The unemployment rate jumped to a seasonally adjusted 9.8% in November and only 39,000 seasonally adjusted jobs were added during the month, according to the Employment Situation Report released yesterday by Uncle Sam’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Although she at least recognized the report’s negativity, Lucia Mutikani at Reuters seemed bent on downplaying its impact, even finding an “expert” who characterized the BLS’s work as an “outlier” in her Friday evening write-up. Nobody’s claiming the folks at BLS are perfect, but I cannot recall a time when an establishment press wire service reporter has questioned the Employment Situation Report’s underlying validity. Despite its supposed lack of credibility, Ms. Mutikani still used the information provided as an excuse to insert a point about how it should cause Fed chief Ben Bernanke to continue the “money from nothing” enterprise euphemistically referred to as “quantitative easing.”

Of special note was Ms. Mutikani’s bizarre contention that the seasonal adjustment calculations might be flawed. Unfortunately for her, comparisons of actual results on the ground (i.e., the not seasonally adjusted numbers) to the seasonally adjusted numbers that resulted were consistent with November 2004, the last comparable year. This has not always been the case in the volatile economy of the past 2-1/2 years.

Here are the first eight paragraphs from Ms. Mutikani’s morose musings (bolds and number tags are mine):

U.S. employment barely grew in November and the jobless rate unexpectedly hit a seven-month high, hardening views the Federal Reserve would stick to its $600 billion plan to shore up the anemic recovery. [1]

Nonfarm payrolls rose 39,000, with private hiring gaining only 50,000, just a third of what economists had expected, a Labor Department report showed on Friday. The unemployment rate jumped to 9.8 percent from 9.6 percent in October.

The weak report was a surprise given the relative strength of some other recent economic signals, [2] including robust retail sales. Economists had expected 140,000 new jobs and a steady unemployment rate.

While the data raised a warning flag, many analysts cautioned against reading too much into it.

“The report comes as an unwelcome bucket of cold water,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts. “We’re reluctant to take it at face value and suspect that it is an outlier — on the downside — but it does underline that the recovery remains a gradual one.” [2]

Stock market investors also appeared to be in disagreement with the weak hiring number, and U.S. shares closed marginally higher. Prices for long-dated U.S. government debt fell while the dollar dropped across the board. [3]

A separate report from the Institute for Supply Management showed service sector activity rose in November [4], with a gauge of hiring reaching its highest level since October 2007 [5], before the economy tumbled into recession.

Payrolls for September and October were revised to show 38,000 more jobs were gained in those months than previously estimated, taking some sting out of the report. [2] Some economists said November’s data was likely distorted by the way it was adjusted for seasonal fluctuations [6] and said they expected a snap back in December.

Points:

• [1] — The news is barely out, and the Reuters reporter can’t wait to use it as a justification to continue Ben Bernanke’s version of “stimulus.” After far more than $3 trillion in real deficits run up by the Obama administration and heaven knows how much “quantitative easing” by the Fed, it should be obvious that it it hasn’t worked and, further, that it has arguably caused the employment market to run out of the bit of steam it had in September and October.
• [2] — “Outlier”? Since when? As noted earlier, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a reference. Also, the fact that September and October were revised upward only makes November’s result look like a bigger fall from what had been a semi-hopeful situation.
• [3] — You know a reporter is scraping for excuses when she cites what the stock how the stock market closed 7-1/2 hours after the report’s release. As shown currently at NASDAQ.com’s home page, the DJIA and the NASDAQ both opened significantly lower at 9:30, only an hour after the report came out. Other influences took over from there.
• [4] — ISM’s reports are very, very important indicators, but we should remember that they are surveys of sentiment, not of hard numbers.
• [5] — Ah, the obligatory negative Bush era reference.
• [6] — Finally, Lucia’s lament that about “some economists” questioning the seasonal adjustments doesn’t fly. Referring to what has actually happened (i.e., the not seasonally adjusted numbers) clearly demonstrates this:

Translation:

• For all nonfarm jobs, the last time November’s actual number was close to this month’s 217,000 was in 2004, when it was 251,000. You’ll notice that after seasonal adjustment, 2004′s number was added was 64,000. That’s pretty consistent.
• For all private-sector jobs, the comparison is even more obvious, because in both 2010 and 2004 the number of jobs actually added was 101,000. This year’s +50,000 after seasonal adjustment is a bit better than the 28,000 in 2004, so if anything, Ms. Mutikani’s weak attempt at a complaint goes in the wrong direction, and November 2010 got a bit of a break relative to November 2004.

Ms. Mutikani’s attempted dress-up of yesterday’s pig of an employment report is an epic fail, but quite illustrative of the lengths to which establishment media reporters will go to tell us we’re not really seeing what we really are seeing.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Recent Obama administration ideas and actions are about far more than “it’s good for you” paternalism. The TSA’s full body scan/”pat-down” regime is only the most visible example.

