nonetheless got a letter three days later saying their brand licenses had expired.

“We believe we’ve followed all applicable state laws on this,” Green said.

Uh, Eric, here’s something even the Democrat Farm Labor Party-defending Associated Press broke down and noted on Sunday. It occurred when a public-sector employee who is nonetheless peeved at Democratic Governor Mark Dayton broke down and told the truth. The man (paraphrased by AP) said that “Dayton vetoed all major state agency funding bills Republicans passed at the end of the session.”

In other words, the government has shut down because DFL Governor Mark Dayton shut it down, period. “Lawmakers” — i.e., the legislature — did their job, and therefore are not to blame for the shutdown. The executive branch, specifically Dayton, the guy who vetoed the funding bills, is solely to blame.

Beyond that obvious error, it takes a special degree of laziness or ignorance for Roper not to have looked into at least the following:

• Why didn’t the state simply cash the earlier check for too much money and refund the difference?
• Why doesn’t the check the state received on June 27, the fourth last day before the shutdown began, count (whether deposited or not)?
• Who issued the letter “saying their brand licenses had expired?”
• Was the person who issued the expiration letter pressured by higher-ups in state government or the Governor’s office to send the expiration letter instead of processing the renewal — perhaps for the express purpose of creating the statewide havoc which appears imminent?
• Why didn’t the state cash the check if it was for the right amount (or if the check has been cashed, what in the heck is the problem)? Who ordered the department not to cash the check if that’s indeed what happened? (Please don’t tell me the state had to allow for check clearance times for funds availability for a company like MillerCoors, which surely has millions in the bank.)
• If state government is shut down, why is Mr. Neville still working?
• Since Mr. Neville is still working and assuming the check hasn’t been cashed, why can’t he take it to the bank? Are his fingers and legs broken?
• If state government is shut down, who is going to pull beer from the shelves if MillerCoors refuses?
• If the state isn’t accepting payments, why shouldn’t Gopher State employers and other taxpayers just hang onto their withheld or otherwise due state income taxes and other tax payments until state government resumes full operation?

I daresay if the governor in these circumstances had been a Republican or conservative, reporters like Eric Roper would be much more curious about the incongruous chain of events he unquestioningly described — and that he’d be pinning the blame on the governor and not the in this case Republican-controlled legislature.

In addition to failing to report that state government has shut down because Mark Dayton decided to shut it down, Roper also failed to tell readers that Dayton is determined not to reopen the government until he gets the income tax increases he wants — and the heck with all the people who are affected in the meantime. But reporting that wouldn’t fit what is apparently the Strib’s unofficial motto: DFL uber alles.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

He said it, he meant it, and there’s no denying it.

On Monday, in a statement carried at the Washington Post, the Associated Press, the New York Times (Page A8 of Tuesday’s print edition), and elsewhere, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told U.S. troops at Camp Victory in Baghdad: “The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked. And 3,000 Americans — 3,000 not just Americans, 3,000 human beings, innocent human beings — got killed because of al-Qaeda. And we’ve been fighting as a result of that.”

That sound you hear is a Democratic Party meme shattering into teeny tiny pieces. The attempts to put Humpty Dumpty together again, both by Panetta himself and the establishment press contingent following him, have been pathetic and ineffectual, which is what happens when one is up against succinctly stated truths.

Aaron Worthing at Patterico’s place correctly characterizes Panetta’s statement “the Mother of All Kinsley gaffes.” Named after lefty journalist Michael Kinsley, it actually has its own Wikipedia entry, where it is defined as “a politician inadvertently saying something publicly that they privately believe is true, but would ordinarily not say publicly because they believe it is politically harmful.”

Perhaps indicating that the Defense Secretary himself realizes the extent of his Kinsley gaffe, Panetta’s statement does not appear in any of the four reports the Armed Forces Press Service filed from Camp Victory (here, here, here, and here). We wouldn’t want the troops getting the wrong idea, eh Leon?

Panetta’s own attempt at the impossible walkback is as follows:

Pressed by reporters to elaborate, Panetta said: “I wasn’t saying, you know, the invasion — or going into the issues or the justification of that. It was more the fact that we really had to deal with al-Qaeda here; they developed a presence here and that tied in.” His aides then intervened and shooed the press corps away.

