Ideological Purity: 99 and 44/100% Pure Intolerance

 

"The Tennessee Democratic Party is disavowing the man who won the party’s nomination to challenge Republican Sen. Bob Corker in November, saying the little-known candidate belongs to an anti-gay hate group. ... Mark Clayton, 35, reported raising no money and campaigned little but received more than 48,000 votes, twice the number of his nearest competitor in Thursday’s seven-candidate Democratic primary."

A hate group? Who could that be?

“Mark Clayton is associated with a known hate group in Washington, D.C., and the Tennessee Democratic Party disavows his candidacy, will not do anything to promote or support him in any way, and urges Democrats to write-in a candidate of their choice in November,” read the statement.

Clayton is vice president of the Public Advocate of the United States, a Virginia-based group that advocates a conservative social agenda. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls it a hate group. Its opposition to gay rights is extreme: “GAY MUPPETS CONDEMNED BY PUBLIC ADVOCATE AND NOW SENATOR JIM DEMINT,” “Gay Curriculum Already Out Of Closet And Into Some City Classrooms To Millions In New York” and “Eating Chicken Declared A Hate Crime Pro-homosexual Socialist Dictators Attack Private Companies just like their President Barack Obama Attacks Private Companies” read recent press release headlines."

But, but, but I thought that, unlike the GOP, the Democratic Party had a "big tent"!!!  What happened?

Everyone can see what the Dems got from Obama finally coming out in support of SSM:  THE BIGOT CARD (to add to THE RACE CARD).

From henceforth, if you deviate even the slightest from the party line on SSM, you will be called a "bigot" and a "hater."  If you are an elected official, have a 99.5% percent voting record, but take a principled position opposing SSM, you will be treated like Bill Casey.

Another litmus test has been added.  In addition to the "women's right to choose" orthodoxy, Democrats will not be allowed to deviate even the smallest of iotas from the official party line on the issue of SSM no matter how hate-free their positions are.  They will not be tolerated.  They cannot be allowed in the party.  

Ideological purity will have to be maintained.  How else will they be able to paint the Republicans as waging a "War on Gays"?  They can't have Democrats who have sincerely-held opinions that are in kind with the GOP.

Senator Joe Manchin, Senator David Proctor, etc., watch out. You may soon be emulating Ronald Reagan:

"I didn't leave the Democratic Party.  It left me."
 

“A lot of people from the gay community was actually telling me not to eat at Chick-fil-A and then you know, I started having these flashback because I started believing like, the gay community — we have went from being bullied to becoming bullies.  And I don’t think that that is fair because I’m like, aren’t we like in America, like we have freedom of speech.  We have the freedom to put our money wherever we want to. That’s what America stands on. So how can we just go after this group, you know — go after this company so viciously because they don’t believe they have the same rights as us.  I don’t think it’s fair and I’d don’t think it’s American.

“I grew up, and my family is like you know, ‘Yeah Antoine we don’t agree with your lifestyle, but we accept you. We love you and don’t try to push your lifestyle on someone else. You can scare them or they just don’t want to be around you.  And I was always taught that.”

- Antoine Dodson

He's smarter than the mayors of Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and, apparently, the vast majority of the Democratic party leadership put together.

 

 

 

 

George Jonas: Let’s Hear It For Israel, The Arab World’s All-Purpose Enemy

 If the early 20th century was about the East trying to join what it couldn’t lick, the early 21st may be about the East trying to lick what it hasn’t been able to join.

By George Jonas

And how is the Arab Spring? Well, there’s bad news, and good news. The bad news is that since the beginning of the phenomenon that has been discussed more and understood less than any in recent years, hostility to Israel in the region has only increased. The good news is that while the appetite to harm the Jewish state and its inhabitants has grown in the Arab/Muslim world since the fall of Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia launched what was supposed to be the region’s democratic renewal, the capacity to do so has diminished.

