The author of “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies,” one of the two stellar bloggers at at Pundit Review, and co-host of “Pundit Review Radio” on WRKO in Boston, laid it out for the LA Times. Don’t bet the house on the Times printing it.

“Conservatives” who supported the candidacy of Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney for President, many of whom continue to encourage John McCain to take him on as VP, should be ashamed of themselves. The shocking part of all of this is that they know that what Jackson says below is true. I have personally verified this in the case of one very well-known “conservative”; others have sufficient legal grounding that they surely understand it, yet they ignore it.

Memo to conservative talkers and others who are still on the Romney bandwagon, or were during the primaries: Your non-stop advocacy on behalf of Romney just had consequences this week. Your failure to acknowledge the disastrously irresponsible role you have played to this point is a stain on your reputations.

THE LETTER

Foundational links:
- The Massachusetts Constitution.
- The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts’s Goodridge decision.

The LA Times article to which Gregg refers is already archived. For fair use and discussion purposes, I obtained the article from the ProQuest library database, and have posted about half of it here at my host.

One clarification: While I agree with Gregg’s characterization that efforts to codify same sex marriage in Massachusetts were “defeated” (i.e., “turned back”), the bills involved were technically put under a “study order” (H1710; S918), which appears to be a form of legislative limbo. I would suggest, but someone would have to confirm, that the bills never came to the floor of their respective chambers for an up-or-down vote either because the votes weren’t there, or because the legislators didn’t want to be forced to go on the record. If the result of this Boston Globe search on “gay marriage law” (without quotes) is any indication, the press in Massachusetts appears not to have covered the progress, or lack thereof, of these bills at all.

So here is Gregg’s letter (other links and the blockquotes within his letter were added by me; bolds and italics are in the original):

+++++++++++++++++++++

Same Sex Marriage is NOT legal in Massachusetts or California!

Your above the fold headline in today’s LA Times, “Massachusetts lives happily with same-sex marriage law,” by Elizabeth Mehren is totally inaccurate and misleading, and it is vital that you clarify this error for your readers.

The truth is that “same sex marriage” is not legal in Massachusetts which is why only about a month ago legislation was introduced to amend the current Massachusetts marriage statute (chapter 207) to legalize “same sex marriage.” (H1710 and S918) which were both defeated. This alone disproves your inaccurate headline!

Under the Massachusetts’ Constitution, the oldest functioning constitution in the world authored by John Adams, which served as the model for our Federal Constitution:

“[T]he people of this commonwealth are not controllable by any other laws than those to which their constitutional representative body have given their consent.” (PART THE FIRST, Article X.)

And “the people” via their elected representatives never “consented” to “same sex marriage.” The current marriage statute was never amended or suspended and to this day doesn’t include a provision for “same sex marriages.”

Many, including former Governor Romney, have claimed that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, “legalized same sex marriage” in issuing their Goodridge opinion in 2003, and that he was “ordered to enforce the law.” Both assertions are totally false.

Even the Goodridge Court admitted that their opinion in no way “legalized” same sex “marriage”:

“Here, no one argues that striking down the marriage laws is an appropriate form of relief.”

In fact, they admitted that under the statute, Chapter 207 of the Massachusetts General Laws, homosexual marriage is illegal:

“We conclude, as did the judge, that M.G.L. c. 207 may not be construed to permit same-sex couples to marry.”

The truth is that the Goodridge declaratory opinion should have been declared null and void since the court lacked the subject matter jurisdiction under Article V to even hear the case:

“All causes of marriage…shall be heard and determined by the governor and council, until the legislature shall, by law, make other provision.” (PART THE SECOND, Ch. III, Article V.)

Although many “conservative” lawyers and pundits have claimed that the “activist MSJC Court” legalized “same sex marriage,” it was the acting governor Mitt Romney, a “conservative” Republican who illegally ordered the Department of Public Health to change the marriage certificates from “husband” and “wife” to “partner A” and “partner B” and ordered Justices of the Peace and Town Clerks to solemnize and perform same sex marriage ceremonies or resign (which one did). Romney did this without an accompanying legal statute and in doing so violated his sworn oath to uphold and enforce the Constitution and the laws and statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

That being said, while it was Romney, not the court, who was solely responsible for installing “same sex marriage,” the certificates that Romney issued (over 150 of them he personally issued) are not worth the paper they are written on because they lack an accompanying enabling statute that recognizes “same sex marriage” and are therefore, according to the Massachusetts Constitution, null and void.

The truth is that according to the highest law of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Constitution, “same sex marriage” is not “legal.”

Nor is “same sex marriage” “legal” in California. The citizens in California approved a voter initiative to define marriage as between one man and one woman in 2000. The judiciary lacks the requisite constitutional authority to overturn any statute passed by the voters. Only the voters themselves can reverse a statute they themselves voted in. While the court is free to interpret the constitution of California and issue opinions, they are not authorized to “strike down” any specific statutes. It is vital that you acknowledge that “same sex marriage” is not legal in California either or prove that it is. Neither the people nor their elected representatives voted to amend or suspend the current marriage statute that doesn’t allow for “same sex marriage.” Until they do, it remains illegal.

You have an solemn obligation to acknowledge these facts and run a retraction for your readers. Anything less is journalistic and legal malpractice.

Looking forward to seeing if you choose to run this letter.

Sincerely,

Gregg Jackson
Los Angeles, CA

For more information on how “same sex marriage” is not “legal” in Massachusetts go here:
– Joint Letter to Governor Mitt Romney from Pro-Family Leaders; December 22, 2006
– And here: http://www.robertpaine.blogspot.com/

_______________________________________________

RELATED: “Still Illegal Coast to Coast“

Someone forgot to tell the Wall Street Journal’s Kelly Evans and Justin Lahart, carried here at the Arizona Republic, that they’re supposed to portray the economy in a bad light whenever and wherever possible. I’ll get to the pair’s report later.

That “bad light” directive seems seared into the minds of the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger and his AP colleagues, as they continue to “cling to recession,” and attempt to convince consumers and businesses that if perchance we’re not already in one, it’s just around the bend.

The AP’s persistence has borne dreadful fruit. Relentlessly downbeat reporting during at least the past six years by the wire service’s business reporters — who largely determine what most Americans see, hear, and read about the economy — is a big reason, if not the most important reason, why most Americans, as seen in the latest consumer confidence report, have a negative economic outlook and are convinced that we are in a recession.

Friday, Crutsinger worked mightily to take the lemonade that was the good housing starts report and turn it into lemons:

Construction of new homes increased by the biggest percentage in more than two years in April, a rare spot of good news amid the worst downturn in housing in more than two decades.

Analysts, however, played down the increase, noting that all the strength came from the volatile apartment sector. They said the painful housing slump is far from over as a record flood of foreclosures continues to add to the sizable stockpile of unsold homes.

….. The correction has proven to be a serious drag on the overall economy, raising worries that the country could be in danger of falling into a recession.

A second report yesterday showed that consumer confidence as measured by the University of Michigan/Reuters survey fell to a 28-year low of 59.5 in early May, down from 62.6 in April. The drop was blamed in part on rising concerns about higher gas and food prices.

