Not the kind of numbers we need to see:
The U.S. economy created just 80,000 jobs in June and the unemployment rate held steady at 8.2 percent, reflecting continued slow growth in the economy with the presidential election just four months away.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said private payrolls increased 84,000, while the government lost 4,000 jobs. Economists expected job growth of about 100,000 and the unemployment rate to be unchanged, though many had increased their forecasts based on some recent indicators.
With yet another month of weak employment growth, the second quarter marks the worst three-month period in two years. The period averaged just 75,000 per month, against 226,000 in the first quarter, which benefited from an unusually mild winter.
These are not the kind of numbers you want to see if you are up for re-election.
Villago Delenda Est
Yeah, but this is an exceptional year. Obama is running against a guy whose sole experience is in destroying jobs.
jheartney
The GOP plan to spike the economy in order to elect Romney is going as planned.
Ruckus
True. And yet mittens is such a disaster that Obama stands a
pretty goodchance.halteclere
I’m just waiting for the Republican jobs plan that they’ve been promising!
SFAW
If only Obama had released his REAL birth certificate…If only traitorous RINO John Roberts hadn’t caved in to Obama’s threats…If only Bill Clinton hadn’t destroyed the economy for W…If only Bill Buckner hadn’t let the ball get through his legs…If only the KenyanMuslimFascist Obama weren’t forcing those patriotic Republicans to focus on everything/anything other than jobs, then Boehner and Cantor would have this country back in tippity-top-super-duper shape.
Also, too.
khead
I suggest more government cuts. That should help.
SmallAxe
@halteclere:
Exactly, bad as it is of a report, you can’t beat somethin with nothin, and the perennial tax cut mantra is falling on deaf ears (finally).
Hunter Gathers
We are getting the economy that the voters wanted. We could have had stronger job growth right now, but voters didn’t want that. What they wanted was to elect a bunch of knuckle-dragging idiots who would spend all of their time bitching about deficits, religious freedom, non-existent voter fraud, how all the wimmins have too much freedoms contained in their vaginas and how much the Kenyan Usurper makes them feel scared and frightened.
We’d have much stronger job growth right now, if most white people weren’t bigoted, retarded idiots.
Steve in DC
@halteclere:
Their jobs plan is simply, vote out Obama and they quit holding the government hostage. If you go one further and get rid of child labor laws, organized labor, cut some taxes, and reduce wages they might just create more jobs… till you do that all the jobs they create will go to China.
Hill Dweller
The prior two months jobs number were revised up, and I suspect June’s will too. Granted, they still suck.
If the media weren’t so f’n worthless, the Republicans would get hammered for blocking the President’s jobs initiatives. They have done everything, at both the state and federal levels, to prevent a robust recovery. It’s essentially economic treason, but they’ve paid no price.
burnspbesq
Republican sabotage of the recovery is continuing to work.
Omnes Omnibus
If you are running for reelection against the personification of everything that is wrong with the economy and that dude has the personal charm and charisma of Kenmore dryer, you have less to worry about than you otherwise would.
AnonPhenom
@jheartney:
Yep. Until the house addresses the payroll tax holiday, the debt deal sequestration, and the Bush tax cuts – all due to hit the economy on 1/1/13 – the job front will remain weak. Just like they want it.
Donut
Yeah, correct. But don’t forget, Obama is driving all of the media narratives right now. Romney is rocked by the ACA decision, the Arizona immigration decision, and to boot, people are not so stupid (ignorant) that they are putting all the blame on Obama for this stall-out. Also, too – the narrative is shifting further with the latest attacks on Romney’s offshore activities and what they say about his ability to govern for the 99% versus protecting himself and his rich buddies in the 1%…pretty good stuff, and they are pulling it off without being overly divisive.
YMMV of course, and obviously one is allowed quibbles with the Obama campaign, of course, but the roll-out of the new ads and the new stump speech were done pretty flawlessly, and until Mittens releases his tax returns, they have every right to keep it up and ratchet up the pressure and paint Mittens into a corner. And damned if he didn’t help by having Anne tool him around on a jet-ski and getting photographed on his god damn yacht.
In other words, don’t panic. Jobs numbers week to week are not everything.
khead
@Omnes Omnibus:
Please do not insult my Kenmore dryer.
Multimoodia
Geeze, do we REALLY have to see ads FOR Romney on this site?
To wit:
Mitt Romney For President
Join Our Support Campaign Get Info at Mitt Romney In 2012.com
MittRomneyIn2012.com
Steve in DC
@Hunter Gathers:
A good portion of this country hates liberals. It doesn’t matter who you elect or who is up there, they just hate liberals in general. It’s cultural in some areas.
Even for people that aren’t Republican a lot of them hate liberals that they’ve met. They may like your policy, but every time they see “Democrat” they remember some bongo drum playing hippie, that obnoxious as fuck vegan, the militant atheist, or some snark master like Maher and think “as much as I hate Republicans, I fucking hate liberals MORE” see “south park republican” for this type of person.