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Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Thursday. I’m pleased to report that the column has generated a great deal of attention.

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If there is any good that might come from the Transportation Safety Administration’s heavy-handed move to full-body scanners, complete with refusers being forced to endure aggressive pat-downs that all too often fit the dictionary definition of sexual assault, it’s that it may shake enough Americans out of their presumptive, too-comfortable complacency about our government’s benign intentions.

The TSA mostly had my backing until several weeks ago. No, let me correct that. The TSA employees on the ground who carry out the government’s required searches at our airports had my sympathies. After all, they’re not the ones who decided that all passengers must be profiled equally (if you won’t profile on any other basis, that’s what you’re doing). To be clear, this horrible no-profiling non-judgment goes back to George W. Bush’s neanderthal Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta. TSA’s frontline employees aren’t the ones who decided that everyone must send their shoes through the X-ray machines, and they’re not the ones who have compiled the detailed list of what you can and cannot take onto the plane or include with your checked baggage.

But my compassion for TSA employees who have public, er, contact mostly vanished when I learned that the ”Advanced Imaging Technology” (AIT) currently being employed:

• May not be safe — “[S]ome researchers are sounding the alarm about airport scanners and the radiation they give off,” including, according to CBS News, ”a group of doctors in San Francisco [who] want the FDA to do an analysis of the radiation risk.”
• Hasn’t been proven safe, at least to the public — “It appears the Obama administration wants to keep that information classified.”

There’s also plenty of justification for doubting AIT’s security effectiveness. CBS also tells us that:

• A report issued after investigators for the Department of Homeland Security “tested the devices in eight airports using federal agents disguised as passengers to see if the items they had on their person were detected by the controversial whole body scanners” stated: “The number of tests conducted, the names of the airports tested, and the quantitative and qualitative results of our testing are classified.”
• “The Government Accountability Office has criticized TSA’s internal testing of the machines.”

What’s with the secrecy? If AIT screening is truly effective, the government would be performing a public service by saying so. The idea that potential terrorists would take such an announcement, if backed by the facts, as some kind of a dare is pretty weak; it isn’t as if they’re not already constantly looking for other airline-related lines of attack. More likely, the lack of willingness to disclose how well AIT and other procedures really work is emboldening terrorists to continue their pursuit.

But let’s get back to the TSA’s employees. Anyone there who understands the problems with AIT, and the completely logical reasons why people would refuse to subject themselves to it, should be asking themselves how they can continue to be participants, when a passenger’s only alternative — besides walking away — is to be subjected to an aggressive, privacy-invading, dignity-compromising pat-down. TSA employees who stay on the job in the midst of all of this are telling us a lot about themselves, and it’s not complimentary.

The bottom line is that millions of passengers are being forced to endure deliberately high-visibility searches which, if they improve security at all, only do so marginally, while obviously more effective measures, including logic-based profiling, remain sidelined.

At some point you have to wonder if the government’s top-priority goal is really security, or if it is more about creating a populace of ever more-compliant sheep willing to put up with anything in the name of some supposedly noble goal.

The idea might seem ridiculous if there weren’t so many clues in other areas that an ever more unaccountable bureaucracy is more interested in asserting control than in achieving positive results, including but by no means limited to the following:

• Vehicle-related traffic deaths per mile driven have been on a decades-long decline. Miles driven have roughly doubled since 1980, while deaths per mile are down by well over 50%. The absolute number of traffic deaths dropped by 22% from 2005-2009. About 29% of those deaths still involve a drunk driver. So what explains Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s obsession with technologically shutting down the ability to use a cellphone while in a car — even as a passenger?
• LaHood, who has morphed into Norm Mineta’s evil twin, has openly stated what his department’s so-called “livability initiative” is really about: “It is a way to coerce people out of their cars.” Why is that important, when Climategate and other revelations — including the German economist who recently admitted that the entire enterprise is really all about redistributing wealth, while the alleged science is secondary — have totally discredited the validity of the idea that global warming, if it is even occurring, is human-caused?
• You wouldn’t think so from the headlines, but the incidence of foodborne illness is down significantly in almost all major categories in the past decade or so. So why has the Obama administration been pushing to impose regulations which currently only apply to large agribusinesses on even the smallest family farms, creating what Patrick Richardson calls “an army of regulators with TSA-like authority over agriculture” — perhaps even your backyard garden?
• Finally, of course there’s ObamaCare. As written, the legislation’s Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB), will, through its default control over Medicare’s budget, decide the level and quality of care America’s elderly will receive without extraordinary congressional intervention. The IPAB is living proof, so to speak, that Sarah Palin’s “death panels” assertion last year was all too accurate; it will in effect decide who lives and dies without leaving its members with blood on their hands.

