It’s Monday, September 10th, 2011….and here’s The Gouge!

Leading off the week, AEI’s James Pethokoukis looks inside employment numbers so bad even Mort Zuckerman, no shrinking Liberal, described as “even worse than they looked“:

The awful, awful August jobs report

 

This was not the employment report either American workers or the Obama campaign were hoping for. A huge miss. It shows the U.S. labor market remains in a deep depression, generating few jobs and little if no income growth. As IHS Global Insight puts it:

All cylinders are not yet firing … manufacturing has at least temporarily run out of steam, and overall growth in output and employment is likely to remain at only a modest pace. … We expect second-half 2012 GDP growth to average 1.5%, slightly slower than the first half. Slower growth in exports and business capital spending will keep growth subdued.

And here is Citigroup’s take:

The unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% from 8.3%, but in this case with declines in both the labor force (-368,000) and the household-survey measure of employment (-119,000). With labor force participation falling back to a new cycle low of 63.5%, the drop in the unemployment rate should not be reported as good news.

Now the depressing details of the jobs report:

– Non-farm payrolls increased by only 96,000 in August, the Labor Department said, versus expectations of 125,000 jobs or more. The manufacturing sector, much touted by the president in his convention speech, lost 15,000 jobs.

– Since the start of the year, job growth has averaged 139,000 per month vs. an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011.

– As the chart [below] shows, the unemployment rate remains far above the rate predicted by Team Obama if Congress passed the stimulus.

– While the unemployment rate dropped to 8.1% from 8.3% in July, it was due to a big drop in the labor force participation rate (the share of Americans with a job or looking for one). If fewer Americans hadn’t given up looking for work, the unemployment rate would have risen.

– Reuters notes that the participation rate is now at its lowest level since September 1981.

– If the labor force participation rate was the same as when Obama took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate would be 11.2%.

– If the participation rate had just stayed the same as last month, the unemployment rate would be 8.4%.

– The Labor Department also said that 41,000 fewer jobs were created in June and July than previously reported. The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for June was revised from 64,000 to 45,000, and the change for July was revised from 163,000 to 141,000.

– The broader U-6 unemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who want full-time work, is at 14.7%.

– The employment-population ratio is perhaps the broadest measure of the health of the labor market. It just shows how many Americans — not in the military or in prison — as a share of the population actually have some sort of a job. That number fell last month to 58.3%, just off its Great Recession lows. (Obama’s right; he IS like Roosevelt!)

– Each month, The Hamilton Project examines the “jobs gap” — the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month. If we added 96,000 jobs every month, we would not close the jobs gap until after 2025, as this chart shows. 

– The average workweek for all employees on private non-farm payrolls was unchanged at 34.4 hours in August. The manufacturing workweek declined by 0.2 hour to 40.5 hours, and factory overtime was unchanged at 3.2 hours.

– The average workweek for production and non-supervisory employees on private non-farm payrolls was unchanged at 33.7 hours.

– In August, average hourly earnings for all employees on private non-farm payrolls edged down by 1 cent to $23.52. Over the past 12 months, average hourly earnings rose by just 1.7 percent.

– In August, average hourly earnings of private-sector production and non-supervisory employees edged down by 1 cent to $19.75.

Again, a terribly anemic report that shows a stagnant economy — not one ready to boom.

Think about it; have you heard a single MSM outlet, print or broadcast, pointing out this pathetic pecuniary performance?!?  Perhaps it’s because, the Chattering Class’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, this bit of political satire from our old friend and classmate Paul Croisetiere is dead-on balls accurate:

In a related item, courtesy of NewMediaJournal.us, we learn the….

White House to Miss Deadline for Report on ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Budget Cuts 

 

Sorry, I’ve been busy.  But….uh,….GM’s alive and bin Laden isn’t!

The White House on Friday said it will miss the legal deadline for delivering a report to Congress on the spending cuts from sequestration that are scheduled to take effect in 2013. Spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Air Force One that the report will be coming next week. Under the terms of the Sequestration Transparency Act signed in August, President Obama was to tell Congress by Friday how the administration plans to implement the $109 billion in automatic cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act.

The Office of Management and Budget has repeatedly failed to make legal deadlines. It delivered its presidential budget proposals and mid-session updates late both this year and last year.

