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The Obama Watch
In Joco Jobitas
How the Obama Administration is able to report accelerating job growth in a stagnant economy.
How the Obama Administration is able to report accelerating job growth in a stagnant economy.
THE BUNGLING CARICATURE of economics and resource management known as Obamanomics reminds one of Inspector Clouseau in the old Pink Panther movies. You can count on Obamanomics to misread all the clues as it flies about wreaking havoc in every direction. It is the hopelessly inept crime stopper who creates more damage than the criminal he pursues.
On July 14, Vice President Joe Biden and the CEA’s Christina Romer updated the nation on a major discovery in the long-running Great Recession. They reported that the government had “created or saved” approximately three million jobs since February of last year — a period of time in which the U.S. economy had a net loss of 2.35 million jobs.
As usual, Biden and Romer, the trusty lieutenants, were three or four steps behind their supremely self-confident leader in sifting through the evidence and drawing the most wrong-headed conclusion. Only days earlier, President Barack Obama said in Racine, Wisconsin, that the economy “would have been a lot worse” and the unemployment rate would have soared to “12, or 13, or 15” percent, had it not been for the intercession of the $862 billion stimulus package.
With the president doing the counting, the administration has “created or saved” as many as 8.5 million jobs, or almost triple the number of jobs cited by his vice president and the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. We may ask ourselves: How could Biden and Romer have overlooked a few million additional jobs? Wasn’t that a little careless on their part? And why aren’t the rest of us feeling the extraordinary jolt that would surely attend so much job creation?
You may credit the administration with creating or saving all those additional jobs if you subtract the current rate of unemployment (9.5%) from the putative 15% unemployment rate cited by the president as what could have been without the stimulus. That is a difference of 5.5%. Multiplied by the size of the labor pool (154 million people), this calculation moves a total of 8.5 jobs into the fanciful “created or saved” column (a metric that can be neither proved nor disproved because it is pure supposition).
But why not go all the way? Why not credit the Obama administration — as the president himself is increasingly inclined to do — with stopping the unemployment rate from skyrocketing to 24.9%, which is where it stood when Franklin D. Roosevelt took office during the darkest days of the Great Depression?
Eight months ago, I wrote a column in this space, entitled “Lies, Damned Lies and Job Creation.” At this time (late 2009), the administration claimed only to have “created or saved” 650,000 jobs. I jokingly suggested that the administration might just well take credit for “creating or saving” 22.9 million jobs — that being the number of jobs that might otherwise have been destroyed in a full-scale depression of the same magnitude as the one in the early 1930s. From a Team Obama perspective, I pointed out, the beauty of this argument was that it left so much untapped downside potential. The unemployment could re-double — to 20% — and the administration would still be within the 24.9% bogey which would entitle them to say — “Think about how much worse things would be if we didn’t add another trillion dollars or more to the national debt.” They could go on and on — in President Obama’s words at the time — determined to “spend our way out of this recession.”
Apparently, my words — even if spoken in jest — did not fall on deaf ears. In Racine, Obama opined:
Now, every economist who has looked at it has said that the Recovery (Act) did its job. It put the brake on the collapse of the economy. We avoided a Great Depression. We are now growing again. The problem is, number one, it’s hard to argue sometimes, things would have been a lot worse. Right?…
So part of the challenge in delivering this message about all that the Recovery Act accomplished is that things are still tough, they just aren’t as bad as they could have been. They could have been a catastrophe. In that sense, it worked.
Let us overlook the fact that the first sentence is flat-out wrong — a whopping falsehood. There are other problems with what might be called the Wilson/Obama Hypothesis (I am giving myself a little credit here) that caused Biden and Romer to stop well short of the president in their estimate of jobs “created or saved.”
First of all, there is the small matter that the president and his economic team did not sell the stimulus bill on the basis that it would keep unemployment below 15 or 25%. Instead, they warned that unemployment could go as high as 9% without the stimulus and they predicted that it would stay at 8% or less with the stimulus. This wasn’t one of those fine moments — like Babe Ruth pointing to center just before hitting a home run over the center field wall — when a promise turned into a walloping reality.
Secondly, Romer and her team of economists want to make at least a pretense of being scientific in evaluating the supposed benefits of the stimulus. As the Wall Street Journal noted in its editorial (“Three Million Imaginary Jobs”) on July 15:
All of these White House jobs estimates are based on the increasingly discredited Keynesian spending “multiplier,” which according to White House Economist Larry Summers means that every $1 of government spending will yield roughly $1.50 in higher GDP. Ms. Romer thus plugs her spending data into the Keynesian computer models and, presto, out come 2.5 million to 3.6 million jobs, even if the real economy has lost jobs. To adapt Groucho Marx: Who are you going to believe, the White House computer models, or your own eyes?
About the Author
Andrew B. Wilson, a frequent contributor to The American Spectator, writes from St. Louis.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (75) | Leave a comment
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Melvin| 7.19.10 @ 7:33AM
I surmise that they are getting their numbers from what the educators a long time ago called, "The New Math."
Chalkdust| 7.19.10 @ 7:35AM
This is whats called "the Dirty Diaper" theory of economics. To wit; Something stinks to high heaven, but from all appearances, everything looks OK.
coal carrier| 7.19.10 @ 7:45AM
It should not be difficult to develop and find out how many jobs were created with this so-called stimulus money. Anyone with half a brain can do it. Here is the formula:
How mush was spent?
Where was it spent?
How many jobs were created?
The reason they really don’t know the true job creation number, if any, is because they don’t know the answer to any of the above questions. If they did know, Joe Biden’s numbers and Obama’s numbers would be the same. And all they would have to do is show the taxpayer an Excel spreadsheet answering the above questions.
Instead we have Obama saying 8.5 million jobs saved and Biden saying 2.8 million saved. Lets see, $862 billion spent divided by 8.5 million jobs saved = $101,411 per job. The number is even higher when you use “make-it-up-as-you-go-along-Joe’s” numbers. Wow, where can I sign up?
November can’t come soon enough.
Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 7.19.10 @ 7:56AM
Karl Marx said, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, and second as farce."
