Would someone please buy the Washington Post's Josh White a clue? He can't seem to get a handle on the "motive" for the actions of Yonathan Melaku (actually, I think White is pretending).

Melaku has just pleaded guilty and will be sentenced to 25 years in jail. Authorities say he vandalized military grave markers, shot at the Pentagon and military museums, and was working on an improvised explosive device. But the headline to White's story (HT Atlas Shrugs) and the reporter's content act as if no one has the foggiest idea what drop Melaku to do what he did (words which betray motivation are bolded):

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Motive of shooter who targeted military sites is unclear

Yonathan Melaku was sneaking through Fort Myer and Arlington National Cemetery, his backpack filled with plastic bags of ammonium nitrate, a notebook containing jihadist messages, and a can of black spray paint. The 23-year-old former Marine was heading to the graves of the nation’s most recent heroes, aiming to desecrate the stones with Arabic statements and leave handfuls of explosive material nearby as a message.

Before police foiled the plan in June, the vandalism was to be Melaku’s sixth attack, months after he went on a mysterious shooting spree that targeted the Pentagon, the National Museum of the Marine Corps and two other military buildings in Northern Virginia. A video found after Melaku’s arrest showed him wearing a black mask and shooting a 9mm handgun out of his Acura’s passenger window as he drove along Interstate 95, shouting “Allahu Akbar!”It was all part of a solitary campaign of “fear and terror,” federal prosecutors said.

But authorities and Melaku’s defense attorney said no one knows for sure what led Melaku — a naturalized U.S. citizen from Ethi­o­pia, local high school graduate and former Marine Corps Reservist — down that path or what message he was trying to send.

Melaku stood in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Thursday morning to plead guilty to three counts, including shooting at the Pentagon on Oct. 19, 2010, and attempting to injure veterans’ memorials on U.S. property. As part of a plea agreement, Melaku admitted to using his legally obtained 9mm handgun to shoot the National Museum of the Marine Corps, the Pentagon and two military recruiting offices in October and November 2010.

The agreement calls for Melaku to serve 25 years in prison. Judge Gerald Bruce Lee accepted the plea, and Melaku is scheduled for sentencing on April 27.

Although Melaku acknowledged shooting at the buildings — attacks that did not injure anyone but caused an estimated $111,000 in damage — it still remains unclear why he did it. In a video entered into evidence and released by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Melaku says that he was targeting the museum as a military building, to “turn it off permanently.”

FBI officials and prosecutors said Melaku was on a personal terror mission. They said he researched jihadism on the Internet and had references to terrorism in a notebook and on his computer. It also seemed like he was gathering materials to make an improvised explosive device, though there was no indication how he would have used it.

Melaku wanted “to create fear and terror, which is what terrorists do,” said Dana Boente, first assistant U.S. Attorney in Alexandria.

… Gregory English, Melaku’s defense lawyer, said after the hearing that Melaku’s family is of the Coptic Christian faith and that they were stunned to learn of his involvement in the crimes and the references to Islamic jihad.

Dictionary.com carries two primary definitions of "motive":

1. something that causes a person to act in a certain way, do a certain thing, etc.; incentive.
2. the goal or object of a person's actions: Her motive was revenge.

White and WaPo really don't have any wiggle room here. Anyone with an ounce of sense will also know that even if they are banking on the first version of the definition to controlling, they can't really claim that "motive" hasn't been identified. The evidence based on the material presented is that exposure to and adoption of jihadist teachings caused Melaku "to act in a certain way." We don't have to sit the guy down on a couch and ask about his family history to know this.

