The Associated Press’s disgraceful coverage of last week’s Employment Situation Report from Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) got left behind in the holiday weekend hubbub, but calls out for comment nonetheless.

The AP’s Jeannine Aversa reached into her Thesaurus as she began her report with what has become the wire service’s standard monthly error of treating reported seasonally adjusted job reductions as reflecting real people thrown out on the streets by mean old employers:

The nation lost jobs for a sixth month in a row in June, a storm of pink slips drenching this year’s July Fourth holiday for more than 60,000 Americans and leaving thousands more worried about the future.

Weighed down by energy prices and the housing crisis, employers laid off workers in stores, factories and forsaken building sites.

….. In June alone, employers got rid of 62,000 jobs, bringing total losses so far this year close to a staggering half-million — 438,000, according to the Labor Department’s report released Thursday.

Reality, as usual, differed, but this time with a twist (go to this link at BLS to access tables referred to at this post):

As you can see, 241,000 jobs were added on a not seasonally adjusted basis (translation: This is Uncle Sam’s best estimate thus far of what happened in the real world in June). As was the case in the preceding four months, fewer jobs were added than in preceding years, which goes a long way towards explaining why the trend of reported seasonally adjusted job losses continued.

To be clear: The job market’s performance during the past six months or so has been very sub-par and unacceptable. But that doesn’t change the fact that for the fifth consecutive month, a period during which 2,712,000 jobs have been added (again, an unacceptable number), employers have NOT “gotten rid of” hundreds of thousands of employees, and hundreds of thousands of individuals have NOT been handed a “storm of pink slips.”

When you dig a bit deeper (gee, I thought this is what reporters are supposed to do), this month’s standard malpractice by Aversa was worse than usual:

As you can see, the overall real-world result has two distinct components. Private employers added 640,000 jobs in June, while the government sector reduced headcount by almost 400,000. I’d be tempted to say that mean, heartless governments issued a “shower of pink slips,” but as you can see from previous years, a reduction of this magnitude is typical for June. The drop likely has a lot to do with the end of the K-12 school year.

The number of private jobs added still trails previous years, and is very troubling. But it remains the case that this later paragraph in Aversa’s report is demonstrably false:

Heavy job losses were reported in construction, manufacturing and financial services — the worst casualties of the housing, credit and financial debacles. Cutbacks also came in retailing, temporary help, trucking, publishing and elsewhere. That more than swamped job gains in other places including health care, education, hotels, bars and restaurants and the government.

The not seasonally adjusted facts that contradict Aversa’s claims of job gains or losses in the previous paragraph are these:
- Construction, +128,000 (-43,000 seasonally adjusted)
- Manufacturing, +68,000 (-33,000 seasonally adjusted)
- Financial services (finance and insurance, per BLS), +14,400 (-10,000 seasonally adjusted)
- Retailing, +58,000 (-7,500 seasonally adjusted)
- Temporary help, +2,700 (-30,400 seasonally adjusted)
- Trucking (truck transportation, per BLS), +10,900 (-7,400 seasonally adjusted)
- Publishing (publishing industries except Internet, per BLS), +2,200 (-2,300 seasonally adjusted)
- Government, -397,000 (+29,000 seasonally adjusted)

The question remains open as to whether Aversa, or her AP editors, even understand any of this.

Next month will be an interesting one, as July is a month when employment typically goes down. If the overall employment situation picks up a bit, leading to seasonally adjusted job gains, will the AP reporter assigned to the task suddenly discover the not seasonally adjusted statistics?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

…. are coming, but will have to wait for another day. Other necessary things have intervened.

But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• On Friday, July 4, the presidential candidate I refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) was in Montana, “urging voters at an Independence Day celebration to support his candidacy if they wanted to end the war in Iraq.”

  News flash, as noted earlier this morning: The American and Iraqi military appear to be on the verge of doing that. Next?

