Suitably Flip

Picture Of the Week

Gold.

"Mike's Nature Trick"

This is how global warming science gets "settled."

Obama Holds Press Conference To Announce Plans To Have Meetings To Think About How To Create Jobs. You're Welcome, America.

Could the Nobel for economics be far off?

Obama's Toxic Coattails

The White House has adamantly disavowed blame for Creigh Deeds' gubernatorial loss in Virginia, noting that the President didn't do much to help the hapless candidate (nor did he, at least compared with the abundant and visible support thrown behind Jon Corzine in New Jersey).

And for that comparative snubbing - it turns out - Deeds should be grateful.  Any more "help" from the erstwhile Mr. Popular, and McDonnell might've run up the score on Deeds even worse.

We tested the impact of the Obama endorsement — 24% said they were more likely to vote for Deeds, while 32% were less likely.  The minus eight increment on that can not be encouraging to the White House.
...
Finally, we tested a simple agree/disagree: “Creigh Deeds’ policies are too close to the policies of President Barack Obama.”  Fully 52% agreed and only 30% disagreed.  By intensity, 30% strongly agreed and only 9% strongly disagreed.  Revisionists on the left are blaming Deeds for not embracing Obama enough, but Virginia voters did not agree.  Among Independents, it was 52% agree/28% disagree.

The Bottom Line

Obama was not the deciding factor in the Virginia campaign.  However, he certainly was MUCH more than a non-factor.  Concern about his policies overreaching permeated to a gubernatorial campaign and helped widen the size of McDonnell’s win.  It allowed the campaign to focus on issues that hadn’t been working in recent years for Republican candidates.  Concern about Obama’s policies on spending, taxes, and jobs allowed McDonnell to thoroughly dominate those issues.  The checks and balances message is a key one, but the bigger lesson about Obama’s impact on Virginia is that his policies have put fiscal and economic messages back into play for Republicans.

The Na Na Na Na, Hey Hey Hey List

Courtesy of DKos, these are the nearly 40 red-district-dwelling Democrat Congressmen who Speaker Pelosi conned into committing political suicide with their populace-defying healthcare votes (ranked by the swiftness with which their constituents will be inclined to bounce them).

District	Representative	PVI
ND-AL	Pomeroy, Earl	R+10
WV-01	Mollohan, Alan	R+9
AR-01	Berry, Marion	R+8
IN-08	Ellsworth, Brad	R+8
PA-10	Carney, Chris	R+8
OH-18	Space, Zach	R+7
SC-05	Spratt, John	R+7
AZ-01	Kirkpatrick, Ann	R+6
IN-09	Hill, Baron	R+6
WV-03	Rahall, Nick	R+6
AR-02	Snyder, Vic	R+5
AZ-05	Mitchell, Harry	R+5
CO-03	Salazar, John	R+5
VA-05	Perriello, Tom	R+5
AZ-08	Giffords, Gabby	R+4
TX-23	Rodriguez, Ciro	R+4
KS-03	Moore, Dennis	R+3
MI-01	Stupak, Bart	R+3
NY-19	Hall, John	R+3
PA-03	Dahlkemper, Kathleen	R+3
FL-08	Grayson, Alan	R+2
IN-02	Donnelly, Joe	R+2
MI-07	Schauer, Mark	R+2
NC-02	Etheridge, Bob	R+2
NY-24	Arcuri, Mike	R+2
OH-06	Wilson, Charlie	R+2
TX-27	Ortiz, Solomon	R+2
WI-08	Kagen, Steve	R+2
CA-11	McNerney, Jerry	R+1
IL-08	Bean, Melissa	R+1
IL-11	Halvorson, Debbie	R+1
IL-14	Foster, Bill	R+1
MN-01	Walz, Tim	R+1
NY-23	Owens, Bill	R+1
PA-12	Murtha, John	R+1
NH-01	Shea-Porter, Carol	R+0
NY-01	Bishop, Timothy	R+0
TX-28	Cuellar, Henry	R+0

October Unemployment Report Confirms: Obama Saved 89.8% of Americans' Jobs

10.2%.