Marx was an idiot, although he was half right with this one statement. Communism's first act was completely tragic (see Iron Curtain), but it's next act will not be slapstick, it'll just be more tragedy, and more death. But this time instead it'll be ironic tragedy!! The freest, most successful Country in the history of the World, slowly transforming into a sad copy of what we once fought so hard against.
Shamus| 7.20.10 @ 12:31PM
First Karl, then Groucho.
stephanie| 7.19.10 @ 7:58AM
Lies, lies and more lies.
Ret. Marine| 7.19.10 @ 8:09AM
Two words, and two words only, Bull shale.
ggoblue| 7.19.10 @ 8:12AM
i personally created or saved 45,000 jobs myself over the weekend...hired a guy off craigslist to build me a privacy fence...that money is now fanning out through the economy....
too bad i can't tax the shit out of everyone to pay for it!
106 days until biden's miracle....lmao
Indiana Alex| 7.19.10 @ 8:34AM
You know an administration has a poor record of economic accomplishment when they have to resort to making up their own statistics.
Shamus| 7.20.10 @ 12:32PM
57.8% of all statistics are made up
Lazy Jack | 7.19.10 @ 9:14AM
Our government has been using the Keynesian multiplier to justify its institutional appetite since 1932. During that period, Democrat(s) have held majorities in the House and the Senate for about 77% of the time, and have thereby controlled both the spending and the public narrative. This virtual one party rule has, apparently, eliminated any meaningful analysis of the true economic costs of government expansion. In the blog post below, a case is made that with every incremental dollar in government spending, a corresponding reduction occurs in the private economy. Arguably, if we had frozen total government spending (local, state, and federal) at the then all time high of 29% of GDP, we would have added $20 trillion to the GDP over the subsequent 40 years, and begun this recession with 7.5 million more jobs. Arguably, your progressive leadership has been promisig you more equality and personal wealth while their policies have been draining the bathtub.
But, of course, we will never know now what would have happened. Pity.
Best,
Lazy Jack
http://thanksforthelaughs.word.....expansion/
Lazy Jack | 7.19.10 @ 9:23AM
Just in case you also thought that stimulus spending is temporary:
Total U.S. government spending (Federal, State, Local) as a percent of GDP:
1966: 27.5%
2009: 45.3
U.S. published unemployment rates:
1966: 3.9%
2009:9.6%
Your perpetual progressive government has, in the great words of Lincoln (Abe, not Blanche) sung you a lullaby about the grace and goodness of government. Apparently, facts and mathematics aside, it is working out pretty well.
See below for more.
Best,
Lazy Jack
http://thanksforthelaughs.word.....9/lullaby/
Streetfighter| 7.19.10 @ 12:01PM
Lazy Jack, I see you also have a link called "Three Beer Solutions" under construction. Maybe you should apply for some of that stimulus money, it appears "shovel ready". You could then call it "Free Beer Solutions". lol
Grzmlyk| 7.19.10 @ 9:29AM
Yes, it's true that Hitler killed 6 million Jews. But what people don't realize is that if Hitler hadn't come to power, 13.7 million Jews would have been killed. That's a net of 7.7 million Jews SAVED by Hitler. Why doesn't anybody give him credit for saving an entire race?
An even better example is Stalin: It's estimated that his various policies and vendettas killed upwards of 60 million people. What the history books conveniently leave out is the 107 million he SAVED.
Far from being genocidal sociopaths, Stalin and Hitler were in fact saviors who held human life more precious than Jesus Christ himself.
Sure, folks call the 20th century the bloodiest in history. But do you have any idea how much bloodier it would have been without Hitler and Stalin?
We should be on our knees every single night thanking God that these misunderstood humanitarians deigned to take the helm of their respective countries when they could as easily have ascended to the heavens without enriching humanity so mightily.
Oh, and when Lt. William Calley and his men entered the village of My Lai, the history books all talk about how he killed everybody in the village. But does anybody reflect on the number he saved? Why, it's. . . . that is, i think . . . Oops. Wait a minute. That math isn't working - if everybody wound up dead . . .
Ah. Now I see. It's not me. Math itself is flawed. I just emailed Paul Krugman and he corrected my understanding of rudimentary addition: One plus one is zero if you're a Republican; one plus one is whatever the hell you want it to be if your a Democrat. The garden gnome with a Nobel then referred me to his source, which, it turns out, is not Keynes. It is Alice in Wonderland.
And the irrascible imp Krugman graced me with the answer: If one uses Krugman's patented Manson Multiplier, it turns out that William Calley saved a total of 228 villagers; that is, without his rampage, everybody in the village - multiplied by a factor of 3, of course - would have been slaughtered.
The Obama administration: Through the looking glass, down the rabbit hole and shot through with such pathology as to put it on a par with the most corrupt, evil regimes in history.
And still the lemming liberals march to his tune; smiling beatifically even as they go over the edge of the cliff.
I say let 'em go over the edge, and good riddance. The problem is that they're not content with their own suicides. They want the sane to go first.
Anthony| 7.19.10 @ 9:46AM
One hates to admit it, but Grzmlyk's analysis is spot on with the insane Obama Administration logic.
How did we sink this low with an entire Democrat establishement run by Lewis Carroll?
I can see November from my house!!!!
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 7.19.10 @ 10:18AM
If I recall correctly didn’t Alice attend a Tea Party?
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“`Have you guessed the riddle yet?' the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
`No, I give it up,' Alice replied: `what's the answer?'
`I haven't the slightest idea,' said the Hatter.
`Nor I,' said the March Hare.” - ‘Alice's Adventures in Wonderland’ by Lewis Carroll
Only 916 days to go.
George S| 7.19.10 @ 10:52AM
That's interesting, for I just had breakfast with the Wile E. Nobel super genius, and we were discussing history's worst economy (since the Great Depression) of 2002 to 2006. Did you know that for every job created, there was one more person who was just a paycheck away from homelessness? Not since Reagan has an economy created so many borderline homeless. Also, all those jobs weren't real jobs, for every thousand of those jobs cost the taxpayer the job of one Food-Stamp bureaucrat. So the federal employee to private sector (FEPS) ratio tilted to a congruent maxima of 1 to 3.987 on the sloping derivative of the Labor Department's bimonthly US Underemployment Statistical Imagery projection, irrefutably concluding Bush = (1.3) Hitler.
