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You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Decent jobs report

Reader Interactions

149Comments

  1. 1.

    Tractarian

    You’re a little late to the party.

    Plus, you neglected to mention that the unemployment rate plummeted to 7.8%.

    Also too, both the unemployment rate, and number of jobs overall, are now better than when Obama took office.

    The economist and media consensus is that this was a much better than expected report. An unvarnished positive for incumbents.

  3. 3.

    Lurking Canadian

    I think the key number is that the unemployment rate is now lower than January 2009. “We kept things from getting worse” is a harder sell than “We have turned things around so they are now better”.

    I imagine Krugman’s employed-people-fraction plot hasn’t recovered to pre-crisis levels, but this is good news.

  4. 4.

    lamh35

    boehner says number positive but slow. someone should ask him if it would be faster if they’d approved Obama’s jobs bill

  5. 5.

    BGinCHI

    Chicago thugs cook jobs report after lazy president drinks a 40 of King Cobra before debate.

    /wingnut

  7. 7.

    quannlace

    Wingnuts already blaming the ‘Chicago thugs’ for this. Who knew Al Capone was in charge of compiling job numbers?

  9. 9.

    rlrr

    “Obviously the Administration is doctoring the numbers in order to improve Obama’s re-election chances.”
    — Fox “News”

  10. 10.

    Culture of Truth

    Allow me to sum up the situation for you:

    The numbers are so low that we should fire the President and so high that we should fire the President.

  18. 18.

    blingee

    Good ole DougJ….always looking for the dark lining on every silver cloud.

    Yawn…unemployment rate goes from 8.1 to 7.8, 30 days before an election….yea…like totally yawwwwn.

    Stay small DougJ.

  20. 20.

    Mr Furious

    Even if the Administration was fudging the numbers this month to, say, distract from the debate, it would bite them in the ass right before the election when October numbers are released, and previous months were revised downward, or October numbers suffer.

  21. 21.

    J.D. Rhoades

    Much as I can’t stand Chuck Todd, he had one good line this morning:

    How many times have Republicans said, “He promised unemployment below 8%!” Well, voila…

  23. 23.

    quannlace

    “Obama finds cure for cancer. Alll those oncologists now out of a job! Why does Obama hate them?” -Fox News

  25. 25.

    Hoodie

    Nice time for Obama to pivot to Republican obstruction, i.e., unemployment would be even better if we could have kept cops and teachers on the job and been fixing roads and bridges. After seeing “moderate Mitt” appear at the first debate, maybe it’s time to ask the new Mitt what he would do about the obstructionist elements in his own party. “Would getting rid of Big Bird get them off the dime? I’d hate to let the big yella fella go, but if that’s what it takes . . . I’d even throw in Bert and Ernie and a player to be named later.” He can even offer to quit funding Tesla, seeing as they seem to be doing quite well, thank you.

  27. 27.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Maybe I missed it, but I haven’t heard that any of Obama’s critics assert that McCain and Snowbilly Snooki would have done a better job with the economy.

  29. 29.

    kd bart

    Jack Welch. Why would I pay attention to a guy who preferred Leno over Letterman 20 years ago?

  35. 35.

    hep kitty

    Also too, both the unemployment rate, and number of jobs overall, are now better than when Obama took office.

    YUP! Pretty damned convenient, considering the election is less than a month away.

    It’s a conspiracy of some kind of course. I’ll let Rush sort that one out

  36. 36.

    Paul

    On intrade Obama is now at 70.9. I checked the number right when the debate started and it was at 70.8 then. In other words, he has recovered the entire debate loss.

  37. 37.

    Violet

    Whoever the wingnut guest was on Morning Joe said this was “bad” or something like that. Scarborough had to remind the panel that fewer Americans out of work is a GOOD thing. These people have no idea what they sound like. “Americans getting jobs. Bad!”

  39. 39.

    hep kitty

    I don’t know if we’ll ever get back the quality of jobs we had before, the security and benefits that were once plentiful.

    But it looks good to the public and I’m happy with it and I’m very happy it’s gone down below %8 which was more than I even expected.

  41. 41.

