"Was CBS justified in believing the documents to be authentic?"
They were not. Note that CBS and Rather talk about mistakes in judgment. They know they got it wrong, and that they were to blame for getting it wrong.
Please, stop. These forgeries were *so bad*, why would any Republicans have believed that CBS would not have caught them? Plus, CBS said their source (now revealed to be Burkett, a man who hates Bush and has advocated using dirty tricks against the Republicans) was very reluctant to turn these documents over to CBS, for a long time (apparently years). Saying this may have come from the GOP doesn't pass the smell test.
Then what you meant to say was "I don't enjoy watching films that appear to have such boring photography and unrealistic editing" or "I don't enjoy watching films with such boring photography and unrealistic editing in their trailers,"
No. I meant precisely what I wrote. I don't enjoy watching films that have boring photography and unrealistic editing.
Whether this film is one of those, I don't know: I can only go by what I've heard from other people and seen in trailers. It appears to be one of those films, and therefore I will not see it, because if it is, as it appears to be, I will not enjoy it. If it is not -- if the trailers are misleading -- then I will have not seen the movie because of how the trailer misrepresented it to me, which is not such a bad thing.
I wasn't trying to twist your meaning, simply pulling out the relevant quotes.
I'm confused then, because you also say it is "very amateurish", it has "boring photography and unrealistic editing", and the blue screening is "just bad."
I stand by the blue screening. It sucks. I don't care what the intended effect is: it looks like blue screening. That means it looks bad.
Those other things I did not say. I said, "from the trailers, it looked very amateurish." That is very different from saying "the movie is very amateurish." And I said, "I don't enjoy watching films with such boring photography and unrealistic editing," in the context of how this movie appears from the trailers; I did not say the very different "this movie has boring photography and unrealistic editing."
Do not misrepresent what I say. It makes you look like really bad, because it shows you either cannot read, or that you are intentionally twisting my meaning.
Have you ever seen a film from the Golden Age? That was intentional.
Have you ever seen movies since then, with their much broader range of camera angles? This, too, was intentional.:-)
I understand the whole homage bit. But if I made an homage to movies from 100 years ago, it would be essentially all one scene with no camera movements at all... and I wouldn't expect anyone to come see it, no matter how well it was done within those self-imposed limitations.
Look at Citizen Kane (I'm sure you have). It had far more different camera angles and movements than this movie appears to have. There is no reason an homage to films of the time period has to duplicate the worst elements of them.
I am not saying the movie sucks. I have not seen it. But I don't enjoy watching films with such boring photography and unrealistic editing -- no matter when it was filmed -- and it seems clear this movie is not intended for me. I dislike most old films because of these things: overacting (again, moving plays to film), bad camera angles, bad lighting. The few old films I like are by directors who were innovative, who used the camera to tell a story, not merely record it: Capra, Hitchcock, Welles.
The melding of the actors to their backgrounds in this movie looked less realistic than the CBS memo forgeries. It was just bad. Now, I only saw the trailers, so it is possible that I am overreacting. But from other comments I've heard and read, and considering you normally don't put your worst shots in trailers, I doubt it.
Also, I've only seen trailers, but what struck me is the complete lack of different camera angles. Every shot of a person was basically level (from the feet up or waist up), or close ups. No real far shots, no crane shots, nothing different at all... just plonk a camera on a tripod in front of some people and tell them to start acting. This is something I could not possibly bear for two hours. Again, maybe the movie is not this bad, but from the trailers, it looked very amateurish... perhaps some comments on camera angles from people who have seen it would be helpful.
I agree wages have not improved in some areas, particularly lower wage jobs. But that's a problem that predates Bush... and Clinton, too. That's been going on for 30 years.
But overall, real wages have improved since Bush took office (that's adjusted for inflation, and predating the recession), which makes me think today's existing jobs are not worse than the jobs that were lost during and following the recession. Again: wages have grown more than inflation since Bush took office, and they grew a lot more than they did during Clinton's first term.
And before you say I am lying with statistics, this is one of the same statistics Kerry is using to say wages are going down, except I am looking at it over a longer period of time. And his use is far less valid than mine, because of the recent volatility in energy prices: nominal wages are far less volatile, so in the short term the difference is less stastically significant.