Welcome to double-digit unemployment, Mr. President.

The jump in joblessness puts us within sight of the 1982 high of 10.8%.  Reagan found a way to snuff out high unemployment (creating, not mysteriously "saving" but actually creating, 16 million jobs) while simultaneously reining in Carter's malaisey inflation and ushering in a generation-long growth spurt in American productivity and prosperity.

It, um... wasn't what we're doing now.

That may help explain why - after the rate seemed to plateau in the mid 9's earlier this year - we're now back to a second derivative problem (accelerating worsening) in employment.

Geoff at Innocent Bystanders updates his increasingly hilarious overlay of actual data over Obama's own with-or-without-stimulus unemployment forecast.

Deadly Shooting at Fort Hood Military Base (Update: Shooter ID'ed As Major Nidal Malik Hasan, Still Alive)

Developing...

At least seven people are dead and 12 wounded in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas, the base's public affairs office told NBC News on Thursday.

The official would not give his name nor additional details. It was unknown whether victims are soldiers or civilians. One gunman was reportedly in custody and another was on the loose, NBC News said. A third shooter may be involved, according to NBC News affiliate KCEN, which said the person had opened fire on the SWAT team at the base.

Reports say as many as 30 may be wounded.  Local schools are on lockdown.  The Killeen, Texas facility houses service members being readied for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Allah notes similarities to the "Fort Dix Six" Islamic terrorist plot of 2007.

Update:  Two separate shooting locations - one at the "Soldier Readiness Processing" center, the other at a theater.

Update:  More, via Allah...

[The shooting] apparently began minutes before a graduation ceremony was to begin at a base sports complex, Pentagon officials said.

Details of the events were sketchy, but officials said the shooting involved two men with M-16 rifles and began about 1:30 p.m. Central time at Howze Theater on the base, then moved to the sports complex, where the graduation ceremony was scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. It was not immediately clear who the ceremony was honoring.

Update:  FBI sources tell Fox News that "no terrorism nexus" is involved.  They must already have extracted some details from the surviving, detained shooter to make that statement.

Update:  ...the two surviving, detained shooters.

The President will give an address at 5:00 pm Eastern.

Update:  The toll is up to 9 dead, 27 injured.

Update:  Make that 12 dead, 31 injured, per Lt. Gen. Bob Cone's on-site briefing.

The two in custody are U.S. soldiers.  One shooter (also a U.S. soldier) was shot and killed.

Update:  Via Drudge, the dead shooter has reportedly been identified as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an army psychiatrist who was upset about being imminently deployed and the possibility he might have to kill fellow Muslims.

Unexpected update:  Dead gunman still alive.

Stimulus Job Creation Data Literally a Bunch Of S#!&

Obama math: 0 jobs now + 5 jobs in a few months = 100 jobs!

About $7.3 million of federal money will flow to the Parkland Sanitary District in Douglas County to replace its sewer system, a project listed as creating or saving 100 jobs even though work won’t start until this spring, federal recovery data shows.

But that number is inflated by 95 jobs, Parkland Sanitary District treasurer Eric Shaffer admitted.

From Ed Morrissey:

You have to love the example of the Parkland Sanitary District data being part of the White House claims.  They took credit for 100 jobs that don’t even exist, at least 95 of which they overstated when the jobs really do begin.  They took a 1900% markup on five phantom jobs — for a sewage project.  If anyone doubted that the White House numbers were crap, this should utterly convince them.

Jobs Created Or Saved Or Saved

With such heroically creative accounting, you'd think they'd be able to gross up the "created or saved" number to something a little more impressive than 640,000 (at a total cost of $215 billion, more than $330,000 per "job").

President Barack Obama's economic recovery program saved 935 jobs at the Southwest Georgia Community Action Council, an impressive success story for the stimulus plan. Trouble is, only 508 people work there.

