f13.net

Very funny, but not work safe.

http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html

There's some humor there, but for the most part it's hardcore anti-bush propaganda.   I guess this is what happens when some fellow unemployed schmuck has too much time on his hands with a tough job market and a pirated version of Macromedia Director at his disposal.    At least I think he's unemployed... the game appears to be sponsored by a clothing company (http://www.americanfearclothing.com/home.html).

Still, it is pretty educational for folks who don't get overly involved in politics, if very biased.   I'd like to hear some pro-Republicans replies to some of the issues presented in that game, but they don't seem to have a lewd flash game of their own.

The graphic style makes me pine for old Lucasarts Zak McCraken games.

Wow, I wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't somehow written by www.johnkerry.com to promote online awarness or some shit.

I'm not a Republican, but I am conservative (I used to be fairly liberal, but I tend to vote for R's these days). All I want to know is how does Voltron and Hulkamania encourage any kind of meaningful political debate? Is this an attempt to cater votes from "teh Stupid" demographic? I guess it probably serves a purpose then. I admit, in that respect, Republicans are pretty far behind. The Flash game is going to tilt the vote. It's pretty symbolic actually.

The creator is clearly under the influence of the condition known as BDS or Bush Derangement Symptom where any problem in the world can be traced back to George W. Bush and no conspiracy can exist without him.

It affects otherwise normal people who outwardly appear normal until his name in mentioned whereupon they decend into a kind of frothing manic rage leaving their intelligence and common sense far behind them.

A similar condition was observed in the years 1992-2000 where the object of fixation was one William Jefferson Clinton.

I hope you can do better than "People don't like Bush Jr. because they're paranoid and see fault in everything".    The thing is, all of the political facts in that flash game seem to me to be well researched and correct.   The worst dirt we could dig up on Clinton was all personal faults in his lust for the fillies and some shady financial dealings he had done prior to his presidency.

If one can't meet each issue presented with a rational counterargument, yet is still honestly planning on voting Bush Jr. back into office in this year's elections, I have to lump them in the same catagory as people who are hiding in closets with their hands over their years yelling, "LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR THE COUNTRY DISINTEGRATING, LALALALA!"

Largest national debt in nation's history when Clinton had us firmly in the green.    Massive tax cuts for the upper crust.   Highest number of joblessness in decades.   All originating entirely from the beginning of Bush Jr's being voted into office.   Seems pretty cut and dry to me.    Frankly, I'm wondering why we don't just vote the entire Republican party out of office.

Seriously, I like to think I'm open minded, but I actually need to hear some real justification to the Bush Jr administrations' actions.   I'm not finding it anywhere, and it's not from lack of looking.

If there is no such justification and we end up with Bush Jr. once again, I guess we'll get what's coming to us.    I'm no insurgent, I'm just a 1 man:1 vote guy, and so I'll have to roll with the punches like the rest of us.

I let it load and got through the first dialogue. Then the hardcore music started and somehow the window closed itself. I'm not sure what happened, I blanked out completely.

There's downloadable versions (http://www.bushgame.com/downloads.html) as well.  Apparently it was made by this company/organization/cult? called Starvingeyes (http://starvingeyes.com/).    Looks like they're heavy into that teen angst angle.

Shit, I thought I closed the door.

not what i said at all.

Well okay, technically you said that there's people that blame Bush Jr. for everything and that a similar behavior was observed in the Clinton years.    You didn't say, "Aw, some wackos are paranoid and make up shit about any president!", but you really didn't have to.

Even taking what you said at face value, it still isn't a very compelling argument that the current administration doesn't suck major donkey balls.   Nor does it bring up any counterpoints to any of the damning political statements expressed by said lewd flash game.

Well having to sit through that even with the speakers off and then taking the time to give it a good fisking to post here is beyond the endurance of most mortals and in the end wouldn't change anyone's mind about anything, so whats the point.

But I can 100% say that Bush does not drive around in an ATST.

I wish to sue for false advertising.  This is not a game.  There is less game here than progressquest.  Having the NPC dialog written by hat-bearing members of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade doesn't help, either.  I did laugh when Mr. T managed to get out of his bed, "for the children!"

...

Egad, that was long intro.  

As far as the budget deficit issue/bar graph, much of that is due to:
(a) the addition of a major new component to the medicare program, the prescription drug benefit.  Such a thing has actually been tried by the Democratic party for some time, and if we were under a Dem. administration, we'd be hearing about how great this new policy is, rather than how just expensive it is.  It's the first major addition to the medicare program in quite some time, and one which I, as a conservative, personally disagree with.  Bush Jr. pushed this thing in order to try to attract more liberal-leaning voters, forgetting that you cannot appease liberals.  Nothing is ever 'enough' for them.  
(b) Also unmentioned are the ridiculous number of things that were tacked onto several spending bills that went thru congress, namely the big 'spend money to defend the country' bill that went thru after 9/11.  Numerous congressmen added things to it, including millions to help alaskan fishermen, and many other bogus things, onto something which as dubbed a 'U.S. Defense spending bill', so no congressmen in their right mind would show up on record voting against it.  I will admit that this was done by Republicans as well as Democrats, but point out that Bush had nothing to do with it either.  He couldn't very well veto the bill, given the high support it had in the legislature.

...

"Just like in the Bush Dynasty, you'll never have to work a day in your life!"
Not to mention the Kennedy Dynasty.  And marrying into the Heinz family was probably very taxing on Mr. Kerry.  All these Democratic speakers go on about the 'trials of the poor', while sitting pretty with their multi-million dollar inheritances.  Talk of tax cuts for the rich...  the taxes on the 'rich' account for some 90% of Income tax revenue.  Most of the 'poor' pay no taxes, and often get large sums BACK from the government after April 15.

...

Repealing the dividend tax gives 'filthy rich people like Bill Gates' massive millions, while the common guy gets very little..  Failing to mention how the filthy capitalist Bill Gates has set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (http://www.gatesfoundation.org), which has a $27 BILLION endowment, and has given billions of dollars to aid worldwide health and humanitarian aid organizations, and help fund libraries in both the US and abroad.

...

It's oh-so shocking to hear that those who pay the most in taxes gain the most from tax breaks.  Look at me, I'm truly shocked.  People who pay little to no taxes, gain little to nothing from a tax break!  Egad, the inhumanity!  Another cute little factoid...  according to IRS data(from 2000), The much vaunted 'top 20% income bracket' are those households who make more than ~$60,000 a year.  Hardly the mega-wealthy.  A couple, both of whom work in an automobile factory, probably fit into that bracket.  My mother is a public school teacher, and my father does phone support for an commercial kitchen equipment company, and they make more than that.

...

Gah, more nonsense regarding the cost of healthcare.  This has nothing to do with income levels, and everything to do with the fact that the health insurance system in the USA is broken.  Health insurance is expensive because it pays for EVERYTHING...  Whereas car insurance, which is fairly affordable, doesn't offer me massive discounts every time I go to change my oil, buy new tires, or see a mechanic about a funny noise my car is making.  My homeowners insurance doesn't pay for replacing my carpets when they wear out, or for a cleaning service when I've made a mess.

...

The problems with Social Security are not minor issues, nor can they be fixed with even a few trillian dollars.  There's the issue that when it was started, for every person living on social security, there were 300 workers paying into social security.  As of the mid-90's, I think, the ratio is more like 3 workers paying in for each person taking out.  Obviously, a change of two orders of magnitude in the ratio of income to payouts is going to affect the stability of any organization.

...

Heh, Dems. are still bitter and confused regarding the 2000 election.  Gore lost, get over it already.  

...

