The past three weeks in the stock market have gone as follows: Week ended July 22 — Pretty good; week ended July 29 — Really bad; week just ended — Absolutely awful.

After I received a remarkably vague e-mail from CNN just after 4 p.m. today, I thought I’d go back and see how it handled its closing-bell emails during the previous two weeks. It was quite revealing.

The three emails follow the jump:

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(Originally posted shortly after midnight, and carried to the top or near the top throughout Friday. The item is by BizzyBlog author Rose.– Ed.)

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“Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping the shadow.” ~Aesop

An email is floating around, attempting to discredit a local Republican & Tea Party leader that I’ll refer to as “this guy,” lol.

Now I know “this guy,” so I know that while we all watch out for foul play (but would never dream we could be a part of it, lol), the character assassination against him personally, is pure bunk. But since I have also heard (all flipping day, I might add, ha) from Republican and Tea Party leaders alike, who are pretty upset that he has been unjustifiably attacked, I will attempt to provide some context. I also removed the names to protect those involved and to focus on recognizing the pattern/tactic for future reference…

The email is as follows; it was addressed to Committee members/leaders, and went out the day after “this guy,” a local Tea Party warrior, announced his candidacy for State Representative (which puts him in a primary with an established candidate whom the sender is probably supporting):

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Dead on, from Mary Kissel at the WSJ’s Political Diary (HT to an emailer):

Ohio’s Pro-Fraud Republican
Jon Husted, a Republican secretary of state, has gubernatorial ambitions.

… it’s somewhat surprising to see a Republican secretary of state, Ohio’s Jon Husted, effectively kill a nascent voter ID law before it was put to a vote in the Republican-controlled state Senate. (The Republican-controlled House passed the bill earlier this year.) House Speaker William G. Batchelder explained to the Columbus Dispatch last week that “there’s a limit to the amount of times you want to run your head into a wall” and said, “we’ll probably not see” the bill again.

Mr. Husted explained to the same newspaper in June that he’s taking a stand on principle, and is trying to be “fair and even-handed.” That’s one way to put it. Our sources tell Political Diary that Mr. Husted has gubernatorial ambitions. Ohio’s editorial boards are notoriously left-leaning and have lauded the Republican for his anti-conservative stance on voter ID, as have Ohio Democrats. If that’s the kind of support Mr. Husted is seeking, perhaps he’s in the wrong party.

The last sentence doesn’t need a “perhaps,” and I hope Kevin DeWine and the folks at ORPINO (the Ohio Republican Party In Name Only) are enjoying the egg in their faces.

And don’t try to pretend that you’re okay with this, Kevin. A dig into the news archives to a blog referencing a no longer available Cincinnati Enquirer item from early October 2006 says otherwise:

Ohio: group to challenge voter I.D. law; secretary of state distributes inaccurate information on I.D.

… Valid photo IDs the state legislature envisioned are issued by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles: a driver’s license or state-issued ID for those who don’t drive.

The second “proof of identity” in the secretary’s brochure and advisory to the county boards of election reads: “Military identification.”

State Sen. Steve Stivers, R-Columbus, an Ohio National Guardsman and a veteran of the war in Iraq, says he made a mistake while lobbying to include military identification, because it does not include an address.

All proof of identity required for voting purposes must have an address, according to the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Kevin DeWine, R-Fairborn.

So Jon-Boy Husted has gone directly against a bill now-ORPINO Chairman Kevin DeWine SPONSORED (not just supported or endorsed) when he was in the legislature. If the matter weren’t so important to the integrity of elections, I’d be on the floor laughing.

Two choices, Kevin:

• You’ve been played by your best bud.
• You never really believed in voter ID either, but thought it was a way to push your political career forward.

Kevin, you know how to find me if you ever want to tell me which one it is.

The state Republican Party is in the best of hands. (/sarc)

I’ll be bringing this up on the TIB Radio Show tonight, as I’ll be accessing the awesome mind of Matt Hurley in hopes of determining how Jon-Boy Husted might have voted on Kevin DeWine’s bill five years ago.

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UPDATE: Actually, thanks to the handy-dandy library database, this doesn’t have to wait for the TIB show.

Here’s the long-gone Cincinnati Post, in full (for fair use and discussion purposes), on February 1, 2006, exposing Husted not only as a supporter of voter-ID, but an outspoken one (Update, Aug. 7: Here is the article as saved from Proquest, for those who doubt its origins; it looks to have been an AP write-up for which credit wasn’t given until the end):

Taft signs voting changes into law

Ohioans who go to the voting booth in November for the first time must also present identification proving who they are.