Well, at least the AP reporter seemed to be acknowledging that we’re not currently in a recession.

But earlier today, in a story about a speech by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Crutsinger found some curiously unnamed others to do it for him:

Treasury secretary says markets are calmer now

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Friday that financial markets are “considerably calmer” now than they were two months ago. He predicted the economy will be rebounding by the second half of this year.

The economy has been pushed to the brink of a recession by a prolonged housing slump, a credit crisis, soaring energy prices and more than a quarter-million job layoffs over the past four months.

In his remarks, Paulson never used the word recession, although many private economists believe the country is in one.

But he did forecast that the stimulus checks going to 130 million households would help spur growth in the second half of the year.

Part of the problem with Crutsinger, AP’s business writers, and others is that they really don’t seem to understand that no one can show that “a quarter-million job layoffs” have occurred (starting point for obtaining the data below is here):

What HAS occurred is that total employment in the economy on a seasonally adjusted basis has gone down by 260,000 so far this year. But on the ground in the past four months, larger than usual job reductions in January, many of which represent seasonal workers leaving the workforce, were followed by smaller than usual job increases in February, March, and April. The net change is a pretty big negative number (-1,209,000), and does not compare well to the same months in the three preceding years. No one around here is claiming that the employment situation is wonderful, because it isn’t.

But no one, not even AP business reporters, can tell whether how much of these changes represent layoffs, voluntary terminations, firings for cause, retirements, or merely returning home after working the Christmas season or the post-Christmas retail closing season. Crutsinger’s characterization of what has occurred as “a quarter-million layoffs” (or “pink slips,” a favorite term of AP’s Jeannine Aversa) makes it look as if one can identify each person in the reported number by name. These and similar renderings by other AP business reporters during the past few months are totally disconnected from reality.

Clearly, we aren’t getting enough of the balanced output exemplified in the report by the WSJ’s Evans and Lahart.

In fact, given what we’ve been fed for so long by AP, what the pair wrote will come as a shock to some (original was published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal; original title was “Recession? Not So Fast, Say Some”; link may require paid subscription; bolds are mine):

As recession fails to materialize, economists revise predictions

A funny thing happened to the economy on its way to recession: It has taken a detour.

That, at least, is the view of a growing number of economists, including some who not long ago were saying a recession was all but inevitable.

They note that stock and credit markets have steadily improved since the Federal Reserve intervened to keep Bear Stearns Cos. from bankruptcy in early March, while a series of economic reports have been stronger than expected.

….. “A couple months ago it seemed like we were on the abyss,” said Jay Bryson, global economist with Wachovia Corp., referring to the seizing up of credit markets and the collapse of Bear Stearns. “Things have changed. . . . The numbers we’ve seen recently haven’t been as bad as we were led to believe just a few months ago.”

….. Job losses, meanwhile, have been less severe than they usually are in recessions. Many economists think the government’s earliest estimate of first-quarter GDP growth - 0.6 percent - will be revised upward. After reviewing the retail-sales data, economists at Global Insight, a Waltham, Mass.-based forecasting firm, predicted the government would increase its assessment of GDP growth in the first quarter to 1 percent at an annual rate. They forecast continued growth in consumer spending, partly because of tax rebates and stimulus checks.

In February, Global Insight joined Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Merrill Lynch in declaring the U.S. to be in recession. Now, Global Insight’s Brian Bethune says that while the firm is still forecasting a recession, “it’s conceivable we could avoid it” …..

When are the luminaries just cited, who just a few months ago said that a recession had already begun, going to say, “We were wrong. We are sorry”? And how could the crack AP business reporting corps not have picked up on the change of sentiment reported by Evans and LaHart?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

You have to wonder how this CNN headline and story, which includes a shocking statistic, about the earthquake in China got out (bold is mine):

Parents’ losses compounded by China’s one-child policy

Li Yunxia wipes away tears as rescue crews dig through the ruins of a kindergarten class that has buried her only child — a 5-year-old boy.

Other parents wail as soldiers in blue masks trudge through the mud, hauling bodies from the rubble on stretchers.

“Children were screaming, but I couldn’t hear my son’s voice,” she says, sobbing.

This grim ritual repeated itself Thursday across southwestern China, as thousands of mothers and fathers await news about their sons and daughters.

….. The grief is compounded in many cases by a Chinese policy that limits most couples to one child, a measure meant to control explosive population growth.

As a result of the one-child policy, the quake — already responsible for at least 15,000 deaths — is producing another tragic aftershock:

Not only must thousands of parents suddenly cope with the loss of a child, but many must cope with the loss of their only child.

China’s population minister recently praised the one-child rule, which dates to 1979, saying it has prevented 400 million children from being born.

….. That reality has cast parents like Li into an agonizing limbo — waiting to discover whether their only child is alive or dead.

Joe Stalin, himself responsible for the deaths of countless millions (literally true; the total has been best-guesstimated at between 20 million and 30 million), once said that “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” What does that make 400 million? It would appear that at least 300 million of those “prevented” children were victims of abortion; this Abortion Facts link reports that over 10 million abortions took place in China in just one of the 29 years since the one-child policy took effect.

Though I suppose the point might be made, I’m not going to try to argue that losing “only” one child of several would make parents’ grief more manageable. I just find it very interesting, given the relative pass the US media has given Communist China during its government-imposed 29-year “one-child” horror, that this story took the angle that it did — and that it got past its editors.

It will be very interesting to see how long this Kyung Lah’s CNN dispatch remains available. Saving it to the hard drive might be advisable.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

How different do you think Americans’ take on the current economy would be if the business press picked up on the fact that the bad employment news is coming predominantly out of two struggling states — and that most of the rest of the nation is holding its own?

That’s the question that occurred to me as I looked at April’s Bureau of Labor Statistics regional and state employment and unemployment report this morning.

Three things stick out:
- How big of a drag California is in the overall employment picture.
- How much of an outlier Michigan is.
- How Oklahoma continues to impress.

How much California and Michigan are affecting the overall picture is a real eye-opener:

(Note: The seasonally adjusted rate for all states differs from the nationally reported rate of 5.0% earlier this month because of differences in data collection methods.)

The Not-So-Golden State and the home of the Wolverines have a combined 15% of the workforce, but almost 20% of the unemployed. Without them (tempting, but I have relatives in CA who needs to be warned first), the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate would be 0.2% lower, the unadjusted rate would be 0.3% lower, and the press wouldn’t be talking about the supposed recession (OK, they wouldn’t be talking about it quite as much).

Only three other “states” — relatively small AK, DC, and RI — have seasonally adjusted or unadjusted unemployment rates of 6.0% or above. Roughly two-thirds of all states have unemployment rates of 4.9% or lower.

So at least from a jobs standpoint, if you want to talk about “economies” in recession (a term that should really be limited to whole countries), we should be talking about the states of California and Michigan, because the rest of the country is doing pretty well. I don’t recall two states having such a disproportionate impact on the national picture during other economic rough patches, with maybe Texas and Louisiana in the late 1970s and early 1980s being an exception.