    Culture of Truth

    I bet all the poor lazy Americans went out and got jobs just to make Obama look good — then once he’s reelected it’s back to the freeloading good life

  42. 42.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    Chicago thugs cook jobs report after lazy president drinks a 40 of King Cobra before debate.

    @BGinCHI: That’s pretty much verbatim what perennial rich-guy loser Jack Welch Tweeted this morning.

    @rlrr:

    “Obviously the Administration is doctoring the numbers in order to improve Obama’s re-election chances.”
    __
    —Fox “News”

    And this is pretty much what the rest of the righties are saying.

    A good sign: my local news, pretty wingnutty, referred to these comments as “conspiracy theories”. I’d prefer “lies” but I’ll take “conspiracy theories” as a close second.

  44. 44.

    Princess

    @cathyx: Look, I hate Mitt but the slow motion version very clearly shows he threw a handkerchief folded into a square onto the podium. This makes us look desperate.

    And we have no reason to be desperate.

  45. 45.

    quannlace

    And Rpmney’s problem is, to try and downplay this report, he has to sound like a Debbie Downer again.

  46. 46.

    Comrade Jake

    The reality is that Obama’s poll numbers are good because more people are getting back to work. Except, of course, in the red states, where life sucks in general.

  47. 47.

    PeakVT

    @1badbaba3: Not great compared to the average number of jobs created each month during the Clinton administration. Not great compared to the number of jobs needed to bring the country to full employment by the end Obama’s second term.

    Any job growth is good, especially if it’s above the number need to cover population growth (right now, that’s about 100K). And it’s a good enough number to help Obama’s re-election chances. But it’s not a great number.

  48. 48.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Violet:

    Scarborough had to remind the panel that fewer Americans out of work is a GOOD thing

    Scar may be an asshole but he’s smart enough to understand that Neo-Confederate Traitor Cosplay is something best done in the privacy of one’s bedroom, because a lot of Americans just aren’t into that kinky shit and don’t want to have to explain the facts of political life to their children at a tender age.

  50. 50.

    Culture of Truth

    BLS is not manipulating data. Evidence of such would be a scandal of enormous proportions & loss of credibility.

    — Tony Fratto @TonyFratto

  53. 53.

    rlrr

    @Lurking Canadian:

    It looked like he had some sort of device strapped to his back under his suit. There was some debate on whether a bullet proof vest could account for the apparent bulge on his back…

  55. 55.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Violet:

    Whoever the wingnut guest was on Morning Joe said this was “bad” or something like that. Scarborough had to remind the panel that fewer Americans out of work is a GOOD thing.

    Sounds like a clip waiting to go viral

    @BudP: Ann hired a Big Bird clown for Craig’s fourth birthday, the poor lad got scared and wet himself. He still wakes up screaming.

  56. 56.

    shortstop

    Re notes at debates, I love this old (possibly apocryphal) one: Nixon, because he was Nixon, loved to go around lecturing prominent Democrats for swearing. Truman was a favorite target of this criticism. During one of their TV debates, Nixon chided Kennedy for the salty language Kennedy had a reputation for using. Kennedy just laughed off this officious piety. As soon as the cameras were off, Nixon hissed, “That fucking bastard — he wasn’t supposed to be using notes!”

  57. 57.

    Paul

    @Forum Transmitted Disease:

    Rightwingers tend to claim they are better patriots then everybody else. You would think then that they would cheer these numbers as they are good for America.

    Rooting against America seems to be the favorite past time among rightwingers these days. I will never forget when it was announced that Chicago did not get the Olympics back in 2009. At the same time of the announcement there was a clip from some type of a conservative meeting where it was pretty much a standing ovation when they heard that Chicago did not get the Olympics.

    Just stunning how these so called self-described patriots behave…

  58. 58.

    ding dong

    Jack Welch is being called the King of the Job Truthers. Roland Martins asking if Welch would h.ve. complained about numbers being made up if they were bad.

  59. 59.

    Violet

    @cathyx:

    I’m sorry if this has already been discussed, but in case it hasn’t, Mitt Romney has been caught with a cheat sheet at the debate. Are cheat sheets not allowed?