In other words: yes, inflation is hurting right now, but you don't expect your employer to change your wages every time the price of oil goes up or down. (And it's not like Kerry or anyone else is going to make the price of oil more stable.)
Steady and strong?
Yes.
the US is deporting labor to other countries as fast as possible
No, it isn't. Outsourcing represnts less than 1 percent of all job turnover, even by the most aggressive estimates. A mere 4,633 jobs were lost to outsourcing in the first quarter of this year. The greatest estimate of total jobs lost is 1 million, while others estimate as low as 300,000.
Meanwhile, foreign companies employ over 6 million Americans in the U.S. If you want to stop outsourcing, then we stop it both ways, and you get to tell 6.4 million Americans why they are out of a job.
Further, more Americans are employed today than ever before, the unemployment rate is historically low, and the civilian labor force continues to grow for the past year and a half at a good clip. There's simply no evidence of outsourcing significantly impacting the economy as a whole.
The simple fact is that Americans are being forced to work harder and harder, but their quality of life is decreasing
Polls have had problems like this for years. For example, what about the millions of people who simply *are not home* to accept phone calls? This problem didn't suddenly spring into existence with the advent of cell phones, it just made idiots like Breslin understand the problems better.
It is not as simple as HUPing. If you have active connections, you need to close them all, then restart iChat to be how you normally have it. Many users would not get it and would just get confused as to why things were not as they were left. And you could log out and log back in, but many users never log in. There's no way to do it that would be simple enough for the average user to not get confused over.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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Mock World Vote
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· Score: 1
We're talking methodology here. If you want to know what a larger group thinks by talking to a smaller group, then you must have a sufficiently random sample, which a self-selected sample cannot be. For an election, you don't care what the larger group thinks, you only care about the people who actually vote.
Re:Those stats don't really mean much though
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Mock World Vote
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· Score: 2, Insightful
It is not that the stats do not mean "much," it is that they mean nothing at all.
Setting aside the obvious point that what people of other nations think about who should be the U.S. leader is completely irrelevant on every level, self-selected samples are entirely invalid, period. The results are completely meaningless on a statiscal level.
Why bother even trying to make the point that, from some arbitrary point you have evidently pulled out of a hat, there have been net gains in jobs?
It was in response to a specific claim made against Bush, as I have already said. I didn't pull it out of a hat: it is a pervasive Democratic talking point, that Bush has presided over the first net job loss since Hoover. Google for "Bush net jobs loss." And I was showing how this is true, but unless you blame Bush for the recession, that it is not his fault, since there has been a net GAIN since the recession.
This is not difficult. Don't blame me for your knee-jerkism.
This is what I mean by propaganda. It is the deliberate use of statements, that while not false, are designed to leave a false impression
I was responding TO SOMEONE ELSE'S propaganda, you twit.
"If we could lay blame... well, why can't we? Sure, it's Clinton's fault!"
"Hmmm, after Bush's policies where in effect for a while, there was net job growth, he must be doing something right!"
I never stated or implied either of those things.
That, by the way, is called an ad hominem attack, attacking the person, not the argument.
Which is what you did first, you twit.
have nothing against individuals being fairly rewarded for their work, however, profiting off of tragedy and socioeconomic inequality gall me.
They should stop earning profits when you think the economy is bad? That doesn't make any sense, on any level.
I think tax breaks primarily for the rich, appalling socioeconomic conditions fostered by 'cheap labor conservatives,' and no-bid contracts for politcally connected companies are bad for the country. Care to disagree on the points I was actually arguing, or would you like to keep knocking down straw men?
If you had actually MADE those points, I might accept your indigination as reasonable. You still haven't made any reasonable point about war profiteering claims. Tax breaks for the rich is another way of saying "tax breaks for everyone." I don't see any serious socioeconomic conditions that have not already existed for 100 years. And the no-bid contract was found to be perfectly reasonable and legal by a bipartisan commission.
Net, according to Bartelby.com, means 1. Remaining after all deductions have been made, as for expenses: net profit. So I chose to deduct the number of new workers entering the work force from the number of new jobs created.... which is something different from what everyone else on the planet means when they talk about net jobs gained and lost.
My point, which you have conveniently glossed over, is that job growth has to at least keep up with population growth, or rising unemployement will ensue.
