WP: "We are beyond full employment" "Allen has enthusiastic black support"

Your Daily Diet of Washington Post Lunacy: (Saturday, November 4)

Front Page, splash image: "Steel Rises Out of the Ashes in Baltimore"

(more on that later... the gist of the article being that steel now employs 2,000 people in the Baltimore MSA instead of 50,000 people, but it would be zero people if it weren't for the wonderful efforts by an Indian mogul, Lakshmi Mittal to capture a monopoly, thereby stabilizing the "downward-spriraling" cost of steel, a commodity that has doubled in value since 2001. Lesson: monopolies are good; labor unions must do everything possible to kow-tow to their Indian benefactor, a man who lives in a $130 million mansion next door to the Queen of England.)

On the very same page, it turns out we are "beyond full employment" thanks to those geniuses like Lakshmi Mittal, with a little help from the Labor Department:

"Jobless Rate is Lowest Since '01"

Unemployment fell last month to the lowest level in more than five years, to 4.4 percent -- a drum-tight labor market that shows the economy remains fundamentally strong despite weak spots such as housing and manufacturing. The Labor Department said employers added 92,000 jobs in October, a modest number. But the department revised earlier estimates to show more payroll growth in August and September <...> That was enough to drive unemployment down from 4.6 percent in September.

Considering that some workers lack the education and skills to be readily employable, economists regard any unemployment rate below 5% as striking. "We are beyond full employment," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com Inc.

"Allen and Webb Scramble to Break Voter Traditions: Military, Black Voters May Swap Loyalties"

HAMPTON, Nov. 3 -- US Sen. George Allen and Democratic challenger Webb fired up black voters Friday on swings through southwest Virginia... Allen, a Republican who has struggled to win support from black voters since his days as governor in the 1990's, won the enthusiastic backing of more than a dozen ministers from black churches in the Tidewater area.

They said they were driven to Allen's side by his support for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on Tuesday's ballot.

"Judges are going after the most important institution of all in our society: the family," Allen said.... The ministers by his side broke into applause, murmuring "That's right!"

(The amendment would also make it impossible for unmarried partners to file domestic violence complaints, but the article fails to mention that, perhaps because it would cast Allen himself in a poor light.

The Post's overriding objective as an institution is to elect politicians who are pro-development, since they have vast investments in area real estate and colleagues of the Graham family stand to make literally billions of dollars from defense-related development on specific tracts in the outer D.C. suburbs...)

The two best paying areas of jobs available to working men and women...

are weak.

Same old bullshit statistics.

said: "Soon we will have ZERO homeless people on the welfare rolls."

Out of sight, out of mind.

Just like idiots at all levels on the so-called "center-left" said that welfare reform must have been a success, because virtually no one is on welfare anymore, and HOPE VI must have been a success, because the housing projects are vacant and abandoned, with the utilities cut off, so nobody needs public housing anymore.

But racists have enthusiastic support from black ministers, at least according to the idiots at the Post, because they have a common enemy: battered unmarried women.

Prediction: If Allen holds on and Steele upsets Cardin, the meme on the front page of the post would be "blacks overturn decades of Democratic racism, flock to Republican banner of openness and a new era of color blindness" because that is how the Post sees the world: a return to the 1970's where racism is acknowledged but dismissed as unimportant and not relevant to US politics.

Unemployment figures are NOT based on people collecting unemployement benefits!

Please! STOP spreading this MYTH. Inform yourself, PLEASE!

Unemployment figures are based on the Current Population Survey (CPS), which is a monthly survey of households conducted by the Bureau of Census for the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

http://www.bls.gov/cps/

In the run-up to the election.

Also, these figures are based on a multitude of factors including employer surveys.

"The Labor Department said employers added 92,000 jobs in October, a modest number. (Post-speak: less than the increase in population)

But the department revised earlier estimates to show more payroll growth in (the two preceding months) for an average of 156,000 new jobs in each of the past three months.

That was enough to drive unemployment down from 4.6 percent in September.

(This is all above the fold. The Post counts on its readers to gloss over statistics, even when they prove LIES. It is the pattern they have counted on for over twenty years to fool YOU, the reader.)

EVERY month, the BLS reports the figures for the most recent month and REVISED figures for the two prior months! EVERY MONTH! The BLS has been reporting this way for DECADES. That's neither new nor remarkable!

Are the figures manipulated? Effectively, yes. All statistical surveys incorporate ASSUMPTIONS and those assumptions (built into a "birth/death model") have an impact on the reported numbers. There's no question that the political pressures from the top drive such assumptions toward the Pollyanna end of the spectrum. That's neither new nor remarkable.

Or the quotes from Moody's? How bout black support for the Allen campaign, which the Post claims is surging thanks to "black evangelicals"?

I'm out of work for the first time in 25 years.

*impossible for unmarried partners to file domestic violence complaints*

Battery (assault, etc.) is battery (assault, etc.) for christ's sake - since when did marital status have anything to do with it?

:grr:

Marriage used to be a private, civil or religious matter.

The government has no business defining marriage one way
or another nor certifying who is and who is not married.

Anyone should be able to establish a joint account;
the homeowner tax credit on which our economy is based
is (sorry, center-left Dems) discriminatory to renters
(both pay property taxes) and unmarried households;
and stuff like domestic violence and privacy access
to sick relatives knows no relation to marriage and
fucks up people whether or not they are intimately involved.

Marriage as an institution predates the church or the state,
and the government has no business trying to define who is
and is not "married".

On Edit:

Do you think Republicans aren't cheering at the prospect of
unwed Republican mistresses being unable to prosecute a sitting congressman for domestic violence complaints?

The Virginia law takes us back to Iranian-style definitions of
"marriage" where an unwed rape victim can be prosecuted for adultery.

We're at least TEN MILLION JOBS down from "full employment" and that doesn't count the below-par compensation! Fucking whore!