Sorry, Leon, yes you were saying that 9/11 justified the invasion.

That there is substantial evidence that there were meaningful ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein is an inconvenient truth the left and Democrats have attempted to shout down and whitewash for almost eight years.

Stephen Hayes’s September 1, 2003 Weekly Standard report (“Saddam’s al Qaeda Connection”) cited many items known before the Iraq War began, some of include the following:

• A letter from CIA Director George Tenet to Senate Intelligence chairman Bob Graham said that “We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qa’ida going back a decade.”
• “Iraqi defectors had been saying for years that Saddam’s regime trained ‘non-Iraqi Arab terrorists’ at a camp in Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. U.N. inspectors had confirmed the camp’s existence, including the presence of a Boeing 707.” Though there seems to have been reluctance to tag Al Qaeda recruits as being among the “non-Iraqi Arab terrorists,” it’s not like there were dozens of such organizations at the time. Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were from Saudi Arabia.
• “According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor, an (Al Qaeda affiliate) Abu Sayyaf leader who planned … a bomb attack in Zamboanga City in the Philippines) bragged on television a month after the bombing that Iraq had contacted him about conducting joint operations. Philippine intelligence officials were initially skeptical of his boasting, but after finding the telephone records they believed him.”

Hayes also noted information obtained after Saddam Hussein was toppled, some of which includes the following:

• “Farouk Hijazi, former Iraqi ambassador to Turkey and Saddam’s longtime outreach agent to Islamic fundamentalists, has been captured. In his initial interrogations, Hijazi admitted meeting with senior al Qaeda leaders at Saddam’s behest in 1994. According to administration officials familiar with his questioning, he has subsequently admitted additional contacts, including a meeting in late 1997. Hijazi continues to deny that he met with bin Laden on December 21, 1998, to offer the al Qaeda leader safe haven in Iraq. U.S. officials don’t believe his denial.” … “(That) meeting was reported in the press at the time.”
• The day after a hawkish Bill Clinton speech about “an unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers, and organized international criminals,” specifically on February 19, 1998, “according to documents unearthed in Baghdad after the recent war by journalists Mitch Potter and Inigo Gilmore, Hussein’s intelligence service wrote a memo detailing upcoming meetings with a bin Laden representative traveling to Baghdad. Each reference to bin Laden had been covered with Liquid Paper. The memo laid out a plan to step up contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda.”
• “According to U.S. officials, soldiers in Iraq have discovered additional documentary evidence like the memo Potter found. This despite the fact that there is no team on the ground assigned to track down these contacts–no equivalent to the Iraq Survey Group looking for evidence of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. Interviews with detained senior Iraqi intelligence officials are rounding out the picture.”

Hayes correctly faulted the Bush administration for not more aggressively building and publicly noting evidence of the AQ-Saddam Hussein connections and cooperation.

Support for the AQ-Saddam connection is also nicely accumulated here by a person who says he was a high school student at the time, and who clearly had more willingness to  look at the truth than hardened, supposedly adult leftists, who have been trying to wish it away since 2003.

And for an after-the-fact bonus, in discussing something which military planners were probably hoping for before the invasion, there’s this analysis from Strategy Page in 2007:

Al Qaeda was a growing movement before 2003, and before 2001. But after the Iraq invasion, and especially the Sunni Arab terrorism, al Qaeda fell in popularity throughout the Moslem world. Arab countries cracked down on al Qaeda operations more than ever before. Without the Iraq invasion, al Qaeda would still have safe havens all over the Arab world.

In 2011, unfortunately, the current administration looks to be increasing the number of Al Qaeda safe havens (e.g., Libya), but that’s on them, not Bush or Cheney.

Leon Panetta certainly knows much of what Hayes identified, and probably much more. No wonder he committed the Mother of All Kinsley Gaffes.

