In an item which still has a breaking news tag, Josh Funk at the Associated Press (saved here for future reference, fair use, and discussion purposes) call retiring Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson a “centrist,” and almost seemed to mourn over “an increasingly polarizing climate” which made it clear that Nelson’s reelection would have been a steep uphill fight. Of course, there was no mention of the infamous Cornhusker kickback which was offered and then withdrawn in a firestorm of controversy in an Obama administration attempt to win Nelson’s support for the passage of ObamaCare — which they got anyway.

Here are several paragraphs from Funk’s report and the immediately following breaking news item:

Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson says he decided to leave the U.S. Senate after 2012 because he wants more free time, not because he’s retiring.

… The 70-year-old centrist Democrat and former governor announced his decision not to seek another term Tuesday. His departure is expected to make it easier for Republicans to win the only seat in Nebraska’s congressional delegation that hasn’t already gone to the GOP.

… He says he’s also confident he could have won himself, saying his poll numbers have improved despite being hammered by conservatives for supporting the federal health care overhaul.

… Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson survived nearly two decades representing heavily Republican Nebraska by carving a path down the political center. But faced with navigating that road in an increasingly polarizing climate, Nelson is stepping away – and swinging the door wide open for the GOP.

Nelson, the lone Democrat in Nebraska’s five-member congressional delegation, announced Tuesday that he wouldn’t seek a third term. He was facing a tough campaign against several Republicans who’ve spent the past several months attacking his support for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and federal stimulus legislation.

“Who can blame him given the current political mood of the country?” said former state Democratic Party Chairman Steve Achelpohl.

… Democrats banking on Nelson’s ability to leverage those centrist stances and capture statewide races were left scrambling, and many state activists acknowledged being taken by surprise.

One suspects that more than a few people are upset about the timing of Nelson’s announcement, given that he continued to press hard for campaign contributions this year while his party spent heavily in the Cornhusker State in an attempt to shore up Nelson’s image.

As for Nelson’s “centrism,” here are his grades from the Club for Growth during the past six available years:

• 2005 — 35%
• 2006 — 49%
• 2007 — 15%
• 2008 — 11%
• 2009 — 30%
• 2010 — 50%
• Lifetime as of 2010 — 32%

The arc of Nelson’s Club for Growth voting record gives away his opportunistic economic liberalism.

Once Democrats achieved a majority in the Senate after the 2006 elections, Nelson went far-left, scoring only one point above the late Ted Kennedy in 2007 and below many known lefties, including Sherrod Brown, Debbie Stabenow, and Bernie Sanders in 2008. His “improvement” in 2009, when he voted for the stimulus plan, and 2010, when he voted for ObamaCare, was clearly intended to mask Nelson’s inner leftist.

Fortunately, Nebraskans finally saw through the clever facade, even as Funk at the Associated Press bitterly clings to Nelson’s claim to be a moderate. Centrist, schmentrist.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

At the New York Times Thursday morning, reporter Choe Sang-Hun’s covering the funeral for late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il made it clear to readers that it “The funeral, and the mourning, appeared to have been meticulously choreographed by the government.” Meanwhile, over at the Associated Press (saved here at host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes), a story involving five reporters left the impression that the outpouring of grief was genuine and broadly shared.

Here are key paragraphs relating to that aspect of the funeral coverage, first from the Times (bolds are mine throughout this post):

North Korean Mourners Line Streets for Kim Jong-il’s Funeral

On the surface, the funeral appeared to proceed with a totalitarian choreography.

Kim Jong-un walked with one hand on the hearse and the other raised in salute. Neat rows of soldiers in olive-green uniforms stood, hats off and bowing, in front of the Kumsusan mausoleum, where Kim Jong-il’s body had been lying in state since his death was announced on Dec. 19.

When the funeral motorcade stopped before them at the start of a 25-mile procession through Pyongyang, they gave a last salute and a military band played the national anthem. Mr. Kim and other top officials did not walk the entire route; from inside their limousines, they watched crowds of citizens and soldiers wailing along the boulevards under a cold, gray sky.

Soldiers appeared to lead the outpouring of grief. They beat their chests in tears, footage broadcast on state television showed. They flailed their hands, stomped their feet and shouted “Father, Father,” as the limousine carrying a gigantic portrait of a smiling Kim Jong-il on the roof crawled past the crowds, followed by the hearse bearing his coffin draped with a red flag. A phalanx of soldiers carrying various party and military flags followed.

In one scene, soldiers rushed to keep mourners from spilling onto the road. But even among the crowds, the intensity of grief — thus loyalty to the regime — seemed to vary; those standing farther from the road seemed less effusive.

… The funeral, and the mourning, appeared to have been meticulously choreographed by the government to strengthen the cult of personality underpinning the Kim family’s rule. State television and radio announcers exhorted North Koreans to uphold the family with their lives. They even attributed the heavy snow fall ahead of the funeral to the “heaven’s grief” over Kim Jong-il’s death.

