Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Posted on February 6th, 2009 by Brad
Looky-looky:
For those of you counting at home, that green line represents the jobs we’ve already lost in this recession. The other two lines represent the jobs lost during the 1990 and 2001 recession.
Thank God, though, that we have awesome centrists such as Ben Nelson making sure that the stimulus proposal doesn’t spend too much on food stamps!
But But But Peggy Noonan says republicans are serious!
Ohdamn, that green line is Bush’s?
Wow. Hoover must be thanking his lucky stars!
These jobs have been lost because employers were dreading the stimulus package!!!11!!!!! Just like the great depression was retroactively cause by the New Deal.
Wait, there’s a recession? But last year, even leading up to the election, all the Republicans and conservative talking heads said the economy was just great, and there was no looming recession, and that we needed even more tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations.
Gee, we better get some more advice and predictions from those folks.
The leisure time we were promised is here.
Boy, the Bush misadministration didn’t do anything in moderation, did they? Talk about literally driving the bus off a cliff, that graph sums it up.
Where’d that come from? I ask because it should be everywhere – every blog, media site, newspaper, etc. Want to cut the “spending bill” crap off NOW? Get that graph out there in fron of every eye in the country.
That’s all.
that green line represents the jobs we’ve already lost in this recession
Now that’s what I call trickle down!
Wow, that is bad. Especially now that the Democrats are in charge. After all, the Republicans know everything there is to know about running the government and economy (and if you don’t believe me, just go ask them) so without them, we’re really screwed.
Maybe we need to encourage their obstruction of the recovery plan. Think of the children!
That chart is hopelessly partisan as it very clearly tries to make the recent job losses after 8 years of Republican right wing leadership look like a limp, thin, drooping penis. This is unforgivable and will trigger no lack of nightmares among all the manly, manly conservative leaders in Congress and the Senate.
Righto Senor Cid. But how does that work out sloganwise.
GOP – we can’t keep it up?
Republicans – because obstructionism is all we can keep up?
Mitch McConnell – I like to get fucked by young men?
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Per the label at the bottom-right, looks like Pelosi from today. Good. Obama really needed to articulate some kind of vision from the very start, but it looks like they might actually salvage it. Maybe. Very maybe.
The current jobless trendline in that graph is green, which is clearly an indication that the DFH ecoterroristic environmentalists are the cause of the job losses.
This doesn’t prove anything except George W. Bush’s love for Line Rider.
I suppose you people are forgetting the fact that NANCY! PELOSI! WENT—TO—SYRIA!!!!!!
It’s not an increase in the number of unemployed, it’s an increase in the number of potential entrepreneurs!
Don’t think of it as a graph of job losses, think of it as a graph of gains in FREEDOM!
AWFUCK AWFUCK AWFUCK
I’m trying real hard but I’m losing the last vestige of calmness and self control. It’s time to stop being mean. It’s time to put the motherfuckers up against the wall.
scuse me while I go call a crisis hotline and down some ludes
Obviously these people now have more time to spend with their families, so it’s a good thing.
Sound of pitchforks being sharpened and torches being lit.
Clearly a reduction in the corporate tax rate coupled with the elimination of the death tax and capital gains tax is the answer here. If only Obama would be bipartisan and do everything Mitt Romney says he should do!! I’m so angry at the Democrats for not being all bi-partisany and shit!!!
“Don’t think of it as a graph of job losses, think of it as a graph of gains in FREEDOM!”
Correct. Why, think about all the time those recently-liberated from the oppressive trappings of gainful employment will have to train for that big marathon, or work on their fine vintage Italian sports cars!
Why are we still taxing the wealthy? If we would just stop stealing their money, then they’d have enough to hire everyone and fix all the jobs.
Only three weeks into his first term in office and the Obama Administration has already lost OVER 1 MILLION JOBS! When will this madman be stopped?!
Here’s the next thrilling chapter of Dubya’s autobiography, Days of Thunder.
The economy is in its last throes…
Ohdamn, that green line is Bush’s?
The green line AND the red line. Bush started off with a bang, and he ended with…an even bigger bang. Heckuva job.
Here’s a serious question: Where is Rahm Emmanuel in all this? I kind of had the impression he would be working the Congress to get it on board with the Administration.
Was I mistaken?
Is this good news for Rudy Giuliani?
The green line AND the red line.
And the blue one is either his dad’s or Reagan’s.
I hope we can put to bed the myth that Republicans are good for the economy.
Oh good, keep me away from sharp instruments all weekend.
Thanks, Bradrocket.
J/K. In a better America,, we would have pundits and newspapers who had told us this stuff already. I think even Krugman is holding back a bit because he knows the news is worse than we can take.
But better to know, I guess. right?
I suppose you people are forgetting the fact that NANCY! PELOSI! WENT—TO—SYRIA!!!!!!
And wore a headscarf. Oh, horrors.
Politicking.
CNN is now reporting that a “tentative” $780 billion stimulus package has been agreed upon.
Where’d that come from?
That graphic and more at the Speaker’s blog.
This just proves that the Democrats are wasting taxpayer money on extravagant copies of Excel 2007 for Nancy Pelosi.
That kind of package sounds like it could be quite stimulating were it not so tentative.
Yeah, enjoy your peace dividend.
This merely cements the imperiled Obama administration as a hideous failiure. Impeach immediatley.
Thanks for the link about Rahm. I missed that.
Well, I don’t like to hang the crepe too soon, but I smell a one-term presidency if they don’t get their act together.
On another note, does anyone seriously believe that if Obama were the person who could do all we want him to do, that he could have been elected in the first place?
We are not a center-right country, we are a bunch of ignorant, ill-informed, badly educated simpletons.
Oh, and that goes double for the gasbags in the media.
a bunch of ignorant, ill-informed, badly educated simpletons
Uhhh … whaaa?
It’s times like this I’m glad that I turned my monitor upside-down.
Pixar: HYPOCRITES.
More!
8 Reasons ‘24? Has Jumped the Shark
For all my skepticism, I try to remember that no one really was sure the New Deal would work until it did, and the Republicans who opposed got 35 years in the darkness in trade.
But, just like all monster movies, eventually the dead creature comes back to wreak havoc again, until the charismatic hero stakes in the heart / shoots it with a silver bullet / burns its original skeleton / etc.
And like any typical horror movie, right now the severed hand is leaping up again to frighten the movie-goers sticking through the credits.
Well, I don’t like to hang the crepe too soon, but I smell a one-term presidency if they don’t get their act together.
Fuck, really? I think you need to step away from your keyboard and reevaluate that statement after five minutes and some deep breaths.
Wait, the right is now chastising “24” for not presenting us with terrorist villains that have complex and nuanced motives?
“We are not a center-right country, we are a bunch of ignorant, ill-informed, badly educated simpletons.”
Um, “We are ‘not A’, we are ‘A’,” just does not make much sense, dude. Try again. Like this: “We are not exemplars of morality, we follow bribe-takers, boy-chasers, and bathroom queens.”
dur-bu-HOY i make typy words on computar machine and make the pplz rly mad aboot wut im sayin ding-dang-doodly i luv some sweet sweet deep dickin
The fact that FDR didn’t fix every single problem in the entire nation means Democrats are a bunch of limp wristed failures and we should all be following the policies of Ronald Reagan exactly as I have them imaginarily tattooed on my eyelids to keep me from seeing the terrorists and hippies who want to touch me in my special places.
Also, I hope Obama nominates Bill Ayers to replace Ginsburg if she chooses to retire, and if the Republicans object than he counters by nominating Barbra Streisand.
I find a definite change in tone after that kickass speech.
Suddenly, we’re this close to having the bill pass.
Hmmmm, could it be that they don’t want President Obama to open a tin of whupass on them Monday night?
Naw, couldn’t be!
This merely cements my imperiled menstruation as a hideous fallopian tube. Impeach my vagina immediatley [sic].
Well, I don’t like to hang the crepe too soon, but I smell a one-term presidency if they don’t get their act together.
Really. I mean, this administration has had nearly three whole weeks to rectify what it took Bu$hCo & ThugsRUs Inc. eight years to create. I smell failed presidency all over the fucking goddam place.
“Bill Ayers’ Tenure”: You misplaced your apostrophe, and you misspelled “collaborators.” You illiterate fuck.
Listen, I’ve been breathing deeply for the last few weeks, but I’m also watching the news, reading the blogs, and evaluating the republican response to the stimulus.
I know I’m not the only one who believes that, deep down, even if they don’t admit it to themselves, the Republicans know that the only way they can win this (i.e. the next election) is if Obama loses, and is seen to lose, preferably early on so it makes a lasting impression on the ignorant badly educated masses who turn out to vote. (and the media gasbags.)
My point is that the administration will have to be quite clear-eyed about this so-called bipartisanship, because the House republicans have nothing to lose by opposing him on every issue.
And yes, I’m probably a bit premature with the crepe-hanging, but if the past two weeks are any indication, it will be a long four years.
And I apoligize deeply for posting serious shit on a comedy blog. It won’t happen again.
I find a definite change in tone after that kickass speech. Suddenly, we’re this close to having the bill pass. Hmmmm, could it be that they don’t want President Obama to open a tin of whupass on them Monday night?
Maybe the ass-kicking speech is just what they were asking for, knowing how bad they’ve been, and now they’ll do what Daddy wants. Isn’t that the dysfunctionally Rethuglican way?
Also, I hope Obama nominates Bill Ayers to replace Ginsburg if she chooses to retire, and if the Republicans object than he counters by nominating Barbra Streisand.
Only if Zombie Lenin is unavailable.
Shhhh.
Bipartisanship is just another word for letting the Republicans throw a breath-holding, pants wetting tantrum… and, at long last, being revealed as such.
At least, that’s how this one is going down.
I’m also watching the news, reading the blogs, and evaluating the republican response to the stimulus.
No wonder you’re so confused.
I know I’m not the only one who believes that, deep down, even if they don’t admit it to themselves, the Republicans know that the only way they can win this (i.e. the next election) is if Obama loses
Ya think?
We around here are dug in for a long
foureight years. We’ve been WAITING to be dug in for a long eight years. Holy fucking Christ, after what we’ve had to endure for the last eight, are you even fucking unsure about our commitment to doing whatever it takes to avoid THAT reign of terror EVER again? That we don’t know what we’re dealing with here?Hey g,
I saw you mention that you were driving in Tampa and thought the traffic was bad. If you want a real “thrill”, do some driving in and around Miami at rush hour. It’s “hilarious”.
