McDonald's, KFC, Burger King workers protest in NYC

What Pamela and most libs fail to comprehend is that fast food service employment consists entirely of entry level jobs. They are minimum wage positions that are suited for high school kids and people who possess absolutely O marketable skill and are in the transition phase of improving their situation. These class of jobs are not suited to provide a wage to substain a family nor can or should they be. That is why McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell and all the rest utilize "lightning" type training programs. These companies expect a very high degree of turnover because it's the defined nature of those class of positions.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Pamela Waldron makes $7.75 an hour as a cashier at the KFC in New York's Penn Station, where she has worked for eight years.

That's just 50 cents above the New York state minimum wage. The 26-year old nursing student, and mother of two, says she has asked for a raise but her pleas have gone unheeded for weeks.

Finally, on Thursday, around lunchtime she joined a protest of about 40 fast food workers who walked out of their shifts, carrying placards and shouting slogans to bring attention to their cause of fighting for higher wages and the right to unionize. The protest was held outside a Burger King (BKW) near Penn Station.

4-Week-Average Jobless Claims At 13-Month High As Sandy Effects Gone

Hardly a shocker.

While any and every bad data point recently has been summarily dismissed by the 'transitory' effects of Hurricane Sandy, it appears in the deepest darkest reality that there is more of a structural trend to this shift than simply a 'blip'.

Claims missed expectations and prior data was revised higher leaving the four-week-average at its highest since October 2011 jumping back over 400k. More critically, when we dig into the details on the DoL site, we find some rather disturbing trends that totally dismiss Sandy effects. For instance, according to the DoL, there were 30.6k fewer initial claims in New York Last week - when this higher aggregate data point is supposed to be due to 'Sandy'. FL, MI, and MA saw the largest increases in claims. It seems blaming this trend-break on Sandy is now a non-starter - fiscal cliff front-running perhaps? Election hangover?

BTW, this is the 86th upward revision in 87 weeks.

WH: Obama 'Is Not Particularly Concerned' Whether Susan Rice Misled the American People

The arrogance of this administration is truly mind boggling.

In response to a question from reporter Major Garrett on whether the Obama administration's mishandling of Benghazi raises "core questions of basic competency," press secretary Jay Carney revealed that Barack Obama "is not particularly concerned" about whether Susan Rice misled the American people.

Video HERE.

White House: 'There Are No Unanswered Questions' On Rice's Involvement With Benghazi Misinformation

Total BS, there are nothing but unanswered questions.

Jay Carney told the White House press pool that the focus on Ambassador Rice is "misplaced" when investigating Benghazi. Carney said that "there are no unanswered questions" when it concerns Ambassador Rice, what she knew, and who gave her the information that was the basis of her comments on the Sunday shows the weekend after the attack on the US consulate in Libya.

Supreme Court revives challenge to ObamaCare on religious-liberty grounds

Hmmmm.

The Supreme Court has revived a Christian college’s challenge to President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, with the acquiescence of the Obama administration.

The court on Monday ordered the federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., to consider the claim by Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., that Obama’s health care law violates the school’s religious freedoms. …

The school made a new filing with the court over the summer to argue that its claims should be fully evaluated in light of the high court decision. The administration said it did not oppose Liberty’s request.

Liberty is challenging both the requirement that most individuals obtain health insurance or pay a penalty, and a separate provision requiring many employers to offer health insurance to their workers.

The appeals court could ask the government and the college for new legal briefs to assess the effect of the Supreme Court ruling on Liberty’s claims before rendering a decision.

Sunday Funny

AP Interview: Hamas No. 2 rejects Gaza arms halt

Talk about stating the ridiculously obvious.

Gaza's ruling Hamas will not stop arming itself, the No. 2 in the Palestinian group told The Associated Press on Saturday, signaling tough challenges ahead for indirect negotiations between Israel and the Islamist militants on a new border deal for Gaza. The talks are being brokered by Egypt, which also helped forge a cease-fire deal that ended eight days of Israel-Gaza fighting earlier this week. The truce went into effect late

Wednesday and has largely held. Residents in Gaza said Israel has begun easing some border restrictions, allowing fishermen to head further out to sea and permitting farmers inspect land in a former no-go zone.

Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy to Hamas' top leader in exile Khaled Mashaal, said talks on a further easing of restrictions are to be held in Cairo on Monday. Hamas and Israel do not meet directly and the indirect talks are held through Egyptian intermediaries.

Morsi grabs dictatorial powers in Egypt

Well, they made their bed...

Say, how has Barack Obama’s Arab Spring policy worked out for us so far? Well, we bombed one dictator out of power in Libya, which set that nation free … to have terrorist networks openly operate and control the eastern part of the country, which resulted in the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi, and four American deaths. In Egypt, we pushed our longtime ally out of power after just eight days of peaceful protests, and then insisted on immediate elections in which only the radical Muslim Brotherhood could organize effectively — and they took over the government and the military.

But at least Egypt transitioned to democracy, right? Right? Er … didn’t The Who warn us about not getting fooled again?

Egypt’s president on Thursday issued constitutional amendments that placed him above judicial oversight and ordered the retrial of Hosni Mubarak for the killing of protesters in last year’s uprising.

Mohammed Morsi also decreed immunity for the Islamist-dominated panel drafting a new constitution from any possible court decisions to dissolve it, a threat that had been hanging over the controversial assembly....

Happy Thanksgiving

Boehner: 'ObamaCare' must be on the table in 'fiscal cliff' negotiations

This is encouraging.

President Obama's signature healthcare law has to be on the table for cuts as Congress tried to negotiate a deal to avoid the "fiscal cliff," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) wrote in an op-ed.

"We can’t afford it, and we can’t afford to leave it intact," Boehner wrote in the Cincinnati Enquirer. "That’s why I’ve been clear that the law has to stay on the table as both parties discuss ways to solve our nation’s massive debt challenge."

Republicans have already made clear that they hope to go after the law's insurance subsidies in upcoming debt talks. The subsidies represent billions of dollars that will, in 2014, help the uninsured pay for private insurance coverage. But Republicans want to cut into the subsidies to help pay for a fiscal-cliff agreement.

San Francisco Nudists Say A Nudity Ban Would Just Make Them Get Naked Even More

The word "morality" isn't in the vocabulary of these nimrods..

San Francisco nudists said on Monday they would continue to walk the streets naked regardless of a proposed law that would order them to cover up.

City authorities are meeting on Tuesday to decide on a new anti-nudity law that is being supported by residents and business owners in the city's Castro district. The law would make it an offence for anyone over the age of five to "expose his or her genitals, perineum or anal region on any public street, sidewalk, street median, parklet or plaza".

Lloyd Fishbach, left, who was standing naked at the corner of Castro and Market, said it should be his choice to dress as he wants, where he wants.

SICK… Dead Child Used for Terrorist Propaganda Was Killed By Hamas – Not Israel

BASTARDS!

Senior Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Egypt’s Prime Minister Hisham Kandil  touch the body of a Palestinian boy, who was killed in an Israeli air strike, during a visit to a hospital in Gaza today. (Reuters)

Egypt’s Prime Minister wept as he kissed the forehead of a boy killed in an Israeli airstrike on Gaza.

But it was all a lie.

Hamas not only uses their children as human shields (firing rockets from kindergartens), but is, also, using their children’s dead bodies as propaganda…and lying. They claimed that the child in this picture, being held by Egyptian PM Kandil, was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. That’s a lie. He was killed by a Hamas rocket.

Sunday Funny

Thanks RR.

Some Hostess Workers Feel 'Relief' at Losing Jobs

No, this is NOT satire.

Hostess employees in Nash County, North Carolina on Friday were relieved that they would lose their jobs because union workers would not agree to an 8-percent pay cut, which was approved by a bankruptcy judge, and end their strike, which crippled the company's factories across the United States.

Their reactions were surprising, because Nash County has an unemployment rate of 11.1 percent.

Lamont Phillips, an employee, said the company had been, “holding this over our head for a long time,” and he was relieved he did not “have to deal with that anymore.”

