Mal, that would require actually DOING something…so it ain’t gonna happen.

The construction industry, buoyed for a couple of years by predatory lending practices, is sagging severely. Housing starts are way off, and construction industry layoffs are beginning.

Since industrial jobs have been drying up, the construction industry remains one of the few bastions of well-paying jobs; the low unemployment you refer to doesn’t reflect the crappiness of the jobs, the unemployed, or the invisible unemployed who have dropped out of the work force.

You enjoy your cheap crap from Wal-Mart Jose.

hey, and PS? I AM married with children. And I vote Democrat. The Democratic Party cares enough about EVERYONE’S family that they work for decent jobs. for everyone. For an equitable legal system. For everyone. For non-tainted food. For accessible health care. For a fair voting system. For public education. For decent housing.

For EVERYONE.

Is that the part that bothers you bunky?

I bet you also clapped when Peter Pan said that Tinkerbell could be saved if you’d only just applaud to show you do believe in fairies. If only recessions worked the same way, then we’d have a perpetually upbeat economy maintained on inexhaustible resources of conservative gullibility.

A recession is what’s coming. The housing bubble just burst. Consumers who have not been saving but banking off the value of their home’s equity (that is to say the a fairly vast majority) will be put in a very tight spot. At this point, it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If high-end housing continues to be built, it will further depress the market, but if you stop building then one of the few reliable jobs out there of the past few years will be gone. Also, stocks are down as real economists have publically expressed their doubts about the health of the economy, and many are predicting a 2007 recession.

The value of the dollar is continuing to fall because of a variety of factors, but in large part because the United States is hemorraging money and driving up a truly unsustainable debt. Even China, our most reliable backer, is getting nervous and diversifying its FOREX holdings and hedging against its T-bills.

Now, granted, some are predicting a “soft landing”, but there’s only been one real one of those in the last 16 periods of ending a Fed tightening cycle, and that was in 1994, where the pain of the downturn was softened by the dot-com boom. Where is a similar industry poised to take over as the housing market slumps? Nowhere. In my view, the best we can hope for in 2007 is a recession, but if the confidence in the ability of the U.S. to pay back its debts slips because of the “hard landing” and record debts and everyone starts demanding payment on their T-bills, then we’re in for some truly horrific times.

As for your comment, Burl Owl, I see irony: “In fact, painful as it will be for youto admit (so I suspect you won’t) the Democrats care more for your FAMILY than the Bush administration does.” Yes, the only problem with this assertion is that the Democratic party is NOT pro-family. It’s just not. It is not pro the nuclear family–a man, a woman, and children. It has no interest in families. If you are married with children you are more likely to vote Republican.

Ooh, wait, was that a death threat? D’oh! No, no I just want them to go away. Permanently.
D’oh!

Chungking, you make us laugh. The good times in America are being enjoyed by a very few at the very top, and if you think you’re part of that group, you’re completely self-deluded.

To borrow your buddy Gary’s trope, the fact is that Bush, Cheney and Rove do not give a rat’s ass about you and yours. If you would enlist, go over to Iraq and get killed, that would suit their plans just fine.

In fact, painful as it will be for youto admit (so I suspect you won’t) the Democrats care more for your family than the Bush administration does.

The Republicans are lying to you Jose. They have been all along.

Liberals are nigger-lovers.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Lowpcimap.png

now line up, take a number, and bite me…

mikeey

These are very good times in America.

Not so in Detroit and Michigan. Michigan was the only state not hit by Katrina to lose jobs in the last twelve months. Michigan has high taxes, strong unions, and high crime. Not a good place to do business. So businesses are leaving.

Welcome to the Liberal Oasis of Old Detroit. Keep it Blue, guys! But at least old John Conyers, who has represented the Detroit area in Congress for over 40 years, has a plan to bring new money to the denizens of his fair city and lovely state: reparations.

mikey

You probably don’t want to click that link, unless you want to be depressed.

If it were up to me, advertising of almost any sort at all would be illegal.

mikey

I think you’re right, Jillian. Not only that, but I think the deliberate dumbing-down of the citizenry (through such things as public schools’ focus shifting away from academic analysis and toward job training and the quaintly-labeled “life skills”) has neatly dovetailed with the increased workload imposed on most Americans. Keep them so busy they’re exhausted, keep them focused almost exclusively on puzzling out how the hell they’re going to pay for food and fill out the quadruplicate forms they need every time they have to see a doctor, and they really won’t ask too many questions about the logic of their elected officials’ statements or actions.

