The case for Barack Obama

The case for Barack Obama - Why voters should choose the Democratic ticket - So far, 35 of the 72 largest newspapers by circulation have endorsed President Obama's re-election. All but one also endorsed him in 2008. Here are some of the arguments they are making for why voters should choose the Democratic ticket:

President Obama's first term was hardly perfect, argues The Washington Post, but he is still by far the superior choice.

What the editorials said

"Think back," said the Chicago Tribune. As President Obama took office in January 2009, the economy was in free fall. "Employers retrenched. Jobs vanished. Home values plummeted." No leader, least of all a "rookie president," could have foreseen how far we would fall, or how difficult it would be to come back. But Barack Obama, "with quick study and sure gait," has created the conditions for a real recovery. Not just by stimulus spending, but also by cutting payroll taxes on small businesses, creating investment tax credits, and agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts. Now look at where we are: The stock market is up, consumer confidence is returning, and the unemployment rate has fallen steadily from 10 percent at the height of the recession to 7.8 percent today. Yes, Obama has "vast unfinished business" left to do. But he, and not Mitt Romney, is the best candidate to do it.

Obama's pragmatic centrism may have disappointed some liberals, said The New Yorker, but few can deny his "run of ambitious legislative, social, and foreign policy successes." The $767 billion stimulus bill helped "reset the course of the economy." The Dodd-Frank bill tightened regulations on Wall Street, making another crash less likely. And his health-care reform bill did something five Democratic presidents before him failed to do — guarantee universal access to medical care. It is the "single greatest expansion of the social safety net since the advent of Medicare and Medicaid." And on foreign policy, said the Montgomery, Ala., Advertiser, Obama's "calm, analytical style" has helped redefine our relationship with an increasingly complex world. It has also delivered notable successes: the killing of Osama bin Laden, the decimation of al Qaeda's leadership, and the end of our "profoundly mistaken" war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney's campaign for president presents a troubling question, said the Salt Lake Tribune. "Who is this guy, really, and what in the world does he truly believe?" Romney has revealed himself to be a "shameless" chameleon who will "say anything to get elected" — including telling fellow millionaires that 47 percent of Americans are "freeloaders." Voters may not know what Romney really believes, said The New York Times, "but they know the Republican Party, and a Romney administration would reflect its agenda" — turning back the clock for minorities, women, and gays, while imposing "reckless budget cuts" on the government and "30-year-old, discredited trickle-down ideas" on the economy.

Obama's first term was hardly perfect, said The Washington Post. The president can be "both arrogant and thin-skinned," and he has failed to provide leadership on immigration reform and climate change, as he promised. But "economic headwinds" and a Republican Party committed to a "scorched-earth campaign against him" have made his many achievements even more impressive. The president is committed to reducing our crippling deficit "in a balanced way," offering a mix of spending cuts and modest tax increases. Romney, on the other hand, has presented a deceptive economic proposal relying heavily on 20 percent, across-the-board tax cuts "which deny math." Obama is "by far the superior choice." ( TheWeek.com )

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Why Does the White House Always Pardon White Turkeys?

An ancient breed of turkey hangs in a larder in this 1566 century painting by Flemish master Joachim Beuckelaer.

Why Does the White House Always Pardon White Turkeys? - When I was very young I lived in a big house in a small city in a rather rural, impoverished part of Southern Mexico. The house had a substantial flower and vegetable garden and, for a while, a turkey I'd sometimes find somewhere between the patch of sunflowers and the lettuce. Most of the food we ate came from the garden and the market stalls in town and the nearby holdings of Don Gustavo, who milked his cows into a bucket and left it to us to pasteurize on our own. But one of my earliest memories is of the turkey hen who lived in the garden, and the day she flew onto the red-tiled roof of the house and wouldn't come down.

Yes, turkeys are meant to fly.

We think of turkeys as a quintessential North American bird, but like corn they were first domesticated by the indigenous inhabitants of Central and Southern Mexico and Guatemala. Early Spanish explorers brought turkeys back across the Atlantic to Europe, and when the Pilgrims set sail for the new world they brought coops worth of the domesticated Mexican fowl with them from England. It was an accident of history they landed on territory where "ther was great store of wild Turkies," as Gov. William Bradford put it in 1621. Known for a time as the "forest turkey," today we call the type of bird the Pilgrims found the Eastern Wild Turkey.

I think about the first turkey I encountered -- yes, we eventually ate her -- whenever I see the annual turkey pardon at the White House. The sad, flightless, white-feathered American birds held down by men in suits amid the trimmed hedges of the Rose Garden look nothing like the creatures I recall being sold in markets in Mexico. And they bear only a passing resemblance to turkeys in the traditional Thanksgiving illustrations that we all know so well here in the United States.

