Monday, November 5, 2012

Pre-Election Day Newsbites: November 5, 2012


My prediction...

Romney 53%

Obama 47%

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7 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/11/02/morning-bell-unemployment-rate-inches-back-up/?roi=echo3-13675302588-10163606-cf2c96c02a319e11da7825d195acacd9&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

The October jobs report essentially agrees with the rest of the current data on the economy - the economy is growing slowly - too slowly to bring down unemployment rapidly.

* FOLKS... I DON'T EVEN BELIEVE UNEMPLOYMENT IS BEING BROUGHT DOWN SLOWLY! THE ONLY FIGURE WORTH FOCUSING ON IS PERCENTAGE OF EMPLOYMENT-AGE CITIZENS EMPLOYED FULL TIME.

(*SHRUG*)

In fact, the unemployment rate rose to 7.9% in October and the economy created about 171,000 jobs, roughly equal to the usual number of new workers in the labor force.

* WHAT SORT OF JOBS...??? AND ON THE FLIP SIDE, WHAT SORT OF JOBS WERE LOST...???

The October report partly reversed the mysterious drop in the unemployment rate in the September jobs report. At the time, J.D.
Foster, Heritage’s Norman B. Ture Senior Fellow in the Economics of Fiscal Policy, predicted that September’s jobs report would be sorted out later."

* THERE WAS NO "MYSTERIOUS" DROP. THERE WAS HOWEVER A PHONY DROP.

(*SHRUG*)

In addition to possible quirks in the way the government collects information on unemployment, the Administration is playing some more overt games with the economy, holding new regulations and even layoff notices until later in the year.

* YEP! THEY BASICALLY ORDERED LARGE DEFENSE CONTRACTORS TO BREAK EXISTING REPORTING LAWS AND NOT MAIL OUT LAWFULLY REQUIRED ADVANCE WARNING OF LIKELY LAYOFFS TO TENS OF THOUSANDS (MAYBE HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS) OF WORKERS.

* FOLKS... UNDERSTAND... THERE'S NOTHING THIS ADMINISTRATION WON'T DO.

As research fellow Diane Katz described yesterday, the Obama Administration has missed two legally mandated deadlines to let them know about new regulations that are coming, adding to the overwhelming uncertainty they are facing.

* AS... I... WAS... SAYING...

(*SHRUG*)

Meanwhile, to keep too many pink slips from going out immediately, the Obama Administration has been "encouraging" federal contractors to break a law that requires them to notify employees of impending layoffs. The Administration has offered to pay the penalties for the companies if they will just hold off.

* "OFFERED" WITH NO LEGAL AUTHORITY - OR CONSTITUTIONAL MEANS - OF MAKING GOOD ON THIS PROMISE. AT BEST WE'RE TALKING "CONSPIRACY" HERE. (OBVIOUSLY FEW DEFENSE CONTRACTORS ARE GONNA RESIST GOVERNMENT "ENCOURAGEMENT" FOR FEAR OF A RE-ELECTED OBAMA TAKING REVENGE UPON THEM ECONOMICALLY.

As Heritage’s Hans von Spakovsky explained, massive defense spending cuts under sequestration are scheduled to hit on January 2, 2013. Defense contractors affected by the budget cuts would have [had] to issue notice letters to employees by November 2 (four days before the election) to meet the January 2 start date for the spending cuts.

* AGAIN, FOLKS, THE LAW MEANS NOTHING TO OBAMA.

With businesses in such a holding pattern, it’s no wonder the recovery is sluggish. And the anticipation of Taxmageddon hitting January 1 is only adding to the crisis.Not only will Taxmageddon mean individual tax increases - if you’re a middle-class family, your taxes will go up around $4,100 - but the whole economy will also suffer. The Congressional Budget Office has said that unless Congress and the President act, we will be plunged into a new recession extending through 2013 - when we haven’t even
recovered from the previous one.

