Radioactive Communist Zombies

Unemployment Rate Reaction Depends on Who's President

Yesterday I opened up my Saturday Spokane Spokesman-Review and saw this (click for a larger picture):

And I went "What?" Yes, unemployment has dropped . . . to 8.5%!  But the Spokesman-Review is acting as if this is wonderful news and even says it "bodes well for his re-election."!  While unemployment is down and 8.5% sure beats where it peaked at 10%, this is still the president with he worst unemployment rate since the first term of Reagan when we were recovering from the Carter Recession (and stopping inflation).  And, if you'll remember, Obama promised unemployment would not exceed 8% if his stimulus was passed.  It did and unemployment peaked at 10% in October 2009. 

The other thing to remember is the unemployment rate is a measure of those who are still looking for jobs and can't find them.  There are a lot of disaffected workers who have dropped out of that pool.  That has skewed the unemployment rate lower.

Now I don't have access to Lexus/Nexus or other newspaper databases and I don't feel like going to the local library to see who the Spokesman-Review handled unemployment with past presidents.  But George H.W. Bush was defeated in 1992 in part because of how awful the economy was.  The unemployment rate was 7.4%.  In 2004 the media allowed John Kerry when he was running against George W. Bush to scream we were in a jobless recovery.  The unemployment rate was 5.5%.

But with Obama, 8.5% is really good news!

And the left denies media bias! 

The Poor Ain't So Poor?

In July we wrote a post about how the "poor" in America have it pretty good.  And recently we learned that the poverty rate in America is richer than about 90% of the rest of the world.

Now the New York Times is saying poor in America is not so bad, which is amazing.  From the Times:

Concocted on the fly a half-century ago, the official poverty measure ignores ever more of what is happening to the poor person’s wallet — good and bad. It overlooks hundreds of billions of dollars the needy receive in food stamps and other benefits and the similarly formidable amounts they lose to taxes and medical care. It even fails to note that rents are higher in places like Manhattan than they are in Mississippi.

On Monday, that may start to change when the Census Bureau releases a long-promised alternate measure meant to do a better job of counting the resources the needy have and the bills they have to pay. Similar measures, quietly published in the past, suggest among other things that safety-net programs have played a large and mostly overlooked role in restraining hardship: as much as half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappears.

(In 2006, Democrats took over Congress, is that coincidence?)

What the NYT is saying is, that a better measure of poverty, including government payments, shows less people in poverty than the old system.

“The official measure no longer corresponds to reality,” said Jane Waldfogel, a professor of social work at Columbia University. “It doesn’t get either side of the equation right — how much the poor have or how much they need. No one really trusts the data.”

Well, except the MSM when they screamed last year that poverty was back up to 1994 levels (before Republican took over Congress, another coincidence?).

Even the poor in America have it pretty good and apparently the NYT and the government has just discovered that.

Who?

Today, Google looks like this (click for a larger image):

Which is to honor the 100th anniversary of Mary Blair's birthday.

On Ronald Reagan's 100th birthday anniversary, Google looked like this:

Which begs the question, who the @*%& is Mary Blair?

Interesting Juxtaposition

I wonder if Drudge did this on purpose. The follow was captured from his website a few minutes ago (click for a larger view):

Or is Drudge just giving somebody the finger?

Too Many Debates?

(This is going to be a longer version of a Twitter post I made last night.)

I'm wondering if we're having too many debates between the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination. I subscribe to the "Buckley Rule": We should nominate the most conservative candidate who can win.  I would add "reliable conservative" to that, not someone who became conservative in order to run for president (yes, I'm talking about you, Mitt Ronmey).   Are endless debates the way to pick that person?  Yes, the nominee will have to debate Obama who is, despite being an awful president, a great debater.  So these debates let us vet who's a good debater and who needs work (Perry).

But are we having too many of them.  Eventually everyone is going to mess up in a debate if they are endless.  Even Romney.  I like Rick Perry (even though I disagree with his HPV vacination and he's a little weak on illegal immigration) but he stumbled so much last night I'm now worried about putting him up against Obama.

Are all these debates just making our candidate (one of whom will have to face the Politician-in-Chief) look small and ineffectual while Obama sits above the fray?

Maybe we need fewer debates.  Maybe we should wait until, oh, November to have more.  I'm really starting to think all these debates are hurting us.

The AP Fact Checks Obama!

The Obama Administration must be scratching their heads.  How did they lose the Associated Press? Today the AP has a story countering Obama's claims about taxes:

President Barack Obama says he wants to make sure millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. The data say they already are.

"Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. There is no justification for it," Obama said as he announced his deficit-reduction plan this week. "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million."

On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

The 10 percent of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Wow.  This is something the right has been saying (with data to back it up) for years (here's me from 2008).  And now AP is using these facts to rebuke Obama?  I'm just . . . stunned.  The left has demagogued this claim that the rich don't pay their fair share and now the AP has come out with facts disputing it.

When you've lost the AP, Mr. President, it may be time to think about doing what Lyndon Johnson did in '68. 

War Worsens, Anti War Protestors Disappear

When was the last time you saw an anti-war protest?  Or even an anti-war news story in the mainstream media?  At least not since January 2009, I bet.  As Reason points out (Hat tip: Instapundit), war protests and anti-war media coverage have evaporated in the era of Obama, despite there being more casualties under Obama than under Bush:

Already, hundreds more American troops have been killed in Afghanistan during the less than three years of the Obama administration than during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration.

