Archives

Friday, September 7, 2012

400-408 – Scott Waller, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Biola, Ph.D. at my alma mater Claremont Graduate University, reacts to the DNC (faculty.biola.edu/scott_waller).

• Joel Pollack (Breitbart, 9/6/2012) DEMOCRATS' CONTROVERSIAL DRAFT PLATFORM PASSED UNANIMOUSLY IN DETROIT IN AUGUST.

• Daniel Halper (Weekly Standard, 9/06/2012) State Dept. Again Refuses to Name Capital of Israel!

• Rich Lowry (NRO, 9/07/2012) The Party of Government.

At the Democratic National Convention, the Charlotte host committee knew its audience. "Government," the narrator says in a video produced by the committee for the opening of the convention, "is the only thing we all belong to." (:09)  The Obama campaign quickly disavowed the video. But it captured all that was to come.

// For Clinton Democrats, the era of Big Government was over. For Obama Democrats, the era of Big Government is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

// The Democrats' favorite rhetorical trick is describing how we all depend on one another: "We all have parents, teachers, and neighbors." And then leveraging these connections to insist on increasing the size and scope of the least personal, least community-oriented institution in American life — the federal government.

Regarding Biden's "Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive" rant (:16), how about "The SEALS killed bin Laden, and GM is still going bankrupt!"  Or simply, "It's still the Economy, Stupid!"

413-423 – • John Nolte (Breitbart, 9/07/2012) FORWARD: JUNE, JULY JOBS REVISED DOWN, PARTICIPATION LEVEL PLUMMETS TO 30-YEAR LOW.

Romney:  "If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover...For every net new job created, nearly four Americans gave up looking for work entirely."

// This is devastating news for a failed President who proved in his speech last night that he is exhausted and out of ideas. Other than "more of the same," Obama had nothing to offer, and this morning was a startling reminder that "more of the same" is a recipe for four more years of failure.

For the American people, however, these numbers are heartbreaking. The thought of so many people giving up hope and leaving the workforce altogether is a tale of despondency. And there is no greater indictment of this president's failure than the knowledge that so many are despondent today that we have devolved all the way back to 1981 participation levels.

"Forward" is nothing more than a word on a teleprompter.

Out here in the real world, things are bad and only getting worse.

•• John Lott (Fox News, 9/07/2012) Do the math, Mr. Obama, you've run out of excuses on jobs.  He is an economist and co-author of the just released Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future" (John Wiley & Sons, March 2012).

Despite a growing population, fewer Americans have jobs today than when Obama took office. And the jobs pay less, too.  With the release Friday morning of the August job numbers, there are still 261,000 fewer Americans employed than when Obama became president. Almost a million -- 822,000 -- fewer Americans have permanent jobs.

And we have fewer jobs despite there being many more Americans than four years ago. There are now over 8.4 million more working age Americans. Normally about 60 percent of the working age population have jobs. Thus, it would have been necessary to add about 130,000 jobs each month just to keep the share of the working age population employed from falling.

// (:24) Former President Bill Clinton made the argument Wednesday night: "No president, no president -- not me, not any of my predecessors -- no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years."

But Clinton is wrong. 

Democrats may not want to hear it, but Reagan faced an unemployment rate as high as 10.8% and was able to drive it down below 8 percent within 14 months. By contrast, unemployment under Obama peaked at 10.0%, eight months after his "stimulus" was passed, and after another 33 months it is still above 8%. //

• Yahoo Finance (9/07/2012) US economy adds 96K jobs, rate falls to 8.1 pct.

// Today's report dealt a blow to Obama's hopes of gaining momentum coming out of his party convention and gave Republican candidate Mitt Romney another campaign weapon. "If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover," Romney said in a statement. "It is clear that President Obama just hasn't lived up to his promises and his policies haven't worked."

// The government said Friday that 41,000 fewer jobs were created in July and June than first estimated. The economy has added just 139,000 jobs a month since the start of the year, below 2011's average of 153,000.

// Republican nominee Mitt Romney pointed to 43 straight months in which unemployment has now exceeded 8 percent.

// More than 12.5 million people were unemployed last month. But when discouraged workers and those who have part-time jobs but would prefer full-time work are included, more than 23 million Americans are under-employed. And the "under-employment" rate is 14.7 percent.