    At one point in the debate, Mitt Romney definitely wiped his forehead with a folded handkerchief. Not sure where that came from–did he pull it out of his pocket at that time, or was this thing he put on the podium that handkerchief? I can’t tell from the video for sure.

  61. 61.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    I don’t know if we’ll ever get back the quality of jobs we had before, the security and benefits that were once plentiful.

    @hep kitty: No, we won’t.

    My father-in-law, on returning from Vietnam, made an observation that has haunted me ever since. And has proven true. It is simply this:

    “When you trade with those who live in mud huts, eventually you will live in a mud hut”

    The world’s economy is in a race to the bottom as far as worker’s rights and wages go. I hope that the process stays slow, but that’s where we’re headed, one way or another.

  63. 63.

    ira-NY

    The key to the this morning’s unemployment report is that the unemplyment rate is under 8%.

    It is like Roger Bannister breaking the 4:00 mile barrier.
    Breaking through that number, 8%, although not entirely rational, is a big effin deal.

  64. 64.

    Another Halocene Human

    @Violet: That think he tosses on the podium looks like a folded over mess of whatever. Hankie on top of notes?

    Or maybe he scribbled some stuff on his paper and has to retrieve it lest he be ridiculed for his doodles a la Bill Gates. (I think Gates, showing himself to be many times more human than Romney, what a comparison, took it in good humor.)

  65. 65.

    Violet

    @ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Yeah, no kidding.

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:
    The two statements were not together. The wingnut guy went on about how it wasn’t good or something like that. Then a few minutes later Scarborough says that he’s an American first and more Americans with jobs is a good thing.

    I wasn’t watching, only listening from another room, so not quite sure how it all went down. Maybe someone with more skillz than me can find it. It wasn’t long after the jobs numbers were released.

  66. 66.

    Culture of Truth

    Wait until the wingnuts find out the bin Laden movie airs just before election day. haids will explode.

  68. 68.

    gelfling545

    Yes there was improvement. Yes there has been fairly steady improvement. Everyone who reports the numbers seems to be required by law to add “but it’s still not enough” as if some month we could expect to add eleventy gazillion jobs or something.
    Just a personal crotchet. Sorry.

  70. 70.

    ? Martin

    I guess those 400K revised from March weren’t accounted for in later months. 7.9 is what we were expecting without the September jobs just due to that.

    Good news. The right will spin this as more people leaving the job market, but it’s not that. Gallup polled the same number. It’s just a discrepancy from the minimal data monthly job collection and the more thorough annual job collection. They had missed counting 400K+private sector jobs and overcounted about 70K public. The unemployment rate leap is due to correcting that data from March. There will be another such correction in February (which could go either up or down).

  71. 71.

    hep kitty

    Holy crap, DougJ really doesn’t read this blog! I just realized that after reading the older post by mistermix(?) I think.

  72. 72.

    Bill in Section 147

    @Culture of Truth: Tony Fratto does not understand “Chicago-Style” and with a name like Fratto you would think he would get it. – Right Wing Responders

    They don’t get how the BLS works or basic math for that matter. Oliver Stone could make the movie that plays in their head.

    For the righties nothing but insanity, corruption, Satan, or all three can explain how NiClang can be the POTUS or that the Democrat Party actually has the majority of registered voters.

    I envy the simplicity of their world view.

  73. 73.

    J.D. Rhoades

    @Paul:

    Rightwingers tend to claim they are better patriots then everybody else. You would think then that they would cheer these numbers as they are good for America.

    They don’t love America as much as they hate Obama.

  74. 74.

    gelfling545

    @cathyx: Why on earth would he need one? He makes that stuff up as he goes along anyway and it’s not like he even tries to remember which lies he told to whom.

  75. 75.

    jibeaux

    @Culture of Truth: There’s tens of thousands of people suddenly lying about how they got a job to cook the numbers for Obama. This Order may have gone out via the microchip that was a required feature of Obamacare. Stay tuned to the entry in the DSM-IV that is the modern Republican party for more details.

  76. 76.

    ? Martin

    @cathyx: Rules have been that you can’t bring anything to the debate – no notes, no props. etc. Been like that for ages.

  80. 80.