So where's Code Pink?

In a phone interview, the national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, which organized some of the largest antiwar protests during the Bush administration, Michael McPhearson, said part of the explanation is political partisanship. A lot of the antiwar protesters, he said, were Democrats. “Once Obama got into office, they kind of demobilized themselves,” he said.

Oh, so they don't care that it's their guy who's causing all the casualties.  Hypocrites?  Of course, they're leftists.  Partisan shills?  That, too.

And what about the MSM?  Oh, yeah, they're in Obama's corner, too.  At least for now.  As the economy continues to tank, that, too, may change.

But it's pretty obvious, when a Democrat is in charge, the left and the MSM (which are virtually indistinguishable) ignores stuff they'd be screaming about under a Republican president.  (Haven't heard much about the homeless lately, either.)

Rick Perry, Democrat?

Texas Governor Rick Perry, who pretty much everyone assumes is going to run for the Republican presidential nomination, was once a Democrat.  In a sign that Perry has Democrats worried, the New Yuck Times has a long piece on Perry's time spent as a donkey.

I've got the perfect come-back for Perry if anyone brings this up:  "The last Republican president who was a former Democrat was Ronald Reagan.  And he did okay."

The NYT article does say that Democrat Perry was, even then, fiscally conservative as he was a state representative for a West Texas district.  But he did act like a Democrat at times:

But Mr. Perry cast some votes and took a few stands that seem to be at odds with his fiscal conservatism today. The most vivid example is his support of the $5.7 billion tax hike in 1987, signed by Gov. Bill Clements, a Republican, opposed by most Republican members. The bill passed the House by a 78-70 vote.

Oh, my, 24 years ago he voted for a tax increase.  I think perhaps we should allow that in the ensuing decades he has learned from that mistake.

Almost a quarter-century later, Mr. Perry, as governor, was faced with a similar budget shortfall. But he took a markedly different tack this session, opposing any new taxes and signing a budget that made the first reduction in overall spending on public education since at least 1949.

Mark Miner, Mr. Perry’s spokesman, said votes cast decades ago do not undermine the governor’s overall record, which he said included the largest property-tax cut in state history, enacted in 2006.

As I said, the liberal establishment must be worried about Perry if the Gray Lady is attacking him for being a Democrat.  Perry is on the short list of people I could support for the GOP nomination (with Bachmann's star rising and Cain flaming out).  This revelation that he wasn't quite as conservative 25 years ago doesn't worry me.

The Narrative

Rush Limbaugh likes to talk about the "Mainstream Media Narrative."  That  is, the MSM has a preconceived notion about the world, the narrative, and the play up stories that fit the narrative and downplay (or don't publish) stories that don't.  Case in point: the Duke LaCrosse rape scandal.  Some white boys for an elite school who played an elitist game were accused of raping a stripper they hired for a party.  The stripper was a woman of color so in the MSM's mindset, she was already a victim.  The LaCrosse players had the misfortune to be white so they were already privileged and therefor suspect.  Oh, and the whole thing happened in the South so, of course, this was just another Southern privileged white boy degrading a woman of color.

Nancy Grace of CNN ran her show for months on that narrative.  Conservatives were saying, "Innocent until proven guilty" but the MSM tried and convicted the LaCrosse players in the media.

But it all fell apart.  The prosecutor had with held exonerating evidence (he knew a good story when he saw one) and the LaCrosse players were innocent and the accuser was lying.

Then came Dominique Strauss-Kahn.  Here was a powerful, liberal, European male who was accused of raping a chamber maid in his $3,000/night hotel suite.  And it fit the right-wing narrative.  So a lot of conservative pundits ran with it.  National Review even put an unflattering portrait of Strauss-Kahn on their cover and used the story to warn of the excesses of power.

Now it's falling apart as it appears the accuser is lying.  Dang, it so fit our narrative.

The moral of the story seems to be, innocent until proven guilty is still the best policy.  I have to admit, the right wing was much more responsible with Strauss-Kahn than the MSM is with . . . anything.  But still, a lot of conservative pundits were salivating at the prospect of Strauss-Kahn in the dock.   It was almost the Bill Clinton impeachment all over again.

We all have world-views and prejudices.  Good journalists (and there are damn few) don't let them affect their reporting of the facts.  And even opinion writers should do their best to stick to the facts and not let their "narrative" get in the way.  The Strauss-Kahn debacle has lessons for all of us.

Terrorist Attack Foiled in Seattle

Just breaking news, a terrorist attack planned for Seattle has been foiled with the arrest of the conspirators. The Associated Press has the story:

The Justice Department says two men have been arrested in a plot to attack a military recruiting station in Seattle with machine guns and grenades.

Seattle resident Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, also known as Joseph Anthony Davis, of Seattle, and Walli Mujahidh, also known as Frederick Domingue Jr. of Los Angeles were arrested Wednesday night.

It will be interesting to learn more about this story.  That "also known as" is interesting.  Did the men use aliases or did they convert to Islam and change their names as so many do? Oops, I'm sorry, I jumped to a (logical) conclusion.  There's no where in the story where it states these two are Muslim.  They don't exactly sound like white supremacists.  I wonder why AP didn't mention if they were Muslim or not.

Apparently, the men were looking for recruits, one of whom turned them in:

The government says agents became aware of the plot through someone the men tried to recruit as a participant, monitored the plot, and that the weapons the men purchased had been rendered inoperable.

I'll be watching for more details about these men.