Few modern issues are straightforward enough to be dealt with in a soundbite. That’s why people of principle continue to lose.

And I’m fairly convinced this inability of modern folk to handle serious argumentation was induced, to some extent at least, deliberately.

Most American’s can’t handle more than 30 seconds of information. It’s as if their eyes glaze over and foam starts coming out of our mouths. It’s really to bad cause dems are poor at using a 30 second clip of information.

mikey

September 22, 2006 at 19:06

“You’ve got to win, first, and you can’t ignore the fact people vote their own interests.”

You made a good point about winning first. And it’s true that “people vote their own interests.” But what does that mean, exactly?

The gist of this post seems to be that the D’s leadership has decided that “the Economy” is what people really care about, that the Economy is the people’s deepest interest, and that if only we can educate the voters about how our policies will be of greater benefit to the people than the rethugs’ policies then the people will wisely see that Democratic policies are real and effective and that Republican policies are phony and ineffective. And all will be well again.

It’s the same old story about people supposedly voting their wallets.

And once again, they will lose more power.

They’ll be left scratching their heads in wonder over how low-income rural people can vote for policies that directly harm them and only help their bosses.

In the same way that Rethugs shake their heads over wealthy liberals in the Blue States who consistently vote against their own economic interest for policies that raise their own taxes and benefit the poor.

The reason is both simple and obvious: IT’S THE PRINCIPLE, STUPID!

People usually do NOT vote their own economic interest, if they did we’d have had a continuation of Clinton/Gore economic policies- though one could argue that that is exactly what the majority of voters wanted in 2000, but got overruled by the Court.

It’s similar to the central idea that underpins classic and neoliberal economics- that people are basically rational and will consistently act rationally in their own best interests. This ignores pretty much everything psychology has taught us in the last century: that people OFTEN, maybe even usually, make completely irrational decisions about every aspect of their lives for all sorts of reasons.

People can, and do, vote against their own economic interest when matters of principle are at stake. Whether those principles have to do with Christianist or progressive values, that is why. They vote to support a cause which they consider to be just and right and decent.

War, torture, corruption, incompetence- these are violations of fundamental principles of decency AND incredibly harmful to the economy. To ignore this basic fact and focus instead on technocratic wonkery about economic policies is foolish.

The “swing voters” (ie: unthinking and apathetic voters) say they want to see what is the real, substantive difference between the parties. They are not asking for detailed descriptions of economic policies- they’re asking about principles.

What does your party stand for, they ask.

Please explain it in the simplest terms, ask the swing voters, because we’ve paid so little attention during our entire adult lives that we really can’t tell on our own. (Hint: arcane economic policy will be totally ignored by us, because we just don’t get it.)

The Democratic Party could rightly say that it stands for fundamental human rights. For peace. For accountablility. For justice. For democracy (as in: all voters count equally, and all votes are counted).

And they could say, also rightly, that the GOP stands for torture, for war, for corruption, for cover-ups, and for incompetence. And against free and fair elections here in the US. And that they will do and say anything, even smearing decorated veterans as traitors, to get and keep power.

But will they say so? Or are we going to get, “it’s the economy, stupid” all over again? This is SO 1992…

The Democratic Party has had the wonkery on “the issues” in their favor for decades when all the GOP has had is bluster and attitude. And guess which party today has all the power? It’s time for a bit more bluster and attitude, please.

To the Party Leadership: Your constituents, your core supporters, are PISSED OFF.

Now, represent them in Washington, goddamnit. It’s your job.

A good line from a mediocre movie, The American President: “We hired a pit bull, not a prom queen.”

Now, sic ‘em!

days like today make me think that the Dems are nearly worthless. their only value is that they aren’t Republicans.

Oh, but cleek…they are…oh yes they are…

This is a one party system, we’re all here just kidding ourselves. Along with the conservatives that think the Repubs are all about ending homosexuality, candy canes and Woody Allen wannabees. The truth is that we’ve all been suckered into believing that having a beer will make everything better along with catching every episode of desperate housewives. Damn, I sure am all pissy this evening. Guess I need to drop a few midols or something…