    1badbaba3

    @PeakVT: It’s a freakin’ miracle number when you add the Congressional Republican Asshattery Factor into the equation.

    And I know you are.

  81. 81.

    Cermet

    Can’t get much better news (except a lower number but that would take a huge growth) so WTF with the head line on balloon juice? Guy needs to take a anti-chill pill and call all of us in the morning to remind him this is really GREAT NEWS! THis is far, far better than any trivial debate – this is REAL world RESULTS! Another good jobs report and the recovery will be offical and as some have said, getting below the ugly 8% is a BID DEAL! More people will feel the economy is in a real recovery mode with this report and things will continue to snow ball as they see more proof that it is getting better! President Obama wins big as the economy heats up and fuel prices remain flat (after falling some.) Win!

  82. 82.

    ? Martin

    But blunting my enthusiasm for the jobs numbers are the gas prices here. Was $3.99 last week. $4.65 this morning – and our local Costco is out of gas and doesn’t know when they’ll be resupplied. Apparently this is localized to Cali.

  87. 87.

    jurassicpork

    Laura Ingraham is chewing off her hind leg on Twitter and claiming some vast left wing conspiracy over numbers she’d be crowing about if they came out during the Bush junta. Jack Welch is especially pathetic, claiming “Chicago guys” are massaging the numbers. Basically, what Jack’s saying is, “Those numbers can’t be true! Why, my old company GE outsources more jobs before lunch than most companies do in a month!” Jack also gets his diapers from the same store as David Vitter.

    Speaking of jobs, you guys aren’t going to believe this Craigslist job ad I just found and what the vetting process now includes. This is like something out of a fucking Phillip K. Dick story.

  88. 88.

    amk

    More wingnutz heads explosion.

    Reuters tweets – Dow industrials hits five-year high on U.S. jobs report.

    Shouldn’t the wall street fuckers be giving obummer a collective bj for this ?

  92. 92.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    He did have a handkerchief.

    @me: And notes. He cheated. He’s Mitt Romney, of course he will cheat! Surely as the sky is blue.

    Not a big deal and I don’t think it altered the outcome, but this is how Romney rolls.

  95. 95.

    Suffern ACE

    @? Martin: Yes it’s a California thing. Your pipeline needs flushing and your refinery is busted. We’d send some gas over, but apparently out gas isn’t good enough for you.

  96. 96.

    Brian R.

    @cathyx:

    I actually noticed that live. It was pretty obvious — he pulled out the sheet and dropped it on the podium as he walked up. Not sure what can be done about it.

  97. 97.

    Poopyman

    @quannlace: @shortstop: She won’t. it probably only comes in late at night or when the house is very still, then returns to its nest. I’ve found plenty of skins but never seen a live snake.

    On the clown on Morning Joe: I didn’t see the piece, but I’ll lay odds the jerkoff was Donny Deutch. Mofo just can’t help himself. Ever.

  98. 98.

    Tractarian

    @Princess:

    Look, I hate Mitt but the slow motion version very clearly shows he threw a handkerchief folded into a square onto the podium. This makes us look desperate.

    Yeah, I saw the slow-mo video. It could be a hanky. It could also be a cheat sheet.

    Either way, I disagree that this shows desperation. I know Obama’s aversion to play for winning news cycles, but he needs that right now. Every journalist focusing on (possibly bogus) accusations of Romney’s cheating is one less journalist focusing on Wednesday’s debate.

    (That said, with the good economic news this morning, perhaps it’s best to bring out these accusations in a week or so!)

  99. 99.

    Petorado

    These jobs numbers can’t possibly be true. Republicans have done everything in their power to ensure that nothing good would happen to the American economy over these past four years. It is simply unpossible for anything other than strict right wing orthodoxy to produce economic good news, except, of course, for the fact that strict right wing orthodoxy f*cks up the economy, as W ably demonstrated.

  103. 103.

    1badbaba3

    @catclub: Well it must be that Chicago-style soul food type cookin’. Think I saw Rev. Wright at the grill workin’ on those ribs.

  105. 105.