Stunned by the aura of brilliance I was engulfed in, I asked him to clear the economic misconception of 9-11 and the Iraq/Afghan wars. Ahh... the financier Bin Laded has resources to fund 19,000 hijackers -- not just 19. That's a thousand times greater, meaning that three million people were spared. Therefore Bin Laden saved the United States treasury close to $15 billion a year, which the war monger Cheney promptly gave to Haliburton to build a cave to house Bin Laden till the 2006 election. But when I mentioned that Bush might have saved us trillions by not invading Syria and Iran, I could see the disappointment in his face. "Your not listening... you cannot save money by not doing something you want to do. You only save money by spending more than you have and, at the same time, less than what you projected to spend. That's what's known as a budget cut -- where you save the taxpayer money."
Clear as a No Bell.
Stan Redmond| 7.19.10 @ 4:44PM
You offer a very true analysis of lives created or saved under liberalism, I mean progressivism. If the results aren't to your liking just change the facts to agree with your hypothesis. All liberalism depends on that principle.
dfern| 7.20.10 @ 12:44AM
Beautiful analysis!
George S| 7.19.10 @ 10:06AM
What's wrong with multipliers? They conveniently fill in the gaps when tree ring data and ice cores do not match temperature data. That, and placing thermometers in volcano pit, informed mankind of the dangers of a warming plant. Where would we be without multipliers hiding the decline of global temperatures and job losses?
Grzmlyk| 7.19.10 @ 10:30AM
And let's not be so hasty as to discount the salubrious effects of pixie dust and gossamer on the economy. When those kick in, ZOWIE!
For you benighted conservatives, those two substances are part of the New-and-Improved Periodic Table of Economic Elements for the Democrat party - you know, the same chart that shows CO2 as an evil pollutant spewed by Republicans.
Why, Paul Krugman alone has over 4 tons of unused pixie dust in his basement, and I'm told Nancy Pelosi's entire life (not to mention her forehead) is held up by gossamer. Rumor has it she owns several gossamer mines somewhere in Elysian Fields, the capital of Utopia - and they are operated by AFL-CIO unicorns.
And if pixie dust and gossamer aren't enough to give the adminstration the numbers they require to prove that Obama has successfully navigated this economy through the turbulent waters of "what might have been," I have it on good authority that Austan Goolsbee is fully prepared to unleash the big guns: Centaur hooves.
But that ain't the half of it: I hate to make fools of you reality-bound conservatives, but when Obama is able to harness the power of leprechaun smiles - with the assistance of his new lapdog, BP and his old lapdog, GM, cars will get 3,412 miles per gallon. Without using one drop of evil gasoline.
That's because he's going to make Barbara Eden his new energy czar (nobody has told him that "I Dream of Jeannie" was a fictitious TV show of the 1960s, but so what? If Obama deems it to be reality, lo, it is reality!).
For his next trick, Obama is going to roll back that inconvenient law of gravity thing. Once he was told it will inevitably make Michelle's buff arms sag (thanks to the collusion of that "insensitive"second law of thermodynamics), he was all over that legislation; Pelosi heartily agrees (Harry Reid could not be reached for comment as he is in the Witless Protection Program).
And the media will pronounce it "good." After all, what the hell will they have to write about throughout Obama's second term if Michelle's arms go the way of all flesh?
Anthony| 7.19.10 @ 11:08AM
Grzmlyk, Co2 levels are outre' dude, that canard has been played out; according to Drudge, the enviro-nut jobs new claim is that we have methane levels a million x that which caused dinosaur extinction.
Great!!! just in time for the 2nd dinosaur extinction this November!!! History does repeat itself, it's about damn time ! Send a D packing home this November and reduce dangerous methane levels in D.C. Who says we're not enviornmentally friendly??
Grzmlyk| 7.19.10 @ 11:41AM
Great point, Anthony - I had somehow failed to notice the Dems' rollout of the latest and greatest ogre in the cave we must all fear.
I'm waiting for blinks of the eye to be the next cause of global calamity. All they need to do is hire Google to develop technology that counts our eye blinks each minute and then charge us for each one. Think of the revenue that would generate!
I will say this: NOTHING is ever outre when it comes to liberalism. They NEVER let go of their pet concepts, no matter how many years of history accrue proving them wrong.
Therefore, it doesn't matter if every single global warming crackpot scientist of cynical politician is revealed to be a liar; they will NEVER let go of it. It's just TOO GOOD to fact check, as the New York Times says.
Similarly, they have never let go of "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs."
They will never let go of feminism until all men start each day by lying prostrate before a female awating his orders.
They will never let go of the victimization of gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered/gender-confused people until only gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered/gender-confused people are in positions of power.
And on and on.
That's what's so GREAT about being a liberal! You don't have to be bound by anything so prosaic as reality! Truth need not cramp your style. All you have to do is wish hard enough and, gosh darn it, you can make the facts suit your narrative, just like the mainstream media!
John II| 7.19.10 @ 10:32AM
Excellent piece, which I shall add to my collection--my rapidly growing collection of Obamacania, which I am saving for my grandchildren to help them 30 or so years from now reflect on what the hell happened to make things so impossibly bad.
But there is one not-so-glaring error. If "Jobitas" is intended to be a faux-Latin term in reference to the condition of "yammering about jobs," the form of the 3rd-declension singular abstract noun should be the genitive "Jobitatis." As it stands, the grammar of the mock title is impossible.
Now let's all sit back and see if TAS's copy editors pay any attention to the postings of us cranks.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 7.19.10 @ 11:44AM
There are a lot of words ending with ‘itis’ a suffix used in pathological terms that denote inflammation of an organ ( bronchitis; gastritis; neuritis ) and hence, in extended senses, nouns denoting abnormal states or conditions, excesses, tendencies, obsessions, etc. ( telephonitis; baseballitis ). {http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/-itis}. I think Mr. Wilson simply misspelled ‘Jobitis’.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, "How is the president?"” - Will Rogers
Only 916 days to go.