It always seems to get back to control of our lives, doesn’t it? What the TSA is currently doing is bad enough, but it pales in comparison to the government’s command-and-control efforts in other areas. We’re not far as far as most people think from having soulless, TSA-like officials dictating the tiniest details of our daily lives. They must be stopped.

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Related: In an Investors Business Daily editorial that appeared on Wednesday:

Just as ObamaCare wasn’t really about health care reform but about government power, S510 is not really about food safety but about government control of agriculture and the nation’s food producers. The Food Safety Modernization Act would give the Food and Drug Administration unprecedented power to govern how farmers produce their crops.

… A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, even if you have to manufacture one. As the Heritage Foundation reports, the nation’s food supply is the world’s safest and getting safer all the time. Incidences of food-borne illnesses, despite headlines about massive egg recalls, have been declining for more than a decade.

… S510 transfers authority over food regulation enforcement from the FDA to the Homeland Security Department, which brought us the TSA, naked body scanners and the groping of our junk. The bill requires the EPA to “participate” in regulating the food chain.

The bill expands government authority and control over America’s 2.2 million farms, 28,000 food manufacturing facilities, 149,000 food and beverage stores, and 505,000 residents and similar facilities. It increases inspections of all food “facilities.”

Though the bill is stalled because the Senate screwed up by raising fees in a bill that started there (the geniuses forgot that all revenue-related measures have to originate in the House, per the C-C-C-Constitution — remember that, guys?), the threat remains.

From Chicago, and Arizona:

It is said that as time goes on, it becomes more difficult to discover the genuine in life, to separate it from that which is forged.

That is especially true when it comes to friendship.

It is hard to define and even harder to find.

Unless Ron Santo was your friend.

On this account there was nothing vague. He either was or he wasn’t, and if he was you knew it. But you had to be all in, because everything about Ron Santo was all in.

“Genuine” is probably a word tossed about disingenuously when someone dies, as if canonization adds a measure of comfort.

But the truth is there are no degrees of it.

Ron Santo died at the age of 70 Thursday night surrounded by his family. He was the real thing. He was exactly as he appeared to be. He was genuine.

“He didn’t tell anyone he was sick again,” his wife, Vicki, said from their home in Arizona early Friday morning. “He didn’t want to bother anyone. He didn’t want to put everyone through it again.”

While cancer had returned and caused him a new set of problems, attacking them was normal for a man who had survived so many medical maladies and several dozen surgeries in the last 10 years. He was, by all accounts, a medical miracle, and there’s no doubt he expected to survive again. But treatments took their toll and his heart gave out, an appropriate conclusion for Ron Santo, who lived his life with more heart, and more love for life, than most will ever dream.

He overcame much more than his considerable physical difficulties, including a troubled childhood in which his drunken father abused his mother and abandoned the family when Ron was only 6.

His mother and stepfather died in a car accident while driving to see Ron in spring training in 1972.

He fought his own demons and never complained. The more difficult the situation, the more he battled back.

I don’t know many people that would have begun the fight he began again in October, but he did. There was no quit in him.

It’s how he lived, and it’s how he died.

“He wasn’t going to give up,” Vicki said through tears on Friday. “You know him. He expected to beat it. He was going to go through it all over again.”

Exhaustion finally won, and if you only knew how damaging some of these conflicts were, you’d be awe-struck that he lived as long as did.

But that was Santo. All heart.

It’s why his eyes lit up when a friend walked into his radio booth.

It’s why that giant smile consumed his face when he spoke of his children and especially his grandson.

It’s why he cheered so loud when the Cubs played well, and why he sounded so miserable when they didn’t.

That was all genuine emotion and he knew no other way to broadcast a game.

He wasn’t a professional analyst taught the rights and wrongs of radio. He was first to admit that he didn’t sound like the brightest man in the room, but he got most of his education on the streets of Garlic Gulch in Seattle.

A smart businessman who found wealth away from the game, when he was on the radio he was just whom he was, a rabid Cub fan who succumbed to the many lows and occasional highs of a suffering fan.

He never claimed to be anything else. Understandably, that style didn’t work for some, but to most fans he was a part of their baseball day.

He was one of you, and I suspect most Cub fans will miss him dearly. …

This one will.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Mike Bauman at MLB.com (“Overcoming odds put Santo on higher level”):

As a player, later as a broadcaster, Santo was as closely identified with the Cubs as any single person this side of Ernie Banks could be. That meant being identified not only with the joy, but with the heartache.

… Those of us who had the privilege of seeing Santo play, and later, simply seeing him smile in the Wrigley Field press box, will never forget what he meant in both roles. Ron Santo rose above some very serious obstacles to carve out a playing career and then a broadcasting career.