    Chris

    @J.D. Rhoades:

    They only love it insofar as they get to run it. The woman in Solomon’s judgment who wanted to cut the baby in half rather than let anyone else raise it? That’s their style of patriotism.

  106. 106.

    The Ancient Randonneur

    The logical answer to this good jobs report is that Obama called the Bureau of Labor Statistics after his miserable debate performance and had them fabricate these numbers!

    BTW if you haven’t seen the Morning Joe discussion of this report it really does demonstrate that Joe Scarborough is either the stupidest bastard on television or he is the stupidest bastard ever. You decide.

    Morning Joe is the audio version of Twitter for people who type slow.

  107. 107.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    awful down in San Diego as well. People yesterday were panic buying and filling up extra containers.

    @ranchandsyrup: Made my wife go out last night and fill up at 10pm. She had no idea this was going on. Word is that this is temporary, but could go on for a “couple of weeks”.

    Fine by me, we’re set. With no extra containers, either – my garage has a gas-fired water heater and I can’t store them in there, and you shouldn’t store it outside for all kinds of reasons. Thank God we both now have cars that get very good milage.

  108. 108.

    ranchandsyrup

    @SatanicPanic: In La Jolla, where Mitt’s car elevator resides, it was $5.36 a gallon. It’s crazy. People down here are going to start going to TJ to get gas from Pemex soon. On the news last night they had a person from AAA come on and tell people not to freak out and not to hoard. Just drive less.

  110. 110.

    Enhanced Mooching Techniques

    @? Martin:

    But blunting my enthusiasm for the jobs numbers are the gas prices here. Was $3.99 last week. $4.65 this morning – and our local Costco is out of gas and doesn’t know when they’ll be resupplied. Apparently this is localized to Cali.

    You are aware of the refinery fire at Richmond last month?

  111. 111.

    butler

    @? Martin: Funny you should mention that, I saw the same thing this morning. I filled up on Saturday for $3.99, and today its $4.41 at the cheapest place by my house. 10% in less than a week.

  112. 112.

    Suffern ACE

    @ranchandsyrup: I read on Bloomberg that it’s going to be at least a few weeks before they can get the supply problem fixed. It’s not good. Even if you weren’t reliant on the special California blend, you wouldn’t be able to transport enough from other parts of the country to make up for the pipeline problem. Not good, but also not permanent. This isn’t 1970s where there were supply issues that needed diplomatic solutions to fix the problem.

  116. 116.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    Seeing so many of us out of work is heartbreaking. Knowing that a nihilistic Republican House voted down anything that would help the unemployed is infuriating. I wonder how they feel now when, despite their best efforts to keep is out of work, unemployment is at a 44 month low.

    I know; they’ll bellow “You lie!” and double down in the next Congress.

    I would pay-per-view to see every one them have their American flag lapel pins driven into their foreheads with a ball peen hammer.

  117. 117.

    Suffern ACE

    On the California gas supply problem and potential hoarding – does anyone remember the 70s enough to recall if there was an increase in home fires due to hoarding and improper storage of gasoline?

  118. 118.

    catclub

    “that are plumb out of product”

    I have never before thought about how to spell
    ‘plumb tuckered out’, but I think you got it right.

    I seem to remember that in spanish plumb was leaded gas.

  119. 119.

    Forum Transmitted Disease

    there will be some stations that are plumb out of product.

    @ranchandsyrup: Passed one on the way in to work – he’s closed. I expect the indy by my house to close up today or tomorrow at the latest.

  120. 120.

    ranchandsyrup

    @Suffern ACE: If only we could Keep Calm and Carry On for those few weeks. Not gonna happen. I already had to point out to someone at my office that the record for gas prices was set in June of 2008 and yes, Bush the Younger was still president, and the local issues that are driving up the gas prices. He was saying it was all the Kenyan Usurper’s fault.
    @catclub: I chuckled a bit when AAA suggested that as well.

  121. 121.

    danimal

    I’m hoping the right-wing nutters really push the jobs number conspiracy. We want the job numbers to become ingrained in every undecided voters’ mind, along with a healthy dose of conservative hysteria. It’s a very, very advantageous and delicious combination, especially when seasoned with wingnut tears.

  124. 124.