There isn’t a way out of that short of the Democratic party changing it’s image, and it’s horrible at religious control. As much as some right winger make me angry enough to be sure I’ll vote Democratic, I know enough left wingers to convince me not to vote at all.
Chris
@Hunter Gathers:
You expect the voters to take responsibility for their own stupidity?
Rhoda
The numbers were worst last month and the President’s polling numbers have improved. Last months job numbers were also revised upwards; this month likely will too given the ADP report. We can’t do anything about the numbers. We can only register voters and attack the other side.
That’s the best thing to do in this situation. Just keep punching and hopefully the truth will punch through to the public and the President will get re-elected.
SFAW
Outstanding! From your keyboard to Karl’s and St. Ralph’s ears.
khead
The people you know must REALLY suck at playing the bongos.
SFAW
@khead: Your Kenmore dryer smells of elderberries.
Chris
@Steve in DC:
That’s too bad, because liberals are literally the only people in Washington who can help them. To paraphrase Golda Meir, America will get better when conservatives and moderates love their children more than they hate DFHs. Until that day, they’re SOL and they frankly deserve everything they get.
SatanicPanic
Still not convinced it will matter.
LosGatosCA
Still waiting for the next ‘pivot’ to jobs.
Hope it happens by November.
Also, too, how’s that deficit reduction/debt limit/extend the Bush tax cuts thingee working for ya?
Bobby Thomson
@Hunter Gathers:
Fuckin’ A. That’s why we can’t have nice things.
Cap'n Magic
Forget voting for the Blue or Red candidate.
If everyone voted Green, both the Red and the Blue would get the message. But we won’t, ‘cuz we’ve been manipulated to believe that a third party can’t succeed.
Folks, this is how you create a mindfuck of the political and power elites: let the Dems and the GOP spend their billions on nonsense ads, and when you are polled, say you’ll vote for either Red or Blue candidate. The come election time, vote Green. If you are exit polled, say you voted Green. Just think of the total chaos that will ensue within the Beltway Blowhards.
LosGatosCA
Too bad nobody ever told these guys that more stimulus and urgency on job growth would have done more to solve the deficit reduction goals than having catfood commissions and working on health care for 2014.
And by nobody, I mean besides Nobel laureates.
Citizen_X
@Cap’n Magic: @Steve in DC: You and him fight! Here’s a couple of knives.
Keith
Bush seemed to do OK with those kind of numbers. And even better, because the GOP keeps recycling the same cast of characters, you can find quotes from nearly every GOP leader who criticizes these numbers also saying the same numbers were proof of growth under Bush.
gogol's wife
@Rhoda:
You’re my hero.
SFAW
@Cap’n Magic: Great, another “Third Party, Folks” dimwit.
Just what we need, another eight years of W, courtesy of our “Both parties SUCK!” friends.
Hoodie
It’s not just Mitt’s lack of personality, which is why the jobs numbers are not all bad politically for Obama. A lot of folks have now been through several years of government austerity with Republican governors and state legislatures and, while they know the economy is in the crapper, may not buy into the particular brand of snake oil Mitt is selling because it isn’t working in their states. That could be one reason why the Bain attacks are working, because they paint Mitt as exactly the type of vampire capitalist that is responsible for high unemployment through pushing aggressive corporate takeovers, outsourcing, offshoring and the like to line executives’ pockets. We just got a new dose of it right here in NC, where a merger between Duke Energy and Progress Energy is looking like a cynical ploy by Jim Rogers of Duke to increase his feudal domain at the expense of a bunch of jobs in Raleigh and what a lot of people believe will be even higher utility rates, irrespective of the bullshit they sold to regulators. A lot of people still don’t blame Obama for the recession, and that may be in part because they blame current republicans — not just Bush — for the state of the economy.
Bobby Thomson
@Cap’n Magic:
Folks, this is how you
create a mindfuck of the political and power elites: let the Dems and the GOP spend their billions on nonsense ads, and when you are polled, say you’ll vote for either Red or Blue candidate. The come election time, vote Green. If you are exit polled, say you voted Green. Just think of the total chaos that will ensue within the Beltway Blowhards.ratfuck the vote. Go on liberal websites and pretend to be a disenchanted leftist and urge people to vote Green. Gets Republicans Elected Every November.Fixeded.
SFAW
@Citizen_X: Thanks.
PeakVT
I have the urge to pick up the Capitol Building and shake it while screaming, “Do something, you tea-addled shitstains!”
But that’s just me.
SFAW
@Bobby Thomson: Thanks for the fix. However, you didn’t answer the burning question: does “Cap’n
CluelessMagic” play the bongos badly enough to piss off “Steve in DC”?catclub
my comments are being eaten? why?
Heliopause
Nor if you need a job.
Donut
@LosGatosCA:
I guess you missed that whole first stimulus in 2009, the largest one in history, and the whole auto bailout, and shit loads of other stuff too numerous to mention in the time I have to make this post.
Sometimes in life we are required to make choices that are kind of unpleasant, and which, in the end, amount to picking the lesser of two evils. It’s called being a grown-up.