The statement from Cub Hall of Famers Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, and Fergie Jenkins is here:

(Banks said) “On the field, Ronnie was one of the greatest competitors I’ve ever seen. Off the field, he was as generous as anyone you would want to know. His work for diabetes research seemed unparalleled. Ronnie was always there for you, and through his struggles, he was always upbeat, positive and caring. I learned a lot about what it means to be a caring, decent human being from Ron Santo.”

Billy Williams comments at length here.

Go here to see Santo’s numbers as a player. His case for being in the Hall of Fame is borderline, but what I didn’t realize is that he was an All-Star 11 times. If there is another 11-time All Star not in the Hall of Fame, I can’t name him.

We can be confident that Ron Santo is in the Hall of Fame that matters most.

Econ catch-up

As noted on Wednesday:

• ADP’s national employment report came in with 93,000 seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs added, the best in three years.
• The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index was still nicely expansionary, with a reading of 56.6 (any reading above 56.6 represents expansion).
• The mass layoff news from Challenger Gray went in the wrong direction, as announced layoffs were up 28% from October.

Other Wednesday and Thursday reports

• Car sales — Year-over-year sales were up 16.9% in November. Specifics: GM – up 12.2%; Ford – up 24.3%; Chrysler – up 16.7%; Toyota – down 3.3%; Honda – up 21.1%; Nissan – up 26.8%; Hyundai – up 45.2%. This is all nice, but November 2009 was a very weak month.
• November retail sales — Well, the press is trying to talk this area up. For example, at the LA Times — “shoppers stormed the nation’s retailers in November.” Zheesh, that’s a reax based on chain store results, which, having shown a 6% increase, were pretty good, but not at the “storm” level. My observations based on what I’m seeing and hearing is that electronics and durables are not doing well, while clothing is, and that on balance, it’s mediocre with a possible upside surprise.
• Initial unemployment claims — they rose, “unexpectedly.”

Employment Situation Report run-up

• The Associated Press’s Jeannine Aversa is carrying a prediction that the unemployment rate will stay at 9.6%, with 180,000 private-sector jobs added.
• At the Street.com, the predictions are that there will be 158-170K private jobs added, with 140K overall, and that the unemployment rate will be 9.5%.
• This link, based on underlying ABC-supplied info, carries a prediction of 150-170K jobs added, and says that “Many analysts are not expecting any big change in the unemployment rate, which is hovering around 9.6 percent.”

Benchmarking November

Here’s the information about what has actually happened in previous, i.e., the NOT seasonally adjusted numbers.

Looking back at previous years’ actual results and the crying need for real improvement, I would suggest that the total nonfarm number of jobs added needs to be at least 425,000 to be considered on track for an acceptable recovery — regardless of what the seasonally adjusted figure is. Actual job additions in the private sector, where it should be obvious that there is a great deal more ground to be made up, need to at least 375,000 of the overall number.

The report will appear here at 8:30 a.m.

Here it is — Ouch, the unemployment rate and the seasonally adjusted jobs number are really, really weak:

The unemployment rate edged up to 9.8 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment was little changed (+39,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Temporary help services and health care continued to add jobs over the month, while employment fell in retail trade. Employment in most major industries changed little in November.

… Total nonfarm payroll employment changed little in November (+39,000). Job gains continued in temporary help services and in health care, while employment fell in retail trade. Since December 2009, total payroll employment has increased by an average of 86,000 per month. (See table B-1.)

… The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for September was revised from -41,000 to -24,000, and the change for October was revised from +151,000 to +172,000.

The upward revisions to September and October merely make it more clear how bad November’s pullback is.

More later, when the not seasonally adjusted numbers are accessible. It’s hard to imagine they’ll look good.

UPDATE: The actual jobs added came in way, way short of the acceptability levels I benchmarked before the report’s release –

The benchmarks were 425,000 overall and 375,000 in the private sector. If the job market had performed as well as it did in October compared to previous October, those numbers should have been achieved. But instead, the actuals came in at 217,000 and 101,000, respectively.

It gets worse. On a seasonally adjusted basis, 39.5K of the 50K private-sector job additions were in temporary help services (NSA, it was 29.3K out of 101K; the reason for the difference is that the ups and downs in the temp business are different from the ups and downs in the economy as a whole):

If you’re running a temp business, the past two Novembers have been outstanding. For just about every other sector in the economy … not so much.

There’s no way to disguise the fact that this is really a major and disappointing pullback.

UPDATE, Dec. 4: Zero Hedge — “And so the myth of the recovery can suck it.”

From Seattle:

Dec 2, 2010 / 08:02 pm

Seattle’s new Archbishop J. Peter Sartain told the faithful that he has nothing to offer them, except the faith he has received in an unbroken tradition from the apostles.