An increase in hostility was predictable. Hatred against Israel, kept on a low boil, is the organizing principle of the Middle East. It’s the region’s main fuel of governance; often its only fuel. Some ruling regimes — kings, dictators, whatever — may have oil wells and sandy beaches, but other than hating Israel (and looking after their families and tribes) they have few if any ideas. If they do, chances are it’s to hate some other group in addition to Israel.

In the Middle East a country’s national purpose often amounts to little more than a list of its enemies. A feeling of being ill-done by dominates the consciousness of groups and individuals. Since it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, it’s not necessarily baseless: The easiest way to have an enemy is to be one.

The centrality of hatred to the culture is remarkable. The Cartesian idea is “I hate, therefore I am.” Self-righteousness is overwhelming: each desire thwarted becomes an example of justice denied. It’s not a pretty place, but millions call it home.

In many ways, Israel is a godsend to the one-trick ponies who rule the region. Their culture defines “ruling” as inoculating your own sect or tribe against all others, including the ones that form your own country. Many Middle East nations — Iraq, Syria, Libya, to name three — are just temporarily halted civil wars. They’re truces rather than countries. Canada may be “two solitudes,” but it isn’t an uneasy truce between French and English Canadians. Iraq is, between Shia and Sunni Muslims.

In such an ambiance, nothing is handier than an all-purpose enemy, just out of reach, close enough to seem a realistic threat but too far to be one. Tyrants can govern by whipping up enough popular sentiment against the Jewish state to give their regimes an apparent national purpose and distract people’s attention from domestic woes, then relax and spend some money in the capitals of Europe.

The key is a low boil, though. If the anti-Israeli sentiment boils over, causing riots against the government for being too soft on the Zionists, or foolish attempts to attack Haifa with rockets, which in turn invites retaliation, the people’s hatred of Israel becomes a headache for the very rulers who instigated it.

“Yeah, well, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch,” somebody might say, “I’ll lose no sleep over it.” He should, though, because it’s like pulling a thread from a piece of fabric. Things can unravel in an instant.

Tyranny, Egyptian-style, under Hosni Mubarak or Libyan-style, under Muammar Gaddafi, often manifested itself in dictatorial governments balancing on a tightrope, trying to maintain a fragile peace with Israel against their own bellicose people, trying to counteract the effects of the sentiments they themselves instigated. When they couldn’t, the forces they helped conjure up turned against them. If lucky, they died in a hail of bullets on the reviewing stand like Anwar Sadat; if not, bludgeoned like a cornered rat in a culvert, in the manner of Gaddafi. It’s a fate Bashar al-Assad has been trying to avoid, which is hardly surprising.

Assad “has threatened to rain missiles down on Tel Aviv should NATO try to dislodge him,” as Michael Koplow put it in the National Interest, but in fact Syria’s tyrant has been raining missiles (and if not missiles, then shells and bullets) on his own towns and villages. No wonder, for that’s where his enemies live — his actual enemies, as opposed to his mythical ones. It’s his fellow Syrians who want to trap him in a culvert and drown him, preferably along with his entire tribe. Israel has no interest in touching him with a 10-foot pole, especially as long as he’s keeping Syria’s armed forces and rebels thinning each other’s ranks.

We won’t understand much about the Arab Spring as long as we persist in looking at it through Western eyes. We see popular uprisings against dictatorships as moves in the direction of Western-style democracy. If they happened here, they probably would be. Where they’re actually happening they’re taking their societies in the opposite direction.

The Arab Spring is an attempt to return the region to its roots. It’s not to Westernize the Middle East and make it more democratic; it’s to Easternize it and make it more Islamic. If the early 20th century was about the East trying to join what it couldn’t lick, the early 21st may be about the East trying to lick what it hasn’t been able to join.

Harry Reid, STFU or Else...

Pic of the Day: 'Fess Up, Harry

M2RB:  Twisted Sister

We're not gonna take your silence any more, Harry Reid!  'Fess up about your buggery, you sick, twisted, pathetic son of a bitch!