It seems like the Washington Post and most of the establishment press is so bound and determined to look the other way and otherwise minimize how the very real and intensely dangerous phenomenon known as homegrown terror has arisen. Jihad is the motivation, and that's all we really need to know.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

The aforementioned facts are generally not known by people who don't closely follow the news, because not much was made of them. But from the point of view of ABC News, particularly the hatchet men disguised as investigative reporters Matthew Mosk and Brian Ross, Mitt and Ann Romney have a much bigger problem than the Gores, Bidens, and Clintons: They, and particularly Mitt through Bain Capital (dubious, as we'll see), have given too much money to a particular charity. Because the reporters apparently want readers and viewers to see this as something underhanded, they describe charity as "sending" instead of "giving":

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Mitt Romney Sent Millions to Mormon Church

Underscoring the prominent, if little discussed role that Mitt Romney played as a Mormon leader, the private equity giant once run by the GOP presidential frontrunner carved his church a slice of several of its most lucrative business deals, securities records show, providing it with millions of dollars worth of stock in some of Bain Capital's most well-known holdings.

Romney has always been a major donor to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which requires that members "tithe," or give 10 percent of their income to the church. His family charity, called the Tyler Foundation, has given more than $4 million to the church in the past five years, including $1.8 million in 2008 and $600,000 in 2009. But because Romney, whose fortune has been estimated at $250 million, has never released his personal tax returns, the full extent of his giving has never been public.

Newly uncovered stock contributions made during Romney's Bain days suggest there is another dimension to Romney's support for the church — one that could involve millions more than has been previously disclosed.

As part of just one Bain transaction in 2008, involving its investment in Burger King Holdings, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal that an unnamed Bain partner donated 65,326 shares of Burger King stock to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, holdings then worth nearly $1.9 million. And there were numerous others, giving the church a stake in other Bain properties, such as Domino's Pizza, the electronics manufacturer DDi, the phosphates company Innophos Holdings, and Marquee Holdings, the parent to AMC Theaters.

… The Mormon church is distinct from many other American denominations in what it asks from adherents in money, time and commitment — and not just because it asks young Mormon males to spend two years proselytizing for the faith as missionaries, said Jan Shipps, a religion professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis, and one of the preeminent non-Mormon authorities on the church.

… Romney appears to have lived up to rigid financial requirements within the church that asks parishioners to contribute 10 percent of their annual earnings.

… Securities records show that Romney found ways to help include the church in some of the companies most lucrative deals, just as other executives at the firm found ways to generate support for their favored charities. Among the companies named on securities filings as "Bain charitable institution donees" were the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, The Boston Foundation Inc., Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, and family foundations run by several top Bain executives.

… Romney's own family nonprofit, The Tyler Charitable Foundation, was also cut into numerous Bain deals. The nonprofit, run by Bradford Malt — the Romney personal attorney who oversees all of the candidate's financial holdings — passed those stock earnings along to a variety of other charities, including the church.

It's hard to believe that ABC really bothered with the previous paragraph — or for that matter the entire report. What does "an unnamed Bain partner" donating stock to the Mormon church in 2008, nine years after Romney ceased his involvement in the business, have to do with anything? Romney still receives millions in annual distributions from Bain entities, but has represented in his financial disclosure statements that he has had no active involvement. Really, Matthew and Brian, those weren't "Romney's Bain days."

And what's with the use of dealmaking words and phrases to describe charitable donations? There's "sent," "carved his church a slice," "include the church in … lucrative deals," and "cut into numerous Bain deals."

Here's part of Rush's take on this nonsense earlier today:

So what? Valerie Jarrett just broke the law! She went into a church and gave a political speech ripping into the Republicans and then after the church speech, they did a voter registration drive in a church. Romney's not breaking the law.

What's wrong with giving to your church? It's a charity! He didn't take all the money himself like the Clintons do. He's not hiding it in some family foundation where he can get access to it later, plus a charitable deduction off the top of the donation he's made. Zero interest in Obama from the ABC investigative unit. Zero. I don't know how much money Obama gave Reverend Wright. We don't know how much money Obama gave Reverend Wright. We don't know how much money Reverend Wright gave Obama.