Republicans have tried to tie the tardiness to the failure of the Senate to pass a budget resolution for the last three years. “Like the [Sen. Harry] Reid majority, the White House has shown astonishingly little regard for budget law in this time of crisis,” said Stephen Miller, a spokesman for Senate Budget Committee Ranking Member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who co-authored the transparency law.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Obama needs to come clean about his plans to carry out the spending cuts. “The sequester originated from this White House, yet it refuses to level with the American people about the devastating impact it will have on our country,” Boehner said in a statement. “By proposing the sequester, the president put his own election campaign ahead of the interests of the country. (As opposed to the Republican Speaker of the House who….didn’t agreee to it?!?) He has a responsibility and legal obligation to tell the American people how he plans to implement, or replace, these devastating cuts.”

Boehner highlighted that House Republicans have passed a replacement for the sequester. That bill relies heavily on social program cuts and does not contain tax increases, which Democrats say are needed for a fair deal. The White House declined to provide further comment on the delay of the report.

Then again, why should The Dear Misleader treat the Military with any greater regard and concern than he does….

….the rest of the country?!?  To borrow a phrase from the immortal….

I gotta a bad feeling about this, Bob; I gotta feeling the country ain’t gonna make it outta here!

….John C. McGinley:

Like his deliberately distorted socialized-healthcare bill, America needs to reelect Obama to learn what’s actually in him.

Meanwhile, across the Pond, as the WSJ informs us, the Frogs are just now learning what residents of the formerly-Golden State and the Land of Once-Gentle Living have known for sometime; meet….

Belgium’s New Billionaire

Arnault says tax rates have nothing to do with his new passport. Sure.

 

The supreme luxury: deciding where one wishes to be taxed….and at what rate!

No doubt Bernard Arnault, France’s richest man, was not thinking about his tax bill when he applied in August for a Belgian passport. No doubt the Socialist French government’s plan to impose a 75% tax on millionaires was the furthest thing from his mind when the 63-year-old native of northern France suddenly spied exciting business opportunities in, er, Liege.

But that hasn’t kept French tongues from wagging following the weekend disclosure in La Libre Belgique newspaper that the LVMH CEO is seeking dual citizenship. The reason, according to Mr. Arnault’s press office, is to expand the “numerous activities in Belgium” of Group Arnault, the billionaire’s private holding company, and also on account of his “many personal and family ties with Belgium.”

Far be it from us to wonder why Mr. Arnault—in a borderless single market—would need a Belgian passport to do business or see his relatives in Belgium. His company insists he will continue to pay taxes in France, where the pre-Hollande top income rate was 46.8%, compared to 53.7% in Belgium.

But if the billionaire’s sudden passion for Trappist beer and good chocolate has caught French imaginations, it’s because it reminds them that tax rates matter. French President François Hollande has made no secret of either his personal dislike of the rich or of his desire to squeeze them for all they’re worth. Now the rich are making it clear they don’t intend to get squeezed if they can help it.

News reports say Mr. Hollande may make a concession to that tax reality by raising the income threshold for his new 75% tax rate. That will spare some French millionaires, but not all of them. Nobody should be surprised if some of them rediscover old affinities for some charming little country on France’s borders. Belgium isn’t the only one.

And in today’s Money Quote, Peggy Noonan’s observations on Sandra Fluke:

“Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception,” Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim?

What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they’re not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That’s not a stand, it’s a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.“

Which makes her eminently qualified for either spot….

….atop the Dimocratic ticket.

Next up, writing at the Washington Examiner, Byron York explains why some Conservatives aren’t hearing Mitt’s dog whistle….other than it’s tough to hear anything strapped to the top of a speeding car:

Romney’s message to Obama voters: He let you down

 

Mitt Romney has just one job going into the last, post-convention stretch of the campaign. He has to connect with people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but are disappointed with the president now. He has to assure them that they didn’t make a mistake back then, that it wasn’t crazy or stupid to believe Obama’s promises, but that things just haven’t worked out as they hoped. And he has to convince them it’s OK to choose a new candidate this time around; they don’t owe Obama another vote. (i.e., voting for a White Mormon will not make them rabid reactionary racists!)

The situation facing Romney is hard for some Republicans to comprehend. They didn’t buy Obama’s bill of goods in the first place and find it hard to sympathize with anyone who did. But there are millions of people who voted for Obama who are not only disappointed in him but have come to the conclusion that he does not deserve to be re-elected. The problem for Romney is they might still be persuaded to vote for the president. Making them comfortable with the idea of leaving Obama is Romney’s job.

Romney campaign advisers are very familiar with the type. They do polling, they do focus groups and they see the phenomenon everywhere. Says campaign pollster Neil Newhouse: “These voters are my mother-in-law. She’s a soft Republican and voted with pride for Barack Obama in terms of what it meant for the country. And now, every time she talks to me, she’s more than disappointed. She’s frustrated. She’s upset. She thought she was voting for a transformational leader and feels like we got just another politician.” You can bet Newhouse and the Romney campaign are not basing their strategy on one mother-in-law. They’re undoubtedly seeing the same thing all the time in their research.