The final version of an election reform bill that Gov. Bob Taft signed into law Tuesday requires voters to provide a driver’s license, utility bill or other identification before casting a ballot. Current law, effective through the May primary, calls for a voter to say name and address and sign the poll book next to an image of his or her signature.

Taft’s signature came within hours of the measure passing both the GOP-dominated House and Senate along party lines. Democrats argued that the ID requirements will make it harder for seniors, the poor and disabled to vote.

Tuesday was the deadline for the bill to pass so that some provisions required by federal law would take effect in time for the May 2 primary. Most other changes, including voter ID, were put off until June.

“We didn’t want to have one set of rules leading up to the election and another set of rules go into effect on the day of the election,” said Rep. Kevin DeWine, the Dayton-area Republican who sponsored the bill.

DeWine and Speaker Jon Husted, also from suburban Dayton (uh, not really — Ed.), said they expect voters won’t experience problems at the polls but will instead have more confidence in election security. New federal elections law requires ID for first-time voters who register by mail, they said, so Ohio is extending that to all voters.

“The integrity of the system is more important than voter convenience,” DeWine said.

Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell believes poll workers will be trained in time and lines won’t be longer, spokesman Carlo LoParo said.

Both House and Senate Democrats vehemently opposed the bill ever since the Senate added the ID requirements, saying it would make it harder for people to vote. Some House Democrats accused Republicans of grasping to stay in power now that ethics troubles have ensnared some GOP officeholders, giving Democrats hope to break a 14-year slump in statewide elections.

“They’re saying we want fairness and honesty in the process when the fact is they want to retain power,” said Rep. Steve Driehaus, a Cincinnati Democrat. “There is no way a bill that fundamentally impacts the electoral process should be dictated by one party.”

Husted accused Democrats of playing partisan politics.

“We want to reform the system they want to complain about it,” he said. “We want to stop the cheating, they want to keep the loopholes alive.”

Neither side has produced data to support either allegation — that there is widespread voter fraud or that ID requirements suppress the vote.

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Ohio election requirements

Some highlights of the election changes:

• Voters must show identification at the polls to cast a regular ballot. Accepted forms include a current driver’s license (even if the address has changed), military ID, passport, utility bill, bank statement, government check or paycheck, and other government documents with name and address.
• Those who don’t have ID may cast a provisional ballot, which is set aside and counted only after elections officials verify the person is a registered voter.
• Elections officials must mail notices of elections, polling places and new ID requirements at least 60 days before the August and November elections this year and 2008 primary and general elections.
• The attorney general and secretary of state may not act as treasurer or in an official capacity for ballot initiatives.

File under: “Words fail.”

The run-up:

• ADP had 114,000 private jobs added. That’s nice, but ADP said we had 157,000 last month, and look what it got us.
• Initial unemployment claims came in at 400,000, basically the same as the week before.
• Lot and lots of other generally bad news has poured in this week, culminating in yesterday’s massive stock market selloff, where the three major indices fell by an average of about 4.7%.

The predictions (all obtained just after midnight; info at links may have changed):

• Chris Rugaber, at the Associated Press — 90,000 jobs added, unemployment rate stays at 9.2%.
• Reuters — 85,000 jobs, 9.2% unemployment rate.
• Bloomberg — 85,000 jobs (with a reported range of zero to +150K), 9.2% unemployment rate.

The not seasonally adjusted benchmarks:

July has been such a quirky month that coming up with benchmarks is a quite difficult, and predicting how the actuals will get converted into seasonal numbers is virtually impossible:

July’s total nonfarm number has always been negative, largely because many teachers, school personnel and others get the summer off. On an overall basis, if actual jobs lost are more than 1.1 million, it will be an unacceptable result, regardless of where the seasonally adjusted number ends up.

On the private side, note how 2005′s small addition turned into a great seasonally adjusted number, while last year’s higher addition didn’t. Yikes; I told you seasonally adjustment conversion goes nuts when the numbers are all over the place as they have been during the past three years. It still seems, based more on last year than previous years, that the economy needs to have added 150,000 private-sector jobs in July to be truly recovering. If that seems high, well, we’ve put up with so much mediocrity during the two years since the recession ended that the economy should be long overdue to produce something real (not that it will, given who’s in charge). As with the total nonfarm situation, the seasonally adjusted number won’t be particularly relevant to how the job market is really performing.