Now let’s look at the excuse-making emanating from the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock, the AP’s Robert Burns, and the New York Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller (bolds and numbered tags are mine):

(WaPo)

Panetta appears to link al-Qaeda presence with Iraq invasion

Just 11 days into his tenure as defense secretary, Leon Panetta has demonstrated a flair for making blunt, unscripted comments. But his inability to stick to prepared talking points is getting him into rhetorical trouble. [1]

On Monday, in his first visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief, Panetta appeared to justify the U.S. invasion of the country as part of the war against al-Qaeda, a controversial argument made by the George W. Bush administration but rebutted by President Obama and many Democrats. [2]

… His statement echoed comments made by Bush and his administration, which tried to tie then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda. But it put Panetta at odds with Obama, the 9/11 Commission and other independent experts, who have said that al-Qaeda lacked a presence in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. [3]

(AP)

Pentagon chief: A mix of blunt, charm, slip-ups

At once blunt and bubbly, poised but prone to gaffes, Leon Panetta showed on his first overseas trip as Pentagon chief that he has framed his agenda but not yet mastered the art of expressing it publicly in detail. [4]

In a talk to troops in Afghanistan he said he was the CIA director (his previous job). The next day he invoked the language of George W. Bush in saying the U.S. is at war in Iraq because al-Qaida attacked on 9/11 – a message that runs counter to the view of his boss, President Barack Obama. [5]

… In Baghdad on Sunday, for example, Panetta appeared to slip on the politics of the Iraq war, which was started by the Bush administration in March 2003 on grounds that then-ruler Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. [6] The Bush White House also suggested a Saddam link to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. by al-Qaida – a connection that Obama and other Democrats have called wrongheaded. [7]

Panetta seemed to make the Bush argument.

(NYT)

Making his first visit to Iraq as defense secretary, Mr. Panetta also said flatly — before he and a Pentagon spokesman qualified his remarks — that United States forces were in Iraq was because of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. That was part of the narrative advanced by former Vice President Dick Cheney and the Bush White House, but it is now widely dismissed. [8]

… In the run-up to the 2003 war, Bush administration officials repeatedly cited ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, but a government investigation found no meaningful operational link between the two. [9] After the invasion, Al Qaeda fighters did pour into Iraq to launch attacks on the American military. [10]

Doug Wilson, a Pentagon spokesman traveling with Mr. Panetta, described Mr. Panetta as a “very plain-spoken defense secretary” who he said was not getting into the arguments over Iraq in 2002 and 2003. “I don’t think he’s going down that rabbit hole,” [11] Mr. Wilson said.

Notes:

[1] and [4] — Translation in each instance: “Get this guy a teleprompter and tell him to stick to the script so we don’t have to keep trying to bail him out.”

[2] — Excerpts of this sentence at the blogs of Patterico, Althouse, and others show that Whitlock originally used “refuted” and replaced it with “rebutted.” Sorry, Craig, that’s still not good enough. “Rebut” means “to refute by evidence or argument.” As seen in the evidence already presented along with additional support coming up in Note [3], nothing has been “rebutted,” by evidence or argument.

[3] and [9] — Even if one concedes that Al Qaeda had no “presence” or “operational presence” in Iraq before the U.S.-led invasion, there are two other direct justifications for the invasion (approved by Congressional resolution). They are in the September 20, 2001 speech President Bush delivered at a joint session of Congress to wildly cheering lawmakers of both parties. Specifically (bolds are mine): “… we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” It is not arguable that Iraq under Saddam Hussein “provided aid” to Al Qaeda as well as “support” for its terrorism.

[5] and [7] — It doesn’t matter whether what Panetta said runs counter to President Obama’s “views,” what Obama’s “views” happen to be, or that Obama and Democrats believe that what Panetta said is “wrongheaded.” The fact is that Bush, Cheney, and Panetta are factually correct. That’s all that matters.

[6] — The AP’s Burns acts as if the presence of weapons mass destruction was the only justification for the invasion. Again, going back to Bush’s September 20, 2001 speech, that’s simply not the case. Besides, weapons of mass destruction were found (along with “550 tons of yellowcake uranium,” which, “once refined, could make 142 nuclear weapons“). Even Wikileaks acknowledges that WMDs were there before the invasion.

