Joe Nocera, "Jobs Report: Cooked or Correct?": Ignoring the Answer

Yesterday, it was announced that the US unemployment rate had remarkably dropped from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September. Lead articles in The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/fall-in-jobless-rate-strips-romney-of-an-argument/2012/10/05/c1e3f3c2-0f1f-11e2-a310-2363842b7057_story.html) and The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/business/economy/us-added-114000-jobs-in-september-rate-drops-to-7-8.html?pagewanted=all) crowed that these figures have reinvigorated the Obama campaign following the president's debate debacle. From the right we are hearing that the figures could well be inaccurate (see, e.g.: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2012/10/05/the-jobs-report-ii/). Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, tweeted (https://twitter.com/jack_welch/status/254198154260525057): "Unbelievable job numbers . . these Chicago guys will do anything . . can't debate so change numbers."

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Jobs Report: Cooked or Correct?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/opinion/nocera-jobs-report-cooked-or-correct.html?_r=0), Joe Nocera concludes:

"But the data were largely overwhelmed by positive signals. In its revised figures for July and August, for instance, the bureau said that more jobs had been created than it originally estimated. People with only high school degrees were finding jobs. The number of people who had been out of work for six months or more was at its lowest point in three years.

Whether the Republicans like it or not, the economy is slowing getting better.

Awful, isn’t it?"

Hallelujah, we're back on the road to recovery! Or are we?

Me? I don't need Joe Nocera or Jack Welch to tell me if the unemployment figures are real, cooked or arbitrary, given that we are all privy to the ultimate arbiter.

If this surprising data was correct, we should have seen a positive response in the US financial markets on Friday. Instead, the Dow Jones Industrial Average added only 0.2%, Nasdaq fell 0.4%, and the S&P 500 ended unchanged.

Sorry, but the US economy, which will ultimately improve somewhat regardless of the outcome in November ("after winter comes the spring"), remains in a funk.

David Brooks, "Moderate Mitt Returns!": "The Man Who (I Think) He Truly Is"

By now, you have probably seen the 2007 video in which Obama told his audience of Reverend Wright's dramatic influence on his life and adapted his angry remarks and vocal accent to his audience (see: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/02/obama-speech-jeremiah-wright-new-orleans/). Obama, of course dissed his racist pastor of twenty years and abandoned his drawl upon becoming a viable presidential candidate in 2008.

We have yet to see the tape of Obama's 2003 tribute to Palestinian "activist" Rashid Khalidi at a farewell party in Chicago, which is locked away in the offices of The Los Angeles Times (see: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/226104/i-l-times-i-suppresses-obamas-khalidi-bash-tape/andrew-c-mccarthy).

I think I know who Obama truly is, and I shudder to think what we might see if he is re-elected and unveils his radical inner self with nothing to lose going ahead.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "Moderate Mitt Returns!" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/opinion/brooks-moderate-mitt-returns.html?_r=0), David Brooks sings paeans to Romney's debate performance earlier this week and welcomes his shift to the middle:

"Yes, it’s true. Romney’s tax numbers don’t add up. Yes, there’s a lot of budgetary flimflam. No, Romney still doesn’t have an easy answer to wage stagnation (neither does Obama). But Romney’s debate performance signals the return of Governor Mitt. Democrats call it hypocrisy; I call it progress.

. . . .

Most important, Romney did something no other mainstream Republican has had the guts to do. Either out of conviction or political desperation, he broke with Tea Party orthodoxy and began to redefine the Republican identity. And, having taken this step, he’s broken the spell. Conservatives loved it! They loved that it was effective, and it was effective because Romney could more authentically be the man who (I think) he truly is."

Romney did a marvelous job on Wednesday and flattened Obama, who, owing to Denver's high altitude (yeah, right) or the absence of a teleprompter, never managed to get himself on track.

But do we know who Romney "truly is"? I know he wants to be president.

Bottom line: I am delighted that Romney is moving to the middle as we approach election day and am convinced that he will have to maintain this moderation if, as president, he is to work with Democrats in an effort to remedy America's disastrous economy. Moreover, he will be answerable to the electorate in 2016 should he fail.

On the other hand, I am extremely wary of Obama's agenda, if he moves to the extreme left in a possible second term, after an "uninspiring" (I'm being kind) first term, and reveals who he truly is.

Gail Collins, "The Season of Debates": What Happened to Dog-on-the-Roof?

Read Gail Collins's latest New York Times op-ed "The Season of Debates" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/opinion/collins-the-season-of-debates.html). Now read it again. What's missing?

Answer: No mention of Seamus. Collins has sunk into a funk.