• Just as the evidence refuting globaloney continues to pile up, a Wall Street Journal writer gives in to “Peak Oil, Schmeak Oil.” The Peak Oil nonsense doesn’t all of a sudden become true because no one will let us get to oil that’s there. What a crock.
• Pithy American exceptionalism points:
  

  There actually is something unique and well worth celebrating in American patriotism. First because we were among the first to throw off the yoke of hereditary privilege and substitute the rule of the governed. Second - and most important - because we are not a patrimony defined by land or by blood - not an accident of geography or a nation bound by a common heritage but instead a people animated by a set of ideas.

  I believe that the recent flag lapel-wearing convert presidential candidate I refer to as Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH (above) either doesn’t understand those points, or doesn’t think them important.

• Speaking of Obama, he wants his Dem convention speech to take place at Denver’s 76,000-seat Invesco Field instead of its 19,000-seat Pepsi arena. The wonderful Hot Air headline snark last week nailed it — “Denver convention center no longer big enough for Obama’s ego.” The ego may be in for a bruise if the budget-strapped networks reduce their other convention coverage because of the extra costs they will have to incur due to the late-breaking move.
• The kind of diplomacy and other maneuvers Obama would prefer to what was done in Iraq are really working out well in Zimbabwe, aren’t they?
• I’d like to see more of this from Jim Trakas:

  

  How cool would it be to be rid of Ohio’s greatest national embarrassment? (OK, maybe Jerry Springer’s worse.)

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• “Flat-screen TVs blamed for accelerating global warming” — a misleading headline given that, as noted in the last (!) paragraph, “The key to whether it’s a problem or not is how much is released to the atmosphere.” Why don’t y’all find out first before bothering us?
• In the WashTimes last week — “Pro-life black pastors wary of Obama.” Uh, yeah. This little detail might have something to do with it:
  

  Obama now says he did not support the Illinois measure (the ” Illinois Born Alive Infants Protection Act”) because it “lacked the Federal language clarifying the act would not be used to undermine Roe vs. Wade.”

  Horse manure:

  ….. (But prolife blogger Jill Stanek) says Obama’s explanation for opposing the Illinois bill does not pass the straight-face test because, as a committee chairman, he blocked the measure’s sponsor from adding the federal language protecting Roe vs. Wade.

• Had to get this one in from Lileks:
  

  ….. the clipboard people were in front fo the grocery store today ….. they were getting signatures for a petition to pressure Congress to give tax breaks to clean energy like wind and solar, instead of dirty energy, like coal and oil.

  Instead of? I asked. Not along with? Because I’m in favor of doing everything.

  No, she said, just clean energy.

  “But we use coal and oil. We need coal and oil.”

  Her response was so peculiar I wonder if she knew what she was saying:

  “But we don’t have any more.”

  The poor gal. Totally. Brainwashed.

• Victor Davis Hanson asks, “Is the Thrill Gone?” — “One can just now begin to notice the subdued applause and crowd unease when he showcases himself at the center of all great issues of the last two decades—when he was in fact a rookie Chicago legislator.”
• If you haven’t heard, you probably won’t believe it, but here it is: The Democratic convention has established color quotas — on its food:
  

  A 28-page contract requested by Denver organizers that caterers provide food in “at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white.” Garnishes could not be counted toward the colors. No fried foods would be allowed. Organic and locally grown foods were mandated, and each plate had to be 50 percent fruits and vegetables. As a result, caterers are shying away

  Geez. Touring rock stars aren’t that demanding.

It’s here, with a good tease:

Harry Reid says coal and oil are “making us sick.” But it’s really him, Pelosi and Obama that make the economy sick.

I will post it here at BizzyBlog on Saturday morning (link won’t work until then) under the title “The POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy: Are the Democrats Deliberately Driving a Downturn?”

The Pajamas column has sentiments similar to those found in what I put up last Thursday on the same topic.