I "glossed over" it because I agree, and had no comment.
What with the tax breaks primarily for the rich, the lower cost of labor due to greater worker desperation, and more taxpayer money being siphoned off by the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel, how can you claim that Bush and his ilk have not profited off of 9/11 and the recession?
They profit all the time, regardless of what is going on. That's what makes them good businessmen. You think profitting is an indictment of some sort? That's exceedingly odd.
As far as propaganda goes, your statement, "But I am not blaming Clinton for the recession either; clearly if we would assign blame for it to a President, it would be his, but why would we do that?" clearly lays the blame at Clinton's feet while disingenuously claiming not to lay blame.
That kind of lack of English comprehension is exactly what I have come to expect from Kerry and his supporters.
For there to be a true net gain in jobs, job growth would have to be greater than the number of new workers.
No. A net gain in jobs means simply more people are employed now than before. That's all it means. That's not to say the number of additional workers is not significant: it certainly is, of course, but the net gain/loss is just about the actual number of jobs, not the size of the work force.
Neither Bush nor Clinton caused the recession.
Of course. I said that already, and never implied otherwise.
Bush may not have caused the recession, but he and his cronies happily capitalized on it and 9/11 to enrich themselves and their wealthy friends at the expense of the rest of us.
Uh, right, and Kerry eats babies for breakfast.
Nice try at pro-Bush, anti-Democrat propaganda, though. I guess the old saying, 'you see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear' is true after all.
Learn to read and understand what "net gain in jobs" means before you start casting aspersions. It just makes you look bad.
We've lost 2 million jobs, and recovered 1.1 million.
There is a net loss since January 2001, but a net gain since November 2001.
I am not all about assigning blame for these things. But if people must do it, then how can he be blamed for losing jobs that were lost as a direct result of a recession that he didn't cause? That's the question I am asking.
Furthermore, the average wage of those new jobs is $9,000 less than the ones that were lost.
I am not too keen on believing this number, because from what I can tell quite a few hoops had to be jumped through to get it. But let's assume it is true: so what? We know that many of the lost jobs were in the tech industry (taking some quick estimates, it is 200K of the 900K still "lost" since January 2001). We know tech industry incomes were overinflated. So how is it a bad thing that the industry has corrected itself... ?
I don't think Gore would've done any better than Bush, though. This was started a long, long time ago and no president would've been capable of substantially altering the outcome.
Right. Again, I am not saying Bush gets much credit or much blame here, I am only saying that lots of people blame Bush for the job loss, but even if we are to blame him for the conditions we've been in, he's actually gained jobs since his policies have taken effect. But I am not blaming Clinton for the recession either; clearly if we would assign blame for it to a President, it would be his, but why would we do that?
Again, I am blaming policy. I think you want me to put the blame on a group of people
Uh, you're the one who implied the blame of the recession lies with the Republican Congress, and before that, you implied Bush was to blame for economic conditions that existed before he took office. I am not trying to get you to blame anyone, you already did it.
Republicans or Democrats in office on a certain day doesn't magically effect change. Their policies, however (put into effect) do.
So you're not blaming people, but their policies! That's flummery.
All I'm saying is that it is the role of the leading economic influence (in this case, Government) to lead, economically. When the policies of Government cause "currency" to flow the economy grows. Today I see a leader hell bent on fueling a political machine; Not fueling an economy towards prosperity for all.
If you're so concerned with policy, you could criticize actual policy, instead of handwaving and grunting "Bush Bad!"
Let's talk about economy growing and money flowing. Let's talk about some of the strongest GDP growth in decades recently. Yes, summer saw a soft patch (not at all bad, but mediocre over the last quarter), but Greenspan -- whom you invoked -- says it is once again picking up steam. We're seeing strong profits and more investment. We're seeing precisely what you say you want to see: currency is flowing and the economy is growing.
If you're suggesting that the Seventeenth Amendment be repealed and the election of senators be done by state representatives then I'm all for that since local politics would matter more.
Not specifically, I was referring to electors, but I wouldn't mind that, either. Zell Miller proposed it...
I am not here to comfort anyone. Great, you got laid off. Life sucks. The tech industry screwed up, and you got the shaft for it.
