[Washington Examiner] U.S. unemployment dipped to 3.7 percent in September, the lowest since December 1969, even as labor market growth contracted sharply amid tightening at stores, bars, and restaurants.
The net gain of 134,000 positions reported by the U.S. Labor Department on Friday was 27 percent lower than the average estimate of 184,000 from economists surveyed by FactSet and compares with growth of 201,000 a month before. Employment in the retail industry dropped by 20,000, reflecting rising competition from businesses like Amazon and disruption from Hurricane Florence's landfall in the southeastern U.S.
"A parting blow from Hurricane Florence rippled through the September hiring headline, but that will likely only be short-lived and recaptured with the next jobs report," said Bankrate.com economic analyst Mark Hamrick, who noted a drop of 17,000 at bars and restaurants, many of which were closed when Florence hit and during the flooding afterward.
While the topline number is still well above the level the Federal Reserve estimates is necessary to maintain stable economic growth, it reflects the escalating risks from the tariffs President Trump has imposed on steel, aluminum, and some $250 billion of Chinese imports. The duties have hammered global supply chains and pinched newer, smaller manufacturers.
Florence ‐ which slammed into southern North Carolina with winds of up to 90 mph in mid-September ‐ likely shaved 10,000 jobs, Robert Martin, an economist with Swiss lender UBS, estimated before the report was released. He predicted growth of 174,000 positions altogether, with robust gains outside of the manufacturing and retail industries, while other economists projected expansion of 200,000 jobs or more.
Payroll-processing firm ADP, meanwhile, said private-employer payrolls expanded by 230,000 in a report on Wednesday. Wall Street typically follows ADP's figures closely, viewing them as a potential indicator of the Labor Department's broader assessment.
[AOL.com] A campaign that aims to get millennials to register to vote turned heads by enlisting the help of actors posing as elderly, white Trump supporters.
The ad, titled "They’re doing fine, are you?" was created as part of the Knock the Vote movement, started by ACRONYM, an organization that claims to be "the largest digital program focused on electing Democrats to state legislative seats across the country."
In the cheeky one-minute PSA, a group of elderly white actors purported to be Trump supporters urges "young people" not to get out and vote on Election Day for a plethora of outrageous reasons.
#1
Yes, remember those old people are transferring wealth the millennials don't have to themselves. Econ 101 ala Krugman.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/06/2018 11:36 Comments ||
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#2
Typical Progressives bigotry. Divide and conquer, and use class and age and race and gender to do so - the finer the mince, the weaker the resultant much.
[The Hill] Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather argued Friday that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) missed an opportunity to be a "hero" by announcing that she would vote to confirm Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
In a Facebook post after Collins announced her plans to vote for Kavanaguh during a lengthy speech on the Senate floor, the veteran anchor called the nomination battle a "devastating loss" for "most women" and some men.
"So Collins misses her moment to be a hero, and the old bulls win again," Rather wrote in the post.
"For most women and many men it’s a bitter, devastating loss. Which makes it all the sweeter for the old bulls, and for the forces of power, privilege and money everywhere," he added.
Rather wrote that his wife was "furious and deeply disappointed" by the day's news that Republicans have the votes necessary to confirm Kavanaugh on Saturday.
[The Federalist] I have become a unicorn. My metamorphosis didn’t require a magic spell or potion, or even a trip to a well-reviewed plastic surgeon to add a horn to my head. All it took was Democrats’ treatment of Brett Kavanaugh over the last few weeks to turn me into that elusive creature: a minority, immigrant woman who supports Republicans.
I moved to the United States from Trinidad and Tobago eight years ago when I married my husband, Christopher, former U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia’s eighth (and, in my opinion, most lovable) child. Some people might read that and think, "Well, that’s no surprise then; Justice Scalia’s daughter-in-law is hardly likely to be anything but Republican!"
But they would be wrong. I’ve always considered myself politically moderate: I am unapologetically pro-life, but my views on affirmative action, Black Lives Matter, and gun control made me sympathize strongly with Democratic perspectives and occasionally led to arguments with my husband and father-in-law. Arguing with one of the greatest legal minds of the century for 'eight years' were you ?
That sense of political homelessness was a big reason that I was never in a hurry to become an American citizen. I figured I’d do it eventually, but not having a strong connection to either party, feeling unsure of where I fit into America’s strange political landscape, meant it was low on my list of priorities.
Fast-forward to 2018, and Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Protests and vows to block him by any means, "using every available tool," followed almost immediately. Anybody paying attention knew that things were about to get interesting. Unfortunately, things got less interesting than ugly and convinced me that Democrats are not who they claim to be. Please file under post-adolescent awakening.
[AmericanThinker] With each passing day and with each bit of information that seeps out about Christine Blasey Ford, it is clearer and clearer that what the Democrats have done to Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been a setup from the outset.
Most of us are relatively naïve, ready to believe what our news outlets put forth. We have open minds and were ready and willing to listen to Ford's testimony and consider for ourselves if it was believable. It was not. Her testimony was obviously scripted, practiced, massaged, and fabricated out of whole cloth.
Ford may have seemed like a victim, not of Kavanaugh, but perhaps of her Democrat operatives. Over the past days, however, what is nearer to the truth is that she was and is part of a faction of anti-Trump activists bent upon destroying Kavanaugh in order to deny Trump another nominee to the Supreme Court. Also a part of the great female movement of destroying men's lives by making false accusations of sexual impropriety - see below
#2
More people are robbed / mugged than raped in the country every year. How do you suppose I'd be treated in the press if I appeared out of nowhere and said some public official stole my wallet at a drunken party 35 years ago?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/06/2018 8:28 Comments ||
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#3
Validity of the foto unconfirmed, but humorous nonetheless.
#4
I do have to thank her for getting GOP and conservative voters stirred up and motivated. And they did this a bit more than 2 weeks out from early voting and mail-in ballots!
Thanks Progs for doing with the GOPe couldn't do: boost turnout and enthusiasm massively for a midterm!
#7
Here's hoping Kavanaugh doesn't do the typical Bushie move of supplicating to the people who hate him, while throwing the people who backed him under the bus.
[Hot Air] That would be a dynamite primary. The Palins and Murkowskis do not care for each other, due in part to Sarah ending Frank Murkowski’s governorship by crushing him in the Republican primary in 2006. (Frank is Lisa’s father.) A Palin-endorsed challenger successfully primaried Lisa herself in 2010, leading to some casual sniping between them during the campaign. This is one woman who won’t quit on Alaska, Murkowski said at one point during her campaign, just a year after Palin abruptly resigned as governor. She went on to win the general election as a write-in candidate and hasn’t looked back.
Could Palin beat her? Murkowski’s not super-popular back home. Morning Consult pegged her approval rating this summer at a tepid 40/43. Palin wasn’t very popular back home at last check either, though. In 2014 Public Policy Polling measured her favorable rating at 36/55. ("Public Policy Polling is a left-wing outfit!" cry furious Palin fans. Which is true, actually.) A year later, in 2015, her *national* net favorable rating was 24 points underwater and just 27 points above water within her own party. Not normally the stuff of which successful primary challenges are made.
#1
I'm not a Sawa fan. That earns me the same flames as saying I'm not a dog lover...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/06/2018 1:59 Comments ||
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#2
So. No flames from me. However, I despise Murkowski. Alaska voters appear to not despise her. And someone keeps re-electing a whole gaggle of clearly insane/psychopathic dems. The list is too curdling to subject you all to this early in the day.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
10/06/2018 8:20 Comments ||
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#3
It's the "They're all crooks but I like my crook." syndrome.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
10/06/2018 8:23 Comments ||
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#4
Ah. Explains at lot. And good morning to you.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
10/06/2018 8:25 Comments ||
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#5
I'm a fan of Sarah's, but at this stage it almost anyone would be an improvement over Murkowski.
#6
Alaskans love her? She got 44% of the vote in 2016. Only 11% went to the Dems. Add together the Libertarian and independent and they about as many votes. A credible conservative (with libertarian leanings) Republican would have kicked her ass.
Palin doesn't need to run. She just needs to support someone who will run effectively. Lisa Murkowski is done as a Republican Senator with this stunt. Ypical Murkowski family business - I wonder how she's getting paid off for this one by the Dems and the other swamp creatures she shares the muck with?
#7
Seriously, does the Republican party have a way to kick this old dingbat out of the party? Will McConnell laugh at her any time she wants anything for her state, any time she introduces any kind of legislation? Can Trump make sure no federal research grants go to Alaska universities? Murkowski needs to be punished.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
10/06/2018 12:39 Comments ||
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#10
Joe Miller won the Republican primary. So Murkowski did a write in campaign and won. She got serious backing from native corporations. The problem like in other states is who in their right mind wants to subject their families and themselves to the shit flowing gutter of politics.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
10/06/2018 22:50 Comments ||
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[PJ] No matter how you feel about polls, twelve points in one year is significant. This is especially true (and surprising) considering the constant drum beat from the press that Trump is a racist somewhere south of George Wallace.
Somebody isn't buying it -- and it's not just Kanye West. If this number grows just a little bit, the Democratic Party is in deep trouble. The party relies for its electoral power on overwhelming support from African-Americans, a dependency in itself inherently racist and suffused with reactionary identity politics. Without the black vote, the Dems might as well rename themselves the Celluloid Party and run Hollywood agents for mayor of Malibu. It'll be their best chance for success.
No wonder Maxine Waters hates Trump so much and no wonder Snoop Dogg has his nose so far out of joint he's attacked Kanye with that hoary cliché "Uncle Tom." (C'mon, Snoop, you can do better than that. You're a creative artist.) Actually, it's a dead giveaway. Today's Democrats are the natural heirs of George Wallace: "Segregation now! Segregation forever!" Only their brand of segregation means segregated dorms at Harvard and a blacks-only graduation ceremony. Talk about reactionary. Is that what MLK wanted? Gimme a break.
Who am I to say that as a white man, you might ask? Well, nobody, but I did live in a rooming house owned by MLK's cousin in Sumter, South Carolina, in 1966, working for, of course, integration as a northern agitator civil rights kid, 22 years old. What happened to the civil rights movement after that became increasingly depressing, increasingly exploitative, and increasingly mired in victimology over the years, in short what happens to so many idealistic movements (cf. Carlyle's French Revolution).
#1
It is not any single group. Americans are waking up and when they do, it will not make a damn bit of difference what you are as long as you are American.
They may even find the Spirit of The Lord again!
Being true to Their GOD and to Themselves.
Truth solves many ills that may not have even been there.
1) Big Government is more of a surrogate husband for black women than any other demographic in this country.Trump's success is viewed as a serious threat to that gravy train.
2) A lot of the men have a positive view of Trump alphaness -- don't forget he was a hip hip icon back in the day.
3) More black men are finding work, and perhaps, some pride in earning their own way. They want to keep that going.
4) Screechy upper class white ladies -- who are the most vocal Trump haters -- don't exactly bring out the warm fuzzies.
Dems will still get a large majority of the black vote of course, but it'll be interesting to see the impact in close races, both vote wise and resource expenditure wise.
Will the Dems have to spend more than expected on "sure thing" races with less left over for competitive ones?
[Daily Excelsior] A major terror funding network has been unearthed by the NIA which has been operating from Lahore Head quarters of Jammat-ul-Dawa (JuD) Chief terrorist Hafeez Saeed in Pakistain supplying funds not only in Jammu and Kashmire for spreading death and destruction but was doing it in Rajasthan, Gujarat ...where rioting seems to be a traditional passtime... and Mumbai. This was found to have been taking place in a gradual manner. Terror outfit Lashkar-e- Toiba (LeT), it may be noted, is an offshoot of JuD.
Not to speak about crushing the terror menace spread by Pakistain in Kashmire with an iron hand but the activities of this fanatic terror monger and his outfits are spreading terror activities to other areas like Rajasthan, Gujarat and Mumbai etc which is a cause of concern and must be crushed mercilessly to safeguard peace, tranquillity , security and integrity of the country . External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj pointed to the threat to India and the civilized world from the terrorist and his outfits while addressing the UNGA meet in New York recently. She reminded big powers like United States that while the one who was a force behind and responsible for 9/11 attack was killed , the one who criminal masterminded and supervised 26/11 massacre of innocents in Mumbai was enjoying state patronage and was roaming free in Pakistain.
The NIA and other intelligence agencies have detected that the funds were diverted to Dubai from Pakistain and then to New Delhi . From New Delhi , major portion of these funds find their way to Kashmire valley while parts of funds were diverted to other major parts of the country to spread their dirty , satanic and inhuman activities of terror given the name of "charitable activities" by the fanatic terrorist and his outfits. Security agencies need to formulate a multi-fold strategy to curb all channels to terror funding in the country.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/06/2018 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[11123 views]
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[The National Interest] The signs are ominous‐especially in Israel and its neighbours, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza. Violence, both actual and rhetorical, has been escalating on all three fronts. Gaza could become the immediate flash point as the Palestinians’ ’March of Return’, which began on 30 March, intensifies and Israeli retaliation becomes increasingly lethal.
On 28 September, 20,000 Palestinians marched to the Gaza‐Israel border and seven of them were killed by Israeli bullets. Such confrontations are now becoming an almost daily occurrence. The march began as a civil-society movement born of the mounting economic and political frustrations over the Israeli blockade of the territory that has made life in Gaza ’poor, nasty, brutish and short’.
Initially, it also had anti-Hamas overtones because of the organisation’s misgovernance of Gaza and its inability to reach an agreement with the Palestinian Authority that is in nominal control of parts of the West Bank. However, over time it has become a movement organised and orchestrated by Hamas itself. That has made the situation highly combustible, with senior Israeli officials threatening a full-scale invasion of Gaza as happened in 2014. It may lead to a Palestinian eruption in the West Bank as well.
Gaza isn’t the only front on which Israel could be engaged in a war. Another major military confrontation is looming between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed in his address to the UN General Assembly on 27 September that Israeli intelligence had unearthed evidence that Hezbollah is building a missile site near the Hariri International Airport in Beirut and a storage facility underneath a soccer stadium nearby.
According to Israeli sources, those projects are part of a joint effort with Iran to upgrade Hezbollah’s missile capacity so that it becomes an increasing threat to targets deep within Israel. In his speech at the UN, Netanyahu threatened Hezbollah explicitly: ’I have a message for Hezbollah today: Israel knows what you’re doing. Israel knows where you’re doing it. And Israel will not let you get away with it.’ It sounded almost like a clarion call to combat, for any Israeli attack on these sites is bound to bring about severe retaliation by Hezbollah that could lead to an all-out war like the one witnessed in 2006.
#5
Syria has to rebuild before they can go to war. Pals can agitate but need Iranian help and Iran is unlikely to do so until Syria is back in shape. At a guess over a decade before we see anything beyond stabbings and low level Pal horrors.
#6
What about the 10,000 or so rockets and missiles Hamas has stockpiled, and the 100,000 or so ditto stored by Hizb’allah, Rjschwarz? They won’t keep forever, you know.
[AmericanThinker] Many economics experts believe that Iran is entrenched in a financial death spiral.
Officials within the regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) claim that the gravity of economic crisis there is overstated. Furthermore, Islamist regime-sponsored lobby factions in the United States, such as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC), argue that fiscal predicaments the country is facing are consequences of malign U.S. policies toward the Iranian regime, including the enforcement of crippling economic sanctions. The truth is, precarious economic circumstances in Iran have been primarily ‐ if not exclusively ‐ triggered by a plethora of iniquitous economic policies adopted by the regime. This is evident by various indicators.
The conversion rate of Iranian rial (IRR) to foreign currencies is one of the most important tools by which the country's economic well being can be gauged. The IRR has lost its value by nearly 70% since April 2018, a month before U.S. president Donald J. Trump reimposed sanctions on the Iranian regime over its rogue nuclear activities. And all this without a single shot (except IAF in Syria) fired
Posted by: g(r)omgoru ||
10/06/2018 04:30 ||
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Link ||
[11127 views]
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#5
Chivalry absolutely goes both ways. To receive that respect I must be a lady* worthy of it.
* As defined in the New World. In the Old World, I once was informed by a denizen thereof who was indignant that I should advise my young daughters to strive for that state, only the womenfolk of aristocrats and hereditary gentry are considered ladies, all other females being mere women, no matter how well-mannered.
An archaic definition of "reckoning" is "a bill or account, or it’s settlement." It’s the settling of scores, or how Michael Corleone in The Godfather "settled all family business". A reckoning restores balance, or karma, when things get too out of whack. Consider Lady Justice’s scale, how justice should be balanced. When one side of the scale tips too low, balance must be restored if the concepts of justice and fairness are to have any meaning.
America is due for a reckoning. It’s one of the main reasons Donald Trump was elected president. Ronald Reagan was an early attempt at a reckoning, after the excesses of the 60s ‐ Great Society, Vietnam, and Woodstock. Following Reagan's course correction, we had "Bu-Bama-Ton", 28 years of Bushes, Obama, and Clinton, tilting the scales toward the elites, the globalists, the deep state, with no regard for honesty, justice, and the needs of average Americans.
Although the reckoning goes beyond simply President Trump being elected, he is the right man at the right time to deliver the message, to restore balance to the Constitution and to human decency, both in desperate need of a course correction. But where is the actual reckoning?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[PJ] No matter how you feel about polls, twelve points in one year is significant. This is especially true (and surprising) considering the constant drum beat from the press that Trump is a racist somewhere south of George Wallace.