I have plenty of criticisms of Barack Obama, but he can’t be everything to everyone all the time. God damn. When you people have a better alternative to Barack Obama, and by that I mean a person who actually stands a fucking chance in hell at getting elected, just fucking stuff it, or go start a new party. PLEASE. Go start a new party.
Interrobang
@PeakVT: Neocons will never actually allow government to do anything, because that might entail having to face the fact that government isn’t always the problem, and can actually do things.
Speaking as a Canadian, I think neoconservatives should be prohibited from holding public office on constitutional grounds. Our Constitution promises us “peace, order, and good government,” and it’s ideologically counter to neoconservatism to provide any of those things. My lawyer friend, unfortunately, says that I probably wouldn’t succeed with that particular constitutional challenge…
SFAW
@Donut: Not clear whether LosGatos was talking about Obama or the Rethugs. He/she may be on the same side as you. (Written in a fit of laziness, i.e. haven’t bothered to read LosGatos’s older posts to see, etc.)
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Hunter Gathers:
That pretty much sums up the last two years and probably the next 4, at least. No more discussion needed.
The only “joy” we might get out of this will be an Obama re-election *and* with control, however tenuous, of Congress. That way we can point to the Repup attempts to destroy any economic recovery in the hopes of making Obama their Black Jimmy Carter and say “Is that the best you could do?”
Sigh.
Cap'n Magic
@Bobby Thomson: Yes. Indeed. Ratfuck the vote. I like it.
Calouste
@Ruckus:
Yet Romney was the best candidate they had. Well, maybe Huntsman would have been better, but it was obvious that he was too tainted to win the primaries the moment he accepted the ambassadorship. All the others? Griftgrich, Pope Santorum, Rick “dumbass” Perry? Don’t make me laugh.
LAC
@Cap’n Magic: Speaking of a mindfuck, did you get the number of the loser that dry humped yours?
Let us know when there is a viable third party that isn’t filled with bong water for brains folks and Ralph “national scold” Nader, m’kay? Otherwise, spare us the “occupy the futon in my parent’s basement and rail against the Man” blatherings.
And “Steve from DC”, here’s a suggestion: buy some tools and lumber, build a bridge, GET THE FUCK OVER IT, and vote. The sitting on hands and bitching portion of this program is dunzo.
Roger Moore
@Steve in DC:
“Vote for us, or your job gets it.”
Turgidson
I’m hoping this is the bottom of the trough and things steadily improve until election day (even if it’s not dramatic – clear improvement should be enough for Obama to take care of shitty candidate Willard). This hope isn’t based on anything empirical.
James E. Powell
@catclub:
Because they are tasty and nutritious?
Cap'n Magic
@SFAW: Tee-hee, he tries to makes a funny and fails like Harry Reid trying to find his spine.
Cap'n Magic
@SFAW: Tee-hee, he tries to makes a funny and fails like Harry Reid trying to find his spine.
kd bart
It’s not too late to draft Sheehan/Choi at the convention.
SFAW
@Roger Moore:
Fixed to be more literary-like.
Mattminus
@Cap’n Magic:
Not sure if trolling or really fucking stupid.
Todd Dugdale
@Cap’n Magic:
“Just think of the total chaos that will ensue within the Beltway Blowhards.”
Yeah, that’s the primary criteria that I use to determine who to vote for. Oh, wait…it’s not, because I’m not stupid.
Re-electing Obama would cause more “chaos” for the pundits than your suggestion would. Any kind of double-digit performance for the Greens would simply be handled as “Democrats in Disarray” by the punditry. It fits in with their “Obama can’t hold his left flank” narrative perfectly. No “chaos” at all. Just smug “told you so” BS.
Actually, if freaking out the pundits is your thing, you’d do better by telling them that a staunch Green voter is casting their ballot for Obama.
But, really, who cares about the pundits? Their influence is limited, and far less than they imagine it to be.
SFAW
@Cap’n Magic: Tee-hee, tries to prove his IQ is higher than a bed of kelp, and fails.
bago
@Multimoodia: Ad engines work on a loose semantic basis. This means the content provider allows the ad engine to scan the posts and index the words contained in the post. So if the engine sees the word Romney, it will feed in ads about Romney. The parsing to determine if the reference to “Romney” is positive or negative would take too long, so the decision sounds like this. “Oh, website X is talking about Romney, lets serve ads about Romney”. Boom. Done. Page continues to load. Impression count increments, and people get paid.
SFAW
@Mattminus: Is that a trick “question”? Kinda like “Rethuglicans: stupid, evil, or insane?”
NR
@Bobby Thomson: I’m voting Obama, because I like Republican policy best when it’s implemented by a Democrat.
Cap'n Magic
@LAC: Unless you control Congress and the Presidency, nothing changes. And the current crop of rent-seekers in both parties suck. Hell, I’d even settle for voting every incumbent out of Congress if just to send a message.
dr. luba
@Cap’n Magic: TBogg said it best.
SFAW
@Cap’n Magic:
Excellent reason to vote for Romney – THEN he’ll REALLY get stuff done.
Roger Moore
@Mattminus:
Excluded middle.