If the election ends up being about the economy, and John McCain loses, it’s a pretty good bet that Arnold Schwarzenegger won’t make the Arizona Senator’s Christmas card list.

Many in the business press, rather than focusing on the mostly self-inflicted problems in California and Michigan, would appear to want to make it look as if economic sluggishness is a nationwide phenomenon, when it clearly isn’t.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma’s exceptional performance continued in April, as its seasonally adjusted and unadjusted unemployment rates came in at 3.2% and 2.9%, respectively — down 1.2% and 1.0%, respectively from April 2007. No state with a larger population has lower unemployment.

I theorized last month (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) that the Sooner State’s enforcement-focused immigration legislation passed last year might a main contributor to its outstanding employment situation. The longer its rate stays much lower than the rest of the nation’s — even if California and Michigan are taken out of the comparison — the more compelling that theory will be.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

The Federal Reserve reported Thursday that April industrial production fell, the second negative reading in the past three months. Specifically, February and April fell by 0.7%, and March showed an increase of 0.2%.

In May 2001, that same report showed that production fell for the seventh consecutive month.

Seasonally adjusted data from the Fed indicates that industrial production during those seven months (October 2000 through April 2001) fell 2.6%.

During the past seven months (October 2007 through April 2008), industrial production has fallen 1.7%.

Guess which set of circumstances generated more talk of recession?

Covering the the 2001 report, the New York Times, appearing ever mindful that a Republican had occupied the White House less than four months, kept talk of a recession to a bare minimum:

Production At Factories Decreases For 7th Month

Industrial production fell in April for a seventh consecutive month, the longest string of declines since 1982.

Production at factories, mines and utilities declined 0.3 percent last month, after falling 0.1 percent in March, the Federal Reserve said. Manufacturing of business equipment, appliances and metals all dropped in April.

….. The string of declines in industrial production is the longest since March-December 1982. The economy was in recession from July 1981 to November 1982, according to statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Note that the Times made no attempt to claim that the country was currently in a recession.

The Associated Press’ Martin Crutsinger technically didn’t do that either, but he got as close as he possibly could while raising R-word specter and playing clever word games (bolds are mine):

Industrial output falls, second time in 3 months

Industrial output plunged in April as factories making everything from autos to heavy machinery felt the adverse effects of the weak economy. Analysts held out hope that production will revive in the second half of the year, helped by the government’s economic stimulus checks.

Industrial production dropped 0.7 percent last month, the Federal Reserve reported Thursday, more than double the decline that economists had expected.

….. Brian Bethune, an economist at Global Insight, said production will shrink again this quarter, marking the third negative quarter, the longest stretch of weakness in manufacturing since the last recession in 2001.

Bethune predicted a mild rebound for manufacturers starting this summer when consumers start spending 130 million economic stimulus checks that are now being mailed out.

“That extra cash is expected to roll gradually into consumer spending by June,” he said, calling the timing “indeed fortuitous.” Many analysts believe the $168 billion stimulus program Congress passed in February will not keep the country from toppling into a recession but will make the downturn shorter and milder than it otherwise would have been

….. The weak economy has triggered four straight months of job losses, often a sign that a recession has started. However, the April drop was just one-fourth the size of job losses in March, giving hope that the current economic slowdown may not be as severe as the past two recessions.

Clever Crutsinger is treating “recession,” “downturn,” and “current economic slowdown” (emphasis “current”) as synonyms. This would appear to be his lame attempt to get his “we’re in a recession” digs in while claiming plausible deniability.

There is nowhere near the level of evidence available to credibly claim that a recession is underway. Economic growth has been positive if anemic, the unemployment rate declined in April, and the weighted average of the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing and non-manufacturing indices is decidedly positive.

Yet Crutsinger, as noted last week, continues to “cling to recession.”

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

PRECEDING POST:
- May 12 — Attention Stanley Kurtz Re Obama, Wright, Trumpet: I’ve Got You Covered
FOLLOW-UP POST:
- May 14 — Trumpet Newsmagazine: Cover Pic Highlights (Farrakhan, Sharpton, Jackson, Others)

_______________________________________________

Stanley Kurtz of the Weekly Standard has done yet more of the investigative work into Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), and Barack Obama that the not merely fawning, but moaning and ogling press (originally on CNN; link is to YouTube; HT Michelle Malkin) won’t do.

I have been arguing for weeks that “it seems inconceivable” that Obama would never have looked at the contents of TUCC’s weekly church bulletins. Kurtz gets to the same place in his review of the issues of Trumpet Newsmagazine that he could get his hands on.

Kurtz reports that he obtained the 2006 issues of Trumpet, “from the first nationally distributed issue in March to the November/December double issue.” In “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet,’” Kurtz reaches the only conclusion anyone still left thinking, instead of swooning, can reach (bolds are mine):

To the question of the moment–What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?–I answer, Obama knew everything, and he’s known it for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah Wright’s disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack Obama must have long been aware of his pastor’s political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year’s worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine, Wright’s glossy national “lifestyle magazine for the socially conscious,” makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise.

Wright founded Trumpet Newsmagazine in 1982 as a “church newspaper”–primarily for his own congregation, one gathers–to “preach a message of social justice to those who might not hear it in worship service.” So Obama’s presence at sermons is not the only measure of his knowledge of Wright’s views. Glance through even a single issue of Trumpet, and Wright’s radical politics are everywhere–in the pictures, the headlines, the highlighted quotations, and above all in the articles themselves. It seems inconceivable that, in 20 years, Obama would never have picked up a copy of Trumpet. In fact, Obama himself graced the cover at least once (although efforts to obtain that issue from the publisher or Obama’s interview with the magazine from his campaign were unsuccessful).

….. There can be no mistaking it. What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Everything. Always.

As would be expected of a preacher skilled at conveying his message, Wright has long been a multimedia purveyor of his radical “Black Liberation” theology and politics. That Trumpet has been yet another extension of those efforts should surprise absolutely no one.

As also might be expected in a slicker, more expensive production, Kurtz clearly documents that Wright’s Trumpet rhetoric is in some respects even more strident and radical than what we’ve seen in his videotaped sermons, and in the rants of Wright and others in TUCC’s weekly bulletins.

Though he doesn’t identify its title, Kurtz refers frequently to a Wright-authored opinion piece (”Looking Back, Looking Around, Looking Ahead!”) in Trumpet’s May 2006 issue to exemplify that stridency and radicalism. That very article happens to be the one Trumpet item I have been able to obtain in my search efforts. I have uploaded it to my host (first and second pages; third page; OR click on mini-pics below; images will open in separate windows) for fair use and discussion purposes:

Among the choice items you will see, some of which Kurtz also excerpted in part or full, are these (items do not appear in the same order as in original):

• “(There can be no such thing as black racism because) “Africans do not control the military, the police, the legal structure or any of the means to enforce their race prejudice.”
• “White supremacy undergirds the thought, the ideology, the theology, the sociology, the legal structure, the educational system, the healthcare system, and the entire reality of the United States of America and South Africa!”
• “Hurricane Katrina gave us some important images that are analogous to the future that our children have to learn how to navigate. When the levees in Louisiana broke alligators, crocodiles and piranha swam freely through what used to be the streets of New Orleans. That is an analogy that we need to drum into the heads of our African American children (and indeed, all children!).
          In the flood waters of white supremacy that our children have to negotiate economically, educationally, culturally, socially and spiritually, there are not only sharks in those waters, there are also crocodiles, alligators and piranha!”
• “Educating our children to the reality of white supremacy becomes crucial for African Americans and for all Americans. Educating our children is a term that I use pointedly. I do not mean “training” our children. That is a part of our problem now. We have trained our children and not educated them!”
• “We need to educate our children about the white supremacist’s foundations of the educational system, the educational philosophy and the very curricula that immerses them in a culture of white supremacy from kindergarten through graduate school!”