An exhortation from the state’s broadcasters in a totalitarian regime telling their country’s residents “to uphold the family with their lives” would tend to be taken literally.

At the AP, verbiage relating to the mourners expressed none of the skepticism seen in the Times:

NKoreans salute, cry for late leader Kim Jong Il

North Korea’s next leader escorted his father’s hearse in an elaborate state funeral on a bitter, snowy day Wednesday, bowing somberly and saluting in front of tens of thousands of citizens who wailed and stamped their feet in grief for Kim Jong Il.

… Mourners in parkas lined the streets of Pyongyang, waving, stamping and crying as the convoy bearing his coffin passed. Some struggled to get past police holding back the crowd.

“How can the sky not cry?” a weeping soldier standing in the snow said to state TV. “The people … are all crying tears of blood.”

The dramatic scenes of grief showed how effectively North Korea built a personality cult around Kim Jong Il despite chronic food shortages and decades of economic hardship.

As the Times’s Sang-Hun noted, the scenario was really one of “Mourn or else.”

The Times doesn’t get a total pass. While its story found space for the word “totalitarian” to describe the country’s state of affairs, it failed to hang any kind of authoritarian label directly onto Kim Jong Il himself. The AP, also failed to label the dead dictator, but at least indicated that he “ruled with absolute power.”

Several decades ago, one would have expected the Times to be the outlet gullibly relaying propaganda and the AP to exhibit at least a bit of skepticism. Today’s result is the opposite of that. It’s probably too much to hope for, but I’d like to think that the AP’s subscribing news, radio and TV outlets will do a collective “What the …?” when they see what Korea bureau chief Jean H. Lee and writers Hyung-jin Kim, Foster Klug, Scott McDonald and Sam Kim have produced.

(Image at top right is from “the Official Webpage of The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”)

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update: The AP has a 23-entry timeline for “Key dates in the life of North Korea’s Kim Jong Il.” It has produced no such timeline for former Czech President Vaclav Havel, who played a pivotal role in liberating that country from Communism in 1. Fortunately the UK Telegraph has.

At the Associated Press on Friday, Jim Kuhnhenn provided yet another reason why characterizing the wire service as The Administration’s Press is perfectly appropriate.

In wake of President Obama’s use of a “signing statement” objecting on constitutional grounds to congressionally-imposed “restrictions on his ability to transfer detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States,” Kuhnhenn wrote that presidential candidate Obama “promised to make his application (of) the (signing statement) tool more transparent.” No he didn’t, Jim; as will be shown, he promised not to use them. Kuhnhenn’s first three paragraphs, plus two later ones describing another signing statement matter, ran thusly (also note how the term “signing statement” was kept out of the story’s headline):

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Rules are here. Possible comment fodder follows. Other topics are also fair game.

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Rick Moran at American Thinker commits an all too frequent and grievous error when he writes that “The constitutionality of a law is determined by the Supreme Court and no one else.”

That’s a recipe for a permanent tyranny of nine robed judges.

Just one example — If they say gun ownership is not an individual right and that states and cities can therefore take away citizens’ guns, would Rick Moran really say that that a president or the people cannot and should not defy that? The President can, and should, and so should the people. And in case the justices are wondering what the people’s response will be — we will defy it.

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At the Wall Street Journal — “Wendy’s Set To Unseat Burger King as No. 2 (U.S.) Chain”

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At Politico — “SOPA is the end of us, say bloggers.”

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During the debt ceiling debacle of late July and early August, the national debt was stuck at $14.34 trillion. The day after the sides settled, it zoomed to $14.58 trillion. As of Friday, it was $15.13 trillion.

The national debt has gone up by $790 billion in four months and three weeks ($550 billion since a couple of days after the settlement).

If the debt increases continue at the daily rate of $3.85 billion a day seen since the debt-ceiling dust settled, that deal’s $16.39 trillion limit will be reached by mid-November 2012. If the daily bleed increases by only 4% to $4 billion a day, something which could happen as a result of even pretty small economic hiccups, we’ll hit the limit at the end of the week before Election Day.

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Obamaville Update: (HT Instapundit) — “… the sharp surge in suburban poverty is beginning to grab the attention of demographers, government officials and social service advocates.”

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From the “Don’t Believe It For a Minute” Dept. — “(Energy Secretary Chu Says Admin Is) ‘Committed to restarting . . . nuclear industry.” I’d guess that the “commitment” will last until November 7, 2012.

Just go to Daryn Kagan’s place for the video of the related NBC report:

… whether they know it or not — and that includes you, Hugh.

In the course of telling us why in his view no one can defensibly vote for Ron Paul, Hewitt lets out the following zinger:

When you vote for a candidate, you vote for all of his or her positions. You accept the moral responsibility for the working out of their platform in practice.