// No president since Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression has been re-elected with a jobless rate over 8 percent. This year's election will likely turn on whether voters see the economy as improving or remaining stagnant or getting worse under Obama.

/// Economists blame fears of the so-called U.S. fiscal cliff -- the $500 billion or so in expiring tax cuts and government spending reductions set to take hold at the start of next year unless Congress acts -- and Europe's long-running debt problems, for the slowdown in hiring.

• LINER – Join us on Saturday September 22nd at the Crowne Plaza in Garden Grove for our next free Financial Restoration Conference, featuring experts with real solutions for your very real financial problems.  Come out early and enjoy a free light-breakfast on us!  Door prizes include a 2-night hotel stay and restaurant gift cards!  Register for this free conference at kkla.com, keyword "financial."

428-438 – Jennifer Walsh, Associate Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and professor of political science at APU (apu.edu/clas/faculty/jwalsh), weighs in on the 2012 elections.

• Gerald Seib (WSJ, 9/07/2012) Two Divergent Paths to Prosperity.

// The core of this difference lies in the parties' views on which economic philosophy produces prosperity in the 21st century.

// The Republican case is that Americans prosper when, and only when, the country broadly prospers, and that only private enterprise can lift it to that level. And right now, the GOP asserts, a combination of over-taxation and misguided attempts by Washington to steer the economy have left private enterprise hobbled and financial markets warped by government borrowing, while the growth of an entitlement society has made the government too expensive and put Washington essentially in charge of at least one entire industry, the health-care sector.  In this view, it is pointless, and in fact harmful, to try to lift the prospects of middle-class Americans by using government policies to bring them a bigger slice of the economic pie—for that doesn't work if the whole pie isn't growing.

// Democrats have long called that trickle-down economics, and argued it produces a profoundly unfair world. This year's convention was significant because the party launched a more coherent effort to link its call for economic fairness to an argument that fairness also produces a more prosperous country.

Often this year, Democrats' calls for fairness have seemed designed mostly to acknowledge that there is pain out there and it's only right to spread it around—that is, that the wealthy should pay more in taxes so the burdens of reducing the deficit, paying for health care and providing education and infrastructure don't fall disproportionately on the middle class. The main point was that it was simply the just way to operate in a time of economic distress.

But increasingly Democrats here in Charlotte began making a different kind of case. They argued that spreading more of the tax burden to wealthier Americans in order to continue government programs would produce a middle class made up of strong consumers and well-educated workers, providing a sturdy base for economic growth.

Perhaps not surprisingly, former President Bill Clinton was the Democrat who framed this argument best.  "It turns out that advancing equal opportunity and economic empowerment is both morally right and good economics," he said in his convention speech Wednesday. "Why? Because poverty, discrimination and ignorance restrict growth."

And the message was seconded Thursday night by President Obama, who linked helping the middle class to boosting economic growth by declaring in his convention speech that he seeks "to restore the values that built the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known." Thus has the fairness argument morphed into a growth argument.

443-452 – •• CNS News (9/07/2012) Record 88,921,000 Americans 'Not in Labor Force'—119,000 Fewer Employed in August Than July.

The number of Americans whom the U.S. Department of Labor counted as "not in the civilian labor force" in August hit a record high of 88,921,000.

The Labor Department counts a person as not in the civilian labor force if they are at least 16 years old, are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home, and have not actively looked for a job in the last four weeks.

The department counts a person as in "the civilian labor force" if they are at least 16, are not in the military or an institution such as a prison, mental hospital or nursing home, and either do have a job or have actively looked for one in the last four weeks.

In July, there were 155,013,000 in the U.S. civilian labor force. In August that dropped to 154,645,000—meaning that on net 368,000 people simply dropped out of the labor force last month and did not even look for a job.

There were also 119,000 fewer Americans employed in August than there were in July. In July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 142,220,000 Americans working. But, in August, there were only 142,101,000 Americans working.

Despite the fact that fewer Americans were employed in August than July, the unemployment rate ticked down from 8.3 in July to 8.1. That is because so many people dropped out of the labor force and stopped looking for work. The unemployment rate is the percentage of people in the labor force (meaning they had a job or were actively looking for one) who did not have a job.

