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)

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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

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.

I’m going back to this, cuz it’s fun — My irreverent acronym for presidential candidate Barack Obama (”Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” — “Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters“) has the H in it is because “He’s the one … who started it.” — as shown here.

Just a reminder that those trying to claim that use of the candidate’s middle name is a “fear bomb,” or whatever, don’t know what the H they’re talking about.

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The Columbus Dispatch’s Mark Niquette wrote the following without even the tiniest hint of its absurdity about Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner’s Profiles in Courage Award:

The award, named for (John F.) Kennedy’s 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book highlighting political acts of courage, previously has been bestowed on such noted political figures as former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

Claudia Rossett, someone who should have a Pulitzer but probably never will because she doesn’t cover liberal and PC causes, wrote that in the Oil For Food Scandal Annan “helped Saddam Hussein steal food from babies.” Hussein “by estimates of the U.S. General Accounting Office, fortified his own regime with at least $10.1 billion grafted and smuggled out of Oil-for-Food.”

Other than that, he was an OK guy, eh Mark?

Great company you’re in, Jennifer.

JFK, for all his imperfections, would be spinning in his grave at how the award program he started has descended into the depths of political hackdom.

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The groundswell of petitioners at Plunderbund demanding that Ohio’s scandalized Attorney General Marc “Gunga Dann” resign has reached 38 as of when this post went up.

Since it only displays the last 10 petitioners’ accompanying messages, we’re left to wonder whether Ohio Daily Blog proprietor and former Wide Open co-blogger Jeff “Dann’s the Man” Coryell is among the signatories.

To be fair, Coryell has written that he wants the “visionary” Dann (cough, cough) to resign.

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The Invisible Sherrod Brown has actually been mentioned as a Dem VP candidate worth considering a few times over the past several months (here; here; here, though the author notes in a later post that the idea has little traction; and here; HT Ohio Daily Blog).

A selection of Brown by Obama, or by the presidential candidate I irreverently refer to as HR4C (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton), would have a certain symmetry. According to the Club for Growth’s 2007 Senate scorecard, it would ensure that the top of the Democratic ticket has a couple of complete zeros:

From Townhall.com:

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let’s look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

At the first Earth Day celebration, in 1969, environmentalist Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.” C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization said, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.” In 1968, Professor Paul Ehrlich, Vice President Gore’s hero and mentor, predicted there would be a major food shortage in the U.S. and “in the 1970s … hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death.” Ehrlich forecasted that 65 million Americans would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989, and by 1999 the U.S. population would have declined to 22.6 million. Ehrlich’s predictions about England were gloomier: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

In 1972, a report was written for the Club of Rome warning the world would run out of gold by 1981, mercury and silver by 1985, tin by 1987 and petroleum, copper, lead and natural gas by 1992. Gordon Taylor, in his 1970 book “The Doomsday Book,” said Americans were using 50 percent of the world’s resources and “by 2000 they [Americans] will, if permitted, be using all of them.” In 1975, the Environmental Fund took out full-page ads warning, “The World as we know it will likely be ruined by the year 2000.”

Harvard University biologist George Wald in 1970 warned, “… civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.” That was the same year that Sen. Gaylord Nelson warned, in Look Magazine, that by 1995 “… somewhere between 75 and 85 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

It’s not just latter-day doomsayers who have been wrong; doomsayers have always been wrong. In 1885, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was “little or no chance” of oil being discovered in California, and a few years later they said the same about Kansas and Texas.

But we should trust the alarmists’ descendants today, because they now have Nobel Prizes, and government contracts, and cushy jobs at NASA. Oh, and Old Media treats what they say as accepted wisdom. (/sarc).

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.

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 NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Reuters looked at the ISM’s Spring Semiannual Economic Forecast and (of course) decided that the weak figure relating to 15% of the economy was more important than the better one about the other 85%. So this is the headline — “US Factory Growth Seen ‘Marginal’ in 2008: ISM.”

It’s here.

It will be posted at BizzyBlog on Saturday morning (link won’t work until then) under the title “The Economy Is Improving, While Old Media Remains Mired in ‘Recession’ Talk.”

Longtime readers here will recognize one of the column’s targets: Rex (”You can have a recession while the economy is growing”) Nutting (link is to a BizzyBlog site search on Nutting’s name).

Read this:

Here’s what the middle para above means: Polls, schmolls — Obama had the Hoosier State in the bag until the Wright mess came along, and he let it get away.

If it weren’t for Wright, Obama wins Indiana, and the contest would be over.

Spin that.

Further elaboration on the NC-IN results is at Newsbusters.org.