John II| 7.19.10 @ 5:19PM
Gill: I think that one may be a stretch. See below.
Roscoe| 7.19.10 @ 12:23PM
John II, I don't believe the use of "Jobitas" was an error by Mr. Wilson. I believe it was a "faux-Latin" (I do like that) play on "veritas". Thus, Mr. Wilson's headline posits that the Biden/Romer/bho version of truth about jobs, is a joke.
John II| 7.19.10 @ 5:18PM
Oh. If so, I guess then that the play is on the chestnut "in vino veritas," which never occurred to me. I was stuck on the thought that the wordplay was on the expression "in loco parentis" and that the nominative form "jobitas" was used merely for syllabic resonance without regard to grammar. Thanks for the ingenious interpretation.
Darn. I was hoping to smoke out a copy editor just to see if TAS pays any attention.
Andrew Wilson| 7.19.10 @ 6:34PM
John II, I will admit my Latin is more than a little rusty, as it has been many years since I have read Virgil or any one else in Latin. But why would you think that the made-up word here should be genitive rather than nominative? In the expressions, "in veno veritas" and "in joco veritas," you have "in wine there is truth" and "in joke there is truth" - with truth as the subject. As Roscoe surmised, it was those phrases that made me think of "jobitas" as absurb word for jobbiness - or "yammering about jobs," as you put it. Thanks for your comments. Andrew
John II| 7.19.10 @ 7:14PM
Because, as I tried to explain, I was stuck on "in loco parentis" as the analogue rather than something like "in vino veritas." The latter just didn't occur to me.
So "in joco jobitatis" (with jobitas in the genitive), the title would mean "regarding the farce of yammering about jobs." But the faux-nominative "jobitas" works much better in imitation of "in vino veritas," and would actually work in Latin idiom: "the job-yammering is farcical" or (somewhat more "literally") "job-yammering (is the keynote) in the farce."
I've been teaching Latin and classical literature for almost 50 years, since my graduate school days--and that's what I get for my acquired expertise: a tin ear. If my own Latin had been rusty, the title wouldn't have bothered me at all, and I could have enjoyed it without all this fuss.
See what asses experts are?
Tim*| 7.19.10 @ 10:46AM
U.S. U-3 Unemployment Rate Forecast
1 Jun 2010 9.7
2 Jul 2010 9.7
3 Aug 2010 9.8
4 Sep 2010 9.8
5 Oct 2010 9.7
6 Nov 2010 9.7
7 Dec 2010 9.7
8 Jan 2011 9.8
Faffnir| 7.19.10 @ 10:50AM
The numbers bandied about byOur Feckless Leader and his Mighty Band of Intellectual Midgets are a pure example of the most powerful tool of economic analysis ever invented: Finagle's Fiddle Factor.
Finagle's Fiddle Factor is that number which, when added to, subtracted from, multiplied by or divided into the answer you have gives you the answer you should have got.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 7.19.10 @ 11:19AM
Grzmlyk @ 10:30AM, will pigs fly on gossamer wings?
I have posted similar numbers before so this only constitutes an update. I began tracking the National Debt Clock numbers { http://www.usdebtclock.org} on November 30, 2009. On December 10, I added their Work Force count to my data gathering. On that day 138,579,287 people were counted, and the U. S. population was 308,124,695 people. This gave a what I dubbed the Employment Rate of 44.975%. The Work Force peaked on June 4, 2010, at 140,658,480, an increase of 2,079,193. On that day, the population was 309,422,558, an increase of 1,297,863. The Employment Rate was 45.458%. I cannot vouch for the validity of their numbers, but this would indicate that just maybe there was some truth to obummer’s boasts. However, since then, the Work Force has declined steadily an average of about 47,793 daily. My numbers indicate that 2,007,310 fewer folks are so enumerated. Last Friday, this number stood at 138,651,170, the population was 309,750,817 and the Employment Rate was 44.762% - less than when I started. In all, there have been 29 consecutive days of job losses; I only record numbers on days the New York Stock Exchange is open and after its close. I fear that OUR current gum’mint views economics as a zero sum game. That the only way for Gill to become wealthy is by his taking Tom’s money. Their corollary to this bogus concept is that the only way they can control our every breath is by seizing total control of everything else. The incompetent won already has assumed control of an estimated 75% of OUR economy with the unconstitutional hairy red- bunny fwank financial reform bill and exercised dictatorial powers with his mishandling of the oil leak. It will get a lot worse before we see the light at the end of this tunnel. I hope it won’t be a freight train. Probably won’t be due to rising freight train fuel prices.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
When a fellow says it ain't the money but the principle of the thing, it's the money. - Artemus Ward
Only 916days to go.
Grzmlyk| 7.19.10 @ 12:01PM
Gill, you are doing yoeman's work - although it is depressing as hell.
I think you are absolutely right about how the adminsitration views economics - as a zero sum game. I believe this to be a fact.
I dated a woman a couple of years ago - very briefly - whose view of economics can only be attributed to a belief that all the money in the world is hidden in a cave somewhere that's guarded by evil republicans.
Her belief - and it is an article of liberal faith - is that ALL wealth is theft (just as Obama's belief that all wealth is theft EXCEPT for that which accrues to him and his cronies).
This ignores fundamental laws of conomics and the reality of how wealth is created, and why the market is such an elastic, intelligent mechanism for allocating resources.
She told me that she hated all rich people - except, of course, the movie stars she idolizes - and when I told her that my sister, who at one time was very wealthy, had not just amassed cash; in her time as an entrepreneur she had probably provided highly-paid employment for upwards of 2,000 people over the course of 20 years.
My soon-to-be-ex girlfriend's reply? "So what? She's rich."
And that, folks, is the extent of Obama's understanding of economics. But why should we be surprised when his tutors are Axelrod, Krugman and Keynes?
BTW, with respect to only 916 days to go - let us PRAY that the GOp puts somebody up there who is NOT a craven rino. We need a real conservative (there are so few in government at every level), and one with the talent to lead.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 7.19.10 @ 5:56PM
Grzmlyk, congratulations! You are, as far as I know, the first person to post a comment indicating an understanding of the “916 days to go”. I hope on your last date with your golden cave friend, she told you its location. Might be a worthwhile vacation destination. As far as its Republy-kon Guard, all we’d have to do is to threaten to call them rascist, and they’d let us right in and tell us to help ourselves - cave in so to speak.