Assuming you’re not in a true lesser of two evils situation, Hugh is of course exactly right. But we are not in a lesser of two evils situation. There are several acceptable candidates in the field. Their names are not Ron Paul or Mitt Romney. I’ll let others take care of Ron Paul. Leave the Mittster to yours truly.

Have some ketchup and other condiments available, Hugh. We’re going to make you and every supporter of Mitt Romney eat those words in the next several days.

Mmm.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Thursday (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

The column shows how the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM), new yardstick for determining how many Americans are living in poverty and how many are “low income.” It’s the same one reported by the Associated Press earlier in the month as telling readers that 1 in 2 Americans is either poor or low income (the methodology used by the Census Bureau for the past half-century shows that it’s 1 in 3). SPM has the potential to be used to help Barack Obama get reelected, and to make ObamaCare artificially look like a success in its early years; the column demonstrates how.

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Mickey Kaus at the Daily Caller commented on the same subject matter yesterday (link in original):

More “New Poverty” Abuse

… What the AP actually discovered was that by changing the poverty line to this new more expansive measure–a measure, in part, of income inequality and not absolute poverty–the Census Bureau can now bring 146 million people–almost half the U.S. population–under 200% of the (new) poverty line (versus a mere 104 million using the traditional poverty line).

Besides the political manipulations described in my column there, there is also the potential for SPM to become the basis for determining eligibility for certain (or eventually all?) for federal welfare, entitlement, higher education, and other benefits, thereby further increasing dependency. Such a move might be doable by bureaucratic or presidential fiat without the messiness involved in, y’know, passing real legislation.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder follows. Other topics are also fair game.

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James Pethokoukis identifies “The 7 most illuminating economic charts of 2011.” Yep, this baby is still Number One:

Go see the others, especially the last.

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14 years in the making — “Two UAW officials sentenced to prison for strike-related extortion.” The story: “… the two former United Auto Workers officials agreed to end an 87-day strike at a GM plant in Pontiac, MI back in 1997 – but only after General Motors agreed to hire Campbell’s son and the son of another UAW official for high-paying jobs they were evidently not qualified for.”

I want to know who paid for their decade-plus defense. I sure hope it wasn’t the UAW or the union’s legal services plan, but I’m guessing it was one or the other.

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This (HT PJ Media) is a really long read, and yes, it’s an “advertorial.” But it makes a lot of important, easily verifiable points, especially in its section about the utter failures of Detroit during the past 50 years (“How Socialism Came to America … and Destroyed Detroit”).

The link’s Detroit recitation leads to a question, which I believe is every bit as relevant to several other U.S. cities as it is to Detroit, two of them (there are several others) being Cleveland and Baltimore. The question is this:

In the history of the human race — not just the history of the U.S., but in the history of the entire human race — has any nation’s government at all levels anywhere in the world taken so many decades of consciously chosen steps which have led to such huge depopulations (Detroit, 61% in 60 years; Cleveland, 56% in 60 years; Baltimore, 34% in 50 years) while leaving behind such serious ruin? If so, name one.

Memo to lefties: If you can’t (and I doubt you can), these and other cities stand as unique monuments in the history of the human race to the failure of big-government, paternalistic, largely union-driven, dependency-creating, civic bankrupticy-causing socialism.

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Here is more evidence (as if we need it) of the Obama White House’s boorishness, even toward people who are overwhelmingly on their side (“Journalists complain the White House press office has become overly combative”; HT The Blaze).

Among the lowlights:

• “a screaming, profane diatribe that lasted two or three phone calls …”
• “National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor, reacting to comments (Politico reporter Julie) Mason made in a TV discussion, sent her an e-mail that included an animated picture of a crying mime — a visual suggestion that she was whining.”
• “they either favor you or try to punish you, depending if they see you as friend or foe.”
• “They don’t seem to realize or care that [e-mails sent from the White House] will become part of the official archives of the presidency.”

Thanks to that lack of care, history will show that this White House was an immature collection of punks — imitating their leader.

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Predictions are that December will be a very good month for car sales — “New-vehicle retail sales in December are projected to come in at 1,033,700 — the first time retail sales will top 1 million since the Cash for Clunkers federal rebates drove strong sales in August 2009 …”

Oddly (or ominously), as commenter dscott pointed out at the Christmas Eve off-topic post, finished gasoline shipments have dropped significantly in the past eight weeks or so, and by far more than the normal summer vs. winter differences would explain (especially since prices have declined a bit since summer). There’s no way that gas mileage improvements in new vehicles vs. old would explain the drop-off. The only other alternatives I can think of are either that the economy is seriously slowing down (Can the “experts” be badly blowing their predictions of 2.5%-plus annualized fourth-quarter growth?) or that we’re suddenly importing a lot more gas (not crude oil, finished gasoline, which I think could only be coming from Mexico, Central America, or Canada).