Demand that Harry Reid prove his innocence.  Call his office at 202.224.3542 (Washington), 775.686.5750 (Reno), 775.882.REID (Carson City), or 702.388.5020 (Las Vegas).  You can also contact him at his $1 million plus condominium in the exclusive Ritz-Carlton Hotel located in very tony and extraordinarily expensive Georgetown by ringing 202.835.0500.  Tell him that we just will not sit idly by while the Majority Leader of the United States Senate refuses to answer questions about his sexual assaults on little boys.

You do NOT have the right to remain silent, Harry Reid, and you are guilty until you prove yourself innocent.

 

Harry Reid Is A Fucking Liar!

"The word's out that he hasn't paid ANY taxes for 10 years.  Let him prove that he has paid taxes,  because he hasn't." 

- Senator Harry Reid

You lie!

Romney paid $3,009,766 in Federal income taxes in 2010.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/romney-2010-tax-return.html


He paid $3,226,623 in Federal income taxes in 2011.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/romney-2011-estimated-1040.html

Further, the whole “investor” thing is ludicrous, too. What investor is privy to the individual tax returns or lack thereof of the ownership of an investment firm … especially when the alleged tax evader hasn’t been involved in the management of the company for more than a decade? 

Lastly, after Reid made his accusation, the Salon.com writer Alex Seitz-Wald consulted several tax attorneys about its theoretical plausibility and determined that it was “nothing short of ludicrous.”

It's time to punish this bastard.

“Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one’s taxes. 

Over and over again, the courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging his affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands.” 

- Judge Learned Hand, a Progressive, who has been quoted more often than any other lower-court judge by legal scholars and by the Supreme Court of the United States in history

The Left's Totalitarian Temptation

By Deroy Murdock

‘I have been to this point unwilling to sign on to same-sex marriage primarily because of my understandings of the traditional definitions of marriage.”

If you dislike that comment, you will hate this one: “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian . . . it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”

Such divisive, bigoted words surely were spat like venom by Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy, right?

Wrong.

President Barack Obama uttered the first statement on October 27, 2010. Candidate Obama made the second remark to Pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., on August 17, 2008.

The Chick-fil-A flap just grows more bizarre from here. This needless controversy illustrates how thoroughly unhinged the American Left has become and exposes the totalitarian temptation that stirs just beneath the thin skins of too many Democrats.

Cathy’s interview in the July 16 Baptist Press triggered this brouhaha.

 

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit,” Cathy said. “We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.” He also told radio host Ken Coleman: “I think we are inviting God’s judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, ‘We know better than You as to what constitutes a marriage.’”

Cathy’s words exploded as if he had told gays to stay the hell out of his restaurants. Cathy said no such thing.

As a gay-marriage supporter, I disagree with Cathy. If Jack and Frank seek marital bliss, let them have it. Government should privatize marriage and let voluntary institutions marry or not marry people, as they wish.

While I differ with Cathy, however, his views are neither extreme nor medieval. Indeed, on May 8, they mirrored Obama’s definition of marriage. That was the day before Obama parroted Vice President Biden and endorsed gay marriage. Obama instantly “evolved” and told ABC News on May 9: “It is important for me personally to go ahead and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

Cathy is being excoriated as a homophobic Neanderthal while just four months ago Obama’s position on gay marriage was equally prehistoric.

Rather than combat this year’s 39 percent spike in homicides in his town, Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel pole-vaulted into this fracas.

“Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values,” Emanuel declared. If that’s true, Obama similarly lacked Chicago values while Emanuel was his chief of staff. Evidently, that did not bother Emanuel at the time.

Other Democrats have not limited themselves to rebuking Cathy. Instead, they have abused their power by threatening or applying government force to sandbag Chick-fil-A — the First Amendment be damned.

“If they need licenses in the city, it will be very difficult,” Mayor Thomas Menino (D., Boston) roared last month.

Mayor Vincent Gray (D., Washington, D.C.) called Chick-fil-A “hate chicken” and opposes its expansion in America’s capital. 

