Reads (2-23-2010)

Hooray! Mississippi decides to join the rest of us in the 21st Century

Notes on a difficult employment outlook –  Hussman Funds

Outlook for employment:

On the other hand, several aspects of the employment picture concern me quite a bit. First and foremost, the unemployment rate is reported as the ratio of individuals who are unemployed and actively seeking work (thereby still being counted as being in the labor force) divided by the labor force itself. The difficulty is that we have seen an unprecedented exodus of discouraged workers from the U.S. labor force over the past two years, which has the result of sharply understating the extent of the unemployment problem. Had labor force participation remained at the same level as it was in 2000, the unemployment rate today would be nearly 3 percentage points higher than is currently reported. Instead, mostly over the past 18 months, the U.S. labor participation rate has retreated to a level we haven’t seen in a quarter century. Moreover, the share of employed individuals who are employed full time has also dropped by 3 percentage points, resulting in a significant contraction of employment activity. Even this would not be a difficulty had we not also vastly expanded the debt burden on the average family since then. Unfortunately, the high debt burdens and weak employment conditions cannot coexist without producing credit strains. Simply put, current employment levels are incongruous with servicing existing levels of household debt.

Who’s Really In Control of the White House? Maybe Not Obama – Alternet

No. Who’s on first!

It began reemerging in September with Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s Afghan escalation plan. McChrystal didn’t just ask President Obama for more troops — protocol-wise, that would have been completely appropriate. No, McChrystal went rogue, preemptively leaking his request to the media, then delivering a public address telling Obama to immediately follow his orders.

Odierno: US Could Slow Exit From Iraq – Antiwar.com

Apparently, who’s on second thoughts as well…

One of Gen. Odierno’s top subordinates, Brigadier General Kevin Mangum said only days ago that the “biggest concern” officials have is not the rising violence ahead of the Iraq election, but the prospect of rising violence after the election. Though levels of violence has jumped all over the place in Iraq in recent months, the trend in sectarian tensions is decidedly toward more, a tailor-made excuse for stalling the pullout.

Ron Paul! – Antiwar.com

The followers of Ron Paul can’t stop slapping themselves on the back. Here Justin Raimondo takes on the NeoCons, Palin, the wars, and Beck:

A rebellion among conservatives has long been brewing, and the CPAC convention represents the first skirmish in a civil war on the right, a war that is essentially over foreign policy. The Paul movement is well-organized, activist-oriented, and well-funded: more importantly, it has a well-grounded ideology, one that offers an alternative to the brain-dead neoconservatism of Republican party hacks and third-rate politicians like Rudy Giuliani – whose single delegate to the 2008 Republican convention fairly represents the strength of the Rabinowitz wing of the conservative movement.