Breaking the law by a Democrat isn't news; but a Republican being generous with his money to an entity which someone doesn't seem to like must be sinister in some way, even though it's clearly lawful. Makes perfect sense to me. (/sarc)

It seems that Ross might have taken the assignment to atone for his breakout report on Jeremiah "Go D**n America" Wright four years ago. If so: For shame, Brian — especially since you seem to be conveniently setting the stage for an all-out attack on Mormonism should Romney get the GOP nomination.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

During Saturday's GOP presidential debate moderated by ABC, after the moderators had devoted six minutes to a discussion of what the candidates would say to a gay couple "sitting in their living rooms" about same-sex marriage and adoption, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich highlighted the double standard in the media's left-leaning sympathy toward gay rights issues but lack of concern about anti-Christian "bigotry" from the left. Gingrich complained: (Video below)

I just want to raise, since we just spent this much time on these issues, I just want to raise a point about the news media bias. You don't hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won't accept gay couples? Which is exactly what the state has done.

Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won't give in to secular bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration in a key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration? The bigotry question goes both ways, and there's a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side, and none of it gets covered by the liberal media.

Below are video of Gingrich's criticism of the media, along with a transcript of the moderator questions on the subject of gay rights, from the Saturday, January 7, presidential debate on ABC:

DIANE SAWYER: I want to turn now, if I can, from the constitutional (INAUDIBLE) here to something closer to home and to maybe families sitting in their living rooms across this country. Yahoo sends us questions, as you know. We have them from real viewers. And I'd like to post one because it is about gay marriage. But, at the level, I would really love to be able to ask you what you would say personally sitting in your living rooms to the people who ask questions like this. This is from Phil in Virginia:

Given that you oppose gay marriage, what do you want gay people to do who want to form loving, committed, long-term relationships? What is your solution?

And, Speaker Gingrich? [NEWT GINGRICH]

SAWYER: Governor Huntsman, you've talked about civil unions. How do you disagree with the others on this stage?

[JON HUNTSMAN]

JOSH McELVEEN, WMUR-TV ABC 9: I'd like to go to Senator Santorum with a similar topic. We're in a state where it is legal for same-sex couples to marry – 1,800, in fact, couples have married since it became law here in New Hampshire. The legislature passed it a couple of years ago. And they're trying to start families, some of them. Your position on same-sex adoption, obviously, you are in favor of traditional families. But are you going to tell someone they belong as a ward of the state or in foster care, rather than have two parents who want them? [RICK SANTORUM]

McELVEEN: Well, what would be – I just need to follow up on that, if you don't mind, Senator. With those 1,800, if you've got a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, what happens to the 1,800 families who have marriage here? Are their marriages basically illegitimate, at this point?

[SANTORUM]

SAWYER: If I could come back to the living room question, again, Governor Romney, would you weigh in on the Yahoo question about what you would say sitting down in your living room to a gay couple who say, "We simply want to have the right to," as the person who wrote the email said, we want gay people to form loving, committed, long-term relationships. In human terms, what would you say to them? [MITT ROMNEY]

SAWYER: Speaker Gingrich-

GINGRICH: I just want to raise, since we just spent this much time on these issues, I just want to raise a point about the news media bias. You don't hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won't accept gay couples? Which is exactly what the state has done.

Should the Catholic Church be driven out of providing charitable services in the District of Columbia because it won't give in to secular bigotry? Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration in a key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration? The bigotry question goes both ways, and there's a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side, and none of it gets covered by the liberal media. [AUDIENCE APPLAUSE]
 

Jean H. Lee's Friday afternoon report at the Associated Press on the omnipresence of images of the late Kim Jong Il throughout North Korea reads more like an audition to be the communist nation's next propaganda minister than a wire service report.

Not once does she call the late tyrant a tyrant, or for that matter even a Communist. If you didn't know any better, you would think you're reading about some idyllic place where people are happy, content, and well-off — not a place where oppression rules, hundreds of thousands starve, and millions more would but for the kindness of foreigners. Though there is no substitute for reading the whole relatively short thing, here are several paragraphs indicating just how bad Lee's report really is (saved here in full as a graphic for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes; HT to an NB tipster):

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Kim Jong Il's presence is felt in series of images

It's hard to imagine a North Korea without Kim Jong Il, who led the nation for 17 years until his death in December.