Alderman Proco Joe Moreno (D., Chicago) promised to barthe company from his constituency. He told the Chicago Tribune: “Because of this man’s [Cathy’s] ignorance, I will now be denying Chick-fil-A’s permit to open a restaurant in the 1st Ward.”

“We don’t want you here,” city-council speaker Christine Quinn (D., New York City) snapped. Also, on official stationery, she wrote New York University president John Sexton and pressed him to expel Gotham’s only Chick-fil-A outlet.

“I urge you to sever your relationship with the Chick‐fil‐A establishment that exists on your campus,” Quinn wrote on July 28. She added: “I appreciate your university’s long history of celebrating diversity. I urge you to join with me in ensuring that our city does not become a place where those who do not share our commitment, have any place to espouse those views [emphasis added].”

Such coercion should terrify every American.

Will there now be a pro-gay-marriage litmus test for anyone who works at Boston’s City Hall or New York’s Municipal Building? Imagine that Chicago pays a contractor to remove asbestos from city-owned buildings. One day, he casually mentions that he opposes gay marriage. Will Mayor Emanuel decry that contractor’s “hate” and cancel his contract? How many government workers and contractors in Boston, Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C., now will not even discuss gay marriage for fear of saying something politically incorrect and then suffering public attack and economic ruin?

Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I., New York City), who almost fetishistically sticks government’s fingers into New Yorkers’ soft drinks and breast milk, showed admirable restraint on this issue.

“You can’t have a test for what the owners’ personal views are before you decide to give a permit to do something in the city,” Bloomberg said last week. “You really don’t want to ask political beliefs or religious beliefs before you issue a permit, that’s just not government’s job,” he added.

“Freedom of speech — everybody’s in favor of it as long as it’s what they want to hear,” Bloomberg continued. “Well the only way that you have your freedom of speech is if you give other people freedom of speech.”

Of course, if people ignore Bloomberg’s advice, this easily could become a two-way street. What if Elton John — a gay man committed to David Furnish — attempts to perform in a socially conservative community — say, Tulsa, Oklahoma? If city officials decide that Elton John violates “Tulsa values,” can they stop him from rocking a municipal arena?

Starbucks supports gay marriage. Could a pro-Chick-fil-A backlash prompt a Bible Belt mayor to block Starbucks from his city?

Gay activists could encourage people to patronize Starbucks or simply avoid Chick-fil-A. That’s not good enough. Instead, some on August 3 will stage a National Same-Sex Kiss Day at Chicks-fil-A nationwide.

Painting heretofore relaxed straight people into a sexual corner is no way to engender gay-friendliness. How would gay activists like to see social conservatives deploy squadrons of husbands and wives to penetrate gay bars and commence male-female lip-locking?

This fiasco confirms the intolerance of the supposedly “open-minded” American Left. Rather than simply dispute or debate Cathy, they immediately pilloried him and vilified those who share his traditionalist outlook.

Far more chilling, major Democratic politicians reflexively grabbed the instruments of power to bludgeon Dan Cathy and Chick-fil-A. The scariest lesson here is that small dictators lurk inside far too many Democrats.

— New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a Fox News Contributor, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University.

Health Care in MA Is Bad Omen for Obamacare

M2RB:  Patti Smith

Every night before I go to sleep
Find a ticket, win a lottery,
Scoop the pearls up from the sea
Cash them in and buy you all the things you need.
Every night before I rest my head
See those dollar bills go swirling 'round my bed.

Oh, baby, it would mean so much to me,
Oh, baby, to buy you all the things you need for free.

  And we'll roll, dream, roll, dream, roll, roll, dream, dream.

When we dream it, when we dream it, when we dream it,
We'll dream it, dream it for free, free money,
Free money, free money, free money, free money, free money, free money.

 By Walter Russell Mead


Opponents of the Affordable Care Act predict the law will play out in four steps:

1. Put government in charge of healthcare.
2. Be shocked by rising costs.
3. Begin micromanagement and cost controls.
4. Endless pain.