[8] — Bumiller cleverly doesn’t identify the specific people who have “widely dismissed” the justification of the Iraq invasion based on 9/11 — which is fortunate for them, because it spares them further embarrassment. As already noted, Bush justified it on September 20, 2001, Congress in essence ratified it in voting for the war resolution in 2002, and the evidence, to adapt words used by WaPo’s Whitlock, is “irrefutable” and “not rebuttable.”

[10] — Bumiller my not realize it, but she totally busted the Times’s post-invasion coverage of the Iraq War. For years, the Times insisted on naming the enemy our soldiers were fighting “Al Qaeda in Iraq,” as if it was an entirely homegrown organization which rose up after the invasion to fight the American occupiers. Now Bumiller tells the truth: “After the invasion, Al Qaeda fighters did pour into Iraq” from elsewhere. Thanks, Liz. It’s been a good day for busting tired media memes.

[11] — Memo to Doug Wilson: It’s too late. Panetta’s already gone “down the rabbit hole,” and he can’t come out. He agrees with Bush and Cheney, and though the attempts to minimize and cover up that agreement will surely continue, there’s no changing the fact that he agrees, and that it’s on the record. Too bad, so sad.

(Photo above is from DOD via U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Jacob N. Bailey)

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Visitors in the past 24 hours know that the BizzyBlog has been down. Those who went to Facebook or Twitter would have learned that this was due to a cluster outage at Media Temple, my web host.

I’ll cross my fingers and hope things are fixed at this point. Obviously, I’m not pleased that this happened at an outfit which boasts of its Fortune 1000 clientele.

What Peter Wallison writes in today’s Wall Street Journal is completely obvious to anyone with open eyes, but bears repeating repeatedly because the political hacks in Washington won’t let go of their “Wall Street did it” meme:

Government-Sponsored Meltdown
Fannie Mae did not contribute ‘marginally’ to the financial crisis. It was the source of the declining mortgage underwriting standards that brought down the system.

… The notion that the “banks led us into” the financial crisis echoes the narrative of the FCIC’s Democratic majority, which placed the blame for the financial crisis on the private sector and dismissed the idea that government housing policy could have been responsible.

… “Reckless Endangerment,” a new book about the causes of the crisis … (makes it) clear that it was Fannie Mae and the government housing policies it supported, pursued and exploited that brought the financial system to a halt in 2008.

After James A. Johnson, a Democratic political operative and former aide to Walter Mondale, became chairman of Fannie Mae in 1991, they note, it became a political powerhouse, intimidating and suborning Congress and tying itself closely to the Clinton administration’s support for the low-income lending program called “affordable housing.”

This program required subprime and other risky lending …

… Far from being a marginal player, Fannie Mae was the source of the decline in mortgage underwriting standards that eventually brought down the financial system. It led rather than followed Wall Street into risky lending.

… by 2008 half of all mortgages in the U.S. (27 million loans) were subprime or otherwise risky, and that 12 million of these loans were on the books of the GSEs.

… two-thirds of these subprime or risky loans were on the books of government agencies or firms subject to government control.

… if government housing policy, and not Wall Street, caused the financial crisis, what was the basis for Dodd-Frank’s extraordinary and growth-suppressing regulation on the financial system?

There is no basis, except insatiable statism.

Statists have used the “Wall Street did it” meme to institutionalize ruinous government intervention in the form of Dodd-Frank which is among regulatory reasons why the economy isn’t sufficiently growing and isn’t creating an acceptable level of jobs. The “need” for Dodd-Frank is as valid as the meme. Its harm to economic freedom and economic growth will be substantial.

Note: Carried to the top for what will probably be the rest of the day.

_______________________________________________

TOPSIDE UPDATE: At Pajamas Media, via Zombie — “Craig Huey vs. Janice Hahn: Your CA-36 Special Election Guide”

_______________________________________________

The Associated Press finally acknowledged the existence of Tuesday’s competitive CA-36 special congressional election on Sunday afternoon. The winner will replace Democrat Jane Harman, who left Congress in February to head up the Woodrow Wilson Center.