Readers will want to know that, at least at that time, Wright had grand plans for meeting the education “need” he identified in the last of the excerpted items above:

We are on the verge of launching our African-centered Christian school. The dream of that school, which we articulated in 1979, was built on hope. That hope still lives. That school has to have at its core an understanding and assessment of white supremacy as we deconstruct that reality to help our children become all that God created them to be when God made them in God’s own image.

I do not know whether TUCC has opened the school Wright said was “on the verge” of opening, or, if it has opened, whether Barack Obama’s daughters, Malia and Natasha, have ever attended.

I do not have the missing covers to which Kurtz refers, but as I noted Monday, I have three examples of the those covers as they were presented in related TUCC church bulletins (each opens in a new window here [May 2007; Obama alone on cover], here [roughly Jan. 2005; Obama and Wright on cover], and here [roughly March 2006; Obama is in a pantheon of roughly 15 civil-rights “leaders,” many historical, two of whom include Wright and Louis Farrakhan]).

As Kurtz concluded, “What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Everything. Always.”

When is someone in the traveling press going stop ogling long enough to call Barack and Michelle Obama out for the poison they have at best acquiesced to, or at worst bought into, for two decades?

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ADDENDUM: Still to come — interesting others who have graced the cover of Trumpet.

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Previous Related Posts:
- May 12 — Attention Stanley Kurtz, Re Obama, Wright, Trumpet: I’ve Got You Covered
- May 5 — The Obamas and the TUCC Bulletins — A May 5 Series:
— May 5 — Selected Quotes from Others in the Wright - TUCC Bulletins
— May 5 — MORE Selected History and Economics Lessons from the Wright-TUCC Bulletins
— May 5 — Selected History and Economics Lessons from the Wright-TUCC Bulletins
— May 5 — The TUCC Bulletins: ‘European Dominance’ and the Church’s Black-Power Roots
- May 1 — Obama Bulletin Blowback: Wright’s Stated and Sanctioned Equations of US War Efforts with Terrorism Are Nothing New, and Have Been Frequent
- April 18 — Obama’s Ongoing Nightmare: Wright’s Rants, Church Bulletin Bombshells, and More
- April 17 — Hillary Clinton Channels March BizzyBlog Wright-TUCC Bulletin Post
- April 15 – Per Rev. Wright: Jefferson a Pedophile AND Rapist, Washington Also Fathered a Slave Child
- April 8 — The Objectively Unfit Barack Obama
- March 26 — Another Bulletin Bomb from Obama’s Pastor, Plus Helpful Campaign Assistance from BizzyBlog
- March 24 — JPost Picks up Obama Condemnation of TUCC Bulletin’s Hamas Column
- March 21 — Obama (Shhh) Blasts Hamas Op-Ed in Church Bulletin, Silent on Other Bulletin Items
- March 21 — Did The New Republic Out Obama As a TUCC Bulletin Reader in March 2007?
- March 20 — Church Bulletin Bonus: Omid Safi and the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU)
- March 17 — TUCC’s Church Bulletins from July 2007 Probably Make Whether Obama Was Present on July 22 Irrelevant

Fox results link; ABC results link.

12:05 a.m. — Holy moly. With 84% counted, Hillary is up 66.8 - 26.0 - 7.2 over Obama and Edwards.

Forty. One. Points.

That is almost without doubt the most lopsided loss by an alleged presumptive nominee in all of American history.

Tomorrow morning’s relentless Old Media spin will be “big freaking deal.” Despite that, you’d better believe Mountaineer State Democrats have sent a message to their party that it isn’t over, and it shouldn’t be over. My prediction as to how many times you’ll hear the actual vote percentages read: Absolutely zero.

Jim Geraghty at the Campaign Spot says this:

Obama received glowing, it’s-over-he-is-the-nominee coverage for the past six days, and that amounted to nothing in West Virginia. One has to wonder if the giddy praise and tingling feelings jolting up the legs of the Chris Matthewses, Keith Olbermanns and the cable news “Wright-free zones” of the world amounts to a hill of beans out in Exurban America.

Actually Jim, the Old Media favoritism may have been worse than nothing, as it may have created a backlash.

If you assume that WV’s 3.5% African-American population made up only 5% of the Dem primary electorate (it was probably closer to 6%), and that African-Americans voted 90% for Obama (it was 91% in NC and 90% in IN last week), my calcs indicate that Obama got an unfathomable (I can’t believe I’m typing this) 22.5% of the non-African-American DEMOCRATIC vote. Tweak the numbers to 6% of the turnout and 90.5% of the vote — both realistic possibilities — and it drops to 21.7%. I’ll finalize this in the morning when 99% - 100% of the ballots are counted.

But, of course, Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Rezko, et al don’t matter (/sarc).

10:30 p.m. — Hillary is up 65-28-7 over Obama and Edwards with 56% counted. What’s stunning to me is how a state that was reliably Democratic, except in GOP blowouts (For Clinton in 1992 by 13%, in 1996 by 15%; for Dukakis in 1988 by 5%; for Carter in 1980 by 4%, won in 1976 by Carter) is now considered a total “who cares?” write-off by Obama Democrats. In 2000, Bush got only 52% of the vote, but in 2004, he got 56%. All of this has occurred while the state’s demographic makeup has, I believe, not changed that much.

Will be back at about midnight …..

10:20 p.m. — Fox has more complete results, and shows that Edwards is getting the other 7%. If it’s a protest vote, which one is it a protest against?

9:40 p.m. — Clinton is up 63%-30% on Obama with 23% of precincts counted. Who in the heck is getting the other 7%?

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I’m saving my posts on Wright, Obama, and Trumpet Newsmagazine until tomorrow, so the West Virginia primary will be out of the way when they post.

Mrs. Clinton is expected to win in a landslide, and Old Media says it will mean nothing — just like the fact that Obama couldn’t get more than about 35% and 41% of the non-African-American Democratic vote last week in North Carolina and next-door Indiana, respectively, mean nothing.

Uh-huh.

As explained previously, this is a near-dead thread because Democratic Party rules enable even pledged delegates to change their minds at the August Democratic Convention.

I’ll check in at about 9:30 to see how much has been counted, and then again when the large majority of ballots are in.

How do you write an article about Uncle Sam’s April financial results without telling readers how much money came in and went out — especially if what came in was an all-time record?

