Where's the Outrage?

US patent office is in bad need of reform.

Bachmann may be down but unfortunately, I don’t think that she should throw in the towel yet.

I think that President Obama needs to think big. He needs to go big. I would push him to go for a $1.5 trillion jobs package. Let the Republicans’ heads explode, to quote Cheney. He should take the package to the American people. He should say that an unemployment rate of 9.1% is criminal. We have to do better. We have to bring unemployment under 5% as quickly as possible. Rick Newman has a more middle of the road suggestion for the president.

I still think that Romney’s job proposal is laughable. There is nothing new. It is a continuation of what Bush started and that didn’t end so well for us. Well, before I completely trash it I should wait for some economists to come out with their thoughts.

We need to prepare for more costly disasters, not less. Eric Cantor, are you listening?

I know that Rick Perry has been bashing RomneyCare but a closer look is illuminating. 27% of Texans don’t have health insurance, whereas 5.3% of Massachusetts residents don’t have health insurance. I’m just saying.

Updates:

Texas Wildfires. Tons of problems in East Texas -

Yesterday, the Texas Forest Service responded to 19 new fires for 1,490 acres, including new large fires in Red River and Rusk counties. In the past seven days, Texas Forest Service has responded to 172 fires for 135,051 acres.

An assessment has been completed on the Bastrop County Complex and 785 homes have been reported destroyed. An additional 238 have been reported lost on other fires in the past three days, for a total of approximately 1,023.

A significant number of aircraft have been mobilized to assist with the heavy fire activity. Six heavy airtankers, three 1,500-gallon scoopers, 15 single-engine airtankers, 12 helicopters, and 12 aerial supervision aircraft are in place. Eight National Guard Blackhawk and three Chinook helicopters have been providing critical aerial support. In addition, a 12,000-gallon DC-10 airtanker will be activated Friday morning at the Austin-Bergstrom Airport. This aircraft was instrumental in helping to contain Wildcat Fire in Coke County last April.

A Type I Incident Management Team is in place in Bastrop this morning and is assisting Texas Forest Service in managing the Bastrop County Complex. Additional Type 1 teams have been requested to assist with the large fires in Northeast and Southeast Texas.

Remember that Rick Perry cut funding for fighting wildfires.

If you are going to invest in government bonds, whose are the safest?

45-year-olds need to plan on retiring at age 70 – Rick Perry. What? Why retire then? Who will have the money? Let’s just retire when we are dead. Is that okay with you, Rick?

Did you catch the London speech of Chicago Fed Chair Charles Evans? Here’s a piece:

Suppose we faced a very different economic environment: Imagine that inflation was running at 5% against our inflation objective of 2%. Is there a doubt that any central banker worth their salt would be reacting strongly to fight this high inflation rate? No, there isn’t any doubt. They would be acting as if their hair was on fire. We should be similarly energized about improving conditions in the labor market.

This has been my point for over 12 months. There are too many Americans out of work. Both parties are acting as if there is something that they need to put up at the Dry Cleaners. It is important but …. Damn it. Millions of Americans are out of work. Let’s get to it. Let’s put Americans back to work. NOW!

Finally, just to prove that we aren’t the only nation that has really crazy people – we have been voted the “coolest nation.” Really? Who votes in that poll? When you look at Michele Bachmann, Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, do you think cool? Will Smith – cool. Lady Gaga – cool or odd?

Tags: Domestic Issues, Economy, Environment by ecthompson md
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No other document, in my opinion, reveals how clueless the Bush administration truly was prior to 9/11. This document is little over a page long, yet it holds some alarming information. First, read the memo. Now, re-read the memo and imagine that you are the President of the United States in August 2001. You are responsible for the well being of over 275 million people. Secondly, focus on the title – Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US. Now, in August of 2001, this was not common knowledge. In 1993, the World Trade Center was bombed, but it is not clear to me that the Bush White House (well, I’m really talking about Bush, Cheney and Rice) clearly understood the connection between Ramzi Yousef, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Osama bin Laden. US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya are bombed in 1998. Hundreds of Africans were killed. A third Embassy was targeted but the attack was thwarted by the Ugandan police. October 12, 2000, the USS Cole was bombed. 17 sailors were killed. We cannot forget the Millennium Day Bomber who intended to bomb the LA airport. Just because he was caught does not mean that he isn’t part of the picture. As a matter fact, the Millennium Day Bomber is probably the most vivid example of Al Qaeda (he trained with Al Qaeda) trying to come into the United States. It was due to nothing but a lot of luck and some skill that this plot was thwarted. The US Customs agent said that the Millennium Day Bomber was acting hinky.