Troofie, we could point you to funny posts on S,N! until the cows come home, and you’d either
A: Not get the joke, or
B: Just flat out lie about it.
So stop pretending you give a wet fart about “humor”, and go back to your hilariously misguided and forehead-smackingly bad political predictions.
Yeah, I fed the troll, sorry. I”ll get another beer.
ZOMG!! McCain’s gonna win!!
Oh… am I too late for that?
So I take it you agree with the rest of my statement,
You didn’t make a statement, you ignorant fuck. And with logic like yours no wonder your spending your time trolling places where people laugh at you.
Shorter “Criteria”:
“Lookit me! Hey! Hey! Pay attention to me! Mo-om-om! They won’t play with me!”
Criteria for a Humor Blog is right. There are no funny posts on this blog.
I wonder why it hangs around?
I guess if a liberal so-called “humor” site isn’t funny, McCain really won.
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/14123.html
Heh. Looks like the saviour’s gone and fumbled a little thing we like to call the hale-Mary pass. What a boob…but you eat it up, liberals. It’s all you know how to do.
a little thing we like to call the hale-Mary pass. What a boob…
Mary is looking pretty healthy these days, but that last comment is beyond the pale.
Friday is troll night! I think it’s time to go do something lifey.
Well, I have to come back to say that I find a lot of what is posted here hysterically funny. I’m just in a reflective mood, a bit depressed, and I surely hope that “we”, whoever that is, will be able to prevail in the end.
are you even fucking unsure about our commitment to doing whatever it takes to avoid THAT reign of terror EVER again?‘
Umm, what exactly are we committed to? I’d like to read the fine print before I sign. Do we bomb the Fox News headquarters? Nuke Congress? I mean, how far are “we” willing to go?
Seriously (that word again), what can we do? Write ignorable emails to our congresscritters? Send money? Sneak into the Oval Office to hold his hand and whisper in his ear?
BTW, I devoted several weekends to knocking on doors for Obama. I still have hope……
Audaciously, of course.
Jacob Singer you’re a bad, bad boy. The phrase “wet fart” is entirely inappropriate when replying to a troll. The correct way to write that is “give a blart about…”
Take your punishment like a man, son.
Seriously (that word again), what can we do?
Seriously, put the motherfuckers* up against the wall.
*No actual motherfuckers were harmed in the making of this comment. Indeed, motherfucking is diddly shit compared to the heinous crimes of the neoconservatives and their facilitators.
TWEEEET
That’s it Criteria. I’m penalizing you for littering the field with boredom. Hit the showers. Really – you stink to high jesusville.
<i.Gotham Thespian said,
February 7, 2009 at 2:38
Poor Troofie.
I really DO own you, don’t I?
Yes, exactly. Aside from the gratutitous swipe at the Dems, of course.
Aside from the gratutitous swipe at the Dems, of course.
Not sure that you’re right. Rush begged people to donate to Hillary when she was running in Texas.
but the real fun is calling out your hypocrisy.
Let me see if I have this straight. You’re a person who thinks “real fun” consists of going to strange blogs and annoying people who don’t give a shit what you say? You must have a helluva rewarding life.
What a pathetic loser.
You’re a person who thinks “real fun” consists of going to strange blogs and annoying people who don’t give a shit what you say?
On a Friday night, we should point out.
Just about everything that doesn’t come from you, actually.
If you want to know, the only thing these days that makes me laugh out loud is Jon Stewart on the Daily Show.
I’d like to see him replace Brian Williams, wouldn’t you?
Of course, me, I have no life tonight either, but my excuse is I do have a cold.
I love Friday nites. The hole campus is bout empty. Everybodies finished and I don’t got to hand out no more towels. Got a cupple hours for the floor needs mopt. Now I can go sho them liebrulz what fer. Heh.
I love the “OBAMA IS A FAILURE” meme. Christ, his first paycheck hasn’t even cleared.
I would like to amend and revise my remarks by striking the second sentence.
Why don’t you try adjusting it for population growth, you lying shit?
So let me see if I have this dropping green line straight:
Fourteen months ago (from January 2009), Bush hit his job creation peak. That would make it…carry the two….November 2006.
Now, I remember from the 2004 election cycle that it wasn’t until late in 2003 that Bush even had as many people working as Clinton left behind when his term expired.
So he had zero job creation for the first three fourths of his first term.
He added another 1.5 million jobs going into 2005 and two million more in 2005. So going into 2006, he created a eye-popping three million jobs.
The worst performance by a President since, errrrrr, since, um, Hoover, actually.
Was the year 2006 better?
No, actually, job growth slowed in 2006. By the peak employment date of November 2006, Bush had created 4.7 million jobs across two terms.
And quickly lost them all in less than a year. And then some.
What’s really scary about those graphs is the fact that the job losses don’t reverse for a full year after they bottom out, and both of the previous recessions were mild ones.
Indeed, you might recall economists called the one in 2001 a “soft landing”.
Population growth! Adjust it. If you don’t you’re a liar..
RS,
What the fuck does population growth have to do with raw numbers? Those aren’t percentages, those are actual jobs lost. It doesn’t matter if it starts at ten million, two hundred million or a billion.
I mean, are you drinking, son, or did you blart this afternoon?
MR. PRESIDENT!
Your questions for Barack Obama and his spokesmen
someone’s cranky.
We have more people in this country that we did in 1990. So of course there will be more jobs lost in raw numbers.
God, you libs are dumb!
It’s no coincidence that millions of jobs have been lost since Obama was elected.
Brad, you might want to check out some of these charts I found at Steny Hoyer’s website
president Obama
Posted by da366060 on Jan 27, 2009 12:00
Why do you continue to ignore our USA laws and constitution. Do you really think you are above the USA laws just because you THINK you have strong backers. You seem to have forgotten America/USA is still ran by and will always ran by the people for the people!
So, why do you refuse to give us proof that you were actually LEGALLY Born in the USA? We will back you as President ONLY WHEN YOU GIVE US A CERTIFIED LEGAL DOCUMENT OF YOUR BIRTH CERTIFICATE. Otherwise we have to assume what we heard on video from your own Kenyan Grandmother THAT SHE ATTENDED YOUR BIRTH…..IN KENYA. And by the way,
DON’T EVEN THINK OF MESSING WITH OUR SOCIAL SECURITY AND SSI FOR THOSE WHO’S ONLY INCOME IS SS & SSI!!!!!
Do the right thing, give us LEGAL proof of your USA birth!
Sincerely,
Linda CURRAN [a USA born citizen, tax payer, VOTER]
____________________
[* Turn off the CAPS LOCK when posting please. -Mikaia]
We have more people in this country that we did in 1990. So of course there will be more jobs lost in raw numbers.
I pay a dollar for a newspaper.
It doesn’t matter if I have a dollar, ten dollars or a million dollars. I’m still out a dollar.
I’m not seeing your point.
I pay a dollar for a newspaper in 1990.
A 1990 dollar costs $2.00.
DON’T EVEN THINK OF MESSING WITH OUR SOCIAL SECURITY AND SSI FOR THOSE WHO’S ONLY INCOME IS SS & SSI!!!!!
so I assume this person wasn’t a supporter of Bush’s attempts to privatize Social Security.
$1.00 in 1990 costs $2.00 in 2009.
One job lost in 1990 means only 0.5 jobs lost in 2009, because we have more people in this country in 2009 than 1990.
I dunno, could be. There is a Caps Lock theme emerging though:
Ok, RedShit75. That graph only shows job losseslosses. What’s not captured on that graph is, as you point out, population growth. During the Bush empire, the LACK OF NEW JOBS TO KEEP UP WITH POPULATION GROWTH means that the effective job loss is even more dramatic. Again: If you add the population factor AND the fact that lack of job creation in a growing population is equivalent to job loss, both the Bush43 lines (red and green) become steeper and deeper. Also, the “recovery” represented by the red line is much shallower and, in fact, doesn’t cross the axis.
pwnag3!
I love how the World Nut Daily freaks think Barry Hussein X al Shabazz can fix in two weeks an agency that the Republicans destroyed over the course of the last eight years. Hell, even the Republican destruction of the FDA comes into play, what with the recall of the emergency food aid.
A 1990 dollar costs $2.00.
so by this you see, actor, that a 1990 job equals TWO jobs in 2009!
Actually, that’s probably true, people needed second jobs to survive in Bush’s America, and now they’re losing both f them.
HOPE and CHANGE will come in 2009, when we spend over 100% of our GDP on pork. Then we will have our HOPE and CHANGE! YEAH! HOPE CHANGE HOPE CHANGE! SPENDING SPENDING HOPE CHANGE!
HREF fail:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090205/ap_on_re_us/salmonella_outbreak_fema_3
I pay a dollar for a newspaper in 1990.
A 1990 dollar costs $2.00.
OK, so applying your ludicrous logic…understand I;m humouring you because I suspect the short bus will be along any minute to pick you up…then we should double the job loss of 1990 to conform?
So you’re admitting that Bush’s FATHER’S recession was a Depression? And that the Bush family alone is responsible for the loss of over ten million jobs in America?
And that Clinton therefore created over eleventy billion new jobs?!>!>!>!>!>!
“Actually, that’s probably true, people needed second jobs to survive in Bush’s America”
It is my America now!
One job lost in 1990 means only 0.5 jobs lost in 2009
So all those people who are the unemployment line should be arrested for working part time while collecting?
HOPE CHANGE HOPE CHANGE!
SPENDING HOPE AND CHANGE! ACRON! HOPE/CHANGE!
Maybe losing 3500000 jobs so far this time is not as bad as losing 1500000 under Bush 1 because since there are more people now it means 3500000 unemployed people are actually fewer than 1500000 unemployed people and OH MY GOD LOOK OVER THERE IT’S SO SHINY!! *runs*
$1.00 in 1990 costs $2.00 in 2009.
One job lost in 1990 means only 0.5 jobs lost in 2009, because we have more people in this country in 2009 than 1990.
This is only because there are a billion Americans….
HOPE AND CHANGE! HOPE AND CHANGE!!
a mathematician’s got yer back on this one, actor.
LOOK AT ALL THE HOPE AND CHANGE I HAVE BROUGHT TO WASH…all shit the Republicans have pwned me in the past two weeks…shit…
Actually, that’s probably true, people needed second jobs to survive in Bush’s America
Uhh… that’s an underestimate, according to America’s answer to
Marie Antoinette.