Massachusetts, the model for the federal law, seems to have moved to step three, with a vote set this week on measures to contain runaway healthcare spending. We’ll see if step four is next.

As the Wall Street Journal report suggests, the legislation involves significant government oversight of the healthcare system and a major expansion of government bureaucracy:
 
 

If the measure is approved . . . [a]ll health-care providers would be required to report financial performance, market share, cost trends, and quality measures to the state.

A new oversight agency would monitor how providers are doing at controlling costs and provide reports on cost trends—information that will be used to develop further policy.

In addition, the bill charges the state’s attorney general, Martha Coakley, with monitoring trends in the health-care market, including price variation, though it doesn’t require her to take action. Ms. Coakley, a Democrat, has been a critic of hospitals that use their brand and clout to charger higher prices that aren’t justified by quality.

Nobody really knows what the answers to America’s healthcare problems are. Rapid technological change means that any system that exists now will likely be unworkable in 30 years. As the population gets older it will require more healthcare per capita. Scientific advances will make more sophisticated treatments available, threatening to drive all existing healthcare systems to bankruptcy sooner or later.

Radically restructuring the way healthcare works seems to be the only way out.

Existing economic interests—pharmaceutical companies, employee guilds like doctors and registered nurses, insurance companies, state and local government, and so on—can create political gridlock and stop real change. Thus markets, rather than government planners, seem most likely over time to create the innovation we need.

Backers of government-run healthcare, including the single-payer concept, think regulation by government and intelligent planning will work better. I think that these people are well-intentioned but wrong. If we follow their suggestions, we are more likely to end up with something like the U.S. Postal Service than a high-tech, streamlined medical system that can work in the future. This is not because governments can never do anything right, but because the American political system works the way it does. Other countries, usually smaller and more homogenous ones, can do these things better. Approaches that might work in Denmark don’t work well here. The messy compromises and one-size-fits-all solutions that usually come out of Washington generally can’t provide the kind of guidance our healthcare system needs.

But nobody knows how things will work out. Given political and social realities, government has a role to play. There is no way that the United States can come up with a true free market approach. It is conceivable theoretically but impractical from a political point of view. So we are stuck with a messy, mixed system.

Massachusetts, thanks in part to Governor Romney, offers us a picture of what the future might look like if the Affordable Care Act survives to shape the future of American healthcare. I don’t think the picture is going to be a pretty one.

How do you cut health-care costs in a system with universal insurance and individual mandates guided by heavy government regulation? The issues that Massachusetts is working on now are exactly the questions the country will have to confront next if we continue on our current track.

Let’s watch and learn.



Free Money - Patti Smith
 
Every night before I go to sleep
Find a ticket, win a lottery,
Scoop the pearls up from the sea
Cash them in and buy you all the things you need.
Every night before I rest my head
See those dollar bills go swirling 'round my bed.
I know they're stolen, but I don't feel bad.
I take that money, buy you things you never had.

Oh, baby, it would mean so much to me,
Oh, baby, to buy you all the things you need for free.
I'll buy you a jet plane, baby,
Get you on a higher plane to a jet stream
And take you through the stratosphere
And check out the planets there and then take you down
Deep where it's hot, hot in Arabia, babia, then cool, cold fields of snow
And we'll roll, dream, roll, dream, roll, roll, dream, dream.
When we dream it, when we dream it, when we dream it,
We'll dream it, dream it for free, free money,
Free money, free money, free money, free money, free money, free money.

Every night before I go to sleep
Find a ticket, win a lottery.
Every night before I rest my head
See those dollar bills go swirling 'round my bed.

Oh, baby, it would mean so much to me,
Baby, I know our troubles will be gone.
Oh, I know our troubles will be gone, goin' gone
If we dream, dream, dream for free.
And when we dream it, when we dream it, when we dream it,
Let's dream it, we'll dream it for free, free money,
Free money, free money, free money,
Free money, free money, free money,
Free money, free money, free money,
Free money, free money, free money,
Free money, free money, free money,
Free money, free money, free money,
Free money, free money, free money,
Free money, free money, free money, free. 