I have every confidence that the Republy-kons will disappoint most of us with their milquetoast nominee in 2012, and for the seventh straight election cycle, we’ll have to hold our noses in order to vote. I’m anticipating a Dole-McCain ticket. Wowie-zowie! The Grand Old Party’s Elephant has been replaced by a weak kneed perissodactyl whose horn has been worn to a nub kissing up across the aisle.
Back to the message in my 11:19 AM Comment: Over the weekend, an additional 29,958 were deleted from the Work Force, the population increased by 25,804, the Employment Rate declined to 44.749%, an additional 343 federal employees have been added and account for 3.076% of the work force, and 29,945 more folks are receiving food stamps comprising 13.312% of the population. I think obummer’s advisor is Rosy Glasses.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
Q: How do you make a rino float?
A: With two scoops of ice-cream, a bottle of root beer, and a rino. Or more simply, toss him overboard.
Only 916 days to go.
Grzmlyk| 7.19.10 @ 7:45PM
You made me smile - again, Gill!
Yes, a Dole-McCain ticket would be a real winner. The only thing even approaching that would be either the Maine-centric fecklessness fest of Snowe/Collins ticket or perhaps a couple of old fashioned RINO dandies, Hatch/Graham.
It's too damned depressing.
Who else but the GOP could make the last three pathetic, narcissistic, eternally adolescent Dem nominees look good? Gore, Kerry and Obama all share a pathological psychosis, utterly bloated self regard, virtually no actual knowldge, wisdom or native intelligence, and a craven ability to continually outwhore themselves and each other. And against this backdrop we produce George Bush and John (pardon me while I gag) McCain, and of course the pathetic, clueless nobody McCain got his clock cleaned - and ours.
BTW, you say that over the weekend, 29,958 jobs were deleted from the workforce. That may be true, but do you know the number that would have been lost if Obama weren't president? 64,348, according to Paul Krugman. That's right - Obama saved 34,390 jobs just over the weekend alone!!!!
Is he a GREAT president or what?
Only 916 days to go - and then be careful what we wished for. And if the next GOP nominee's name is Jeb, I swear to god I'm going to sit down and have a month-long cry.
John II| 7.19.10 @ 10:11PM
Okay, Grzzy, I'll bite. Dubya wasn't quite the same as his old man, and Jeb is rather considerably different from his brother.
Look, I am the paterfamilias of five kids, ranging in age from 20 to 34. NONE of them is the same as the other. Well--they're all conservatives, of course--but some of them are only casually so, and some of them make me look like a suck-artist in the Obama administration.
So what, EXACTLY, is your beef against Jeb? Seriously (sort of), I just want to know. I mean, if 2012 turns into a toe-to-toe with Bammy and Jeb, whom the hell are you going to vote for?
Grzmlyk| 7.20.10 @ 12:37AM
Hello John II:
First, I enjoy your comments immensely. Thank you for your insights.
To answer your question: Because the Bushes all come from the "Noblesse Oblige" school of patricianism, wherein "service" is the highest form of the expression of compassion and "conservative" is merely a focus-group-approved word to be used as a foil against opponents whose views are not that different from the Bushes’ own.
Frankly, I think the entire Bush dynasty is long-since proven to be wrong-headed and the product of an elite echo chamber that is disassociated from reality.
As you say, you are the father of five, and all offspring are, more or less, oriented conservatively (congrats, by the way; I'd say you are a success for that alone!). In a general way, you are making my point for me; all of the Bushes are, more or less, "compassionate conservatives." Count on it.
Prescott Bush was the prototype country club Republican - aligned with Planned Parenthood and philosophically in tune with Nelson Rockefeller.
George Sr. showed his provincial paternalism and elitist, country-club republicanism in spades. Decent chap? Yes. Legitimate heir to the Reagan Revolution? No.
And while I was no huge fan of George when it was clear he'd win the nomination in 2000, after 9/11 I really believed he might have conservative fiber in his sinew after all.
I was wrong.
The man was a nanny-statist from top to bottom, and, even more egregious than the cynicism of most Dems, W is a True Believer. Bush conforms to the David Frum school of “conservatism,” which posits that, hey, the argument about big government is over - the question now is, can "conservatives" prove they can run a massive statist bureaucracy more judiciously than dems. Well, I think Frum and his ilk are dead wrong and Reagan was right (government is not the solution, it's the problem).
And W's failure to stand up for Scooter Libby was the last straw for me. It was unconscionable and unfathomable. As was his feckless - at best - defense of the Iraq war (Karl Rove's recent mea culpa excuses neither of them one iota).
I don't care what Jeb says or does; he will run as a strict tea-party friendly conservative. And, if elected, he will proceed to turn into a carbon copy of his brother and his father, bowing at the altar of status quo bureaucracy and bending to its gravity.
These GOP blue-blood types are anathema to conservatism, and I believe the strain of "compassion" that runs through the Bush DNA trumps any true faith in free market principles and the rugged individualism that made this country great. The entire family tree is rotten with Noblesse Oblige.
Admittedly, these thoughts are the bitter brew that was steeped in three Bush administrations that never failed to snatch philosophical defeat from the jaws of conservative victory.
Mathematically speaking, the odds are that Jeb will follow the classic Bush route. And frankly, I think this next election is too important to gamble that the apple may, against the odds, have fallen far from the tree.
Besides, there's just too much baggage attached to the Bush name. Independents beyond Florida will be hard pressed to fall for Jeb as Floridians once did (and in the wake of that tornado of oleaginousness Charlie Crist, who even remembers Jeb anymore?).
W has made the name toxic for years to come. There will be no “Jeb Democrats” and precious few “Jeb Independents.”
Just to let you know where I'm coming from, I think even Romney is damaged beyond repair and dares not run after RomneyCare’s implosion (never mind his listless - but money-saturated - run in 2008).
We need a new leader to emerge. If he's not the product of political Immaculate Conception, he damned well ought to be pretty close!