YOU PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO RON PAUL
ITS NOT TO LATE…
*snerk*
PeeJ, I’m just trying to make him state the obvious:
A job in 2009 doesn’t count as much because more brown people are working.
MY STIMULUS IS THE HOPE AND—-CH—-SHIT REV. WRIGHT YOU GOT ANY CRACK?
I’M JUST SHUCKIN’ AND JIVIN’! HEEEELLLL YEAH!
Apologizing for Stupid Actor212 Comments said,
February 7, 2009 at 4:22
Hey, stalker! How are you doing?
RS, 1 does not equal 2. Not even for large values of 1.
But you are correct in wanting to account for inflation. Of course, if you want to account for inflation, you must also account for wage stagnation. In precisely the same way you were completely wrong about adjusting for population growth, considering the aforementioned factors actually makes your “argument” much worse for your side. I can prove it to anyone who is equpipped with even the most basic arithmetical skills so I won’t waste my time saying any more to you.
MY PRES’DT IZ BLK!
Criteria for a Humor Blog said,
February 7, 2009 at 4:21
You just keep pedaling that tricycle, Lorraine, and who knows? One day, you might make the Little Girl X Games!
How many jobs have been lost since the Democrats took back Congress in 2007?
RE: RE: Second amendment
Posted by NorCal Trucker on Jan 31, 2009 16:42
Mr President; Are you worried that Americans may revolt against your communist agenda? Millions of us now fear our government. Thomas Jefferson, “When the people fear their government you have tyranny, when the government fears the people you have freedom”.
Reply to: troubled
Mr Obama,
Why are you going against the rights of the American people to protect themselves.
We do not live in a totalarian society here,
But the other countries are heavily into weapons.
Why persecute American citizens.
MY PRE’ZDNT IZ BLK!
Millions of us now fear our government. Thomas Jefferson, “When the people fear their government you have tyranny,
Hey Bub? Do you think this guy realizes he’s just explained eight years of Bush’s “war on terror”?
No one’s going to play your stupid game, Troofie. This blog is funny Often [i]amazingly[/i] funny. Often at your expense, but the vast, vast majority of the humor here is at the expense of your sad and moribund, bankrupt ideaology. Like I said earlier, I could point to hundreds of hilarious, laugh-out-loud posts, images, you-name-it, but you would never, ever admit you laughed at something on this site in one hundred years.
So keep waiting, loser. Keep waiting in 2010 and 2012. Keep waiting.
And keep losing.
I’ll keep waiting for someone to actually refer to a post that they think is funny.
You know what’s really hilarious? Imagining you frantically clicking “refresh” again and again.
MY PRE’ZDNT IZ BLK!
Jake, Troofie’s just sore because he realized that Vaseline isn’t supposed to have sand in it for “texture”.
HELL YEEEAH! HE BLK!
You’re soaking in it, sunshine.
Read the title again – & remember The Decidernator & his creepy crew of cronies whose Ambien-fueled “policies” made that line so amazingly fucked-up in the first place. Rapier wit like “damn those nefarious Democrats for not holding us in check better when we ran all three branches” makes me think perhaps someone’s MENSA Card isn’t in the mail.
I’ve never seen a lulzier illustration of BushCo’s prodigal talent for thoroughly ruining anything it ever touched than the droopy green line hanging over this thread like a fiscal nose-goblin – & your attempt to derail it is both telling & hopeless; nobody here is interested in your monotone failathon pretending to be Teh Funnay, any more than they are in your defective logic or Mobius-loop analogies. Feel free to take another week or two off to come up with two more fake names now, you cowardly little twit.
Too bad everyone’s too broke now to afford toboggans, eh?
Whenever in doubt / just take this advice: / pull down your drawers / & slide on the ice (BURMA SHAVE) … & yes oh yes, ladies & germs, I am highly prone to a bias toward gallows humor.
I hate instead of []. I fail the internet.
ARGH, I even messed that one up.
Crap, when is Battlestar Galactica on?
Wow. This is the shittiest thread I’ve seen in a while, and with the way things have been lately…
I really hope you are happy, whoever you are. Because I don’t believe for a minute that you’re a real troll, and you’ve pretty much fucked this place over, maybe for good.
And I really don’t like the menacingly vague stuff that is going back and forth between actor212 and the troll. If you know who this is dude, if you can call them off or scare them off or whatever, do it. Settle your scores elsewhere, no one here gives a shit.
And you know what? Fuck the no-ban policy. I think the survival of this community is more important, and we are long past the point of no return here. I think it’s time for the fucking banhammer to come down, or for someone with the keys to this place to tell us what the deal is.
This is fucking ridiculous.
HELL YEAH WHITEY HE BLK!
Why don’t you try adjusting it for population growth, you lying shit?
OK, my fellow Generation X’er. Feast your eyes on this historic list of the private non-farm employment figures from the Census Bureau.
In 1990, the workforce was 109 Million.
In 2002 it was 130 Million.
And today, it is estimated at 134 Million, falling fast from a peak of 136M.
So even adjusting for baby-making and hiring undocumented aliens, that green line is very severe, since it suggests that we’re only halfway through this employment bleed-out. The cooked government unemployment figure is 7%, but the true number is well over 10%. And mainstream, macroeconomists are predicting 10% unemployment for 3-5 years, which would trigger what some bearded hippie economist in Princeton calls a “prolonged deflationary trap.” You may not know that that means, but it ain’t good.
And please don’t call a government graph a ‘lying shit.’ It’s just the messenger.
Fuck this! I will suck cock instead! MMMmmm COCK!
Has anyone emailed Gavin & Co.? What have they said?
“And you know what? Fuck the no-ban policy. I think the survival of this community is more important, and we are long past the point of no return here. I think it’s time for the fucking banhammer to come down, or for someone with the keys to this place to tell us what the deal is.
This is fucking ridiculous.”
THIS.
Mikey moves on, but these shitstains remain? I know I’m just an unfunny noob here, but Christ, this site needs to be here. I’m not big on the banhammer, but I think overt racism deserves it every time.
Sheesh, this is like waiting for actor212 to tell us the name of a movie or TV show he was in. Either do it or admit it ain’t real.
Yeah, he’s not an actor! He just plays one on T.V.
“So do it already.”
I guess that whole part about “nobody’s gonna play your stupid game” was a little over your tiny head(s).
LOL!
Well played, B^4!
Actually, that’s truer than you know 😉
You could use the banhammer, but there are about hmm, six Wi-Fi hotspots within two miles of here. Including an Arby’s. Nothing like a Jamocha Shake to get the trollin’ powers back up!
That’s what bothers me the most. That mikey is gone. He might never come back even after this mother fucker gets banned.
So, yeah. Good work you worthless sack of rancid monkey shit.
[*cough*]
Simba, just imagine what this troll’s pathetic life is like. What a loser.
Touche’.
To RB, that is.
You could use the banhammer, but there are about hmm, six Wi-Fi hotspots within two miles of here. Including an Arby’s.
Mom will drive you that far this time of night?
I just fuckin’ love the taste of cock with semen dripping from the hole!
God I love a fat big black cock up my ass!
You could use the banhammer, but there are about hmm, six Wi-Fi hotspots within two miles of here. Including an Arby’s. Nothing like a Jamocha Shake to get the trollin’ powers back up!
Yeah. Try that on Wikipedia and see how long you last. As much as you might think you do, you don’t have an unlimited supply of IP addresses.
But generally speaking, yeah, I think you’ve got the right idea. You’re certainly more of a obsessive, deranged psychopath than we are. If you are hell-bent on destroying this site, there’s probably no stopping you. Technology cannot solve the problem of people who are assholes, ultimately.
So I guess what I do now is sit back and watch the place burn…
Damnit, jim, you need to post more. You are consistently insightful and entertaining.
Isn’t everyone an actor? In the sense that they are individuals who perform actions?
I am gay, FWIW. And I remember what fearing that was like in my teen years. I threw around insults like that and deep down, I was scared to death that I would like it. So yes, troll, your copious use of that particular line of attack does resonate with me, but not in the way that you think it does.
One funny post. I’m still waiting.
Now that’s funny!
Criteria for a Humor Blog said,
February 7, 2009 at 4:48
Posts like these scream “disaffected regular”, one who particularly enjoys the friendly-fire threads we have every once in a while.
That’s… a damn scary graph. Looks like the first drop on a really good roller coaster. Except this coaster has an initial drop of 30 miles and terminates in a pile of broken glass. 🙁
“As much as you might think you do, you don’t have an unlimited supply of IP addresses.”
The fuck I don’t! All I have to do is unplug my cable modem and wait 30 mins.! a newly random IP address is mine!
You’re certainly more of a obsessive, deranged psychopath than we are.
He’s also become more and more frustrated, the more and more things that turn against him.
His psychology has been very interesting to watch unfold.
Do I know him? I’m not sure. If he is who I think he is, then he knows I’m one of the few people who has bested him one on one. He has visited my blog, altho he believes he’s covered his tracks carefully enough.
However…I don’t think he realizes just how extensive Sitemeter’s paid services are 😉
Troll Thinker
Isn’t that an oxymoron? Just sayin’
Simba B–
So you’re a little sodomite? Have you got AIDS yet? You fucking disgusting ass-fucking shit! Sodomite asshole!
Where’s Mikey gone? I, um, wasn’t paying close attention to the comments for a while…
Posts like these scream “disaffected regular”, one who particularly enjoys the friendly-fire threads we have every once in a while.
It does seem to be oddly persistent. I mean, I think Funky Winkerbean is virtually anti-humor, and downright depressing to boot, but I don’t hang around their blog and whine about it.
Isn’t everyone an actor?
Except for obstructionists who act through inaction. It’s a cosmical parodoxism. It’s eerily akin to trolls somehow providing humor by being phenomenally dull.
That was how I felt about that first tremendous season of Big Brother.
It does seem to be oddly persistent.
It believes it has power to destroy this blog. That alone makes it want to stick around.
It does not. It allows itself the false comfort of posting on a Friday night when everyone else is out and enjoying themselves, to believe it can pollute this place.
Nevermind that it will be gone before these folks get back.
Big Bald, your quoted text seems to show an inveterate liar which usually posts as “The Truth” complaining that other folks’ pseudonyms don’t fit its rigorous standards for absolute accuracy. Shocking, if true.
Glad I found this site – I’m finding the content very useful – thanks!