But as anyone who has followed the wire service’s biases would expect, Political Writer Michael R. Blood’s nearly 1000-word write-up (“GOP looks for upset in race for Calif. House seat”) totally ignored a serious controversy and related attempted thuggery involving Democrat Janice Hahn, whose opponent is Republican Craig Huey. It’s fair to ask whether the AP’s Blood withheld the incriminating information against Hahn in hopes of avoiding further harm to an already vulnerable liberal in what was originally supposed to be a cakewalk race. Details follow the jump.

(more…)

You know it’s bad when the dollar stores are suffering — and they’re starting to suffer:

More stores across the U.S. that offer deeply-discounted products are seeing their sales decline after years of growth amid America’s “Great Recession” — and one analyst said on Monday it’s another sign of even deeper downturn.

While the demand at stores like the 99-Cent Store or Dollar Tree is still relatively high, the biggest chains in the nation have fallen short of Wall Street’s expectations for several months, a trend that may prove even more ominous for the economy at large.

“I think what’s going on in those stores is that we are in a depression for 80 percent of Americans,” top retail analyst Howard Davidowitz told KNX 1070.

… “In those stores, somebody comes in with $12 to do all their shopping,” said Davidowitz. “The person who used to come in with $12 now comes in with $8.”

“In other words, the economy is continuing to be worse, the Obama depression continues to explode,” he added.

Don’t worry: $2 trillion in tax increases will fix that (/sarc).

Boehner-bashers, close your eyes:

President Barack Obama could have done two things that might have saved his Mother of All Budget Deals.

First, he could have embraced market-centered, consumer -focused reforms to Medicare. That was about as likely as him accepting an Obamacare rollback. Second, he could have agreed — as House Speaker John Boehner and Republicans suggested — to sharply reduce tax rates in return for fewer special tax deductions/breaks/loopholes/subsidies. Recall that is what his own debt commission recommended.

Instead, he apparently offered to keep top individual rates where they are, at 35 percent, in exchange for tax reform.

I haven’t copied over James P’s charts, but keeping rates where they are in exchange for “reform” would have meant the following, when using properly framed language of taxation (note that the line for comparison at James P’s post is “2010,” because that’s the current rate structure after last December’s tax deal):

• the first significant bracket (after the narrowly applied 10%) at 15% instead of 12% — i.e., 25% (15 divided by 12) higher
• the average of the next two brackets at 27.5% instead of 22% — i.e., 25% (27.5 divided by 22) higher
• the next bracket at 33% instead of 28% — i.e., 21% (34 divided by 28) higher
• the highest bracket at 35% instead of 28% — i.e., 25% (35 divided by 28) higher

Without a detailed look I can’t know for sure, but I would expect that “reform” (eliminating deductions for items like charitable deductions and mortgage interest) would affect higher-income returns more than lower-income ones (because they almost always itemize, and because their deductions as a percentage of income are also fairly high), meaning that the overall tax increases in the highest two brackets would likely be 30% or more.

Bottom line: Obama wants taxes to be astronomically higher than even his liberal-stacked fiscal commission recommended.

Back to Pethokoukis:

In short, Obama sees a need for a permanently bigger government and a lot more tax revenue to fund it. Had Obama agreed with his own debt commission and Republicans, a big agreement was possible. Or he could have proposed real reforms to entitlements. But he declined and there wasn’t a mega-deal. Don’t blame Boehner for that.

Boehner-bashers won’t like reading that an agreement could possibly have occurred under the circumstances described, nor am I — if it’s true, which no one can prove or disprove. The fact is that it didn’t happen — or do we also start bashing Boehner for things which never happened just because we can?

Better suggestion: Contact him (e-mail, phone and fax info are here) and your Congresscritter and tell them not to go wobbly.

______________________________________________

UPDATE (posted after Update 2, but moved up for visibility): Matt at Weapons of Mass Discussion, a Boehner constituent, has further thoughts on the Boehner-bashing brouhaha.