November 5, 2012 at 12:43 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://washingtonexaminer.com/november-surprise-epa-planning-major-post-election-anti-coal-regulation/article/2512538#.UJbkMoW1-AI

President Obama’s EPA has devoted an unprecedented number of bureaucrats to finalizing new anti-coal regulations that are set to be released at the end of November, according to a source inside the EPA.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

More than 50 EPA staff are now crashing to finish greenhouse gas emission standards that would essentially ban all construction of new coal-fired power plants.

* FUNNY HOW THIS WASN'T PART OF OBAMA'S ELECTION PLATFORM...

(*SMIRK*)

Never before have so many EPA resources been devoted to a single regulation. The independent and non-partisan Manhattan Institute estimates that the EPA’s greenhouse gas coal regulation will cost the U.S. economy $700 billion.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

The rush is a major sign of panic by environmentalists inside the Obama administration.

* BY FANATICS! (I'M AN ENVIRONMENTALIST, FOLKS! ALL OF US WANT A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT! THESE PEOPLE ARE FRIGGIN' NUTS, THOUGH!)

If Obama wins, the EPA would have another four full years to implement their anti-fossil fuel agenda. But if Romney wins, regulators will have a very narrow window to enact a select few costly regulations that would then be very hard for a President Romney to undo.

* MAYBE... MAYBE NOT. UNFORTUNATELY WHAT OBAMA HAS CREATED IS AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY BEYOND ANYTHING NIXON EVER DREAMED OF... BEYOND ANYTHING CLINTON OR BUSH CREATED... AND UNFORTUNATELY, I FEAR ROMNEY WILL "BUILD" UPON OBAMA'S IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY.

Reached for comment, Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said: "President Obama won’t tell the voters of the Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania the truth about his plans to shut down the coal industry. Even after he loses on Tuesday, it appears that the President will still try to continue his efforts to kill their jobs and drive up their energy prices. Mitt Romney is committed to reversing the damage caused by the Obama Administration’s disastrous liberal agenda as soon as he takes office."

November 5, 2012 at 12:44 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/running_into_brick_wall_O7eD7uSm23n0BLdYhMz9eJ

The city left more than a dozen generators desperately needed by cold and hungry New Yorkers who lost their homes to Hurricane Sandy still stranded in Central Park yesterday.

* BLOOMBERG.

* BLOOMBERG... CUOMO... FEMA...

(*SHRUG*)

And that’s not all - stashed near the finish line of the canceled marathon were 20 heaters, tens of thousands of Mylar “space” blankets, jackets, 106 crates of apples and peanuts, at least 14 pallets of bottled water and 22 five-gallon jugs of water.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

A marathon security worker still working yesterday from a generator-powered trailer in the park, said the power sources had not been moved to devastated areas of the city because of an impromptu race run by marathon holdovers in the park. “Once we found out they’d still be running a marathon, we had to call all the towing vendors and tell them they couldn’t come,” he said.“We can’t have these trucks coming in with the runners. It’s a safety issue.”

* JEEZUS...

* YA KNOW WHAT, FOLKS? FOR ALL HIS FAULTS... MAYBE IT'S TIME FOR A MAYOR TRUMP - OR POSSIBLY A GOVERNOR TRUMP.

[T]he city had no explanation for why it didn’t simply ask the runners to stay out of the way of the trucks - or send cops to clear a path.City Hall also did not explain why the equipment and food were not moved out of the park on Saturday - since the race had been canceled a day earlier.

* BUT, HEY, FOLKS... HOW MANY PRESS CONFERENCES DID BLOOMBERG GIVE... DID CUOMO GIVE...?

A few of the generators were moved out of the park yesterday morning and Saturday, but Mayor Bloomberg was clueless about where they went.“I think they went to New Jersey for refurbishment and [to] change trucks and then went elsewhere, if I remember that,” he said, lecturing reporters that the fate of the marathon’s generators was “not a story.”


(*STILL SHAKING MY HEAD*)

November 5, 2012 at 12:54 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2012/11/03/breaking_naacp_takes_over_polling_station_advocates_for_president_obama_at_houston_polling_location

* FOLKS. USE THE ABOVE PROVIDED LINK AND ACCESS THE STORY.