This should be the most superficial knowledge that the president should have as he was reading the August sixth daily brief.

The seventh paragraph of the PDB should have sent chills up and down the spine of any American who read it.

Al Qaeda members – including some who are US citizens – have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two Al Qaeda members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-’90s.

Never before have I seen any evidence that the FBI or the CIA thought that Al Qaeda had members here in United States. If I were president, I would want the FBI director to explain how come we haven’t located these Al Qaeda members. Where are they? What are they doing? Who are they with? Can we arrest them? I would pepper the FBI director with questions until he had answers.

The first paragraph of the second page reads:

Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.

This paragraph should elicit one of two responses. First, if you’re not taking Al Qaeda seriously, there’s nothing specific in this paragraph, so you can just ignore it. Let the FBI and CIA and other agencies do their jobs at their usual pace. On the other hand, you can remember that you’re responsible for the safety of millions of Americans. You can ask the FBI what kind of suspicious activities they have been seeing. You can ask your national security advisor to alert the FAA. You can also call the governor/mayor of New York and inform them of suspicious activities. You can ask them to have their state and local authorities look for suspicious activities.

Now, if President Bush was truly on the ball and had really studied all the information he been given, he would’ve known about not one but several different plans to hijack planes and use them as missiles. What if President Bush had called the head of the FAA and his national security advisor and the heads of the FBI and CIA down to Crawford after his August sixth daily brief? What if he told the head of the FAA that the FBI has information that suggested that Al Qaeda was preparing for hijacking of one or more planes here in the United States. Could that warning have saved lives? Could the FAA have done enough to have prevented the hijackings?

I know that it is far-fetched to think that President Bush would have been this in charge and on the ball that early in his presidency. I fault him for being so complacent, so nonchalant. On August sixth, we needed a president that was engaged, cerebral, who studied information that he’d been given and who took his job as president as seriously as he did after the September 11 attacks. (If you are interested in reading the spin that the Bush White House put on the PDB check this out.)

What your thoughts? Is the August sixth presidential daily brief as big a deal as I’m making it?

Tags: Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, Terrorism by ecthompson md
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AK-47 plus crazed man equals chaos in Carson City, Nevada. Three people are dead. Seven people were wounded. The incident happened at an IHOP. My heart goes out to the victims and their families.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has unveiled his jobs plan. Cut the corporate income tax from 35% to 25%. Make the Bush tax cuts permanent. Eliminate taxes on dividends, interest and capital gains. Oh, just to top off this “jobs plan,” he would push for free-trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. More drilling for oil. Where are the jobs in this jobs plan? This appears to be more of the same. Free-trade equals exporting jobs. This is simply a bunch of Republican gibberish and there are almost no jobs in here. I don’t see anything that would actually grow the middle class.

I’m not sure what’s going on in Libya. There seems to be a convoy of senior Libyan officials from the Qaddafi regime who have fled to Niger.

The chief of Yahoo has been fired. Yahoo, in my opinion, is an excellent example of a company that has needed executive leadership for more than 15 years. (I talked about Yahoo here.) Now, I think it’s too late to resuscitate the company.

Americans are smoking less. This is good. Now, if we could eat less and exercise more…

Rep. Tammy Baldwin announces that she’s running for the U.S. Senate in Wisconsin.

Now that Texas is fighting some of the largest wildfires in its history, I find it interesting that it was Rick Perry and his Republican friends who cut funding to fight fires.

One of the biggest drags on the economy is the fact that our economy over the last 15 years switched from manufacturing to housing. We started building tons of houses. Now that the housing sector has collapsed, we need something to take up the slack. The graph below shows construction payroll jobs. Notice a huge increase from the mid-’90s through 2007. How do we make up the slack? This is the problem. The only way that I know of to fix this is putting all of these construction guys back to work building schools and roads and fixing our infrastructure. This is something we can do now!

Tags: Domestic Issues, Economy, Foreign Affairs, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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The President brought his A game to Detroit. He talked the talk. Now, can he walk the walk? It is all about jobs.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Tags: Economy, Obama administration by ecthompson md
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Many of us are not able to camp outdoor cookout today because of heavy rains. The rains are welcome.

