Monthly Archives: November 2012

Bipartisanship

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So much for it from the Democrats.  Here’s Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV):

Mitt Romney’s fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his “severely conservative” agenda is laughable[.]

And he continues this monumental misunderstanding of who the American people are.  This is his excuse for refusing to work with Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney—or any Republicans.

Mitt Romney has demonstrated that he lacks the courage to stand up to the tea party, kowtowing to their demands time and again.

The Democratic Party’s view of bipartisanship is, “Do it my way.”  Their demonstrated view of compromise (see Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and immigration by fiat and carbon-taxing by regulation) is “My way, or the highway.”

 

h/t Doug Powers, writing for Michelle Malkin

Unemployment

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The last Labor stat on the unemployment rate is out, and as usual, there are some interesting underlying numbers, also, as reported by Jeff Cox of CNBC.

First, the headline number: overall unemployment rose to 7.9% in October.  It’s important to note that due to problems related to the impact of Sandy, New Jersey and DC data are not included in this estimate; BLS says they estimated these missing data.

The underlying numbers:

  • 171,000 new jobs
  • the number of those employed part-time who would rather work full-time and those discouraged and so dropped out decreased to 14.6%
  • labor force participation rate, which consists of those working or looking for jobs (which includes the above underemployed), edged higher to 63.8%

But it wasn’t all even as “good” as those tepid numbers.  From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

  • black unemployment rose to 14.3%—nearly twice the national average
  • Hispanic unemployment rose to 10%—25% above the national average
  • unemployment duration rose to 40.2 weeks
  • average work week showed no change
  • average hourly earnings for private nonfarm employees dropped by 1¢
  • number of unemployed rose by 170,000

Cox notes this, also:

President Barack Obama has touted the more than 4 million jobs created [sic] since the 2009 economic nadir, though the number is much lower—less than 200,000—when compared to the jobs lost.

As someone once said, this isn’t what a recovery looks like.

Whiner-in-Chief

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It’s President Bush’s fault.

I “inherited worst economy since the Great Depression.”

“You didn’t build that.”

“Republicans won’t pass my JOBS bill.”

“The YouTube video started it.”

“It [the video’s fault] was purely a function of what was provided to us.”

“We weren’t told they wanted more security.  We did not know they wanted more security there.”

“Gunwalking began under the ‘previous administration’.”

“I think it’s important for us to understand that Fast and Furious was a field operation begun under the previous administration.”

You “can’t change Washington from the inside.”

Chris Wallace was right.

These guys [the Obama administration], everything is personal…They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.

Negligence or Arrogance?

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I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters.  I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.  And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.

So announced 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.  Apparently he knows more about counterterrorism then his counterterror experts in Defense, CIA, State, et al., too.

Jennifer Griffin, of Fox News, has this:

Top State Department officials decided not to send an interagency rapid response unit designed to respond to terrorist attacks known as a FEST team, a Foreign Emergency Support Team.  This team from the State Department and CIA has a military Joint Special Operations Command element to it and has been routinely deployed to assist in investigations—for instance, after the USS Cole bombing and the bombings at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

…

“The response process was isolated at the most senior level,” according to one intelligence source.  “Counterterrorism professionals were not consulted and a decision was taken to send the FBI on its own without the enablers that would have allowed its agents to gain access to the site in Benghazi in a timely manner.”  The FBI team did not get on the ground in Benghazi for several weeks after the attack and at that point any “evidence” had been rifled through by looters and journalists.

And

Further, the Counterterrorism Security Group, or CSG, was never asked to meet that night or in subsequent days, according to two separate counterterrorism officials, as first reported by CBS News.  The CSG is composed of experts on terrorism from across government agencies and makes recommendations to the deputies who assist the president’s Cabinet in formulating a response to crises involving terrorism.

Why not deploy the FEST?  State Department spokesman Philippe Reines:

[T]he first thing to know is that it’s not a security team.  It’s primarily a resource that State can send to help restore a facility.  Best example is Nairobi after the bombing because the Embassy suffered such significant damage.  It couldn’t function properly without resuming basic infrastructure needs like communications.  In this case, that was not necessary as Embassy Tripoli wasn’t impacted and could, as it does today, to function normally.

Look!  Shiny!  Umm, the terrorist attack occurred over in our Benghazi, Mr Reines….

The CSG?  Well, Obama and his lessers already knew all the answers.

[T]he most senior people in government worked on this issue from the minute it happened.  That includes the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of State, National Security advisor, etcetera.  Additionally, the Deputies Committee—the second in command at the relevant national security agencies—met at least once and more often twice a day to manage the issue.

And now, four Americans, including a high-ranking Federal government official are dead; American territory lies in ruins with no apparent attempt to restore it; and who knows what classified information, names of locals who were helping us, etc now are in the hands of our enemies.

Because Barack Obama thinks he’s more expert than his experts.

Racism Again

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Reverend Joseph Lowery (that Reverend Joseph Lowery—past-president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference), according to The Daily Caller, citing the Monroe County Reporter, told a get-out-the-vote audience on 27 Oct the white folks were going to hell.  For no particular reason, just because, apparently.  He said that

when he was a young militant, he used to say all white folks were going to hell.  Then he mellowed and just said most of them were.  Now, he said, he is back to where he was….

Lowery went on:

I don’t know what kind of a n—– wouldn’t vote with a black man running[.]

Then came the backtracking.  Helen Butler, Executive Director of Lowery’s Georgia-based Coalition for the People’s Agenda, claims

He was saying…based on all of the hatred that’s going on [towards President Barack Obama]….  He just fell that he should feel the way he used to feel.  Of course he doesn’t believe that all whites should go to hell….

Lowery denied to TheDC that he denigrated blacks with that appallingly racist slur.  Butler tried to spin it.

He’s not saying you should support the black guy because of his race, he’s saying you should support a competent black person[.]

Not “support a competent person.”

We’ve already been over the “hatred” toward Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama—any criticism of him must be racist at bottom.

On the larger matter, I have to ask, was Lowery was telling the truth or is Butler, with their mutually exclusive statements about whites?  If Butler is truthful, then I have to ask, on what basis does a man of the cloth, a man who supposedly is a messenger of Christian peace and a caring person, tell such a racist joke?

On what basis does Lowery use an especially appalling term to refer to black Americans?  And to insist that blacks are bound to vote for a candidate on the basis of the color of his skin and not the content of his character?

It would appear that the Reverend Joseph Lowery disagrees with the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King.  But this is the Left in today’s politics.