Seems like sort of good news.

Which means it's not news, so don't expect Charlie Gibson to mention it tonight.

The unemployment rate dropped to a five-year low of 4.4 percent in October as employers added 92,000 new jobs flashing a picture of a strong labor market as the midterm elections draw near.

The latest report, released Friday by the Labor Department, showed that the civilian unemployment rate fell 0.2 percentage point from 4.6 percent in September. It marked the third month in a row that the politically prominent jobless rate declined.

The tally of new jobs added to the economy in October fell short of economists expectations for an increase of around 125,000 positions, however. Nonetheless, job gains in both August and September turned out to be much stronger than previously estimated and that took much of the sting out of October's less-than-expected payroll performance.

Really? The August and September numbers were revised sharply upwards? Gee, I didn't see that coming.

Neither did the MSM, which cited those numbers as evidence of a dying economy... which of course they'll now do with October's numbers.

...

That disappointment, however, was offset by much better job gains in the previous two months. Employers added 148,000 jobs in September, versus the 51,000 first reported. Payrolls grew by a robust 230,000 in August, stronger than the 188,000 slots previously recorded.

...

And they'll forget to correct their previous erroneous pessimism when those numbers are revised up as well, as they probably will be.

Workers saw solid wages gains last month.

Workers' average hourly earnings climbed to $16.91 in October, a sizable 0.4 percent increase from September. That increase was bigger than the 0.3 percent rise economists were expecting. Over the last 12 months, wages grew by 3.9 percent.

Growth in wages is good for workers, but a rapid and sustained advance makes economists fret about inflation flaring up. That's not good for the economy or workers' pocketbooks, ultimately, because inflation can eat into everybody's buying power.

The hunt for a job got shorter.

The average time that the unemployed spent in their search for work in October was 16.5 weeks, an improvement from the average 17.4 weeks registered in September.

Wages are increasing? By a big .4 percent? I thought wages were frozen at Great Depression levels. I believe I just read Paul Krugman writing that the average hourly wage in the United States was "two bits and a handful of hay for your mule."

The jobless rate for blacks fell to 8.6 percent last month, from 9.2 percent in September. The unemployment rate for Hispanics dropped to 4.7 percent, from 5.4 percent. The jobless rate for teenagers declined to 15.4 percent from 16.4 percent.

Women, minorities hardest hit.

Posted by: Ace at 10:31 AM | Comments (12)
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Absolute moral authority, I'm sure Maureen Dowd will declare:

I missed the joke. You must forgive me, for there just is not a lot of room in my life for even good jokes--and there is absolutely no room for "botched jokes"--when the subject of the joke is my son who was killed in Iraq. I know exactly what came out of Sen. John Kerry's mouth, and in those words there is no interpretation required. His attempt to convince us--and, I believe, to convince himself that that there was really a botched joke buried deep within his insult is in fact a reaffirmation of his ever-present condescending nature. He actually believes that we are stupid enough to agree with him and start laughing simply because he said it was a joke. Mr. Kerry said exactly what he meant and meant exactly what he said. In those words Mr. Kerry did in fact wash completely away the facade of his support of our magnificent troops and revealed for all to see his true colors.

All one had to do is look into the face of Mr. Kerry as the last word came out of his mouth, and it was painfully obvious that he knew that he had just disparaged the entire military. As the firestorm grew, the calls for an apology filled me with unease. It is not up to him to determine if an apology is in order. That decision most certainly rests with the millions of individuals he offended, and then they would decide if they were going to accept one or not.

...

It is in my mind the height of irony that John Kerry, a Yale graduate, would make two other Yale graduates the butt of his supposed joke. One we all knew as President Bush; the other is known mostly to those who have proudly served with and under him. On the day Kyle died, this gallant warrior was to take command of Kyle's parent unit, the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion. Kyle was on his way to the ceremony when he and his buddies were killed. Here is a man who is the epitome of intellect, character and gallantry--an individual that Mr. Kerry does not believe exists.

Worth reading in full.

Via Sticky Notes, if you'd prefer to read it there.>

Even the Boston Globe -- which of course is spinning like a top for Kerry -- has difficulty understanding the nuances of Kerry's purportedly intended joke:

According to a text provided by his office, Kerry intended to skewer Bush as someone who is not "smart," who is "intellectually lazy," and who, as a result, "end[ed] up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." Even if delivered properly, the jab put Kerry in murky water. When Kerry and Bush were at Yale, neither excelled academically. Also, in 2002, Kerry voted for the Iraq use-of-force resolution while possessing nearly as much information as Bush. And when they competed for the presidency in 2004, Kerry was the clear winner of the debates, but Bush ran a far smarter campaign. So who is Kerry to be lampooning Bush's brainpower?

