Clear as a bell this morning on California’s northern coast, a bright moon lighting the western sky and the air so clean I can hear the sound of the Pacific washing ashore a couple miles away.

Labor Day reportedly this is, but there’s not much labor going on.
And the Newt is happy: I think the biggest event won’t be his speech Thursday. It’ll be the Friday morning jobs report. If that Friday morning jobs report is bad, it’ll drown his speech. You want to talk about Eastwood? Friday morning jobs report is a lot bigger event next week than Eastwood was this week.
You betcha!

And cranking up any kind of optimism is way-laborious.

(Illustration found here).

Gingrich was ass-blustering about the horror of his own RNC last week and the Democrats own lovefest, which begins tomorrow in Charlotte, NC, also called the Queen City by state residents, and how employment will affect/effect the election — odds are even.
One of the most-mind-blowing reports (are US peoples deaf, dumb and blind?) from Reuters:

Democratic President Barack Obama regained a narrow lead on Saturday by 44 percent to 43 percent over his Republican challenger, former Massachusetts Governor Romney, in the latest daily installment of the four-day rolling poll.
…
The two candidates also emerged neck-in-neck in the question of who “has the right values,” with Romney at 38 percent and Obama at 39 percent.
On Monday, Obama led in this category by nine points with 43 percent.

Mitt didn’t bounce much from the RNC’s neurotic laughfest, but despite all the lying and bullshit pouring from Tampa — not withstanding Clint Eastwood’s soliloquy with an empty chair — a huge chunk of Americans aren’t really paying much attention.
Our MSM is much to blame, although a goodly number of them are starting to push back at all the lying coming from Republicans (even bullshitting on long-distance running) and maybe if there’s an outbreak of journalistic integrity some voters might sit up and take notice.
Even with Obama being the most-disappointing president in US history — natural to follow the way-worse president in US history — the average Joe on the street should have enough sense to realize that although Democrats are fairly spineless and are under-achievers, the bombast and pathological, lying nonsensical blubber that’s coming from GOP pie holes should sway hearts and mind.
You’d figure.

And what about that jobs report the Newt was spewing hardy about?
Forecasts aren’t filled with happiness:

Yet the odds of a big change in the employment picture are slim.
Despite an uptick in hiring in July, economists predict the U.S. will continue to add jobs at a modest rate that’s disappointing by historical standards.
In August, economists surveyed by MarketWatch forecast the U.S. added 120,000 jobs, down from an initial estimate of 163,000 in the prior month.
…
“We should remain in recovery mode, but it won’t be especially strong,” said Scott Brown, chief economist of financial-advisory firm Raymond James.
“We have a lot of ground to make up in the labor market.”

Jobs are indeed hard to come by and as we wake up this holiday morning, there’s not much love amongst employers, either.
The problem beyond just getting a dang job, but it’s wages, too.
From the Washington Post on Friday:

The United States lost about 8.1 million jobs after the recession began in late 2007. The economy has since recovered about 3.3 million of those jobs, starting in early 2010. That, in itself, should alarm policymakers. The labor market is still in a deep, deep hole.
But in some respects, the situation is even bleaker than that. The types of jobs that have come back so far don’t seem to be paying as well as those that were lost.
A new report (pdf) from the National Employment Law Project finds that low-wage jobs, paying $13.83 per hour or less, have dominated the recovery to date. In many cases, they appear to be replacing higher-paying jobs that were lost in the first place.
The NELP report finds that mid-wage jobs, paying between $13.83 and $21.13 per hour, made up about 60 percent of the jobs lost during the recession. But those mid-wage jobs have made up just 27 percent of the jobs gained during the recovery to date.
…
What’s more, the report notes, if this trend continues, it’s likely to exacerbate income inequality in the United States. Over the past decade, high-wage and low-wage jobs have been growing at a decent clip. But that middle rung continues to get hollowed out. Mid-wage jobs took a big hit after the 2001 recession, largely stagnated during the 2000s, and they’ve now declined even further in the most recent crisis. (See this graph for a look at the historical trend.)
“In short,” the report notes, “America’s good jobs deficit continues. Policymakers have understandably been focused on the urgent goal of getting U.S. employment back to where it was before the recession (we are still missing nearly 10 million jobs), but our findings underscore that job quality is rapidly emerging as a second front in the struggling recovery.”

As the saying doth go — let them eat cake with their meatless hotdogs.
Happy Labor Day!