[Posted by Karl] You see, the Washington Examiner columnist had the gall to not only suggest that Americans care more about the economy than whether Mitt Romney gave someone a haircut 47 years ago, but also to suggest that Tamron Hall was pandering to her audience of dozens by dragging out the story on the pretense of doing the meta-story of how the Romney campaign is reacting to the story which most people do not care about. Actually, Carney was far more polite than that, which did not stop MSNBC from cutting Carney’s mic while Hall yelled at him: WFB has the full video . Apparently, Hall’s support staff thinks Hall was unequipped to have that discussion with Carney — or that MSNBC is ill-equipped when someone pulls back the curtain on how the establishment media drags out nonstories to suit their biases. Update : Carney tweets : “The question I was sent for the Romney bullying segment was ‘Does the story matter?’ So I was answering it, not dodging.” –Karl
View post:
MSNBC’s Tamron Hall goes nuts on Tim Carney over the “Mitt Bully” story
[Posted by Karl] After rounding up blogger opinion on the campaign season’s “dumb distraction derby,” Jim Geraghty draws upon a “fairy tale liberals tell themselves” he first recounted in 2010: The fairy tale is that Americans, deep down, really agree with liberals on all of these issues and would heartily embrace their agenda if only these side issues, scandals, and manufactured distractions would just get out of the way. Geraghty noted that Dems were playing the politics of distraction in 2010. The midterm elections did not end well for them. Pres. Obama seems bent on trying it in a nationwide campaign for 2012. The good news is that independents tend to base their vote more on the economy than partisans do. The bad news is that voters often care less about issues than they do about a candidate’s character , broadly defined. This is why Team Obama is fueling media coverage of the supposed likeability gap between Obama and Romney, stories about how the candidates treat (or eat) dogs, and so on. And this is ultimately why it’s probably a good thing if some on the right fight those battles, while Romney and the GOP focus on the economy. The right does not want to buy into the inverse of the liberal fairy tale. On the other hand, the fact that the 7%-10% of voters who end up deciding elections are almost by definition not swayed by ideology does not lessen the importance of making the case for smaller government, economic freedom and personal responsibility. As Jonah Goldberg points out in The Tyranny of Cliches , one of the fundamental cliches of the progressive left is pragmatism, i.e. , that they are simply doing “what works.” It is also one of the progressive left’s fundamental falsehoods. The past century has been one in which progressives have put forth the idea that Soviet communism is what works, that Eurofascism is what works, that Maoism is what works, and that Eurosocialism is what works. The actual history of the past century is one in which Eurofascism was defeated in WWII, Soviet communism was defeated in the Cold War, Maoism has degenerated into a fascism and crony capitalism that only Tom Friedman finds attractive, and Eurosocialism is taking its own road to the dustbin of history. To be sure, voters in the UK and France are resisting, the Germans less so. But fiscal realities will continue to intrude , regardless of which governments they elect. They will eventually figure out what the OECD and IMF already have about the solution to their problems: spending less is the answer. Voters in America — even the non-ideological, low-information voters — will end up absorbing these lessons as they move through life. The right should not adopt pragmatism as its own cliche, but the decay of 20th century progressivism will continue to push the electoral mainstream rightward. –Karl
Read more:
The ideologue’s fairy tale
The jobs numbers came out Friday and as has been the case in recent weeks – the gains were disappointing. The U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 8.1 percent,down from 8.3 percent, according to official figures from the U.S. Labor Department. However, American employers reported to have added fewer workers than forecasted in April and the jobless rate unexpectedly declined as people left the labor force. With this, The Blaze’s Becket Adams notes that the decrease in unemployment can only be attributed to the fact that people have left the labor force: Bottom line: the economy created only 115,000 jobs in April, 522,000 people left the labor force, the “official” unemployment rate is 8.1 percent, and total employment for the month actually fell 169,000, according to CNBC . Rather than focusing on yet another week of anemic numbers, the “Real News” panel opened Friday examining the big picture. Earlier in the week, James Pethookoukis of the New York Post notes that “even if you believe the garbage-in-garbage-out economic models that say Obama’s trillion-dollar stimulus averted a 1930s repeat, it’s sadly apparent we’ve stumbled from the Great Recession into the Great Stagnation.” Stagnation has been thrown around a lot by commentators this week. On “Real News” Friday Will Cain aimed to put the label into context, assessing that when judging the economy we often talk about growth and contraction, put forth as we are either going forward or going backward. Cain described stagnation as when we are either barely moving forward or standing still. From 2007 to 2012, Cain notes that for the most part the U.S. economy grew each year by only two percent or less. From 1970 to 2010 we grew at an annualized pace of over three percent a year. Cain explains that after examining the economic growth of both countries, we may be on course for the Japanese “lost decade” of the 1990s. Matt McCall said we may very well be on the same path. “The path that Japan took did not lead to growth,” said McCall of the Keynesian economic measures applied by the Japanese government after the bubble burst. “What scares me is the path that we’re going down now, with the FED and the U.S. government, we’re going down a similar path in that we do not see growth. “We’re putting a band aid on the situation where it’s not getting any worse, we’re going to have probably slow growth; stagnate growth, but I do not see where the ultimate growth will come from.” [ooyala code="t3NWxtNDplvxyUdW7loHUteG3B5dFjlr"] Continue reading here: ‘Real News From The Blaze’: Stagnation Nation
View original post here:
‘Real News From The Blaze’: Stagnation Nation