His portrait hangs in every building, his visits to factories and shops are commemorated with signs in his honor. The song book at the hotel at Mount Kumgang features a full page of tunes with his name in the title, and the airline hostesses in lacy gloves give their thanks to him as Air Koryo flights cross into North Korean airspace.

Kim's death on Dec. 17 marks the end of an era for North Korea, which has known only two leaders: Kim and his father, Kim Il Sung. Already, a new era has begun under the leadership of his young son, Kim Jong Un.

… Doctors and nurses laugh as they huff and puff their way past mountains carved with Kim's sayings and signature.

Young men in bumper cars bash each other gleefully at an amusement park that Kim ordered renovated as part of a bid to "improve the people's daily lives," one of the goals he left unfinished when he died at age 69.

If the nominations for worst single sentence written by a wire service journalist in 2011 are still open, I'd suggest that Lee's final excerpted paragraph would end up at or near the top of the awful heap.

Memo Ms. Lee: The only place where Kim's magical presence is not so magically being felt is far away from North Korea, in a place usually characterized as being quite hot.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

I know, we're supposed to give TV shows and the like a bit of dramatic license to push a plot line. But doesn't it seem that an awful lot of the license taken tends to be pro-big government and left-leaning?

One pretty obvious example came along Monday night during the Season 2 finale of TNTs' "Rizzoli & Isles" (which ran again late tonight). The plot of "Burning Down the House" centered around the death of a Boston fireman in a major warehouse blaze. Ultimately, the perpetrator ended up being a fireman who was upset by "budget cuts," which were mentioned twice during the episode:

• At the beginning, one of the in-charge fireman regrets that he had to send the one who died (actually, it turn out that he was killed because he was onto the arsonist) into the building without backup, saying in essence, "That's what budget cuts will get you." He goes on talk about station closings and the like.
• In the climactic scene at the show's end, the arson-setting fireman, who ends up being responsible for a large number of them, believes he is alone in the same burned-out warehouse with Ms. Isles and is about to kill her. Before he makes his attempt, he complains about how the city "kept cutting back and cutting back," and how "they can't keep laying us off." When asked by Isles how he would prevent it, he responds (paraphrasing) that he would "burn a few buildings."

The trouble is, the City of Boston's Fire Department Budget has increased each year from 2010 to 2012.

As shown at this graphic, which was found at Page 31 of the city's 2012 budget (large PDF), the Fire Department's actual or appropriated amounts from 2009 to 2012 were as follows:

• FY09 Expenditures — $165.3 million
• FY10 Expenditures — $173.6 million (5.0% increase over FY09)
• FY11 Appropriations — $176.4 million (1.6% increase over FY10)
• FY12 Appropriations — $181.9 million (3.1% increase over FY11)

One can argue about whether the increases are big enough, but it's hard to make a case that the city is "cutting back and cutting back." Instead, it's on track to spend 10% more than it did three years ago.

Looking at another metric, total employment per the Department's About page is 1,611 in a city of about 620,000. Cincinnati's Fire Department has about half as many employees, and the city is about half Boston's size.

In other words, the situation in Boston doesn't seem to be out of whack. It certainly isn't in some kind of radical cutback mode, and hasn't been since the 1980s (with as far as I can tell no or almost no station closings since then). In fact, it's Boston's police budget which has seen real cuts (from $288.6 million in 2009 to a projected $269.2 million in 2012, also at the graphic) during the past three years.

Unfortunately, shows like these are where many of the disengaged who nevertheless vote end up getting what they believe is valid information which conforms to reality. In this case, it's not, and it doesn't.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

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

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Thousands of rare documents burned in Egypt clash

Volunteers in white lab coats, surgical gloves and masks stood on the back of a pickup truck Monday along the banks of the Nile River in Cairo, rummaging through stacks of rare 200-year-old manuscripts that were little more than charcoal debris.