These rains are helping the swamp fires in southern Louisiana.

The EU and NATO believe that we are safer 10 years after 9/11. I think they’re probably right.

New survey shows that almost 70% of Americans believe that we’re in a serious to moderate recession. This should be no surprise. With tens of millions of Americans either unemployed or underemployed and the economy stuck in neutral Americans are feeling the squeeze.

The New York Stock Exchange is closed today but stocks opened much lower in Europe.

Pakistan and America are trying to make nice.

The Washington Post has published the five myths of 9/11. Take a look. See what you think. #5 is that US civil liberties were decimated after the attacks. I think this point is somewhat questionable. I think there’s no doubt that we’ve given up some freedom, everywhere from more invasive screening at airports to warrantless wiretaps. Have these government powers been abused? Have we, the American citizens, suffered? Only time will tell.

Conservatives decided that the failure of that solar plant that the Obama administration had so publicly supported means that it is time to jump on the anti-solar power bandwagon, again. Some in the conservative media have even pushed the idea that solar power doesn’t work. Moronic. (How conservatives decided to embrace nuclear power but shun solar power?)

I simply don’t understand how anybody can embrace more corporate tax cuts. Corporations, major corporations, are sitting on billions of dollars in profits. Some still believe, though, that if we give these corporations even more money that will somehow make them decide to stop hiring people overseas and begin to hire Americans here at home. The idea is complete nonsense.

Sarah Palin believes that the Tea Party is winning. Winning what exactly? The Tea Party is more unpopular than ever.

On Labor Day, let’s take a quick look at Labor. Labor seems to be working harder and getting less. From the BLS report – In August, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls decreased by 3 cents, or 0.1 percent, to $23.09. Decrease? We need an increase in take home pay. Period. Any decrease has to be seen as a huge setback. We as a labor force, are already behind the 8-ball.

Post Office is running into a money crush. To be honest and nonpartisan for just a second, I have no idea how the post office stays open. I receive most of my bills via e-mail. I pay most of my bills via e-mail/Internet. I can’t be the only one who’s doing this. This must account for a huge decrease in volume in US mail. Has the US Post Office made adjustments with service? Have they streamlined? Are they more efficient in this more competitive environment?

Finally, from the Associated Press – Today in History:

Tags: Economy, Pakistan, Party Politics by ecthompson md
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When the twin towers fell, the Pentagon was on fire as the fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania and the Bush administration had a huge problem on their hands. On one hand, they had to convince the American public that they weren’t asleep at the wheel. On the other hand, they had to convince America that they were on the job in keeping us safe. It is somewhat like that old Richard Pryor routine where he asks, “Are you going to believe me or your lying eyes?” America could clearly see that the Bush administration failed to keep us safe. We could see the smoldering Pentagon and the 24/7 news coverage of the fallen twin towers. Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor, famously stated, “I don’t think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile.” Although these words are strong, seeing Condi Rice deliver these words are even more powerful.

Condoleezza Rice - No One would have thought [ 0:39 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

On the surface, this seems reasonable. If you’re a guy who works on the assembly line and doesn’t follow the news extremely closely, this makes perfect sense. You can’t recall any time that someone was trying to use a passenger jet as a missile. This was a deliberate attempt to throw you and the American people off the trail. The goal is not for you and me to imagine this or that, the goal is for the Bush administration to use all the information at their disposal to try to prevent something catastrophic like 9/11.

In 1994, Algerian terrorists tried to fly a plane into the Eiffel Tower. The plot was foiled by a French SWAT team while the plane was being refueled in Marseille. The plane was getting three times as much fuel as it needed, which tipped authorities off to their real intent. The Bojinka Plot, which I mentioned yesterday, also included one of the 12 planes to fly into the Pentagon and another of the planes to fly into CIA headquarters in Langley. Abdul Hakim Murad trained at a flight school in Norman, Oklahoma. He became an informant when he was captured in Manila. He told police that the plan was to board an American aircraft as a passenger, hijack it and then fly the plane into CIA headquarters. He specifically said that it was a suicidal mission. Remember that this plot was foiled in 1995. In August 2001, US officials intercepted intelligence suggesting that terrorists wanted to bomb the US Embassy in Nairobi. They were either going to bomb the embassy using a plane or using the plane as a missile.