While many of us would prefer that political campaigns were run on issues, the fact is that most are won or lost based on imagery. What do we remember from the 2008 campaign beyond “hope and change?” Was the deciding event in 2004 the policy differences between George Bush and John Kerry or was it the Swiftboat Veterans? Other than the recount, what do we really remember about 2000 other than the last minute DUI revelation? Jim Webb owes his senate seat to George Allen’s infamous “macaca” comment and if Scott Brown prevails over Elizabeth Warren it won’t be because of policy differences it will be because of her bogus claim of “Cherokee” lineage. The current presidential campaign is no exception. That is why we must fight and win the minor wars that flare up over Obama’s epicurean proclivities, the travel arrangements for Seamus, and most recently the grotesque credit-grubbing indulged in by Obama over the death of Osama bin Laden and the life of Obama’s imaginary girlfriends. Some on our side, some of whom are friends of mine, are of the opinion that focusing on these near daily guerilla actions is counterproductive and diverts the voters’ attention from the Administration’s abysmal handling of the economy. I disagree. If we let these small attacks go unanswered, they become part of the image for Romney and Obama. If we want to go into November 7, 2012 with Romney labeled an out of touch, uncaring, rich guy and Obama the guy who saved Western Civilization then ignoring the various dogs, eaten and uneaten, Ann Romney’s work history, and who actually killed bin Laden is the way to go about it. The fact that Mark McKinnon would take to the pages of The Daily Beast to explain how wrong we are demonstrates why we are correct in meeting each one of these attacks. McKinnon, if you recall, was the guy John McCain hired to run his advertising operation and who then stepped down because he discovered that job would entail attacking Barack Obama . He is now affiliated with the “non-partisan” No Labels organization . Now I personally don’t think Obama has to hit things very directly on the nose regarding bin Laden. I always prefer a subtle glove rather than a high-fived slap. But, Obama has every right to tout this significant accomplishment. And if he wants to suggest Mitt Romney might have done otherwise, that’s his right as well. That’s what campaigns are all about. It is Obama’s right and obligation to characterize his record and run on it. And when you look down the list of Obama’s accomplishments, if you’re honest about it and take out the politics, you would have to say eliminating Osama bin Laden is right there at the top. So I say to Republicans: take an aspirin. Applaud Obama’s significant foreign- policy achievement. Get some credit for being honest and then take that credibility and turn the argument back to the economy, where the turf is much friendlier. You’ll note that his advice is 1) Obama is entitled to say it, 2) Romney is not entitled to refute it, and 3) move back to the economy. Ask yourself how this strategy focuses anyone on the economy rather than allowing Obama’s claim to be a national security hawk go unchallenged? Short answer: it doesn’t. Logically it doesn’t and the fact that Mark McKinnon, the man who deserted a long time friend rather than campaign against Obama, tells us we are wrong should tell us we are on the right track. This election will be a close one and it will be as bitterly fought as any we’ve ever seen. But we can walk and chew gum at the same time. Fighting these memes before they take hold is critical to, not a distraction from, the larger economic message. Each time we beat one of these memes we increase the focus on the economy because we are able to strip away Obama’s attacks on Romney and discredit his narcissism. As November approaches and more people are listening Obama will not be able to avoid the economy.
The headline number from the BLS’s Establishment Survey was an addition of 115,000 jobs for the month of April. That is a terrible number for this far into the recovery, as it fails to keep up with population growth. At this time in the Reagan recovery, the economy added a population-adjusted 480,000 jobs. So why did the unemployment rate (U3 number) drop another 0.1% to 8.1%? Let’s delve through some of the data from the Household Survey: Size of civilian labor force : So why did the unemployment rate fall? Well, if you shrink the size of the pool, the unemployment rate will actually go down. While a net-115,000 jobs were added in November, the civilian labor force shrunk by 342,000. In March, the civilian labor force stood at 154.707 million. Now, there are only 154.365 million in the labor force. Moreover, the Civilian noninstitutional population grew by 180,000, yet there are now 522,000 more people not in the labor force than there were in October. Consequently, the labor participation number dropped from 63.8% to 63.6%. That is the lowest rate since 1981. This has caused the U3 rate to drop by .1%. The broader U6 number is unchanged at 14.5% – still amazingly high for this long after the official end of the recession. Duration of unemployment : The average (mean) duration of unemployment is 39.1 weeks, a record high. By comparison, the average duration was 19.9 weeks in January 2009. Comparison to January 2009 – The size of the working age population grew over 8 million from 234.739 million at the time Obama was sworn in. Yet, the labor force has grown by just 130,000. The labor-participation rate has dropped 2.1%. Also, there are still 325,000 less people in raw numbers that hold jobs than there were at the time of his inauguration. Overall, there are almost 8 million more people not in the labor force relative to January 2009. So we have a larger population, a smaller workforce (resulting from discouraged workers), and more unemployed. As AEI’s James Pethokoukis points out , if the labor force was the same size as when Obama took office, the U3 rate would be 11.1%. There will be those who will blame this all on the aging population, but the bottom line is that job creation is not keeping up with new population growth. Also, while there is a long-term trend of baby boomers retiring, the fact that there has been such a precipitous drop in the participation rate the past two years is reflective mainly of the weak economy. Here are the relevant charts from Zero Hedge . Don’t tell me that such a precipitous drop is due primarily to the long-term factor of aging. There is a reason why nobody on the street is feeling this recovery, even though the U3 number has dropped almost a full point over the past 6 months, and it has nothing to do with the aging population. It has everything to do with the anemic economy. So this is the new normal in America. We will continue flat lining at (or near) the bottom of the employment trough indefinitely and more people will leave the workforce, even as the population continues to grow. Hey, maybe we can get the unemployment rate down to 4% like this. Cross-posted from The Madison Project
Read the original here:
April Jobs: More is Less
