Jobless Claims Up By 51,000 – Experts Blame Global Warming

All of that global warming falling from the sky is being blamed for an unexpected rise in jobless claims last week.

More Americans than forecast filed first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments last week, indicating it will take time for the labor market to mend.

Applications for jobless benefits increased by 51,000 to 454,000 in the week ended Jan. 22, Labor Department figures showed today. Economists forecast 405,000 claims, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey. The number of people on unemployment benefit rolls rose, while those collecting extended payments fell.

A Labor Department official said snow in four southern states in previous weeks created a backlog of claims that were processed last week. While the economy has improved, it hasn’t been enough to reduce an unemployment rate that Federal Reserve policy makers said yesterday is too high and requires pressing ahead with a $600 billion stimulus plan.

“If claims drift higher, we’re just going to have to wait and see, tread water,” Julia Coronado, chief economist for North America at BNP Paribas in New York, said. “We’re creating enough jobs to keep the unemployment rate roughly steady and at a pace to keep the economy on track, but it’s not necessarily a picture of rapid improvement.”

Understatement of the year.

AP: Obama’s SOTU Numbers Don’t Quite Add Up

Wait a minute.  You mean you can’t reduce the deficit and spend more money at the same time? 

WASHINGTON — The ledger did not appear to be adding up Tuesday night when President Barack Obama urged more spending on one hand and a spending freeze on the other.

Obama spoke ambitiously of putting money into roads, research, education, efficient cars, high-speed rail and other initiatives in his State of the Union speech. He pointed to the transportation and construction projects of the last two years and proposed “we redouble these efforts.” He coupled this with a call to “freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years.”

But Obama offered far more examples of where he would spend than where he would cut, and some of the areas he identified for savings are not certain to yield much if anything.

Fuzzy math.

More Heartache For The Left: Clinton Policy To Blame For Loughner’s Gun Purchase

One more nail in the coffin formerly known as the left’s credibility.  Such violent rhetoric, I know…

An old policy memo from the Clinton administration paved the way for accused Arizona gunman Jared Loughner to buy his first firearm.

Put in place by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, the policy prohibited the military from reporting certain drug abusers to the FBI, which manages the national list of prohibited gun-buyers, federal officials said.

Loughner attempted to enlist in the Army in December 2008 but was rejected because he failed a drug-screening process, Army officials said. Within a year, Loughner bought a Harrington & Richardson shotgun from Sportsman’s Warehouse in Tucson.

In November, he went back to the same store and purchased a Glock 19 – the one he is accused of using in the Jan. 8 rampage that killed six and wounded 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D).

Federal law since 1968 has prohibited gun sales to anyone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. Licensed dealers have been required to check the backgrounds of gun-buyers since 1994. But the Reno policy told federal agencies not to report people who had voluntarily given drug tests for fear it would deter them from seeking treatment, federal officials said.

Add the NRA and the eeevil gun lobby to the long list of those whom the left has tried – and failed – to blame for the Tuscon massacre.

Don Surber To Sanctimonious Left: Bite Me.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”

Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.

Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.

Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.

Right on!

Read it all and be prepared for spontaneous fist-pumping.

NYT Columnist: Thank You Very Little, Democrats

Uber liberal NYT columnist, Charles M. Blow, “congratulates” the left for their ghoulish attempts to link the right to the Tuscon massacre.

Immediately after the news broke, the air became thick with conjecture, speculation and innuendo. There was a giddy, almost punch-drunk excitement on the left. The prophecy had been fulfilled: “words have consequences.” And now, the right’s rhetorical chickens had finally come home to roost.

The dots were too close and the temptation to connect them too strong. The target was a Democratic congresswoman. There was the map of her district in the cross hairs. There were her own prescient worries about overheated rhetoric.

Within hours of the shooting, there was a full-fledged witch hunt to link the shooter to the right.

“I saw Goody Proctor with the devil! Oh, I mean Jared Lee Loughner! Yes him. With the devil!”

The only problem is that there was no evidence then, and even now, that overheated rhetoric from the right had anything to do with the shooting. (In fact, a couple of people who said they knew him have described him as either apolitical or “quite liberal.”) The picture emerging is of a sad and lonely soul slowly, and publicly, slipping into insanity.

[…]

Great. So the left overreacts and overreaches and it only accomplishes two things: fostering sympathy for its opponents and nurturing a false equivalence within the body politic. Well done, Democrats.

Now we’ve settled into the by-any-means-necessary argument: anything that gets us to focus on the rhetoric and tamp it down is a good thing. But a wrong in the service of righteousness is no less wrong, no less corrosive, no less a menace to the very righteousness it’s meant to support.