Yes, if it’s Jeb vs. Obama in 2012 I’ll vote for Jeb – as I voted reluctantly for McCain in 2008. But if Jeb ever had a moment, it is past. He's not the man for the times; not any more.
gene| 7.20.10 @ 5:58AM
I am looking for results oriented people.
Mitch Daniels and Paul Ryan come to mind.
John II| 7.20.10 @ 12:44PM
Jeb doesn't project the same listlessness and rhetorical indifference as does either the old man or Dubya. But he is indeed saddled with the name, and, notwithstanding their past enthusiasms for the Kennedy thing, the MSM would have a field day with such themes as "dynastic pretension."
I suppose we need a decent infusion of Marco Rubios to counter the country-club bluebloods. This coming November is probably more important than any of us realize. It's going to be either a disastrous fizzle abetted by the RINOs or a decisive watershed of greater consequence than either 1980 or 1994.
Nothing in between will do. Once the nation is habituated to nanny-state medical care, America will have been reduced to a congeries of spiritual druggies acquiescent in a permanent tyranny.
Anyhow, thanks for the concrete response, Grzzy. Consider me chastened.
JoshINHB| 7.21.10 @ 12:06AM
Exactly Right.
Stan Redmond| 7.19.10 @ 4:50PM
Cap and trade will put 100% of all manufacturing and production in this nation under the direct control of a carbon 'Czar' who will be under the direct control of Obama. That's when the real fun begins. I've already moved my production overseas. Save money and starve the government beast. GO GALT BABY!!! [PS I have EXPANDED my business there and have not displaced my current core employees]
C.K. Amos| 7.19.10 @ 11:41AM
We've seen nothing yet. Wait 'til they take on revising Newtonian physics and physical chemistry.
BTW: Once heard this about mathematical simulation modeling and the influence of the assumptions in such: Give me four variables and I give you a dog. Give me 10 and I'll make it bark.
Streetfighter| 7.19.10 @ 12:22PM
How can an entire nation fall for this. It's like a child with a new bb gun shooting out a garage window. When confronted by an adult, defends himself by claiming; I didn't shoot the insulators off the lightning rods, the cat, people riding by on bicycles, or anybodys eyes out.
It is a childs logic they are using on adults and many are falling for it.
Pat| 7.19.10 @ 4:28PM
Along with AmSpec, the New York Times is also concerned about jobs – like “where are all those new jobs we were promised?”. Just the other night, senior editors from the Times joined their “sources” at the Democratic Party National Committee for a quiet drink when the topic came up – “where are the jobs?”. An intern, coincidentally from Obama’s old neighborhood, was sent scampering off to the Democratic Party Strategy Vault to fetch back the “Creating Prosperity” To Do list.
After carefully re-checking the To Do list, everyone ordered another drink and settled down to discuss the problem. For example, blame your predecessor and clear the slate so you can take credit for any economic improvement. Check that item off the list – Bush was blamed, Obama claimed he had the solution. Then the list says: Make a noisy, public fuss claiming to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on job creation while directing most of the money into the pockets of your friends and campaign supporters – check, yes we did that also.
Next on the list, create misleading statistics which make you look good, which make your job creating actions look like they’re bearing fruit and which keep the whole “how many jobs have been created so far” issue as confused as possible. Check and double check, Obama’s White House flunkies did the confusing numbers bit, in fact they’re still doing it.
Last on the list and most important of all is: “Wait Patiently (the economy always recovers no matter what you do)”. “We’ve been waiting patiently and waiting patiently, but it isn’t working this time around”, complained the Democrat’s Strategist in Chief, “we just can’t wait any faster than we already are”. The Times’ Senior Editor said: “Maybe we can help with that” and, as a consequence in today’s Times, bright, creative John Harwood cranked out the obligatory “plausible excuse” piece in the hopes of helping Obama.
Harwood first asks: “Why is unemployment so high”? He then answers himself by saying the problem: “has flummoxed economists in both parties for a year”. Translated from Liberal Speak to plain English, Harwood is trying hard to make us believe this situation is an economic phenomena which is unprecedented in past presidencies and, therefore, you can’t blame Obama for it. Also, “economists in both parties” admits that economics is really more politics than science – something Political Science professors have been saying for years while complaining they should be paid as much as “economists”.
For 87.9% of upper west side New York liberals, this excuse makes perfect sense. Obama has done everything right, it isn’t his fault. For 57.3% of the voting public, the belief that our Presidents can bring about economic prosperity is vindicated, this time around there is obviously something mysterious going on, something outside the normal “wait for prosperity to return and then take credit for it” pattern – but whatever mysterious economic forces are currently at work, somehow George Bush must be at fault.
Stan Redmond| 7.19.10 @ 4:53PM
I am clearly not capable of comprehending the brilliant economic leadership of Obama [pbuh] the holy won. Imagine how much better things would be if the rest of the stimulus money were spent.
I'm off to see spot run.
magua| 7.19.10 @ 5:31PM
What more needs to be highlighted here other than something so obvious it's amazing we've failed to notice until now.
Why are all the women surrounding this administration so ugly?
Just an observation.
p.s. that goes for Michele too!
John II| 7.19.10 @ 6:09PM
Oh, I've noticed all right, but I'm just used to it because of my work in academe.
Lefty women seem to come in two phenotypes: (1) lean, terse, and angry, or (2) plump, garrulous, and angry. Without severe discipline, the hatchet-like type 1 is prone to morph into the mallet-like type 2 over the years, but Aristotle would refer to both as "fat-souled."
Orwell was equally blunt about this touchy issue of lefty women in "The Road to Wigan Pier." Apparently, among women especially, if one thinks in a certain way for too long, one starts looking like one's thoughts.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 7.19.10 @ 6:22PM
Please, let’s not focus on superficialities. For the record, though I do not recall their names, I have seen attractive obummerites on Fox’s evening shows. The outside of a person is a very unimportant factor, especially when compared to that person’s character. Someone much wiser than I once said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.” Matthew 7:1-2
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“You can't judge an apple by looking at a tree
“You can't judge honey by looking at the bee
“You can't judge a daughter by looking at the mother
“You can't judge a book by looking at the cover” Bo Diddley and Bo knows diddley.