NR
@SFAW: It doesn’t matter if Romney wins. Nobody can do anything without 60 votes in the Senate. Or so I was repeatedly told in 2009 and 2010.
SFAW
@dr. luba: One of the great posts, right up there with Gilliard’s “fighting liberal” and a few others.
NonyNony
@NR:
You do realize that there are probably 60 votes for most pieces of conservative legislation in the Senate right now, right?
Once you realize that the two political parties in this country are the “far-right conservative” party and the “left-to-center-right” party, the fact that Republicans can get most of anything they want and Democrats have to fight their own party members for votes becomes not only explainable, but obvious.
NonyNony
@Cap’n Magic:
“I’d send these clowns a message by staying home on election day and dressing up like a clown.”
Why not do that. It’ll be less destructive overall.
And as a bonus – less stupid as well.
PeakVT
@Interrobang: They might do something if I was 1000 feet tall and threatening to squash them like bugs. Sadly, I’m about 994 feet short of that situation. Sorry, unemployed people.
Bill Arnold
@AnonPhenom:
This is what Republicans call “uncertainty”, at least when it can be blamed on Democrats.
The Republicans pretty much weren’t called on the months of damaging uncertainty they caused winter/spring/summer of 2011 when it became clear that they were willing and eager to play chicken with the debt ceiling.
Tonal Crow
Republicans’ War on America is going swimmingly. I understand that Boehner is going to create some more uncertainty by attempting to repeal ACA soon. Probably he’ll also emote about another debt-limit fight, which is always good for knocking another 5% off the S&P 500.
Republicans’ sabotage is getting mighty close to treason.
SFAW
@Tonal Crow:
“Mighty close”? What, did they decide to double back? ‘Cause they passed that line a long time ago.
Cap'n Magic
@dr. luba: My Reply to Mt. TBogg.
Cassidy
I don’t know who bugs the shit out of me more: “the third party, both sides do it” idiots or the *Rand quoting, think they’re libertarians but don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about assholes.
*Still irritated from some nonsense a HS friend put on FB. I mean, really, how the hell are seemingly educated people so friggin’ stupid. And I’m not talking uneducated, I’m talkin’ shoot yourself in the dick if someone is cruel enough to let you hold a gun stupid.
Wiesman
I’ve been plotting the monthly jobs numbers against Nate Silver’s “magic number” (and Ezra Klein’s and another more optimistic number from Silver) that he talked about back in February.
http://somedisagree.com/2012/07/06/july-jobs-report-not-good-but-still-positive/
Also, according to Bonddad’s blog apparently the adjustments now for the BLS are heavily negative (390,000 negative!), although I’m not sure of the methodology used to get that number.
I think the numbers are going to get better from here on out.
SFAW
@Cassidy: As Cap’n Magic demonstrates: Stupid is forever, ignorance can be fixed.
GxB
@Cap’n Magic: Yep that Pres. Nader really got stuff done didn’t he? Ah, when will we ever get another one like him?
Okay, snark aside, I do see some wisdom in a legit 3rd party and a parliamentary system. Since my eyes glaze over at the first mention of government legalese I’ll ask those of a legal persuasion, what (if any) constitutional barriers lie in the formation of a more coalition type representative system. I always assumed that the 50%+1 (60% in the Senate, natch) rule is the only practical barrier, but haven’t heard of any set in stone law for having just two diametrically opposed parties (eating out of the corporate trough together, but work with me here.)It might be a good time to try to get the discussion going; since one of the very few things both sides may agree on is the fact that we’re deadlocked and getting nothing done.
Jeezuz – just in typing that up I got to thinking how much resistance there would be to ANY change, and how hopelessly broken the entire system is at this point – we’re really going to have a fustercluck aren’t we…
Cassidy
@GxB: You won’t find anyone here who doesn’t agree that our system could use some tweaking; degrees of f’edupness vary. But, and I presume to summarize many commenters, it won’t get fixed by November. The reality is that voting, today, is a pragmatic effort. The reality is that a center-left party is going to do more to bring about liberal changes than a fictional 3rd party of leftist principle. Any talks of changing the system for the long term, involve electing a permanent center-left majority, most of whom are liberals, but are pragmatic politicians as well. The right has to be removed from the conversation entirely.
the Conster
Not one single voter’s mind is going to be changed based on this jobs report – we’re all wonks and politics addicts here so we obsess over every detail and pore over the entrails of every ad. All these reports do is give fodder to the horse race narrative and succor to the pundits for the 24/7 news cycle. Obama’s got this. The Republicans have chosen the worst possible candidate in this environment, because Mitt’s going to be forced to present a real job-creating alternative to Obama sooner than later, and he can’t, because there’s not one damn thing in his record to point to. Fucking Murdoch is making that point already! If you don’t think that O’s people will be making that stark ravingly clear by November, pass me what you’re smoking.
Roger Moore
@Cap’n Magic:
Theodore Roosevelt’s reply to your reply.
Cap'n Magic
@SFAW: Outsourced to RFK:
Roger Moore
@Cap’n Magic:
And don’t listen when it’s explained to you.