The important thing for Romney, aides believe, is not to rub the voters’ noses in their decision from four years ago. Don’t bash Obama, don’t even harp on how he’s not up to the job — that carries the implication that they should have known that when they voted for him. Just focus on the point that his policies have not made things better. “You’ve got to be careful in terms of how you talk about the president,” says a top Romney campaign aide. “It’s his policies and performance voters are concerned about — that’s the focus.”

On the afternoon before the Democratic convention began in Charlotte, political messaging guru Frank Luntz convened a focus group in a local office park. He gathered 27 voters, 24 of whom had voted for Obama in 2008. Some were sticking with the president, but a larger number were undecided, and a few had already jumped to Romney. Luntz played some campaign commercials for them.

The best-received ad was one produced by the anti-Obama conservative group Americans for Prosperity, in which ’08 Obama voters expressed disappointment with his performance in office. “I think he’s a great person; I don’t feel he is the right leader for our country,” said one woman in the ad. “I still believe in hope and change — I just don’t think Obama is the way to go for that,” said another. They reluctantly concluded that Obama has not earned another term in office.

The focus group members liked the fact that, as one said, “it’s not a negative ad” and did not feature “dark music playing and black-and-white images of [Obama] on the screen.” Another liked that the ad makers “weren’t bashing him, weren’t being mean, weren’t being nasty.” The people in the ad seemed like real people, not political hit men. And they said what those voters were thinking.

Luntz also played the group a few clips from Clint Eastwood’s much-discussed stand-up routine at the Republican convention in Tampa, Fla. (A significant number of them hadn’t seen it.) Eastwood was gentle with Obama voters, saying he felt good when Obama won, but high unemployment has gone on for so long that “it may be time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem.”

The group watched a clip in which Eastwood said, “[Y]ou, we — we own this country. … Politicians are employees of ours. … And when somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go.” The clip got a very positive reception from Luntz’s group, and not just from the few Republicans. That is not good news for the employee in the White House.

Between now and Nov. 6, Romney has to reinforce those voters’ thinking about Obama — and give them a clear picture of what a Romney presidency would look like. The job will take care and hard work, but the voters are more than ready to go along.

One thing’s for certain; if these voters suddenly suffering Obama-regret truly are “Moderates”, what went down in Charlotte….

….surely couldn’t have helped.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s this from Balls Cotton: the only know photographs of Karl Marx and his disciple, The Obamao, together….

….along with this fashion-forward statement from Brenda Berry:

Turning now to Tales of Socialized Medicine, we travel to Sweden where a….

Man dies after doctor goes on lunch break during surgery

 

A Swedish man undergoing surgery died on the operating table after the anesthesiologist and a nurse went to lunch during the procedure, The Local reported. The 72-year-old man was having a tumor removed at a hospital in Lidköping, Sweden, and had gone under anesthesia at 10:45 a.m.  According to The Local, the head anesthesiologist then left at noon for lunch, followed by the head nurse anesthesiologist fifteen minutes later.

While they were gone, no replacement anesthesiologist took over.  Another nurse anesthesiologist was called in, but she was unfamiliar with the respirator attached to the 72-year-old. Soon, the patient began hemorrhaging, while his blood pressure started to drop. The replacement nurse desperately tried to find the anesthesiologist at 1 p.m., when the man’s condition became critical.

The doctor and nurse finally returned from lunch, and found that the man’s respirator had been turned off – depriving the patient of oxygen for eight minutes.  They tried to resuscitate him but ultimately could not revive him.  Due to the lack of oxygen, the man had suffered severe brain damage.  He died weeks after the episode.

The Local said the man’s incident was recently reported to Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare by the man’s daughter, and the board has issued ‘stinging criticism’ of the hospital’s policies.

“Stinging” criticism, mind you!  Here’s the way we look at it: under ObamaScare, guess which anesthesiologist The Dear Misleader gets….

versus who will be attending you and us?

Any questions?!?

And in News of the Bizarre….

California man pleads guilty of ripping out friend’s heart while on hallucinogenic drugs

 

A Northern California mixed-martial artist accused of ripping out his friend’s heart and removing his tongue while the two were on hallucinogenic drugs has pleaded guilty to murder and mayhem charges. Jarrod Wyatt of Crescent City agreed to a plea deal in which he will serve 50 years to life in prison, Del Norte County prosecutors said. His official sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 4.