* FOLKS... THERE ARE PLENTY OF THESE SORTS OF STORIES OUT THERE. NOTE, HOWEVER, I'VE BASICALLY IGNORED ANYTHING EVEN SMACKING OF "HE SAID, SHE SAID." STILL... THERE ARE SO MANY REPORTS AND THE VAST MAJORITY ARE ABOUT DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES BENEFITING FROM "GLITCHES" AND SUCH.

* ALL I'M SAYING... PAY ATTENTION. VOTER FRAUD HURTS US ALL. IF IT CAN CANCEL OUT MY VOTE - IT CAN CANCEL OUT YOUR VOTE.

November 5, 2012 at 1:02 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/11/05/Proof-Obama-Refused-to-Call-Benghazi-Terror-CBS-Covered-Up

In an astonishing display of media malpractice, CBS News quietly released proof--two days before the election, far too late to reach the media and the public - that President Barack Obama lied to the public about the Benghazi attack, as well as about his later claim to have called the attack "terrorism" from the beginning.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

CBS unveiled additional footage from its 60 Minutes interview with President Obama, conducted on Sep. 12 immediately after Obama had
made his statement about the attacks in the Rose Garden, in which Obama quite clearly refuses to call the Benghazi an act of terror when asked a direct question by reporter Steve Kroft:

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?

OBAMA: Well it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

* WELL... TO BE FAIR HE DIDN'T "SAY" THAT IT "WASN'T" TERROR... BUT MEANWHILE HE AND HIS ADMINISTRATION WERE TALKING ABOUT IMAGINARY RIOTS RELATED TO "THE VIDEO" WHICH OBAMA KNEW NEVER TOOK PLACE!

* FOLKS... CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING. WHAT COMES NEXT WILL REINFORCE THIS...

CBS News held onto this footage for more than six weeks, failing to release it even when questions were raised during the Second Presidential Debate as to whether Obama had, in fact, referred to the Benghazi attack as an act of terror before blaming it falsely on demonstrations against an anti-Islamic video.

* YEP! NOW, FOLKS... THAT RIGHT THERE IS A SMOKING GUN! THE SECOND OBAMA LIED DURING THE SECOND DEBATE CBS's STEVE KROFT WAS HONOR BOUND TO PUBLICLY EXPOSE OBAMA AS A LIAR! HE DIDN'T...

(*SHRUG*)

The moderator, CNN's Candy Crowley, intervened on Obama's behalf, falsely declaring he had indeed called the attack an act of terror in his Rose Garden statement, and creating the impression that Romney was wrong.

* SHE TRIED. SHE DIDN'T SUCCEED.

CBS News could have set the record straight, but held onto this footage, releasing it just before the election- - perhaps to avoid the later charge of having suppressed it altogether.

* YEP... I BELIEVE THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS IS ABOUT!

Why did CBS release a clip that appeared to back up Obama's claim in the second debate on Oct. 19, a few days before the foreign policy debate, and not release the rest of that interview at the beginning?

* I FEAR THE ANSWER TO THAT QUESTION IS OBVIOUS...

Why on the Sunday before the election, almost six weeks after the attack, at 6 p.m. does an obscure online time-line posted on CBS.com contain the additional "60 Minutes" interview material from Sept. 12? Why wasn't it news after the president said what he said in the second debate, knowing what they had in that "60 Minutes" tape - why didn't they use it then?

* AGAIN, FOLKS... PRETTY MUCH RHETORICAL QUESTIONS. WE KNOW THE ANSWERS!

(*SHRUG*)

And why is it taking Fox News to spur other media organizations to take the Benghazi story seriously?

* FOLKS... AGAIN... I KNOW SOME OF YOU ROLL YOUR EYES WHEN I REFER TO THE LACK OF HONOR AND INTEGRITY ON THE PART OF SO MANY PEOPLE... BUT SADLY IT'S TRUE. SADLY MY PESSIMISM AND CYNICISM IS BASED UPON OBJECTIVE REALITY - WITH THIS LATEST EXPOSE JUST MORE EVIDENCE SUPPORTING MY CONTENTIONS.

