It’s been quite a PR campaign by the May 21, 2011 doomsdayers.

I went to the dentist today, and I hardly know why.  If 8 p.m. EST tomorrow is the end of it, I probably could have used the hour better. I’m just grateful that the Preakness will be held at 4:30. (I like “Dialed In” by the way. May as well bet everything I own on him…)

Curious what you all think.  Is tomorrow it? Are we toast?

Cheri Jacobus has a very good piece in The Hill today extolling the non-candidacy of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels.

Gov. Mitch Daniels. The Closer He Gets, The Better He Looks

“Mitch Daniels is the rare political candidate who looks better and better the more he comes into focus, rather than forcing us to reluctantly accept major flaws upon closer inspection,” Jacobus writes.  And , indeed, she is right. Daniels and his record as governor are looking better with every passing day.

The Indiana governor may not be flashy — he is anything but — but his distinct mid-western sensibilities might contrast brilliantly with President Obama’s over–the-top showmanship.  Obama oozes stardom and arrogance; Daniels oozes competence and humility. I would argue that the nation thirsts for the latter.

Governor Daniels says he will soon announce his intentions for 2012. I, for one, would gladly forgo hearing them for a while if that would help him become president.

Sharpton, Brawley, and Attorney Alton Maddox in 1987

Tawana Brawley isn’t a name you read much about these days. But there it was today in the New York Daily News attached, as it forever will be, to the man who made her infamous, the less than Rev. Al Sharpton.

For those too young to remember, or who have successfully repressed memories of the times, Sharpton riled racial tensions in New York for most of 1987, accusing a group of white men, including a Hudson Valley assistant district attorney, of sexually assaulting the then 15-year-old Brawley for a period of days — and then dumping her, covered in feces, in a trash bin, with racial epithets scrawled across her body to boot.

The story proved to be bogus, yet it ruined the lives of the men involved. One man went into a deep depression and killed himself. But Sharpton never apologized for being wrong. (Many believed that Sharpton knew the story was fabricated from the start.)

Sharpton will apparently appear on 60 Minutes on Sunday to mark the 25th anniversary of his National Black Action Network, where, again, he will refuse to apologize.

Presumably, he is unapologetic, too, for riling up tension in Harlem a decade later against a business known as Freddy’s Fashion Mart. Its crime was that it had Jewish owners — “white interlopers” as Sharpton called them at the time. That ended in tragedy, too. Sharpton, a talented trouble maker with a keen talent for media manipulation, whipped up a frenzy of anger toward the West 125th store — crowds chanted “burn the Jew store down” outside Freddy’s — resulting in a Sharpton supporter torching the place with propellent — after ordering black patrons to leave.  Eight people, including the owner, were roasted alive.

No apology from Sharpton. Nothing.

But, despite these and other incidents, Sharpton gained acceptance in the Democratic Party over time because politicians became fearful of him. Get on his wrong side and the Sharpton PR machine could do a number on you. He even became welcome in some Republican circles. It became hip to know “Rev” in New York.  “Funny,” “quick,” and “savvy” are now words used to describe him.

I can think of others.

Sharpton became a much sought-after media personality in the years following Tawana Brawley.  Brawley made Sharpton famous, and he took full advantage of it, while Brawley faded into obscurity.

But a lot of us still remember that Al Sharpton. The one that is anything but hip. To us, he will forever be an amoral self-promoter who tore New York apart in 1987. Absent contrition, he will always remain that.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) released dubious statistics two weeks ago claiming that the “average salary offer to all Class of 2011 graduates” is $50,462 . These pages called bullsh*t, as did every single reader responding to the post. The number simply didn’t mesh with reality.

Friday’s New York Times story, Outlook is Bleak, Even for Recent College Graduates, concurs with that assessment — in a big way.

In her story, Catherine Rampell of  The Times writes:

The median starting salary for students graduating from four-year colleges in 2009 and 2010 was $27,000, down from $30,000 for those who entered the work force in 2006 to 2008, according to a study released on Wednesday by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University. That is a decline of 10 percent, even before taking inflation into account.