Eh, got up to Hillary Duff, and had had enough of toilet humor and overt sexual grossness to play anymore.

My question is, what does this have to do with John Kerry?  He's delliberately not officially accepting the Dem. party nomination so he can continue to avoid spending caps on his campaign, and continue to accept donations from people he would not be able to take money from were he an official candidate.  Like Bush, he's tied to a massive fortune, and an incredibly large company.  Which company also has many factories overseas, where they can exploit the lower wages and avoid US Government regulations on working conditions...  Tactics which Kerry has frequently derided.  He's taken both positions on nearly every issue, and sometimes more than two positions, when possible...  Lately, he's simply invisible.  He's not stated that he's for anything, he has no platform other than 'I'm an alternative to Bush'.

--
Alkiera

This coming from a guy that believed 6 democrats were going to be on the presidential ballot in November.

Geldon, why do you keep saying that you'll stay out of political discussions due to your ignorance of the subject matter, and then jump in at every opportunity?

Saddest part is that your less-than-educated opinion is based on Michael Moore-quality opinion pieces that play fast and loose with the truth for entertainment value.....and that you're probably about as educated on politics as 40% of the eligible voters in this country.

But hey, don't let me get in the way of the Bush = EVIL bandwagon. I was just thinking I'd prefer a candidate that has a stronger plan than "just like Bush, only BETTER". If you think I'm dissing Kerry, go read his comments on foreign policy from his own website....there isn't much disparity at all from Bush's current plan.

His economic plan ignores some inherent realities of capitalism in favor of playing socio-economic classes against one another....the folks at the top of the food chain are the ones who provide capital for new business ventures, which in turn create jobs. Place a heavier tax burden on them personally, and you've diminished their ROI, and making any new venture subject to greater risk. Since those additional taxes fund liberal programs that primarily benefit the lowest socio-economic classes, you're effectively using the government to trim wealth from the richest to prop up the poorest. It's well-intentioned, trying to create a larger middle class...but if the wealthiest Americans don't have sufficient incentive to invest, new businesses and jobs are going to suffer....which may actually make MORE people dependent on the government for a "hand up". The only thing I like about his economic strategy is the plan to discourage overseas outsourcing. Not revolutionary, but a solid plan that I could get behind regardless of party affiliations.

Of course, that'd be educating yourself on politics....doing some research. Something which you refused to do back on WTO because it would take time away from your gaming, posting, and being unemployed.

Shit, somebody wake me up when this fucktard's opinion becomes relevant.

Bring the noise.
Cheers...............

Great post. Many strong points, and well written. Good on you, Alkiera.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

Well of course for a pure blood capitalist that sounds bad, Dark. But that social capitalism works in many countries, and the horror scenarios you try to develop here are not supported by facts.

If what you said was true, Europes economy was in shambles, which it aint. So you can say you don't like that approach, and that certainly is a valid option. But if a majority of the Americans want that approach, it will work as well. As it did in other countries - for centuries.

I thought the Anti-Bush game was the one where you try to think beyond knee-jerk nationalism.

Those "pure blood capitalists" are primarily the ones doing the investing.

I seem to have left my crystal ball in my other jacket. I wasn't aware that "could" and "might" needed to be supported by facts as opposed to sound economic theory. It is speculation on my part, looking at something other than the sunny-side scenario.

You're also trying to imply that I'm saying that all investment would cease....it's not a binary thing. We're talking in degrees here. Effectively, if the personal tax is greater for investor_01, any investment he considers now has to make that much more to provide a sufficient ROI for him. The need for greater earnings to reach that point means that the investor has a greater risk exposure. Thus, there is less incentive to make the investment.

This doesn't mean that nobody will invest in anything....just means that the tolerance for risk will be less, and controls on costs will be higher. Which should mean less than optimal job growth. Especially if his intent is to create jobs and grow this recovering economy, I don't think this is the best way to accomplish that.

Kerry's economic plan primarily helps the "Mom and Pop" startup, which doesn't typically create a whole lot of jobs. Again, it attempts to pump up the middle class at the expense of the wealthy. This is certainly popular among the middle and lower economic classes, who'd just as soon stick it to the rich....it will win Kerry lots of votes, but that doesn't necessarily make it the best solution for our economy.



You're talking out of your ass...comparing the US as a country to Europe as a collective. Europe's economy has had individual countries as economic winners and losers for centuries. Those countries have not all shared a common economic strategy, nor even the same political idealogies with each other, let alone the US.

It's a flawed comparison.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

Yea - ignore that Euro behind the curtain....

Cute.

He is pointing not only to present-day Europe, but to history as well. Even today, the countries of Europe have differing political and economic agendas and policies.

The circumstances between the US and EU are different enough to render the comparison invalid. Moreover, the EU has not been in its current state "for centuries" to make Teb's claims valid.

I'm not denying that social capitalism can work, I'm just of the opinion that it would not work in the US....especially not as we are today. Politically, economically, or culturally.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

And they will be doing the investing in that model, because they invest to get more money that way. Money that is working beats money that is not working. The pure blood capitalists know that, and ignoring the grinding of teeth and the hollow threats towards easily intimitated politicians, they will invest in that model, because they only care for their bottom line. Just like Canadian investors still invest in Canada and European (insert single European country name if you are uncomfortable with calling Europe Europe) investors still invest in Europe.

Of course, speculations don't have to be supported by facts, but when the speculations go in a different direction than comparable cases that already have known effects, then one at least has to try to explain why those speculations go in a different direction.

All your points are right, but the net effects are usually benefitting to the economy of a country. Why? Because 10000 Moms and Pops pay more taxes and do more for the economy than one super rich person with 10000 times the money. 10000 middle class people with enough money on their hands waste more money than that one person. 10000 Moms and Pops channel more money back into the economy, thusly further stimulating said economy.

Mind me here, I'm not making a case for or against taking away money from the rich or giving to the poor. I'm just saying that it tends to be good for economy, completely ignoring the moral and ethical implications in my statement.

By the way, the comparasation is not with the European collective market, you can replace Europe with any one European country if you like. The comparasation is one of systems, not actual markets. Therefore not flawed.

Edit: Since you wrote your latest reply while I wrote mine. Actually I agree with you. I just wanted to show that it can work, and I don't know if it could work in present day USA. Its all guessing from there, you guess no, I guess yes. Not really something you can argue about.

I think you guys are all missing the larger, overriding point...

As a voter, I'm pretty ashamed to see that Bush and Kerry are the best we have to offer for the highest position in the nation.  Has anyone stopped to wonder why it is that the people best qualified to do the job, don't want the job?  Look at the resumes of these two guys (CV's if you prefer), is this the best we can find to run the country? For those of you wondering, I'm not talking about Woodrow Wilson-like academic credentials... we know how little Wilson got accomplished.

The office of the president has become a fucking prom queen election with the majority of Americans so apathetic, they don't even bother to vote.  I haven't seen a candidate with a decent foreign policy stance in years and the whoring of religion to get votes is becoming a joke.  The last election was lose-lose and I see the same thing for the upcoming election.  It's all about which flavor of beurocratic shit you can swallow the best.

Do not breed. That was fucking stupid.

Hmm, how about the national debt and the massive hemmoraging of US jobs?

Overall, good information, much appreciated.  Far better than:

To answer your question, because you bastards keep calling me out like this.  

Die in a ballot fire.

You define prejudice to see "Geldonyetich is talking politics" and immediately assume I'm trying to bandy about my uninformed opinion anymore.   Those days are behind me.  I'm not making uninformed opinions, I'm trying to better understand both sides our political climate.

That's why the stance I was taking here was just asking for some counterpoints to the flash game in order to get some equalibrium established.  I wasn't trying to (heaven forbid) make any political points of my own.  