General Stuck
@GxB:
If half the country is determined to sabotage democracy if they can’t win elections and run things, then no version of democracy is beyond their breaking things with hissy fits and monkey wrenching whatever the system is. At its core, democracy that can work, is no more than differing groups of political ilk, engaged in a gentleman’s agreement to be governed by whatever majority emerges at the ballot box. Otherwise, we move ever closer to politics by other means.
AxelFoley
@Hunter Gathers:
BAM! You gets whats you pays for.
Let the GOP take over one house of Congress, this is what you get.
Todd Dugdale
@Bill Arnold: “This is what Republicans call “uncertainty”, at least when it can be blamed on Democrats.”
I think “uncertainty” is nothing more than Republican code for “Democrat in the White House”.
gene108
@Cap’n Magic:
Wasn’t always this way.
Reagan got things done with a Democratic House and a 1 or 2 seat majority in the Senate.
Bush, Sr. also got things done, such as cap-‘n’-trade for acid rain prevention, rather than a top-down government approach.
Nixon, Ford, and even Bush, Jr. got things done without controlling Congress.
Clinton wasn’t a total stiff, even after losing control of the House and eventually losing control of the Senate. sCHIP got passed with Republicans in control of at least one house of Congress.
The media just doesn’t have the ability to point out how unprecedented Republican obstructionism in the Congress has been during Obama’s presidency.
EDIT: Also, too even though people won’t vote Republican, the obstruction has prevented things from getting done and will get a certain percentage of voters to stay at home in the fall rather than do what they normally do and vote for Democrats, which is a victory for Republicans anyway.
Cap'n Magic
@Roger Moore: Outsourced to Mullah Nasruddin:
bob h
The ADP report the other day had 176,000. Who is to say which is right? Does American civilization rise and fall with jobs sampling that has an inaccuracy of 100%?
AxelFoley
@NR:
No, you’re just a fuckin’ idiot troll. Go hide under a bridge.
Origuy
@Cap’n Magic:
Wake me up when you actually have Green Senators and Representatives in Congress. I would have voted for a Green candidate for Senate in the California “jungle primary”, but there wasn’t one! The Republicans had 14! The Democrats dug up five to run against Dianne Feinstein; even the Peace and Freedom party had two.
Cap'n Magic
@gene108: Clinton was the linchpin in the current Economic Crisis, having been the exec who signied the CFMA and the repeal Of Glass-Stegall.
Now that the inmates are running the asylum, all bets are off.
AxelFoley
@the Conster:
This.
xian
@Multimoodia: clicking on them costs his campaign money. just sayin’.
LosGatosCA
@Donut:
Obama knew, or should have known, on election night 2008 that his re-election chances were very slim. He didn’t inherit 1933 from Hoover, he inherited 1929 – he had no time to waste jumping on the economy. He needed a lot of luck combined with skill and a sense of urgency to work on job growth non-stop.
Instead, he worked on being bi-partisan, he worked on health care, which by definition would not help in 2012, and even on those he took his sweet time, letting Baucus do his summer and fall thing for zero effect. Everyone knew including the Republicans that it would take serious efforts to even have a chance to get the economy on the right path by 2012.
Obama let himself, or worse enthusiastically cooperated, on wrong turns on the catfood commission, deficit reduction, the debt limit, and extending the Bush tax cuts. And now he’s facing the inevitable uphill battle for re-election getting out raised by Romney.
I’m sure Obama doesn’t allow himself the self-reflection that would create doubt but he’s a really bad negotiator – not because of the negotiations he conducts, but the negotiations he chooses. I didn’t want him to be more liberal, I didn’t want single payer, I didn’t want bipartisan harmony. Like the majority of the electorate, he was hired to work on jobs and getting more economic justice, if possible. But if the economic justice was too much, then just jobs, jobs, jobs. He didn’t and guess what? 80,000 jobs a month 5 years out from the start of the Great Recession. Captain Renault is shocked.
Obama does not deserve re-election but the country does not deserve Romney. That’s a lose-lost proposition.
But clap harder, it might work.
Cap'n Magic
@AxelFoley: One single unforseen event between now and November can totally scupper this narrative-at which point, all bets are off.
xian
@Rhoda: also, i hate to say it, but these numbers are bad for people looking for work, not for Obama. at the current rate, Obama will be fine. He and his people game shit out, and they have tactics planned for various eventualities – this is why some people think it’s 11-dimensional chess. On some level politics, especially campaigning for election is a game and one that they play very well.
The jobs numbers are bad for workers. I don’t want to look at everything through the lens of “is this good for candidate?” (even though I do).
NR
@NonyNony: Then maybe we should start voting for an actual progressive party.
Cassidy
@LosGatosCA: Well, those are your choices. So grandiose blathering aside, pick one and vote or STFU.
Spatula
@NR:
This.
FlipYrWhig
Hold on, quiet down, I’ve got the best plan yet. It involves undoing 150 years of two-party politics so that liberal ideals win easily. And we could totally do it too. If not for the corporatists. It’s always the coproratists’ fault that my great ideas just can’t happen. Well, on the bright side, the obvious excellence of my plan remains intact, and it’s not like I need to reconceive it in light of my open admission that it will never happen, because that’s, like, somebody else’s fault.