Oh, and yeah - I blame Junior. Who in their right mind wouldn't?
You have it backward. Who in their right mind *would*?
He didn't create the recession: it is the result of the tech crash that started 10 months before he took office, and the recession started less than two months after he took office. The recession ended in November 2001, but 9/11 and the recession combined to make the recovery very slow, and job losses continued through 2002 and into 2003. And yet we still have a net gain in jobs since the end of the recession. Not a net loss, a net gain. And we have gained 1.6m jobs since a year ago, at the job loss low point.
The economy is steady and strong. But that doesn't mean that an industry that had no business employing as many people as it did is going to make the same mistake again.
Yes, by your timeline, the Republicans already controled all but the Whitehouse when those events began. It may not be the man at the top which controls these events, but they are certainly influenced by prevailing policy.
Sure. If we were really debating blame, I'd just say something like, "[insert President here] can only react to and nudge the economy, he can't direct it, kinda like a pinball machine." I am just talking about the numbers, and noting that nothing Bush did could have caused the recession.
Note also, however, that if the Republicans in Congress get the blame for the recession as you appear to imply, they also get the credit for the boom in the late 90s. You really can't have that argument both ways, and if you do credit/blame the Republicans for both, then we have had a net gain, so you shouldn't complain...
It's the WELL EDUCATED workers that are suffering most in this I.T. backlash, not the lower end guys.
I didn't imply there is only one kind of worker suffering. But the cause is still the same: the market does not need and cannot -- and will not -- support a large number of highly paid workers. It's not the government's fault, it just is.
Sure. I was using the cab drivers to demonstrate part of the problem. We're down 400,000 jobs, they can't all be cab drivers.
But yeah, even for good people, there were just too many of them. And some good people bumped out other good people. It's musical chairs. We were all told in the 90s this was the business for everyone to get into, and it was a damned lie.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice tactic, eh?
If by "nice" you mean entirely implausible, then yes. Very nice.
"Was CBS justified in believing the documents to be authentic?"
They were not. Note that CBS and Rather talk about mistakes in judgment. They know they got it wrong, and that they were to blame for getting it wrong.
Please, stop. These forgeries were *so bad*, why would any Republicans have believed that CBS would not have caught them? Plus, CBS said their source (now revealed to be Burkett, a man who hates Bush and has advocated using dirty tricks against the Republicans) was very reluctant to turn these documents over to CBS, for a long time (apparently years). Saying this may have come from the GOP doesn't pass the smell test.
Then what you meant to say was "I don't enjoy watching films that appear to have such boring photography and unrealistic editing" or "I don't enjoy watching films with such boring photography and unrealistic editing in their trailers,"
No. I meant precisely what I wrote. I don't enjoy watching films that have boring photography and unrealistic editing.
Whether this film is one of those, I don't know: I can only go by what I've heard from other people and seen in trailers. It appears to be one of those films, and therefore I will not see it, because if it is, as it appears to be, I will not enjoy it. If it is not -- if the trailers are misleading -- then I will have not seen the movie because of how the trailer misrepresented it to me, which is not such a bad thing.
I wasn't trying to twist your meaning, simply pulling out the relevant quotes.
And doing an extremely poor job of it.
I'm confused then, because you also say it is "very amateurish", it has "boring photography and unrealistic editing", and the blue screening is "just bad."
I stand by the blue screening. It sucks. I don't care what the intended effect is: it looks like blue screening. That means it looks bad.
Those other things I did not say. I said, "from the trailers, it looked very amateurish." That is very different from saying "the movie is very amateurish." And I said, "I don't enjoy watching films with such boring photography and unrealistic editing," in the context of how this movie appears from the trailers; I did not say the very different "this movie has boring photography and unrealistic editing."
Do not misrepresent what I say. It makes you look like really bad, because it shows you either cannot read, or that you are intentionally twisting my meaning.
Have you ever seen a film from the Golden Age? That was intentional.
:-)
... and I wouldn't expect anyone to come see it, no matter how well it was done within those self-imposed limitations.
Have you ever seen movies since then, with their much broader range of camera angles? This, too, was intentional.