Enlighten me.   If this approach actually *worked*, why are we at the biggest job decline since the great depression since Bush Jr. went into office?

Because we aren't. Check the Labor statistics and you'll see that currently jobs are getting added back into the market, and on top of that unemployment was at an 30-year low when Bush took the office in 2000. It was 4% then, and it was 6% in 2003. A jump of 2% over those years. Hell, from 81-82 unemployment jumped almost that much in a year reaching 9.7%. We are far from the dramatic statements of the worst job situation ever.

In reality, we had hit the lowest it could go, there was nowhere to go but up. Factor in the hit of 9/11 and you get the rest of the picture.

Well, I wasn't saying job loss was *as bad* or *worse* as the great depression, just that it was the most significient drop since according to said biased flash game.  

If this isn't true, thanks for the heads up, that's why I asked.

Still, 2% of the entire American population is a pretty dramatic increase.   It may not seem like much, but do the math: 151 million (http://www.prb.org/Template.cfm?Section=PRB&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=10201) * 0.02 = 3,020,000 with less jobs in Bush Jr's term than before.   Instead of every 1/25 people you know being unemployed, it's moved up to being every 1/~17 people you know.

This is assuming generous rounding isn't at work in the base percentages we're basing this off of.

Of course being an unemployed schmuck myself, I know where you can find the official sources (http://www.workforceexplorer.com/) of this information.  Wish I had excel so I could read the silly thing, but it looks like 5.6% is the actual nation-wide unemployment rate, and not a full 6%.

When I took Economics (Macro and Micro) it was stated that a Capatilist nation's unemployment could never get below te 6-8% level (IIRC).  That was the percentage of people that would always be changing jobs, not looking, or just chronically unemployed.  Well we have been below that for sometime.  Also with the problems of 9/11, the overall changes in the American Economy, and the dotcom bubble it seems pretty good that we haven't hit double digit unemloyment again.  Plus I know of places that are begging for workers unfortunately they require that you get your hands dirty which to many people look down on.

He would if he played SW:G.  He'd be the guy in Moenia, full stormtrooper armor, 3 ATSTs (can one person still have 3 out?), spamming REBS SUX/GUARD ME/REBS SUX/GUARD ME

Anyone defending Bush: wake up, even the neocons are distancing themselves.

Actually, I found the "I can say 100%" remark the most interesting comment in this web vomit. You don't even need to get into subjective perception to understand the problem with this quote. All I can agree with is that you can "say it" as well as "type it" no matter how true it is, or isn't.

Much like the rest of this bollocks thread.

As to the point regarding "it was stated that a Capatilist nation's unemployment could never get below te 6-8% level (IIRC)", it's worth noting that were you able to remember correctly, you'd also need to know the yardstick. Let's not kid ourselves that every successive regime, both Republican or Democratic, has revised the yardstick by which we measure unemployment. Let's also not delude ourselves into believing that they do so in order to hide the wonderful job that they are doing...

Maybe you are aware of these things:
1) The dotcom bubble burst, which was basically a large market correction from the glib optimism of the 1990's.

2) Planes struck the WTC and Pentagon on 9/11, shutting down Wall Street for the remainder of the week.

3) Several companies were found to have used shady accounting practices to distort or flat-out falsify their numbers. Often the executives cashed their own stock out before this was made public and/or they spent company funds like no tomorrow.

Now we can go on and review recent history, or we can point out that with all 3 of these things, the stock market and many investors took substantial losses.

1) The largest growth sector of the last 10 years bottomed out. Not only was it flat, it was actually taking heavy losses. Even companies with a legitimate business plan were "devalued by association" as people dumped dotcoms and either cashed out or diversified their portfolio. This began under Clinton in 2000, and the circumstances that caused it date wel back into his administration....though I place the blame squarely on the market itself. Everyone wanted to be a dotcom millionaire that it blurred their view of reality, and they stopped looking at fundamentals. A big part of this was indicated by the issues in foreign markets as well....the US economy was propped up while the world economy was already beginning to take a dump.

2) The market shut down for the better part of a week. In the financial world, that was every bit as damaging as the attacks themselves. Economy is all about the exchange of wealth and assets, and for a few days, the biggest market in the world was closed. Stocks plummetted...many to all-time lows. Despite all the attempts to blame Bush for 9/11, the events of that day were not forseeable, and were inconceivable to just about everyone.....thats why it was such a shock to all of us.

3) Corporate scandals shook the confidence of the American investor. As a result, stock values didn't recover as they otherwise might have. Additionally, formerly strong investments like Enron and WorldCom came apart at the seams. The real meat of this issue is that after learning a lesson about trusting substance (i.e. a sound business plan and good fundamentals) over flash, the American investor watched in horror as they discovered that even the fundamentals couldn't necessarily be trusted. This corruption had been going on for a few years...dating back to the previous administration. Obviously the blame lies with the corrupt executives.

So the market takes a hit...what does this have to do with jobs, right? Well, when a company's stock price takes a big hit, there are 2 ways to get it back....increased productivity or decreased costs. Not only is it key to post profits, but to continue showing a growth in profits as well.

First thing to go in the corporate world is discretionary spending. This means that improving productivity isn't going to produce the desired results. B2B business slowed, while consumer business was reeling from some folks having lost practically their entire retirement in the span of about 2 years. In my hometown (Detroit), auto sales hit the shits, which snowballed throughout the entire industry. Improving productivity wasn't necessarily realistic, nor a sound strategy to achieve profitability.

So at that point, where can companies cut? Outsourcing, both foreign and domestic, became an increasingly viable alternative. Companies starting trimming "inessential infrastructure". Unfortunately, this means real jobs....career-level positions eliminated, including a lot of white collar jobs. Middle management took a shot in the nuts. The primary job offerings were not going to pay nearly as much, and typically involved semi-skilled or unskilled labor.

Where do the jobs come from? Overseas outsourcing has gotten out of hand, as capitalism tends to do, and bringing jobs back means substantially higher costs....which some companies cannot bear right now. Moreover, companies that are now doing well see bringing jobs back from overseas as compromising their profitability.

Now, we can talk about how the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq severely stifled consumer confidence....but then we also need to talk about Bush's tax cuts and rebates to spur consumer spending. Whether you agree with it or not, placing national security as a higher priority than the economy in the wake of 9/11 is tough to argue against...though many people have questioned the relevance of Afghanistand and Iraq to our national security....but that's another thread unto itself.

Not that Bush is free of any blame, but IMO he has handled the economy about as well as could be expected, given the circumstances. The key area in which he has to make a move is on foreign outsourcing....the downside to doing so is that legislation that sufficiently penalizes foreign outsourcing would be the death knell of several companies, while sufficiently incenting companies to bring back jobs doesn't necessarily get it done....and it would be painted as Bush giving breaks to big business.

So for job creation, we basically have to count on new business. Starting a new business is tough in a poor economy (it's hard enough in a good one)....even moreso when venture capitalists are still stinging from the "big 3" mentioned above. The risk exposure is high.

But, yknow, it's probably ***ALL*** Bush's fault....couldn't possibly be realities of our current economy, or capitalism at work. Are you beginning to see why a pseudo-educated opinion, such as you espoused above isn't necessarily looking at the objective reality? Do you grasp why that's frustrating to those of us that have actually made the effort to understand the situation?

Bring the noise.
Cheers...............

Based in Bermuda?

But who is to blame for that? Bush....or the capitalist system and current economic conditions?