Obama's Game Plan: Whites Need Not Vote

By John Ellis, Buzz Feed

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has spent more than $100 million on advertising over the last 3 months. Much, if not most, of it has been produced to shred Mitt Romney's reputation and suppress turnout among white voters who might vote for Romney. The outlook for August is more of the same. The outlook for September and October is probably a lot more of the same.

The 2012 president election, boiled down to its remaining variables, is about two things: (1) white voters who voted for Barrack Obama last time and have since grown disillusioned and, (2) white voters who stayed home in 2008 rather than vote for John McCain but may vote this time. The Obama campaign's goal is to make both groups stay home rather than vote. It's not a "negative campaign" they're running. It's purposefully toxic.

The math is simple. In 2008, black turnout was way up. Hispanic turnout was up. Young voters flooded the polls. Barack Obama won a substantial majority (53.4%) of the vote, the largest majority for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide in 1964.

The white vote, as a percentage of the total vote, was down. Obama captured 43% of the white vote, the highest percentage of white votes garnered by a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson (President Clinton also received 43% of the white vote in his 1996 re-election campaign).

Fast forward to 2012. Black turnout indicators are down, substantially. Hispanic turnout indicators are down, substantially. The youth vote, as a percentage of the total vote, is expected to revert to form. White voters are now expected to comprise 75% of the total electorate.

If President Obama gets 40% of the white vote, he has a chance to win re-election. If President Obama gets 35% of the white vote, he's finished.

Right now, depending on which poll you look at, President Obama is running somewhere north of 35% and south of 40% among white voters. The danger for Team Obama is that there will come a moment – “anything is better than this” – that will cause the bottom to fall out of the president’s support among white voters. If that happens, he will fall into Mondale country (35%) and lose in a landslide.

So the purpose of the president’s campaign is to make sure, if such a thing can be made sure, that that doesn’t happen. Thus the chemical warfare campaign, the war to end all wars.

There’s a lot the Romney campaign could do to change this dynamic. It could, for instance, run a series of television advertisements that recite Mr. Romney’s success in business, management, governance, and high-profile International events. It could articulate a clear plan to jump start economic growth, spur innovation, and encourage investment and opportunity. It could highlight the obvious fact that an effective manager could easily get 10% more productivity out of the Federal government on 10% less money. It could highlight the fact that Governor Romney actually knows how to manage large, complex enterprises and organizations.

For whatever reason, Team Romney seems disinclined to do this. Maybe they’re waiting for the Convention and the fall campaign. Maybe they haven’t formulated their final plans. Maybe whatever.

It might not matter. If the election is a referendum on President Obama, then he will lose. A majority of the nation’s voters would rather he be retired than be given another term. So the race boils down to a simple question: can Mitt Romney be made so toxic as to enable the re-election of a president that a majority of voters would rather not re-elect?

Jobs Picture Comparison: January 2009 v. July 2012 -- Stagnation Nation

M2RB:  The Verve at Glastonbury

Well I never pray
But tonight I'm on my knees yeah
I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me, yeah
I let the melody shine, let it cleanse my mind, I feel free now
But the airways are clean and there's nobody singing to me now

This morning's jobs report for June was another abject, colossal, unmitigated, catastrophic disaster for the American economy, the millions of unemployed and underemployed, the college graduates hoping to embark upon a glowing career path, families, whose homes are underwater, and for one man, in particular, who has "focused like a laser beam" on one job: his.  That one man is President Barack Hussein Obama.

It has long been a very open secret that the Enron-style number-fudging that Señora Solis is doing over at the Department of Labour would land any of us in the private sector right next to Bernie Madoff R. Allen Stanford.  At this rate, Hilda may need to spring Bernie from prison to accomplish her one job mission -- well, other than the one creating hotlines for illegal immigrants to call to learn about their "rights":  Getting Barack Obama reelected.  Yep, only Madoff can create those kinds of numbers.

