Originally Posted by Aramea

You are reading the posts on a somewhat superficial level. Obama underestimated Romney's debate preparation and his strategy backfired performance-wise. Do you really think that the guy on the stage next to Mitt looked like any Obama we have seen to date? I could obviously be incorrect that he deliberately downplayed it, but something was off. He was back to his old self by yesterday afternoon. The presence of a teleprompter could explain part of that, but Obama is capable of talking normally without it.

He was:

A) Very very tired
B) Medicated
C) Hungover
D) Up to something

Fact checkers are already hard at work on Mitt's economic "plan". Meanwhile all they are saying about Obama is that he looked "arrogant". Which one could cause a long-term problem for a candidate?

another possibility:

e) preoccupied with the syria/turkey violence.

Originally Posted by the bouncer

meh.

if that's the case, then i stand by my original reaction.

perhaps you did not intend to give offense, but that's what happened.

i do agree with prince that dave chappelle (and others) have done a better job with humour in this area.

so i'll just leave it at that.

No worries. I never mean to offend, it is not part of my emotional makeup. I DO misfire. I normally fall all over myself apologizing and 'fixing' it, but from your post, I can tell you have no idea how your reaction may (or may not) have affected me. I'll just leave it at that.

All in all, I agree with much you have to say otherwise. I do love Chapelle.

Originally Posted by the bouncer

another possibility:

e) preoccupied with the syria/turkey violence.

Ah, I did miss the obvious E) He was too busy being President to prepare ...

Mitt Romney is essentially unemployed and has time on his hands.

Originally Posted by Odin

Unemployment has dropped to 7.8%. Romney is finished.

yah. he may not have a better moment than he did on wednesday. i expect that some wavering right-wingers will come back to him after his macho b.s. performance, but that's as good as it will get.

watch the swing state polling, not the national polling.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

Romney ignored the very concept of fact, and said whatever worked. He was good and very polished, but don't argue that the facts align with what he said on any level.

So many people keep saying that... as if it made him the slightest bit different from Obama or any other major presidential hopeful.

We've been talking about potentially fake poll numbers. But this supposed drop in unemployment is absolutely, unequivocally, obviously fake. Even people like Jack Welch are publicly saying so. There is no depth of dishonesty these people will not sink to. It goes so far beyond "coincidence" that it's laughable. Obama bombs in the debate, and two days later his own Administration magically claims unemployment has dropped below 8%. Hilarious. We don't have a government anymore. It's all a fraud.

The problem for them though is that fake numbers don't change reality. Telling people things are better when they know they aren't is not going to change anything.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

So many people keep saying that... as if it made him the slightest bit different from Obama or any other major presidential hopeful.

justin '77!! there you are!

could you explain the "brown folks" remark you made to me the other day?

Originally Posted by Aramea

Mitt Romney is essentially unemployed and has time on his hands.

lol -- exactly -- didn't he even try to make a joke of it as a lame attempt to "empathize" with the common folk?

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

We've been talking about potentially fake poll numbers. But this supposed drop in unemployment is absolutely, unequivocally, obviously fake. Even people like Jack Welch are publicly saying so. There is no depth of dishonesty these people will not sink to. It goes so far beyond "coincidence" that it's laughable. Obama bombs in the debate, and two days later his own Administration magically claims unemployment has dropped below 8%. Hilarious. We don't have a government anymore. It's all a fraud.

The problem for them though is that fake numbers don't change reality. Telling people things are better when they know they aren't is not going to change anything.

Originally Posted by Aramea

Ah, I did miss the obvious E) He was too busy being President to prepare ...

Mitt Romney is essentially unemployed and has time on his hands.

I've seen reports that he dodged several prep rounds. Now that could be overconfidence, and is now corrected. It could be a secret yearning to get out of the job, and may have moved the needle in that direction. On the other hand, it could be a hundred things we won't know about until the inevitable post-presidency book.

If the second case is the right one, I only wish he had decided not to run when an alternative was possible.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I've seen reports that he dodged several prep rounds. Now that could be overconfidence, and is now corrected. It could be a secret yearning to get out of the job, and may have moved the needle in that direction. On the other hand, it could be a hundred things we won't know about until the inevitable post-presidency book.