Hey, here's an easier reason to disbelieve Kerry's claims of intent: His joke, as he claims he meant to say it, relies upon threatening young people that if they don't "make themselves smart" and "get educated" they'll get stuck in a dead-end civil service job like the Presidency of the United States of America.

This makes sense to people? Chris Rock had a joke about this, in reverse. Referring to Marion Barry, he joked that if you tell kids not to take drugs or they won't end up being anything, they can say, "I can be Mayor." But note that Rock's joke is aimed at how absurd it is to make such a threat -- don't do drugs -- when there's an example of someone getting hooked on crack and yet being Mayor.

John Kerry wants you to believe his joke actually played upon the situation Chris Rock found so preposterous -- threaten kids to buckle down and study, or else they just might wind up leaders of the free world.

I submit it makes much more sense to use "or else you'll wind up as a soldier in Iraq" as a consequence of not studying that being elected president.

Military people don't buy this interpretation, it seems. One soldier writes:

Ace,

Allah misses the bigger point. I think he is not worked up because he doesnÂ’t have a dog in the hunt. The important thing is I and my brothers are offended, nay outraged...

Cary had a target audience he was playing to and Service Members were the butt of his joke, simple as that. Or maybe I just to stupid to peel layers.

Deliberate misspelling and emphasis his.

It's not that Allah doesn't have a dog in this hunt so much as he just buys, as some people do, Kerry's unlikely explanation.

As Charles Johnson said, "Occam's Razor." The simplest explanation? He said what he said because he intended to say it. Insult the troops? No, I don't think he went up there planning to deliver to insult the troops, as I said, but he didn't think through the implication of his statement (study hard and you won't wind up in the armed forces) and thereby revealed what he really thinks.

Plainly the guy does not like the sort of people who serve in the military. They voted four to one against him; they "Swift-Boated" him, etc. And he thought so little of them that he actually, sincerely believed they were capable of war crimes on a massive scale in Vietnam.

Think about that. How the hell can you believe that someone is committing the most unspeakable crimes imaginable -- mass murders, mass rapes, mass maimings, etc. -- and simultaneously believe they're enlightened individuals?

Has anyone ever said, "I know he's got a bad rep, but Jack the Ripper is actually a really good guy" ?

Posted by: Ace at 10:19 AM | Comments (23)
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From Dave in Texas. Follow his linkage to a very funny video.

I didn't understand much of what was going on in the film, but I liked the part about how kittens are nice because they are soft.

Dave has a nifty pool with a heated jacuzzi, and he will be sleeping in it this evening.

Posted by: LauraW. at 07:00 AM | Comments (105)
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via Michelle Malkin.

By the way, I hope everyone knows that when I said "The pictures of him conducting executions while reading from the Koran are priceless" I was not joking.

No, click on the link in the article below. I was serious. He does that.

He's now updated with a Kerryesque sorry-if-I-was-misunderstood apology. But I'll have to check out the videos he's made, linked at Michelle's, to guage the "context."

More... The alternative name for his suicide bomber costume was "freedom martyr."

At least... We know he's a poseur terrorist. Because he fights like a girl. A very uncoordinated girl who fights like a pussy.

Thanks to phin of Agent bedhead.

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 PM | Comments (65)
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Huh? The attempt to spin this as anti-Bush may not be quite successful.

mong the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990Â’s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. HusseinÂ’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Perhaps there is more reason to fear some of these documents shouldn't have been posted.

But it's hard to make that case without revealing that, I repeat, Hussein was at one point one year away from building a bomb.

According to the New York Times.

Posted by: Ace at 07:58 PM | Comments (70)
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Oh, puhleeeeze...

Hahahahaha. I forgot: This is Drudge. Overpromise, underdeliver.

And the NYT, always overspinning anti-Bush stories.

Together, they're crazy-delicious comedy gold.

Posted docs include...

detailed accounts of Iraq's secret nuclear research; a 'basic guide to building an atom bomb'...

... Officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency fear the information could help Iran develop nuclear arms...

Blah, blah, blahbetty-blahblahblah.

Oh yeah: the IAEA is a real hawk on preventing Iran from developing the bomb.