Only 916 days to go.
John II| 7.19.10 @ 9:36PM
He was much wiser than you and I than you allow, Gill. Please: don't give me that lefty non-judgmental interpretation of Christ's words on the Mount. If you take it in the whole context of the Gospel, you can't help concluding that, whereas Christians are not permitted to pretend that they have a window to see into the souls of others, they are just as firmly mandated to judge the behavior of others--because there is an objective standard against which to measure the behavior. It's come to be called the Natural Law.
I have often thought that the most difficult demand of the difficult Christian faith is that we must juggle those two mandates: never judge another, but never fail to judge the other's behavior. Our common enemy, Gill, preaches primly that we should not judge the other's behavior. Which is not what Jesus teaches.
Makes it all kind of interesting for a dip-shit intellectual like myself. There's something for everyone in the Gospel. So, if you find something specifically objectionable about my remarks on the "superficial" behavior of the lefty distaff, let me know what it is without bringing in the Supreme Authority in support of your rather cliched remonstrance. I plumb reckon.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$| 7.19.10 @ 11:32PM
Whoa there John II, if you check the alignments of the remarks you’ll notice my reply was not to you, but to magua. However, if you resent anything I wrote, excellent. I do find it quite amusing that you would put me in camp with the lefties. So just relax, take a deep breath and ponder that little in your tongue lashing disagrees with anything I wrote. However, if you agree with magua that those who may not be hollywood hunks are permitted to pass judgement on another’s physical attributes and pass it off as part of the solution to OUR Nation’s problems, even in jest, then you and your cohort may kindly leave and take that bilge with you. We need real solutions, not silly arguments over whose women are hotter. I have never voted for a candidate based on the appearance of his supporters and hope no one else does. I do take issue that you equate one’s physical appearance with behavior. Do you have scientific research supporting such a claim, or is it just an example of your aptly described intellectual skills? Both you and magua should be ashamed for even introducing this topic here.
Gill O’Teen ✝✡$
gill.Oteen07041776@gmail.com
“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used” - Carl Sagan
Only 916 days to go.
John II| 7.20.10 @ 12:04AM
Sagan? Is that the same dude who used to bulge his eyeballs and say, with puffy checks, "Billions and billions and billions!" when he was talking about stars and galaxies and stuff? The implication being that earthen folks are so small and insignificant?
Christianity is not gnosticism. Cool it with the non-judgmental wham-wham. One of the reasons the non-judgmental ethos creeps me out is that, somehow, it's ALWAYS accompanied by fierce judgment of the judgmental without regard precisely to what the judgmental are judging.
Now quit pestering me, Gill. I'm right on the edge of a big win in an important poker game.
Margie| 7.19.10 @ 6:01PM
Grzmlyk has just added to the lexicon of the physician's desk ref. for insufferable diseases of the GOP. Craven RINO Syndrome. Cured only by purging, and that by the entire electorate on the date~ Nov. 2nd, 2010.
May none of us sit home, may we all rise up for the sake of the healing of our country.
Grzmlyk| 7.19.10 @ 8:00PM
Hi, Margie! Thank you.
Let's hope we give that disease a massive dose of penicillin this year's mid-terms!
Margie| 7.19.10 @ 9:02PM
You're most welcome, Sir Grz. ;^)
John II| 7.19.10 @ 9:43PM
Yo Marge! You're my heroine. You'll be my saint too when you come back to the Church. But don't hurry. Just take your time. We got some ass-kicking to do, meanwhile.
Margie| 7.19.10 @ 9:56PM
I love you too, John II. And always remember, the Church is its members, the body of believers, wherever they may be, the world over. Church isn't a building, but it is us, the individuals who God made to believe in Him. And that~ according to the Bible,
"For where two or three are gathered in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." Mt. 18:20.
"Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with hands; as the prophet says.." Acts 7:48.
Jesus said to him, "I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father, but by Me." Jn. 14:6.
So~ I am already in His Church. :^)
John II| 7.19.10 @ 11:28PM
Well--yes, generally speaking. But this is hardly the time of night to be talking the0logy, when I'm in the middle of an important poker game.
This is the big one, Marge. I've got four aces, and I'm almost certain that the smug dude across the table from me is preening over his full house.
Margie| 7.20.10 @ 12:25PM
John II,
When you realize truly that God holds all the cards and that He decides what you get, you won't need to gamble anymore. :^)
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths." Prov. 3:6 & 7.
John II| 7.20.10 @ 1:15PM
"Go to the ant, O sluggard;
consider her ways, and be wise.
Without having any chief,
officer, or ruler,
she prepares her food in summer,
and gathers her sustenance in harvest.
How long will you lie there, O sluggard?
When will you arise from your sleep?
A little sleep, a little slumber,
a folding of the hands to rest,
and poverty will come upon you like a vagabond,
and want like an armed man." [Prov. 6:6-11]
Besides, when I'm in a poker game with the boys, I really AM trusting in the Lord.
And indeed, He giveth, and He taketh away. As it turns out, the guy across the table didn't have a full house. I misread his cheek-tics. He had a low-end straight flush, and without wild cards, so my four aces availed me naught.
Margie| 7.20.10 @ 2:00PM
Well I hope you were playing for chips and not cash!
Yes, consider the ant of course! One thing I know through experience is that when I so much as lift my little pinky to work, God supplies me with every need. Remember "Give us this day our daily bread.." Mt.6:11.
Ah, but to some I am considered a bore. That's OK~ trusting in God is way more fulfilling than having to rely on a card game.. or even another human being!
John II| 7.20.10 @ 3:22PM
Well--it was pretty low stakes, Marge. The excitement of the game is all I care about--and the beer.
noneofyourbusiness| 7.19.10 @ 6:17PM
Coal Carrier up near the top of these comments has some points, but is way too sanguine on how easy it is to figure anything out in this mess.