“They always hold that over our heads, that they’ll close it down,” he said. “So, I’m like, ‘OK. Close it down.’

Saturday Funny

There Goes 18,000+ More Jobs

Maybe Obama will insist on a bailout.

And that’s that: Hostess Brands, maker of Twinkies, Wonder Bread and more, announced this morning it has filed a motion with bankruptcy court to start liquidating the company immediately. A huge number of jobs are soon to be lost.

“Hostess Brands will move promptly to lay off most of its 18,500-member workforce,” said CEO Gregory F. Rayburn in the statement, “and focus on selling its assets to the highest bidders.”

In a letter posted on a new site set up to communicate with employees and suppliers through the liquidation process, Mr. Rayburn pinned the blame on its striking union:

"Despite everyone’s considerable efforts to move Hostess out of its restructuring, when we began implementing the Company’s last, best and final offer, the Bakers Union chose to stage a crippling strike. This affected Hostess’ ability to continue to make products and service its customers’ needs and pushed Hostess into a Wind Down scenario. As a result, we are forced to proceed with an orderly wind down and sale of our operations and assets. We deeply regret taking this action. But we simply cannot continue to operate without the ability to produce or deliver our products."

Jobless claims take big jump in latest week

After the election......how convenient.

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits leapt to the highest level in four months in the latest week, erasing the large drop reported last week and then some.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that initial claims, a notoriously volatile data point that is subject to large swings due to technical factors, rose a seasonally-adjusted 46,000 to 388,000. The four-week moving average, which smooths out wrinkles in the data, rose 750 to 365,500. Both data points remain below 400,000, suggesting that the labor market is healing, although at a snail's pace.

"Improvement in the labor market will continue to be fitful and slow," said Joseph Trevisani, a market strategist at Worldwide Markets in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey.

Oh, and the BS spin from the MSM concerning this all being about Hurricane Sandy. Don't you believe it:


The highest numbers of new filings came from Pennsylvania and Ohio.

Governor Palin: “Who is running our country?”

Rhetorical question. It's Valerie Jarrett and Sarah Palin knows it.

Who is running our country? We’ve got a CIA Director sharing security info with his mistress using an unsecure gmail account. We’ve got the delusional Susan Rice blaming the death of an ambassador on a Youtube video. We’ve got Iran firing on one of our drones a week before the election. We’ve got the White House either ignorant of or covering up all of this. Who is minding the store? Everywhere we look we see the rank incompetence or corruption of the people who are supposedly running our country and our major institutions. Let’s hope that responsible reporters at Obama’s press conference today ask the right questions Americans deserve answers to.

Here’s my question for the president: As our nation’s chief executive you claim to be unaware of the most important and tragic situations we’re facing; so, as a former chief executive, I’d like to know how long it takes for your staff to tell you things like: “Sir, your CIA Director is under investigation”?

- Sarah Palin

Wednesday Funny

McCain Beats Romney

Hard to believe but there it is.

Brace yourselves, conservatives. What I’m about to say will hurt, and it should hurt -- and I’m not the first to notice. (Kudos to Rush Limbaugh, who noticed and is hitting this point hard.) Mitt Romney lost the 2012 election not so much because he got fewer votes than Barack Obama but because he got fewer votes than John McCain in 2008.

Additional votes are still coming in, but, as of the time of my writing, Romney received around 57.8 million votes in 2012. In 2008, John McCain received 59.9 million. Romney got over 2 million fewer votes than McCain. And in the final count, he will almost certainly have received considerably fewer votes than McCain.

Obama received 60.6 million votes in 2012, almost 9 million less than he received in 2008. If Romney would have had McCain’s vote total, he would have been much closer in the popular vote and might have even had enough to win the Electoral College. Or, better put, if Mitt Romney had secured just a tiny fraction more votes than John McCain -- as we conservatives were certain he would -- he might have won the presidency.

Hostess Brands permanently closing 3 bakeries following employee strike

Don't worry strikers, Obama will take care of you.

IRVING, Texas — Hostess Brands Inc. is permanently closing three bakeries following a nationwide strike by its bakers union.