What Simba said. Except, I’ve never been ashamed or afraid of my taste for cock. The troll is too stoopid to realize that absolutely no one here thinks being called a coclsucker is an insult. Oh the ironies! The ironies!
Does it burn when the AIDS goes up your ass PeeJ?
Isn’t that your mom looking over your shoulder when you write that, troll?
Or your wife? Or maybe your kid? Are you proud of that? What’s going to happen when your employer reads that?
Well, lets talk about that graph,eh. I don’t see why it has to have the green line on the same scale as the other two. If the green line time scale was elongated out to ,say, 6 times what it is now and the other two lines had their time axis lengthened out to, say, 30 times what they are now they would all look pretty similar and no one would be alarmed or lose their hard working high paying executive jobs and house in the Hamptons and shitty Learjet with Ochre!!! coloured carpet.
You know, I really hate to do this but if it will save this place, then hell—I remember quite a while ago we had one of our perennial Nader flamewars and there was some troll with an unfamiliar name, it might’ve been a regular fake troll nym, I don’t remember. But someone called out D.N. Nation on it, and he got mad. I mean spitting mad. He’s usually rather passive-aggressive, but he sure as hell acted like he was caught fucking red-handed. Ever since then I’ve nursed a suspicion that the majority of the fake troll activity on this site was largely his doing, except of course for the constant background of Gary Ruppert postings. Which, I’ll admit, have the potential for humor, but the posts I’m talking about, lately under “The Truth”, all had a tediously boring quality to them, and always felt quite artificial. None of it was ever funny. I don’t know how many people saw/remember that thread, but I sure as hell do and I’ve not been able to get it out of my mind when reading this site lately. People seem to get the Ralph Nader thing but no one seems to remember that. There’s other things too, but a lot of could be construed as petty so I’ll leave it out for now.
I feel really dirty for saying all of that but I just need to get that out there for everyone to consider.
Well, the bill passed, with several Republican votes. So, w00t, I guess?
the Senate didnt pass shit, liar!
Provide a link!
Provide a link!
Just like a conservative…always asking for a handout.
Zounds! One (of the) interesting thing(s that) pops out from those charts is that all of the negative bars are during Repub admins. All of the positive bars are Dem admins. Also note that on chart #1 the highest job growth for any R years is for Ford’s term. Note further that it a factor of two below the lowest growth for any D term.
Proving that the R’s have ALWAYS been strong on natsec and the economy, right?
I’m not sure. If he is who I think he is, then he knows I’m one of the few people who has bested him one on one.
Was it hand-to-hand combat? You are a Knight of Karelia, are you not?
Big Bald, your quoted text seems to show an inveterate liar which usually posts as “The Truth” complaining that other folks’ pseudonyms don’t fit its rigorous standards for absolute accuracy
Yeah, you’re not a tigrismus at all! I suspect that you are an asymptote! Me? I am really a cute hipster girl with Bettie Page bangs who uses a Hello Kitty lunchbox as a purse.
The troll is too stoopid to realize that absolutely no one here thinks being called a coclsucker is an insult.
Yeah, PeeJ, there was a Pharyngula thread in which the minions of the Tentacled Overlord came to the conclusion that “Cocksucker” is an honorific, not a pejorative.
Actor212 is tracking down some dude he came to fisticuffs with
Oh?
And you saw that precisely where?
One (of the) interesting thing(s that) pops out from those charts is that all of the negative bars are during Repub admins. All of the positive bars are Dem admins.
My favorite political quote of all time comes from Harry Truman:
If you want to live like a Republican, vote Democratic.
Ignorance is bliss, as is ignoring.
And I might add that mikey left due to a disagreement w/ the staff & usual gang of idiots here, not due to any electron-wasting posting by rather peculiar types.
February 06, 2009
President Obama’s TV interview on al Arabiya
By Walid Phares
For his very first interview after the inauguration, President Barack Obama chose to grant the Saudi-funded, Dubai-based al Arabiya TV the first media salvo of the new presidency. According to Hisham Melhem, the veteran journalist who conducted the interview, it was the White House who decided so, after discussions about approaching “the situation in the Muslim world especially after closing Guantanamo and starting the withdrawal from Iraq.”
Per a Melhem statement to AlArabiya.net , selecting an Arab channel to kick off the administration’s “new direction” is part of a communications strategy: sending a message to the other side while slowly preparing the American public for what is to come. Hence, this interview, which will precede a flurry of forthcoming statements and moves, is only the beginning of a massive change to hit US Foreign Policy and through it the entire so-called War on Terror.
In short, the orchestra has begun playing the tunes of ending the latter war, in pieces, by slices and methodically. The American public, the majority of which has voted for the Obama agenda knowingly, is now invited to understand the successive steps of the implementation. For many citizens may realize that the results of these policies and the realities in the region do not necessarily match the theoretical pronouncements of the stated agenda. Because of our constitutional mechanisms, we have four years, perhaps even three only, to appreciate these decisions and measure the outcome. So let’s analyze this benchmark interview.
Hisham Melhem is a seasoned Lebanese-born journalist, whose work I followed since my younger years in the old country. His comprehensive articles in the Pan-Arabist al-Safir daily reflected the positions of one of the two camps during the 15 year-long conflict that ended in 1990: the alliance between the PLO, left wing forces and Arab Nationalists versus the Pro-Western right wing and Lebanese nationalist front. His writings, even though representing his own camp, were always intelligent and of strategic nature.
Years later, Melhem became the correspondent of al Nahar Lebanese daily in Washington DC, a centrist liberal newspaper whose publisher was a friend of mine, the slain Jebran Tueni, a Member of Parliament who was assassinated by Syrian intelligence in 2005. In the last few years, Melhem was assigned the task of directing the office of al Arabiya TV, a direct competitor to al Jazeera TV, the Qatari-funded and Muslim Brotherhood-inspired famous network. In short, the journalist who conducted President Obama’s first interview in office is experienced in the region’s affairs and knows exactly what its leaders want from the United States. The American President, too, knows exactly what kind of messages he wants to be sent to these leaders: Hence the importance of the interview. It is the first benchmark of Obama’s new direction for US policy in the region.
The conversation had two distinct parts, one dealing with the Palestine-Israel issue and the other part addressing a new narrative toward the Arab and Muslim world. The structure of the interview, the selection of the topics and obviously the answers are very revealing as to the current analysis inside the new White House and at the State Department. The ideas are already shaped and the input of the traditional Middle East Studies establishment is evident.
In this new direction in thinking, it is perceived that by addressing grandiosely the question of “Palestine,” a massive swaying of hearts and minds will take place in the Arab Muslim world to the advantage of American image in the region. This assertion that US mishandling of the “Palestinian question,” which is often read as “unilateral and unconditional support to Israel,” being the root cause of all anti Americanism is almost a sacred parameter in the Middle East Studies elite, but also in many ruling quarters in the region. And from Palestine to the broader region, another “sacred’ assertion is that the narrative used by the previous administration is “the” reason for why US image is doing so poorly.
In my book The War of Ideas, the two equations are shown to be only stereotypes built by the pounding of the vast propaganda network of Jihadism and their apologists in the West. In The War of Ideas, I drew a much wider, more complex web of factors that sculpts the road to America’s demonization in the world. I’ll revisit that topic at many future opportunities, but now back to the presidential interview, with regard to the promise “to do better on Palestinian matters.”
Hisham Melhem’s first question sets the track for the answer:
“You’ve been saying that you want to pursue actively and aggressively peacemaking between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Will you be proposing ideas, pitching proposals, parameters, as one of your predecessors did? Or just urging the parties to come up with their own resolutions, as your immediate predecessor did?”
The question as we see already frames the forthcoming answer: President Clinton got it right in the 1990s and President Bush got it wrong in the post 9/11 era. The first one reached out to Palestinians and Israelis and the second didn’t, according to al Arabiya TV.
In fact, the question misses a big elephant in the room, forcing the incumbent US president to do the same. The issue is not anymore between “Palestinians” and “Israelis,” as it was for decades, it is between Iranian-backed Hamas and Israel. M. Melhem, who has actually stated the latter fact even clearer than I did on many Arab channels for few years now, served President Obama with a classical question from the early 1990s, as if Hamas butchering of the Peace Process and of their Palestinian opponents is simply out of the equation.
Nevertheless, our president responded accordingly: “George Mitchell is somebody of enormous stature. He is one of the few people who have international experience brokering peace deals.”
The equation has morphed from how much the Iranian-Hamas axis will resist the Peace Process to the “capacity” of the US envoy and “brokering peace deals.” Do we read here that the seasoned Irish-Lebanese-American politician is tasked in fact to reach a “deal” with whoever can make the “process” move forward and that is, of course Tehran, or is he sent to the region to re-work an old process? The president said he “told him to start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues — and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved. So let’s listen.”
Since we already know what is the position of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, Egypt and Saudi Arabia from the Oslo agreements; and since we know that Israelis and the Arab League have already consented to discuss the Saudi-sponsored Arab initiative, who should we listen to in the region? Who hasn’t spoken yet? Who can make the “deal” possible? I would suppose it is those who are blocking the Peace Process, ineluctably Iran and its acolytes.
Hence, former Senator Mitchell will be meeting with all those who have already accepted the settlement, but in fact he will be listening to those who continue to reject peace. President Obama indicated something like that when he said: “He’s going to be speaking to all the major parties involved. And he will then report back to me. From there we will formulate a specific response.” In short we want to know Iran’s price for the deal.
President Obama then said:
“I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what’s happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan. These things are interrelated. And what I’ve said, and I think Hillary Clinton has expressed this in her confirmation, is that if we are looking at the region as a whole and communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.”
This sophisticated statement, which accurately educates readers and viewers in the U.S as to the web of intertwined connections among all these players, can however go in two different directions with regard to policies. Indeed, as connoisseurs of the region’s geopolitics know, Hamas is the stumbling block in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is the chief opposition to normalization on the southern borders. Assad supplies both organizations while being an ally to Khamanei. Syria and Iran control war and peace in the Levant and can make things hellish in Iraq.
Last but not least, the Taliban are the shaker of stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran can also further destabilize Kabul’s western frontiers. Had Obama expanded on his thoughts, he most likely would have drawn a similar tableau, with the invaluable intelligence estimate he receives daily. But the beef is not in the description, rather it is in the prescription. Do we believe his assessment is to reaffirm what the previous administration already knew, but never acted on? Or do we read a mental preparation of our public for these “new choices” to come? Unless proven wrong in the near future, I sense our President is preparing us — not just the Israelis — for what is to come.