See, we don't have to sweat Iran enriching uranium. No sirree. Most likely that's for peaceful energy purposes. What we have to worry about is Bush assisting Iran in building the bomb that we're not really convinced they're building.

Unbelievable. Supposedly Iraq has advanced nuclear research, which could be used to build a bomb, and this gets spun against Bush.

Iran doesn't need any advice about building a bomb. The basics of it are well known. And the A.Q. Khan network acted as a nuclear Johnny Appleseed throughout the Islamic world (and NK, too!).

So, there's your "huge" story:

Iraq had advanced plans to build a bomb (but it was no threat to build a bomb!) and Bush is horrible because he let those plans be posted on line, which Iran may use to build a bomb (but we also don't have to worry about them building a bomb, so don't get any tricky ideas about bombing them!).

Ohhhhhhkay.

Absurd.

The New York Times is a joke and Drudge is a frickin' low-rent carnival barker who fancies himself P.T. Barnum.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 PM | Comments (59)
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Trick or treason!

No, it's not treason, just a disgusting wink-wink nudge-nudge at terrorism and murder. I just liked the wordplay.

The kid's name is Saad Saadi. Somehow I don't think he means this as some sort of complex parody of the jihadi mindset.

The photos of him conducting mock executions while reading from the Koran are just priceless.

And UPenn's president must think it's pretty funny. A scream, if you will.

The Democracy Project says you couldn't go to one of these parties dressed as Hitler. I disagree -- at this point, you probably could.

The left has looked at the pros and cons of their former position against anti-semitism, and they've found that Jews just don't offer the numbers.

And they've decided Jews are in bed with NeoconNazi Bush anyway, so they deserve all they get.

Can you imagine being a Jew at this party and seeing this? Or someone with a loved over in Iraq or Afghanistan?

And Penn's president not only didn't turn him away from her party for being dressed inappropriately, she proudly posed with him.

I'm pretty sure at this point the left would support a ressurrected Hitler so long as he promised to raise taxes and let gays get married. Final Solution? Eh, you take the good with the bad.

Thanks to Old Coot.

Not to go all lefty identity politics on Jews or anything, but... You guys still really voting as part of this coalition?

Really?

You've not noticed they, ummm.... how do I put this delicately... have made an alliance with Jew-murdering terrorists and their supporters and enablers?

I know you guys prefer a more secular party, and you were all pretty rah-rah about FDR and all, but, dudes. Dudes.

Maybe it's time to align with those who annoy you by saying you can't get into Heaven, rather than those in league with terrorists eager to prove the theory one way or the other.

Posted by: Ace at 05:51 PM | Comments (49)
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On Drudge, at the top of the page.

Finally! The NYT will report on Saddam's active pursuit of a nuclear bomb, just four days from the election!

(Ahem.)

No, it will be a re-breaking of a story -- with NEW reportage and NEW quotes that aren't new at all -- that there was reason to doubt Saddam's capability in this area and that "some senior intelligence analysts at the State Department" strongly questioned the prevailing view that he sought a bomb.

The same "senior intelligence analysts" who have been saying the same thing for four years and who, no matter how right they may have turned out to be, were nonetheless a small minority of the intel community who were unable to persuade their fellow analysts of their point of view.

"It's a slam dunk," George Tenet said about the case for Saddam's WMD's. This was the consensus view of the entire intelligence establishment, and not controversial in the least.

Or, at least, about as controversial as global warming, which the MSM tells us should be accepted without question because it similarly commands the position of "widely-agreed consensus" among "experts in the field."

Sometimes the dissidents are right. Most of the time they're wrong. The NYT wants the country to impeach Bush because he failed to side with the dissidents over the great majority of analysts.

In this case, at least. In the case of global warming, it's enough to take a poll and go with the winner, and entirely ignore the dissenters.

So, you know -- big, big, big story, according to the media, much bigger than anything else in the entire universe, including Kerry's anti-military swipe, which, by the way, still didn't make a prominent mention in the NYT.

The Above Is Just Speculation. I'm saying that because See-Dub wasn't sure if I was speculating or had some inside information.

I'm very happy that someone imagines I could possibly have inside information.

I'm just guessing, based on the Times' past pre-election late-hits. The "missing explosives" story that was a bit dated and a bit overstated and all that.

Thre are three possibilities, one I already covered. One other possibility is worse, and the other other possibility is better.

The worse possibility is that this is some real, serious new reporting on a Bush cover-up about what it knew about the program, warnings it had and disregarded, etc.

