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The Labor Department says initial claims for unemployment insurance rose by 17,000 to a seasonally adjusted 474,000. That was above analysts' expectations of 460,000. A Labor Department analyst says claims were partly inflated by a surge following the Thanksgiving holiday week, when many state unemployment offices were closed.

Junk Science: The Environmental Protection Agency's sneak attack on the U.S. economy and our freedoms, curiously timed for the opening day of the Copenhagen climate charade, won't go unchallenged. Nor should it. (snip) EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, in a conversation with Sen. James Inhofe, ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, has in effect admitted the finding was based on the junk science and data manipulation practiced at Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU). "She told me that EPA accepted those findings without any serious independent analysis to see whether they were true," Inhofe said. Dr....

He promised shovel ready jobs if the Congress rushed through the $787 billion dollar stimulus earlier this year. He promised 400,000 to 3.5 million jobs and that unemployment would not rise above 8%. But as we all know by now absolutely nothing that he promised was real. It was all made up. (see 4:21min video) Now that he can no longer deny the reality of unemployment as high as 10.2% nor can he deny the made up Congressional districts in which made up jobs appeared, Soetoro admitted that he lied about jobs. No he didn’t say that he lied, and...

California: While Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger worries about rising seas, his state sinks below the waves. Don't mess with Texas, they say. But California and the nation could follow its lead. Last Wednesday, Gov. Schwarzenegger released a new report based on research compiled by the California Energy Commission claiming that by 2100 San Francisco Bay would be more bay than San Francisco, with Fisherman's Wharf and Treasure Island under the rising waters of climate change. His show-and-tell, which included a new Google Earth application the commission spent $150,000 to help develop, goes a long way toward explaining the once-Golden State's slide...

President Obama said at a much-anticipated jobs summit Thursday that chronic unemployment isn't merely academic and is "a struggle that cuts deep and touches people across the nation." Chronic unemployment isn't merely academic and is "a struggle that cuts deep and touches people across the nation," President Obama said at a much-anticipated jobs summit Thursday. The president claimed progress toward an economic recovery while saying much more work needs to be done -- even as the left wing of his party accused his administration of not doing enough to increase employment. Obama sought fresh ideas from the 130 corporate executives,...

When I linked to a USA Today story the other day about Americans elbowing illegals out of the way for day-labor jobs, under my headline of "And Yet, We Still Haven't Suspended Immigration," one reader replied, "Yah, because protectionism is clearly the answer for our economic woes." This betrayed a widespread misconception about immigration and trade, one that's important to keep in mind as the president unveils the political theater production called his "Jobs Summit." Restricting immigration is fundamentally different from restricting trade in two ways, one theoretical, one practical. First, people are not things — in addition to being...

The original $787 billion Stimulus was sold as a jobs bill. Today President Obama will host a "Jobs Summit" and Congress is moving towards passing a second stimulus package. But the first stimulus bill did not work, and there is little reason to believe that a second round will be any more successful. During his weekly radio address on January 10, 2009, Obama promised that the economic stimulus' No. 1 goal was to create 3 to 4 million new jobs over the next two years: "Our first job is to put people back to work . . . ." He...

Bad is good. Quagmire is progress. And jobs destroyed are jobs “created or saved,” says the Obama administration. A political columnist points out that “one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language.” The writer was George Orwell, adding that “political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Wind power turns out to be central to Obamathink in more ways than one. The...

Obama said the White House forum will gather CEOs, small business owners, economists, financial experts and representatives from labor unions and nonprofit groups "to talk about how we can work together to create jobs and get this economy moving again." "We all know that there are limits to what government can and should do, even during such difficult times. But we have an obligation to consider every additional, responsible step that we can take to encourage and accelerate job creation in this country," he said.

<p>Gov.-elect Haley Barbour doesn't take office until Jan. 13, but he is already trying to make good on a campaign promise.</p> <p>Barbour on Wednesday announced details of a job creation summit in Jackson Dec. 15-16.</p> <p>White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and Federal Express CEO Fred Smith, a Marks native, are the keynote speakers for the summit, which will bring together business, higher education and political leaders to develop plans to spark Mississippi's economy.</p>