If you want to understand why the presidential candidate I refer to as “Mr. BOOHOO-OUCH” (Barack O-bomba Overseas Hussein “Obambi” Obama - Objectively Unfit Coddler of Haters) is frantically “refining” (translation: flip-flopping) his position on Iraq, you need look no further than two places:

• This account at the UK Times Online of how Al-Qaeda was driven from Mosul in May and June. It’s by a female reporter, Marie Colvin, doing the job Lara Logan apparently wouldn’t do (she was, uh, busy). Colvin’s bottom line: “The Iraqis and Americans have got Al-Qaeda on the run.”
• US troop and Iraqi casualties so far in July. As of early AM on Thursday, the totals through July 9 at Icasualties.org were three deaths (two from hostile causes) and 93 Iraq Security Forces/Civilians. Though it’s clearly early in the month, both are on track to be alltime lows by far since Icasualties has been tracking the data (since March 2003 for US troops, since January 2006 for Iraq Security Forces/Civilians). These results would appear to confirm Colvin’s claim, and to support Al-Maliki’s brash statement made last week that “we have defeated terrorism.”

Thus, it’s looking more and more like Team Obama is going to have to figure out how to make large helpings of crow digestible for their candidate, based on these gems from 2007 (originals here and here; backups in case the pages move are here and here):

Here’s the full vid, which is also currently at Obama’s site:

Mr. Figurehead for the “Party of Compassion” also said in July 2007, as paraphrased in this Associated Press report at MSNBC, “that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”

Obama’s September 2007 speech and the July 2007 statement were made during the time when the troop surge was having much of its greatest impact.

Team Obama, the candidate, and his party appear to have another scheduled appointment with the wrong side of history. Thank God we didn’t follow their advice, and that of pals Pelosi, Reid, et al. Why should we listen to whatever refinements, shifts, modifications, nuances, movements, moderations, moves, zigzags, pivots, adjustments, amendments, variations, revisions, alterations, adaptations, conversions, or mutations Team Obama and and its pals come up with now?

What they should be formulating is the “We were wrong, we are sorry, please forgive us” statement.

From Bremerton, Washington:

July 4, 2008

Pomona native Paul Wilson did not have a second thought when his colleague asked if he was confident enough to swim out to save a drowning couple in the bay.

The seaman apprentice assigned to the Naval Hospital Bremerton in Washington state was patrolling the area Sunday when he spotted a canoe that had flipped over in Dyes Inlet.

His colleague, Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Bobby Colon, had to use a pair of binoculars to see the people far out in the bay. Then Colon asked Wilson if he could help.

Wilson, 19, walked through bushes to the shore, removed his gun belt and radio, undressed and jumped into the water to swim out to the couple, who were about 200 yards offshore.

“I first got up to the wife,” Wilson said. “I asked her if she was okay, and she said yes because she had a life jacket.”

But her husband, who was without a life jacket, was in distress, barely holding on to the overturned canoe.

“He said he felt really weak,” Wilson said. “He said he swallowed a lot of water and he had a heart problem.”

Wilson found a life jacket inside the canoe, put it on for him, and asked if he could swim back with him.

When he learned the husband did not have any energy left to do that, Wilson suggested the husband hold on to the canoe. Wilson’s idea was to pull the canoe and the man back to the shore.

And that’s what he did.

The Kitsap Sun, a local newspaper covering Kitsap County, Wash., reported that the 77-year-old husband and his 69-year-old wife, both of Erlands Point, Wash., were treated at the scene by the Bremerton Fire Department and sent home.

Lt. Charlie Rinard of the Bremerton Fire Department applauded Wilson’s action, calling it “heroic.”

“To be honest with you, there was none of us, standing on shore, as far as the Fire Department that would have jumped into the water and swam out to those people. They were too far away,” said Rinard, adding that firefighters were not trained to do water rescue and the department’s rescue boat was not available because it was being repaired. “He did not hesitate. It was just great. It was just good feeling to know that the Navy is out there, helping people.

“To be honest with you,” Rinard said, “without Wilson, the old guy wouldn’t have made it.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.