Abbreviated Pundit Round-up: How are the employment numbers looking? ::posted Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:18:12 +0000:: ift.tt/1pHYim0 rss@dailykos (Greg Dworkin) Total employment, now topping 139 million jobs. Dan Diamond: Labor Day was created to honor American workers, and this year — despite the Great Recession — there are more of them than ever. Total U.S. employment topped 139 million workers as of August 1, 2014, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data. (That number is expected to climb again when the Labor Department releases its new jobs report on Friday.) The nation’s economic recovery has been slow, but the labor market has gained about 230,000 jobs per month so far this year. That compares to a monthly loss of 298,000 jobs in 2008; a monthly gain of 88,000 jobs in 2010; and a monthly gain of 174,000 jobs in 2012. By total jobs per month, 2014 has seen the fastest rate of growth since 1998. The strong gains so far also meant that, as of May 2014, the U.S. economy finally recovered the millions of jobs that the labor market shed between 2008 and 2010. Meanwhile, DC journos are freaking out because Obama doesnt talk like Bush and doesnt act like John McCain. Michael Cohen has the story: There is a fun foreign policy game making all the rounds in Washington D.C. this summer: Pin the tail on Barack Obama. Its appeal is not hard to understand; its so easy to play. Some examples of the rules: Step 5: Offer a set of proposals that are vague and contradictory, have little chance of being implemented, fail to take account domestic politics and would do absolutely nothing to impact the crisis that youve described in Step 1. Step 6: Publish your condemnation in a major newspaper or news outlet. Wait for a phone call from a booker with a Sunday morning talk show. Brilliant stuff. But most important reads of the day: Tom Friedman: There are no words to describe the vileness of the video beheadings of two American journalists by ISIS, but I have no doubt that they’re meant to get us to overreact, à la 9/11, and rush off again without a strategy. ISIS is awful, but it is not a threat to America’s homeland. and Julie Pace: President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the United States will not be intimidated by Islamic State militants after the beheading of a second American journalist and will build a coalition to degrade and destroy the group. More politics and policy below the fold. [Forwarded by the MyLeftBlogosphere news engine. Link to original post below:]
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 11:55:42 +0000
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