The volunteers, ranging from academic experts to appalled citizens, have spent the past two days trying to salvage what's left of some 192,000 books, journals and writings, casualties of Egypt's latest bout of violence.

Institute d'Egypte, a research center set up by Napoleon Bonaparte during France's invasion in the late 18th century, caught fire during clashes between protesters and Egypt's military over the weekend. It was home to a treasure trove of writings, most notably the handwritten 24-volume Description de l'Egypte, which began during the 1798-1801 French occupation.

… "The burning of such a rich building means a large part of Egyptian history has ended," the director of the institute, Mohammed al-Sharbouni, told state television over the weekend. The building was managed by a local non-governmental organization.

Al-Sharbouni said most of the contents were destroyed in the fire that raged for more than 12 hours on Saturday. Firefighters flooded the building with water, adding to the damage.

… Zein Abdel-Hady, who runs the country's main library, is leading the effort to try and save what's left of the charred manuscripts.

"This is equal to the burning of Galileo's books," Abdel-Hady said, referring to the Italian scientist whose work proposing that the earth revolved around the sun was believed to have been burned in protest in the 17th century.

… Volunteer Ahmed el-Bindari said the military shoulders the brunt of responsibility for using its roof as a position to attack protesters before the fire erupted.

"When the government wants to protect something, they do," el-Bindari said. "Try to reach the Interior Ministry or Defense Ministry buildings. You won't be able to."

In an op-ed at YNetNews.com, Guy Bechor is refreshingly direct in delivering the ugly truth:

Welcome to Cairostan
Op-ed: Egypt’s radicals eliminating country’s connection to West, but does anyone care?

It was barely mentioned in the Israeli and global media, but the following event pertains to the whole of Western civilization: Last Saturday, violent groups of Islamic-Salafi radicals burned the famous scientific institute established by Napoleon in Egypt after its first encounter with the West. Some historians consider it the start of modern times in the Middle East.

The site, L’Institut d’Egypte, held some 200,000 original and rare books, exhibits, maps, archeological findings and studies from Egypt and the entire Middle East, based on the work of generations of western researchers. Most of the artifacts were lost forever, burned or looted.

… it was a symbolic, intentional act. Those who burned the building and its artifacts meant to burn the era of logic, enlightenment, research and individualism.

This was a grave provocation against the whole of Western civilization, a desire to disconnect from science, research and modernity, while cynically using a Western means – that is, democracy – in order to take power.

One need not go all the way to blowing up the pyramids, as some of Egypt’s Salafis wish to do after they seized some 35% of the new parliament seats (alongside 40% of the Islamic brotherhood,) and there is no reason to go as far as Afghanistan, where the Taliban blew up the huge Buddha statues. The elimination of Egypt’s non-Muslim past is already here.

Anything that dates back to the Pharaohs, that is ancient, or that is Western is destined to be destroyed, and the mission has already been launched in the most symbolic manner: The outset of Egypt’s modern era, which the Salafis seek to erase, and in fact rewrite. This is a battle for writing the history of Egypt and of the Arab and Muslim world.

… All of this is happening while the confused West is lauding the new democracy established in Egypt, without understanding that this democracy is erasing the historic Egypt that was intimately connected to the West and its culture; a new Egypt shall rise on the ruins of the great fire. What we are seeing here is not a battle for power, but rather, a battle for perception, memory, heritage and historiography; that is, the writing of history.

… And who is supposed to raise a hue and cry over the burning of Egypt’s Western past? Who is supposed to be greatly disturbed by the fact that Egyptian authorities are having trouble protecting their own museums? UNESCO, the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Yet not much is happening there. Well, we can’t blame this organization; after all, it is preoccupied with admitting “Palestine” into its ranks.