Above is your iconic North American wild turkey tom, the type of bird you and I drew in elementary school along with men and women in black, buckled shoes. Below, a turkey pardoned Wednesday by President Obama:

 

A Broad Breasted White from the National Turkey Federation, foreground. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)

Unless you have gone out of your way to order and buy a heritage bird, this is the type of turkey you just ate on Thanksgiving: a Broad Breasted White. It is the only turkey breed still widely raised for the market, and it is a troubled creature. Wild turkeys have feathers colored iridescent red, green, copper, and bronze -- colors memorialized in crayon and tempera-paint images on the walls of every elementary school in America each fall. Heritage breeds like the Jersey Buff, the Narragansett, and the Bourbon Red grow feathers in an array of striking patterns and can range from tawny to black. All those shades have been bred away by the turkey industry, because feather buds (the pin feathers) are less noticeable under the skin of a plucked bird if they are white. With short legs and wide breasts -- the better to serve up white meat -- Broad Breasted White turkeys do not fly and can't even reproduce on their own.

As the New York Times described it in 2001:

After years of selective breeding, only one breed of turkey, the aptly named Broadbreasted White, remains in large-scale production in the United States. For about 30 years, it has been the breeding stock owned by the three major companies, Hybrid Turkeys of Ontario, Canada; British United Turkeys of America in Lewisburg, W. Va.; and Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms, Sonoma, Calif. A blowzy specimen with short stubby legs, its disproportionate supply of white meat has come at the expense of taste and texture. It's stupid to boot.

The joke about turkeys drowning in the rain may actually have some basis in fact. Glenn Drowns, secretary-treasurer of the Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities, and owner of the Sand Hill Preservation Center in Calamus, Iowa, a preservation farm, is infuriated by the degradation of the turkey. ''The commercial guys say they have to keep the turkeys in buildings because they'd drown in the rain,'' he said. ''It makes my blood pressure boil. Next year I'm going to raise some of them to see if they are that far gone.''

Because most Americans aren't old enough to have eaten the old-fashioned turkey, they have no idea what they are missing. The rest of us just forgot over the years, lulled into thinking that new is improved. Tasting the four heritage turkeys against two Broadbreasted Whites, one of which was free range, reminded me why the Thanksgiving turkey was so eagerly looked forward to 50 years ago, and why, today, cooks have had to dream up dozens of ways of making it taste better.

The common ancestor for all heritage breeds is the wild turkey, native to these shores. Wild turkeys went from Central America to Europe with the first explorers. Then they were imported to North America by English settlers as the black Spanish turkey, which was bred with the wild North American turkey. The Standard Bronze was the result and the other breeds followed: the Narragansett from Narragansett Bay in Rhode Island; the Bourbon from Bourbon County, Ky., and the Jersey Buff from New Jersey.

Fifty years ago, when Americans were still eating turkeys raised nearby, there were millions of those birds....

Today, their flocks number in the thousands. The White House pardons white turkeys because that's what the National Turkey Federation sends over. A nonprofit, NTF is "the national advocate for all segments of the turkey industry"; its president was registered as a lobbyist in 2012. It began sending the White House a turkey each year before Thanksgiving during the Truman administration. Presidents ultimately chose not to eat their gift, though the "pardoning" of the bird only formally began in 1989, during the administration of George H.W. Bush. (See also "The Definitive History of the Presidential Turkey Pardon," courtesy of the White House.) Since then all the pardoned turkeys have been white, according to the photographic record.

"We just pardon who they send us," an administration official explained.

The NTF sends the White House the only breed their members raise. "The turkeys that are pardoned and the ones that are raised for consumption are almost exclusively white breasted. That is the breed that growers have found have the most white meat, which is what Americans prefer," said Kimmon Williams, a spokesperson for the National Turkey Federation.

"True wild turkeys aren't grown too much for consumption because they are a smaller bird," she added. "None of our members produce wild turkeys and I'm not entirely sure what companies do."

Heritage birds are represented by a different group, the Heritage Turkey Foundation, while wild birds find advocates at the National Wild Turkey Federation, which works with sportsmen on conservation issues. (Apparently "Turkey hunting is the hand-knit doily of the hunting genres. Arcane, involved, complex, and to outsiders, never worth the trouble," according to a recent article in Garden and Gun. Who knew.) The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy works to preserve heritage turkey breeds, as does the Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities. 