If the second case is the right one, I only wish he had decided not to run when an alternative was possible.

There was no-one who could have beat Romney on the Democratic side (according to my crystal ball that is). My prediction stands though; Obama will win.

He seemed like he was not engaged; as if he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. He should have sung a round of Good Time!

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

We've been talking about potentially fake poll numbers. But this supposed drop in unemployment is absolutely, unequivocally, obviously fake. Even people like Jack Welch are publicly saying so. There is no depth of dishonesty these people will not sink to. It goes so far beyond "coincidence" that it's laughable. Obama bombs in the debate, and two days later his own Administration magically claims unemployment has dropped below 8%. Hilarious. We don't have a government anymore. It's all a fraud.

The problem for them though is that fake numbers don't change reality. Telling people things are better when they know they aren't is not going to change anything.

Well, nothing will change JPT's views on things. It probably isn't any fake numbers; but the numbers sure are different. In the "household survey" (not sure if that's a government survey; it might also be) "some 873,000 people in the household survey said they found jobs," and the jobless rate fell to 7.8% on that survey. But it was "the government" that said the new jobs total was only 115,000, although figures were revised upward over the previous 2 months by a combined total of 86,000. So if numbers are fake, it is Obama's own "government" numbers that show only modest growth, while the "survey" shows the biggest gains since 1983. And the "market watch" site gives priority to the low number. Go figure.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sep...-78-2012-10-05

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

We've been talking about potentially fake poll numbers. But this supposed drop in unemployment is absolutely, unequivocally, obviously fake. Even people like Jack Welch are publicly saying so. There is no depth of dishonesty these people will not sink to. It goes so far beyond "coincidence" that it's laughable. Obama bombs in the debate, and two days later his own Administration magically claims unemployment has dropped below 8%. Hilarious. We don't have a government anymore. It's all a fraud.

The problem for them though is that fake numbers don't change reality. Telling people things are better when they know they aren't is not going to change anything.

Our government's been a fraud for a while now, but it's always great when people notice!

Anyway, unemployment is one of those deceptively oversimplified metrics. The headline number that the soundbite media loves to throw around doesn't mean much without looking at the underlying data that derives that conclusion.

On a per-capita basis, it is a good thing that the number of job hunters is coming in to alignment with the number of available jobs. The bad news for the aggregate is that a lot of this is coming from people retiring and discouraged workers who are trying to go back to a one-income household. The silver lining on that dark cloud is that domestic work all has its own economic value that isn't necessarily reflected in the GDP statistic.

With the election around next month there seems to be some claiming that the new data is manipulated.
Here is an analysis of why the new number are not fake.

Originally Posted by washingtonpost

We’ve hit that moment in the election when people begin to lose their minds. Case in point, within minutes of the jobs report, Twitter filled with Republicans claiming the books were somehow cooked, the numbers aren’t real, etc.

Let’s take a deep breath. Jobs reports are about the economy, not about the election. Confusing the two leads to very bad analysis.

This is a good jobs report in a still-weak economy. The 114,000 jobs we added in September aren’t very impressive. The revisions to the last two months, which added 86,000 jobs to the total, were much more impressive. Those revisions also suggest that September’s jobs could get revised up — or, of course, down. So be careful about reading too much into that number. Still, these are, at best, good, not great, numbers.

The controversy, if it’s worth using that word, is over the unemployment rate, which dropped from 8.1 percent to 7.8 percent. That’s three-tenths of one percent. That’s what all the fuss is about.

Let’s get one thing out of the way: The data was not, as Jack Welch suggested in a now-infamous tweet, manipulated. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is set up to ensure the White House has no ability to influence it. As labor economist Betsey Stevenson wrote, “anyone who thinks that political folks can manipulate the unemployment data are completely ignorant of how the BLS works and how the data are compiled.” Plus, if the White House somehow was manipulating the data, don’t you think they would have made the payroll number look a bit better than 114,000? No one would have batted an eye at 160,000.

The fact is that there’s not much that needs to be explained here. We’ve seen drops like this — and even drops bigger than this — before. Between July and August the unemployment rate dropped from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent — two-tenths of one percent. November-December of 2011 also saw a .2 percent drop. November-December of 2010 saw a .4 percent drop. This isn’t some incredible aberration. The fact that the unemployment rate broke under the psychologically important 8 percent line is making this number feel bigger to people than it really is.