“I have nothing at all of my own to offer you,” he told the congregation at St. James Cathedral during his installation Mass on Dec. 1. “Everything I have, I have received … What I have, I will offer you: the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The previous Bishop of Joliet, Ill. then reflected on his position of leadership. He noted that the Church’s leaders must see themselves primarily as followers, walking in the footsteps of Jesus.

A bishop, he said, must first be led and taught by the Church, in order to be a leader and teacher himself. “It is the Lord Jesus who leads, guides, protects, and nourishes the flock,” he explained. “It is first and foremost, in following him that we (bishops) shepherd the portion of the flock entrusted to our care.”

In his first address to the Catholics in his diocese, the new archbishop offered them clear and practical guidance for following Christ more closely. He advised them to recall God’s presence throughout each day, and in all situations.

“He is always before us, and we are to follow,” Archbishop Sartain exhorted. “The name of Jesus should be on our lips: in every homily, at every meeting, in every counseling session, in every moment of prayer.”

“His name should be in every parish and school mission statement,” he continued, “and as we go through the day, we should pray his name silently to remind ourselves of his nearness, and seek his protection … for Satan does not like to hear his name, and he flees.”

“In union with our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI,” he announced, “and with Catholics around the world, we will follow the one whose name we call, day and night … We will proclaim his name, even when his name meets rejection and ridicule.” …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Here’s something about which the environmentalists and car czars planted inside the Obama administration can’t be pleased: as a percentage of their U.S. sales, Multi-Government/General Motors and Chrysler are selling more “light trucks,” consisting of pickups, SUVS, and “crossover” vehicles than any other major manufacturer. Further, the companies are clearly emphasizing light truck sales at the expense of their car models.

I wonder how a government promise to accomplish this would have been received by the fossil-fuels-are-awful media at bankruptcy crunch time last year?

You can pretty much count on this inconvenient product mix not getting a great deal of establishment press attention while it drools over the underpowered, heavily subsidized electric lemon known as the Chevy Volt and whatever toy disguised as a useful vehicle Chrysler/Fiat plans on foisting onto the market.

The detail is at the Wall Street Journal’s monthly report on vehicle sales (link will change in one month). Key items include these:

• In November, GM’s November 2010 car sales trailed November 2009 by 1.4%; year-to-date, the shortfall is 5.8%. Meanwhile, GM’s light truck sales in November beat last November by 20.7%.
• The changeover is even more radical at Chrysler, which posted a 9.1% decline in car sales from November 2009, while moving 24.2% more light trucks.
• GM’s November product mix was 66-34 in favor of light trucks in November, up from 62-38 a year ago; Chrysler’s was a stunning 82-18. By contrast, only Ford’s November mix, at 64-36 (virtually identical to a year ago), was close to GM’s. Cars make up the majority of sales at the three largest Japanese-headquartered companies.
• Chrysler’s November car sales of 13,112 placed it 11th, behind GM, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, Subaru, Volkswagen, and BMW. This would seem to indirectly validate a suspicion that if it weren’t for low-margin fleet sales, which as I understand it the company is no longer disclosing, the company’s car business might as well be mothballed.

Wasn’t one of the objectives of government ownership of GM and Chrysler supposed to be getting Americans to swear off those eeevil, gas-guzzling, global warming large vehicles? Why yes, according to an Economist item in April 2009:

The task-force identified six areas where it found GM to be over-optimistic or in denial … (one of them being) a weakening product mix as consumer tastes and tighter fuel-economy rules eat into sales of high-margin trucks and sport-utility vehicles …

… Chrysler’s only hope, Mr Obama said on March 30th, is to consummate the deal it has been discussing since January with Fiat. The Italian firm would supply it with “cutting-edge technology” in the form of fuel-efficient engines, small-car platforms and factory automation.

Roughly 20 months later, other than the overhyped Volt and the Chrysler/Fiat 500, what is there?

I guess we should be somewhat relieved that the companies have at least tried to follow drivers’ wishes while one of the government’s main justifications for taking ownership stakes in these companies slowly crumbles. But it would be nice if someone in the establishment media pointed to the difference between what the government promised its greenie friends vs. what it has delivered.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

It’s here.

It will go up here at BizzyBlog on Saturday (link won’t work until then) after the blackout expires.

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Beyond the Nanny State Update: After I submitted the column, the Senate passed what Michelle Malkin accurately calls “the food police bill.”

Here’s an all too sympathetic capsule from the Washington Post:

The Senate on Tuesday approved the biggest overhaul to the nation’s food safety laws since the 1930s. The 73-to-25 vote gives vast new authorities to the Food and Drug Administration, places new responsibilities on farmers and food companies to prevent contamination, and — for the first time – sets safety standards for imported foods, a growing part of the American diet.

The legislation follows a spate of national outbreaks of food poisoning involving products as varied as eggs, peanuts and spinach in which thousands of people were sickened and more than a dozen died.