His next sentence is revealing: “I believe that they will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side.” While referring to Israel, it sounds if President Obama is also talking to his own people about “sacrifices” regarding the region: instead of an open-ended war on terror, the new US policy will also grab any “serious partnership on the other side,” Iran, Syria, or even the Taliban; but of course, “if the time is appropriate.”
The shaping of the new direction is carefully crafted in psychological narrative: no “dictating,” more “listening” and setting aside “preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years.” Gradually, this deconstruction of the (said) “wooden discourse” of the former administration aims at reassuring the “other sides” that no more ideological projects for the region, including naturally the so-called “spread of democracy.” Future US policy will be adaptable to “achieving breakthroughs” in stalemates. The grand designs are over.
Mr Melhem shrewdly uses a central theme in the president’s narrative, let alone from the title of his book: “There are many Palestinians and Israelis who are losing “hope.” Will it still be possible to see a Palestinian state — and you know the contours of it — within the first Obama administration?” The question, especially as it utters the term “contours” (borders of the Palestinian state to come) gives the president an opportunity to share his long term view on the two states solution, unlike all his predecessors. “I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people, etc.”
Most likely the bulk of the American public didn’t catch the vital word, “contiguous;” while most certainly alert strategists in the region may have read the message differently. President Obama may have been thinking about the geographical continuum within the West Bank, signaling the necessity of removing many Israeli settlements. But in the mind of many others, Hamas or not, the concept of contiguity for a Palestinian state means simply that Gaza and the West Bank should be also linked territorially. So far, we haven’t seen any architecture of borders between the forthcoming two states, Israel and Palestine, that ensures that sort of “contiguity” for both. It will have to be one or the other. Is there a shift in US policy on these explosive territorial matters? The next speeches may enlighten us further.
Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.
Ironically, Anonymous just took the steam out of Troofie’s menacing “threats”.
Ouch. sniff, cry. That really hurt. *mewl*
And thanks for prroviding me yet another opportunity to revel in the knowledge that you and your ilk are not only pinheads but also hateful excess human baggage. It always cheers me up to be proven right yet again. Say it some more – I can use a pick-me-up.
So, it DOES burn when it goes up your asshole “PeeJ”?
Don’t you ever think its just a little WEIRD you take a cock up the same place where you shit?
Did I miss anything? I went out and rode the light rail all over town just because it annoys conservatives when I do that.
I get free public transpo as a perk from my job – I work at a taxpayer-funded university which is completely heaving with liberals.
I dunno…would a contiguous Palestinian state be a bad thing?
After all, it seems to me that part of the problem is you have an Israel sandwich. Consolidating the two parties would go a long way towards allowing at least half of lower Israel to get some rest.
BTW, are I bet you’re the “catcher” not the “pitcher”, huh fag?
Hey those-ignorant-of-net-block-allocation,
a newly random IP address is mine!
It’s not random.
I suspect that you are an asymptote!
You are being hyperbolic; my ass is more clutch-sized.
Actor212’s Inability to Follow the Thread said,
I’m flattered, thank you for the extra attention! Nice to know that you seek to honor me.
Xecky,
Light rail? Did you at least take a cab to the station?
February 06, 2009
President Obama’s TV interview on al Arabiya
By Walid Phares
For his very first interview after the inauguration, President Barack Obama chose to grant the Saudi-funded, Dubai-based al Arabiya TV the first media salvo of the new presidency. According to Hisham Melhem, the veteran journalist who conducted the interview, it was the White House who decided so, after discussions about approaching “the situation in the Muslim world especially after closing Guantanamo and starting the withdrawal from Iraq.”
Per a Melhem statement to AlArabiya.net , selecting an Arab channel to kick off the administration’s “new direction” is part of a communications strategy: sending a message to the other side while slowly preparing the American public for what is to come. Hence, this interview, which will precede a flurry of forthcoming statements and moves, is only the beginning of a massive change to hit US Foreign Policy and through it the entire so-called War on Terror.
In short, the orchestra has begun playing the tunes of ending the latter war, in pieces, by slices and methodically. The American public, the majority of which has voted for the Obama agenda knowingly, is now invited to understand the successive steps of the implementation. For many citizens may realize that the results of these policies and the realities in the region do not necessarily match the theoretical pronouncements of the stated agenda. Because of our constitutional mechanisms, we have four years, perhaps even three only, to appreciate these decisions and measure the outcome. So let’s analyze this benchmark interview.
Hisham Melhem is a seasoned Lebanese-born journalist, whose work I followed since my younger years in the old country. His comprehensive articles in the Pan-Arabist al-Safir daily reflected the positions of one of the two camps during the 15 year-long conflict that ended in 1990: the alliance between the PLO, left wing forces and Arab Nationalists versus the Pro-Western right wing and Lebanese nationalist front. His writings, even though representing his own camp, were always intelligent and of strategic nature.
Years later, Melhem became the correspondent of al Nahar Lebanese daily in Washington DC, a centrist liberal newspaper whose publisher was a friend of mine, the slain Jebran Tueni, a Member of Parliament who was assassinated by Syrian intelligence in 2005. In the last few years, Melhem was assigned the task of directing the office of al Arabiya TV, a direct competitor to al Jazeera TV, the Qatari-funded and Muslim Brotherhood-inspired famous network. In short, the journalist who conducted President Obama’s first interview in office is experienced in the region’s affairs and knows exactly what its leaders want from the United States. The American President, too, knows exactly what kind of messages he wants to be sent to these leaders: Hence the importance of the interview. It is the first benchmark of Obama’s new direction for US policy in the region.
The conversation had two distinct parts, one dealing with the Palestine-Israel issue and the other part addressing a new narrative toward the Arab and Muslim world. The structure of the interview, the selection of the topics and obviously the answers are very revealing as to the current analysis inside the new White House and at the State Department. The ideas are already shaped and the input of the traditional Middle East Studies establishment is evident.
In this new direction in thinking, it is perceived that by addressing grandiosely the question of “Palestine,” a massive swaying of hearts and minds will take place in the Arab Muslim world to the advantage of American image in the region. This assertion that US mishandling of the “Palestinian question,” which is often read as “unilateral and unconditional support to Israel,” being the root cause of all anti Americanism is almost a sacred parameter in the Middle East Studies elite, but also in many ruling quarters in the region. And from Palestine to the broader region, another “sacred’ assertion is that the narrative used by the previous administration is “the” reason for why US image is doing so poorly.
In my book The War of Ideas, the two equations are shown to be only stereotypes built by the pounding of the vast propaganda network of Jihadism and their apologists in the West. In The War of Ideas, I drew a much wider, more complex web of factors that sculpts the road to America’s demonization in the world. I’ll revisit that topic at many future opportunities, but now back to the presidential interview, with regard to the promise “to do better on Palestinian matters.”
Hisham Melhem’s first question sets the track for the answer:
“You’ve been saying that you want to pursue actively and aggressively peacemaking between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Will you be proposing ideas, pitching proposals, parameters, as one of your predecessors did? Or just urging the parties to come up with their own resolutions, as your immediate predecessor did?”
The question as we see already frames the forthcoming answer: President Clinton got it right in the 1990s and President Bush got it wrong in the post 9/11 era. The first one reached out to Palestinians and Israelis and the second didn’t, according to al Arabiya TV.
In fact, the question misses a big elephant in the room, forcing the incumbent US president to do the same. The issue is not anymore between “Palestinians” and “Israelis,” as it was for decades, it is between Iranian-backed Hamas and Israel. M. Melhem, who has actually stated the latter fact even clearer than I did on many Arab channels for few years now, served President Obama with a classical question from the early 1990s, as if Hamas butchering of the Peace Process and of their Palestinian opponents is simply out of the equation.
Nevertheless, our president responded accordingly: “George Mitchell is somebody of enormous stature. He is one of the few people who have international experience brokering peace deals.”
The equation has morphed from how much the Iranian-Hamas axis will resist the Peace Process to the “capacity” of the US envoy and “brokering peace deals.” Do we read here that the seasoned Irish-Lebanese-American politician is tasked in fact to reach a “deal” with whoever can make the “process” move forward and that is, of course Tehran, or is he sent to the region to re-work an old process? The president said he “told him to start by listening, because all too often the United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues — and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved. So let’s listen.”
Since we already know what is the position of Israel, Mahmoud Abbas, Egypt and Saudi Arabia from the Oslo agreements; and since we know that Israelis and the Arab League have already consented to discuss the Saudi-sponsored Arab initiative, who should we listen to in the region? Who hasn’t spoken yet? Who can make the “deal” possible? I would suppose it is those who are blocking the Peace Process, ineluctably Iran and its acolytes.
Hence, former Senator Mitchell will be meeting with all those who have already accepted the settlement, but in fact he will be listening to those who continue to reject peace. President Obama indicated something like that when he said: “He’s going to be speaking to all the major parties involved. And he will then report back to me. From there we will formulate a specific response.” In short we want to know Iran’s price for the deal.
President Obama then said:
“I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what’s happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan. These things are interrelated. And what I’ve said, and I think Hillary Clinton has expressed this in her confirmation, is that if we are looking at the region as a whole and communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.”
This sophisticated statement, which accurately educates readers and viewers in the U.S as to the web of intertwined connections among all these players, can however go in two different directions with regard to policies. Indeed, as connoisseurs of the region’s geopolitics know, Hamas is the stumbling block in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In Lebanon, Hezbollah is the chief opposition to normalization on the southern borders. Assad supplies both organizations while being an ally to Khamanei. Syria and Iran control war and peace in the Levant and can make things hellish in Iraq.
Last but not least, the Taliban are the shaker of stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Iran can also further destabilize Kabul’s western frontiers. Had Obama expanded on his thoughts, he most likely would have drawn a similar tableau, with the invaluable intelligence estimate he receives daily. But the beef is not in the description, rather it is in the prescription. Do we believe his assessment is to reaffirm what the previous administration already knew, but never acted on? Or do we read a mental preparation of our public for these “new choices” to come? Unless proven wrong in the near future, I sense our President is preparing us — not just the Israelis — for what is to come.
His next sentence is revealing: “I believe that they will be willing to make sacrifices if the time is appropriate and if there is serious partnership on the other side.” While referring to Israel, it sounds if President Obama is also talking to his own people about “sacrifices” regarding the region: instead of an open-ended war on terror, the new US policy will also grab any “serious partnership on the other side,” Iran, Syria, or even the Taliban; but of course, “if the time is appropriate.”