I'm going to lean toward the latter...because Bush isn't the one that came up with the notion of minimizing costs to maximize profitability. That's the motivation of companies and their shareholders.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

These are all good points that these are just three things that occured which challenged the Bush Jr. Administration.   Far-fetched conspiracy theories and overzealous media claims to preventive incompetance aside, lets say none of this was the government's fault.   So, it comes down to asking, could another administration have handled things better?


Okay, so that's why you're telling me it's okay to vote Bush back into office.   Bad stuff happened but he wether or not he had anything to do with it, he did as well as humanly possible.   Hey, that's fine, presidents are human - just ask the last one who took a hummer in the oval office.

I need a little more to work with though.   Is his spending plan really working or just wasting our money?   We know overseas outsourcing has gotten out of hand, but why didn't he just nip it in the bud?    Considering the massive tax cuts to big companies, why is it suicidal for them to pay for workers on US Soil?

You don't need to be a head of a political party to know that something doesn't wash here, but it helps (http://www.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/09/03/cf.crossfire/index.html).

Defencive, aren't we?  I have yet to "espouse" (http://www.webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=espouse&x=7&y=14) any opinions, and as proof of that I've asked for the other side's perspective in the face of what's obviously a very biased flash game.  

You've provided that, thanks.

Considering I've not done this strange thing you accuse me of during this entire thread, the answer is no.    

However, in my previous thread that got me neatly one-day banned before, I did insinuate a few times that no one man could understand the entire political landscape.    I could see that as being frustrating for those who think they can, even if such an achievement seems impossible for those who are actually in politics professionally.

Geldon,

On the topic of unemployment.  I do have excel, and viewed the data from the site you offered.  One thing that shows up from even the quick data on their website, is that unemployment has gown DOWN a good bit over the last year, from 7.7% in April 03 to an estimated 6.3% in April 04.  The numbers on that site are primarily just for Washington state.

Also, those unemployment numbers are a bit iffy.  They claim to be produced by using population data to determine the approximate workforce size, data on the number of "Nonagricultural Wage and Salary Workers", and the number of people who file for unemployment benefits, and munging.

There is a hole in this method, namely, small business.  If your business is small(basically just you, or you and spouse), you don't always get your salary/wage reported in that 'Nonagricultural Wage and Salary Workers' count.  Apparently other metrics(no internet source atm, sorry) indicate that a significant number of people who lost their normal wage slave jobs used the opportunity to start a small business, and therefore appear to be 'unemployed', tho they have an acceptable income.

...

The other part of the issue, namely outsourcing jobs overseas, is tricky.  In part, we can blame NAFTA, and other similar agreements.  These laws were sold to us as supposed to help out foreign countries's economies, by letting their businesses sell easily to the US, and doing the same for US businesses.  However, the same controls that made selling goods in the foreign markets easier, made expanding a business into the other countries easier... One of the stated objectives of NAFTA ("http://www-tech.mit.edu/Bulletins/nafta.html") is to "promote conditions of fair competition in the free trade area", perhaps unintentionally including competition for jobs.  Wages are higher in the US, and manufacturing regulations are more difficult to deal with, so these foreign countries 'won the contract' so to speak, to provide labor for US corporations.

This sort of effect could be predicted by logical thought about the system.  As we know from MMOGs, tho, most people, including(and especially) developers of such systems, lack the ability to look at a system and logically work out the effects of its implementation.  As a side note, G. W. Bush likely had little to do with NAFTA, since it was put into effect some 6 years before he reached the office.

This link ("http://www.citizen.org/trade/nafta/") has a short discussion of the issues with NAFTA.  It seems to line up pretty closely with my MMOG system analogy, where the naysayers turn out to be right when the system is implemented and studied over time.

As far as Presidential debate goes, as I said before, Kerry has said bad things about companies, and the ethics of the leaders of those companies, who export labor outside of the US... but he's also married to the heir of Heinz, which incidentally has a majority of its production plants overseas.  Do those same epithets apply to his wife?

--
Alkiera

Good, while that's still way up from the 4.3 at the end of Clinton's term, things are going in the right direction.   Hopefully this is being done because Bush Jr's economic plan is actually a capable of improving this instead of some temporary phenominon (or worse, deliberate manipulation by those who own big companies pulling some temporary hires around election day).

Good point about how the unemployment stats are difficult to track as they only cover a noted portion of the stats.

He's not entirely off the hook, as being in office is exactly when his administration has had the oppertunity to bring it up to revise it, and apparently chose not to.

Thanks for the heads up on Nafta.   It's interesting to note that a lot of this overseas job deportation was caused by a well meaning attempt to create fair trade.   I think I overheard something on TV in regards to that a few years back but, like most of the mass media I'm subjected to on a regular basis, quickly forgot it.

I often wonder how much Politicians would learn from the proceedings of a good MMOG and vice versa for the makers of MMOGs from Politicians.  I know that's not what you're saying here, but I just thought I'd bring that up :)

According to www.truthorfiction.com (http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/h/heinz-kerry.htm) this is ranked as "Fiction".

Reason being that:
1. His wife does not have a controlling share of the company and so had no decision-making capability in those regards.

2. Sixty percent of Heinz sales are to overseas customers, and having close proximity of the plants is to serve those customers better.   It's an entirely different situation from firing workers in local soil and sending them overseas to cut costs.

But hey, don't stop trying to find things wrong on Kerry.  We want a fair and balanced election, after all, and we need more obvious fault on Kerry for him to match his competitor (http://quicksitebuilder.cnet.com/sartrejp/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/bush-pope.jpg). :)

Looks like that "Michael Moore's Movie Banned by Bush Administration" thing in that anti bush game is now outdated.

Flash! (http://www.news24.com/News24/Entertainment/Abroad/0,,2-1225-1243_1536234,00.html) - "Fahrenheit 9/11" is to be released in American theatures June 26th.

(Also according to that article it wasn't Bush Jr. who prevented the game from hitting theatres but rather the Movies' previous owners, Disney, fearing political backlash.  They sold the movie to Miramax who apparently habors no such fear and that's why it's a-go.)

Misinformed much? The only facts you got right are that George W Bush (his Dad was George Herbert Walker Bush....he isn't a "Jr") did not attempt to prevent the films from being shown, and that Disney had opted not to distribute. They did the same with Kevin Smith's "Dogma".

Disney owns Miramax....Disney feared that the controversial nature of Moore's film may motivate conservatives to boycott Miramax and/or Disney films. Disney certainly doesn't need that kind of heat, especially since they are about to lose Pixar, and watch as they become Disney's biggest threat.

The film is being distributed through Lion's Gate, IFC, and a new company formed by Bob and Harvey Weinstein (who happen to be co-chairmen of Miramax). Showtime has gotten exclusivity for pay-TV rights, and they're rumored to be close to a deal with Universal Home Video for VHS/DVD rights.

Check out what this smug fuckwad has to say about the distribution:


Moore wanted to have his film out by July 4th, and on video in time to influence the November election. The film's release date is June 25th.

Of course, you could have researched all of this yourself....wouldn't have been too tough if you had bothered to read the article on CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/06/02/film.moore.reut/index.html).

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

Wake up on the wrong side of the bed?

He was kinda busy, given that his team was held up from getting into the Whitehouse for awhile due to Gore refusing to give up counting dropped chads, and trying to keep military absentee votes from counting.  Once he finally did get into office, some idiots flew planes into a couple large buildings.

Anyhow, I agree that Bush is not exactly a perfect President.  I disagree with some of the things he's done domestically, especially the changes to Medicare.  I'm firmly against big government, and anything that makes our current bloated behemoth any bigger.  However, I feel that Bush is more likely to not go overboard on government growth than any Democrat alternative.  Breaking up agreements with our neighbors, without first proving unequivocally that they aren't working, doesn't neccesarily sound like good foreign policy, either.  And proving that will take time Bush doesn't really have to spare right now, given all that is on his plate.