Yesterday and today, many journalists have shown us how. Two of them are Martin Crutsinger of the Associated Press and Michael M. Phillips of the Wall Street Journal.

Crutsinger’s AP report actually made it appear as if collections is the problem area. In fact, as you will eventually see below, April’s result had nothing to do with “dampening” revenue growth, and everything to do with exploding spending.

Crutsinger began as follows:

Federal government surplus for April shrinks

The federal government ran a budget surplus of $159.3 billion in April, smaller than a year ago.

The Treasury Department reported Monday that the budget surplus for April was 10.4 percent lower than in April 2007.

The government traditionally runs a surplus in April, the month that tax returns are due. However, the weak economy has been dampening growth in revenues this year.

Crutsinger avoided mentioning April’s all-time record tax collections (April 2007 was the previous record), and the potential implications:

As I wrote on April 29 (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), when it first became clear that a record month for federal receipts was in the making, one key element of this supply-side stunner of a result may be a positive leading economic indicator:

The unexpected increase in this not-withheld category consists mostly of final payments that accompany individual 1040s for 2007, plus first-quarter 2008 estimated payments. The increase may not only reflect that entrepreneurs and the self-employed had pretty decent years in 2007, but that many of them are thinking, in the face of relentless media harping to the contrary, that 2008 will be at least as profitable.

For some reason, the WSJ’s Phillips focused this morning on one line item that makes up less than 15% of total receipts, saved the really good receipts news for his fifth paragraph, and didn’t recognize just how good it was:

U.S. Receives Less From Corporate Taxes

With turmoil rocking financial markets and housing woes slowing the economy, corporate tax revenues are falling and leaving big holes in the federal budget.

The Treasury Department reported Monday that corporate income-tax revenue over the first seven months of the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, was $171.1 billion, 14.7% lower than during the same period a year earlier. Meantime, government outlays rose 7.3%, to $1.7 trillion, and the federal deficit ballooned to $152 billion, 88% higher than the same period last fiscal year.

….. One slight bright spot is that while growth in revenue from individual income taxes has slowed, it has held up better than expected. That includes taxes paid by individuals on April 15, which reflect economic activity in calendar 2007, and those withheld monthly by employers, which reflect current business trends. Overall individual income-tax receipts reached $748 billion over the first seven months of fiscal 2008, up 6% from the period in fiscal 2007.

The decline in corporate tax collections, using Phillips’s 14.7% decrease, is about $29 billion. His “slight bright spot” from individual taxes, using his reported 6% increase, is over $42 billion. As you can see from the table above, the not-withheld portion of those collections, which is heavily influenced by tax payments from entrepreneurs, partnerships, and Sub-S corporations, was up $33 billion in April alone. For the first seven months of this year, those receipts (excluding refunds, which have not changed in an amount material to the gross collection numbers) are up by 12.3% over fiscal 2007.

(To verify, go to the Daily Treasury Statements for April 30, 2008 and April 30, 2007. Then compare the totals of the line item of the same description, plus a later, much smaller item called “Individual Income Taxes.” April 2008’s total is $357.6 billion [$342.0 + $15.6]; April 2007’s is $318.3 billion [$306.1 + 12.3]. $357.6 billion is 12.3% greater than $318.3 billion.)

As for the deficit, here is the clearly gloomy comparative news for the month of April and year-to-date (source: April 2008 Monthly Treasury Statement):

AP’s Crutsinger avoided mentioning spending, where Uncle Sam’s problem so obviously lies, until the seventh of his eight paragraphs. This later placement increases the likelihood that the spending news won’t appear at all in many edited reports at AP-subscribing publications.

To his credit, Phillips got spending into his second paragraph, but “somehow” never got around to enumerating April’s or fiscal 2008’s receipts.

Interestingly, if you follow the WSJ link from a Google News search on “treasury receipts” (not in quotes) done at about 10 a.m., you end up at Phillips’s article, which does not contain the text relating to receipts and disbursements shown at the search result (link not provided, as results on the same search done now may be different):

This search result, obtained by clicking on the “all 135 articles” link pictured above, and then viewing results “with duplicates included,” clearly shows that Crutsinger’s narrative dominated the coverage of yesterday’s Treasury report.

This would explain why you probably haven’t seen or heard anyone mentioning the April collections record.

Mission accomplished, eh Martin?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

FOLLOW-UP POSTS:
- May 14 — As Media Ogles, Stanley Kurtz Trumpets the Obama-Wright Connections
- May 14 — Trumpet Newsmagazine: Cover Pic ‘Highlights’ (Farrakhan, Sharpton, Jackson, Others)

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May 14 Topside Update: The Trumpet and cover pictures story has been picked up by Sean Hannity (see box with rotating items on the left side at his site) –

Sean, I’d be happier if you were linking directly here, but the fact that the news is spreading is the important thing. Any visiting Hannity fans should be sure to go to the follow-up posts above.

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(begin original post)

The Cover Guy

The Trumpet Newsmagazine cover Stanley Kurtz of the Weekly Standard is looking for is here (click here or on the pic to enlarge in a separate window):

It’s the March 2007 issue. The cover image was found in the March 11, 2007 Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) bulletin.

Topics on the cover of this issue of Trumpet are:
- Barack Obama: History in the Making
- Africans in Disapora, Part 2 (in the United Kingdom)
- A Woman’s Worth, as Seen in the Eyes of Angela M. Brown, Cheryle Robinson Jackson, and Rhoda McKinney Jones
- Rear View: Abortion

Other Covers

Here’s an Obama-Wright bonus, as found in the December 26, 2004 TUCC bulletin (graphic is not clickable):

In this case, the topics are very difficult to decipher; Because of blurred pixelation, I can’t even tell what the issue date is. Since the Trumpet shown in the previous week’s bulletin had a different cover, I would guess that the above Obama-Wright cover is from January 2005.

As to topics, I can’t tell at all, except for the obvious “Yes We Did!”

Finally, there’s one more cover where Obama makes an appearance. It was found in the February 12, 2006 TUCC bulletin (click here or on the pic to enlarge):

As with the previous blurred cover, I can’t tell what month it relates to. But I can read its title (”The Legacy Lives On”), and I believe I am correct in recognizing Obama, Wright, and Louis Farrakhan in the second row from the bottom. Positive IDs of the others would be useful.

Kurtz Is Right

The three Trumpet covers shown here may not represent all where Obama made an appearance, as my 125-plus collection of TUCC bulletins only represents about 65% or so of those I would expect to have been issued over the period from late May 2004 until late March 2008.

Kurtz writes that “efforts to obtain that (March 2007 Obama cover) issue from the publisher or Obama’s interview with the magazine from his campaign were unsuccessful.” I would suggest that it’s because it would, as does what’s on display at this post, give further support to Stanley Kurtz’s prime contention, which, based on his investigative work and the most rudimentary application of common sense, is this:

To the question of the moment–What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it?–I answer, Obama knew everything, and he’s known it for ages. Far from succumbing to surprise and shock after Jeremiah Wright’s disastrous performance at the National Press Club, Barack Obama must have long been aware of his pastor’s political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year’s worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine, Wright’s glossy national “lifestyle magazine for the socially conscious,” makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise.