The shaping of the new direction is carefully crafted in psychological narrative: no “dictating,” more “listening” and setting aside “preconceptions that have existed and have built up over the last several years.” Gradually, this deconstruction of the (said) “wooden discourse” of the former administration aims at reassuring the “other sides” that no more ideological projects for the region, including naturally the so-called “spread of democracy.” Future US policy will be adaptable to “achieving breakthroughs” in stalemates. The grand designs are over.
Mr Melhem shrewdly uses a central theme in the president’s narrative, let alone from the title of his book: “There are many Palestinians and Israelis who are losing “hope.” Will it still be possible to see a Palestinian state — and you know the contours of it — within the first Obama administration?” The question, especially as it utters the term “contours” (borders of the Palestinian state to come) gives the president an opportunity to share his long term view on the two states solution, unlike all his predecessors. “I think it is possible for us to see a Palestinian state that is contiguous, that allows freedom of movement for its people, etc.”
Most likely the bulk of the American public didn’t catch the vital word, “contiguous;” while most certainly alert strategists in the region may have read the message differently. President Obama may have been thinking about the geographical continuum within the West Bank, signaling the necessity of removing many Israeli settlements. But in the mind of many others, Hamas or not, the concept of contiguity for a Palestinian state means simply that Gaza and the West Bank should be also linked territorially. So far, we haven’t seen any architecture of borders between the forthcoming two states, Israel and Palestine, that ensures that sort of “contiguity” for both. It will have to be one or the other. Is there a shift in US policy on these explosive territorial matters? The next speeches may enlighten us further.
Dr Walid Phares is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad.
It nice to know I’m making you work this hard, Troofie. Look at all the effort you’re putting in for l’il ole me!
When you’re on your death bed and you’ve wondered where your life went, remember this.
Light rail? Did you at least take a cab to the station?
No, there’s a station within easy walking distance to my house.
The whole experience was Communisterrific™!
Um, Mr. Troll, when you impersonate other people here, can you follow the longstanding custom of using a different, perhaps sarcastic link? Like so:
Isn’t the homophobic obsession with taking it up the ass so…enlightening? I mean, do they even think these things through? If we’re all secretly a bunch of wussy bottoms, then who, you know…
And hell, I know people who like that, who are more masculine that you’d ever hope to be. I’d like to see you come around here and start running your mouth, me and my boyfriend will kick your ass into next week. Could you really live with yourself if you got beat within an inch of your life by a couple of fags?
And troll, when you do end up seeking out your first boyfriend, be flexible. That whole “I’m the bottom” or “he’s the top” dichotomy isn’t accurate for the real world.
No, there’s a station within easy walking distance to my house.
HIPPIE!
Gavin, that’s the first smile I’ve had tonight. Thank you.
OK. Here’s some rough adjustments.
There were 280,000,000 people in the US in 2000, according to the Census.
There are 305,000,000 people in the US now in 2009, according to Census projections.
At this point in the 2001 recession, month #15, about 2,100,000 jobs had been lost from the peak month. 2.1/280 * 1000 = 7.5 jobs lost per 1000 people.
At this point in the 2009 recession, 3,600,000 jobs have been lost. 3.6/305 = 11.8 jobs lost per 1000 people.
Gavin, you are far too generous: it’s been told that before, and the name swiping is usually malicious.
HIPPIE!
That’s Dirty Fucking Hippie to you!
Thanks, Gavin.
“N.C. said”
blah blah blah
And since 1990, what? Adjust it from 1990! NOW!
Well, I just presumed the fucking was dirty, Xecky.
And since 1990, what? Adjust it from 1990! NOW!
Just like a conservative. Always looking for a handout.
As far as trolls’ ability to destroy a blog’s web community, I don’t buy it. I’ve been at sites that had to deal with attacks from the Stile Project, and they ended with the trolls getting kicked out. It would take a very organized effort by a lot of very smart trolls to shut down a website from the comments section, and Troofie doesn’t have the numbers or the smarts to do it.
When he/she/it adjusts it from 1990 it will destroy the lib myth of “worst economy since the Great Depression”.
I’ve been at sites that had to deal with attacks from the Stile Project…
Good grief… I’d forgotten about the Stile Project. Now that was a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
RS,
I presume you gradumacated high school, so why don’t you go find the numbers and do the math and report back to us?
Sheesh, bossy boots.
1990: total population 249,000,000, jobs lost at this point -1,550,000 = 6.2 jobs lost per 1000 people, which is half of the 2008/9 rate.
Did you really think the US population quadrupled in 20 years?
Good grief… I’d forgotten about the Stile Project.
That’s your mental defenses protecting you from ungodly trauma. 🙂
(that means “became four times as much”)
I really like that graph. Storing for future possibilities.
That’s your mental defenses protecting you from ungodly trauma. 🙂
You’re right. It’s those defenses that make the ‘net tolerable.
I still remember the first thing I read that made me think, back in 1990 or so, that this Internet thing might be worth hanging around. I think it was on alt.tasteless.
“The more you run over a cat, the flatter it gets.”
Well than the Obama Depression is in full swing isn’t it libs?
Hello President Palin!
Well, I don’t buy his IP address wizardry shtick either. As someone who remembers the days of dial-up when residential IP addresses were in fact a lot more random and flexible then they are now, IP bans seem to me to be surprisingly effective.
However, I suppose now that Gavin is here, and/or that I sit back and think about it for a minute, I don’t really think that our hosts would allow this site to go down in flames on a free-speech principle. We all understand the limits of free speech, so while they may have a lot more tolerance than we do, I don’t think there’s any reason to get hysterical, like I did.
Can you tell it’s been a long week (and it’s not over by a long shot)?
Noooo, this is the Carter Depression. He just waited to spring it on us until now.
Can you tell it’s been a long week (and it’s not over by a long shot)?
Condolences, and FWIW, I didn’t think your comment was hysterical. I wouldn’t mind seeing The Tedium get bounced for good either, but it’s not our call to make.
(Shrug)
Simba, I’d hardly call this a “go down in flames” thing. People will leave. New people will come in. The trolls believe they are the arbiter of all this, but they’re wrong.
There is a lot that could be written on the psychoses that drives trolls, to be sure, but the observation I’ll make is that the harder they try to destroy a site, history shows, the less successful they become at it, ironically because they have to put in such an effort that eventually, they can’t juggle it over long periods of time.
Hm. RedStater goes away. Troofie shows up.
Troofie vanishes. RedStater comes in.
Interesting.
Oh, trolls. Well, we dealt with Annie Angel and Shoelimpy. Those were trolls.
Also the GNAA. That’s a respectable bunch of griefers, right there.
[whistling aimlessly]
I expect that his posts will just stop. Gavin might announce it, but I know by now we won’t find out much about what exactly has been going on. And I can respect that.
I don’t really care who it is or what their issue is with the site or particular commenters here. I just want it to stop so we can get back to the funny.
Has anyone checked in on Pastor Swank lately?
I wouldn’t mind seeing The Tedium get bounced for good either, but it’s not our call to make.
Hey, he galvanizes us, makes us know what a bunch of shitbags they are. Here in the People’s Republic of the Northeast, we don’t get to see his kind very often, so he serves well as a zoo (soon to be museum) specimen.
Now, has anybody gone outside to take in the real, actual world? The (almost full) moon on the snow is beautiful.
I suspect this is a problem of perspective, really.
After all, all these posts – and the threads of commentary they spawned, surely made me laugh:
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16764.html
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16727.html
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16665.html
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16593.html
(But I suspect you didn’t find them as funny as I did, for some reason.)
In fact, wandering through the past few months of archives has put me in a merry mood. After all, who could ever forget this heartwarming moment?
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/16413.html
Go on, travel back down memory lane and see if you aren’t cheered.
I know I am. ^_^
Gavin,
The Greater Nashville Apartment Association? 😉
Has anyone checked in on Pastor Swank lately?
Not I – I imagine he’s curled into fetal position and gibbering even more nonsensically than before.
Not to mention the obvious point that, one metric (as significant as it may be–especially for those who happen to be in the “jobs lost” category of late) doesn’t prove jack.
Oops. Goldfinger is on. Time to see if Ron Paul has a point or if he really is deluded.
You are being hyperbolic; my ass is more clutch-sized.
Nice! You can tell a guy’s spent a lot of time in the Bronx when he wishes his girlfriend’s ass were just a little bit bigger.
YOU PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE LISTENED TO RON PAUL
ITS NOT TO LATE…
But Ron Paul IS TO FUNNY FOREVER!
ooh, or this one! Gods this was funny. Hee hee hee hee hee.
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/15918.html
I love that picture. SO MUCH.
Not that I know of, although we had a scrape with these guys.
Speaking of
redgreenheads…The scroll thing deserves deletion.
There’s a point where the line between dissent and the desire to destroy any conversation at all becomes obvious.
They had our wiki article deleted, if memory serves.
Now, has anybody gone outside to take in the real, actual world? The (almost full) moon on the snow is beautiful.
It’a a bit overcast here in SLC, but the moon is lighting things up nicely. There was also some planet or something shining very brightly through the clouds a while ago which looked really nifty.
I love that picture. SO MUCH.
Nice! It looks like a pr0n screen capture… “It’s soooo biiiiig!”
I don’t know how you do it, Gavin. You have the patience of a saint, you dirty hippie sinner.
The (almost full) moon on the snow is beautiful.
The snow in Syracuse has now turned a healthy gray. Hopefully the unseasonally warm weather tomorrow (43F is short-sleeve weather, bitches) will get rid of a good part of the stuff.
Sorry, we don’t do much snow magic here. 130″ a season does that to you.
Fuck it, I really need to get spellcheck fixed in Firefox.
There was also some planet or something shining very brightly through the clouds a while ago which looked really nifty.
I’m pretty sure it’s Venus.
This guy could tell you for sure. Yeah, he looks kinda like an Oompa Loompa, but he’s cooler than I am, because he works with Neil Degrasse Tyson.
Might be Jupiter, too. Venus is usually somewhere around the horizon, but Jupiter’s been pretty bright and close to the moon lately.
Well, the guiding ethos is that me, Brad, TinTin and so forth are fortunate (or doomed) enough to have the front page to maintain every day, so it’s only sensible that the comments should belong to everyone equally.