The Georgia nonprofit's inflated job count is among persisting errors in the government's latest effort to measure the effect of the $787 billion stimulus plan despite White House promises last week that the new data would undergo an "extensive review" to root out errors discovered in an earlier report.

About two-thirds of the 14,506 jobs claimed to be saved under one federal office, the Administration for Children and Families at Health and Human Services, actually weren't saved at all, according to a review of the latest data by The Associated Press. Instead, that figure includes more than 9,300 existing employees in hundreds of local agencies who received pay raises and benefits and whose jobs weren't saved.
...
At Southwest Georgia Community Action Council in Moultrie, Ga., director Myrtis Mulkey-Ndawula said she followed the guidelines the Obama administration provided. She said she multiplied the 508 employees by 1.84 — the percentage pay raise they received — and came up with 935 jobs saved.

"I would say it's confusing at best," she said. "But we followed the instructions we were given."

Counting a not-lost job in your ostensible job creation?  That takes moxie.  Counting each one more than once?  That takes Obama.

Nature Picking Up Obama's Slack

See?  We don't need additional (human) troops to fight terrorists.  McChrystal's such a drama queen.

A bear killed two militants after discovering them in its den in Indian-administered Kashmir, police say.

Two other militants escaped, one of them badly wounded, after the attack in Kulgam district, south of Srinagar.

(HT: JWF)

Only the Federal Government Could Spend $24,000 On a $4,000 Subsidy

Nice job with the cars, boys.  Now try your hand at health care.

The Cash for Clunkers program gave car buyers rebates of up to $4,500 if they traded in less fuel-efficient vehicles for new vehicles that met certain fuel economy requirements. A total of $3 billion was allotted for those rebates.

The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.

Perhaps the Coolest, Most Depressing iPhone App Yet

Via Gizmodo, soak in the splendor of Keynesian augmented reality.

As of today Android and 3GS users can see recovery.gov contract data on their phones via the Layar augmented reality application. Layar is an application that overlays your view of the real world with waypoints representing your favorite coffee place, the movie theatre you're trying to find, or in this case, where some of that $787 billion from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is going.
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There are also a few options to help you filter the results should you be in a contract-heavy area like DC, it is possible to filter by amount or search by name if you're trying to find larger contracts or contracts for a certain nearby recipient.

This data is taken from the recovery.gov Where Is The Money Going? map which provides a KML file containing all recipient reported Contracts. As of October 30th this data will be updated with the final contract, grants, and loans.

Strategy Room 3:00-4:00

I'll be on Strategy Room at FoxNews.com today from 3-4 pm.

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As always, you can email the show here and you can stream it live here.

White House War On Fox Paying Big Dividends

The forbidden network - already #1 by a mile - has seen its audience swell by almost 10% in the two weeks since Anita Dunn fired the opening salvo.

I'm finding myself less convinced the administration is clear on the distinction between a war of necessity and a war of choice.

Wolf Blitzer Hates Charities

And knowledge.

These are ten painful minutes.

It's not that he's stupid per se...

A CNN insider defended the journalists: "They are reporters, not trivia experts. And the buzzer is complicated.

Congratulations On Being Independent Thinkers. Now Kindly Quiet Your Opposition and Get On Board With Me.

The crowd seems sufficiently seduced by His flattery not to notice the irony of His wheedle.

"Democrats are an opinionated bunch.  You know, the other side, they just kinda sometimes do what they're told. Democrats, y'all thinkin' for yourselves.  I like that in ya.  But it's time for us to make sure we finish the job here.  We are this close.  And we've gotta be unified."

White House Sets Bar Hideously Low For 2010

After their epic whiff upon attempting to forecast unemployment with vs. without "stimulus," I suppose it makes sense that they would try to guide our expectations lower in time for the midterms.

But if they really expect this prediction to pan out, the whole administration might want to go ahead and resign in disgrace now.

