Meaning “Not to good” for the Messiah’s chances here, despite the State’s hosting of the DNC Convention. Perhaps the DNC Convention should be re-termed the D&C Convention, which refers to a medical procedure called dilatation & curettage.

It’s a procedure in which a woman’s womb is essentially scraped free of all the detritus, so that it can return to functioning normally…which, at this point, seems to be a most apt comparison, in myriad ways, to today’s abnormally bizarre Democratic Party……

News and Observer
By John Murawski
North Carolina’s unemployment rate remained flat in May, even as the state is bleeding jobs at a disturbing rate.

The 9.4 percent jobless rate is North Carolina’s lowest in nearly 3 1/2 years.

But the state lost 16,500 jobs in May, the third consecutive month of job losses.

May’s decline puts North Carolina in negative territory for annual job creation, with a cumulative loss of 15,100 jobs in the first five months of 2012.

“It definitely indicates a slowing of the labor market,” said N.C. State University economist Michael Walden. “We’re in a worldwide economic slowdown.”

Economists had been projecting healthy job gains but are having second thoughts and beginning to revise their estimates.

Walden had projected North Carolina would gain between 60,000 and 75,000 jobs in 2012. He has since scaled back his expectations to a gain of 40,000 to 55,000 jobs.

Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner in Charlotte said the European financial crisis is a drag on the global market, including North Carolina’s economy.

If the state doesn’t gain much more than 40,000 jobs this year, Vitner said, the jobless rate could creep back up.

The U.S. jobless rate has already reversed direction, rising to 8.2 percent in May from 8.1 percent in April.

North Carolina lost thousands of jobs in May in multiple categories, including 7,000 jobs in professional and business services and 4,800 jobs in construction.

The biggest monthly gain was 1,900 jobs in trade, transportation and utilities.

Vitner said the monthly figures could turn out more positive when they are revised next year. Revisions tend to improve the numbers.

But Walden said some fear a worldwide economic recession.

“This is an indication of the fact that the recession we’ve been through was more devastating than any of us had expected,” Walden said.