That is, I’m certainly able to look up IPs and moderate comments and all that, but I generally don’t like to touch anything that doesn’t belong to me — the only real exception being comments that ‘out’ people’s personal information,or that otherwise seem to threaten real-world consequences for things said on the Internet….
Fair enough.
I’d say “Off Topic”, but is there a topic? Is there ever a topic any more?
Anyway, Neil Degrasse Tyson will be speaking at the Bell House in Brooklyn in March. I believe it’ll be March 19th, the feast of San Giuseppe. If you’re anywhere near NYC, check it out, and go to Little Italy for a pastry fix.
This one, this one, this one:
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/14792.html
“And while we can take heart in knowing that somewhere, perhaps lighting some great and dark vastness between stars, is an equivalent quasar streaming supercompacted, quantum-shredded smartness back into the universe, it is also the case that that quasar doesn’t have a blog.”
Pure awesome.
mikey wasn’t happy with the trolls, but that isn’t why he left IIRC. He got angry about what he perceived as the “lockstep” thinking around here, He posted a comment in defense of someone the post in question was attacking. Other commenters and the author of the post disagreed. I didn’t have a dog in that fight myself and didn’t have an opinion, which is probably why I can’t remember the details. I’m pretty sure mikey’s departure wasn’t troll related, even though I know he hates them.
It would be nice if mikey would come back. I was sorry to see him take that position. I personally don’t think this place is particularly lockstep, but I guess it depends on one’s perspective.
The troll thing sucks. This latest bunch of racist crap is just over the top and should stop. Ordinarily troll baiting doesn’t bother me as much as it does some other commenters, but just lately it’s been kind of out of control. I would hate to see this place get all ban happy, but sometimes there are exceptional cases. Annie Angel was one. This thing here tonight is another.
Sorry if this is incoherent. I took two benedryl and am soon going to have keyboard face if I don’t go to bed.
There was also some planet or something shining very brightly through the clouds a while ago which looked really nifty.
I’m pretty sure it’s Venus.
Oh, yes, I saw it earlier. Beautiful!
Scroll comments to try and break the window now? Well well well… pretty much the identical M.O. of an insane troll I first saw at Eschaton back in 2001, who was going by the name of “America’s Memory” then. He’d name-jack, argue with himself to try and disturb commentary flow, form obsessive attachments to individual posters, and yes… post long, long strings of characters to try and break the screen. He’d also set up false blogs, which he’d include in his screen name in the hopes people would visit, and then watch the incoming IP address logs to try and work out real life contact details. Then people would get phone calls, again obsessively repetitive in content (“this is Atrios, stop posting, fuck you!”… always “Stop posting! Fuck you!”) He even tried to set up false Eschaton/Hesiod blogs as I recall… didn’t one just have a child’s drawing of a man on it, which was apparently some sort of disconnected neurotics idea of biting satire. Funny to think, he might still be at it nearly 9 years later, here at Sadly No! isn’t it…?
Mikey’s pretty easy to get in touch with if you want to ask him.
T__T
..I guess he was going to ignore any evidence sent his way anyway. Oh well.
Have you guys seen this?
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/2/2/
Apparently the *same woman* who heard it the first time is claiming she’s heard it from a second, independently-manufactured toy. Conspiracy!
Checking back in and….
No funny posts or references to one. Oh well.
Really? How about this one?
Here is how it will go down next week. First, the results from Virginia and North Carolina will come in, and they’ll be declared for McCain. You’ll be disappointed, but “no big deal, change can’t come overnight” will be your comment. Florida will go red, and a little nervousness will creep in. The usual suspects will fall into the usual categories. As the night drags on, Ohio, Colorado, and (much to your horror) Pennsylvania will be too close to call.
My advice at this point to you will be to go to bed. You will wake up to a McCain presidency and the Great Liberal Freakout will be on.
Bookmark this, liberals, as this is exactly how it is going to go down. You will be wonder how the hell I was able to call this.
I notice that Troofie’s legendary post has been retired, along with many of his other “legendary” posts.
Hey Troofie! King Leonidas called and he wants to meet you over by the big bottomless pit in downtown Sparta. Bring RedBlarter with you, too.
Holy Ned, I just caught Jon Stewart’s Michael Steele joke.
Now, that is to funny forever!
kind of interesting that a guy posting on a blog where no one at all wants him is referring to other folks as “lonely-hearts.” Truly, Reublicans project more than the cinemaplex.
Ever since my psychiatrist prescribed these antidepressants (early on November 5, 2008) I’ve been totally impotent, so I take out my frustrations by posting here.
If I ever get my dick back, I’ll stop annoying you with my pathetic whinging.
Interesting that he only noticed the link about him. >_>
Well, back to trolling the archives over at Lovecraft Is Missing, I guess. Ta!
Yeah, clearly S’N just doesn’t have the cutting wit of a Bill O’Reilly or Ann Coulter
Errmm…or Bill O’Reilly even.
On the Broad Shoulders of Michael Steele I Rest This New Republican Agenda
What the fuck is with the crap about the dragon?
Hours later and the best you can do is (as I stated upfront) a post about me
Glad you admitted at last you’re the same psychotic obsessive that’s been at this for nearly a decade… For someone who fancies himself as superior to everyone here, that you still fall for the most basic reversal of your own trolling tactics years later is rather revealing, isn’t it? And here’s a little hint; no one’s being especially funny with regards to you because, quite apart from having grown out of such pre-pubescent games long ago, there’s nothing particularly funny about the sort of mental illness that is driven by hate to spend every Friday night for year after year trying to control and upset and drive away people from web boards based upon nothing more than a political belief system he can’t even understand. You even quoted George W. Bush and thought a “Liberal” had said it… the sort of drooling intellectual disability that people desperately try and avoid acknowledging, just as they try to stare anywhere but at paraplegics on the streets, because it’s just demeaning for all involved if you stare…
And besides, why would Liberals even need to address you directly? You’re own insane brand of identity politics, your hate, your dishonesty, your attempts to manipulate online debate has given the world… President Barack Obama. Remember how you couldn’t bring yourself to comment upon anything except your own feelings of bile and spite on Inaugration Day? And yet Obama won in part because, alone in the voting booths with their memories of exactly your sort of politics, a large majority of the American Electorate couldn’t stomach the insanity and degradation any more. You might have told, and indeed still tell yourself that if you only name steal enough, or pretend to be enough different people at the same time, or assert just how much you “pwn” liberal boards that it’s liberals you are turning America against… The lack of any comment on any board that’s ever blamed anyone but the trolls, that is blamed you for your own behaviour, just shows how detached from reality you are. And we thank you for the corresponding Electoral results too.
Wuh? This shit is still going on?
G’night blarters, and blart bless, each and every one.
[flame bait]
Dang, that was a good pizza. Not like that shite one gets in New Jersey.
[/flame bait]
Wheeeeeeeeee, indeed.
Too somnolent right now to read the foregoing comments, but that chart makes me feel uneasily ambivalent about lacking a *real* job since 1982. Just don’t swamp my ever-tipsy lifeboat, plz… We’re currently stocking an extra-large supply of driftwood for the onboard stove and don’t have much freeboard to spare.
In the red and blue line times you didn’t have the wingnuts you have today.
Challenge is a large amphibian with toad drool in its mouth. Tame the amphibian and the toad drool is yours.
You’re own insane brand of identity politics, your hate, your dishonesty, your attempts to manipulate online debate has given the world..
You are totally, fully, completely full of crap (and illiterate to boot). You wouldn’t know humor if it licked your balls. Go away.
If you rotate the diagram through 90 deg. anticlockwise, then the red line has an uncanny resemblance to Bill Kristol. I’m sure this is evidence of something.
“Red line” = “blue line”, for sufficiently large values of red.
Sufficiently large volumes of many things would look like “Bloody Bill”. Elephant crap comes to mind.
Rupert Murdoch’s empire has lost a third of its value just in the last few months.
Now that’s change to believe in.
Sufficiently large volumes of many things would look like “Bloody Bill”. Elephant crap comes to mind.
Elephant crap is useful. Pick another turd.
It should indeed be measured in percent change to correct for population growth.
If an economy has 10 jobs and loses 2 its different from an economy with 100 jobs losing two. Silly and extreme analogy, but the logic is sound
In 1990, there were about 250 million people in the US, and now there are 350 million. You can’t compare raw numbers when population changed by 100,000,000 people. That’s a lot of people!
Or, think about it this way…If I said, “Canada lost 8 million jobs and the US lost 10 million, so Canada isn’t experiencing as much job loss as the US,” someone would surely point out that Canada only has 35 million people and that is a much higher percentage of job losses out of total population, so in fact, they are doing worse. Change in total population (or even possibly, working age population) should be taken into account.
I’m an economist and the employment numbers are horrible and they scare the crap out of me, but this graph is comparing apples to oranges.
The earliest recession on the graph was 1990; the 1990 census indicated 248m people, the 2000 census 281m, and current estimates suggest 309m.
To simplify, count the 1990 numbers as 25% higher and the 2000 numbers as 9% higher.
Which gives nadir figures of 1990: ~1875 (above the current blue line) and 2001: ~2800.
So the contrast is less dramatic, but the time shouldn’t scale. If we’re in a situation as bad as the Depression, depending on how big we assume the workforce to be, we can expect nadir figures of between 25% and 30% – 27%, say – so for the workforce as 80% of the population (hence wf=.8) 66m, and for wf=.65 54m.
Bear in mind we’re MUCH worse off in that single-earner homes (which were basically the norm in the Depression era, although more because women’s pay was shit than women not actually working, which most women beneath the upper middle class did) are no longer a reality – our workforce is bigger, but we can’t afford to have as many people out of work.
Also, I’m really hoping the ‘assuming well-paying public works programs created no jobs, the unemployment rate in the Depression was constant’ shit calms down – the Depression was a long natural event, something we probably wouldn’t have recovered fully from without the War until the 50s, so either Obama engages in the dreaded makework or we starve.
The one thing to take heart in is this: Obama’s people ran an intensely modern, on-top-of-things campaign, capable of rope-a-doping with the best of them and managing a relatively tiny early budget fantastically, along with inciting a lot of public interest in a candidate of fairly little intrinsic excitement. Right now, because the only White House facilities with technology more advanced than early faxes is the Big Butch Situation Room, he and his are operating out of what amounts to a ski lodge. The Republicans are the ones going through a honeymoon, and they’re largely using it to hang themselves.
