Sunday, October 07, 2018



Trump has a week to brag about

This article is from a Leftist source so I have deleted a few dubious claims and snide adjectives

He promised so much success that everyone would be tired of all the winning. But after 20 months that proved more arduous than President Trump once imagined, this may be the best week of his presidency so far.

The all-but-assured confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court will cap a week that also saw the president seal an ambitious and elusive new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico, one of his top campaign promises. And the latest jobs report out on Friday put unemployment at its lowest since 1969.

It gives Trump a fresh narrative to take on the campaign trail just a month before critical midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. With the investigation by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, turning quiet during campaign season, Trump has an opportunity to redirect the conversation onto more favorable territory.

Still, in Trump’s presidency, even victories come at a cost.  America has been ripped apart by the battle over Kavanaugh’s nomination, fraught as it was with gender politics that Trump seemed eager to encourage and anger on the left and the right.

His most significant legislative achievement was last year’s tax-cutting package, which was forged in large part by Republican congressional leaders.

The past couple weeks, however, saw Trump seal a revised trade agreement with South Korea and replace the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, which not long ago seemed as if it might be beyond his reach. But the booming economy has become one of his strongest political assets. And with Kavanaugh nearing confirmation Saturday, he showed he could push through an important nomination that many predicted was likely to fail.

“It’s a wonderful week. We’re thrilled,” Kellyanne Conway, his counselor, said in an interview. “It shows that his perseverance and his tenacity and his adherence to campaign promises and principles are paying dividends.”

Whether the string of success for Trump will translate into support on the campaign trail could be the defining test of the next few weeks.

“Independents especially are tired of the chaos and the uncertainty,” said Patti Solis Doyle, who was Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager in 2008. “Yes, the economy is good; yes, Trump got two conservative judges on the court; and, yes, he is doing what he promised on the campaign trail” in terms of trade, tax cuts, and tougher immigration enforcement. “But at what cost?” she asked. “Tariff wars, separating children from their mothers, huge deficit. I can go on and on.”

SOURCE 

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Higher Educational Attainment Linked to Trump Support and Republican Favorability in Key Demographics

Among first generation Americans and blacks, higher education leads to conservative voting

Market Research Foundation was one of the first research groups to identify the ‘White, No College’ wave which brought out white blue-collar voters in droves and helped propel President Trump into the White House. Since then, data has been fairly consistent in validating this trend. Earlier this year, Pew published a series of reports showing the highest educational attainment-party divide in two decades. According to Pew’s surveys, in 1994, 39% of voters with a four-year college degree identified with or leaned Democrat, and 54% identified or leaned Republican. In 2017, those numbers were exactly reversed.

Market Research Foundation has identified a growing educational attainment trend in the opposite direction within two key demographics: Black voters and first-generation Americans. Our nationwide online survey from July of this year found that Black voters with higher levels of education are more likely to have supported the President, not less. Seventeen percent of Black Trump voters had a Postgraduate Degree, versus 12% of Black Clinton voters. According to the census Bureau’s educational attainment publication, only 22% of Blacks over age 25 had a Bachelor’s Degree and just 8% had an advanced degree in 2015. The more education a Black voter had, the more likely they were to support Trump. Combining the shares of Black Trump voters with a Bachelor’s Degree and a Postgraduate Degree, 49% had completed at minimum a BA. This is in stark contrast to the way white voters voted in 2016. Sixty-seven percent of whites with a high school education or less supported Trump in 2016, while just 28% supported Clinton.

Our nationwide July survey of 1,751 first generation Americans from across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Canada, and South America, found that the less education an individual had achieved, the more likely they were to have supported Clinton – by 45.5%. In addition, higher educational attainment was correlated with higher Trump approval and higher approval of the Republican Party. The table below outlines the correlation between educational attainment and sentiment.

Education and views in first generation Americans

Overall, 35% of first-generation Americans voted for Trump in 2016, while 56% voted for Clinton.