From her opinion piece:

"Obama seemed tired or bored, and he fell way behind in the much-anticipated battle of the zingers. The president thinks these debates are ridiculous, and he may well be right. But, truly, it would have been a better idea to keep the thought to himself.

. . . .

If you watched the whole thing, you now know that the president has taken to calling his health care reform law 'Obamacare,' which is really a tad strange.

. . . .

And what are we to make of all this? There wasn’t any car crash.

. . . .

Do debates really matter? The experts say that, barring total disaster, the answer is actually no."

Translation: There was indeed a car crash, and as evidenced by a perspiring Richard Nixon in 1960, debates do matter. Romney wiped the floor with Obama, who, sans teleprompter, appeared petulant and disoriented.

Until now, it had been so much easier for Axelrod to demonize a nonresponsive Republican strawman in 30-second advertising spots.

This race is again wide open.

Maureen Dowd, "Complicity in Duplicity?": The Queen of Snark Wakes Up to a Cover Up

On September 12, shortly after the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, I wrote in no uncertain words (http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/gail-collins-mitts-major-meltdown.html):

"Make no mistake about it: The movie 'Innocence of Muslims' was a disinformation exercise, timed around 9/11, intended to exacerbate Arab rioting that had been scheduled in advance. Worse still, the global media, hungry for a story, quickly cooperated by publicizing all of the story's false threads."

Nevertheless, the Obama administration chose to pretend that the attacks had been "spontaneous" in respose to this silly excuse for a film.

Initially oblivious to the Obama administration's snow job, Maureen Dowd stated in her September 25th New York Times op-ed entitled "Why Not Debtors’ Prison?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/opinion/dowd-why-not-debtors-prison.html):

"At least the president has a foreign policy."

Well, Dowd has now woken up to the effort to disguise a foreign policy and national security disgrace. In her latest Times op-ed entitled "Complicity in Duplicity?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/opinion/dowd-complicity-in-duplicity.html), Dowd tells us:

"It’s remarkable that President Obama, who came to power abhorring the manipulative and duplicitous tactics of the Bush crowd, should now be vulnerable to similar charges.

. . . .

Just so, in an overzealous effort to burnish a president who did not need burnishing — especially against foreign policy bumbler Mitt Romney and foreign policy novice Paul Ryan — they have gotten tangled in contradictory accounts about Benghazi. The administration had benefited from the impression that it had diminished Al Qaeda, even though the public no doubt appreciates that it was never going to be so simple."

Dowd unreasonably blames only Susan Rice for "rushing to pump up the president on national security." Yet in this instance, culpability extends far beyond America's ambitious Ambassador to the United Nations. White House press secretary Jay Carney declared on September 14:

"We have no information to suggest that it was a pre-planned attack. The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims find offensive."

However, as reported by Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/27/us-officials-knew-libya-attack-was-terrorism-within-24-hours-sources-confirm/):

"U.S. intelligence officials knew within 24 hours of the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that it was a terrorist attack and suspected Al Qaeda-tied elements were involved, sources told Fox News -- though it took the administration a week to acknowledge it."

Make no mistake about it: The breakdown of security in Benghazi and the subsequent attempt to bamboozle the American public should be the subject of a congressional investigation.

David Brooks, "The Opening Statement": No Mention of the 2,000th American Soldier Who Died This Weekend in Afghanistan

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Opening Statement" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/02/opinion/brooks-the-opening-statement.html), David Brooks suggests an opening statement for Mitt Romney for tomorrow's presidential debate. If Romney follows the advice of Brooks, he will lose the 2012 election. It's that simple.

On the other hand, if Romney follows my advice, he will win. But there's no chance of that happening.

Read Brooks's opinion piece. Now read it again. What's missing? Simple.

This past weekend we witnessed a tragic milestone: The 2,000th American soldier died in the war in Afghanistan, which was escalated by Obama. In addition to this heartbreaking loss of life, the US is spending $6 billion every month on this boondoggle.

There is no mention of Afghanistan in David's op-ed. There will be no mention of Afghanistan in the opening statements of Romney and Obama during the debate.

If Romney wants to win this election, he needs to tell the American people that he will end America's presence in Afghanistan within six months of taking office. But he won't do that. It would antagonize many of his conservative backers, notwithstanding the fact that it is the right thing to do. Romney would rather lose gracefully to Obama.

Regarding Medicare, Brooks is correct: Romney needs to treat Americans as adults and explain in no uncertain terms that the rising cost of medical entitlements, if unaddressed, will bankrupt the US. Brooks, however, does not mention that Medicare fraud costs the US $90 billion per year. It's time to declare war on this crime, which is draining the lifeblood from the country.