I understand the whole homage bit. But if I made an homage to movies from 100 years ago, it would be essentially all one scene with no camera movements at all
Look at Citizen Kane (I'm sure you have). It had far more different camera angles and movements than this movie appears to have. There is no reason an homage to films of the time period has to duplicate the worst elements of them.
I am not saying the movie sucks. I have not seen it. But I don't enjoy watching films with such boring photography and unrealistic editing -- no matter when it was filmed -- and it seems clear this movie is not intended for me. I dislike most old films because of these things: overacting (again, moving plays to film), bad camera angles, bad lighting. The few old films I like are by directors who were innovative, who used the camera to tell a story, not merely record it: Capra, Hitchcock, Welles.
The melding of the actors to their backgrounds in this movie looked less realistic than the CBS memo forgeries. It was just bad. Now, I only saw the trailers, so it is possible that I am overreacting. But from other comments I've heard and read, and considering you normally don't put your worst shots in trailers, I doubt it.
... just plonk a camera on a tripod in front of some people and tell them to start acting. This is something I could not possibly bear for two hours. Again, maybe the movie is not this bad, but from the trailers, it looked very amateurish ... perhaps some comments on camera angles from people who have seen it would be helpful.
Also, I've only seen trailers, but what struck me is the complete lack of different camera angles. Every shot of a person was basically level (from the feet up or waist up), or close ups. No real far shots, no crane shots, nothing different at all
Of those 1.6m jobs, how many of them don't suck?
... and Clinton, too. That's been going on for 30 years.
There's no way to know.
I agree wages have not improved in some areas, particularly lower wage jobs. But that's a problem that predates Bush
But overall, real wages have improved since Bush took office (that's adjusted for inflation, and predating the recession), which makes me think today's existing jobs are not worse than the jobs that were lost during and following the recession. Again: wages have grown more than inflation since Bush took office, and they grew a lot more than they did during Clinton's first term.
And before you say I am lying with statistics, this is one of the same statistics Kerry is using to say wages are going down, except I am looking at it over a longer period of time. And his use is far less valid than mine, because of the recent volatility in energy prices: nominal wages are far less volatile, so in the short term the difference is less stastically significant.
In other words: yes, inflation is hurting right now, but you don't expect your employer to change your wages every time the price of oil goes up or down. (And it's not like Kerry or anyone else is going to make the price of oil more stable.)
Steady and strong?
Yes.
the US is deporting labor to other countries as fast as possible
No, it isn't. Outsourcing represnts less than 1 percent of all job turnover, even by the most aggressive estimates. A mere 4,633 jobs were lost to outsourcing in the first quarter of this year. The greatest estimate of total jobs lost is 1 million, while others estimate as low as 300,000.
Meanwhile, foreign companies employ over 6 million Americans in the U.S. If you want to stop outsourcing, then we stop it both ways, and you get to tell 6.4 million Americans why they are out of a job.
Further, more Americans are employed today than ever before, the unemployment rate is historically low, and the civilian labor force continues to grow for the past year and a half at a good clip. There's simply no evidence of outsourcing significantly impacting the economy as a whole.
The simple fact is that Americans are being forced to work harder and harder, but their quality of life is decreasing
That is not a fact, simple or otherwise.
Just have a look around.
You first.
Polls have had problems like this for years. For example, what about the millions of people who simply *are not home* to accept phone calls? This problem didn't suddenly spring into existence with the advent of cell phones, it just made idiots like Breslin understand the problems better.
It is not as simple as HUPing. If you have active connections, you need to close them all, then restart iChat to be how you normally have it. Many users would not get it and would just get confused as to why things were not as they were left. And you could log out and log back in, but many users never log in. There's no way to do it that would be simple enough for the average user to not get confused over.
We're talking methodology here. If you want to know what a larger group thinks by talking to a smaller group, then you must have a sufficiently random sample, which a self-selected sample cannot be. For an election, you don't care what the larger group thinks, you only care about the people who actually vote.
It is not that the stats do not mean "much," it is that they mean nothing at all.
Setting aside the obvious point that what people of other nations think about who should be the U.S. leader is completely irrelevant on every level, self-selected samples are entirely invalid, period. The results are completely meaningless on a statiscal level.
I call on us all to "Mock" this "World Vote"!
Why bother even trying to make the point that, from some arbitrary point you have evidently pulled out of a hat, there have been net gains in jobs?