But that's odd timing, isn't it? Very convenient. I suppose someone may have decided to leak something big right before the election, but I figure it's more something the Times has been working on, and finally said, "Write up what you have now, so we get it out before the election," and are juicing it up to make it seem like something more than it is.

The other other possiblity is the NYT is about to report Saddam was working harder on a bomb than previously reported, right on the eve of an election, which would of course greatly assist Republicans in retaining control of Congress.

Which, of course, is simply not a possibility.

Rove's "October Surprise:" For those who want to hope... well, there is that talk of Rove's previous declaration that the election was in the bag because he had an October Surprise on the way.

Rove, being Rove, and therefore Pure Evil, gives the huge story -- Saddam was working on a bomb until the invasion -- to the Times.

With this Hobbesian Choice: You can either run with this story, which we know you don't want to run, or in three days we take the story to the Washington Post, and we let the world know you actually had the story, but chose to pass on it.

So, your choice: You can either aid us with a big exclusive that you really should report, or you can spike the story, in which case not only won't you have the exclusive, but we'll further expose you to the world of being unwilling to report big, important exclusives if you feel they hurt Democrats.

However, that's just a flight of fancy. I don't believe it for a second.

Would be sweet, though.

It would also be sweet to be a velociraptor.

Posted by: Ace at 05:35 PM | Comments (43)
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Or so charges Ramesh Ponuru, finding 17 passages in Webb's books that seem lifted from other books.

We're now four days from election day. I'm not sure any of this stuff matters much anymore. I think Kerry, bless his stupid little gigolo heart, got his scandal in just before the deadline to have any effect on the election.

Still, might as well get it all out there.

Posted by: Ace at 04:17 PM | Comments (20)
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Ralph Peters is a tough-minded veteran, formerly a strong war supporter and optimist on Iraq. Not any longer. He thinks the war is lost.

raq is failing. No honest observer can conclude otherwise. Even six months ago, there was hope. Now the chances for a democratic, unified Iraq are dwindling fast. The country's prime minister has thrown in his lot with al-Sadr, our mortal enemy. He has his eye on the future, and he's betting that we won't last. The police are less accountable than they were under Saddam. Our extensive investment in Iraqi law enforcement only produced death squads. Government ministers loot the country to strengthen their own factions. Even Iraq's elections — a worthy experiment — further divided Iraq along confessional and ethnic lines. Iraq still exists on the maps, but in reality it's gone. Only a military coup — which might come in the next few years — could hold the artificial country together.

This chaos wasn't inevitable. While in Iraq late last winter, I remained soberly hopeful. Since then, the strength of will of our opponents — their readiness to pay any price and go to any length to win — has eclipsed our own. The valor of our enemies never surpassed that of our troops, but it far exceeded the fair-weather courage of the Bush administration.

Yet, for all our errors, we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy. They preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption. It appears that the cynics were right: Arab societies can't support democracy as we know it. And people get the government they deserve.

For us, Iraq's impending failure is an embarrassment. For the Iraqis — and other Arabs — it's a disaster the dimensions of which they do not yet comprehend. They're gleeful at the prospect of America's humiliation. But it's their tragedy, not ours.

Iraq was the Arab world's last chance to board the train to modernity, to give the region a future, not just a bitter past. The violence staining Baghdad's streets with gore isn't only a symptom of the Iraqi government's incompetence, but of the comprehensive inability of the Arab world to progress in any sphere of organized human endeavor. We are witnessing the collapse of a civilization. All those who rooted for Iraq to fail are going to be chastened by what follows.

Iraq still deserves one last chance — as long as we don't confuse deadly stubbornness and perseverance. If, at this late hour, Iraqis in decisive numbers prove willing to fight for their own freedom and a constitutional government, we should be willing to remain for a generation. If they continue to revel in fratricidal slaughter, we must leave.

I'm still not quite sure what "lost" means. Chaos, civil war, mass deaths -- certainly the US didn't hope for these things for Iraq, but then, the killing of large numbers of Sunnis is not exactly going to bring the Ba'athists back into power.

Those who fought the US first, and most viciously -- the Sunnis and Al Qaeda -- can't "win" this war. They can only kill... for a time. They can drive the US out by turning pubic opinion against the war, but that is not a path to victory.

That is a path to their own slaughter.

Their cries of victory will be short-lived, as Shiite killers begin executing them en masse and driving the survivors into the western wastes.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:21 PM | Comments (58)
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