UPDATE 2: The latest at Boehner’s blog –

Using a graph found at Calculated Risk, and shamelessly appropriating an idea employed by Alo at Brain Shavings last week, I give you a graph of previous recessions with all employment troughs as their zero points:

Let’s see now, the establishment press thinks that it’s heresy to contend that Barack Obama and his administration didn’t lengthen the recession — yet the amount of time it will take the employment market to recover is an absolute certainty to be the longest of any recession since World War II, and probably by several years.

The press also wants us to think that it’s heresy to contend that Barack Obama and his administration didn’t make the recession worse — yet the dive in employment is by far the furthest of any recession on record, and has gained back only about 20% of the jobs lost (the difference between 6.4% and 5.1% divided by 6.4%) in sixteen long, hard months since the trough.

Both of the above statements are true even if one properly times the beginning of the recession as the end of June 2008 — when the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid economy and the recession as normal people define it began — instead of December 2007, as the National Bureau of Economic Research has erroneously defined it.

Memo to Corbett B. Daly of CBS News, who contends that anyone making either claim just noted is being “factually inaccurate”: Horse manure. You and the rest of the press can take your two-bit intimidation campaign where we supposedly can’t tell the truth about the economy without your approval and shove it. It’s not working here, and it’s not going to work anywhere else in the sensible center-right blogosphere. Two long years after the recession ended, we’re still asking: “Rebound? What Rebound?“

As seen at a well-timed activist convention and a packed Tea Party meeting.

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Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Saturday.

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Ohio, well-known as a key presidential election state, will also be a pivotal battleground this fall.

Judging by what I saw during the first week of July at the We The People Convention in Columbus and at this month’s meeting of the Clermont County Tea Party, those representing the state’s sensible center-right majority will be ready.

They’ll need to be. Two pivotal measures will be on the ballot this fall.

One will attempt to repeal SB5, a commonsense public-sector labor relations measure which became law in March. SB5 prohibits public employee strikes in a state which has seen more than its fair share of learning-disruptive teacher walkouts. Among other things, it also limits the subjects of collective bargaining for public employees, requires public workers to pay at least 15% of their health insurance costs, and prohibits “fair share” payments which force nonunion workers to “contribute” to the costs of union contract negotiation and enforcement.

The repeal initiative will certainly qualify for the fall ballot. Organized labor and other leftist groups plan to spend millions, much of it collected through “a one-time, $54 dues increase,” trying to push it through.

Heavy union turnout should largely be offset by Ohioans aching for a chance to personally do something about Obamacare. That’s because, barring a last-minute setback, the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Amendment, a law which aims “to preserve the freedom of Ohioans to choose their health care and health care coverage,” including nullifying the financial penalties of Obamacare’s individual mandate, will also be on the ballot.

Given the political backdrop, the July 1-2 We The People Convention could not have come at a better time. Its ambitious mission: “To recruit, educate, and motivate Ohio citizens at the grassroots level to perform their constitutionally defined role in the governance of their townships, municipalities, and counties, as well as in our state and nation, by providing opportunities, knowledge, and training to ensure limited constitutional governance.” Having attended eleven breakout sessions while serving as a panelist in another, I can assure readers that the mission was largely accomplished.

As I wrote at my home blog on July 3: “This year’s event came about because of a recognition that as important as the achievements in last year’s congressional and U.S. Senate races were, it will take ongoing activism at the local, county and state levels to effect genuine long-term change, build an organizational and philosophical bench, and bring about an ultimate return to this country’s constitutional core values.”

We The People was no pep rally, though mealtime speeches featuring Tea Party Patriots National Coordinator Jenny Beth Martin, Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund, and presidential candidate Herman Cain certainly energized attendees. Cain also put in an impromptu appearance late Friday afternoon, where he was instantly mobbed by fans and well-wishers.