It was in response to a specific claim made against Bush, as I have already said. I didn't pull it out of a hat: it is a pervasive Democratic talking point, that Bush has presided over the first net job loss since Hoover. Google for "Bush net jobs loss." And I was showing how this is true, but unless you blame Bush for the recession, that it is not his fault, since there has been a net GAIN since the recession.
This is not difficult. Don't blame me for your knee-jerkism.
This is what I mean by propaganda. It is the deliberate use of statements, that while not false, are designed to leave a false impression
I was responding TO SOMEONE ELSE'S propaganda, you twit.
"If we could lay blame... well, why can't we? Sure, it's Clinton's fault!"
"Hmmm, after Bush's policies where in effect for a while, there was net job growth, he must be doing something right!"
I never stated or implied either of those things.
That, by the way, is called an ad hominem attack, attacking the person, not the argument.
Which is what you did first, you twit.
have nothing against individuals being fairly rewarded for their work, however, profiting off of tragedy and socioeconomic inequality gall me.
They should stop earning profits when you think the economy is bad? That doesn't make any sense, on any level.
I think tax breaks primarily for the rich, appalling socioeconomic conditions fostered by 'cheap labor conservatives,' and no-bid contracts for politcally connected companies are bad for the country. Care to disagree on the points I was actually arguing, or would you like to keep knocking down straw men?
If you had actually MADE those points, I might accept your indigination as reasonable. You still haven't made any reasonable point about war profiteering claims. Tax breaks for the rich is another way of saying "tax breaks for everyone." I don't see any serious socioeconomic conditions that have not already existed for 100 years. And the no-bid contract was found to be perfectly reasonable and legal by a bipartisan commission.
Yawn.
Net, according to Bartelby.com, means 1. Remaining after all deductions have been made, as for expenses: net profit. So I chose to deduct the number of new workers entering the work force from the number of new jobs created. ... which is something different from what everyone else on the planet means when they talk about net jobs gained and lost.
My point, which you have conveniently glossed over, is that job growth has to at least keep up with population growth, or rising unemployement will ensue.
I "glossed over" it because I agree, and had no comment.
What with the tax breaks primarily for the rich, the lower cost of labor due to greater worker desperation, and more taxpayer money being siphoned off by the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel, how can you claim that Bush and his ilk have not profited off of 9/11 and the recession?
They profit all the time, regardless of what is going on. That's what makes them good businessmen. You think profitting is an indictment of some sort? That's exceedingly odd.
As far as propaganda goes, your statement, "But I am not blaming Clinton for the recession either; clearly if we would assign blame for it to a President, it would be his, but why would we do that?" clearly lays the blame at Clinton's feet while disingenuously claiming not to lay blame.
That kind of lack of English comprehension is exactly what I have come to expect from Kerry and his supporters.
For there to be a true net gain in jobs, job growth would have to be greater than the number of new workers.
No. A net gain in jobs means simply more people are employed now than before. That's all it means. That's not to say the number of additional workers is not significant: it certainly is, of course, but the net gain/loss is just about the actual number of jobs, not the size of the work force.
Neither Bush nor Clinton caused the recession.
Of course. I said that already, and never implied otherwise.
Bush may not have caused the recession, but he and his cronies happily capitalized on it and 9/11 to enrich themselves and their wealthy friends at the expense of the rest of us.
Uh, right, and Kerry eats babies for breakfast.
Nice try at pro-Bush, anti-Democrat propaganda, though. I guess the old saying, 'you see what you want to see, hear what you want to hear' is true after all.
Learn to read and understand what "net gain in jobs" means before you start casting aspersions. It just makes you look bad.
you say that his policies have "taken effect" and as a result, there has been a job gain.
I did not say "as a result."
We've lost 2 million jobs, and recovered 1.1 million.
... ?
There is a net loss since January 2001, but a net gain since November 2001.
I am not all about assigning blame for these things. But if people must do it, then how can he be blamed for losing jobs that were lost as a direct result of a recession that he didn't cause? That's the question I am asking.
Furthermore, the average wage of those new jobs is $9,000 less than the ones that were lost.