Essentially, Obama is demanding Daniel Boulud turn cow patties into Araguani Chocolate Cremeux and that is "Ce n'est tout simplement pas possible.  Comprendre?"

Another 150,000 Americans just VANISHED from the labour force last month.  Poof!   The number of Americans employed fell by 195,000.   Last month's number of jobs created was reduced from 80,000 to an even more measly 64,000.

The economy added 163,000 jobs added, seasonally adjusted. -- about one-third of them were in temporary services. Whoop-dee-doo!  When discouraged workers are added, the unemployment rate rises to 15.0%.   If we keep the participation rate at the level it was when Obama took office, then unemployment (U-3) is over 11%.

 

Some "fun facts" from our friend, Jim Pethokoukis:

Today’s 8.3% jobless rate is exactly what it was in February 2009, when Obama got his $838 billion stimulus package.  At that point, the civilian participation rate in the workforce was 65.8%.  Today’s was 63.7%.  In February 2009, we had 80.392 million people not participating in the workforce; as of July, that number has grown by almost eight million people, to 88.34 million, which took 42 months to grow.  The time it took previous to February 2009 to add eight million to those not in the workforce was 92 months, more than double the amount of time.

Hey!  Did someone say "War on Women"???  I've got ya a "War on Women."   Check it out:

In January 2009, the number of women employed was:  67.007m

In July 2012, the number of women employed was:  66,754m

In January 2009, the number of unemployed women was:  4.845m

In July 2012, the number of unemployed women was:  5.865m

The percentage change in the number of women employed between January 2009 and July 2012 has been a DECREASE of 0.378%.

The percentage change in the number of women unemployed between January 2009 and July 2012 has been an INCREASE of 21.053%.

 "Our growth rate is measly [so what did you expect?]"

- Austan Goolsbee, former Obama economic adviser

Measly growth rate?  Yeah, I guess you could call it that.  **eyeroll**  But, can we at least get it to hurry up so that we can get rid of this imbecile?  Seriously.  Who in their bloody mind would hire and expand with Black Jesus (h/t David Axelrod) as CEO of the country?

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for blacks (14.1%) edged down over the month from 14.4%, while the rates for adult men (8.4%), adult women (8.1% - up 0.7% since June), teenagers (23.7%), whites (7.4%), and Hispanics (10.3%) showed little or no change. The jobless rate for Asians was 6.2% in July, down 1.1% since last year.  The unemployment rate for black teenagers is 38.1%, 21.7% for white teenagers, and 29.4% for Hispanic teens.

If we add in the long-term discouraged workers that the BLS does not even count anymore, the Shadow Government Statistics website reports the total unemployment rate increasing to 22.8% in June.

 

 A million more workers were suffering long-term unemployment of 27 weeks or longer in July than at the supposed end of the recession 3 years ago.

Who will rid us of this meddlesome priest?

OK, onto the business of the day.....


I ran the numbers comparing January, 2009, to July, 2012:

January 2009:

Civilian non-institution population:  234.739m

Civilian labour force:  153.716m

Employed:  142.099m

Employment-population ratio: 61.3

Unemployed:  11.616m

Not in labour force:  81.023m

Not in the labour force, but who want a job now:  5.62m

Part-time, but want full-time job:  8.038m

Participation Rate:  65.5%

Average Weeks Unemployed:  19.8

Unemployment rate:  7.6% 



July 2012:

Civilian non-institutional population:  243.354m

Civilian labour force:  155.013m

Employed:  142.220m

Employment-population ratio:   58.4

Unemployed:  12.794m

Not in labour force:  88.340m

Not in the labour force, but who want a job now:   6.554m

Part-time, but want full-time job:  8.246m

Participation rate:  63.7%

Average Weeks Unemployed:  38.8

Unemployment rate:  8.3%

Percentage Change:

Civilian non-institutional population:  +3.67 %

Civilian labour force:  +0.844 %

Employed:  +0.121%

Employment-population ratio:  -4.731%

Unemployed:   +10.141%

Not in labour force:   +9.031%

Not in the labour force, but who want a job now:   +16.619%

Part-time, but want full-time job:   +2.588%

Participation rate:  -2.748%

Average Weeks Unemployed:  +95.96%

Unemployment rate:  +9.211%

More from James:

Only in a world of lowered, New Normal expectations was the July jobs report anything less than another disaster for U.S. workers. Nonfarm payrolls rose 163,000 last month as the unemployment rate rose to 8.3%. In addition, employment for May and June was revised by 6,000 jobs.