In light of this information, Condoleezza Rice’s statement seems less genuine. It seems more crafted to throw the American people off the scent of incompetence. Now, to be fair, the FBI and the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community together form a huge and unwieldy beast. The one thing that 9/11 has taught me is how difficult it is to get information to those who can really use it. Still, the Bush administration could’ve admitted to us that they were truly focused on Al Qaeda, bin Laden and terrorism. That kind of honesty, I would’ve respected.

9/11 has taught me that our government can be extremely deceptive. Before 9/11, I thought that our government basically gave us the straight scoop. Maybe I was naïve. Now, everything that comes out of our government I question. Basically I say, prove to me that you’re telling the truth. What are the lessons that you learned from 9/11?

A lot of the information from this post comes from the fabulous book, Intelligence Matters, written by Senator Bob Graham.

Tags: 9-11, National Intelligence by ecthompson md
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I’ve spent most of today reading and reflecting on my education over the last decade. I don’t remember the first time I heard the word Al Qaeda. I don’t remember the first time I ever heard the name Osama bin Laden. I do remember where I was on September 11, 2001. I had been up most of the night taking care of trauma patients and I was sleeping in the morning. The phone rang and it was my mother-in-law. She is and was the Sentinel. She was always scanning the news. She called to tell us to turn on the TV. She said something terrible happened in New York. I thought she was crazy and misunderstood what she had seen. I handed the phone to my wife as I grabbed the remote control and turned on the television.

I’m sure over the next several days that there’s going to be lots of blogs and television shows which are going to reflect on what has happened in the last 10 years. The New York Times is already started the series on 9/11. I just want to revisit some of the information and data that we’ve learned over the last 10 years. I’m not going to spend much time talking about the Patriot Act and how it has been abused over the last decade. I’m not going to talk about civil liberties and how Republicans have taken advantage of 9/11. I’m sure that these topics will be adequately covered by many others in the blogosphere.

In my opinion, the key to understanding the failure of 9/11 lies in the arrest and interrogation of Ramzi Yousef. Ramzi Yousef was the mastermind behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Once he was captured, authorities began to see into the mind of a Muslim extremist. Ramzi Yousef was associated with Osama bin Laden. The uncle of Ramzi Yousef was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. After escaping the country in 1993, Ramzi Yousef attempted an assassination of Benazir Bhutto in the summer of 1993. He then attempted to bomb an Israeli embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. These attempts failed. Yousef, a Sunni Muslim, bombed a Shiite holy site in Iran in June of 1994. He then made his way to Malaysia, where he began to plot the Bojinka plan (also known as the Manila plot). He and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed planned to blow up 12 US airliners as they flew over the Pacific Ocean. As they were preparing their 12 bombs, a fire broke out in Yousef’s apartment. One thing led to another and authorities got a treasure’s trove of information from his apartment.

At the very least, authorities have an opportunity to see what one man was capable of doing around the world. The mistake that was made was that everyone assumed that this was just one man and not a movement. Only a few in the intelligence community understood that he was one of many. It wasn’t until 1998, the embassy bombings, that many in the United States began to take notice that this was a serious threat. For some, it took until 2000, the USS Cole bombing before they believed that Al Qaeda would stop at nothing.

Ramzi Yoursef is currently in a maximum-security prison in Colorado.

How did you first become aware of Al Qaeda or Bin Laden or the fact that we were a serious target? Where were you 10 years ago?

More tomorrow on 9/11 and Al Qaeda.

Tags: 9-11, Al Qaeda, Bin Laden, National Intelligence by ecthompson md
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I’m still reeling about the jobs report. Unemployment is unacceptably high. There is some big question on whether president Obama is going to go big – announce some large program in order to get millions and millions of Americans back to work or whether he will go small – announce something that he believes the Republican House will not object to. I think the unemployment numbers speak for themselves. Our president has to go big.

Every now and then, it becomes unclear as to what’s going on inside the White House. Yesterday, the Obama administration decided to walk away from stricter ozone pollution controls. There really was no explanation. After thinking about the story for about 24 hours, I think it is clear to me that the Obama administration needs to hear from us. We need to let him know that this is unacceptable. I really don’t care if this topic is going to be revisited in 2013. The time is now. Now is the time for us to move forward in cleaning up the mess that was left by the Bush administration. Sitting around and hoping that tomorrow is going to be a better day or that the political environment will be friendlier in 2013 is based on what? Fix the environment now!