Memo to CNN’s John Roberts, who says he has established a “Wright-free zone” on his program: Wright-free, schmight-free.

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ADDENDUM: There are a lot of “interesting” people gracing the Trumpet Newsmagazine covers I have seen. I will get to them in a later post.

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UPDATE, 11:55 p.m.: Welcome to The Corner, LGF and American Thinker readers! Come back for tomorrow morning’s post, which will to go up at about 7:45 a.m.

During the 1992 presidential campaign, when incumbent Vice President Dan Quayle made a spelling mistake, the New York Times was all over it. It’s clear from the Times’s story that the rest of the media was also in full pursuit:

So Jay Leno has a week’s worth of new Dan Quayle jokes. At a school here, everyone was quite hush-hush the day after the visiting Vice President spelled potato wrong while directing a spelling bee.

….. Reporters stood around today for hours outside of the house where 12-year-old William Figueroa lives. He has become a national celebrity for having spelled the word correctly on the blackboard, only to have Mr. Quayle, holding a flash card with the word spelled incorrectly, encourage him to add an E at the end.

On Friday, Barack Obama, as NewsBusters John Stephenson reported, told an Oregon audience that “I’ve been in 57 states, (with) I think one left to go.”

Searches at the Times on [Obama “57 states”] and [Obama “fifty-seven states”] — each typed as indicated — came up with the following results:

But a Times search on “Quayle potato” (not in quotes) from June 10 to November 10, 1992 shows that the Old Gray Lady’s reporters, columnists, writers, and editorialists went back to the story another 38 times between that first story and shortly after Election Day.

Identical Obama-related searches at the Washington Post yielded the following (57 states; fifty-seven states):

The Associated Press? Surely you jest (here and here).

A Google News search on the first of the two terms returned 27 results, only four of which could be considered Old Media outlets: at a Reuters blog; a Bloomberg “Campaign Notebook” item carried at the Houston Chronicle; a Los Angeles Times blog entry; and an MSNBC “First Read” blog entry. Only Reuters gave the story headline coverage.

The others buried it in a series of presidential campaign-related items (”snippets,” if you will). It was the fifth topic at Bloomberg, the third at the LA Times, and made up the last two paragraphs of a 1250-word entry at MSNBC.

(UPDATE: An NB commenter [thanks for catching it!] has pointed out that there is also an LA Times blog entry near the end of those 27 results that has headline treatment. I would suggest that it’s doubtful that the paper has given the "Obama 57" story main-site or print edition treatment. This LAT site search on [Obama "57 states"] would appear to confirm that.)

Old Media’s treatment of the story thus far indicates a strong likelihood that Obama’s arguably dumber gaffe has not found its way into the primary web sites or print editions of most newspapers, and that it never will. Has the flub made it, or will it make it, to network and/or cable newscasts? The prognosis is: Doubtful.

By contrast, a Google News Archive Search on “Quayle potato” for the period from June 10 to November 10, 1992 — likely an incomplete rendering of the news that was available at the time — returned over 850 items (link is to Page 43 of a 20-per-page list). A scan of the results indicates that the press not only went into saturation mode when the story broke, but kept going back to it at a fairly sustained pace until Election Day.

Will anyone in the traditional press corps even allow anyone to mention Obama’s “mis-state-ment” in a month? Will CNN’s John Roberts add “no 57-state zone” to his “Wright-free zone“?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Note: This was originally posted at Pajamas Media Thursday morning under the title “Economy Improves, Old Media Ignores.”

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Those who are rooting for the economy to go into a tailspin cannot be pleased.

First, the government told us that the economy grew 0.6% in the first quarter.

I wasn’t happy, because I’d like to see the economy get back to at least the 3.2% average growth it experienced from the second quarter of 2003 through the third quarter of 2007.

But many in the business press seemed displeased for the opposite reason — that the number wasn’t negative. Since the everyday working definition of a “recession” is “a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters,” it meant that there is no solid evidence of a recession.

Nevertheless, the Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa insisted that “A growing number of economists believe the economy is in a recession and is indeed contracting now.”

Rex Nutting at MarketWatch.com went way over the top, as you can see from these article excerpts:

U.S. could have recession without drop in GDP
Analysis: Growth isn’t everything; jobs and incomes count more

….. the economy may be on track for the first recession in U.S. history without any quarterly decline in growth.

….. GDP is a pretty crude measurement of economic well-being.

….. GDP is a quarterly accounting gimmick that may not be an accurate reflection of the economic reality.

….. With GDP showing a small positive number in Wednesday’s report, no doubt many people will cheer that the economy has therefore avoided a recession. But that’s not what the other economic numbers show.

Nutting, MarketWatch’s Washington bureau chief, quoted no outside economist, analyst, government bureaucrat, think-tank researcher, or anyone else to back up his extraordinary claims. I have never seen anyone call GDP a “crude measurement” or an “accounting gimmick.” If I were working at Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, I’d feel insulted.

Fortunately for the rest of us, the “other economic numbers” that followed last week’s GDP report do not support Nutting’s peculiar notion of “recession with growth.”

On Friday, the government’s employment report showed that the economy added over 700,000 jobs in April.

That’s right. Here’s the proof:

As you can see, government’s best estimate is that 703,000 more real people were actually working in April than were in March, and that 1,810,000 more were really doing so in April than in January.

If you’re surprised, I don’t blame you. Rex Nutting may be too.

That’s because the “official” jobs increase or decline and the unemployment rate are both adjusted for seasonality, or changes in real employment levels that have occurred in previous years. The fact that the number of jobs added in April 2008 was less than the number added in previous Aprils goes a long way towards explaining why the most recent seasonally adjusted jobs change was a loss of 20,000.

The business press has abused the seasonally adjusted job-loss numbers for the past three months by pretending that they represent actual people thrown out of work. They do not.

The AP’s Aversa was a primary offender last Friday, as she wrote:

Employers eliminated 20,000 jobs in April …..

….. It was the fourth straight month that employers cut jobs — bringing total losses to 260,000.

….. Businesses are handing out pink slips as they cope with an economy that is teetering on the edge of a recession, or possibly in one already.

….. On the employment front, construction companies, manufacturers, retailers, mortgage brokers and temporary help firms were among those shedding jobs in April.

Almost none of what Aversa cited above happened in the real world. Except for manufacturing, every major sector of the economy had more workers in April than in March.

To be clear, compared to previous years, April’s jobs increase was not as great as one would hope to see. But it was at least closer to the previous two Aprils (within 157,000, on average) than January’s decrease or February’s and March’s increases were to their comparable 2006 and 2007 figures. More improvement is needed, but April at least headed in the right direction.

Oh, and April’s unemployment rate, seasonally adjusted, fell 0.1% to 5.0%; the unadjusted rate fell from 5.2% to 4.8%.

Finally, the recent news from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) has been very good.

Last Thursday, ISM reported that manufacturing’s 15% of the economy, while still slightly contracting, held steady. Its Manufacturing Index came in at 48.6% (any reading above 50% indicates expansion; below 50%, contraction).