--
Alkiera

This would of course be excluding the Department of Homeland Security using its wealth of resources to access abortion records?  And a big government wouldn't er, want to change the constitution based on religious beliefs would it?

Let's reiterate the reasons I refuse to vote for George Bush in November:

1) During his administration, he has taken what was a balanced budget and continually RAISED government spending, including deficit spending, while lowering taxes, mostly for upper middle class and upper class income people. He's intentionally making the government spend more money than they are taking in, and that's WITH a majority of Republicans (supposedly the fiscally responsible party) in Congress.
2) The tax cuts mentioned above gave a higher percentage of cuts to people who DID NOT NEED THEM, while completely ignoring the people most hard hit by the economic situation. He used the worst aspects of "trickle-down" economics to suggest these cuts would help stimulate the economy.
3) The people he appoints into positions of power are intransigent cockmunchers, with weekly news reports of new scandals that they are just slippery enough to avoid.
4) His appointee John Ashcroft has single-handedly made the most egregious affronts to the Bill of Rights all in the name of "Homeland Security." My perception is that we are no more or less secure today than on September 10th.
5) While he handled the post-9/11 crisis well, he has rode that tragedy to maximum effect, involving us in one just war, and one war that I have seen no good justification for. He has saddled the American taxpayer with a gigantic bill for the latter war, while I have seen no positive gains come from the war and a whole lot of negative.
6) He has taken the US from the highest international regard (post 9/11) to the lowest in just 2 years. Our foreign policy is a clusterfuck, and what influence we might have had under Clinton has been eroded for years to come.
7) Rather than admit their faults, his entire administration has participated in buck-passing, or worse, outright attacks on his opposition based on Fear, Unrest and Despair.
8) He looks like a simpering, arrogant fool.

Kerry may not be better, but I have a hard time thinking he'll be worse.

Maybe you missed it when geldon said the following:


...then he proceeds to not only provide uninformed opinions, but to report incorrect facts that are easily obtained with a quick hop over to the most popular news site on the internet. And people wonder why his opinions in political discussions aren't respected.

By comparison, although I disagree with Haemish on some points, I at least respect his opinion as being pretty well-informed. Our difference of opinion is based primarily on our view of the facts....not necessarily a dispute of what the facts are.

Big difference.

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

One has to compare the numbers on jobs created to the unemployment figures.  You also have to look at first-time filers for unemployment benefits.  These numbers are mostly guesstimates anyway, but between these three indicators you get a feel for the number of people who have given up or otherwise now have jobs that have fallen off the radar.

I suggest it is a mistake to assume all those people are now suddenly contented sole proprieterships.  They're more likely declaring bankruptices, defaulting on credit, and when they finally do find employment are working well below levels that make for a more stable recovery.

I don't fault Bush for getting us into Iraq, I fault him for conducting the war so that our military will suffer declining recruitment for at least another decade, squandered our last bit of global capital, and ensured petro dependence for at least two generations.  I don't fault Bush for securing the longest list of health care changes ever made, I fault him for doing it in a way that doesn't provide safety nets for society and bleeds the government of resources.

And so on down the list of his "accomplishments."  I fault Bush because he's basically sold the country to private interests and undermined our ability as a genuine superpower.

An interesting repeated lesson of superpowers over the last three thousand years is that as soon as they use unilateral blunt force they begin their decline.  A reading of Gibbon's Decline of the Roman Empire sounds eerily similar to our current society's refusal to pay for a stable country - everyone wanted "their" money then too...

Private enterprise is operationally efficient, but it's not socially **effective**.  The point of government, its effectivity, is to provide a stable society.  We can't do that when we have a government of infinitely layered sub-contractors, each siphoning off their 20% while evading responsibility to provide effective stability to society.

My Post: Wed, June 1st, 1am PST
CNN Source: Wed, June 1st, 10am CST

So no, I guess I did not go forward in time 7 hours to read that article and instead had to use what little facts were available to me in the distant past from a less reputable news source.   Of course, this is completely my fault for not using my psychic powers to scry this knowledge from the future.

Perhaps, but it's hard to say how long it takes a few hundred officials to get through the red tape and get those things done.   It's really a matter of prioritizing, isn't it?   He had time to draft lots of tax cuts, he should have had enough time to consider a revision to the NAFTA.

You're under the effects of selective hallucination.   I've strived to provide as little opinions of my own as possible here.  Any opinions I did provide were someone else's, and the primary idea there was to show you that some people other than myself disagree with what you had said.   I did this full knowing that if it were coming from me, you'd disagree automatically, but apparently that backfired because this extends to include links to other people (even popular news sites) coming from me.   I mention a CNN hosted debate and it is now firmly in the pit of lies for you, amazing considering you used it just a few hours before as basis to prove I didn't research anything.

And so you continue to define prejudice.   If I were to write some of the exact same things HaemishM did, you would probably attack me saying I was making baseless accusations.   In fact, come to think of it, I did and you have.    

It's interesting that he doesn't need to provide massive proof to back up every little thing he says and I do.   Basically you just disagree with me but simply have not enough respect for me to think anything I say may have any basis in fact.    That's fine, I can't ask for someone to give me their respect, and it's clear that you've already made up your mind.  

Now if Boog were here, with backup from some other #hate chronies, I'm sure he could accuse me of something outragous that would cause me to lose my composture and make me look like a total ass like I did before.    You don't quite have the finesse for it.   So just spare me more pointless mudslinging, as it's tiring to have to overstep another dig at me in every second sentence you've written on this thread.

Don't blame me because your sources suck, and you don't know enough to tell the difference.



He should have pencilled this in somewhere between unprecedented terrorist attacks on the US and unprecedented corporate scandals on Wall Street.

You also ignore a very important point about outsourcing....companies have to maintain this thing called PROFIT. When costs exceed revenues, the company has to cut back as many costs as possible. Take away the ability of companies to cut costs during the last few years, and you'd have a LOT more bankrupted companies. There is some "sacrifice a few jobs to save the company" involved that you aren't considering.

Bringing them back is a bit tougher...because now you're asking a company to incur greater costs to bring the same job back to the states. It is due to the need for PROFIT that companies are lax to bring the jobs back.



WTF are you babbling about? So now the opinions expressed in your posts are not your own? Give me a fucking break. Playing devil's advocate and asking people to make counterpoints to the flash movie is pretty fucking transparent....particularly when you press the counterpoints, and bring up other points against Bush.

You implied that big business is doing temporary hires so that unemployment figures look favorable for Bush....that's fucking idiotic.

You've also made several comments that certainly express opinions about the candidates. If you like, I can point them out to you via PM.



The fucking facts about Moore's film were not accurate. Bitch about it all you want, isn't going to change it.



WTF did I say about the Crossfire link? NOTHING.



Prejudice would be if I were judging your comments before you said anything. This is not the case.



He's expressing opinions, and not trying to dispute facts. Fuck, his post barely brings any facts into the equation, and those that are used I am willing to concede as accurate.

Pull the sand out of your vagina, geldon. I disagree with you because you don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Look to your comments about unemployment rates....and take a look at how quickly you backpedalled when Alkiera provided facts that proved your statement wrong.



Let's leave Boog and Corp out of it...you certainly don't need their help to look like an ass.

I don't particularly want you to look like an ass. Quite the opposite...I want you to use some goddamned brain power and do your research. Actually make an effort to UNDERSTAND the shit, instead of just linking to it. If you insist on posting in political threads, I'd prefer to see you make a point that doesn't leave me shaking my head at your ignorance.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

+1

O man.  Boo.