But, as I noted in the column, with a link to stats, which the WaPo’s Lyndsey Layton never provided in any meaningful form:

You wouldn’t think so from the headlines, but the incidence of foodborne illness is down significantly in almost all major categories in the past decade or so. So why has the Obama administration been pushing to impose regulations which currently only apply to large agribusinesses on even the smallest family farms, creating what Patrick Richardson calls “an army of regulators with TSA-like authority over agriculture” — perhaps even your backyard garden?

“Your backyard garden”? It seems like an extreme interpretation at first blush, but WaPo’s report on how the bill’s deliberations turned out vindicate my excerpt’s assertions:

The bill has also revealed a divide between the burgeoning local-food movement and major agriculture businesses. Small farmers concerned about the cost of new federal regulation were initially opposed to the bill and argued that since most cases of national food-borne illness are caused by large companies, small producers should not be required to meet the same standards.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), a farmer, added an amendment before Thanksgiving that would exempt small farmers and those who sell directly to consumers at farmers markets and farm stands.

But the Tester amendment has angered large agriculture groups, which argue that no one should be exempted from producing safe food. The Produce Marketing Association and the United Fresh Produce Association withdrew their support for the bill in light of the Tester amendment.

Note what’s at play here:

• Big guys vs. little guys — The big guys don’t like the overregulation regime under which they live, but rather than fight it, they move to impose it on the little guys. This not coincidentally raises the little guys’ costs, which will inevitably make them less competitive and drive some of them out of business.
• Smears — What kind of crap is a statement like “no one should be exempted from producing safe food”? What the big guys are saying is that “no one should be exempted from producing regulated food.” That, friends, means absolutely no one, which would include food co-ops and, yes, even your backyard garden. The Tester amendment probably contained most of the damage this time, but it’s obvious that Big Ag will be back to stick it to the little guys somewhere down the road.
• Inevitable, heavy-handed enforcement — Expect a lot more of what happened to the Stowers family at the Manna Storehouse in Northeast Ohio two years ago (background here, here, here, and here), complete with SWAT teams and rounding up of children at gunpoint. The latest on the case is here. If the food police bill the Senate passed ever becomes law, the Stowers family can kiss their voluntary exchange rights good-bye once and for all — unless they submit to the bill’s complete regulatory regime.

I do support the bill’s effort to set standards and inspection requirements for imported foods, and challenge anyone to tell me why they would deserve less scrutiny than foods grown here.

But at bottom, it should be obvious that the “food safety” bill is about far more than the nanny state’s interest in safe food. It’s about insinuating the heavy hand of government control as far as possible into yet another corner of everyday life.

From New York City:

Dec 1, 2010 / 05:55 am

The Catholic League recently sent nativity scenes of the Holy Family to the 50 governors of the United States. So far, the group says, the responses received have been “overwhelmingly” positive.

The Catholic League explains that there is no constitutional prohibition barring privately-funded scenes from being displayed alongside secular symbols on capitol grounds.

CNA spoke about the nativity scenes with Catholic League communications director Jeff Field. He explained that the group “just wanted to make it clear that it’s okay for the government to display religious symbols at Christmastime. As long as they are not paying for it, there is no problem with displaying a religious scene.

“It’s perfectly reasonable and perfectly appropriate for the government to recognize the holiday.”

He reported that the Catholic League received an “overwhelmingly positive” response from about a dozen governors.

Idaho Gov. C.L. Otter plans to display his nativity scene in his capitol’s ceremonial office, while Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell will display his state’s set in the executive mansion.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen also sent “a kind letter” in response.

Field told CNA that Washington state has said that they will not display the nativity set because of a rule disallowing any displays. Several years ago the state suffered a “circus” of controversy involving a variety of displays at the capitol.

However, Washington is the only state known to have declined the display of the set and the Catholic League is seeking permission for an alternative arrangement there.

Other pre-Christmas actions of the Catholic League include a billboard on the New York side of the Lincoln Tunnel which shows a nativity scene. The large sign, captioned “You Know It’s Real: This Season Celebrate Jesus,” wishes motorists a Merry Christmas.

The display counters a billboard the group American Atheists purchased on the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel. Erected over the weekend, that billboard reads “You Know It’s a Myth: This Season Celebrate Reason.”

Catholic League President Bill Donohue said his organization decided to “counterpunch” after a donor sought to challenge the atheist group’s “anti-Christmas statement.”

Go here for the rest of the story.

ADP’s national employment report came in with decent private-sector job additions during November, and an upward revision to October:

Private-sector employment increased by 93,000 from October to November on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report® released today. The estimated change of employment from September to October was revised up from the previously reported increase of 43,000 to an increase of 82,000. This month’s ADP National Employment Report shows an acceleration of employment and suggests the nation’s employment situation is brightening somewhat. November’s gain in private-sector employment is the largest in three years. This is the tenth consecutive month of gains, which have averaged 47,000 during that period.