Wyatt pleaded guilty to first-degree murder involving mayhem in the March 21, 2010, death of his sparring partner, 21-year-old Taylor Powell, prosecutors said….When police arrived that day at a home at the mouth of the Klamath River, they found Wyatt naked and covered in blood. He told the officers, “I killed him,” and said he had cut out Powell’s heart and tongue, according to court documents.

The officers found Powell’s body on the couch of the Requa home. His chest was cut open, and his heart, tongue and the skin of his face were gone, court records said. His heart was found charred in a wood-burning stove. An autopsy determined the organs had been removed while Powell was still alive, the documents said.

Witnesses say the two had ingested hallucinogenic mushrooms before the attack and believed they were involved in a struggle between God and the devil.

Finally, we’ll call it a day with the “Another Sign The Apocalypse Is Upon Us” segment, courtesy of Noel Sheppard and Newsbusters.org:

Gawker: ‘Pedophilia Is a Sexual Orientation’

 

The following headline actually appeared at Gawker Friday: “Born This Way: Sympathy and Science for Those Who Want to Have Sex with Children.” The article, written by Gawker West Coast editor Cord Jefferson, was even worse (emphasis added throughout):

In an ABC News article from 2003, a corrections officer from Los Angeles told reporter Michael S. James that imprisoned pedophiles “usually don’t make it” without protective custody. Leslie Walker, a prisoner’s rights activist, told James, “[Child sex offenders] are at risk of being murdered, having their food taken, having their cells defecated and urinated in. Their life is truly a living hell.” Good, most people will say. But there is a growing number of researchers, many of them out of Canada, whose work suggests that pedophilia is an illness deserving of the public’s sympathy the way any brain disorder is. Some of the scientists say pedophilia is a sexual orientation, meaning that it’s unchangeable, regardless of how much jail time or beatings or therapy someone is dealt. Others have reason to believe that pedophiles are born that way, and that some of them will suffer through entire lives without hurting a single child. If this research proves to be correct, it should help shape both our public policy and our public attitude, so that we’re protecting kids while also protecting pedophiles from angry mobs, cellmates, and themselves.

That bears repeating: “[P]edophilia is an illness deserving of the public’s sympathy…pedophilia is a sexual orientation.”

Scary stuff. But it got worse:

Currently, there is no significant longitudinal evidence that pedophiles can be made to not be attracted to children, and thus it can be defined as their orientation. And if pedophilia is a sexual orientation, that also means it’s futile to send pedophiles to prison in an effort to alter their attractions. Doing so is akin to sending a homosexual child off to a religious-based institution that claims it can “pray the gay away.”

Yes, the article really said “it’s futile to send pedophiles to prison in an effort to alter their attractions.”

Our proposed alternative to the futility of incarcerating pedophiles.

But there was still more:

Imagine a world in which admitting your attraction to busty women or tall men led to alienation, jail time, or your murder. Older gay men can probably remember such an era, but nowadays most sexual appetites have been mainstreamed to the point of banality. Pedophiles, for obvious reasons, don’t enjoy the same kind of tolerance, and thus it seems as if they may be locked forever in a sexual prison from the moment they’re born.

Isn’t it a shame that pedophiles “don’t enjoy the same kind of tolerance?”

But the worst was still yet to come:

The old adage is that the true mark of a society is how it treats the weakest in its ranks. Blacks, women, Latinos, gays and lesbians, and others are still in no way on wholly equal footing in America. But they’re also not nearly as lowly and cursed as men attracted to children. One imagines that if Jesus ever came to Earth, he’d embrace the poor, the blind, the lepers, and, yes, the pedophiles.

Jesus would embrace pedophiles? Not according to Poor Richard’s News:

[H]ow ignorent of the Bible can you be if you’re suggesting Jesus would “embrace the pedophiles”?

Matthew 18: 6: “But whoever causes the downfall of one of these little ones who believe in Me—it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea!”

Jesus died for the forgiveness of sin, not the embrace of it. The Bible is very clear that while all sins can be forgiven, Jesus never ever embraces the sin itself. He made no bones about the punishment for harming a child.

No matter how preposterous this Gawker editor’s views, we learned in the very next sentence how someone could actually think this way.

“As a self-professed ‘progressive.’“

That’s all you needed to know, isn’t it?

More importantly, after Charlotte, on what possible grounds can Cord Jefferson, or any other Liberal, invoke the name of Christ?!?

What’s next?  Jesus was pro-abortion?!?

G. Trevor, Lord High King of All Vietors: as regards the normalization of pedophilia, we hate to say we told you so; but….we did!

Magoo