Of course, these are the lucky ones — the graduates who found a job. Among the members of the class of 2010, just 56 percent had held at least one job by this spring, when the survey was conducted. That compares with 90 percent of graduates from the classes of 2006 and 2007. (Some have gone for further education or opted out of the labor force, while many are still pounding the pavement.)

I’d like to see the statistical acrobatics NACE had to use to come up with its figures.  Its “average” was $23,000 more than Rutger’s medium– almost double.  You don’t have to be a math major to be skeptical of that. Or, was NACE cooking the numbers to rationalize its member fees as a professional organization? That’s the larger question.

I’m a PR guy.  I blow sunshine up you know where for a living.  But NACE’s numbers look like more than spin to me.  They appear downright fraudulent and they ought to be checked, before struggling college graduates see them and begin feeling like big fat losers. That would be a crime. They have it tough enough already.

I’m liking Leon Panetta more and more.  

The CIA Director is reportedly cracking heads within the Obama Administration to stop the constant leak  of details to the news media about the Osama bin Laden raid, even threatening prosecution for those doing it.

Panetta — and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen — rightly point out that the details of U.S. military operations are nobody’s business, certainly not the international press corps’.  Obama press operatives haven’t seemed to care in an effort to keep the story going and going.

Glad there are some grown ups in the Administration.

Pete King has to stop it.

He’s a good congressman. A solid, conservative congressman, and the senior member of New York’s Republican delegation. He’s  chairman of the Homeland Security Subcomittee. He has a big, big job.

And he’s a mystery novelist, maybe not John le Carré, but a published author nonetheless. How many members of Congress can boast that?

So why does the Long Island congressman insist on diminishing his reputation by feigning a run for higher office every year? Every single year.

Today we read that he’s floating a presidential bid.  I hate to be unkind — King is a leader in my Party and a fellow Notre Dame alumnus to my father and brother — but the words “get real” spring immediately and forcefully to mind. The idea is preposterous. It is a lie.

Pete King is in no way, shape, or form running for President, nor is he presidential material. He is a good congressman. He may have once been able to achieve higher office,  had he actually tried and not just talked about it.

Last year King was running against Kirsten Gillibrand for U.S. Senate, except he wasn’t. Before that he was running against Hillary Clinton for Senate. Except he wasn’t. He was running against Chuck Schumer before that. But he didn’t. He was running for governor at least twice. But he skipped both runs. I think he talked up runs for Attorney General — it’s difficult to keep track — but, if he did, he skipped those, too.  There were other feigns, too, I’m sure.

I am flummoxed by King’s trial balloon habit. You can float your name for higher office only so many times before your credibility is shattered, and King’s was shattered several cycles ago. He is a political pro. How can he not know that?

Suggesting a presidential run now is utterly insulting to the intelligence of the voters and news media.

Pete King has to stop it. For his own good.

http://youtu.be/vlLZPo1M9dQ?t=51s

http://youtu.be/CSG807d3P-U

I don’t know how You Tube does its targeting algorithms, but here’s what was just recommended to me by the company for having watched an online Carl Paladino video six months ago (“If you liked this Carl Paladino video, you’ll love this.)

Amazing.  Just what I always wanted.

The ad, for Levis, is a bit risqué.  It was banned in England, but comes complete with the Benny Hill laugh track.

Perhaps You Tube was confusing the video I watched with the Paladino’s emails I read/saw earlier last year.  Are their target marketers that good?

I’ve always defended the Post Office when people disparage it.  Maybe the lines are long, and, yes, once in a while a postal worker goes, well, you know, but the fact that it can move hundreds of millions of pieces of paper from point A to point B, across millions of square miles in just a couple of days, is a wonder of organizational management. They do it right.

Something else the U.S. Postal Service has done right — something no other U.S. government agency has — is pre-funding its pension plan. That is, it puts money away today to pay for the pensions of its employees tomorrow.  It pays as it goes.

But now, the U.S. Postal Service is asking Congress to relieve it of that financial “burden.” In other words, it wants to join the rest of the federal government in promising retirement benefits with money it doesn’t have.

How will pensions be funded then?  The same way the rest of them are.  They aren’t.  Our children will be stuck worrying about them. They will have to pay the bill, along with all the others being heaped onto them.

Is anyone else seeing an alarming pattern here?

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays our future generations from their appointed debts.