That’s decent. We consistently need at least double the levels noted each month to be in a truly recovering employment market.

The Institute for Supply Management’s Manufacturing Index stayed pretty good (bold is mine):

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in November for the 16th consecutive month, and the overall economy grew for the 19th consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®.

The report was issued today by Norbert J. Ore, CPSM, C.P.M., chair of the Institute for Supply Management™ Manufacturing Business Survey Committee. “The manufacturing sector grew during November, with both new orders and production continuing to expand. With the PMI at 56.6 percent, November’s rate of growth is the second fastest in the last six months. Exports and imports continue to support expansion in the sector. Prices moderated slightly during the month, but comments from the respondents express concerns with regard to pricing pressures. The list of commodities in short supply increased, though short supply items are not yet posing significant problems. Manufacturing continues to benefit from the recovery in autos, but those industries reliant upon housing continue to struggle.”

Gee, imagine how good the report would be right now if the Obama administration hadn’t decided to massively intervene to prevent the housing market from fixing itself.

Challenger Gray’s “planned job cuts” reports wasn’t so good:

The pace of downsizing surged to its highest level in eight months, as employers announced plans to reduce payrolls by 48,711 jobs in November, according to the report released Wednesday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc.

November job cuts were 28 percent higher than the 37,986 planned layoffs reported in October.

… The November surge in job cuts was somewhat offset by hiring announcements totaling 26,012. Hiring was led by retailers, who reported plans to add 15,900 seasonal workers last month. In October, retailers announced plans to hire 66,000 seasonal workers. Transportation companies added 50,300 seasonal workers in October to help meet increased shipping demands over the holidays, but added only 500 additional workers in November.

So announced permanent worker additions, assuming no other seasonals, were about about 10,000. That’s not so good.

Here’s more from Bloomberg on how not-so-good the mass layoffs news is:

Compared with the same month last year, planned firings dropped 3.3 percent, according to Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.

This month’s downsizing marks the smallest year-over-year decline since May 2009 when job cuts increased by 7.4 percent from a year earlier.

The usually estimable Wall Street Journal put one of its two major blind spots on display a few days ago in an editorial supporting the nightmarish illegal-immigrant amnesty bill known as the DREAM Act.

The other blind spot is “free trade (which in the real world is government-managed trade) uber alles.” In each case, the Journal doesn’t mind if America serves as the world’s doormat. In the case of trade, countries can do anything and everything to prevent U.S. goods and services from having fair access to their markets, which we can let anything and everything into our market with virtually zero thought given to the short- or long-term consequences of doing so.

In the case of illegal immigration, we must never lose sight of the fact that the Journal’s ultimate goal, as expressed in a 1984 editorial, reiterated several times during the next few years, and never repudiated, is a five-word constitutional amendment: “There Shall Be Open Borders.”

No other country in the world, including the free world, is so utterly lacking in judgment or any sense of the need for national and cultural self-defense. But that doesn’t bother the Journal’s editorialists at all.

24ahead.com (HT Michelle Malkin) has the detailed critique.

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President Obama’s proposed two-year freeze on federal pay (which, by the way, unless someone can show me I’m wrong, will NOT affect “step” raises based on seniority) is a very tiny start in dealing with the deficit/debt tsunami heading our way.

It “freezes” pay at unrealistic levels that can’t be supported by the private sector, which pays its participants significantly less for the same work — even before considering the outrageous differential in employee benefits.

A New York Daily News editorial (HT Richard Fernandez at PJM) importantly notes that the sort-of freeze doesn’t deal with federal payroll bloat, which has continued despite the recession, the “Rebound? What Rebound?” recovery, and the horrible private-sector job market — all of which have been delivered to us by the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy of the past 2-1/2 years:

Federal payrolls jumped by more than 137,000 slots in the last two years – at a time when unemployment in the private sector climbed close to double digits and nearly 15 million workers are without jobs.

Federal non-military payrolls have to be slashed in a major way — 5% per year for the next four years, at least. Pay and benefits have to be ramped back to comparable private-sector levels, and soon.

Update: Instinct confirmed, via USA Today –

Obama’s pay freeze for federal workers only limits raises

…. Many federal workers would still get pay raises the next two years despite the limited salary freeze President Obama proposed this week for 2.2 million government employees.

… Step raises are largely automatic, based on longevity, but merit can hasten a step pay raise or even move a worker up multiple steps. Not every worker gets a step raise every year, but the raises average about 2% per year for workers as a group.

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An interesting tidbit from ABC’s Brian Ross yesterday:

Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the Somali-American college student charged with plotting an attack on a Christmas lighting event in Portland, Oregon, was in contact with, and wrote articles for, another prominent American al Qaeda propagandist for nearly two years, authorities say.