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UPDATE, 1 p.m.: Rush is on today saying that the Obama campaign has said three separate times in the past 18 hours that Hillary would not have won Indiana if it were not for Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos campaign to get Republicans to register as Democrats and vote for her. If so, it’s the Obama-Wright decay that made it close enough for Operation Chaos to have a chance to succeed.

UPDATE 2, 1:30 p.m.: Well. Be careful what you “assume.” My estimate of Obama’s performance with non-African Americans in Indiana is that he did more dismally than I would have thought:

(This chart was updated with a different African-American vote percentage and slightly different vote totals at this later BizzyBlog post.)

Given the next-door-neighbor effect, getting barely 40% of the non-black vote is pitiful.

As before, the vote numbers are from this ABC link. The estimate of black voter turnout is based on a black Hoosier State population percentage of 9.4%, then assuming that its turnout multiple was the same as North Carolina’s estimate (40% turnout divided by 22.3% of the population):

40% divided by 22.3% = 1.79
1.79 times 9.4% = 16.8%

As with North Carolina, the result supports the notion that Mrs. Clinton would outperform Obama in the general election.

UPDATE 3, 2 p.m.: Now here’s an interesting point. What percentage of the African-American vote did Obama win in South Carolina? Surprise: “Only” 80%.

It’s going to be really easy, and really wrong, for Old Media to try to claim that the above-90% black support of Obama is a Rev. Wright backlash. The fact is that Obama got 86% of the black vote in Ohio, where the governor, who is somewhat popular with blacks, was and still is a Hillary superdelegate. He won 85% of the black vote in Texas. Both primaries took place nine days before the Wright story broke nationally.

It’s much more likely that the extraordinarily high black vote in NC and IN was part of an ongoing reaction to Bill Clinton’s “subtle” race-card playing that began after South Carolina. Ohio and Texas were just short of the halfway marks of that trend, which has never truly ended. Obama’s African-American pickups have had little if anything to do with Wright.

As expected, many in the press are falling in line to declare the presidential candidate I irreverently refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) the nominee. Tim Russert has anointed him. The pressure on the candidate I irreverently refer to as “HR4C” (Hillary Rodham Cackling Crying Complaining Clinton) has to be enormous.

Those who are doing the “Barack the Inevitable” dance need to explain how someone transitions into general election mode when he barely won 1/3 of the non-white vote in North Carolina:

(This chart was updated with a different African-American vote percentage and slightly different vote totals at this later BizzyBlog post.)

Vote totals are here.

Take the items in yellow as “givens,” and the item in orange is the forced result. The Obama percentage of the African-American vote is based on this USA Today article’s claim that blacks went 13-1 for Obama in exit polls. Any cleaner info than the 40% I have for the estimated African-American percentage of total turnout, which is based on supposed early-voting breakdowns that I can’t find a link for, would be welcome (with a link if possible).

As noted last night, Obama won every demographic group except white females in South Carolina. He almost certainly lost every major group except African-Americans in North Carolina.

Yes, Indiana looks different (Update: Not as much as originally thought), but everyone’s totally ignoring the Illinois senator’s next-door neighbor effect, especially in high-turnout Gary. In the 45 states that either aren’t Illinois or don’t meaningfully border Illinois, the North Carolina result should be frightening to Dems who want to win the White House as opposed to feeling good about themselves while losing (based on the update just noted, the Illinois border states aren’t automatics for Obama in the general).

Further elaboration on the NC-IN results is at Newsbusters.org.

In a remarkable example of “Name that Party,” the Associated Press, in an unbylined report about the beginning of his divorce trial appearing in USA Today, failed to name the party of former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, who resigned in 2005, or of his former “male staffer.”

Beyond that, AP did not accurately describe the circumstances that triggered McGreevey’s resignation.

Here’s how the report began (bold is mine; HT to an e-mailer):

After two tell-all books, tawdry sex claims and 3½ years of living apart, New Jersey’s gay ex-governor and his estranged wife showed up for court Tuesday morning to begin the process of ending their marriage.

….. The issues to be decided in the divorce settlement involve custody, alimony and child support, and whether McGreevey, now openly gay, committed fraud by marrying a woman.

Matos McGreevey, 41, is seeking $600,000 for time she would have spent at the governor’s mansion had her husband not resigned in disgrace. McGreevey stepped down during his first term after a nationally televised speech in which he acknowledged being “a gay American” and having an affair with a male staffer. The staffer has denied the affair and said he was sexually harassed by McGreevey.

Since his resignation in the fall of 2004, both he and his soon-to-be-ex wrote books about their time together, including their sex lives. She claims she never knew he was gay until just before he told the rest of the world. He claims their marriage was “a contrivance on both our parts,” but that he fulfilled the marriage contract by providing companionship and a child.

The AP report gives the reader the impression that the only reason McGreevey resigned was because of the affair (or harassment) and his sexual “preference”/”orientation.”