Cassidy
F-k’n firebaggers with their middle school knowledge of politics….but waaaahhhhhh, Obama didn’t pick me as his pretty, pretty princess homecoming dance partner. Rejects. Got no use for these fluttering butterflies and their f-k’n feelings.
gene108
@Todd Dugdale:
In early 2009, from a business point of view Democrats, especially in the House, were looking to make bunches of huge regulatory changes, from heatlhcare reform to cap-‘n’-trade for carbon emissions and they got some stuff passed like the Lilly Ledbetter law.
When the economy’s reeling and businesses are panicked, in hindsight, as much energy as Democrats had in making their “mark” on undoing the “Reagan revolution”, it really sent the wrong message to businesses about being able to have Democrats understand their problems.
I’m not saying the goals of the 111th Congress weren’t worthy, but the fact is the Democrats underestimated the severity of the downturn and the consternation businesses were faced with as the economy tumbled.
Some things like cap-‘n’-trade could wait, until the economy recovered.
This is in hindsight.
At the time liberals wanted to undo the last 30 years of the “Reagan revolution” in one fell swoop and “take America back” to some earlier, better, era when unions were strong, the air was clean and everyone prospered.
FlipYrWhig
@LosGatosCA: Yeah, I bet if he had it to do all over again he would have started with a gigantic domestic spending bill, rather than whatever he did do, which I like you have forgotten.
Spatula
@General Stuck:
Stuck, this is very true. Also true is that Mr. Obama’s efficacy at explaining this in clear, concise terms to the American public absolutely sucks.
Also sucky: His obsession with bipartisanship belies what you wrote: A sensible person asks, “if the republicans are so awful as to cripple democracy, why would Mr. Obama wish to bargain/work with them, assuming nonexistent good faith?”
Spatula
@Cassidy:
Well, clearly not everyone can be as smart as YOU. The entire country has let you down.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: I’m not sure I agree with the specifics there, but I have felt like a major tension arose between everything that both candidates ran on for a year, on the one hand, and what kinds of things needed to be done quickly to avert catastrophe. If we as a country had spent longer talking and listening about what Democrats would do to fix the economy, vs. what Republicans would do, we might have had a chance to work out the kinks in the Democratic coalition. But, at least the way I remember it, the question of What’s To Be Done never really got aired until extremely late in the campaign.
Concerned Citizen
@Hunter Gathers: That pretty much sums it up.
catpal
[March 2012] “U.S. Companies Sitting On $1.24 Trillion Cash Hoard”
I have heard many stories of employed people complaining that their work projects are being Delayed because their employer refuses to hire more help right now – especially one Big Pharma employer that I know.
Next week we need to Call our Congressperson (Repug idiot in my case) and tell them to Pass the American Jobs Act (S.1549 and H.R. 12) – instead of Repealing Affordable Health Care which we like.
General Stuck
@Spatula:
Spatula, hands up, and step away from the soufflé!!
Obama is doin’ it his way, and that’s okay!!
I made a rhyme, this time.
Ruckus
@Mattminus:
The answer to stupid, evil, insane is almost always “All of the Above”. Trolling is part of the same diagnosis so once again All of the Above or Both is the correct answer.
Ash Can
Hey guys, go easy on the firebaggers/Greens/Naderites here. Remember, you were once middle school students yourselves.
Cassidy
@Spatula: Nah, just dishonest little shits who play the “both sides do it” game.
FlipYrWhig
@Spatula: A huge part of what you think of as “obsession with bipartisanship” is actually, I humbly submit, a need to corral conservative _Democrats_ who by and large share mainline Republican thinking on economics. It takes a lot of work to get the right-hand side of elected Democrats to sign off on the kinds of things liberals accept easily, like, say, Keynesian economics, or “government spending” for the goals of social welfare. Obama’s biggest problem is Republican obstruction, but his next biggest problem is conserva-Dem stubbornness. And, since those guys think they know much better than Obama what their voters want, it is exceptionally hard to maneuver them in a leftward direction.
gene108
@Cap’n Magic:
What does that have to do with my point?
We’ve not needed one party in complete control of the White House and Congress to get bills passed, since the end of World War II.
Eisenhower didn’t need a Republican supermajority in the Senate and a majority in the House for the interstate highway system to be started, for example.
As far as repealing Glass-Steigal goes, Lehman Brothers and Bear Sterns never got into retail banking, so their implosions wouldn’t have been prevented with Glass-Steigal in place.
What you really need to watch for are the capital requirements banks are required to carry. For big banks, what’s decided by the Basel Accords has as much impact as any unilateral action by the U.S. government.
CFMA was a bad bill, in hindsight.
Roger Moore
@Spatula:
More important is that the media’s willingness to say this at all is nonexistent. Obama doesn’t have the power to get a message across to the public just by saying it; he depends critically on it being reported by the news media. If they don’t want to talk about the Republicans being crazy, they’re perfectly capable of ignoring what he says or twisting it into him being a crazy, scary person who’s trying to implement single party government. Republican insanity will continue until their enablers in the media decide it’s over, and not a day sooner.