On Monday, ISM’s Non-Manufacturing Index, covering the remaining 85% of the economy, including the troubled housing and financial services sectors, leaped into expansion mode with a reading of 52%. That was up 2.4% from the previous month and confounded the “experts,” who had predicted that it would go down.

Then on Tuesday, ISM had the nerve to issue its Spring 2008 Semiannual Economic Forecast, which said: “Economic Growth to Continue Throughout 2008.”

If you think you heard “How dare they!” murmurs from the business press, you may be right.

Though more easily comprehensible, the comical error (or is it what he truly thought?) in Barack Obama’s “57 states” statement (HT Newsbusters’ John Stephenson) is nothing compared to the dangerously wrong “history” he recited in his North Carolina Primary victory speech Tuesday night.

Friday, at Real Clear Politics, Jack Kelly recounted the Illinois Senator’s egregious error, and its frightening implications (bolds are mine throughout):

Obama Needs a History Lesson

In his victory speech after the North Carolina primary, Sen. Barack Obama said something that is all the more remarkable for how little it has been remarked upon.

In defending his stated intent to meet with America’s enemies without preconditions, Sen. Obama said: “I trust the American people to understand that it is not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but to our enemies, like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did.”

That he made this statement, and that it passed without comment by the journalists covering his speech indicates either breathtaking ignorance of history on the part of both, or deceit.

Then Kelly recited how wrong Obama was about Roosevelt and Truman:

FDR talked directly with none of them (our enemies) before the outbreak of hostilities, and his policy once war began was unconditional surrender.

….. Truman did not modify the policy of unconditional surrender.

….. Harry Truman also was president when North Korea invaded South Korea in June, 1950. President Truman’s response was not to call up North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung for a chat. It was to send troops.

….. When Stalin’s (post-World War II) designs became unmistakably clear, President Truman’s response wasn’t to seek a summit meeting. He sent military aid to Greece, ordered the Berlin airlift and the Marshall Plan, and sent troops to South Korea.

….. The closest historical analogue to Sen. Obama’s expressed desire to meet with no preconditions with anti-American dictators such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the trip British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French premier Eduoard Daladier took to Munich in September of 1938 to negotiate “peace in our time” with Adolf Hitler. That didn’t work out so well.

Kelly also quoted a historian who told of how John F. Kennedy’s decision to meet with Kruschev enabled the Russian premier to evaluate him as someone “who would shrink from hard decisions. (Kruschev) came to believe that Americans are ‘too liberal to fight.’” He also quoted journalistic icon James Reston of the New York Times, who once wrote that “when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.”

Kelly’s wrap:

The lack of historical knowledge among journalists is merely appalling. But in a presidential candidate it’s dangerous. As Sir Winston Churchill said:

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

Is the Obama campaign going to pass off their candidate’s misguided rendition of history as yet another error resulting from being “tired”? Will Old Media journalists covering him let it slide? Or is Kelly’s suspicion that they didn’t even recognize Obama’s error correct?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It must be nice to be on Old Media’s “free pass” list.

For years, Apple Computer has been on that list (disclosure: yours truly is a 23-year Mac user). Apple has been the cool, innovative tech darling, the noble foil of big, bad monopolist Microsoft.

Another free-pass beneficiary is Al Gore, who sits on Apple’s Board of Directors.

Wait until you see what ClimateCounts.org thinks of Apple’s record on “fighting global warming,” especially in comparison to its industry peers (HT InfoWorld via Kevin at Pundit Review):

( Links: Sector Company Scores; Apple’s Overall Scorecard)

According to Apple’s detailed scorecard (PDF), the company scored a zero in 18 of the 22 measurement criteria. Some of them include (bold is mine):

• Item 13 — Has the company achieved emissions reductions?
• Item 5 — Is there external, qualified third party verification of emissions data, reductions, and reporting (where applicable)?
• Item 18 — Does the company require suppliers to take climate change action or give preference to those that do?
• Item 19 — Does the company support public policy that could require mandatory climate change action by business?

In 2006, Apple’s score was “2.” I doubt that ClimateCounts.org has set aside a “most improved” award for the company’s 9-point 2007 pickup.

Note that I do not subscribe to any of this nonsense. “Climate friendliness” is part of the broader, dangerous notion of “Corporate Social Responsibility” (CSR). As I have noted before, companies that embrace CSR, or cynically give into it in the name of appeasement, are engaging in an an economic and ideological sellout to groups who are, at bottom, hostile to capitalism. The late Milton Friedman was and still is right when he wrote that CSR is a “fundamentally subversive doctrine,” and that “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.”

But, though he is careful about when and where he talks about it (note that his Nobel Prize acceptance speech makes no direct reference to business), Al Gore does subscribe to CSR.

Here’s an interesting possibility: One of the reasons Apple is financially outperforming its peers under Gore’s “oversight” may be that it’s not allowing itself to be overly distracted by CSR, and that Gore’s mere presence on the Board is enabling the company to escape activists’ wrath. If so, how “convenient.”

You would think that journalists who have swallowed whole the gospel of globaloney (my term for the mistaken beliefs that catastrophic global warming is taking place, and that it’s largely caused by human activity) to be giving Apple and Gore some, uh, heat over the company’s “disgraceful” (as ClimateCounts.org defines it) record of environmental stewardship.

But it appears that when you’re on the “free pass” list, all is forgiven.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

I noted a few weeks ago (at BizzyBlog; at NewsBusters) that Mike Celizic at MSNBC couldn’t get though his article about Jenna Bush’s upcoming wedding without bringing up her misdemeanor arrests from seven years ago.

Julie Mason of the Houston Chronicle also went there in a late Thursday report. She also threw in a number of shots at Jenna’s father, his administration, and his hometown:

Saturday, in an Oscar de la Renta gown with twin sister Barbara at her side, Jenna Bush, 26, will marry 29-year-old business school student Henry Hager at her parents’ Central Texas ranch.

It’s probably as close as Oscar de la Renta will ever get to Crawford.

….. The wedding also is a last hurrah of sorts for Crawford. The town saw its fortunes and profile rise when Bush built his 1,600-acre ranch there. More recently, like the president’s approval ratings, Crawford has fallen on hard times.

….. The White House is being secretive about the ceremony, secretive even by the opaque Bush administration standards.

….. It’s all a far cry from “Jenna and Tonic,” the tabloid sobriquet she earned after two college-era busts for underage drinking. (Ohio University historian Katherine) Jellison said it’s clear Jenna has put some work into improving her public image.

Leanne Italie of the Associated Press (HT Captain Ed at Hot Air) also went to apparent go-to “expert” Jellison, who managed to tie a daughter’s wedding into the Iraq War:

“This is going to be such a different kind of situation,” said Katherine Jellison, an associate professor of history at Ohio University who chronicles the American obsession with marital pomp in her recent book, It’s Our Day.

“Jenna’s father is not running for re-election,” she said. “The frivolity of a big White House wedding in the middle of an unpopular war would have used up what little political capital he has.”