Or, to put it another way. The addition of 114k new jobs is good but great. And the rop of .3 n the U3 falls into the same classification.
Let's try this because sometimes a chart can say a lot.

Originally Posted by Ezra Klein

We are very slowly pulling away from a pit. It would be nice if it were faster but this is a 4T. Fast recoveries are possible in the other three turnings but not in this one. It is what it is. And there's nothing in these numbers that is out of the historical norm.

Originally Posted by the bouncer

another possibility:

e) preoccupied with the syria/turkey violence.

That would be a perfect excuse.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

That would be a perfect excuse.

don't get me wrong, though. the president should have showed a little more intensity. he could have looked at the camera more (the moment when he said that fifty-somethings should pay attention to romney's voucher plan for social security was a good one) and less down at his notes.

i'd have been bored by romney's bullshit, too. but i'm not running for re-election. prez should have engaged a bit more.

Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough

We've been talking about potentially fake poll numbers. But this supposed drop in unemployment is absolutely, unequivocally, obviously fake. Even people like Jack Welch are publicly saying so. There is no depth of dishonesty these people will not sink to. It goes so far beyond "coincidence" that it's laughable. Obama bombs in the debate, and two days later his own Administration magically claims unemployment has dropped below 8%. Hilarious. We don't have a government anymore. It's all a fraud.

The problem for them though is that fake numbers don't change reality. Telling people things are better when they know they aren't is not going to change anything.

For dishonesty and incompetence, look at the previous Administration. Ideological positions that you disagree with are not dishonesty.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

There was no-one who could have beat Romney on the Democratic side (according to my crystal ball that is). My prediction stands though; Obama will win.

If he truly hates the job, and he's just phoning it in, then 2016 could see everything washed away in a massive reversal. I would rather have Romney now than Paul Ryan with a Tea Party Congress in four years.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

... We are very slowly pulling away from a pit. It would be nice if it were faster but this is a 4T. Fast recoveries are possible in the other three turnings but not in this one. It is what it is. And there's nothing in these numbers that is out of the historical norm.

We could have recovered quicker if we had decided to use fiscal stimulus (it's not as if there is a lack of constructive things that need doing). By the same token, there is an ongoing workforce reduction rippling through the economy that has nothing to do with governement. It has to do with computing and the internet. That's the nut no one seems interested in cracking, nor capable of it either.

Permanent labor contraction is starting to be an issue. It's also becoming a demand issue. The economy is a cycle, after all. If we break it due to lack of demand, it will be difficult but possible to restart. If we break it due to structural changes in the economy itself, I'm sure we even know how.

Originally Posted by herbal tee

With the election around next month there seems to be some claiming that the new data is manipulated.
Here is an analysis of why the new number are not fake.


Or, to put it another way. The addition of 114k new jobs is good but great. And the rop of .3 n the U3 falls into the same classification.
Let's try this because sometimes a chart can say a lot.

We are very slowly pulling away from a pit. It would be nice if it were faster but this is a 4T. Fast recoveries are possible in the other three turnings but not in this one. It is what it is. And there's nothing in these numbers that is out of the historical norm.

I dont know if the numbers are cooked or not. But the real unemployment rate counting all of the people who haved dropped out of the workforce is over 11%. Gaining 114,000 is better than losing them but it is anemic and pathetic especially since the bulk of these jobs are low paying Mcjobs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/bu...udy-finds.html


This is nothing for Obama to hang his hat on....

Oh and the pathetic performance of O'Bummer is paying dividentds for Mittens in key states

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epo...lls/president/

My ex husband runs a adult discussion group on issues of the day out in San Diego. He also runs a blog, which I subscribe to. A recent post of his has links to some of the commentary that he views as more insightful.

He leans left, but tries to be fairminded and his group includes folk from the right.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

We could have recovered quicker if we had decided to use fiscal stimulus (it's not as if there is a lack of constructive things that need doing). By the same token, there is an ongoing workforce reduction rippling through the economy that has nothing to do with governement. It has to do with computing and the internet. That's the nut no one seems interested in cracking, nor capable of it either.