Does the name Dennis Kozlowski ring a bell?  Hope ya don't think he's an anomoly.   Granted, I heard about that dude on CNN so he may not exist.  



Fixed!

This is a common liberal refrain I see in response to strong emplyement figures.  "Oh, well, they don't count all the people who stopped looking for work!"  Also soon followed by, "And the new jobs aren't as good as the old ones!"

The problem is we didn't count those people when CLINTON was President either, and under 6% unemployment was considered amazingly awesome.  What was the "true" unemployment then?  Well, there are lots of studies that try to quantify this, but it is complicated by lots of other factors.  For example, incarcerations... we have a much larger prison population today than we did 1o-30 years ago, and they aren't counted either.  Meanwhile, retirement ages have risen.. do we consider this a good thing, that people are living longer and more productive longer, or a bad thing, because "evil Republican policies" are "forcing older workers to work since they can't live on Social Security, etc."?  It all depends on how you want to spin it.

But the bottom line is we're talking about relatively small fluctuations in an otherwise very healthy economy, especially in the face of the dot.com bubble burst, 9/11 and other terrorist threats, and rising oil prices.  You want to see bad times?  Talk to those who went through the Great Depression, or the period from 1972-1982.  Those were economic tragedies.  Anything better than that is fine by me.

Bruce

I don't know what liberals say, not being one and only knowing a single individual who self-labels as such.

The definition of unemployed only encompasses those who tell government offices they are actively seeking work and/or are claiming unemployment.  The difference between new jobs and the new unemployment numbers gives us a rough idea of whether unemployment really dropped due to a recovery.  Or people truly just gave up.

This is not a "liberal" vs. "conservative" thing, it's just the way the current government chooses to cast the stats.

We can always look at the actual numbers on the US DOL site:

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls

Enable "Civilian Unemployment" and "Unemployment Rate", then click "Retrieve Data" at the bottom.  They recently added charting so at the next screen change the From date to 1990 and leave the To date at 2004.  Then enable "Include Graphs".

There is a short peak in unemployment for the first six months of the Clinton administration.  The trend strongly declinesand there is a slight trend upwards after the Bush administration takes office.  Of course after 9/11 the trend understandably skyrockets.  Though interestingly the father's numbers were worse than the son's now - intriguing since the elder Bush inherited the benefits of Reagan's revolution.  (Must... resist... sarcasm...)

We can certainly debate how much the policies of the Democratic party had anything to do with global boom/bust cycles.  I question that myself.  But your point that things are the same now is incorrect.

There was tremendous creative destruction in the 90s, but we really did see people rotate out of manufacturing into knowledge positions.  We're now seeing people rotate out of knowledge positions into unemployment or service jobs.  The Bush administration's policies of tax cuts for individuals and corporations only demonstrates what we saw in the Reagan years: it does not create jobs and encourages adverse behavior by the corporations.

The difference this decade is that we see is the difference pocketed by the senior execs via bonus and stock payouts as they invest overseas.  All a magnitude more than ever seen before.

Can things be worse?  Sure, but to use your example we're being asked to re-elect Herbert Hoover.  Hoover's strategic decisions also were rooted in the truths of his day and like now the actual implementations were pretty destructive.

I suspect Bush will do better than Hoover's 59 electorial votes.  Not that I'll be one of his voters this time around.

*blink* Come again?   I post that info from a webpage that was available to me at the time.  CNN, which is probably more accurate, was not yet posted up when I did my post.

You're basically complaining here that I was too dumb to have gone forward in time to gather the correct information.   Now you are aware that this is a metaphysical impossibility, correct?   Would you like tommorow's lottery numbers while I'm at it?

Well, I appreciate you're not aware that you are deliberately endeavoring to make me look bad.   I don't appreciate that you dig into me every second or third sentence you've been writing on this thread as though I'm the idiot savant invader pounding on the iron doors to your castle.  

Particularly when you consider this is the first political thread I've gotten involved with in three months and your using the word "threads".    Do the wounds from my previous ignorance run so deep that  a three month gap is entirely transparent to you?   Apparently so.

But you have made an effort to try to explain the issues, and I do appreciate that.   Though you may not believe it, I am trying to register your perspective on the matter based on what you've said here.   I may not neccessarily agree with you any more than you agree with HaemishM, but as you've asked, I'm trying to keep that to myself, with apparently varying levels of success.

Fair enough.  Still, you know how it's human nature to always be wanting more.

I'd just like a job myself, but I suppose if I spent more time looking and less time posting on this board I could probably make that happen, not that I'm not already fulfilling double my state requirement of job contacts per week.

Good resource.  

Apparently there's no danger of artifically inflated employment levels and/or world conspiracies involving giant bees, because the employment levels haven't changed much at all since December.

Then why are you responding as if you know what liberals say:



And it's the way the previous government chooses to cast the stats, too.  Again, you seem to totally miss the point.  You can't claim X% of unemployment under Bush isn't really good because of those who have stopped looking, because the same is true under Clinton... his X% would have been higher as well, had we counted those folks.  But we didn't.  So the point is to compare apples and apples.

X% during the Clinton era was widely regarded as great, so a similar X% in Bush's era should be as well.



You're a moron.  I never said "things are the same now".  I said that there was X% of unemployment under Bush now, and when X% occurred under Clinton, things were regarded as great.  I also said that it is erroneous to discount X% under Bush because of Y adjustments because you need to apply those same adjustments under Clinton for the comparison to be relevant.  This is not to pick on Clinton; it's just the common point of reference where we recently encountered historically low unemployment rates.


More unfounded rhetorical spin.  Facts are facts, jack.

Bruce

I always liked Kerry in the past. When he decided to run, I really wanted to like him at first, but the guy can't make up his damn mind. He's not a leader. Sure, Kerry has some things planned that he hasn't flip-flopped on, but I wouldn't be surprised if he changes those too. After his first year in office, it's all polling and gauging the public from there. Maybe he can do that in the Senate, but not as President. And if he chooses Hilary as his running mate, he can definitely kiss my (ass) vote goodbye. The more I think about it, the Dems probably would have been better off if Dean won the primaries (at least the guy was "passionate").

Neither Bush or Kerry are who I'd ultimately prefer, but as it stands right now, I'm voting for Bush. Both R and D sides have issues I'm for and some I'm against, but at least I know Bush will carry out a good portion of what he says he's going to do. The fact that he's relentlessly offensive about the terrorist threat (while Kerry only speaks of "Security") is almost good enough for me. I happen to think some things outweigh the bad with Bush.

Funny, that's the exact reason I'm not going to vote for Bush.

Are you somehow trying to imply that an entity that exists solely to make money is somehow being immoral for making money?

Businesses exist to create wealth. They don't exist simply to provide jobs.

If only it were that simple. (http://www.tomklein.de/en/profil/faq.shtml?action=number&id=1)

And exactly because businesses are about making money for themself and nothing else, they shouldn't be able to dictate government policies. They are not immoral, but certainly amoral.

Which a government shouldn't be. So the question is not what do the businesses want to do, but what the government does to temper that basic greed so that it doesn't hurt the other citizens of the country, without going to far into the other direction and making the environment hostile to businesses.

That unchecked greed doesn't work we already found out in the early days of liberalism, which even the USA recognized with such things as anti-trust laws and child labour laws (I guess others exist as well to further prove that point if you are thusly inclined),

yep it amazes me why some people are so concerned with keeping the government 'out', when in a democratic society where the government intervenes it is usually in a benevolent manner in order to provide services which the market will not provide or correct injustices or bad outcomes for society which are caused by the market.  