Since all sense of decorum has been abandoned, I hope it’s not too rude to point out that Ms. Jellison has a, uh, unique perspective on weddings, as this Editorial Review of her book, the full title of which is “It’s Our Day: America’s Love Affair With the White Wedding, 1945-2005,” explains (original had no paragraph breaks; bolds are mine):

Love may be the catalyst for the American white wedding, but hosting an elaborate celebration also demonstrates a family’s prosperity and material success, argues Jellison in her compelling economic and social history of how this ritual survived despite the major cultural and political changes of the 1960s and beyond.

Jellison, an associate professor of history at Ohio University, argues that while the white wedding of the 1940s may have celebrated youth, virginity and a patriarchal family structure, Americans have reinterpreted the symbolism of satin and lace: the 21st-century bride evokes the tradition of female-focused celebration and uses the elaborate and costly event as a display of her professional and social success as she marks a life transition.

With chapters on celebrity nuptials, silver-screen I-dos and the latest batch of reality TV brides, Jellison demonstrates how advertisers, media and brides themselves slowly reshaped the white wedding into an act of organized feminism.

Who knew that weddings, of all events, are now celebrations of the sisterhood?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

So the New York Times, as it lays people off, partially blames Bush — falsely, of course:

A little over two months ago, I told you that we would have to reduce staff within the newsroom by roughly 100 jobs given the difficult financial challenges facing our business and the deteriorating national economy.

Our hope, as you know, was that we could trim our payroll by encouraging enough volunteers to accept buyout offers. While the overwhelming majority of our reductions did indeed come from volunteers, we have been forced to resort to a relatively small numbers of layoffs to meet our assigned goal. (We are not going to discuss numbers or the details of the staff reduction, nor will we be releasing a list of names.)

Earth to Times: Stop reading your own bogus economic articles. Things are improving, not deteriorating, and the “challenges facing (y)our business” haven’t stopped your two Gotham rivals from holding their own.

The Times has been catching flak (HT Instapundit) for not releasing the names, and somewhat deservedly so, since it would release the names of those laid off at other companies, especially unfavored ones, in a heartbeat if it ever got its hands on such a list (or at a minimum would hound each released employee for an interview in search of dirt).

My bigger beef is that in a truly professional organization, the Times, as a company, would be giving them professional send-offs and good-luck wishes, including letting the employment market know who’s available publicly (unless the person involved wished otherwise). But the Times is not a professional organization.

The Times’s Newspaper Guild thinks the “Company appears to have violated (the) contract” in its handling of the layoffs.

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Speaking of the Times — On Wednesday, it had a rare example of pretty decent business commentary by the Times’s David Leonhardt, who nonetehless still owes us a retraction of his bogus “manufacturing recession” call over a year ago) —

….. when the new inflation numbers come out next week, they will indeed be misleading. They will be artificially high.

Rhetorically excessive question: “How much inflation has there been in the 19 years Wendy’s has had its 99-cent menu?” Yeah, I know it’s more than zero; but it’s barely so.

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The rebuilding of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minnesota is an ahead-of-schedule, temporary privatization success.

Locally, we should be treating the rebuilding/replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge connecting Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky similarly. It certainly shouldn’t take seven freaking years — until construction (hopefully) begins (not kidding).

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As he was on Wednesday, the Associated Press’s Martin Crutsinger was still “clinging to recession” on Thursday in his report on unemployment claims:

Many economists believe that a prolonged housing slump and severe credit crisis have pushed the economy into a recession. For that reason, they believe job layoffs will rise in coming months as the unemployment rate climbs higher.

Ian Shepherdson, chief U.S. economist for High Frequency Economics, said that even with the improvement this week, claims are now at a level equal to where they were at the start of the last recession in March 2001. He predicted that layoffs would increase further in coming months.

Mr. Shepherdson failed to note that:

• The workforce is 4%-plus bigger now than in March 2001, so current per-capita claims aren’t up to that level.
• Even though there never were two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction (the everyday working definition of “recession”), the alleged start of the “recession,” as “defined” by the “nonpartisan” National Bureau of Economic Research, should have been sometime during the summer of 2000.

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RIP Lynne Harvey, wife of legendary broadcaster Paul Harvey:

She was the first producer to enter the National Radio Hall of Fame and was inducted in 1997.

….. Bruce DuMont, (Radio Hall of Fame) museum founder and president, said Lynne Harvey was “one of the most remarkable behind-the-scenes talents in the history of American broadcasting, both radio and television.”

….. “She was to Paul Harvey what Colonel Parker was to Elvis Presley.”

DuMont called the Harveys’ relationship “probably the greatest love story that I’ve ever experienced.”

Her Hall of Fame bio is here. “The Rest of the Story” was her brainchild.

Husband Paul called her “Angel.” In her industry, she was “The First Lady of Radio.” Her passing should be receiving much more notice than it is.

The Associated Press’s business writers just won’t let go of their claim (or is it audacious hope?) that we are in a recession — not heading towards one, but actually in one.

Wednesday, despite yet another decent economic report, this one on productivity, the AP’s Martin Crutsinger downplayed a significant beating of expectations, and continued to invoke the R-word (bolds are mine):

Worker productivity rose by a better-than-expected amount in the first three months of the year while labor cost pressures eased.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that productivity, the amount of output per hour of work, increased at an annual rate of 2.2 percent in the first quarter. That was slightly higher than the 1.5 percent increase that had been expected.

Analysts read the bigger-than-expected rise in productivity and the smaller increase in unit labor costs as a good sign that inflation pressures, at least on the labor front, are remaining under control and the country is not facing the danger of a wage-price spiral.

….. Many analysts think the country has already toppled into a recession. But overall economic growth, as measured by the gross domestic product, eked out a tiny 0.6 percent rate of increase in the first three months of the year, the same anemic pace as the final three months of last year.

I did the math just to make sure — 2.2% is 47% higher than 1.5%. Additionally, the 2.2% first-quarter performance was higher than the 1.8% reported for the fourth quarter of 2007, while expectations were that it would come in lower. “Slightly,” schmightly, Martin.

Consider the other economic news of the past week that Crutsinger had to blow past with his assertion that “many (unnamed) analysts” think that the US has “already toppled into a recession”:

• The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) Manufacturing Index released a week ago, covering about 15% of the economy — contracting, but barely, and holding steady.
• Last Friday’s Employment report — Unemployment rate down to 5.0%, seasonally adjusted job losses smaller than previous months.
• ISM’s Non-Manufacturing index, covering the remaining 85% of the economy, including the troubled housing and financial-services sectors — Moved significantly into expansion mode in April, blowing away expectations that it would further slip into contraction.

Topping all of that, the ISM issued its Spring Semiannual Economic Forecast Tuesday. The press release for the report had these headlines:

The weighted average of the expected 1% increase in manufacturing revenues and the 2.7% increase in non-manufacturing is about 2.4%. That’s not spectacular growth by any stretch, but it’s a far cry from negative growth.

Yet the AP’s Crutsinger and his unnamed analysts continue to “cling to recession.” Excuse me for believing that he, his business-reporting co-workers at AP, and their oft-unnamed agenda-driven “analysts” will continue their clinging until, oh, about early November.

Cross-posted at NewsB