I agree that the whole mess of money spent has not been done in the wisest way possible, although more on that below. And I think Obama is a short-term failure, although my reasoning has more to do with abstract issues of leadership than whether the policies themselves are too liberal or not liberal enough (which is, oddly, where some of his nastiest criticism is coming from which can't be as easily dismissed as coming from right-wing/racist, etc hate-mongers. Watch Hilary run in 2012! :-) That would be fun! As the old-time humourist Will Rogers once quipped, ``Ì don`t belong to any organized political party...I am a Democrat`` :-) ).
I'm not sure, however, that the premise on which this piece rests is entirely accurate. The math is completely faulty. I don't see the President, or anyone else, claiming that 8.5 million jobs were saved (although even the 2.5-3.5 miillion tossed out is purely speculative, as I discuss below). If the unemployment rate is officially (don`t get me started on the real unemployment rate!) 9.5%, and Obama claims that some 2.5-3.5 million jobs were not lost due to the various stimulus and bailout measures, then claiming that it would have been 12% in the absence of these actions is quite plausible on the face of it (although 15% is stretching a bit on his own terms), just as a matter of math -- i.e, a 1% increase in unemployment represents a million jobs, give or take (although if you are starting from Obama's initial wishful thinking of these measures keeping the rate below 8% or so, then we do have a real problem -- but that is not their stated starting point.. Of course, things were worse when they came into office and dsicovered the reality of the mess left behind. Every administration says that. Well OK, the last Bush administration can`t make that claim inheriting a $250 billion surplus, but I digress).
It seems to me that determining how many jobs were saved or created by the stimulus (and I think we need to add to that the bank/Wall Street bailouts and that of GM and Chrysler as all part of the same mix) is a bit like real estate appraisal. You can come up with a wide range of numbers depending on your inputs and assumptions (e.g., I have seen the same piece of development property appraised at anything from $2.5 million to $8 million. Takes some judgement to decide how much to lend on that basis -- or just say `forget it``).
As a matter of humility, we should all concede that we really have no idea, NONE AT ALL, what would have happened if the banks and automakers, etc... had not been bailed out, although I think it is perfectly reasonable to posit as a first assumption that a whole lot of people in those sectors would have been out of a job quite quickly. The concatenation of forces following that is pure conjecture, but COULD have been calamitous. We just don't know. Humility is required here, people!
What would have happened if the bank (or investment) accounts of tens of millions of people (and the jobs of everyone employed by GM/Chrysler, or whose employment was connected -- through the supply chain etc...-- had just vanished? I rather imagine that there are a lot of readers on here who would have been very much affected.
The stimulus package was an absurd mess, perfectly illustrative of Bismarck's caution of the unsightly mess of sausage making that is legislation (in the US, far more than just about anywhere else in the world today -- both an abstract virtue and a source of great practical weakness).
About one-third of the so-called stimulus went to tax cuts. We all love tax cuts. This was trying to throw a bone to get some Republicans on board. It was wasted money in every sense. About a third went to states so that they could continue to spend on critical services like teachers, police and firefighters, etc...This won't be coming this/next year, so you haven't even begun to see the mess that is coming down the road (although think California in most states).
Only a small portion was true stimlus in going to road/bridge buildingetc... and such traditional things (that are only now starting to get up to speed), and little bits tucked away for green energy and things that won't start to show themselves for 10 years.
My basic point is that we should take political statements (from all sides -- this article included, given the well-known political agenda of this magazine) for what they are -- realistically appraising the interests they represent -- and think for ourselves. Don`t be sheeple!
P.S. Like Gill O`Teen (gotta love that handle!), I love the debt clock. It is a spectacularly frightening thing to watch, and chock full of interesting info.. that you don`t often see reported. http://www.usdebtclock.org
Cheers!
John II| 7.19.10 @ 9:48PM
Well . . . yeah. Nice to hear from you again, Professor None. I mean, generally speaking.
But how am I going to recover my Bullwinkle collection now that I've put aside my boycott of things Canadian? I reckon you moose-hunters have a thing or two to tell us snake-charmers.
dw| 7.19.10 @ 6:50PM
It's the way they lie while smiling that is so disturbing. You have to take courses in that and practice in front of a mirror to be able to do it so effortlessly.
Tim*| 7.19.10 @ 7:19PM
"Add former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to the list of Republican tea party bashers. Lott (R-MS) held little back in a Washington Post interview that was published this weekend, drawing the ire of conservatives far and wide.
Lott told the Post that the tea partiers might not help with an already dysfunctional Senate. "We don't need a lot of Jim DeMint disciples," he told the Post, referring to the current Senator from South Carolina. "As soon as they get here, we need to co-opt them." Lott also told the Post he is not expecting a "tea-party sweep."
We Tea Party Rebels will deal with LobbyBoy Trent Lott and his Fellow traveler RINO- CINO Agendists in Congress .
Jim DeMint Is Our Tea Party Kingmaker Champ .
The Tea Party Rebellion Now Ramps Up .
106 Days To November 2nd.
RCV| 7.20.10 @ 6:36PM
The Tea Party Implosion Ramps Up!
Maddox| 7.19.10 @ 7:34PM
I have a much more simple explanation as to how they are able to report accelerating job growth in our stagnant economy:
THEY LIE !
Mimi| 7.19.10 @ 9:52PM
GRZ...said it best..." That what's so great about being a liberal....not bound by reality....Truth need not cramp your style" SO TRUE
FeralCat| 7.19.10 @ 11:42PM
On July 14, Vice President Joe Biden and the CEA's Christina Romer updated the nation on a major discovery in the long-running Great Recession. They reported that the government had "created or saved" approximately three million jobs since February of last year -- a period of time in which the U.S. economy had a net loss of 2.35 million jobs.
Oh quit your bellyaching already!
Just feel fortunate that Obama and his administartion didn't "create or save" approximately thirty million jobs since February of last year or we would have a net loss of 23.5 million jobs.
dw| 7.20.10 @ 1:21AM
Actually they are way too humble. They have saved or created every job in America and half the world. Jesus is in the White House..
Yosemeti Sam| 7.20.10 @ 10:41AM
Whose bread I eat his song I sing.
And - well fed is BHOs' CEA.
weddingdress | 7.1.11 @ 1:10AM
Just feel fortunate that Obama and his administartion didn't "create or save" approximately thirty million jobs since February of last year or we would have a net loss of 23.5 million jobs.