In my view, the most important of the over 40 breakout modules presented each day — a veritable smorgasbord with so many great entrees the convention could easily have gone four days instead of two — dealt with how to get government to work as it should at the state and local level. Six sessions were devoted to those considering running for office, starting with the decision to take the plunge all the way to the final 72 hours of Get Out The Vote. Aspiring activists learned the nuts and bolts of neighborhood and precinct organizing, the Ohio Open Records Act, and how to start, build and manage patriot groups. Buckeye State-oriented modules focused on what it would take to continue the state’s nascent turnaround. Ex-ACORN insider Anita Moncrief, who received a standing ovation even before she began to speak, gave a tremendous presentation on election integrity. For seekers of the bigger picture, there were modules on various aspects of Obamacare, constitutional core principles, the economy, the Federal Reserve, and the fraudulent “science” of global warming — oops, I meant “climate change.”

Yours truly was privileged to be on a panel with fellow Ohio bloggers Maggie Thurber of Thurber’s Thoughts and Matt Hurley of Weapons of Mass Discussion, with Matt’s co-blogger Mark Garbett pitching in to keep the discussion of blogging and online activism on track. We aim to make the State of Ohio Blogger Alliance at least as potent a force as it was in state politics several years ago, when it can fairly be claimed that we helped save several political offices from being occupied by unacceptable Republicans, unhinged Democrats, or severely conflicted individuals.

We The People organizers are so pleased with the turnout of well over 1,000 and the positive attendee feedback that they’re already beginning to plan next year’s event.

On July 5, I attended the monthly meeting of the Clermont County Tea Party just east of Cincinnati. The group’s guiding principles are simple: “Fiscal Responsibility, Limited Government, and Free Markets.” I was attracted to the meeting by the arrival of the Americans For Prosperity Foundation’s Running on Empty Tour. Apparently, I’m about the only one who had that motivation. Not to knock AFP’s presentation, which was outstanding and important, but the packed meeting room had what I was told is its normal monthly contingent of roughly 300 attendees.

In 75 minutes, in bang-bang fashion, I heard an Ohio Healthcare Freedom update, the AFP’s energy presentation, a trucking company owner’s revelations of how skyrocketing and volatile fuel costs have forced him to stop doing business in distant states, an EPA-driven sewage assessment horror story from next-door Hamilton County, an update on soaring water costs visited on Clermont County residents by a bloated water and sewer district with an edifice complex, and a brief overview of how the Community Reinvestment Act and excessive government intervention in the housing market has ruined what had been a well-functioning industry. Whew. This group is clearly near the top of its activist game, so it should be no surprise that reportedly 30% of the signatures necessary to get the healthcare initiative on the ballot came from Clermont County alone.

That’s the kind of intensity it will take to get the needed results in November, namely preservation of SB5 and voter enactment of the Ohio Healthcare Freedom Act. Both desired results would build further momentum for Tea Party-sympathetic candidates in critical 2012 primaries as well as the general election — just in time to ensure that our Punk President and his Gangster Government fail to get four more years. John Fund summed it up when he employed an old but rarely truer bromide at the end of his We The People speech: “Politics is too important to be left to the politicians.”

From Detroit:

Jul 10, 2011 / 06:52 pm

A 100 year-old crucifix pulled from a devastating Detroit parish fire in the 1960s is being restored and sent to a new church home in Michigan.

“It’s life size,” said Alton James from Detroit’s Good Shepherd parish, where the 13-foot crucifix has been kept safe over the decades.

The cross was the only surviving artifact from a fire – believed but never proved to be set by arsonists – that destroyed Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church on the city’s east side in 1963. Though no one was killed in the disaster, it grieved Detroit’s Belgian Catholic community, which had been attending the parish since its establishment in 1884.

Parish member and 19th-century Belgian immigrant Joannes Emmanuel Verbiest donated the cross, which is made out of fir and a 5-foot plaster corpus, to his church in 1911.

Pastoral associate Alton James told CNA/EWTN News that the spared crucifix was transferred to a nearby parish after the fire, which merged with other parishes over the decades and eventually became Good Shepherd.

But it wasn’t until recently that Mary Lou Schulte, great-granddaughter of Joannes Verbiest, started the effort to have the crucifix restored.

“This is an important piece of Detroit history and of Belgian history,” Schulte told the Detroit News. “It has to be preserved for generations to come. It’s our obligation.”

After inquiries were made at several local parishes, Schulte found the artifact a new home at St. Gerald Catholic Church in Farmington.

Go here for the rest of the story.