White House economist Christina Romer warned this morning that unemployment is “unlikely to end 2010 much below” the current rate of nearly 10%.

Romer offered that bleak assessment of the job market for a difficult Democratic election year even as she defended White House economic policies.

In prepared testimony to Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, Romer, chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, conceded “the likelihood that labor market conditions will remain painfully weak through 2010.” Fiscal stimulus “will likely be contributing little to growth” by the middle of next year, she said, although hundreds of billions of tax dollars will still be flowing into the economy.

Economic growth, she said, could dip below forecasts, and in that case the unemployment rate “would likely continue to rise.”

Congratulations, North Dakota!

I hope you're sitting down, Peace Garden State, because you're officially the only state to see job creation in the 7-month wake of the $787 billion stimulus bill.  Not only did you see net job creation, you saw hundreds upon hundreds of jobs created.  1,800 in all!

Yes, the rest of the nation has bled some 2,706,800 jobs over that period, but, well, if we simply ignore that... this latest wacky foray into bizarro-economics has yielded brand spanking new payrolls at the bargain price of $437 million per job.

True, we haven't actually deployed all that capital.  But that's where the fun starts.  Once we're done crapping away the rest of the funds wrested away from the greedy job-and-wealth-creators, extrapolating from these results, we can project the creation of as many as 10,000 jobs in North Dakota (with the loss of only 20 million elsewhere).

It's a veritable Keynesian paradise!

Sadly, genuine economic recovery will in all likelihood have stubbornly taken hold by then (despite our best efforts to snuff it out once and for all), so there may well be a few million "collateral damage" jobs created by the private sector that we can't in good conscience take credit for.  But don't let that get in the way of feeling tepidly okay in the mean time about several hundred of the best ditch-digging and ditch-re-filling-in jobs money can buy, courtesy of your U.S. government and a few million highly productive fellow citizens, the most rational of which are now eyeing flights to one of the 190 or so nations with less bludgeony tax regimes.

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another!

Is it any wonder the bulk of the droves of Wall Street bigs who supported the President last year didn't rush across town last night to pay $30,000 for more public flogging?

President Barack Obama took on Wall Street in its own backyard Tuesday night, telling the bankers at a glittering Manhattan fund-raiser to get on board with his efforts to re-regulate the financial industry even as his Democratic Party was taking their money.

At a $15,200-a-plate dinner at the Mandarin Oriental, the president castigated people "who have just taken taxpayer bailout money saying, 'What do you want from me?'"

Stories of small businesses unable to get loans means the banks are not thinking about "our mutual obligations," he said, adding, "We're in this together."

"So if there are members of the financial industry in the audience today," Obama said, drawing some ooohs and chuckles from the crowd, " I would ask that you join us in passing what are necessary reforms. Don't fight them."

ObamaCare To Thwack Middle Class With Up To 70% Marginal Tax Rate

Maybe it's worth Congress' time to read the bill after all.

Think about a family of four earning $42,000 in 2016, which is between 150% and 200% of the federal poverty level. CBO says a mid-level "silver" plan will cost about $14,700 in premiums, of which the family will pay $2,600—since the government would pay the other $12,100. If the family breadwinner (or breadwinners, because the subsidies are based on combined gross income) then gets a raise or works overtime and wages rise to $54,000, the subsidy drops to $9,900. That amounts to an implicit 34% tax on each additional dollar of income.

Or consider a single worker earning $20,600 and buying an individual "silver" policy with a premium at $5,000. Again according to CBO, if his income rises to $26,500, his subsidy plummets to $2,700 from $4,400 (including a cost-sharing subsidy that goes away). This is a 29% marginal tax; moving to other income levels yields increases in the neighborhood of 20% to 23% for both individuals and families. Jim Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, calculates that when combined with other policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit that also phase out, the effective marginal rate would rise to nearly 70% at twice the poverty level.

(HT: HA Headlines)