At National Review, Mark Steyn identified something about the military's role in the Institute's burning which I suspect the AP's Batrawy knew or at least suspected but did not disclose — instead, as seen above, deflecting to the opinion of a likely uninformed volunteer:

The Torch Has Been Passed to a New Generation

In Egypt, the short version of the Arab Spring is that after 60 years the Nasser/Mubarak military has decided to throw its lot in with the Muslim Brotherhood. Given that for three decades the army was largely funded and its senior officers trained by the United States, at least we won’t have to waste a lot of time on “Who lost Egypt?” analyses.

The consequences for Copts, women, Israeli Embassy staff, etc., have been clear for some time. But just as important over the long run may be the loss of historical memory. A few days ago, during the recent military crackdown, the Institut d’Egypte was burned to the ground — mainly because young soldiers either joined in the gleeful savagery or declined to prevent it. Millions of manuscripts were lost.

Batrawy's AP story and other coverage of the Institute's burning indeed received very light coverage, as YNet's Bechor contended. A Google News search on "library burning egypt" (not in quotes, sorted by date, with duplicates) returned about 170 relevant results out of the 245 listed. That's barely a blip, and in my view hardly an accident.

Meanwhile, the Arab Spring's descent into a winter nightmare continues in Egypt — and elsewhere, mostly unreported and underreported.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

In her profile of Kansas Governor Sam Brownback on Wednesday, the Washington Post's Annie Gowen went through the predictable leftist checklist of things that should supposedly cause the rest of America not to like him. A state taken over by "tea party fervor"? Check. "Slashed" funding for "schools, social services and the arts"? Check. Imply that his predecessor, radical proabort and ObamaCare implementer Kathleen Sebelius, is a "moderate," and that he is somehow breaking a tradition of moderation? Check. Finding an old-line Republican who thinks he's going too far? Check. Oh, and mentioning that the eeeeeevil Koch brothers, who like the guy and have given him money (that might have something to do with the fact that Koch is headquartered in Wichita)? Check.

Here are excerpts from Gowen's report (HT Norma at Collecting My Thoughts, whose reaction is "Something good is happening in Kansas"; bolds are mine):

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In Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback puts tea party tenets into action with sharp cuts

If you want to know what a Tea Party America might look like, there is no place like Kansas.

In the past year, three state agencies have been abolished and 2,050 jobs have been cut. Funding for schools, social services and the arts have been slashed. The new Republican governor rejected a $31.5 million federal grant for a new health-insurance exchange because he opposes President Obama’s health-care law. And that’s just the small stuff.

… in Kansas, as nowhere else in the country, tea party fervor is reshaping government. The same political forces of the Republican Party driving the confrontation over taxes and spending in Washington are now completely in charge in Kansas.

The GOP now controls the state’s House of Representatives with the biggest majority in half a century. Emboldened by this power shift, Brownback — the state’s former two-term U.S. senator — has embarked on his overhaul at a breathtaking pace.

… The governor has said his main concerns are creating jobs, cutting taxes and bringing new businesses to the state, which has been losing population to domestic migration over the past decade and ranks near the bottom in private-sector job creation.

… at the state level, Kansans have routinely elected moderate Republican governors. More recently, the state elected Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, now President Obama’s secretary of health and human services.

… “For 40 years, we had this moderate Republican-Democratic coalition running the state, and suddenly it’s pretty much gone,” said Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at the University of Kansas.

… The Kansas Policy Institute, where Brownback delivered his recent speech to warm applause, is funded by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

… The Kochs “have been handed the keys to the governor’s office,” said state Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Democrat.

… “I think a lot of people don’t realize the role government plays in their lives until it’s gone,” (said Bill Kassebaum, a Republican former state representative and son of former U.S. senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum). “They may not be happy with what’s left.”

Gowen also treats Brownback's personal faith-driven efforts to reduce abortions and strengthen marriage as something out of order and unusual, but of course says not a word about how Sebelius went to extraordinary lengths to defend even practitioners of late-term abortions when she was governor.