    Chris

    @danimal:

    I’m hoping the right-wing nutters really push the jobs number conspiracy. We want the job numbers to become ingrained in every undecided voters’ mind, along with a healthy dose of conservative hysteria. It’s a very, very advantageous and delicious combination, especially when seasoned with wingnut tears.

    Colin Powell claimed he picked the name “Operation Just Cause” so that even the operation’s worst critics would have to utter the words “just cause” when criticizing it. Same here. “Unemployment under 8%” + the sense that the wingnuts are definitely not happy about it = good for us.

  126. 126.

    ? Martin

    @Suffern ACE: Damn right it’s not good enough! We only use organic gas here, pal!

    For those that don’t know – California uses a cleaner burning gas blend in the summer because we used to book 100 stage one smog alerts per year in LA and we haven’t had a single one now in 10 years. We fix shit out here rather than just calling it all socialism and then hording incandescent lightbulbs in our anus.

  127. 127.

    ericblair

    @ranchandsyrup:

    If only we could Keep Calm and Carry On for those few weeks.

    The Stiff Upper Lip things’s a bit overdone I think, but it would be nice if hysterical incontinence wasn’t the first American response to a crisis.

  128. 128.

    Cris (without an H)

    @Chris: Colin Powell claimed he picked the name “Operation Just Cause” so that even the operation’s worst critics would have to utter the words “just cause” when criticizing it.

    That’s funny, because my first response to the name of the operation was to mock it. “Why did we invade Panama? Just ’cause.”

  129. 129.

    tBone

    So Romney may have had a cheat sheet. So what? It’s not as bad as the TelePrompter Obama had his Chicago thugs install in his lectern. (They barely had enough time left over to finish cooking the jobs report.)

    @quannlace:

    I’m still wondering if Betty Cracker found that snake yet.

    Maybe it found her.

  130. 130.

    hep kitty

    Colin Powell claimed he picked the name “Operation Just Cause”

    Maybe what he really meant was Just Be-cause

  131. 131.

    SatanicPanic

    @ranchandsyrup: Unfortunately for me I live pretty close to Mitt’s car elevator. It was $4.65 the other day, but I don’t drive much so I only put in a few gallons. It’s never cheap in this part of town so I didn’t think anything of it. Oh well, I can get by without a car, but I had some errands to run this weekend. Guess they will have to wait a few weeks.

  132. 132.

    ranchandsyrup

    @ericblair: Can’t waste a good crisis! Crises can solidify individuals’ narratives/fears. We are mostly Chicken Littles.

    A couple of years ago when the power went out due to a mistake in a plant in AZ which shut down the local nuclear facility, my now former neighbors were 100% convinced that it was Al Qaeda. I could not dissuade them, even by letting them use my phone to search the innerwebs.

  133. 133.

    PeakVT

    @1badbaba3: The reason I declined to rejoice about modest numbers is that I think a lot of people have adjusted their expectations. An analogy might be how we’ve adjusted our expectations on weight. Just because we don’t notice it so much doesn’t mean this isn’t a country with far too many obese people (or merely overweight people, like myself). We still have a large number of long-term unemployed people in this country, along with young people who have never had a job. To get employers to hire those people, it will take a tight job market, with the U3 down in the low fives, not just a job market that was better than it was. Yes, positive job growth is great considering how much effort the Republicans have put into impoverishing their fellow Americans over the past four years. But we need much higher net job growth to fill the hole Bush dug.

  134. 134.

    Suffern ACE

    @? Martin: Well I guess that beats my plan at the time. Which was basically to level the Santa Whoever mountain ranges so that the smog would just blow away.

  136. 136.

    ? Martin

    @Enhanced Mooching Techniques: Yeah, but fuck, we haven a refinery fire every year. Apparently it’s just a bad combination of pipelines being down, that fire, some other refinery maintenance, and so on. It sounds more like the distribution problems are the culprit, not that there is a lack of production. Costco was saying that the independent buyers can’t get any gas, while the guys with their own gas pipelines can.

  138. 138.