A really pure market system would result in a society just as bad as a totalatiarian communist one, except for the very rich.

I'm complaining because for anyone that has followed the story, it was obvious from the start that you didn't know wtf you were talking about. Additionally, the only "news" provided by your faulty source got BOTH pieces of new information wrong....the distributor and release date.



I'm aware that I am probably making you look like an ass. I don't give a fuck. Stop blubbering about how the bad man is being so mean to you. If you don't say stupid shit, I don't bust your chops for doing so....see how that works?



What difference does three months make when you apparently learned nothing? The lesson wasn't "stay away from politics", it was "come to political discussions with an informed opinion".

Reasearch, learn, understand, apply logic and common sense...maybe toss in a dash of humor (but don't compromise the point to do so), and you'd hang in just fine. But you haven't done that yet...you keep trying to just jump into the pool and swim, without first learning any strokes.



If you are trying to learn something, you may want to consider the "mouth shut, eyes & ears open" approach. If you have questions ask....but as it stands right now, your existing bias (the same one that was there 3 months ago) is obvious.



Let's stick to finding the job first, before you start "asking for something more". For starters, the state requirement is a BARE MINIMUM. Anytime I've been unemployed, 8AM-5PM has remained time for work.....when you don't have a job, finding one is your full-time occupation.

I can appreciate the mindset that blames Bush for your job troubles....but he didn't get you fired, didn't determine your job qualifications, and isn't the one doing your interviews. You can't absolve yourself of personal responsibility...and that applies whether it's about finding a job, or what you post here.

At this point, I'm going to stop the Brucing...you're either going to get defensive and go on blubbering about how I'm so mean to you, or you're going to try and do something to improve your situation.

Just anything that gets you out of the cycle of 'unfounded statement - correction - oh, well what about this then? - correction - rinse - repeat'.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

A good post....but nobody is suggesting that businesses should dictate government policies.

All I was attempting to suggest is that you don't spur the economy and job growth by installing policies that are going to drive many companies out of business. Fuck, I can't even count the number of companies that went under since 2001....some startups that flopped, some established companies that fell apart in the tough economic climate.

My employer didn't outsource....we used attrition to cut jobs, and then even cut some people loose after it started taking too long. We also reduced our compensation for salespeople, and raised quotas. Long story made short - we paid fewer people less money and asked them to do more. The end result is even worse than overseas outsourcing for those that remain.

Why did we do this? Because we had to trim "inessential infrastructure". This included merging a couple sales offices, closing one remote office in favor of having reps work from home, putting tighter reigns on waste around the office, and even dropping jobs. We needed to do this to make something reasonable close to our projections for profitability and earnings per share.

The "gluttonous profits" we were trying to post worked out to less than $0.30 per share for our stockholders. Guess who holds the most stock in my company? THE EMPLOYEES.

But sure...it's just that evil corporate America lining the pockets of the ultra-uber-rich. It can't possibly be sacrificing a few for the good of the company as a whole, right?

I'm all for legislation to discourage overseas outsourcing...this is one of the few things I like about Kerry's economic plan. I just think that the corporate America = evil greed machines that serve the uber-rich is just a knee-jerk reaction. Better to understand the business realities, not just the antoagonistic vision of big business....because after all, if not for big business, most of us wouldn't have any jobs at all.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

I think they actually do in times with strong lobbies and too compliant governments. But the posting was deliberately held neutral without making accusations. It just was meant to be a statement to Logains posting, no deeper sinister meaning behind it.

My crazy European mindset gets me in enough arguments with you guys without people putting words into my mouth or hidden agendas into my mind. Not that this should stop you through, its a free forum after all.

Just to counter any antiamerican tendencies interpreted into it, I see the same problem surfacing in the EU with the lobby work in our EU organs. For me the latest Software Patent laws are a sign for that. It even hurts our own interests und quite many Developers and small to medium companies mourn it, but substantial lobbying work (with some Nepotism on the side) pushed it through anyway.

So if I understand you correctly, when I say statistics are defined consistently and absolutely, not by partisan terms, than I must be partisan.  How... interesting.

I didn't miss the point because I didn't dispute it.  If you are going to take a stance that 6 is approximately equal to 6, granted.  Thanks for your insight.

Where you are violently childishly wrong is that the relative percents, taken on a month by month basis, might be in the same ballpark but they don't describe the same reality.  Six is just a number.  We have to look at the trends to understand what the number means.

In the Clinton years new jobs outpaced lost jobs.  That's a better thing than we see now, where new jobs substantially trail lost jobs.  The numbers are roughly the same simply because more people currently are falling off the charts.

The current situation is not all that different than what we saw about the time Clinton took office.  The difference is that the recovery happened when people rotated into higher skilled jobs.  For the last three years that trend has been reversing itself.

The general trend would have happened had Gore won the election.  The difference would be how the government might have responded.  It's entirely possible to do the right thing the wrong way.  The neocons are demonstrating that.

Holy shit, imagine that...a political thread where I disagree with both geldon and SirBruce. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

personman has a point here, Bruce....both this administration and the previous one benefit from this practice. There isn't really much of a way to dispute that Bush has had a net loss of jobs during his administration.

Of course, I wasn under the impression that we were making a recovery in terms of new jobs within the past year, though it wasn't on pace to break even by the end of the term.

We could also point to the vastly different economic climate the Bush administration had to deal with. Let's note that the impending dotcom implosion, corporate scandals, and Al Qaeda threat existed under Clinton's watch as well....they just didn't happen to blow up in our faces until after Bush took office. And let's be realistic....they all certainly could have.

I think Gore may have handled things differently, and Bush probably should have. But wtf does that matter? It might make for a damn interesting episode if they ever decide to bring back Quantum Leap, but it doesn't do us a damn bit of good to speculate about it now. The best we can do is look at the stated plans of each candidate to improve the situation moving forward.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

Here's my big problem with the rush to outsource these days.

Businesses spent and overspent then spent on credit in the dot.com explosion days. Everybody was happy, everyone was supposedly getting rich. Businesses hired out the ass to provide customer support, and other things, often hiring people who may or may not have been totally qualified for the job, but because they at least had some knowledge of the field, they got the job. I should know, I was one of them. I had about 1 week worth of HTML experience when I was hired to start designing web sites, back in 1995. Luckily, not many other people did either. Often, these businesses hired at what they KNEW was way over the market value for that person, simply to secure their employment.

The corporate structure of America essentially showed reckless abandon, planning and building businesses around shaky business practices at best, outright short-sighted stupidity at worst. No good business plan will tell you to pay over the market value of an employee. In 2 years time, I doubled my yearly salary in positions I was barely qualified for, and I'm not the only one. Call centers were probably the biggest area where this type of thing happened, but look at all the barely competent network admins that got hired as well.

So corporate America was spending and planning based on the high times, with no thought to how their business would be profitable if the economy shrunk. And that's not even getting into the whole "we fake the accounting thing to appear profitable" ploy. Corporate America as a whole made stupid, shortsighted decisions based on aberrent profit cycles, and when the economy shrunk, they found profitability was impossible without abberent economic conditions or accounting fraud. And instead of cut their executive salaries, take a hit, and live up to their responsibilities to their workers, they instead go for the cheap labor in foreign countries. Never mind that the corporations are in existence because of tax breaks they've been given by the communities they are now turning into ghost towns when the factory closes. Then, some of these industries get hit with a disaster and suddenly they are crying to the U.S. government for subsidies (hello, airlines!) while laying off more people.

And in all of this, not only is the employee left to flap in the very strong breeze of an economy that ain't hiring no more, the customer is left to hear Apu on the phone when they call customer support for a warranty problem.