The Bureau of Labor Statistic also reported that in August the labor force participation rate (the percentage of the people in the civilian non-institutionalized population who either had a job or were actively looking for one) dropped to a 30-year low of 63.5 percent, down from 63.7 percent in July. The last time the labor force participation rate was as low as 63.5 percent was in September 1981.

458-508 – Greg Laurie, pastor of Harvest Christian Fellowship Riverside since 1979 and Harvest Orange County Irvine since 2011 (harvest.org/church), and host of many things:  the Harvest Crusades since 1990, the weekly GregLaurie.tv, and host of A New Beginning heard twice daily here on KKLA at 5:30am and 12:30pm.  This coming weekend is Harvest LA, Saturday (6pm) and Sunday (4pm), September 8-9, at Dodger Stadium. 

• Greg and Cathe have had two sons, Christopher (1975–2008 July 24) and Jonathan (1986), and they enjoy four grand-daughters and one grandson:  from his late son Christopher & Brittany – Stella (2006) and Lucy (2008); and from Jonathan & Brittni – Riley (2005), Ali (2010), and their new grandson Christopher David Laurie (2012). 

512-523 – Victoria Jackson, grew up in a Bible-believing, piano-playing, TV-free home in Miami, won a gymnastics scholarship to college thanks to her dad's coaching, came to LA and waited on tables until Johnny Carson put her on his show… 20 times!  She went on to star for six seasons of Saturday Night Live (victoriajackson.com).  She's just out with her autobiography entitled Is My Bow Too Big? How I Went from SNL to the Tea Party (2012) (Patriot Depot).  She hosts The Victoria Jackson Show on the web.

• LINER – Join us on Saturday September 22nd at the Crowne Plaza in Garden Grove for our next free Financial Restoration Wealth Summit, featuring experts with real solutions for your very real financial problems.  Come out early and enjoy a free light-breakfast on us!  Door prizes include a 2-night hotel stay and restaurant gift cards!  Register for this free conference at kkla.com, keyword "financial."

528-539 – (19X) • Fox News (9/06/2012) Transcript of Obama's speech at the DNC. 

544-554 – (2X) • The Blaze (9/06/2012) BRIT HUME ON OBAMA SPEECH: 'SIGNIFICANT NUMBER OF STRAW MEN AND CRITICISMS OF PROPOSALS NOBODY'S MAKING'.  Hume said Obama's argument that Republicans say bigger tax cuts and fewer regulations is the "only way" and government should do nothing. "I've never heard anybody say that in either party about anything," Hume said.

(4X) • Real Clear Politics (9/06/2012) Krauthammer On Obama: "One Of The Emptiest Speeches I Have Ever Heard."

558-608 – • Joel Pollack (Breitbart, 9/6/2012) DEMOCRATS' CONTROVERSIAL DRAFT PLATFORM PASSED UNANIMOUSLY IN DETROIT IN AUGUST.

• Daniel Halper (Weekly Standard, 9/06/2012) State Dept. Again Refuses to Name Capital of Israel!

612-623 – (5X) • Fox News (9/07/2012) Rove responds to latest unemployment numbers.

(4X) • Real Clear Politics (9/06/2012) Krauthammer On Obama: "One Of The Emptiest Speeches I Have Ever Heard."

• LINER – Join us for a special, private-screening of the new movie "Last Ounce of Courage" on Tuesday, September 11th at the AMC Burbank 6 Theaters at 7:30pm.  I'll be there to introduce the film which seeks to encourage all Americans to take a stand and raise their voices in support of their beliefs. Tickets for this screening are free, but you've got to register online, and seating is available on a first-come, first-served basis, so arrive early!  For info, go to www.kkla.com, keyword "movie."

628-639 – • Peggy Noonan (WSJ, 9/07/2012) The Democrats' Soft Extremism.  Obama is out of ideas, and Clinton's speech was unworthy of him.

// There was the relentless emphasis on Government as Community, as the thing that gives us spirit and makes us whole. But government isn't what you love if you're American, America is what you love. Government is what you have, need and hire. Its most essential duties—especially when it is bankrupt—involve defending rights and safety, not imposing views and values. We already have values. Democrats and Republicans don't see all this the same way, and that's fine—that's what national politics is, the working out of this dispute in one direction or another every few years. But the Democrats convened in Charlotte seemed more extreme on the point, more accepting of the idea of government as the center of national life, than ever, at least to me.