The Texas-based maker of Twinkies and Ding Dongs says the strike has prevented it from producing and delivering products. Hostess warned earlier this month that the strike, by about 30 percent of its workforce, could lead to bakery closures. It said Monday that it will close bakeries in Seattle, St. Louis and Cincinnati that collectively employ 627 workers. The company has about 18,300 employees.

Election Fraud? Obama Won More Than 99 Percent Of The Vote In More Than 100 Ohio Precincts

I must admit, this does seem suspicious.

Barack Obama received more than 99% of the vote in more than 100 precincts in Cuyahoga County, Ohio on election day. In fact, there were a substantial number of precincts where Mitt Romney got exactly zero votes. So how in the world did this happen? Third world dictators don't even get 99% of the vote. Overall, Mitt Romney received 30.12% of the vote in Cuyahoga County. There were even a bunch of precincts in Cuyahoga County that Romney actually won. But everyone certainly expected that Cuyahoga County would be Obama territory. And in most of the precincts that is exactly what we saw - large numbers of votes for both candidates but a definite edge for Obama.

However, there are more than 100 precincts in Cuyahoga County where the voting results can only be described as truly bizarre. Yes, we always knew that urban areas would lean very heavily toward Obama, but are we actually expected to believe that Obama got over 99% of the votes in those areas? In more than 50 different precincts, Romney received 2 votes or less. Considering how important the swing state of Ohio was to the national election, one would think that such improbable results would get the attention of somebody out there. Could we be looking at evidence of election fraud hidden in plain sight?

Perhaps if there were just one or two precincts where Obama got more than 99% of the vote we could dismiss the results as "statistical anomalies" and ignore them.

But there were more than 100 precincts where this happened in the most important swing state in the nation.

Happy Veterans Day

Sunday Funny

Thanks RR.

This is the Way “Forward” – Gov. Scott Nixes ObamaCare Healthcare Exchanges

Hope this sets a precedent for the rest of the Republican Governors out there.

There’s one path “forward” for Republicans if they’re serious about reclaiming power in the future- do not capitulate to the failed ideas and destructive economic policies that President Barack Obama will assuredly quadruple down on in the wake of his re-election. It’s one thing to win an election by misleading and bribing the masses, but let me be clear, as Obama would say- in no way, shape or form did the president win a national debate on the merits of his policies- and his policies, when they are fully implemented will undoubtedly cost us jobs, raise our taxes and further strain our already cash-strapped state budget.

Governor Rick Scott is showing the way forward if Republicans want credibility as the clear alternative to the statist interventions that Democrats offer, as he’s declined to implement the state health insurance exchanges that were mandated with ObamaCare.

NYC Bans Food Donations To The Homeless

Classic liberal mentality

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s food police have struck again!

Outlawed are food donations to homeless shelters because the city can’t assess their salt, fat and fiber content, reports CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

Glenn Richter arrived at a West Side synagogue on Monday to collect surplus bagels — fresh nutritious bagels — to donate to the poor. However, under a new edict from Bloomberg’s food police he can no longer donate the food to city homeless shelters.

Colorado Counties Have More Voters Than People

Passing voter ID legislation needs to be at the top of Republican initiatives.

A review of voter registration data for ten counties in Colorado details a pattern of voter bloat inflating registration rolls to numbers larger than the total voting age population. Using publicly available voter data and comparing it to U.S. Census records reveals the ten counties having a total registration ranging between 104 to 140 percent of the respective populations.

Counties such as Gilpin and Hinsdale have 110 percent of their populations registered to vote. Gilpin County has a total population of 5,441 with 17.4% of the population below the voting age, making the highest possible number of registered voters 4,494. Currently Gilpin County has 4909 registered voters. Hinsdale County has a total population of 830 with 20% of the population below the voting age, making the highest possible number of registered voters 664. At 110 percent registration, that means that there are 515 excess voter registrations in Gilpin county and 68 excess registrations for Hinsdale.

Puerto Rico wants to become the 51st state of the US

Of course they do. With Obama re-elected they want in on the freebies too.

Voters in Puerto Rico have supported a non-binding referendum to become a full US state.