CBS News, in an effort to assist President Obama's re-election campaign, corruptly concealed information about two critical issues - namely, a terror attack and the president's dishonesty about it.

November 5, 2012 at 1:47 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.aei.org/article/society-and-culture/race-and-gender/wage-gap-myth-exposed-by-feminists/

If you believe women suffer systemic wage discrimination...

* ...YOU'RE IGNORANT.

How many times have you heard that, for the same work, women receive 77 cents for every dollar a man earns? This alleged unfairness is the basis for the annual Equal Pay Day observed each year about mid-April to symbolize how far into the current year women have to work to catch up with men's earnings from the previous year. If the AAUW is right, Equal Pay Day will now have to be moved back to early January.

[R]ead the new American Association of University Women (AAUW) study "Graduating to a Pay Gap."

Bypass the verbal sleights of hand and take a hard look at the numbers.

Women are close to achieving the goal of equal pay for equal work. They may be there already.

The AAUW has now joined ranks with serious economists who find that when you control for relevant differences between men and women (occupations, college majors, length of time in workplace) the wage gap narrows to the point of vanishing.

The [supposed] 23-cent gap is simply the average difference between the earnings of men and women employed "full time." What is important is the "adjusted" wage gap-the figure that controls for all the relevant variables. That is what the new AAUW study explores.

The AAUW researchers looked at male and female college graduates one year after graduation. After controlling for several relevant factors (though some were left out, as we shall see), they found that the wage gap narrowed to only 6.6 cents.

* AND AS WE'LL SEE, EVEN THAT OVERSTATES IT!

One of the best studies on the wage gap was released in 2009 by the U.S. Department of Labor. It examined more than 50 peer-reviewed papers and concluded that the 23-cent wage gap "may be almost entirely the result of individual choices being made by both male and female workers."

(In the past, women's groups have ignored or explained away such findings.)

What the 2009 Labor Department study showed was that when the proper controls are in place, the unexplained (adjusted) wage gap is
somewhere between 4.8 and 7 cents. The new AAUW study is consistent with these findings.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

November 5, 2012 at 2:49 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

The AAUW notes that part of the new 6.6-cent wage-gap may be owed to women's supposedly inferior negotiating skills - not unscrupulous employers. Furthermore, the AAUW's 6.6 cents includes some large legitimate wage differences masked by over-broad occupational categories. For example, its researchers count "social science" as one college major and report that, among such majors, women earned only 83% of what men earned. That may sound unfair... until you consider that "social science" includes both economics and sociology majors.

(*SMIRK*)

Economics majors (66% male) have a median income of $70,000; for sociology majors (68% female) it is $40,000.

The AAUW study classifies jobs as diverse as librarian, lawyer, professional athlete, and "media occupations" under a single rubric - "other white collar." So, the AAUW report compares the pay of male lawyers with that of female librarians; of male athletes with that of female communications assistants. That's not a comparison between people who do the same work.

* NO... NO, IT'S NOT.

With more realistic categories and definitions, the remaining 6.6 gap would certainly narrow to just a few cents at most.

* YEP. MAKES SENSE. SOUNDS REASONABLE.

Could the gender wage gap turn out to be zero? Probably not. The AAUW correctly notes that there is still evidence of residual bias against women in the workplace. However, with the gap approaching a few cents, there is not a lot of room for discrimination. And as economists frequently remind us, if it were really true that an employer could get away with paying Jill less than Jack for the same work, clever entrepreneurs would fire all their male employees, replace them with females, and enjoy a huge market advantage.

(*SHRUG*)

AAUW officials are trying mightily to sustain the bad-news-for-women narrative. According to "Graduating to a Pay Gap" publicity materials, "The AAUW today released a new study showing that just one year out of college, millennial women are paid 82 cents for every dollar paid to their male peers. Women are paid less than men even when they do the same work and major in the same field."

(*ROLLING MY EYES*)

Many journalists seem to have read and reported on the AAUW's press releases rather than its research.

That is the hype. Look at the numbers.


(*NOD*)

November 5, 2012 at 2:50 PM

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