Other less pessimistic suggestions are welcome.

Datelined Flagstaff, Arizona:

(12-22) 06:29 PST

Lauren Weinberg was seen leaving her mother’s home in Phoenix on Dec. 11 and later said her car became stuck in the snow a day later in east-central Arizona. The SUV carrying the Higgins family was buried in a snowdrift early this week in rural New Mexico.

The frigid ordeals that followed for occupants of both vehicles ended with their rescues Wednesday. Authorities said all are recovering at hospitals.
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A month ago, Aya Batrawy at the Associated Press’s Egyptian bureau described those who ransacked the Israeli embassy in Cairo as “protesters,” and absurdly asserted in the face of contrary evidence I was able to find in about five minutes that “the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel … has never had the support of ordinary Egyptians.”

Last week, in the wake of the burning — more like the gutting — of the Institut d’Egypte in Cairo and the destruction of and serious damage to thousands of priceless books, manuscripts, documents, and artifacts, Batrawy attempted to deflect blame to the military (which did have a role, as will be seen later) for not sufficiently protecting the building instead of placing it on the arsonists who did the damage. And of course, you’ll search in vain for any references to the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi radicals, or Islam. I guess Batraway didn’t want anyone to get any kind of crazy idea that this “Arab Spring” enterprise which Western news outlets so gullibly embraced earlier this year isn’t exactly working out. Here are several paragraphs from the AP repoter’s dispatch (bolds are mine throughout this post):

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I hope that the nominations for dumbest wire service item of the year are still open, because the December 20 report by Associated Press Education Writer Jay Pope on the alleged negative impact of a successful college football team on the grades of male students on campus must be placed in the running.

Based on an eight-year study of grades by economists at just one school, the University of Oregon, who are either getting grant money they don’t deserve or have totally run out of productive things to do, a three-win improvement by a football team can increase the differential between male and female students’ grade-point averages by as much as 0.0144 points. Seriously. Pope never disclosed the degree of difference I just cited, and wasted almost 900 words on a story which should never have been written. What follows is some of the AP writer’s vapid verbiage:

Study: When a football team wins, male grades drop

On campus, a successful football team is a cause for celebration.

So much celebration, in fact, that three economists have found a link between a winning season at one big-time football program and lower grades for male students.

In a new paper, the economists at the University of Oregon chart the grade point averages of students there alongside the fortunes of the football team between 1999 and 2007. Their findings could give ammo to critics of big-time college sports.

Their conclusion: When the Ducks were winning, students celebrated more and grades suffered. And that doesn’t bode well for upcoming report cards – the Ducks are 11-2 this season, Pac-12 champions for the third straight year, and headed to the Rose Bowl.

… Women’s grades held up better than men’s when the team was doing well – and the drop in men’s grades compounded a GPA gender gap that was already present at Oregon, as it is on many campuses.

… On average, men were earning GPAs of 2.94, compared to 3.12 for women. But the more the team won, the more the gap widened; three extra wins amounted to an approximately 8 percent increase in the difference.

Seriously, Jay, if you would have dusted off your calculator for a few seconds, you would have realized how infinitesimal the supposed effect of a successful football season is:

• The average male-female differential is 0.18 points.
• Three extra wins widens that difference by 8% to 0.1944 points (0.18 x 1.08).
• That means the average male GPA dropped from 2.94 to 2.9256. That's the equivalent of 14 out of every 1,000 male students getting a "C" instead of a B in one course during each fall quarter or semester. Oh the humanity!

All kinds of other influences, including runs of bad or good weather on campus perhaps moving some students to study out of sheer boredom, could easily be as important or more important than how the football team happens to be performing.

The caption at the photo accompanying the story reads in part: "When the college football team was racking up wins on the field, the men in classrooms partied so hard their grades took a dive." Words fail.

Instead of showing that "Their findings could give ammo to critics of big-time college sports," as Pope claims, what they instead show is that a certain Associated Press writer needs to go back to school to learn something about statistical significance, so that he (and his editors) won't be deceived by a bunch of academics attempting to push utter garbage on the public.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

This is the seventh year I have looked into how the media treats two Christmas-related topics: The use of “Christmas shopping season” vs. “holiday shopping season” and the relative frequency of “Christmas” and “holiday” layoff references.

Unfortunately, the hints of improvement late last year, when 20% of stories in the late December pre-Christmas search referenced the “Christmas shopping season,” largely disappeared this year. Well, at least the combined results of this year’s three sets of searches (at Google News, done shortly before Thanksgiving, about two weeks later, and a few days before Christmas) show that last year’s overall gains compared to the two previous years held. But, as will be seen after the jump, news reports still use the term “holiday shopping season” seven times as often as “Christmas shopping season.”

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