You can’t claim the higher ground in a pit of quicksand.

Paul Krugman, last seen flailing for air in said pit, could not be reached for comment.

 

Figures. Sheriff Dipstick’s Department Had Contact With Loughner Prior To Shooting

Lefty media darling Sheriff Dupnik has some ‘splainin to do.  

TUCSON — The police were sent to the home where Jared L. Loughner lived with his family on more than one occasion before the attack here on Saturday that left a congresswoman fighting for her life and six others dead, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said on Tuesday.

A spokesman, Jason Ogan, said the details of the calls were being reviewed by legal counsel and would be released as soon as the review was complete. He said he did not know what the calls were about — they could possibly have been minor, even trivial matters — or whether they involved Jared Loughner or another member of the household.

It’s time for the official lawman of MSNBC to to STFU, stop blaming Rush Limbaugh and start explaining to the victims’ families why his department dropped the ball and allowed this psycho killer to roam the streets of Tuscon unchecked.

Flying Pig Moment: David Brooks Calls Out The Left

David Brooks nails it in his column today.  Many others on the right have said as much in recent days, but when the left’s pet moderate calls out their shameful behavior it is more stinging and satisfying.

This probably won’t go over very well at the Upper West Side cocktail parties.

These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.

Yet such is the state of things. We have a news media that is psychologically ill informed but politically inflamed, so it naturally leans toward political explanations. We have a news media with a strong distaste for Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement, and this seemed like a golden opportunity to tarnish them. We have a segmented news media, so there is nobody in most newsrooms to stand apart from the prevailing assumptions. We have a news media market in which the rewards go to anybody who can stroke the audience’s pleasure buttons.

I have no love for Sarah Palin, and I like to think I’m committed to civil discourse. But the political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.

Unfortunately, this will fall on deaf ears.  The left has no shame as was proven within minutes of the Arizona shootings.

Et tu, Barry?

As the left shrieks and tries to lay the blame for the Arizona shootings on Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, let’s take a trip down memory lane and revisit the following statements made by the Hope and Change president who was going to heal our country:

“I think it’s tempting not to negotiate with hostage takers, unless the hostage gets harmed. In this case the hostage is the American people and I was not willing to see them get harmed,” Obama on keeping taxes from increasing, December 6, 2010

“A Republican majority in Congress would mean “hand-to-hand combat” on Capitol Hill for the next two years, threatening policies Democrats have enacted to stabilize the economy,” Obama, October 6, 2010

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama in July 2008

“Here’s the problem: It’s almost like they’ve got — they’ve got a bomb strapped to them and they’ve got their hand on the trigger. You don’t want them to blow up. But you’ve got to kind of talk them, ease that finger off the trigger.”  Obama on banks, March 2009

“I want you to argue with them and get in their face!” Barack Obama, September 2008

“We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” Obama to Latinos, October 2010

“I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry! I’m angry!” Obama on ACORN Mobs, March 2010

“We talk to these folks… so I know whose ass to kick.“ Obama on the private sector, June 2010

Now do I think Obama is to blame for what happened in Arizona?  Not even for a second.  BUT, if we are to follow the lead of the shriekers on the left and apply their standard in assigning blame for the acts of a deranged madman, we must look at all rhetoric equally. 

Or people could stop using the unspeakable horror to gain political points and say a prayer for the victims instead.

Feel Good Pictures Of The Day

Buy-bye Queen Nancy.

Hello, Speaker  Boehner!

MSNBC: George W. Bush’s Book Is Wildly Popular…Because He Was Hated

Riiight.  Because people just love to drop cash on books about people they loathe.

Mediate via Hot Air

In the battle of the presidential memoirs, George W. Bush is gaining some significant ground on his predecessor, selling almost as many copies of Decision Points in two months as President Bill Clinton sold of his in two years. Why would Americans be so eagerly purchasing the product? One suggestion on MSNBC is that, maybe, people just hate Bush more. Speaking to Norah O’Donnell, who introduced the segment in awe of the book sales given approval ratings, Salon writer Alex Pareene brought a grab-bag of reasons that Bush’s book may be selling like hotcakes, few of which were flattering:

It may be the fact that he was hated by so many people actually helped fuel his book sales because people wanted to hear him actually justify himself and explain some of his decisions that he made. And, you know, there are, I mean, you can imagine that some people bought it as a gag or some people got it, received it as a gift and didn’t really want it.

Why of course….a gag gift! 

It’s going to be a long two years for Poor Norah & Co. at MSNBC now that the bloom is officially off The Messiah’s rose and people are looking back on the Bush years with longing.  Pass the popcorn!