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Obama's Foreign Policy of Fantasies "Anti-Immigrant bigotry" and lack of jobs are causing the rise of ISIS? October 1, 2015 Joseph Klein    President Barack Obama continued his feckless foreign policy charade at the United Nations on September 29th before returning to Washington. He chaired what was billed as “The Leaders’ Summit on Countering ISIL and Violent Extremism,” and he met with Cuban President Raul Castro. At the summit, Obama claimed major progress in rolling back the Islamic State (or ISIL, as he refers to the jihadist caliphate occupying large portions of Syria and Iraq). By now, the president...

Looks like America will run a little less on Dunkin’. Dunkin’ Brands, the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts and the Baskin-Robbins ice cream chain, announced Thursday that one of its franchisees it will be shutting 100 stores across the country in the next 15 months, reports Forbes. [....] Dunkin’ said a spike in the cost of eggs due to the recent avian flu outbreak in the U.S. was a reason along with concerns with the rise in minimum wage laws in cities across the country. Last month, New York became the first state to raise the minimum wage for fast-food...

The prevailing narrative on the U.S. economy has downshifted, as three consecutive months of disappointing job growth raise concerns about a serious slowdown. There’s some good news to offset the bad, however: household incomes have finally shown a sharp gain, which means the typical family’s purchasing power is bouncing back. And the pace of car sales is accelerating toward record levels, with consumers more than willing to commit to costly long-term purchases. Meanwhile, several other indicators that don’t get as much attention as the monthly jobs report show sustained improvement in key parts of the economy. The monthly employment report...

Before Steve Jobs, there was Seymour Cray – father of the supercomputer and regarded as something close to a God in the circles he moved in. Jobs’ Apple Computer is reputed to have bought one of Seymour’s massive machines back in the day: a Cray, to design the brand-new Macintosh personal computer. This would have been a significant moment for a man of Jobs' character, not prone to flattering the inventions or ideas of others. In return, Cray is said to have quipped that he'd bought a Mac to design the next Cray. Cray – who would have been 90...

The Fox News report that the Teamsters have decided not to endorse Hillary Clinton’s candidacy at this time, shortly after her pronouncement of her opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, does not surprise and shows the peril of trying to be all things to all constituencies. On the one hand, there is a need to placate environmentalists and climate change true believers who oppose the pipeline from Canada. Among them is billionaire Tom Steyer, an eco-zealot who has pledged his fortune in support of Democratic candidates who want to repeal the Industrial Revolution who want us to rely on solar...

For a third month in a row, native-born Americans saw their job numbers tumble while immigrants experience solid gains. According to the montly Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers just released, "foreign-born" jobs numbers increased by 14,000, while those for "native-born" Americans fell off a cliff, by 262,000. Over the past three months, the job numbers for native-born have dropped by nearly 1 million, exactly the number of jobs President Obama promised to add when he ran for re-election in 2012. During that period, jobs for immigrants grew 218,000.

Andy KierszOctober 2, 2015 The September jobs report was broadly disappointing, with very few points of optimism. Along with non-farm payrolls and wage growth missing expectations, the civilian labor force participation rate — the percentage of the US population that is either working or looking for a job — fell by 0.2 percentage points to 62.4%. This is the lowest reading since October 1977.(snip)

And so the "most important payrolls number" at least until the October FOMC meeting when the Fed will once again do nothing because suddenly the US is staring recession in the face, is in the history books, and as previewed earlier today, at 142K it was a total disaster, 60K below the consensus and below the lowest estimate. Just as bad, the August print was also revised far lower from 173K to 136K. And while it is less followed, the household survey was an unmitigated disaster, with 236,000 jobs lost in September.Putting it into perspective, in 2015 job growth...

While the September jobs number was an absolute disaster, here is the real punchline: in September, the people not in the labor force soared by a whopping 579,000 to a record 94.6 million, up from the previous record 94.0, even as number of people employed - according to the household survey used to calculate the "5.1%" unemployment rate - tumbled by 236,000 to 148.8 million. And as a result of this latest surge in people who aren't working, nor want to work, the participation rate crashed yet again, and sliding from 62.6% to 62.4%, it was the lowest since October...

The number of new applications for U.S. jobless benefits rose modestly last week and a gauge of the trend in claims fell, pointing to ongoing tightening in the labor market that could push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits rose 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 277,000 for the week ended Sept. 26, the Labor Department said on Thursday. It was the 30th straight week that claims remained below the 300,000 threshold, which is usually associated with a strengthening labor market. The four-week moving average of claims, a closely followed trend measure because it...