Even the writer of the article's picture caption tried to get in on the act, but the best that person could come up with as a criticism was: "Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas is a career politician." Brownback spent several years as an attorney before he began his career in politics as the Sunflower State's Agriculture Secretary. When is the last time the WaPo or any other establishment press outlet called New York Senator Chuck Schumer, who really has never done anything except hold political office, a "career politician" in a supposedly straight news piece?

Make no mistake what Gowen is up to. She is laying down a marker for future reference by the rest of the press so they can drum up a "far-right extremist" theme for Brownback should he ever try to return to national politics or even run for President.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

See-no-evil economic reporting during the Obama years has "somehow" missed a number of developments in the makeup of the American workforce which I believe would not have been missed (or deliberately overlooked, take your pick) if a Republican or conservative were in the White House. One of them relates to full-time employment.

Did you know that seasonally adjusted full-time employment in September 2011 was lower than it was when the recession officially ended in June 2009, and that this was the case for 26 of the first 27 post-recession months? What's more, the economy had over 8.7 million fewer full-time workers in November 2011 than it did when full-time employment peaked four years earlier in November 2007. Proof from the Bureau of Labor Statistics follows the jump.

Here it is:

Full-time employment finally surpassed the June 2009 level for two consecutive months in October and November. Hopefully it will keep going up, but the economic policy barriers to continued improvement are quite substantial, as has been noted elsewhere by yours truly and so many others. For those who are wondering, during the first 29 months after November 1982, the official end of the Reagan-era recession according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, full-time employment increased by almost 8 million:

Currently, the economy has 417,000 more full-time workers than it did when the recession officially ended in June 2009. Readers will also see that the increases in the number of full-timers continued to climb after that. By the end of 1986, over 11 million more Americans (almost 14%) were working full-time than were doing so at the end of that era's recession.

President Obama said in Kansas on December 6 that what Reagan did, followed by similar but less aggressive moves under President Clinton (with prodding from a GOP-controlled Congress) and Bush 43 "doesn’t work. It has never worked."

Really? Then what would you expect a nonpartisan observer to say about the policy prescriptions employed during the past three years?

If the economy under a Republican or conservative president had utterly failed to create full-time employment for so long, we'd be hearing about it constantly. But we've heard something between absolutely nothing and barely anything from the lapdog establishment press.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Late Friday afternoon, Todd Shields at Bloomberg News broke a story about some guy, who happens to be an Obama and Democratic Party donor (but not disclosed), against whom the Securities and Exchange Commission is formally considering an enforcement action (also not disclosed, though it was noted at the New York Times's Dealbook Blog five hours before Shields's report), whose "wireless service caused interference to 75 percent of global-positioning system receivers examined in a U.S. government test." Though it generated a fair amount of center-right blog discussion over the weekend, the establishment press largely ignored the stunning result.

Earlier this evening, Shields and Alan Levin reported even more troubling info (as carried at the San Francisco Chronicle; bolds are mine throughout this post):

---

Falcone's LightSquared Disrupts Plane Safety Gear in Testing

Philip Falcone's LightSquared service disrupted airplane safety equipment in U.S. tests of the proposed wireless network, government officials said.

Signals from LightSquared equipment caused "interference with a flight safety system designed to warn pilots of approaching terrain," according a statement from the Defense and Transportation departments distributed today by e-mail.

The safety gear relies on the global-positioning system. U.S. officials are testing for interference with GPS devices as they consider whether to let LightSquared operate its network. The service would let clients such as Best Buy Co. offer cheaper wireless services and products, LightSquared Chief Executive Officer Sanjiv Ahuja said in a Dec. 9 interview.

… LightSquared's effect on the air-safety system was the subject of a separate analysis by the Federal Aviation Administration, according to today's statement.

… The safety system displays any terrain or man-made obstruction in the path of an aircraft. If a plane flies too close to danger, the system sounds increasingly dire warnings urging a pilot to "Pull up!"

