The Golden Report

JUST IN: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to bring a veterans tax break bill to the floor for a vote on or close to Veterans Day, the latest component of the President’s proposed American Jobs Act to be considered in a piece-meal approach. In doing so, Reid is all but daring Republicans to vote against a popular tax break on a symbolic holiday. Today, the Senate failed to reach 60 votes to cut off debate on a transportation and infrastructure bill, one day after President Obama went to Washington’s Key Bridge to urge its passage.

TOP STORY: Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou appeared to walk back today on his proposal earlier this week to put the EU-brokered financial rescue package for his country up for a vote by popular referendum. Tomorrow, Papandreou faces a vote of no confidence in the Greek Parliament and it is not clear if he and his ruling political party will survive the vote. This comes as leaders of the G-20 nations are meeting this week in Cannes, France to discuss the proposal and its effects, should it pass or fail.

TOMORROW MORNING: The Labor Department releases its monthly employment report which will show the jobs situation for the month of October. Bloomberg is predicting that 95,000 jobs were added last month and the unemployment rate is expected to be unchanged at 9.1%. The numbers are released at 8:30am EST.

WALL STREET:

• DOW up 208
• NASDAQ up 58
• S&P 500 up 23

STILL IN THE DARK: As of this hour, 318,212 customers in Connecticut remain without power after Saturday’s historic and unusual snow storm. Tonight, the Connecticut National Guard has been dispatched to some areas of the hard-hit Farmington Valley. Many school districts have been closed for the entire week. Connecticut Light & Power, the state’s primary utility company, predicts that all customers will have power restored by Sunday night.

TOP POLITICAL STORY: the developing scandal over allegations of sexual harassment by Republican frontrunner Herman Cain. The story has taken a number of new developments: with now three accusers coming forward, at least one asking permission from the National Restaurant Association to go public with her story and an accusation by the Cain campaign that a staffer with the Rick Perry campaign reportedly leaked this story to POLITICO. In an interview with CNN tonight, Perry strongly denied that, saying, “You know, I don’t know how to tell it any other way except we knew nothing about it.”

SO FAR, Cain is holding his own against a growing media firestorm. But as each day goes by, more and more details are coming out that, when compared against Cain’s prior statements, and the statements that he has made this week, don’t appear to add up. The biggest unknown right now is what kind of damage this story may have in the eyes of Cain’s supporters. However, his campaign reported this week that they have been raising on average of $1 million a day, a sign that Cain’s base of support may not be weakened- but rather emboldened- by this controversy. And with Rick Perry being drawn into the story, the Romney campaign is having a very good week. Although their candidate is not attracting any media attention, he also isn’t attracting any scrutiny while his chief obstacle (at the moment) for frontrunner status is fighting hard to get his campaign back on track.

THE NEXT DEBATE is Wednesday night in Rochester, Michigan. Its focus is slated to be jobs and the economy, although it is hard to see at this point how the Cain scandal could not be brought up.

RASMUSSEN POLL out today:

• Cain 26%
• Romney 23%
• Gingrich 14%
• Perry 8%
• Paul 7%
• Bachmann 2%
• Huntsman 2%
• Santorum 1%

QUINNIPIAC POLL out Wednesday:

• Cain 30%
• Romney 23%
• Gingrich 10%
• Perry 8%
• Paul 7%
• Bachmann 4%
• Huntsman 2%
• Santorum 1%

FINALLY..SERIOUSLY…”Siri” the voice activated network on Apple’s new iPhone 4S, encountered a major glitch today resulting in its first outage. According to TechCrunch, which is compiling some of the best tweets from users experiencing the problem, “When you try to use Siri on the iPhone 4S right now, the usually perky virtual assistant just responds: “Sorry, I am having trouble connecting to the network” and does nothing.”

FRIDAY’S EARLY EDITION

TOP STORY: The Labor Department released the September Employment Report this morning, which showed the national unemployment rate remained steady last month, at 9.1%, while non-farm payroll increased by 103,000 jobs. This includes the approximately 45,000 workers at Verizon who returned to their jobs after a prolonged strike this summer. Meanwhile, employment figures for both July and August were revised upwards. Other highlights of the report:

There are approximately 14 million unemployed persons- a number essentially unchanged from last month [increases in jobs were due to increases in the labor market], 44.6% of whom have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer

Since April, payroll employment has increased by an average of 72,000 per month, compared with an average of 161,000 for the prior 7 months.

Local government employment declined by 35,000 and has fallen by 535,000 since September 2008. 5,000 US Postal Service workers were laid off

WALL STREET broke a 3-day winning streak and was positive for most of the session before falling at the end of the trading day

• DOW down 20 to 11,103
• NASDAQ down 27 to 2,479
• S&P 500 down 9 to 1,155

FOR THE WEEK, the Dow was up 1.7%, NASDAQ up 2.6% and S&P 500 up 2.1%

STATEMENT OF THE PRESIDENT on the 10-year anniversary of the War in Afghanistan- in part, “As we mark a decade of sacrifice, Michelle and I join all Americans in saluting the more than half a million men and women who have served bravely in Afghanistan to keep our country safe, including our resilient wounded warriors who carry the scars of war, seen and unseen.  We honor the memory of the nearly 1,800 American patriots, and many coalition and Afghan partners, who have made the ultimate sacrifice in Afghanistan for our shared security and freedom.