While Clinton’s total share of college educated immigrants was higher than Trump’s, her share of the lowest educated vote was higher. Clinton got 69.2% of the vote among those with a high school education or less, and that dropped to 48.6% for those with some college, and 56.1% for those with a Bachelor’s Degree.
In contrast, only 23.7% of those with a high school education or less supported Trump, and his share of support rose to 42.3% among those with some college and 33.9% among those with a Bachelor’s Degree. To compare, Trump got 67% of whites with a high school education or less

Trump’s approval rating was higher among those with some college or a Bachelor’s Degree than among those with a high school education or less. 35% of respondents with some college or a Bachelor’s Degree approved of Trump, compared to 27.5% of those with a high school education or less.

Positive views of the Republican Party were also higher among first generation immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment. 31% percent of respondents with some college and 30% of voters with Bachelor’s Degree approved of the Republican Party, compared to 26.1% of those with a high school education or less.
Conversely, negative views of the Democrat Party were higher among first generation immigrants with higher levels of educational attainment. 37.8% of voters with some college and 34.2% of voters with a Bachelor’s Degree disapproved of the Democrat Party, compared to just 18.6% of those with a high school education or less.

SOURCE 

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Lowest Unemployment Rate Since '69; Lowest Number of Unemployed Since 2000

"Just out: 3.7% Unemployment is the lowest number since 1969!" President Trump tweeted on Friday.

Not since the end of 1969 has the nation's unemployment rate been this low. The Bureau of  Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the unemployment rate dropped two-tenths of a point to 3.7 percent in September.

Last month, the number of employed Americans (155,962,000) remained near the record high of 155,965,000 set in July; and in September, the number of unemployed persons decreased by 270,000 to 5,964,000, a level not seen since 2000.

The unemployment rate for Hispanics, 4.5 percent, tied the record low set in July. For African-Americans, the unemployment rate in September was 6.0 percent, just a tenth of a point above the record low set in May.

And 70,656,000 women age 20+ were counted as employed in September, a record number for this group.

“Since the election, we have created over 4 million new jobs,” President Donald Trump told a rally in Minnesota Thursday night. “We've added nearly half a million new manufacturing jobs...and we have companies pouring into our country.”

On Friday morning, the Labor Department said another 134,000 jobs were created in September, a bit disappointing, since economists had projected a gain of 185,000 jobs.

But BLS also reported that total nonfarm payroll employment for July was revised up from +147,000 to +165,000, and the change for August was revised up from +201,000 to +270,000. With these revisions, employment gains in July and August combined were 87,000 more than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.)

After revisions, job gains have averaged 190,000 per month over the last 3 months.

In September, the nation’s civilian noninstitutionalized population, consisting of all people age 16 or older who were not in the military or an institution, reached 258,290,000. Of those, 161,926,000 participated in the labor force by either holding a job or actively seeking one.

The 161,926,000 who participated in the labor force equaled 62.7 percent of the 258,290,000 civilian noninstitutionalized population, the same as August.

The higher the participation rate, the better, but economists expect this percentage to remain stagnant and decline in the years ahead as more baby boomers retire.

Another troubling number: BLS said a record 96,364,000 Americans were not in the labor force last month, meaning they did not have a job and were not looking for one, for whatever reason.

SOURCE 

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Hispanic Unemployment Rate Hits Lowest Level on Record in September

The national seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos in the U.S. labor force fell to the lowest level on record in September of 2018, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data released Friday show.

In September, the unemployment rate for Hispanics and Latinos, aged 16 and up, was 4.5%, tying July 2018 for the lowest level since the BLS began tracking Hispanic-Latino employment data in 1973.

Hispanic-Latino employment statistics for September 2018:

Unemployment rate: 4.5%, down from 4.7% in August
Number Employed: 27,059,000 up from 26,927,000 in August
Number Unemployed: 1,287,000, down from 1,315,000 in August
Labor Force Participation: 66.0%, up from 65.9% in August
Civilian Noninstitutionalized Population (16+ years old): 28,346,000, up from 28,242,000 in August
Number Participating in Labor Force: 28,346,000, up from 28,242,000 in August

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

SOURCE 

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Manufacturing Jobs +18,000 in September

Manufacturing jobs increased by 18,000 in the United States in September, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In August, according to the new BLS numbers, there were 12,729,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States. In September, there were 12,747,000.

