Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The revolution will be supervised.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Infrastructure week. at last.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

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Reader Interactions

55Comments

  1. 1.

    Tommybones

    How many people failed to claim for unemployment because they ran out of eligible weeks, I wonder…

  5. 5.

    Schlemizel

    STOP IT! Stop it now! Stop trying to convince me there is no need to worry over this falls election! 8-{D

    A rebounding economy (no matter how weakly) and a Willard/Frothy GOP? Its like He lifted a noodley appendage and dropped a great big ol meatball of love on me!

  12. 12.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @kay:

    Which demonstrates to people not directly employed in the auto industry just how important the auto industry is to their livelihoods.

  15. 15.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    Cue Fox and Friends: “Some people say GM is making those profit numbers up through questionable accounting as political payback for Obama’s bailout plan.”

  16. 16.

    rikryah

    Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive.

    should be on t-shirts, bumper stickers and mugs available for purchase from the Obama campaign.

  17. 17.

    Mark B

    This kind of news is why the Republicans are doubling down on culture wars. It’s all they have left.

  20. 20.

    geg6

    @rikryah:

    Yup. It’s been my mantra with people who I encounter and politics comes up in the convo. Shuts a lot of them up pretty quick. Short and to the point. Liberals generally do a terrible job with short and catchy tag lines that people can remember and contain a larger truth. Our messaging always seems to be too wonky. “Osama Bin Laden is dead and GM is alive” is just perfect. Perfect. And wasn’t that line thought up by my deceased mom’s boyfriend, VP Biden?

  21. 21.

    kay

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    just how important the auto industry is to their livelihoods.

    Which they should know, because they’re (allegedly) “businesspeople” :)

    It is the top story on the Toledo Blade site, with the 7,000 bonus checks prominently featured, however, so I won’t whine.

  23. 23.

    rlrr

    Unemployment claims are down for the fifth week in a row. And GM just recorded a record profit.

    Romney and Santorum have a sad.

  24. 24.

    Linda Featheringill

    @Schlemizel: #5

    A rebounding economy (no matter how weakly) and a Willard/Frothy GOP? Its like He lifted a noodley appendage and dropped a great big ol meatball of love on me!

    It is wonderful, isn’t it?

    I’m dreaming about taking back congress. We need to gain 25 [I think] representatives and 7 senators.

    DCCC has targeted 36 seats to flip from red to blue. That would be a big job but not impossible. The senate? I’m not sure about that.

  25. 25.

    Waynski

    @butler:

    I wouldn’t bet my life on it but I’m pretty sure. That number almost always refers to first time claims.

    That’s my understanding too.

  26. 26.

    rlrr

    @redshirt:

    I heard everyone in the GM Union is getting a rather large profit sharing check. Great timing!

    That’s just the kind of union thuggery Romney wants to protect us from.

  29. 29.

    lord karnage

    @butler:

    that’s incorrect, but your impression is likely the result of mis-reporting by the wire services. they are best understood as claims following a separation from employment, in large part because that is how they are used: as a proxy for the pace of layoffs. some industries and occupations routinely furlough their employees. if you had been working, and now are out of work through no fault of your own, you need to file a claim to either get benefits or re-access the benefits you established earlier.

  30. 30.

    dslak

    “Fox and Friends” also tried to connect high gas prices to Obama. They’re behind the curve, though: I knew that he was to blame yesterday.

  31. 31.

    russ

    GM trades in pension plan for 401k plan for salaried workers and profits in the car business are not the same as making money. “On paper” profits in most cases yield “some” cash.

  33. 33.

    Cermet

    1. To throw cold water on good news – In Salon, they have major Israel Defense people saying Israel will most likily attack Iran’s uranium processing plants in April or May 2012.
    If they do, then the Persian Gulf will then be closed for weeks if not months by Iran. They’ll stop all their production/export, and due to the closure – Iraq and the Saudi’s will lose their biggest export harbors (and these could get hit by heavy missile strikes – oh, boy.)
    Oil at $200/barrel would be lucky – the spike could easily go far higher; gas lines and economic free fall for the West. Kiss all economic recovery good bye for a year or more. Obama would be one term (Surely the Israel number one goal, and the nuke bombing would be a distant number two.)
    Of course, this would never stop Iran from developing nuclear processing for fuel(a delay of a year or two at best) but damn will get them motivated to go full nuclear weapon development.
    I get the feeling these right wing fuckers in Israel will never be happy until they destroy all democrats and install a rightwing gov in the US; I think we will soon learn if Israel is really our number one enemy in the world … great.
    Could we please shoot down the fucking Israel jets if they try doing something this stupid? Besides, Iran will strike back at them as well and all Arabs will really, really get pissed at them (and of course, us.)
    So much for all the $$$ and amerikan lives lost in Iraq for oil we will never see again for years if this all comes to pass … damn, I sure hope they are just trying to scare Iran into an agreement …

  34. 34.

    Ken

    @rlrr: Well obviously. All that those autoworkers are going to do is spend the money on food and clothing and mortgage payments. If it instead went into one of Romney’s offshore bank accounts er, I mean were paid as dividends to the job creators, they would invest it in T-bills, oil futures, and credit default swaps.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    @Mark B:
    This. It’s a reason why models like Nate Silver’s probably underestimate the importance of the economy to the election. If the economy keeps improving, it will remove the one serious Republican argument for dumping Obama and force them to find something else. That hurts them two ways, by making Obama look good on the economy and them look bad to everyone except the 27%ers.