SFAW
@Cap’n Magic: What, you’re praying for that giant meteor strike or something?
Ruckus
@GxB:
Going to have?
I know you have been paying better attention than that, I’ve read your posts.
And it’s clusterfuck. It’s OK to say it out loud. It helps to recognize the disease and find a cure if you talk about it using the correct language.
Roger Moore
@FlipYrWhig:
Sure; that’s because the financial crisis didn’t hit until fairly late in the campaign. Nobody was willing to talk about what the government should do until we were staring into the abyss.
Cap'n Magic
@Cassidy: Then you best pray that LIBORgate doesn’t blow the World Economy back into the tank again-another round of TBTF bailouts and The Dems will be in the wilderness for decades.
gene108
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think McCain and Obama were that far apart in 2008 on what to do with the economy. Obama wanted to raise taxes back to the 1990’s levels on those earning over $200,000 (individually) or $250,000 (married). McCain wanted to make the Bush Tax cuts permanent or some such.
We were in a recession because of energy price shocks, with $4/gallon gasoline in 2008 and higher food prices.
Very few people really saw the financial collapse coming.
It’s hard to have a policy discussion in August to address a problem that very few people really noticed or thought would be a big problem, until Lehman Brothers collapsed and we realized banks didn’t have the money to cover the bets they made, if those bets went bad.
ouidcom
Way to support the home team with your uplifting commentary Cole you Greenwald reading moron!
Cap'n Magic
@gene108: Glass_Stegall was what allowed Citi to branch into their near death-spiral. Bear and Lehman set the motions; Citi’s problems as a backstop amplified them-nobody could trust anybody at that rate-hence the Fed’s intervention.
Basel III’s requirements are going to set off some serious asset selling in order to meet their new targets-now that LIBORgate is ell underway we’ll see who really has a fortress balance sheet.
Mike E
@burnspbesq:
Fix’t.
Judging by the commentary here, it’s all over but for the fighting over who gets the best crumbs out of the brownies pan.
FlipYrWhig
@gene108: @Roger Moore: Right, I agree. And that’s a large part of the reason why the fateful question of The Stimulus and how large it should be got hashed out haphazardly. When Bush ran against Gore, they slugged it out over what to do with the surplus (!) and Bush by winning (!?) could say with some authority that his view had been accepted by the public. But Obama, or Democrats generally, never had a chance to say, in 2009, that they were going to do economically what they had run on doing, because they didn’t really run on a solution to the crisis. And consequently people like Ben Nelson et al got to trot out the deficit-spending skepticism they feel by default, and they’ve been pulling the steering wheel in that direction — the Democratic steering wheel, mind you — for 3.5 years now.
Cap'n Magic
@SFAW: If for nothing else that maybe we’ll actually evolve. Lord knows I keep hearing Robin Williams’s routine
SFAW
@Cap’n Magic:
For now, I’d settle for Ted Nugent not acting like Ted Nugent. Probably less likely than a meteor strike, though.
EriktheRed
Very true, unfortunately.
However, while this is a big problem and could be what does the Prez in this November, at least it’s his only problem.
None of the other crap the Repubs have tried to tar him with has stuck. They’ve made themsleves look totally nutty with their efforts. The Obama campaign is successfully tarring their candidate as an out-of-touch rich elitist (not hard, since that’s what he is).
This is why,despite this bit of bad news, I would still bet on the Prez to win this year.
Cap'n Magic
@NonyNony: Thanks for the encouragement-makes me want to go vote for the worst possible candidate then.
Be careful of what you ask for-you may get the opposite result.
Cap'n Magic
@EriktheRed: Fortunately for those who consider themselves ‘serious conservatives’, even the occasional crank has woken up.
Cap'n Magic
@SFAW: Now a meteor strike hitting Ted Nugent-that I can get behind.
daveNYC
@Cap’n Magic: You’re an idiot. The LIBOR scandal might do lots of things, but tanking the economy is not one of them.
SFAW
@Cap’n Magic: We agree on something. I may have to commit seppuku.
Bill
Made the mistake of turning on CNBC for the first time in months and saw the clown, Rick Santelli, discussing the jobs report with another clown, Rep. Joe Walsh. Walsh said that thanks to our $16 trillion debt, every person in the country owes a million dollars (of course the actual number is around $50,000). Just the most obvious in a litany of lies.
Ruckus
I like true believers. They are so entertaining to watch them keep running into walls at the speed of stupid, arms full of randomly selected bits of data. In fact the capt sounds like a scientologist, with all that data, enthusiasm and stupidity.
SFAW
@Bill:
Walsh probably was confusing that with the amount of child support he owes.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Ten points.
Cap'n Magic
@daveNYC: As tens (if not hundreds) of trillions of dollars in assets and derivatives are priced based on LIBOR, this is a BFD-especially if some of them derivatives wind up having to get paid out at a much higher rate-better still, now we’re finding out the rates were fraudulently set.