I am not too keen on believing this number, because from what I can tell quite a few hoops had to be jumped through to get it. But let's assume it is true: so what? We know that many of the lost jobs were in the tech industry (taking some quick estimates, it is 200K of the 900K still "lost" since January 2001). We know tech industry incomes were overinflated. So how is it a bad thing that the industry has corrected itself
I don't think Gore would've done any better than Bush, though. This was started a long, long time ago and no president would've been capable of substantially altering the outcome.
Right. Again, I am not saying Bush gets much credit or much blame here, I am only saying that lots of people blame Bush for the job loss, but even if we are to blame him for the conditions we've been in, he's actually gained jobs since his policies have taken effect. But I am not blaming Clinton for the recession either; clearly if we would assign blame for it to a President, it would be his, but why would we do that?
Again, I am blaming policy. I think you want me to put the blame on a group of people
Uh, you're the one who implied the blame of the recession lies with the Republican Congress, and before that, you implied Bush was to blame for economic conditions that existed before he took office. I am not trying to get you to blame anyone, you already did it.
Republicans or Democrats in office on a certain day doesn't magically effect change. Their policies, however (put into effect) do.
So you're not blaming people, but their policies! That's flummery.
All I'm saying is that it is the role of the leading economic influence (in this case, Government) to lead, economically. When the policies of Government cause "currency" to flow the economy grows. Today I see a leader hell bent on fueling a political machine; Not fueling an economy towards prosperity for all.
If you're so concerned with policy, you could criticize actual policy, instead of handwaving and grunting "Bush Bad!"
Let's talk about economy growing and money flowing. Let's talk about some of the strongest GDP growth in decades recently. Yes, summer saw a soft patch (not at all bad, but mediocre over the last quarter), but Greenspan -- whom you invoked -- says it is once again picking up steam. We're seeing strong profits and more investment. We're seeing precisely what you say you want to see: currency is flowing and the economy is growing.
You're obviously not reading what I am writing, or simply not understanding it.
If you're suggesting that the Seventeenth Amendment be repealed and the election of senators be done by state representatives then I'm all for that since local politics would matter more.
...
Not specifically, I was referring to electors, but I wouldn't mind that, either. Zell Miller proposed it
I am not here to comfort anyone. Great, you got laid off. Life sucks. The tech industry screwed up, and you got the shaft for it.
Oh, and yeah - I blame Junior. Who in their right mind wouldn't?
You have it backward. Who in their right mind *would*?
He didn't create the recession: it is the result of the tech crash that started 10 months before he took office, and the recession started less than two months after he took office. The recession ended in November 2001, but 9/11 and the recession combined to make the recovery very slow, and job losses continued through 2002 and into 2003. And yet we still have a net gain in jobs since the end of the recession. Not a net loss, a net gain. And we have gained 1.6m jobs since a year ago, at the job loss low point.
The economy is steady and strong. But that doesn't mean that an industry that had no business employing as many people as it did is going to make the same mistake again.
Yes, by your timeline, the Republicans already controled all but the Whitehouse when those events began. It may not be the man at the top which controls these events, but they are certainly influenced by prevailing policy.
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Sure. If we were really debating blame, I'd just say something like, "[insert President here] can only react to and nudge the economy, he can't direct it, kinda like a pinball machine." I am just talking about the numbers, and noting that nothing Bush did could have caused the recession.
Note also, however, that if the Republicans in Congress get the blame for the recession as you appear to imply, they also get the credit for the boom in the late 90s. You really can't have that argument both ways, and if you do credit/blame the Republicans for both, then we have had a net gain, so you shouldn't complain
We *have* recovered the jobs lost since the recession.
:-)
And you're allowed to blame him for anything you want, but that doesn't mean it will necessarily be rational.
It's the WELL EDUCATED workers that are suffering most in this I.T. backlash, not the lower end guys.
I didn't imply there is only one kind of worker suffering. But the cause is still the same: the market does not need and cannot -- and will not -- support a large number of highly paid workers. It's not the government's fault, it just is.
Sure. I was using the cab drivers to demonstrate part of the problem. We're down 400,000 jobs, they can't all be cab drivers.
But yeah, even for good people, there were just too many of them. And some good people bumped out other good people. It's musical chairs. We were all told in the 90s this was the business for everyone to get into, and it was a damned lie.