Toxic chemicals linger in our clothes after dry-cleaning. Yuck.

Martin Luther King was one of the most eloquent speakers of his day, if not in the whole of American history. He left us huge volumes of thoughtful and eloquent sayings. So why would the architect of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial decide to change the words from his famous Drum Major sermon? The stupidity is overwhelming. The changes make Doctor King look arrogant. It is completely unacceptable. Once you read the section below, why would you want to change that? Arrogance? Stupidity? A deep misunderstanding of the words?

The section from the Drum Major Instinct speech:
Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that’s all I want to say.

Here is the way the inscription reads on the newly unveiled Martin Luther King Memorial statue – “I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness”

The US government is suing Bank of America, J.P. Morgan and several other financial houses on Wall Street on the behalf of Freddie and Fannie for fraudulent mortgage-backed securities. I wonder if any of the people who bought the securities in Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac were fired for incompetence. Just wondering.

Another manufacturer of solar panels is struggling to fight cheaper Chinese imports. It appears that China is subsidizing their solar panel companies.

It is common knowledge that Republicans hate poor people. There’s a school of thought in conservativism that if you’re poor this means that you’re lazy and did not take advantage of the many opportunities that America has to offer. One conservative has taken this idea a step further. He has stated that it is “un-American” to register poor people. I wonder if he’s ever read the Constitution?

Giving a gun away as a prize in the district of Gabby Giffords is simply awful.

Tags: Civil Rights, Economy by ecthompson md
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Honda Fit

The idea for this article was great. I think that parents do need help figuring out what kind of car to get their teen. This article doesn’t come close to getting this right. Cars like the Chevy Cruze, Fiat 500, Ford Focus and Honda Fit are not even close to what I would recommend to parents. All of these cars are small and boxy. They will easily get run over by a large dog. Teenagers need cars that they will be safe in. They need to stay away from huge cars because teenagers can’t control those monsters.  The authors of this article even recommended a Ford F-150, a truck. What are these guys thinking?? You need a car that is safe, that is easy to handle with great brakes and okay acceleration. You need a mid-size car.

You should look at the crash safety ratings before you even think about buying your little Sally or Joey a car. Safety first. Check the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and NTHSA. Airbags are a must. They save lives. Side airbags are not as well proven as front seat driver and passenger airbags. As a trauma surgeon, I love OnStar or its other forms from other manufactures. If your child is in a crash you want prompt help. You want that GPS locator to find the car if it is in a ditch.

Personally, I love Volvos. Find one that is used, four or five years old. These cars run forever. They are built to last. Other cars have good or even great safety ratings, but these guys wrote the book on safety. I like the S40 or S60. If you want to look at other cars, may I suggest the Honda Accord, Nissan Altima, Toyota Camry and the Chevy Malibu. Used 3-series BMW or C-class Mercedes are excellent choices. They tend to hold their value so you might have to find one five to seven years old, but they are still excellent cars.

I know that tons of people love SUVs for their children. I would shy away from most standard SUVs. It is true that they are much better than they were five or ten years ago. There was the problem with the cars tipping over and awful handling. Many SUVs are much better now. The crossovers are also better but I would rather have a Volvo then an SUV. If you have to have an SUV try a BMW X3 from a couple years ago.

Here are a couple of articles (here, here and here) on teens and cars which were written by authors who have thought about the unique problems that teens present.

Update: I got a very nice comment from Biggie. He mentioned something that I really did not get into – Insurance. Insurance can be extremely painful (read expensive). Insurance for a 16-year-old male can be astronomical in some states. Please check insurance rates before you lock in on a car. This website will give you some general averages of insurance rates but use with caution. These are average insurance rates for the entire population of that state. The insurance rate for 40-year-old female who is never been in a car crash is considerably lower than the insurance rate for a 16-year-old male who’s just getting behind the wheel.

Tags: Domestic Issues by ecthompson md
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Today’s jobs report was just as mediocre as I thought I was going to be. The Verizon worker strike sucked out 45,000 jobs from this report. The private sector added 17,000 jobs. The combination of this would’ve meant 62,000 jobs were created in August. (The Verizon strike is over.) These jobs will be added back into the September labor report.