// The sheer strangeness of all the talk about abortion, abortion, contraception, contraception. I am old enough to know a wedge issue when I see one, but I've never seen a great party build its entire public persona around one. 

// "Republicans shut me out of a hearing on contraception," Ms. Fluke said. But why would anyone have included a Georgetown law student who never worked her way onto the national stage until she was plucked, by the left, as a personable victim?

What a fabulously confident and ingenuous-seeming political narcissist Ms. Fluke is. She really does think—and her party apparently thinks—that in a spending crisis with trillions in debt and many in need, in a nation in existential doubt as to its standing and purpose, in a time when parents struggle to buy the good sneakers for the kids so they're not embarrassed at school . . . that in that nation the great issue of the day, and the appropriate focus of our concern, is making other people pay for her birth-control pills. That's not a stand, it's a non sequitur. She is not, as Rush Limbaugh oafishly, bullyingly said, a slut. She is a ninny, a narcissist and a fool.

And she was one of the great faces of the party in Charlotte. That is extreme. Childish, too.

Something else, and it had to do with tone. I remember the Republicans in Tampa bashing the president, hard, but not the entire Democratic Party. In Charlotte they bashed Mitt Romney, but they bashed the Republican Party harder. If this doesn't strike you as somewhat unsettling, then you must want another four years of all war all the time between the parties. I don't think the American people want that. Because, actually, they're not extreme.// 

• John Fund (NRO Corner, 9/06/2012) Bill Clinton Pulls the Race Card.  

// Clinton's attacks on voter-ID laws, along with those of Attorney General Eric Holder, ignore the fact that a recent Washington Post poll found that 74 percent of Americans favor having people show an ID when they vote, including 65 percent of African Americans and 64 percent of Hispanics. Most voters believe showing ID — a necessity in our daily lives — is common sense. For those few who lack an ID, getting them a free one is doing them a favor and helping them enter the mainstream of American life.

But critics such as Bill Clinton and Eric Holder prefer to drum up racial fears and tensions with constant references to Jim Crow and poll taxes. Their criticism is not only unwarranted. It is reckless and irresponsible. 

• Michael Tomasky (Daily Beast, 9/06/2012) Obama: A Pedestrian and Overconfident Speech.

// This was the rhetorical equivalent, forgive the football metaphor, of running out the clock: Obama clearly thinks he's ahead and just doesn't need to make mistakes. But when football teams do that, it often turns out to be the biggest mistake of all, and they lose.

// The only sentence I really liked was the one about citizenship. It makes my heart happy to hear a president use the word, because a lot of them don't very much, especially Democratic ones, who are probably warned that the word might offend the non-citizen community. So that felt like it might be the start of something interesting, but it too just sort of floated out the window.

The night's big thematic device, the "it wasn't me, it was you" business, sounded like a somewhat forced attempt, frankly, to come up with…something. He was trying to re-inspire the Obamabots of 2008. But it felt very superficial to me. Nothing in this speech was developed, nothing given hard thought, nothing that built to a great moment. Jeezy peezy, did Mitt Romney give a better speech last week? Not quite, but almost.

The question is, did he let the air out of the balloon here? Lose the momentum that gathered with such undeniable force over the previous two nights? I suspect he may have. If he comes out of this convention with under a three-point bounce, that will constitute a horrible missed opportunity. This thing was teed up for him to build a five-point lead. If there's little movement in next week's polls, then there's also little doubt whose fault it is. Michelle did her job, and Clinton more than did his.

644-656 – (5X) Cardinal Timothy Dolan 

• Kerry Picket (Washington Times, 9/06/2012) PICKET: (video and transcript) Dolan brings pro-life message to DNC convention.

• LINER – Join us on Saturday September 22nd at the Crowne Plaza in Garden Grove for our next free Financial Restoration Wealth Summit, featuring experts with real solutions for your very real financial problems.  Come out early and enjoy a free light-breakfast on us!  Door prizes include a 2-night hotel stay and restaurant gift cards!  Register for this free conference at kkla.com, keyword "financial."

• Fox News (09/06/2012) Transcript of Joe Biden's speech at the DNC.