Wal-Mart Stores Inc (WMT.N) is planning to lay off hundreds of people at its headquarters in Arkansas as part of the retail giant's efforts to pare costs, people familiar with the matter said. Fewer than 500 employees are expected to lose their jobs and an announcement could be made as early as this Friday, according to one of sources, who declined to be named because the move had not been made public.

A "multicultural creative career fair" aimed at encouraging the hiring of African Americans featured a panel at their event that had no black people in it. The fair, called "Here are all the black people," is a one-day event that "provides multicultural students, recent graduates, and creative professionals who are interested in exploring careers in advertising and design the opportunity to showcase their talent to top agencies in the industry." A panel during the fair, however, featured precisely no black people, leading to this ironic photo: Another angle of the panel was re-tweeted by The One's twitter account: "Here are...

Bowie Resource Partners plans to lay off nearly 100 people at its Bowie #2 Mine near Paonia in the latest setback to coal employment in the North Fork Valley. The company said Tuesday that it anticipates laying off 78 workers and 19 contractors from the mine, where 181 full-time employees and 19 contractors work now. ... it is continuing to evaluate the market for the mine’s coal after losing a contract to sell to the Tennessee Valley Authority a year ago. The loss of that contract caused Bowie to eliminate about 150 jobs at that time. Bowie operates three underground...

Chesapeake Energy Corp. is shedding 740 jobs, about 15 percent of its workforce, as part of an effort to trim costs as low oil prices linger, the company said Tuesday. It may be the Oklahoma oil producer’s first round of mass layoffs since the plunge in crude prices began last year, according to a tally of industry job cuts kept by consultancy Graves & Co. The company says it will have about 4,000 after the cuts. “While this was extremely difficult, we are acting decisively and prudently to enhance the long-term competitiveness and strength of Chesapeake,” CEO Doug Lawler told...

Despite a long process involving collaboration between local officials the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in Western Colorado, the federal land agency is proceeding with the closure of roads that have been traveled for 50 or more years. The road closures comprise a portion of the BLM’s Resource Management Plan (RMP) for Mesa County, of which, 73 percent is controlled by the federal government . ... public roads, used by off-roaders, hunters, farmers, ranchers and, during wildfire season, firefighting crews. ... Jody Green, a member of Public Lands Access Association and long-time activist working to preserve access into federally-managed lands,...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Royal Dutch Shell's dry hole in the Chukchi Sea may be disappointing to shareholders, but it's potentially devastating to Alaska. The company's decision to end oil exploration in offshore Alaska for the foreseeable future means the state must find another source to fill the 800-mile trans-Alaska pipeline and solve its economic woes, Gov. Bill Walker said.

In a challenging year that has seen it battle declining sales and increased competition, Austin-based Whole Foods Market said Monday that it will cut 1,500 jobs in the next two months. [....] Whole Foods said it is making the cuts “as part of its ongoing commitment to lower prices for its customers and invest in technology upgrades while improving its cost structure,” according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The reduction represents 1.6 percent of the company’s workforce, the filing said. The organic foods giant, which employs 91,000, said it will make the cuts over the...

President Obama chided Iran for focusing on violent rhetoric rather than doing work to advance its economic interests during his speech Monday before the United Nations General Assembly, saying that “chanting ‘death to America’ does not create jobs or make Iran more secure.” “That path is now available to a nation like Iran, which, as of this moment, continues to deploy violent proxies to advance its interests,” Obama said. “These efforts may appear to give Iran leverage in disputes with neighbors, but they fuel sectarian conflict that endangers the entire region and isolates Iran from the promise of trade and...

Says Iowahawk, “To be fair, it did create jobs for Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.” Via the Free Beacon, here’s the professor-in-chief doing what he loves to do, lecturing other regimes that he understands their national priorities better than they do. In a way, this reminds me of his infamous bitter-clingers comment during the 2008 campaign: In both cases, he resorted to economics to try to understand cultures that were antagonistic to him (albeit in very different ways). There’s a hint here that “death to America” is less a sincerely held worldivew among Iran’s rulers than a convenient scapegoat used...

As Halliburton officials confirmed laying off workers at its Williston offices earlier this month, many in the industry are anticipating more layoffs to come as the price of oil and the state drilling rig count continue to drop. "I think the next four to five months are going to be a struggle," said North Dakota Petroleum Council President Ron Ness. From September 2014 to as recently as August, 4,552 individuals working for oil-related companies received unemployment benefit payments, according to North Dakota Job Service data. These include positions related to drilling, extraction and support activities, according to Michael Ziesch, Job...