The measure will require approval from the US Congress, but President Barack Obama has said he will respect the vote.

The island is currently a US territory, which uses the dollar and whose citizens travel on US passports.

But it does not return senators to the US Congress and is represented in Washington by a non-voting delegate.

Almost 80% of the island's electorate took part in the referendum, the fourth in the past 45 years.

Pic of the Day

Captures the sentiment of country loving patriotic Americans precisely.

Quote of the Day

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”

  Alexis de Tocqueville

Kremlin Cheers Obama Election

Simple to understand why....it makes them stronger in the world and us weaker.

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin has sent a congratulatory note to President Obama after his re-election Tuesday, his spokesman said. The Kremlin says it will make the text public after the Americans have received it.

Putin is also expected to call Obama personally “in the near future.”

“In general, the Kremlin took the news about Barack Obama’s victory in the elections very positively,” spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, according to the Interfax news agency.

Election Day 2012

Will post significant info as it becomes available.

UPDATE: THE COUNTRY LOSES.

US employers post fewest job openings in 5 months in September

When pulling that lever today ask yourself ; Do I really want want 4 more years of this?

U.S. employers posted fewer job openings in September after advertising more in August than first estimated.

The Labor Department says job openings dropped by 100,000 to 3.56 million, the fewest in five months. August's openings were revised up to 3.66 million.

Employers also filled fewer of their available positions in September.

Michael Barone's Final Prediction: Romney Beats Obama, Handily

Michael Barone is the Gold Standard when it comes to political analysis. He knows the political landscape right down to the precinct level.

I can't think of anyone I'd rather have making this prediction at this point in time.

Fundamentals usually prevail in American elections. That’s bad news for Barack Obama. True, Americans want to think well of their presidents, and many think it would be bad if Americans were perceived as rejecting the first black president.

But it’s also true that most voters oppose Obama’s major policies and consider the very sluggish economic recovery unsatisfactory — Friday’s job report showed an unemployment uptick.

Also, both national and target-state polls show that independents — voters who don’t identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans — break for Romney.

That might not matter if Democrats outnumbered Republicans by 39 to 32 percent, as they did in the 2008 exit poll. But just about every indicator suggests that Republicans are more enthusiastic about voting — and about their candidate — than they were in 2008, and Democrats are less so.

That’s been apparent in early and absentee voting, where Democrats trail their 2008 numbers in target states Virginia, Ohio, Iowa, and Nevada.

Sunday Reminder

Chart of the Day

So much for Obama's erroneous claim of 5 mil+ jobs created.

Graphic of the Day

Sixty Percent of US Muslims Reject Freedom of Expression

One wonders why they have any desire to be here.

After violent Muslim reactions to the amateurish “Innocence of Muslims” video, which simply depicted a few of the less salutary aspects of Muhammad’s biography, international and domestic Islamic agendas have openly converged with vehement calls for universal application of Islamic blasphemy law. This demand to abrogate Western freedom of expression was reiterated in a parade of speeches by Muslim leaders at the UN General Assembly. The US Muslim community echoed such admonitions, for example during a large demonstration in Dearborn, Michigan, and in a press release by the Islamic Circle of North America.

Now the results of polling data collected by Wenzel Strategies during October 22 to 26, 2012, from 600 US Muslims, indicate widespread support among rank and file American votaries of Islam for this fundamental rejection of freedom expression, as guaranteed under the US Constitution.

When asked, “Do you believe that criticism of Islam or Muhammad should be permitted under the Constitution’s First Amendment?, 58% replied “no,” while only 42% affirmed this most basic manifestation of freedom of speech, i.e., to criticize religious, or any other dogma. Indeed, oblivious to US constitutional law, as opposed to Islam’s Sharia, a largely concordant 45% of respondents agreed “…that those who criticize or parody Islam in the U.S. should face criminal charges,” while 38% did not, and 17% were “unsure”. Moreover, fully 12% of this Muslim sample even admitted they believed in application of the draconian, Sharia-based punishment for the non-existent crime of “blasphemy” in the US code, answering affirmatively, “…that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death.”