– Not only is the 8.3% unemployment rate way above the 5.6% unemployment rate that Team Obama predicted for July 2012 if Congress passed the $800 billion stimulus plan. It’s way above the 6.0% unemployment rate they predicted if no stimulus was passed.

– Job growth, as measured by nonfarm payrolls, has average about 75,000 jobs a month during the Obama recovery for a total of 2.7 million jobs. Context: During the first three years of the Reagan Recovery, job growth averaged 273,000 a month for a total of 9.8 million. If you adjust for the larger U.S. population today, the Reagan Recovery averaged 360,000 jobs a month for a three-year total of 13 million jobs.

– This continues to be the longest stretch of 8% or higher unemployment since the Great Depression, 42 straight months.

– If the labor force participation rate was the same as when Obama took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate would be 11.0%.

– Even if you take into account that the LFP should be declining as America ages, the unemployment rate would be 10.6%.

– If labor force participation rate hadn’t declined since just last month, unemployment rate would have risen to 8.4%.

– The broader U-6 unemployment rate, which includes “all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons,” ticked up to 15.0%.

– Two years ago, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner wrote his now-infamous “Welcome to the Recovery” op-ed for the New York Times. During those two years, the economy has added an average of just 137,000 jobs a month.

– Not only is the 8.3% unemployment rate way above the 5.6% unemployment rate that Team Obama predicted for July 2012 if Congress passed the $800 billion stimulus plan. It’s way above the 6.0% unemployment rate they predicted if no stimulus was passed.

– Good point on the report from IHS Global Insight:

In the household survey, which produces the unemployment rate, both the employment-to-population ratio and the labor force participation rate dropped, not signs of a healthy labor market. The report will alleviate fears that the US might be tipping back into recession. But uncertainties over the strength of global growth, the Eurozone crisis, the fiscal cliff and the November elections are giving plenty of reasons for caution. We expect subdued monthly job creation in the 100,000-150,000 region in the second half of the year

– And Citgroup’s take:

To keep us all guessing, today’s data included a particularly weak reading on employment from the household survey, which showed a 195,000 drop in employment and 150,000 drop in the labor force. The unemployment rate rose to 8.3% from 8.2%. While trend employment gains are not progressing at a particularly robust rate, we would not view a 0.1 percentage point move in a singlemonth reading as particularly significant. Also showing that the underlying trend is not very robust, the work week was unchanged and average hourly earnings rose just 0.1%, suggesting a much smaller gain in real income than reported in June (which also argues for smoothing). Aggregate hours worked rose a modest 0.1%.

Seasonal And Birth Death Adjustments Add 429,000 Statistical "Jobs"

By Tyler Durden 

Happy by the headline establishment survey print of 133,245 which says that the US "added" 163,000 jobs in July from 133,082 last month? Consider this: the number was based on a non seasonally adjusted July number of 132,868. This was a 1.248 million drop from the June print. So how did the smoothing work out to make a real plunge into an "adjusted" rise? Simple: the BLS "added" 377K jobs for seasonal purposes. This was the largest seasonal addition in the past decade for a July NFP print in the past decade, possibly ever, as the first chart below shows. But wait, there's more: the Birth Death adjustment, which adds to the NSA Print to get to the final number, was +52k. How does this compare to July 2011? It is about 1000% higher: the last B/D adjustment was a tiny +5K! In other words, of the 163,000 jobs "added", 429,000 was based on purely statistical fudging. Doesn't matter - the flashing red headline is good enough for the algos.

Seasonal Adjustment:

Birth Death: