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The White House and the media were ecstatic about Friday's BLS unemployment report, which showed the national jobless rate dropping to 8.3 percent, as the US economy added 243,000 jobs.  These should be welcome results for all Americans, CBO's harrowing 2012 economic projections notwithstanding.  Although the headlines were uniformly positive, reality isn't quite as cheery.  Leftist Paul Krugman notes that long-term unemployment remains historically persistent, the U-6 "real" unemployment rate still floats above 15 percent, and -- most distressingly -- the labor force continues to contract.  Zero Hedge documented Friday's flat-out bad news (emphasis his):   A month ago, we...

SINGAPORE—The price of oil climbed above $101 a barrel in light holiday trading on growing consumer confidence and prospects for stronger demand. Benchmark crude rose $1.52 on Tuesday to $101.19 per barrel in New York. Brent crude rose $1.21 to $109.17 per barrel in London. Prices have risen in the past week as encouraging U.S. economic news pointed to stronger future demand. A private survey released Tuesday showed consumer confidence this month surged to levels not seen since April and was near a post-recession peak. The New York-based Conference Board its Consumer Confidence Index rose almost 10 points from November,...

The Gingrich campaign contacted me directly last night about the comments that he made to ABC News. The campaign sent me the following statement from Newt Gingrich. (Which is also on their website). I am very glad that the Gingrich campaign was quick to respond to the fallout from the ABC News interview and that they came out with a strong pro-life statement which reaffirms the scientific fact that life begins at conception....

Since 1920, the Clerk of the House has collected and published the official vote counts for federal elections from the official sources among the various states and territories. These documents, out of print for many years, have been collected and scanned in a format to make them once again available to researchers and students. Statistics from some recent elections are available as both HTML and scanned image (Adobe Acrobat .PDF) formats. Users should be aware that printing a document in its entirety is often a lengthy process depending on your equipment.

More evidence that Obama’s jobs plan isn’t resonating as much more than a reelection effort. As Greg Hengler at Townhall.com asks, what do you do when even your fans laugh at you?

...Obama will hold a news conference on Wednesday morning at 11:30am EDT, giving reporters the chance to ask....

“An open heart is an open mind”? “Friends, genuine friends, have much more to do with, whether we have a warm heart, not money or power”! “The huge gap between rich and poor, globally and within nations, is not only morally wrong; it is also a source of practical problems”? “Wherever I go, I always give the advice to be altruistic and kind to others”! But note the enlightened one recently referred to our female Prime Minister as a him. So, to be fair and all, he can be a real b*****d. Also, in meditation news, “If you treat people...

At last night’s Republican debate, the seven candidates talked about unemployment, taxes, regulations, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s talk of a goal of 5% GDP growth, the individual mandate in the health care bill, the Independent Medicare Advisory Board, welfare reform, the Tea Party, currency policy, the National Labor Relations Board, Boeing, TARP, the auto bailout, Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposal, former Gov. Mitt Romney’s health care program in Massachusetts, raising the debt ceiling, raising the retirement age for Social Security, the role of religion in public life, the 10th amendment, Libya, Afghanistan, and so on. But President Obama’s 2012 campaign...

 The current feature at the top of the Fox News website has this:"Executing the Vision of Israel's Pre-War 1967 Borders Presents Some Serious Logistical Issues" By Leland VittertPublished May 20, 2011 FoxNews.com[Accompanied by the photo below]:  FILE: Palestinian laborers walk past a billboard advertising a new housing project in the Jewish settlement of Maale Adumim in the occupied West Bank. (AFP)  Vitters writes:"For Israel, President Obama's announcement of basing a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders creates not only huge strategic and tactical issues, but practical ones as well. ""About 6 percent of Jewish Israelis live outside the ’67 borders in the...

In discussing the present "kinetic military action" in Libya, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell and Contessa Brewer both tried to shift scrutiny away from President Obama and toward Republicans Monday afternoon, hours before the President's address to the nation on Libya. O'Donnell tried to pinpoint the hypocrisy of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for criticizing Obama's failure to obtain authorization from Congress for military action in Libya. The liberal MSNBC host referred back to a nonbinding Senate resolution passed unanimously on March 1, calling for the U.N. Security Council to implement a no-fly zone over Libya. Since the resolution passed unanimously,...

EXCERPT A statement from the VP's office noted that "It is standard policy for the Vice President's office that a print pooler cover the speaking program at fundraisers. This has been the consistent policy throughout the Administration. At times, these fundraisers are at private homes and 'hold rooms' are provided for pool reporters to wait for the speaking program to commence. A hold room, however, should not be a storage room. This was the unfortunate mistake of an inexperienced staffer and the Vice President's office has made sure it will never happen again." Biden's office added that in this particular...

Solving our national debt problem might be more of an income dilemma and less about a debt problem. A recent chart compiled from IRS and Tax Foundation data suggests the rich have been paying fewer taxes as compared to the middle class for over 20 years. Stephen Von Worley's chart adjusts for 2011 inflation and includes income tax statistics from the 1920s through the present day. Darker shaded areas of the chart bespeak a time when the relative tax burden reached historic levels--blue is a low level, red is a high level. No one class of citizen has an overly...

When conservative political activist James O'Keefe released the 11-minute edited version of his secretly recorded video of then-NPR chief fundraiser Ron Schiller slamming conservatives, O'Keefe also posted what he says is the entire two hours' worth of video his undercover team collected. "Judge for yourself" whether he produced a fair and balanced 11-minute version, O'Keefe said last Tuesday when his tapes hit the Web. As NPR's David Folkenflik says on Weekend Edition Sunday, conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck's website The Blaze has done some judging and concluded that O'Keefe did make some misleading edits. The Blaze wrote Thursday that some things...

The Aspen Institute has released a statement that Ron Schiller will not be coming to work for them after all.According to a statement issued last week Schiller was supposed to start work for the Aspen Institute in April.In light of Schiller's remarks against Jews, Christian evangelicals, and conservatives caught on hidden camera,-- going to work for the Aspen Insitute would seem appropriate.Aspen Institute is liberal, pro-Palestinian, and anti-Israel.The Aspen Institute is facilitator for the USPP [United States Palestinian  Partnership]. Initially, this was first called the USPPP, U.S. Palestinian Public-Pivate Partnership:["In December 2007, President Bush, Secretary of State Rice and USAID Administrator Fore...

LAWRENCEVILLE — A Gwinnett judge sentenced a tea party member to serve eight years in prison for attacking and hospitalizing a President Barack Obama supporter during a 2009 bar room altercation, a prosecutor said Thursday. Jurors convicted Carnesville resident Larry Morgan, 39, of aggravated assault and two counts of aggravated battery this week for smashing several bones in the victim’s face with a pool cue on Jan. 31, 2009 — a few days after Obama’s inauguration. According to testimony, trouble began when Morgan was talking to other bar patrons about his negative feelings about Obama, when one of O’Neill’s friends...

What to make of the news that the "centrist" Democratic Leadership Council -- the vehicle that helped propel Bill Clinton to the presidency in 1992 -- is suspending operations as it ponders an uncertain future? Conventional wisdom says that the DLC, which favored more business-friendly policies in order to make the party appealing to corporate contributors, could no longer compete in a hyperpartisan political environment. Or that the rabid Howard Dean/Daily Kos "Netroots" wing of the party simply overwhelmed its message. Or that in the age of Obama, as Clinton has faded, Hillary has vanished into the swamps of Foggy...

The Obama administration is claiming that the president has been out in front of the crisis in Egypt. The facts prove otherwise. He has been behind the curve and has badly damaged American interests -- perhaps irretrievably so. Barack Obama's campaign was built on spin and speeches. His presidency has used these tools to present a false image. In this case, his chief spin maestro, David Axelrod, has been peddling the story that Barack Obama has been "out ahead of this" ("this" being the crisis in Egypt). Politico Journalist Josh Gerstein was skeptical and fact-checked Axelrod's boastful claim. Press Secretary...

...In April 2009, a disgruntled, unemployed loser shot and killed three Pittsburgh police officers in a horrifying bloodbath. The gunman, Richard Poplawski, was a dropout from the Marines who threw a food tray at a drill sergeant and had beaten his girlfriend. Was this deranged man who pulled the trigger to blame? Nope. Despite evidence that Poplawski’s homicidal, racist tendencies manifested themselves years before Obama took office, lefty publications asserted that the real culprit of the spree was the “heated, apocalyptic rhetoric of the anti-Obama forces” (according to mainstream liberal Atlantic Monthly pundit Andrew Sullivan), along with Fox News and...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI told Vatican officials Monday that they must reflect on the church's culpability in its child sex-abuse scandal, but he also blamed a secular society in which he said the mistreatment of children was frighteningly common. In his traditional, end-of-the-year speech to Vatican cardinals and bishops, Benedict said revelations of abuse in 2010 reached "an unimaginable dimension" that required the church to accept the "humiliation" as a call for renewal. "We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing...

WASHINGTON — President Obama is ending the first half of his term the same way he began it — with a storm of activity of impressive, even historic, dimensions. Year-end victories on taxes, economic stimulus and landmark cultural change are reshaping the image of a president who seemed isolated and out of touch only a month ago in the wake of an enormous midterm election defeat. Suddenly, he looks like a deal maker who can reach across party lines to get things done and, perhaps, make progress that Americans found lacking when they went to the polls in November. Obama...

Ezra Klein, the Washington Post's blogging wunderkind, is a smart guy. He made his name becoming the go-to pundit for health care policy. He understands health care policy as few do in D.C. But if you're looking for an unvarnished opinion about the political realities of Obamacare, he's the last guy I would read. Since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act begin winding its way through Congress last year, Klein has been almost unrelentingly supportive of every proposed version of the legislation. Now that the legislation is in place and we're

Following their electoral repudiation, the left is handing out very few mea culpas. Instead, we are getting a lot of whining, excuses, spinning, and outright distortions. Other than those 43 House Democrats who wanted someone other than Nancy Pelosi as minority leader, the Democrats, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, "are not for turning." Contrast Democratic Party talk now, or lack of it, with 2008. When the left won, their rhetoric was all about "change has come." The verbiage crescendoed with exalted talk of imposing their agenda, elections having consequences, and compromise mandating conservative surrender, white flag in hand, to...

A video is being widely circulated showing a shirtless boy receiving secondary screening from a Transportation Security Officer (TSO). A passenger filmed the screening with their cell phone and posted the video on the web. Many are coming to their own conclusions about what's happening in the video which is now perched at the top of the Drudge report and being linked to in many other blogs and tweets. We looked into this to find out what happened. On November 19, a family was traveling through a TSA checkpoint at the Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC). Their son alarmed...

Creators Syndicate – In one of his latest attempts to get his face on every television network in America before the election, President Obama appeared on "The Daily Show" with Jon Stewart to plead his case to the hip, young, leftist voters who love that show. Obama claimed he had done so much, "We have done things that some folks don't even know about!" In a more serious interview, Obama told the Los Angeles Times the economic mess he "inherited" required him to take so many rapid actions that he could not "communicate effectively to the public in any coherent...

In a week, Americans go to the polls. But it might as well be happening today. For -- barring major news events or extraordinarily damaging revelations about individual candidates that cause probable voters to rethink their choices in unprecedented fashion -- the 2010 cake is baked, it's out of the oven and it's cooling in an undisclosed location. You wouldn't know this from the hyperactive political press, which now screams minute by minute at readers and viewers from multiple outlets, from traditional perches to Facebook to Twitter. Any spin, no matter how ludicrous, can get 10 or 15 seconds' attention...

How many countries did Islamic Republic of Iran attack in the last 30 Years? (Today on Fox, CAIR'S lies) Today, Mr. Rehab of CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relation) asked spinned Bill O'reilly "How many countries did Iran attack in the last 30 Years..."? Hijacking of Americans (direct attack on the US) in 1979. Action by its government directly and/or via its armed -Hezbollah- wing: US Marine Barracks in Oct. 1983, killing 241 Americans and 58 French soldiers. 1984-8 string of hijacking US personell. Bombing of US embassy in Lebanon in April 18, 1983, killing 63. Bombings in Paris, France...

As head cheerleader of the stagnant and stumbling economy, President Obama has lost all the frills on his pompoms. Exhausted, he stood before cameras yesterday and, in dreary cadences of despair, did his best to draw lipstick on the mouth of a sick pig. Any way you try spinning it, the latest job numbers are disastrous for Democrats desperate to hold on to power in next month's elections. Take the rosiest spin possible out of the White House. "Today's employment report shows that private-sector payrolls increased by 64,000 in September, continuing nine consecutive months of private-sector job growth," Obama's chief...

Ive gotten 95% of my information from the internet over the past 5-6 years. There exists a special mix of intelligence, altruism and collegial respect that can unite to make internet forums worth much more than the price of admission. As such I've become habituated to a variety of sources, bloggers, websites, and internet personalities. Of late it seems these forums have become more shrill and predictable in their aggregate coverage of real life. Recently the signal to noise ratio is so low that I find myself using the internet for learning less and less, and when I do, with...

Liberals Spinning Economic Uncertainty The American Prospect has partisanship down to a science with Mark Schmitt's new article, Uncertainly Wrong. We have heard a lot in the past 18 months about uncertainty and its affects on the economy but only now did we realize that...it's all Bush's fault. In his own words, “Today's uncertainty was baked in nine years ago, by the same people who are now capitalizing on it.” Schmitt is speaking about the sunset clause on the tax cuts that cause them to expire at the end of the year. This doesn't represent George Bush not shoving policy...

Lauer to Laura Bush: Is It 'Painful' to Be in New Orleans, Since So Much Blame Is Laid At Your Husband's Feet? Today co-anchor Matt Lauer traveled to New Orleans, on Friday, to mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and interviewed the likes of former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, former FEMA Director Mike Brown, current Democratic Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, but saved any sort of direct shots at George W. Bush for his interview with Laura Bush.

WASHINGTON — Republican Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia won his seat in Congress campaigning as a strict defender of the Constitution. He carries a copy in his pocket and is particularly fond of invoking the Second Amendment right to bear arms. But it turns out there are parts of the document he doesn't care for — lots of them. He wants to get rid of the language about birthright citizenship, federal income taxes and direct election of senators, among others. He would add plenty of stuff, including explicitly authorizing castration as punishment for child rapists. This hot-and-cold take on the...

Republican Congressional candidates on Monday intensified efforts to inject the divide over construction of an Islamic center near ground zero into the midterm campaigns while the Senate’s top Democrat said he objected to the mosque being built there. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada...a Democrat facing a difficult re-election fight, said through a spokesman that those who plan to erect the Islamic center should look elsewhere. That separates Mr. Reid from President Obama’s support of the developers’ right to build the center.... Republicans said Mr. Obama’s defense of the right of the developers to pursue the project showed that he was...

Barack Obama celebrates primary victories as Tea Party splits votePresident bolstered for November's mid-terms as Democrats lead in key races for Senate and state governorships Chris McGreal in Washington Wednesday 11 August 2010 Barack Obama and his Democratic allies have scored a series of victories in primary races while the Republican establishment has lost out to agitated Tea Party supporters, bolstering the president's hand in November's mid-term elections. The results of primaries in four states on Tuesday will leave moderate Democrats facing Republicans who have been tainted by extreme views, or accusations of unethical conduct, in key races for the...

Inside story of Michelle's trip First lady took Spain vacation with 'a dear friend' whose father recently died Michelle Obama and daughter Sasha returned from Spain on Sunday, a vacation at a lavish hotel on the Mediterranean coast that triggered her first controversy since becoming first lady. I'm told she made the trip because she promised one of her closest friends, a longtime Chicago pal who just lost her father, she would spend time with her.

Surprising to many, the Exxon Valdez spill is only the 34th largest oil spill ever. And while the Deep Water Horizon spill is a disaster by any means, it remains distant to this top 10 list (Hopefully it never makes this list). I decided to publish this list because I’ve heard a handful of people say it’s the end-of-the-Ocean/Gulf-as-we-know-it. While it will take time to cleanup the surrounding shores from this environmental disaster, there is no doubt the Ocean and Gulf of Mexico will continue. See Top 10 List...

A Sestak Offer? Criminally Stupid, Not CriminalBy Michael Grunwald Thursday, May. 27, 2010 If it's true that the White House offered Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak a job to try to clear the Democratic Senate primary for incumbent Arlen Specter, that's disturbing. But not because anyone is "participating in the cover-up of a possible crime." This doesn't sound like a "potentially devastating accusation of political corruption," much less an "impeachable offense," no matter what nonsense Michael Steele or Sean Hannity are peddling. Republicans may be calling for a special prosecutor, and even Democratic Senator Dick Durbin wants to know what happened....

Since the Deepwater Horizon explosion the night of April 20, federal authorities, both military and civilian, have been working onsite and around the clock to respond to and mitigate the impact of the resulting BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We have compiled this chronology in the spirit of transparency so the American people can have a clear understanding of what their government has been and is doing to respond to the massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster. Total response vessels: nearly 200 Boom deployed: 367,881 feet Boom available: more than 1 million feet Oily water recovered: more...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (GYT'-nur) says the economy is growing faster than the Obama administration expected. He tells NBC's "Meet the Press" that the country is on the way to sustained job creation. But he acknowledges that unemployment may remain high, close to 10 percent. Geithner says there's more confidence in the business world, and he says the private sector is growing. He also says people are spending more. He said he sees encouraging signs that should make Americans confident the country will emerge stronger.

Economic Reality Check… Once again just perusing the latest updates from the St. Louis Fed… Many people get all wrapped around the axle about debt to GDP statistics. This is a complete Red Herring as comparing our Federal Government’s debt to the productivity of the nation is exactly the same as comparing your personal debt to the productivity of your neighborhood. They are unrelated. What is completely related and totally relevant is DEBT to INCOME. In fact, in regards to debt, income is the only thing that really matters. Our Nation’s Income is crashing as shown in this chart...

. . . go completely insane. Climate change doesn’t mean we’ll have lots of lovely weather all the time, you numbskulls Right, there is something that is going to have to stop right this second, and that is people making jokes about “If the globe is warming up then where did all this snow come from, eh? Eh? Tell me that?” Because it is driving me crazy. And when I say “people”, I mean mostly columnists, cartoonists and comedians. I know there is nothing else to write about at the moment (God help me, I’m writing about people writing about...

Tall tales are better. When escalators were first introduced in Shanghai in the 1980s, authorities were worried about stampedes on the new contraptions. So they put out a pamphlet, 'Escalate Two By Two For Harmonious Escalating', which encouraged people to stand side-by-side on escalators, thus creating a barrier to prevent excessive movement up or down. The campaign worked, and nowadays Shanghai's escalator riders are as intent as ever on preventing stampedes by not allowing you to pass when you're in a rush.

New jobless claims increase less than expected after 2 weeks of sharp drops. A government report Thursday on claims for unemployment aid signaled that layoffs are easing and that the economy could be on the verge of posting the first monthly gain in jobs in two years. The number of people claiming unemployment benefits for the first time barely rose last week, after two weeks of sharp drops. But the four-week average of claims, which smooths fluctuations, fell for the 18th straight week to 450,250. That figure is nearing the roughly 425,000 that many economists say would be a sign...

President Barack Obama declared Friday a "meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough" had been reached among the U.S., China and three other countries on a global effort to curb climate change but said much work was still be needed to reach a legally binding treaty. "It is going to be very hard, and it's going to take some time," he said at the conclusion of a 193-nation global warming summit. "We have come a long way, but we have much further to go." The president said there was a "fundamental deadlock in perspectives" between big, industrially developed countries like the United States...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: The Gallup poll will announce -- they effectively have announced it -- the Gallup poll will announce that for the first time in their poll Barack Obama's approval rating has fallen below 50%. In fact, a little story about this. This from Ben Smith at The Politico: "His approval numbers have bounced down to the 50% mark several times, driven by weaker support from independents and Republicans, but hadn't crossed it. The slide is worrying for the White House, but it's probably not yet panic time. Ronald Reagan's approval numbers dropped well below 40% during the depths...

US admiral defends Obama's Japan bow (AFP) – 1 day ago WASHINGTON — The former top commander of US troops in Asia on Thursday strongly defended President Barack Obama against critics of his bow to Japan's Emperor Akihito, calling it a gesture of respect. Admiral Timothy Keating, who retired last month ...

Obama bowed to emperor as 'protocol' By: Mike Allen November 14, 2009 11:08 PM EST SINGAPORE – A senior administration official said President Barack Obama was simply observing protocol when he bowed to Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko upon arriving at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on Saturday. “I think that those who try to politicize those things are just way, way, way off base,” the official said. “He observes protocol. But I don’t think anybody who was in Japan – who saw his speech and the reaction to it, certainly those who witnesses his bilateral meetings there –...

The uncle says Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a sensitive man haunted by the wartime disabilities of soldiers he treated. The Army psychiatrist was not political, his relatives in the West Bank say. Hamad described his nephew as a gentle soul who once, as a young adult, mourned for three months after rolling over during a nap and crushing his pet parakeet. During medical school, the uncle said, Hasan switched his major to psychiatry after fainting at the sight of blood while delivering a baby. The young man became more religious after the death of his parents, who were Muslims...

Wall Street: Dumb as It Ever Was November 06, 2009 | about: DIA / QQQQ / SPY Todd Kenyon I had to take a few moments away from shouting at the circus-of-the-inane on CNBC to vent. All the focus on this jobs number this morning should confirm to any rational person that the great majority of what goes on in Wall Street is a complete waste of time at best and a criminal destruction of value at worst. Being trained as a scientist in a former life just makes it harder to watch this garbage. Yesterday afternoon some random NYSE...

Reenergized Republicans are savoring victories in two states that President Obama won last year, with party chairman Michael S. Steele celebrating the GOP's first turnabout after three years of Democratic wins by proclaiming a "Republican renaissance." But behind the Republican Party's elation after capturing the governorships in New Jersey and Virginia are troubling fissures within party ranks over how best to lead the GOP back to power in 2010. Conservative grass-roots activists drew national attention to New York's 23rd congressional district by bucking the party establishment and forcing out a Republican nominee, Dede Scozzafava, whom they deemed too moderate. But...

Over the years, I have spent a great deal of time studying psychology. To be specific, I've studied how psychology is often used to manipulate people. I first gained an interest in this subject years ago as it pertained to cultists (LONG story), but eventually I started to notice the same tactics used in the media, in political debate, and in general conversation with left-leaning people. In this post I will go over some of the basic tactics often used by those who wish to manipulate you, and how you can defend against them. ...