    The Moar You Know

    For those that don’t know – California uses a cleaner burning gas blend in the summer because we used to book 100 stage one smog alerts per year in LA and we haven’t had a single one now in 10 years. We fix shit out here rather than just calling it all socialism and then hording incandescent lightbulbs in our anus.

    @? Martin: I’m native, with asthma. The smog that we had blowing down from LA every summer damn near killed me. “Brown Wall Of Shit” is what I called it as a kid in the 1970s, as that’s exactly what it looked like.

    I can’t remember the last one we had. And in most of LA, the air is clean these days. It used to be yellow – I mean, seriously, piss yellow air – when I was a kid.

    And yeah, we tend to deal with our shit as we have the brains and money to do so. Shame the rest of the country runs pretty consistently thirty years behind us.

  140. 140.

    MCA1

    Y’all need to get over your California gas price crisis whining/navel gazing. We’ve had $4.35+/gallon around here for months unabated now. And right here in Chicago! To think, even the President’s market manipulating thugs can’t bring down gas prices to buy our votes in their own backyard.

  141. 141.

    Ruckus

    @? Martin:
    If you were a conspiracy type you might think that big oil is limiting supplies to CA to try to get it to vote red instead of deep blue.

    However,

    “Product supply in California has tightened, especially in Southern California, due to refinery outages,” Bill Day, a Valero spokesman at the company’s headquarters in San Antonio, said by e-mail.

    Exxon’s Torrance refinery is restoring operations after losing power Oct. 1. Phillips 66 (PSX) is scheduled to perform work on gasoline-making units at its two California refineries this month, two people with knowledge of the schedules said. A Chevron Corp. (CVX) pipeline that delivers crude to Northern California refineries was also shut last month due to elevated levels of chloride in the oil.

  142. 142.

    uptown

    Got back to Seattle late on Tuesday evening and ran out to get a carryout. Gave up because there were lines everywhere I tried. On Sunday night, I had dinner out in a tourist town near Seattle and they were busy all evening.
    People seem to be getting in the spending mood again around here.

  143. 143.

    Mnemosyne

    I’ve been forced to drive to work every day for the past few weeks (combination of awful allergy season, 100+ degree temps in the SF Valley, and work events), but sounds like I’ll be biking to work a couple of days next week at least. This is one of those times when it’s really nice to live so close to work.

    Also, too, my friend who drives a diesel Jetta must be laughing her ass off right now, because diesel prices are lower than regular gasoline. Usually they’re slightly above the cost of premium.

  144. 144.

    Steeplejack

    @amk:

    I don’t think so. The RAND Corp. has been a heavyweight policy think tank since the ’50s. Conservative, maybe (in the old sense), but not right-wing (in the current, crazy sense).

  145. 145.

    Steeplejack

    @Suffern ACE:

    I don’t remember a lot of hoarding. It was more like there were very long lines to get gas, and it went straight into your car. Plus the whole situation was so unprecedented that people couldn’t believe it would last long.

  146. 146.

    Matt McIrvin

    A thing to keep in mind about the RAND survey is that they poll one-seventh of their sample population every day, so any effect is going to get smeared out over a week. Also, from the descriptions on the website it’s not clear to me that this isn’t off by one day, with tomorrow’s number giving the first real post-debate result.

    That said, if the Thursday point is really from Thursday, they see amazingly little change from before the debate to after. In the “shifts between candidates” chart, Romney has stopped hemorrhaging voters, but that happened before the debate. And the relative intention to vote seems to have gone up a little for Democrats, which may be why the prediction ticked up.

  147. 147.

    Matt McIrvin

    …Sam Wang’s aggregator sees a big jump toward Romney, but it seems to be on the basis of three Republican-leaning pollsters all dumping swing-state numbers at the same time, combined with some older results leaning unusually heavily toward Obama falling off the aggregate.

    I was freaking out a little over it, especially WeAskAmerica’s result with Romney leading in Ohio, Virginia and Florida, but I guess we need to wait for some more outfits to present numbers.

  149. 149.

    Thoughtcrime

    @? Martin:

    Martin,

    Isn’t this related to the explosions/fire at the Richmond, CA Chevron refinery about 2 months ago?

    I knew it had to be bad when I could see the huge plume as I was driving home from work that day.

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