These devices have been required on turbine-powered aircraft since 2005 and are credited with nearly eliminating crashes in which pilots hit the ground in darkness or bad weather, according to the FAA. The system uses GPS to determine a plane's position, which it matches against a worldwide database of terrain, radio towers, buildings and airports.

Once again, Shields failed to report that Falcone is a heavy Obama and Democratic Party donor, or the existence of the SEC's consideration of enforcement action against Falcone, described thusly by the Times:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is putting Philip A. Falcone on alert.

Mr. Falcone, a hedge fund manager, received a Wells Notice from the commission on Thursday, according to a filing made by his firm, Harbinger Capital Partners. The agency typically sends those notices when it is considering an enforcement action against someone. Omar Asali and Robin Roger, two Harbinger board members, also received the notices.

The notices stem from possible "violations of the federal securities laws' anti-fraud provisions in connection with matters previously disclosed and an additional matter regarding the circumstances and disclosure related to agreements with certain fund investors," according to the filing.

Although the filing does not specify charges or allegations, the notice is likely related to a disclosure Harbinger made to investors. In April, the firm said it was being investigated for possible market manipulation in the trading of undisclosed debt securities from 2006 to 2008. Mr. Falcone has also been investigated over whether a $113 million personal loan he made to himself, using his firm’s funds, was disclosed to investors in a timely manner.

Such trivial matters are not news at all at most establishment press outlets, including the Essential Global News Network known as the Associated Press. A search on Falcone's last name at the AP's main national site comes up empty, and Lightsquared's name is mentioned only in passing in an unrelated AP article about Clearwire.

Hot Air's Ed Morrissey provided background the press has totally ignored on Saturday (links were in original):

If that was all there was to this story, then this would just be another commercial venture that struck out, with little interest outside the tech fields involved.  However, the overwhelming failure of LightSquared’s test puts allegations from last summer in a new light.  In September, four-star Air Force General William Shelton accused the White House of pressuring him in August to change his Congressional testimony to make his assessment of LightSquared more favorable.  Another Congressional witness told Eli Lake that the White House had “offered guidance” on how to testify favorably towards LightSquared.

Why is this important?  Philip Falcone is a big donor to the Democratic Party, and he has billions of dollars at stake in LightSquared’s approval.  Also, Obama himself was an investor in LightSquared at one point, as were or are a number of his associates.  The resounding failure in this test makes it look like the White House pressured witnesses to back off of exposing LightSquared’s product as exactly the kind of dangerous problem that critics had maintained all along — with the intent to mislead Congress into moving forward with LightSquared’s government contracts.

Is this administration really going to ultimately green-light LightSquared, thereby disrupting the GPS system, and even risking the safety of air travel, in the name of granting favors to a corrupt crony? We may be witnessing a high-tech "All My Sons" scenario conducted in broad daylight.

Is the press, including Bloomberg, which is negligently sticking to the technical details without addressing the corruption — something which certainly would not be happening if a Republican or conservative were in the White House — really going to look the other way while all of this happens? If so, why do they bother coming to work every day?

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.

Wednesday afternoon, Matthew Balan at NewsBusters noted that two of the three network morning shows failed to mention disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's Democratic Party affiliation.

Not that it's an excuse, but what was probably their primary raw material, namely three Tuesday reports from the Associated Press, completely failed to tag Blago as a Democrat, specifically the following (idea HT to NB commenter "trak65"):

• Don Babwin and Michael Tarm, as carried at Yahoo News — "After crime, punishment awaits ex-Gov. Blagojevich"
• An unbylined item carried at the Portland (ME) Press Herald — "Defense: Ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s actions were criminal" (currently dated December 7, but content is clearly from Tuesday)
• Michael Tarm, as carried at TriValleyCentral.com in Arizona — "Blagojevich hoping for light sentence"

Wednesday's coverage of Blago's 14-year sentence at the AP and the New York Times tagged him as a Democrat in the third paragraph, which beats nothing. But most short broadcast announcements won't get that far, and it's reasonable to believe that the journalists involved know that. Reuters waited until about Paragraph 15.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.