Some think the goofy Washington tradition of the president pardoning a turkey has passed its prime. "Of all the indignities a president must endure, officiating at the annual turkey pardon is perhaps the most unbecoming," wrote Joe Heim midweek in the Washington Post, calling the practice "unforgivably silly" and something "no president should intentionally subject himself -- or the country -- to."

But like so many other practices Washington interest groups have managed to get the government to sign on to, it seems unlikely the president will be able to get rid of the turkey receiving and pardoning ceremony without a minor uproar. Besides, people love silly White House traditions precisely because they are so incongruous, providing light-hearted photos of the most powerful man in the world.

Given the Obamas' concern with food sourcing and healthy eating, though, it might be time to diversify the turkey-pardon pool. Some of those heritage breeds are gorgeous birds, and the cause of preserving them is certainly as worthwhile as the annual event with Big Turkey's trade association. Heck, it might even make for a better photo. At the very least, it would turn an annual bit of White House silliness in an opportunity to raise awareness about a tiny sliver of American agricultural heritage, and provoke thinking about its future. ( theatlantic.com )

 

A flock of heritage turkey breeds. (Porterturkeys.com)

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Fewer seek US jobless aid as storm distorts data

Fewer seek US jobless aid as storm distorts data — The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment aid remained elevated for a second straight week because Superstorm Sandy forced many people to seek temporary benefits.

The Labor Department said Wednesday that first-time applications for benefits fell by 41,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 410,000. That offset only part of the previous week's surge.

Associated Press/Mike Groll - In this Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012, photo, Angela Winters of Schenectady, N.Y., center, talks to a recruiter during a job fair at the Marriott Hotel on ,in Colonie, N.Y. The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment aid remained elevated for a second straight week because Superstorm Sandy forced many people to seek temporary benefits. The Labor Department said Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2012, that first-time applications for benefits fell by 41,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 410,000. That offset only part of the previous week's surge.(AP Photo/Mike Groll)

Two weeks ago, the storm drove applications up by 90,000 to 451,000, an 18-month high. Nearly 44,000 people in New York and 31,000 in New Jersey applied for benefits that week, according to the latest state data available. People in Pennsylvania and Connecticut also sought benefits because of the storm.

Workers can claim unemployment benefits if their employers are forced to close and they aren't paid. Sandy could keep applications higher for another week, department officials say.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose by 9,500 to 396,250.

Before the storm, weekly applications had fluctuated this year between 360,000 and 390,000. At the same time, employers added an average of nearly 157,000 jobs a month. That's barely enough to lower the unemployment rate, which was 7.9 percent in October.

The storm should also slow job growth in November, economists said. That's because the government calculates monthly job gains by subtracting layoffs and people who quit from overall hiring. In addition to the temporary increase in layoffs, some companies probably delayed hiring because of the storm.

Joseph LaVorgna, an economist at Deutsche Bank, said that net job gains could fall to 25,000 this month from 171,000 in October. But employment should rebound after the impact of the storm passes. Rebuilding efforts after the storm could even create some jobs.

"If there is any good news in this extremely tragic event it is that the longer term impacts on the labor market in particular and the economy in general are negligible," he said.

There are some signs the job market is improving. Hiring picked up in October and was stronger than first estimated in August and September, the department said earlier this month. The economy gained an average of 174,000 jobs a month in the July-September quarter. That's up from 67,000 a month in April through June.

The unemployment rate rose slightly in October because more Americans began looking for work. That suggests some felt their chances of finding a job had improved. Not all of them were hired, which pushed up the unemployment rate. The government only counts people as unemployed if they are actively searching for work.

The number of people receiving unemployment aid jumped by about 244,000 to 5.2 million in the week ended Nov. 3, the latest data available. That's up from fewer than 5 million the previous week, and likely reflects more people joining the rolls after Superstorm Sandy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a speech Tuesday that despite some improvement, the job market is still weak. According to minutes of the Fed's last policy meeting, the central bank may unveil a bond buying program in December to drive down long-term interest rates and boost growth and hiring.

One bright spot for the economy is the steady housing recovery. Economists hope that it could lead to more hiring. Homebuilders broke ground last month on the most new homes and apartments in more than four years. Builders' confidence increased this month to its highest level in 6½ years.

Sales of previously occupied homes have risen nearly 11 percent in the past year. And home prices are also increasing steadily, which makes homeowners feel wealthier and could encourage them to spend more.

The economy is expanding at a modest pace. Many economists now predict growth at an annual rate of roughly 3 percent in the July-September quarter, up from the initial estimate of 2 percent reported last month. The government releases its second estimate for third-quarter growth on Nov. 29.

Still, many economists say the economy is growing in the current October-December quarter at an annual rate below 2 percent — too slow to make much of a dent in unemployment. ( Associated Press )

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