There's no reason why a new technology should result in a net loss of work that needs to be/can be done. The weakness in the consumer driven economy is a feedback loop.

Wages ceased to keep up with the productivity improvements the internet brought. During the 3T, this fact was covered up by the housing bubble and the middle class' ability to derive income from appreciating real estate prices. Since 2/3rds of our economic demand comes from consumer spending, this is essential to keep things afloat.

After the housing bubble crashed, so too did wages crash back down to the reality of having missed out on decades of productivity gains. Consumer spending falls, demand falls, jobs cut.

It doesn't help that the Federal Reserve is trying to keep prices up and it doesn't help that the Congress refuses to use fiscal stimulus that could really support wage prices. They're both rushing off in the wrong directions thanks to two different but equally shallow orthodox viewpoints that fail to grasp the big picture (go boomers, go!)

Permanent labor contraction is starting to be an issue. It's also becoming a demand issue. The economy is a cycle, after all. If we break it due to lack of demand, it will be difficult but possible to restart. If we break it due to structural changes in the economy itself, I'm sure we even know how.

Demand is the issue, and wages have to go up for demand to come back. The best way to do this is probably a massive government project that puts a lot of skilled people to work at competitive wages.

The problem is the financial constraints imposed by our ways of monetary thinking. Public debt may be internal, but if we insist on the current paradigm we will eventually reach a peak where new debt isn't effective in creating demand. We might have even already passed the peak.

Now, we could ride Playwrite's favorite magic pony, MMT, out of this spiral, but the international reaction might be bad news for America's position as an empire and monetary superpower. Dollar devaluation means lower American wages (sticky both ways these days!) and more expensive imports - a double-whammy for a country that relies on domestic consumption and imported resources.

I dunno, there's no easy way out and a lot of sacred cows are going to get slaughtered before we're done with this mess.

Originally Posted by JohnMc82

There's no reason why a new technology should result in a net loss of work that needs to be/can be done. The weakness in the consumer driven economy is a feedback loop.

Quite a few retail and service jobs can be and have been sacrificed to internet retail web pages. Travel agencies, insurance, book selling and retail electronics can stand as example fields where ma and pa independents have been severely pressured by national chains, which in turn have been pressured by direct from the web sales.

I am seeing growth in non-necessity storefronts, karate studios, nail polishing studios and coffee retailers. These are a decent way go find employment, but they don't feel necessary to me. They kept people employed somewhat through the Great Recession, but if we had a true depression where people were actually going hungry, would such places keep going?

Originally Posted by the bouncer

justin '77!! there you are!

could you explain the "brown folks" remark you made to me the other day?

Sorry man. I'm very picky about the cartoon characters with which I choose to interact. Better luck next handle, eh?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

If he truly hates the job, and he's just phoning it in, then 2016 could see everything washed away in a massive reversal. I would rather have Romney now than Paul Ryan with a Tea Party Congress in four years.

Is he at a payphone trying to call home?

Yeah, we may get that; Obama, then Ryan. I don't think he hates the job; just got overconfident in the debate. But sometimes it has been charged that he doesn't engage and takes things for granted, and the debate reminds people of that.

On the bright side, if Ryan does win in 2016, first: he will likely not have a Tea Party Senate, since they can't unseat as many Democrats that year; and second, any Republican administration would quickly fall out of favor because their policies are so out of date, especially with the new demographics. The zero year usually means a change in party, so having Republicans in for 4 years might be a better set-up for 2020 than Democrats for twelve years going into the zero year! 4 years of Ryan would really ramp up the frustration, the ongoing economic crisis, and our desire for change in this 4T. 8 years of Romney would do that too of course. The 2020s do look like a time of increasing action and change, leading up to the climax in 2025-27. Republicans would be very unlikely to lead such a time of change and reform; they would quickly be run over.

The possible alternative scenario I see is a Republican win in 2020, after 12 years of Democrats; followed by a quick meltdown and increased activism leading up to 2024-25. The best would be simply to have Democrats in charge from now on, and for the progressive change to outstrip them as well by the mid-20s. In any case, the duopoly in power and the 2-party system is certainly due for a fall. People don't really want it anymore. If not in a 4T, then when would it crumble?