But AP left out other details behind McGreevey’s resignation that would have informed readers that it was not “all about sex.”

The former “male staffer” AP refered to is Golan Cipel, whom AP inexplicably chose not to name. Cipel’s Wikipedia entry, which on balance appears to correctly represent events that occurred during the time involved, says this (New York Times link within excerpt added by me):

McGreevey eventually appointed Cipel as a Counselor to the Governor. Investigations by the news media into Cipel’s history revealed few notable qualifications related to intelligence or security. Additionally, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would not grant him the necessary security clearances for the job because he was a foreign national. He was retained on the government payroll as a “counselor” at the same salary and with undefined job responsibilities. Documents show that he helped plan foreign trips for the governor, and that he continued his liaison role with the Jewish community. He ultimately resigned in August 2002, taking a position at the Trenton lobbying firm State Street Partners.

Reports that Cipel would file a sexual harassment suit against McGreevey in Mercer County Court led to McGreevey’s decision to out himself as “a gay American” on August 12, 2004, and announce that he had engaged in an adulterous relationship with Cipel and would be resigning as governor.

Golan Cipel dropped the suit after McGreevey resigned, stating that justice had been served.

(in 2004) Cipel claims he was one of many victims of McGreevey’s sexual harassment, that he had “no romantic affair” with the governor, but rather was taken advantage of. He also describes the former governor’s behavior as egotistical, unprofessional, immoral and immature, as well as having received threats from McGreevey’s “friends” should he come forward and speak.

The resignation thus was strongly related to McGreevey’s laxness in assigning properly qualified Homeland Security personnel, as well as to the (take your pick) the affair the former Governor claims he had, or the sexual harassment Cipel claims to have endured.

AP’s failure to name to party of a scandal-plagued Democrat is typical. Its failure to accurately recount the history is indefensible.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

….. to let you know that the Institute for Supply Management’s Non-Manufacturing Index returned pretty convincingly to expansion mode in April:

“The NMI (Non-Manufacturing Index) increased 2.4 percentage points to 52 percent, indicating expansion after three consecutive months of contraction within the non-manufacturing sector for April 2008.”

The report, which covers the 85% or so of the economy that isn’t manufacturing, blew away expectations of a 0.3% decline to 49.3%.

The weighted average of the two indices (manufacturing came in at a contracting but improving 48.6% last Thursday) is 51.5%. That is definitely expansion — not by as much as anyone would like, but decidedly positive.

MarketWatch’s Rex (”U.S. could have recession without drop in GDP because I say so”) Nutting was apparently not available for comment.

Recession, reschmession.

Note: This column originally appeared at Pajamas Media (”Press and Politicians Prematurely Crying Recession”) on Thursday.

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Yesterday, the government reported that the economy’s Gross Domestic Producdt (GDP) grew by an annualized 0.6%.

Many in the press, along with some politicians, who have been matter-of-factly assuming that we’ve been in a recession since early this year, have a little explaining to do.

Don’t stay up waiting for the apologies.

Let me be clear: Even if the result is revised upward a bit in May or June, the economy’s current performance is nothing to celebrate. In fact, I believe there should be more emphasis on the fact that after two really good quarters in 2007 — the second quarter’s 3.8% and the third quarter’s totally-forgotten 4.9% (see BEA table here) — economic growth hasn’t even matched population growth for two consecutive quarters. When that occurs, per-capita GDP, as well as per-household GDP, is going in the wrong direction: down.

But it’s one thing to be unhappy with how things are going. It’s quite another to keep shouting “recession” when GDP growth, though anemic, continues to be positive.

Though technically determining whether and when a recession actually occurred is more complicated, and is actually “determined” after-the-fact by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the everyday working definition of “recession” is very simple:

A recession is defined to be a period of two quarters of negative GDP growth.

Thus: a recession is a national or world event, by definition. And statistical aberrations or one-time events can almost never create a recession; e.g. if there were to be movement of economic activity (measured or real) around Jan 1, 2000, it could create the appearance of only one quarter of negative growth. For a recession to occur the real economy must decline.

(Aside: By that definition, there was no recession in 2000-2002. Just look here.)

The definition just cited is at About.com, which has been owned by the New York Times Company since 2005. Business reporters and columnists at the Times have been routinely ignoring the readily-available guidance at their online property for well over a year.

For example, way back on February 28, 2007, the Times’s David Leonhardt didn’t let the fact that a recession is “a national or world event” stop him from declaring that “For Manufacturing, a Recession Has Arrrived.” He reached the conclusion that manufacturing’s 15% of the economy was in a recession based on one weak durable goods report from the Commerce Department and two slightly below 50% readings (November 2006 and January 2007) in the Manufacturing Index (full index history is here) published by the Institute for Supply Management (ISM). An ISM Index reading above 50% indicates expansion, while below 50% means contraction.