“Employment in manufacturing continued to trend up in September (+18,000), reflecting a gain in durable goods industries,” the BLS said in it monthly jobs report. “Over the year, manufacturing has added 278,000 jobs, with about four-fifths of the gain in the durable goods component.”

Manufacturing employment in the United States peaked in June 1979, when it hit 19,553,000. Even with the recent gains in manufacturing employment in the United States, there are still 6,806,000 fewer manufacturing jobs in this country than there were at the 1979 peak.

SOURCE 

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Sons of America, beware

By Cheryl K. Chumley

I have two sons. One is in his 20s, well on his way into adulthood. The other is 16 and, given the way the Brett Kavanaugh nomination process is headed, walking a tight rope between college preparation and jail.

As President Donald Trump noted in recent comments about the runaway train called Supreme Court Nomination, it’s “a very scary time for young men in America.”

Yes, it is. This is no joke. The sons of America are facing some dire straits.

The left, with one fell Supreme Court nomination swoop, has managed to upturn the entire notion of due process and collapse the cherished American principle of innocent until proven guilty.

Democrats shrug off such assertions and warnings by saying, in essence, oh, this isn’t a court of law — due process doesn’t apply. But that’s a skirt of accountability. That’s an argument of deceit. The left knows very well what it’s doing.

Senate Democrats know very well that Christine Blasey Ford’s high-school-era accusations against Kavanaugh are being kept alive solely on the willingness of the thug elements of the left to play their thug roles — on the willingness of these anarchy-minded to, say, corral Sen. Jeff Flake with a crying-on-cue show of female hysteria on a congressional elevator; or to stage noisy and disruptive sit-ins at the offices of Sen. Joe Manchin; or to shamelessly pitch and parade around the media ridiculous notions of Kavanaugh & Friend drug-fueled gang rapes.

Senate Democrats know they don’t have the evidence to prove these flimsy and fantastical allegations against Kavanaugh, so they instead resort to theatrics and distractions to convict — to convict in the court of public opinion, that is.

But slander is serious business. Tearing apart a man’s reputation for political sport is a grave enterprise.

So is the Democrats’ utter disregard for the long-term.

If Ford’s unfounded accusations are allowed to stand as truth, America’s standard of proof for guilt will be forever damaged. Courts won’t even matter, because mob rule will become the decider.

Ford, after making her allegations — or better yet, before or during — ought to have provided some corroborating evidence, some documentation from police, some irrefutable notes or papers from therapists, teachers, trusted adults who were in the know of what she alleged and who could provide the much-needed backing to cast genuine dark shadows on Kavanaugh’s character. But she didn’t. All Ford did was throw out her accusation with full expectation she’d be believed.

All the supporting evidence the Democrats have since tried to sell has crumbled in the light of day.

So what we’re left with is Ford’s accusation — filled with memory gaps — and the Democrats’ insistence that her simple I Am Woman allegation is enough to boot Kavanaugh from the nomination process.

Well, mark these words: If Democrats win on this, if they’re able to stop Kavanaugh’s nomination on such whimsical wordage, then each and every future Republican-nominated judicial pick will be treated to the same circus show. But not just judges. It won’t be long before Democrats, drunk with the power of the allegation, segue their Kavanaugh win to any and all male Republicans seeking public office — House, Senate, state and local legislative seats. All GOP candidates will soon enough be dealt the same Kavanaugh cards.

The effect to conservative male voices will prove chilling.

What Republican in his right mind would want to subject himself to the type of scrutiny Kavanaugh is enduring — just to hold a school board seat, for crying out loud?

But more than that, the effect to males in general will be downright silencing. Think about it: If the men of America know they’re one single female accusation away from losing everything, they’re much more apt to go along to get along — to keep from making waves, rocking boats, stirring pots, however they can. Guilt? Innocence? Truth? Doesn’t matter.

The left has an agenda here. And it should scare every male in America. This isn’t just about a political stifling; it’s a gender bash.

And mothers of America, of all political walks, Democrat, Republican, independent, what have you, take note: Today’s Kavanaugh is tomorrow’s John Smith.

Your son — yes, yours — is one Ford-like accusation away from complete character destruction.

SOURCE 

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCHPOLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on THE PSYCHOLOGIST.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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