No, this can’t possibly blow sky-high. Right. And AAA-rated MBS’s were secure, too.
ruemara
@Cap’n Magic: Your attempt at seeming deep is failing. Try again when you have real depth.
Cap'n Magic
@ruemara: And you are….?
Cap'n Magic
@SFAW: Hey-shit happens.
JGabriel
@Multimoodia:
CLICK ON THEM!
Waste Romney campaign dollars (well, pennies anyway) on advertising click-throughs you know won’t result in a GOP vote while raising money for Balloon Juice and other lefty sites.
It’s a win/win.
.
Donut
@LosGatosCA:
So, like I said, go start a new party. Please. Do it already.
DFH no.6
@Bill:
Discussions about the US debt and current annual deficit are among the most stupid in a long list of stupidly-discussed items in our political world.
Unless and until the US debt causes a credit crunch it is not any sort of problem. Period. Unlikely to happen in any way in the foreseeable.
In fact, we should be borrowing a hell of a lot more with interest on T-bills at essentially zero.
This would never happen (because, politics) but we would be much better off right now to fund the federal government as fully as possible with borrowing only, and give tax breaks to all until we climb out of this ditch the conservatives drove us into.
I’ve tried again and again to get idiot conservatives (but I repeat myself) to tell me just what problem the debt is causing right now, and of course they can’t answer with anything remotely real because it manifestly isn’t causing any actual problems (other than the problem of giving conservatives a stalking horse for our incredibly ignorant and innumerate electorate).
And it’s not like it’s all coming due next week or something, and we all have to dip into our savings and sell the car to come up with the cash to pay up.
Oh, and fuck all the purity trolls here today.
Not ALL the stupid is on the right.
Patricia Kayden
@Bill: How much of that debt was caused by the Bush tax cuts and the Iraq war?
FlipYrWhig
@DFH no.6: Yes yes yes on the debt and why it’s bad. You cannot get a straight answer out of these people. And I want someone to force Romney to explain it, and George Allen, and all these other dimwits who use it like a scarecrow.
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
But-but-but gay marriage! KenyanMuslimFascists in the
BlackWhite House! It’s all Clinton’s fault! George Soros! usw.Bill
@Patricia Kayden: The debt was already almost $6 trillion in 2000, but a large portion of the debt piled up by Bush over the next eight years (another 5 trillion) was from his tax cuts and unfunded wars. Five more trillion has been added since, but most of that can be attributed to the continuation of the wars and the extension of the tax cuts, but also the fact that, thanks to the financial crisis and the consequent unemployment, tax receipts have gone down and spending on automatic stabilizers, such as unemployment benefits and food stamps have increased.
Bill
@DFH no.6: Just thought it was funny that by Joe Walsh’s rough estimate, there are only 16 million people in the US.
Agree completely with all your points. Most of these people have no clue about taxes, debt, spending, anything that you could actually take a few minutes and look up the actual information.
We should absolutely be borrowing massively at essentially negative interest rates (accounting for inflation). At least the federal reserve made the intelligent decision with Operation Twist, to extend the average maturity of US debt.
If the debt/GDP ratio gets too far out of whack, you can adjust, but at the moment, we need to expand GDP more than we need to cut debt.
Spatula
@Roger Moore:
If that is true, what is the motivation for an Independent to vote Democratic?
Spatula
@Donut:
Are you saying that an American citizen has no right to criticize the existing political environment and its actors UNLESS they are willing to devote themselves to founding an entirely new party?
That absent this effort, they should just STFU?
Spatula
The Obama administration/campaign has had four years to ask this question over and over and over again, and they don’t do it.
Why?
Cap'n Magic
@Spatula: If you have to ask that question, then you already know the answer.
LosGatosCA
@Cassidy:
@Donut:
@FlipYrWhig:
Glad to see you can deal with constructive criticism about as well as the typical TeaBagger.
Even if Obama squeaks through in November, 80,000 new jobs in July, 2013 will still be a real and serious problem.
I’ll be glad if Fat Tony drops dead or retires and Obama appoints his successor.
But on the economy the guy’s a dud – by choice in priorities and his appointments. And, I’m not expecting any good changes after the election if he wins.
odp
If the Republicans would quit screaming about “reducing Government” till you can “flush it down the toilet,” then there would be a lot more people employed, at the federal, state, and local government levels — and we’re not talking bureaucrats (though who else keeps the gummint running, I don’t know), but teachers, firepeople, policepeople, bridgebuilders, highway builders. Those types of government people the Republicans think we don’t need any more of.
odp
@Bill: Hear, hear!!
odp
@Bill: If we divide $16 trillion by the population of the U.S. (currently 313,893,627), it comes out to about $51.00 per person (man, woman, child), not $50,000 per person. $50k times the population = $16 quadrillion.
Yutsano
@odp: Gastritis must be epidemic in calculators lately.
Bill
@odp: try again
LAC
@Cap’n Magic: Yeah, I am with the rest trying to figure out whether you are troll or beyond fucking stupid.