So much for the argument that the guy’s involvement with terrorists was peripheral at best.

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Michelle Malkin’s latest column (“The Littlest Victims of ObamaCare”) is, as usual, a must-read, this time especially for a news tidbit that has been mostly ignored by the establishment press:

Late last month, the Service Employees International Union informed dues-paying members of its behemoth 1199 affiliate in New York that it was dropping its health care coverage for children. That’s right. A radical leftist union, not an evil Republican corporation, is abandoning the young ‘uns to cut costs.

More than 30,000 low-wage families will be affected, according to The Wall Street Journal

… (This is happening because) “…(N)ew federal health-care reform legislation requires plans with dependent coverage to expand that coverage up to age 26,” (SEIU 1199 benefits manager Mitra) Behroozi explained in an Oct. 22 letter to members. “Our limited resources are already stretched as far as possible, and meeting this new requirement would be financially impossible.”

Oh, by the way, SEIU 1199 is a union of … (wait for it) … health care workers. Imagine that.

That’s really embarrassing to the statists and their union sympathizers, which probably explains why searches at the Associated Press and the New York Times on “1199″ return no relevant results.

This is not tough to figure out.

Why is the statement that “Romney voters a risk to switch to Obama if he loses nomination” likely true? Because Mitt Romney isn’t a sensible conservative. He’s an objectively unfit, constitutional oath-breaking, control-driven, mandate-mad statist with a tiny base of legitimate, passionate support.

At the last link, we see Romney directly quoted saying that “his decision to mandate that each person in Massachusetts obtain insurance or face a financial penalty – similar to Obama’s plan – is ‘the ultimate conservative plan.’”

Go to the “I like mandates” video:

It’s clear that Romney either would not repeal ObamaCare in its entirety if given the chance, or would quickly move to reinstate some of its most onerous provisions immediately upon repeal.

As to the fear that if the GOP doesn’t nominate Romney hordes of voters will go to Obama, let’s go back to something from Frank Luntz.

60% of Americans agree with all of the following ideas and actions reflecting Tea Party values:

1. Balance the budget as quickly as possible through meaningful spending reductions, a hard spending cap and a constitutional amendment so that it never gets unbalanced again.
2. Eliminate all earmarks until the budget is balanced, then require a two-thirds vote by Congress for future earmark legislation.
3. Keep taxes down by requiring supermajorities for increases, and eventually enact tax reform with a simple, low, fair rate that drastically reduces the length of the IRS code.
4. Create a blue-ribbon task force that engages in a complete, line-by-line forensic audit of federal agencies and programs to end waste and reduce red tape and bureaucracy.
5. And require Congress to provide specific constitutional authorization for every bill it passes so that the government stays within the boundaries imagined by the founders.

Point 5 would nullify Mitt Romney’s precious “individual mandate.”

Luntz’s obvious finding is that the Tea Party IS the mainstream, and IS the majority.

Despite his packaging, Mitt Romney’s real views are not in the mainstream; those views don’t represent the majority of Americans. Those who would switch to Obama if blue-blood RINO fave Romney didn’t get the GOP nomination constitute a tiny minority of the electorate — which makes sense, because Romney’s true level of passionate supporters also represent a teeny, tiny minority of the electorate. The establishment press with spend the next year trying to convince us that this is not the case. The press sympathy ought to tell sensible, constitutional conservatives all they need to know.

From Madrid, Spain:

Nov 30, 2010 / 09:51 pm

Four former Cuban political prisoners recently shared how their faith helped them survive their time in prison.

Jose Miguel Martinez, Regis Iglesias, Leonel Grave and Jesus Mustafa recently spoke to the Catholic newspaper Alfa y Omega.

“Only God can sustain you in the prisons of Cuba,” Jose Miguel Martinez explained. While Martinez had participated in both the Legion of Mary and Caritas, it was after his involvement in the Varela Project that he was imprisoned.

The Varela Project works to achieve a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba.

“Each day we agreed to pray, each one in his cell. We read the Bible and we shared reflections,” he said. Although their activities were temporarily prohibited by the prison guards, Martinez continued, “the feeling of God I had inside made me ever stronger.”

The case of Jesus Mustafa is unique. At the age of 66 he remembers the first years of the “Communist revolution.” “Before taking over, Castro said that to betray the poor was to betray Christ. But when he came to power he betrayed the poor and he betrayed Christ,” Mustafa said.

Sentenced to 25 years for his membership in the Christian Liberation Movement, Mustafa said the prison guards tried to break the will of political dissidents. “If I did not have faith, they would have won.

“They make your life miserable,” he continued, adding that if the guards don’t achieve their goals, they take their aggression out of the dissidents’ families.

Go here for the rest of the story.