And then there is no mention by Brooks of the necessity to reform Wall Street, which is witnessing the departure of individual investors as algorithms and computerized trading have come to rule the roost. It's time to take this unfair edge away from the hedge funds and to allow stock markets to again serve the needs of innovative start-ups, hungry for seed money, which offer the promise of sustainable employment. But will Romney demand the reinstatement of the Uptick Rule and Glass-Steagall, thereby antagonizing many of his donors? Not a chance.

Given the disastrous state of the US economy and Obama's unlimited number of foreign policy failures, this is Romney's election to lose.

Yes, he is losing it.

Iranian Rial Falls 13% in One Day: Funding for Hezbollah in Jeopardy

Today, the Iranian rial lost an additional thirteen percent of its value against the US dollar in open market trading. The rapid fall of the rial in recent days prompted Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz to state on Sunday that the Iranian economy "is on the verge of collapse" (see: http://www.jpost.com/IranianThreat/News/Article.aspx?id=286152).

In addition, as reported by The Times of London (http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article3554189.ece):

"Iran is spending billions of dollars in support of President Assad of Syria, creating a rift at the top of the regime in Tehran as the war remains deadlocked.

Failure to decide the Syrian conflict in favour of President Assad, despite huge military and financial support for the regime in Damascus, has caused a split between Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and Iran’s spymaster, Qassem Suleimani."

But this is only half of the story. Iranian funds to finance the activities of Hezbollah in Lebanon are also growing scarce, and this could have dire consequences for the organization's future operations, both military and civilian. Although much of Hezbollah's funding has come from drug smuggling and money laundering, Iran has also subsidized Hezbollah in the amount of some $100 million annually.

Paul Krugman, "The Real Referendum": "We Are Not Facing Any Kind of Fiscal Crisis"

Yesterday, I asked in which world New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman is living. Today, I am asking the same question regarding Paul Krugman.

In his latest New York Times op-ed entitled "The Real Referendum" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/opinion/krugman-the-real-referendum.html), Krugman anticipates in November a clear referendum in support of Obama, enabling the president to reject the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles debt reduction plan "that would undermine some key pieces of our safety net." According to Paul, the first reason Obama should dismiss Simpson-Bowles is that America is not facing a fiscal crisis:

"First, despite years of dire warnings from people like, well, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, we are not facing any kind of fiscal crisis. Indeed, U.S. borrowing costs are at historic lows, with investors actually willing to pay the government for the privilege of owning inflation-protected bonds. So reducing the budget deficit just isn’t the top priority for America at the moment; creating jobs is. For now, the administration’s political capital should be devoted to passing something like last year’s American Jobs Act and providing effective mortgage debt relief."

No fiscal crisis? As recently observed by the Congressional Budget Office (http://www.cbo.gov/publication/43288):

"Over the past few years, the federal government has been recording budget deficits that are the largest as a share of the economy since 1945. Consequently, the amount of federal debt held by the public has surged. By the end of this year, CBO projects that the federal debt will reach roughly 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), the highest percentage since shortly after World War II."

Sure, nothing worrisome about that.

If re-elected, Obama should focus on job-creating legislation, "like last year's American Jobs Act"? The anticipated cost of this proposed legislation was $447 billion. In an earlier opinion piece (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/opinion/krugman-obstruct-and-exploit.html), Krugman told us that this act would have added 1.3 million jobs by the end of 2012. So divide $447 billion by 1.3 million jobs, and what do you get? Taxpayers would have been saddled with a cost of $344,000 per job.

The American Jobs Act also called for funding a "Pathways Back to Work Fund" in the amount of $5 billion, although it was never quite clear who would administer these funds or for what exact purpose they would be dispensed.

Krugman goes on to say that "America does not have an 'entitlements problem,' but rather "a health cost problem, private as well as public, which must be addressed." I hope Shakespeare will forgive me if I observe that "A road apple by any other name would smell as foul."

Finally, Krugman contends that "if a re-elected president were to endorse [Simpson-Bowles], he would be betraying the trust of the voters who returned him to office." Or in other words, just keep shelling out the funds until the system collapses, because this is what those who voted for him wanted. By the same token, if our children were to demand lollipops for breakfast, Twinkies for lunch, and pink cotton candy for dinner, we should accede to their demands, notwithstanding the consequences?

All of this blather is coming from the same visionary who one year ago declared (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html):

"Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.

. . . .

It’s clear what kinds of things the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators want, and it’s really the job of policy intellectuals and politicians to fill in the details."

Ah, yes, the enlightened stuff which makes for Nobel Prizes in economics.