Also: Yours truly will be watching for what the government does with the “Birth/Death Model” estimate of net new jobs created from startups and businesses which folded that it couldn’t fine. Last year’s number was -31K.

The report will appear here at 8:30 a.m. If you can stand the thought at this time of the morning, bring some popcorn.

8:35 a.m. Update: Overload at BLS is preventing access at the moment. My CNN email says the overall jobs add is +117K and that the unemployment rate dropped to 9.1%. That’s what Drudge has too.

8:48 a.m. Update: Still haven’t gotten in. Maybe the access problem is local, though I’m not having problems with access to other sites.

8:52 a.m. Update: I’m in … with a marvelous view of the web page’s headers.

9:00 a.m. Update: The darn thing loads … June’s report.

9:07 a.m. Update: I see that Zero Hedge is also having trouble getting into BLS, but also tells us that “the labor force participation rate, and the reason why the general unemployment rate declined to 9.1%, just dropped to 63.9%, the lowest in 16 years, or matches the participation rate from January 1984.” Well, Obama has been invoking the Reagan Era … Seriously, the 1980s participation rate is as low as it is because many potential second earners were choosing to stay at home. That’s not how it is now.

9:20 a.m. Update: Tired of waiting. … ah, finally:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 117,000 in July, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 9.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care, retail trade, manufacturing, and mining. Government employment continued to trend down.

… The number of unemployed persons (13.9 million) and the unemployment rate (9.1 percent) changed little in July. Since April, the unemployment rate has shown little definitive movement. The labor force, at 153.2 million, was little changed in July.

… Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 117,000 in July, following little growth over the prior 2 months. Total private employment rose by 154,000 over the month, reflecting job gains in several major industries, including health care, retail trade, manufacturing, and mining. Government employment continued to decline.

… The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for May was revised from +25,000 to +53,000, and the change for June was revised from +18,000 to +46,000.

Counting the pickups in previous months, 173,000 more people were thought to be working in July than were thought to be working in June. Not bad, but as mentioned in the intro, the seasonally adjusted numbers may not reflect the underlying data very well. Will be working on that, assuming BLS stays available …

UPDATE: The total nonfarm NSA number was -1.231 million. I suggested that anything worse than -1.1 million would be unacceptable, and it is. It trails 2004, 2005, and 2006. If we were in a real recovery, the performance have outdone those years. It didn’t. The seasonally adjusted number that shook out of that (+117k) seems to be a reasonable reflection of the underlying NSA performance. Birth/Death came in at -18k, which compared to last year’s -38K seems a bit optimistic, but not radically so.

The private-sector NSA number was -4K. I suggested that anything short of +100k would be unacceptable, given that last year’s NSA number was +74K. Does anyone remember July of last year being a really stellar month (IIRC, it beat expectations, but didn’t blow anyone away).

Team Obama appears to have gotten a big break in the seasonal adjustment. Last year’s +74K NSA translated to +93K SA. This year’s -4K NSA (78K worse than last year) translated to 154K SA (61K better). One could argue that the same NSA number would have yielded a higher SA result six years ago, but there seems to have been a fundamental shift in summer private sector employment patterns vs. six years ago. As I’ve said repeatedly, the SA numbers can’t be the last word given the volatility in the numbers during the past three years and how they diverge from the more predictable patterns in the years which preceded them.

Overall: Better than “expected,” but nothing upon which to base any sustained optimism.

More later, if time.

UPDATE: Here’s a small tease for the workforce detachment I’m hopefully going to address in the column I write up this weekend. According the the “A” Household Survey data, we’ve lost over 400,000 seasonally adjusted jobs since the end of the recession. But according to the “B” Establishment Survey data, we’ve gained almost 700,000. What’s going on?

From Austin, Texas:

Doctors used adult stem cells to help Texas Gov. Rick Perry with his back surgery last month.

A spokesman said the stem cells were used in an “innovative way.” The cells were taken from Perry’s body and applied to the area where doctors decompressed a nerve and fused part of his spine. Adult stem cell therapy is different from using embryonic cells, which Perry opposes.

The Food and Drug Administration has not approved using stem cells to help people heal from surgery, but experimentation is common. Researchers do warn, however, of a slight increased cancer risk.

Perry, a Republican who is considering a run for president, has advocated research into adult stem cells. …

Go here for the rest of the story.