Although he later allowed that we weren’t in a “real recession,” Leonhardt’s invocation of “the R-word” to describe an individual economic sector was inexcusable. What’s more, the manufacturing sector wasn’t even in the neighborhood of distress, and Leonhardt should have known it. The very first day after his article appeared, ISM’s February 2007 Manufacturing Index came in showing expansion, and did so for the next eight months. The Times has ignored requests that they correct Leonhardt’s error.

It isn’t just manufacturing that has been described as in recession. This Times search on “housing recession” shows that the Old Gray Lady has used that term 25 times since October 2006. Housing is in a very bad slump, but, by definition, it cannot be in a recession.

More recently, presumptive announcements that we’re in a recession — not heading for one, but actually IN one, have come from politicians as high up in the food chain as John McCain and Bill Clinton (or perhaps the reporter covering him, who wrote, “He began the night by discussing the current recession ….”).

If politicians are throwing around the R-word, it’s because the press has been, recklessly and repeatedly. A Google News Search done early Thursday morning covering the past 30 days had 132 hits on just one all too commonly used phrase: “the current recession.”

The Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa provided perhaps the most egregious preemptive recession declaration on April 5, when, in the wake of March’s weak Employment Situation Report, she wrote:

It’s no longer a question of recession or not. Now it’s how deep and how long.

Reacting to yesterday’s positive GDP report, Aversa acted as if she never wrote those words, didn’t bother to correctly define a recession, and still got in her digs:

The statistic did not meet what economists consider the classic definition of a recession, which is a retraction of the economy. This means that although the economy is stuck in a rut, it is still managing to grow, even if modestly.

Give Old Media reporters and naysaying politicians a few days, tops, and they’ll be telling us we’re in a recession all over again. Talking down the economy appears to be their stock in trade these days. Didn’t somebody rip into Dick Cheney for doing that very thing in late 2000?

Marc Dann MUST resign. If he won’t, he must be removed. After this (HT Weapons of Mass Discussion), it’s hard to imagine how he can have any defenders besides himself. A strong argument can be made that, while less “exciting,” what Dann has done is worse than what led Eliot Spitzer to resign.

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Related — A certain person who I believe knows better tried to put one over on me by claiming that Ohio’s Old Media drove the Dann story, and ridiculed the notion that bloggers were holding their feet to the fire.

What I now recall is that a November Dann affair item was first put forth by Ohio right-side blogger Matt Naugle (who has since moved to another site). It was roundly ridiculed by left-side bloggers such as this one (see “2008 Outlook” at link), and a few on the right, who collectively owe him an apology.

Unless I’m missing something Ohio’s Old Media was nowhere to be found, but got working after that, knowing full well that right-side and left-side bloggers were also on it.

If that chronology is correct, though it’s not a done deal at this moment, Ohio’s state and national left side owe Naugle a big thank-you for helping them take out the trash. That would include Hillary Clinton superdelegate Ted Strickland and Hillary Must-Win-Ohio Clinton, for whom Dann’s continued presence is a ginormous liability.

Ohio’s Old Media would, in my opinion, have been proactively looking for these kinds of things from the get-go if the GOP controlled the Statehouse. In fact, that’s not an opinion; that’s an assertion based on watching them do their jobs, occasionally overzealously and often selectively, during the previous 16 years. From here, it seems like they largely stopped doing their jobs, unless pushed, in early January 2007. Thank goodness for those, like Naugle, who have pushed them.

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Sit down, because you otherwise might faint when I say this: Give CNN (a little) credit for showing a picture from a May Day “comprehensive immigration reform” (i.e., open-borders) rally showing both an American and Mexican flag.

Though many reports, including this one, noted the presence of both countries’ flags at these rallies (earlier reports, which indicated that they were about 50-50, ended up being revised to “mostly American flags” — hmmm), the LA Times managed to shoot a picture with nothing but Old Glories as far the eye could see. Media manipulation is visual, too.

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In my Thursday post on the steep decline in newspaper circulations, I neglected to note that the Denver Post was the only paper in the March 31, 2005 Top 25 that was no longer there in March 31, 2008 (this year’s new addition is the Sacramento Bee).

The Post’s circulation has dropped at least 16% in the past three years. Story cover-ups like this one noted at Slapstick Politics (”‘Brown Pride’ Vandals Hit Denver Suburb, Local MSM Silent”; HT Michelle Malkin) explain why.

If the locals can’t rely on a paper to report the important fundamental facts about an apparent ethnicity-driven incident of major vandalism, why should they buy it, or subscribe to it?