Thanks to the extraordinary service of these Americans, our citizens are safer and our nation is more secure.  In delivering justice to Osama bin Laden and many other al Qaeda leaders, we are closer than ever to defeating al Qaeda and its murderous network.

As the rest of our troops come home from Iraq this year, we have begun to draw down our forces in Afghanistan and transition security to the Afghan people, with whom we will forge an enduring partnership.  As our sons and daughters come home to their families, we will uphold our sacred trust with our 9/11 Generation veterans and work to provide the care, benefits and opportunities they deserve.”

2012:

In South Carolina today, Republican presidential candidate MITT ROMNEY delivered a sharp rebuke to the Obama Administration’s foreign policy in a major address at The Citadel. “In an American Century, America has the strongest economy and the strongest military in the world. In an American Century, America leads the free world and the free world leads the entire world,” he said. 

The key line: “I will not surrender America’s role in the world. This is very simple: If you do not want America to be the strongest nation on Earth, I am not your president. You have that president today.”

CNN is reporting that sources inside the Iowa Republican Party confirm that the date for the 2012 Iowa Caucus will be Tuesday January 02. Although that has not yet been officially announced, the remaining process is being described as a “formality.” That would leave New Hampshire as the only early state to not yet announce its primary date. 

If Iowa goes on the 2nd, it is widely expected that New Hampshire will go one week later, on Tuesday January 10th. That would be followed by Nevada four days later on Saturday January 14th and South Carolina a week after that on Saturday January 21st. Then, ten days later, the Florida Primary on Tuesday January 31st. In February, expect to see primaries in Missouri, Michigan and Arizona. 

Tuesday is the next Republican Presidential Candidates Debate, sponsored by the Washington Post and Bloomberg and presented by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. It will air live on Bloomberg television and be streamed online beginning at 8pm Tuesday evening from Hanover, New Hampshire. The following week, Tuesday October 18th, is another GOP debate- this one sponsored by CNN and the Nevada Republican Party, from Las Vegas. 

GALLUP released a disastrous job approval rating for President Obama today: 38%, with a 53% disapproval. A Rasmussen poll today put the President’s job approval at 42% with a 57% disapproval. The current Real Clear Politics is 42.3% approve, 51.8% disapprove.  

The 2011 NOBEL PEACE PRIZE was awarded to three women’s rights activists today. The Nobel Committee announced early this morning that Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Liberian Leymah Gbowee and Tawakul Karman of Yemen would be recognized for their “non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”

From BBC News, “The women will share the $1.5m prize money…the Nobel Peace Prize originally recognized those who had already achieved peace, but that its scope has broadened in recent years to encourage those working towards peace and acknowledge work in progress….The Nobel committee received a record 241 nominations for this year’s prize - among the individuals and groups believed to have been put forward were the European Union, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and key cyber dissidents in the Arab Spring movement.”

RECENT WINNERS of the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE:

2010 - Liu Xiaobo - Chinese dissident lawyer

2009 - US President Barack Obama

2008 - Martti Ahtisaari, former Finnish president

2007 - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), former US vice-president and environmental campaigner Al Gore

2006 - Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank

2005 - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and its president, Mohamed El Baradei

HOW WE DID: In Sunday’s THE EVENING REPORT, we highlighted three stories to watch in the week ahead. Here’s how they played out:

1/ 2012 & Chris Christie. We said that this week would be the final deadline for the New Jersey Governor to decide whether or not he would enter the 2012 race and, indeed, he decided, announcing on Tuesday that he would not be a candidate. One day later, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin announced that she, also, would not seek the nomination, all but sealing up the 2012 Republican field, now within the 90-day mark of the Iowa Caucuses.

2/ Congress & Chinese Currency Legislation. With Congress back in town, we highlighted the Senate’s consideration of a controversial (but, strangely, bi-partisan) piece of legislation to tighter control of the Chinese currency. What we didn’t know was that this legislation would become a lightning rod for some of the most partisan legislative tactics we’ve seen in years. Last night, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid invoked a version of the so-called “nuclear option” and changed the Senate rules to prohibit further amendment after a cloture motion had been successfully adopted on the legislation. With the Senate adjourned for the holiday weekend (and Senate Democratic leaders huddled at The White House for several hours this morning with the President and Vice-President), watch to see how this issue is resolved beginning on Tuesday.

3/ The Economy. An easy topic to watch, and one that will remain on our list for many months. Today’s better-than-expected employment report looked like it would propel the markets to a four-day winning streak, but momentum was lost towards the end of the day on continued anxiety from Europe looking ahead to another series of pivotal meetings of European finance ministers this weekend.

FINALLY…the Justice Department will release the transcript of former President Richard Nixon’s testimony to a grand jury investigating the Watergate scandal, POLITICO reports. “The release of Nixon’s testimony, set for November 10 at the Archives in Washington and at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., comes after the Justice Department decided not to appeal a judge’s ruling in July that the materials should be made public. Nixon’s testimony took place on June 23 and 24, 1975, nearly a year after he resigned. The sessions spanned 11 hours and were conducted near his home in San Clemente, Calif. The grand jury was based in Washington, so the foreman and one other member traveled to California to join prosecutors at the session”

In honor of the Columbus Day holiday, THE EVENING REPORT will next publish on Monday October 10. 

Gmar Chatimah Tova!