The bottom line is that the unemployment rate of 9.1% is unchanged. We have to do better. We must do better. We can’t have chronic long-term unemployment in a large section of our population. Prolonged unemployment sucks the life out of a person. The unemployment rate in the Black community is 16.7%. The unemployment rate in the Hispanic community is 11.3%. The current labor gap from when the recession started until now is approximately 11.2 million jobs. According to the Economic Policy Institute, in order to fill these jobs in three years, the economy would have to add 400,000 jobs per month. This is an unprecedented growth rate.

We’ve got a huge problem. Sitting around and wringing our hands and finger-pointing is not going to fix the problem. The private sector alone is not going to fix this problem. I don’t care how you cut taxes and I don’t care what tax incentives you give. It simply is not going to happen. Until we wake up and understand that there is a huge government role to be played, millions of people are going to remain out of work. I blame everybody in Washington for this failure of vision, forethought and simple common sense.

From EPI:

The U.S. is currently 6.9 million jobs below where it was when the recession started. But because the working-age population grows as the population expands, in the three years and eight months since the recession started we needed to have added around 4.3 million jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising. Putting these numbers together means the current gap in the labor market is roughly 11.2 million jobs. To fill that gap in three years – by mid-2014—while still keeping up with the growth in the working-age population—would require adding around 400,000 jobs every single month. To fill the gap in five years—by mid-2016—would mean adding 280,000 jobs each month. By comparison, over the last three months, the economy added just 35,000 jobs, on average.

More than two years into the official recovery, the United States has yet to produce anything close to the rate of job growth that will put its backlog of unemployed workers back to work before the end of the decade.  As this report shows, the key issue holding back job growth is a lack of demand. For policies that we can and should be pursuing to stimulate demand and generate jobs, see EPI’s Briefing Paper, Putting America Back to Work.

Tags: Economy by ecthompson md
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Been travelling today.

College grads are losing ground on wages. This isn’t good. We need higher wages, living wages for everyone.

Prolonged unemployment is causing and will continue to cause long lasting damage to our society. Everyone is affected. Everyone!

I don’t get it. If children are our future and we, all, believe that children are the foundation of tomorrow then why are we short changing the most important gift that we can give to our children – their education?

BTW, I don’t care if the president backed down on when he would schedule his speech to Congress. I really don’t. We need jobs now. Not tomorrow or next week. Why couldn’t the Republican candidates debate an hour later or two hours earlier? Why couldn’t the president give his speech today and not next week? I don’t care about these macho contests. I care about jobs. Tomorrow we will have another jobs report. I suspect that this is going to be mediocre – with 60,000 – 75,000 jobs added. We need 10 times that much every month for more than two years in order to put 25 million workers (unemployed and underemployed) back to work in jobs that they want at wages that can truly support them. Shame on the media for pushing this non-story and why isn’t the media showing us a daily segment entitled – JOBS???!?!?

Vermont and Connecticut are still struggling with recovery.

For some reason auto sales went up last month. Who would have thunk? I’ll take any economic good news.

From PA:

* Libya: “The transitional government of Libya’s triumphant rebels decided Thursday to extend by up to a week the deadline given to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his remaining fighters to surrender, but the fugitive leader rejected the ultimatum and raged at his enemies in a new broadcast that called for the country to be ‘engulfed in flames.’”

* Better, but still too high: “Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 12,000 to a seasonally adjusted 409,000, the Labor Department said, still pointing to a jobs market struggling to find strength, but well short of a recession signal.”

* Iraq: “Under increased pressure from the United States, an Iraqi crackdown on Iranian-backed Shiite militias has helped produce a previously elusive goal: For the first time since the American invasion of Iraq, an entire month has passed without a single United States service member dying.”

* Maybe someone should do something: “The Obama administration downgraded its forecast for economic growth Thursday, predicting turmoil in the economy will likely keep unemployment above 9 percent through next year’s election.”

* On the other hand, the federal budget deficit will run “20% lower than expected this year.” Tea Partiers will be celebrating the Obama administration’s progress on deficit reduction, right?

* Counter-terrorism: “On a steady slide. On the ropes. Taking shots to the body and head. That’s how White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan described al-Qaida on Wednesday as he offered the first on-record confirmation that al-Qaida’s latest second-in-command was killed last week in Pakistan.”

* The White House’s new “We The People” online petition initiative looks pretty good.

Tags: Economy, Education, Environment by ecthompson md
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