  37. 37.

    marcopolo

    So nice to be part owner (the US still owns roughly 26% of GM) of a successful company! Not sure what stock price the gov’t is looking for to sell but these kind of operating results will help it get there.

  39. 39.

    Schlemizel

    @Cermet:
    Gawdamn I hope you are wrong. Not just for the selfish reasons of the harm that would come to my country over this but because of the whirlwind this would reap around the world. Its not impossible to imagine millions of dead and 10s of millions suffering greatly just from the initial ripples.

    Makes me wish there was a great hairy thunderer in the sky so that prayers might prevent this.

  43. 43.

    Cermet

    @sock puppet: Never said that it would be a “catastroph” but oil would shoot up to $200+ no matter and Iran could use missiles to strike the Saudi’s oil ports AND hit ships in the passage causing major shipping problems. (I agree the Iranians could never keep the passage closed for any length of time.) With Europe in deep trouble, we just climbing out of trouble (slowly)economies would be hit really hard. Would hope you are correct but the price of oil is now climbing as demand has steadily decreased!

  44. 44.

    butler

    @lord karnage: So then these aren’t the total number of people on UI but the number who are either starting or re-starting their claims in a given week, correct?

  45. 45.

    Triassic Sands

    Unemployment claims are down for the fifth week in a row. And GM just recorded a record profit.

    Yeah, but things would be way better if a) we’d refused extended unemployment benefits to all those lazy parasites who don’t want to work and b)let GM and Chrysler fail.

    In fact, if we’d done that, AND terminated Obamacare, we’d have annual GDP growth of 15-20% and everyone would have health insurance.

    OK, maybe I’m being a bit over-optimistic. Of course, we would have needed to have tort reform as well. Oh, and drug testing the poor would also help. (Not onlybecause doing so would have resulted directly in economic gain, but because our whole society absolutely thrives on humiliating people, especially the poor.) It’s just crazy to continue to allow poor people to pay for heroin and vacations in Bora Bora with their Food Stamps.

  48. 48.

    Interrobang

    Half a loaf, I suppose. Given that GM is a serial antitrust violator and completely dedicated to wrecking things to get its way, it’s long since time someone took it out back of the barn and shot it in the head. At the very least, it should be dismantled and turned back into the remains of the hundreds of companies it has absorbed since 1909.

    Pretty much any company with the word “General” in the name was founded explicitly to be a Gilded Age-style trust, with all that implies. I don’t want to live in a world dominated by a bunch of Generals, why should you?

  49. 49.

    lord karnage

    @butler:

    butler, good question. initial claims are eligibility determinations. think: i am out of work and i want to know if am i eligible to receive benefits. people who lose their jobs would file to see if they were eligible for some sort of benefit. hence this serves as a proxy for separations from employment.

    if you want a proxy for the number of people on UI, you would want to look at continuing claims in all programs. you can see a time series of that data here:
    http://ows.doleta.gov/unemploy/docs/persons.xls

    note that this isn’t exactly the same as people receiving benefits but it’s pretty close.

  50. 50.

    feebog

    I don’t know why I did this, but yesterday I went to the Hot Air blog (Michelle Malkin’s site). One of the storys was by Ed Morrisy examining a recent Gallup economic poll. And Ed found (insert hand wringing here) that only 15% of the small business owners surveyed had recently hired new workers. Which means that 85% had not hired anyone and that of course means everthing Obama has done in the last three years has been a failure.

    Morrisy also cites the fact that uncertainty and worries about health care costs were reasons that large pluralities among those 85% did not hire.

    So I linked to the Gallup Poll itself and read it. You would be surprised, shocked even to learn that Mr. Morrisy “forgot” to cite part of the Gallup article. The part where it said that the economic confidence level was at its highest in four years. Of course that narrative would destroy the whole point of Morrisy’s article, so leaving it out was essential.

    The economy is coming back. For every 1,000 workers hired, governement saves 20 million per annum in unemployment and food stamps, while collecting between 5 and 10 million in taxes. Do the math, we can climb out of this.

  51. 51.

    magurakurin

    @Tommybones: do you really wonder? Or do you honestly believe that no one at the Department of Labor ever thought about that possibility before?

    http://www.cnbc.com/id/46411223

    Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 13,000 to a seasonally adjusted 348,000, the Labor Department said, the lowest since March 2008. The prior week’s figure was revised up to 361,000 from the previously reported 358,000.

    Workers who lose their jobs and are covered by these programs typically file claims (“initial claims”) that serve as notice that they are beginning a period of unemployment.

    http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

  54. 54.

    Tenzil Kem

    @Linda Featheringill: The Senate is tough. Figure NE is going R, that brings the Dems down to 52-48. Best pickup chances are MA and then NV, with AZ a distant third and then maybe, possibly, if the teabagger beats Lugar in the primary, IN. Winning all 4 would bring the Dems to 56 IF they hold all of their other seats, including ND, MO, and VA….

  55. 55.

    Can't Be Bothered

    @Tommybones: @Cermet: @Interrobang:

    Give it a rest. Fuck, you people are exhausting. Serious question here. When you see people enjoying a nice sunny day in the park, do you have to fight the urge to pass out leaflets about skin cancer?

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