The next big developments on the political right will be intra-Democratic, not extra-, and the inefficacy of the President is temporary. I’m certain that the worst that will happen is the Republicans manhandling down the stimulus, which – while terrible – is hardly as bad as the shit Bush pulled, and which will be enough of a wakeup call for either the White House to be fully wired or Obama to work out of a more modern office until it can be.
This is a case in which the most useful figure is the raw data.
What, for example, would be the great utility of a chart measuring employment (total number of nonfarm payroll) per capita (resident population)?
Or in XY chart form, see the same data here
So, generally over time the ratio of jobs per capita rises, and occasionally goes down. (A monthly chart would be better, but this was easier, this being a blog, and not my job.)
Though it may be interesting, given the chart, that if you compare the # of years it takes for the ratio to equal the last peak (it rises for a while, peaks, and then drops 3 major times 1977-2008, with major peaks in 1979, 1990, and 2000), we have spent more years below the previous peaks since 2000 than the peak of 1979 or the peak of 1990.
A more useful chart would have to factor in a number of other important adjustments: the working (employable) population, not residents; the number of jobs worked per person and the number of hours worked per person; and measures of wages and benefits.
And soon you’d have the kind of multifactor plot that makes eyes glaze over without really telling a great deal of anything useful.
.45 nonfarm employment per capita? Wow, that’s a lot less than I figured. Do they use a really screwy version of ‘farm’, or are we just having a lot of kids and retirees (or, as the Republicans like to think of them, womb greeters) these days?
Oh yeah, and to apply the Great Depression threshhold to the current situation: as of the most current statistics, the US workforce was 153,716k (which, as I understand, is a conservative estimate; ‘workforce’ excludes a good number of people without work who need it, for a variety of reasons), with an unemployment rate of 7.6% meaning 11 million unemployed.
Let’s say the threshhold at which we are in a situation as bad as the Great Depression is 20% (27% was the nadir of the Depression, not the norm). That means a little under 31 million unemployed. Even if our monthly rate bottoms out right now at about 3.5 million a month and recedes in October (per 1991), that still leaves us at 39 million – before we even start climbing the trench. Add around the same number of lost jobs getting out as getting in (about 6 million), which assumes a fairly rapid recovery, and by the time the economy is recovering lost jobs 45 million, or just under 30% of the workforce, will (barring state intervention) be jobless.
This is envelope stuff, but the upshot is that if we get off as easy as they did in the 30s we should count ourselves lucky.
alec: If you use the estimate from the CIA World FactBook, in 2008 there was a total U.S. labor force of 155,200,000, so then the total nonfarm employment / labor force member = 0.88.
Conversely, roughly 12% of the population which is defined as being able to work and in the working population have no job.
Biggest pet peeve right now: the use of ‘job’ in the individual, reified sense it gets thrown around in Washington. The main flaw with the chart, and with similar discussions of jobs being lost, is that however easy it might be to skim corporate records (and I suspect that the more top-down, corporate-framed idea of jobs being created or destroyed as opposed to people gaining or losing employment is no accident, either), it’s not particularly informative: it doesn’t tell you how many people are out of work except for immediately after the fact, it doesn’t tell you what kind of jobs they are (if Wal-Mart started taking on dozens of greeters per store, it could soften, eliminate, or even reverse the number of ‘jobs’ lost, but almost everyone employed would still be job-seeking and for all but a pittance and the name unemployed) and worst of all, it’s difficult to make concrete long-term statements about it.
It’s possible to say “X jobs were lost in Y month, or between X and Y years Z jobs were lost”, but that chart (by no fault of the maker, I assume) is completely opaque as to whether it’s referring to how many jobs are being lost or how many jobs have been, which are critically different. Operating under the assumption that the former was true brought me to that bleak conclusion, although the latter could well be worse – you can’t realistically expect losses of millions to go on exponentially for long, but hundreds of thousands are a different story.
alec: To chart with a single variable versus time, you’d have to come up with a fairly complex measure (maybe one is used often, I dunno) to express the number of jobs per working population member combined with all the other measures, including wages & benefit distribution (i.e., X% jobs between $X1 and $X2 hour equivalents), job duration (most of the data is non-seasonal, maybe seasonal work should be included), or other factors.
Besides being unwieldy, it would also be the sort of thing that would take really knowledgeable statisticians to come up with along with the important qualifiers to keep it all as valid as possible, as you may be mixing truly quantifiable variables with categorical variables or all other sorts of problems.
Krugman usually uses the U6 percent total of various measures of unemployment and under/marginal employment, seasonally adjusted or not adjusted, and here it is for the past months beginning with September:
U6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached workers, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all marginally attached workers…
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan
11.2 12.0 12.6 13.5 13.9
Hey, Brad Delong did a month-by-month chart on his bleg. Who couldanode?
Civilian Employment to Population Ratio, 1986 – 2009.
Watch those last few monthly steps, though — they’re a Duesy!
Actually, it’s no weirder than you taking your head up the same place, ‘phobe. In fact, it’s a lot less weird…and less pathetic, too.
…Okay, back to the unprecedented job losses brought on by the Bush Recession. Just think, if there ever is a President Palin (insert uncontrollable laughter here), the Palin Recession will dwarf this one by roughly the same order of magnitude as an Everest-sized manure pile dwarfing a cowflop.
Bookmark this, conservatards.
Sarah Palin/Not-Joe the Not-Plumber 2012!
1 does not equal 2. Not even for large values of 1.
Ha! Good one PeeJ.
MIchael Steele has been head of the RNC for almost a week now, and Obama is still president.
Michael Steele is a failure.
So, er, the chart was right?
I mean, use twisted Wingnut Logic all one wants, a steep dive on a chart is a steep dive on a chart.
And we’ve been screamed at for years now that the economy is doing fine!
If it’s fine, why is our charts diving?
If it’s fine, why is our charts diving?
The pie is too low.
This is excellent news. FOR PALIN!!!!!
To visit with the beautiful reef fishes, and commune with the coral.
Actually, if you ↺ it in the plane through π radians, it looks like the beast with two backs. With some green thing – I dunno what that is.
Ooh! Oooh! No, wait! ↺ it in the plane through π radians, then flip it along the x axis (↺ through z) it shows clearly that convergence at the year 2000 is guaranteed! All we need to do is fire up the wayback machine….
Thanks for allowing me this opportunity to practice Wingnut logic.
Also, TAX CUTS! It proves scienterrifically that we need more TAX CUTS!
Check out the banner here:
http://www.21stcenturypaladin.com/
The pie is too low.
It got the blues, so bad.
PeeJ gets the Secretary for Happy Days are Here Again job (formerly The Secretary for You Never Had it so Good).
Conversely, roughly 12% of the population which is defined as being able to work and in the working population have no job.
If the 88% is non-farm, wouldn’t some of the 12% be farmers? Not sure if I get their categorization, I guess.
The pie is too low.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!
How about a new value of 3.2? Is that high enough?
I think maybe 4: shouldn’t it be round?
The graph appears to be based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data from here:
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=CES0000000001&output_view=net_1mth
When I plot their series of non-farm employment (which extends back to 1939) it overlays perfectly on Pelosi’s chart.
Now, total employment has increased 4% since August 2003, and 24% since may 1991, so in terms of percentage loss of jobs, the 1.6 million jobs which disappeared between 6/90 and 5/91 are the equivalent of 2.0 million jobs disappearing today.
I added the 1982 recession to Pelosi’s chart:
http://uncharted.org/frownland/pix/recession.jpg
When viewing job figures proportionally as a fraction of their most recent peak value, the 2008 curve (2.6% down in 13 months) very much resembles the 1982 curve (3.0% down in 17 months before beginning an upswing). However, it’s extremely important to realize that the method used in 1982 is not applicable to the current recession. This is because the 1982 recession was actually an engineered recession. In 1981 the Federal Reserve deliberately ran the prime rate (“Average majority prime rate charged by banks on short-term loans to business”) to over 20%:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/H15/data/Daily/H15_PRIME_NA.txt
with the explicit intent of increasing unemployment in order to defeat inflation and protect thus bond holders. Having achieved that goal (at the cost of three million American jobs) they then dialed the prime rate down by ten percent, which restarted the American economy. This is not an option today; the current prime rate is 3.25%.
Good. Lord.
Just the thought that The Virgin (no more?) Ben thinks he has any scrip to call anybody else a “pusillanimous little weasel” is the funniest thing I’ve seen all week.
Been ? so long, it seems like ? to me.
problems comparing this recession to earlier recessions
? and ? should be ‘phi’ and ‘pi’ respectively.
Speaking of rotating graphs through 90-deg., my favourite is the Monty Burns Function.
I’m so pleased that Troofie believes 3.5 million people losing their jobs is something to have fun with.
See, this is why we’re liberals, Troof. We know when to shut up.
Now, fanboi, I need coffee. Black, no sugar, and hurry your ass about it.
Grateful for the sentiment, but I can’t pledge compliance to the request.
Funny – I have a blog, which to me is just a means for me to put a cool picture next to my blogspot comments. Almost nothing on it, & what little there is is largely self-quotes from here … & I’m anaphylactically allergic to blogwhoring.
Food. Sleep. Work. Fapping. Putting the hurts on my guitar.
I value them all dearly … & combining even the easiest (food) with posting is risky business. The others render posting either impractical or impossible.
Insight is easy – mind you, the process of obtaining it is a royal bitch, but if you survive THAT, insight itself is like falling off a log.
Using it wisely isn’t.
I’m curious to see what the start of the corresponding line for 1929-1932 would look like superimposed over the current swan-dive. Just so I can decide whether or not to invest in pencil-&-tin-cup futures yet.
Uhh… that’s an underestimate, according to America’s answer to
Marie Antoinette.
that’s “misunderestimate.”
I suspect that you are an asymptote!
You are being hyperbolic; my ass is more clutch-sized.
Goddamnit, last week my
boyfriendcreature said “that’s what you get for having an ass like a satchel.” He’s absolutely correct too: like one of those goddamn cylindrical duffel bags from LLBean circa 1979. Ah well, I have got used to saying “an ass the size of New Jersey” and now it’s all fun & fucking games.Sorry to break in with personal angst, but I so resemble that remark.
Also about trolls: I used to frequent, of all things, news.admin.net-abuse.usenet, and give helpful advice to the constant stream of people asking that news.admins do something – or say something should be done – to deal with trolls. I saw some extreme stuff. We are not there yet. The scroll troll comes closest, but that could be dealt with separately if necessary.
i can haz update? on current status of this?