Certainly a corporations first task is to be profitable. But pure capitalism is dangerous, because a corporation without any sense of responsibility to its employees and its communties is all too often a lumbering beast crushing all in its path.

Shareholder interest should never take precedence over your company's employees, or the community where your company is located.

Your example is certainly tilted toward the large manufacturing/industrial business that shuts down an entire location to outsource it to another country. In that case, I agree....the company has to consider more than just shareholder value. For this reason, I applauded Moore when he opposed GM in his film "Roger & Me". Flint still hasn't fully recovered.

However, in other scenarios, it doesn't always leave the ghost town....although it may mean that the on-site call center jobs go away. In those cases, it may well be a case where cutting the costs saves the company.

Certainly, some of this can be blamed on overpaid employees, or poor business plans. But let's also keep in mind how much revenues tightened up....the auto industry was feeling the pinch, enough so to offer unprecendented incentive plans. Several suppliers were given a flat-out mandate...lower your prices, or lose our account. In some cases, businesses had made themselves lean to maximize profit, and when revenues dried up, they had no place else to cut.

Like I said, I agree...but I can also see situations where a company had to dump a few jobs and/or send them overseas in order to keep the company afloat, preserve the profitability of the company, and provide jobs for the vast majority of their employees.

Ultimately, if a company cannot posts profits, they aren't going to be around very long. The opposite held true for much of the dotcom era, so people tend to forget this. If the company goes under, ALL the jobs are lost....so in some cases outsourcing was used to benefit the man at the expense of the few.

But as I said, I'm willing to concede where there are cases where it was a necessary evil, and other cases where it was simply used as a way to make more money without feeling any sense of responsibility. Can we each agree that both situations exist, that the former is acceptable yet undesirable, and that the latter is the type of behavior that needs to be addressed?

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

Certainly, I will agree with you that both situations can exist. I never said that they didn't exist.

However, especially in the tech sector, the benevolent business is the exception rather than the rule. That's where many of our growth gains came in the 90's, and where most of our job losses have come from outsourcing and overworked employees. The first thing to go in all of these cases has been customer service. So not only does the customer pay through the nose for the product, gets little to no good customer support because he's having to deal with someone whose name he cannot even pronounce on the phone, but his community also loses 100 or 200 jobs because the call center that used to be down the street is now located in New Dehli.

And overall, the biggest problem with outsourcing is that THE JOBS DON'T COME BACK. And all these bastards talking about how "it'll be a hard transition to a new career once your job has been outsourced" aren't the motherfuckers who lost their jobs. They are the consultants who showed the executives the ten-cent savings in having a foreigner do your phone support.

I also have a problem with the current economic model that corporations employ to satisfy their shareholders.  That is the increasing salaries and defered stock options that most CEOs recieve these days, and the continual downsizing of the little guy.

If they are so interested in cutting costs, I think they should trim the fat at the top first, before they cut it at the bottom.

I've actually been adopting a "asking questions while eyes and ears open approach".   You might find those questions assinine, but I'm humble enough to endure you abuse if it means getting to the point.   Honestly, if I was asking for a device to find fault in myself, there's no shortage of mirrors in the world.

Maybe I did expose a bit of bias.   My mom's a retired school teacher, and apparently the republicans had not been kind to them over the past, and as a result I've been risen in a somewhat Democratic-favoring household.    

But, are you're telling me you totally lack bias yourself?   Well, that's not terribly fair of me to say seeing how I asked for some defence for Bush Jr. in the first place.   Granted I did it in a somewhat biased manner because I knew that was the only real way to produce some results.

Didn't he?   I used to work for a small company which was having such troubles in the current economical situation that they repeatedly had to tighten their belt and move more and more work onto my position while cutting our training and increasing our work load for no pay increase.   After going through nearly four years of that, most people are going to succumb to the stress.  

Though, if I weren't such a tool sporting such lofty ideals of company loyalty I'd probably have done the smart thing and bailed out the moment I saw things were going the direction they were.   Unfortunately due to several jobs in the tech industry at about my level of qualification (just call center ISP stuff) moving over to India where it could be done much cheaper, I really haven't had much places to go.  

But no, I guess your perspective would be that this really isn't the BUsh Jr's administration's fault, as you're pointing out that Bush Jr. didn't cause the economy to have issues.    Maybe you're right.   I think I have established at least that the business politics have not been favoring me during his administration, coincidentally or otherwise, so it's only natural for your average man on the street to pick up that impression.    Ask CNN (http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/03/news/economy/jobs_outlook/index.htm), most people think the job market is poor, even though it's supposedly improving.

Personally, I'm going to school, but maybe I should start going to church instead.   That's why we need to start cutting money from schools so there can be more government funding for faith-based institutions.

This is the smartest thing I've ever read on the internet.  It made me decide not to post a very bitter rant!

Oh those poor people! They actually got to keep their jobs! How terrible!

Hey, you're one of those poor people. Why don't you do yourself a favor and quit your job? You can just pretend that your company outsourced your position. Then you'll be available to apply for one of those new  manufacturing (http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/releases/pr_2004_0220c.html) jobs!

Hey a job is a job no matter how tedious or mundane. If times were hard on me, you can bet your ass I wouldn't scoff at taking a job working minimum wage to keep the lights on. Sometimes anything is better than nothing when others are counting on your income. Pride shouldn't get in the way.

Pride has nothing to do with NOT being able to support a family on $5.15/hr.


The more I think about what Dark said the more angry I get. What kind of low life mother fucker would WANT other people to lose their jobs just so they don't miss out on any scheduled pay raises? It's always the OTHER people and never YOU, isn't it Dark? OTHER people should lose their jobs but NEVER YOU, God's gift to our world! Your business is having trouble because of OTHER lazy people who won't work for less and so THEY should lose THEIR jobs to outsourcing so that YOU CAN REMAIN COMFORTABLE AT THEIR EXPENSE.

Fuck you scumbag.

It must be shocking to realize that people at the top look out for number one, or that America was built on the backs of exploited workers. Your outrage is misplaced by about two centuries.

I am not shocked by the result of capitalism, the world's largest pyramid scam. I am disgusted.

If more people shared the attitude that any attempt to correct long standing social injustice is too little too late then American slaves would still be picking cotton. It's never too late to fight injustice.

Because slavery and outsourcing are so very close as to be lumped together under the header of social injustice. Outsourcing happens because somewhere down the line, America lost its competitive advantage in certain industries, and others can do them so much cheaper and more effectively. It's basic trade in economic forces. That's also coupled with the pendulum effect of bandwagoning inside corporations. There will be a flurry of outsourcing, and the people that get replaced will bitch. However, the pendulum swings back and people adapt in the job market. That the way business works, adapt or perish.

You say social injustice, but I say a harsh reality of the system.

Ah those whiney Americans who paid American prices to go to American colleges to be trained for American jobs in the American job market which no longer exist due to a record trade deficit. Yes, let's blame them for not being able to compete with a foreign cost of living.

Why stop at white collar jobs? Why not let third world countries sell us manufactured goods that are made by employees who make less than $100 per year? That'll teach those greedy Americans a thing or two about the harsh reality of global trade.

For the most part, no-one blames those people for getting laid off. Though admittedly those of lower competency are usually let go first, but that doesn't mean much when entire departments are outsourced, eh.

Regardless of where the fault lies, the fact still remains that many busineses decided it wasn't economically viable to have those jobs here in the U.S. The people hit by it will have to adapt, no matter how much they might cry.

The majority of jobs outsourced are very low-level jobs that anybody can do with little to no training. Yes, Apu the help-desk guy is hard to understand, but he can still do your job and he can do it for a lot cheaper.

In markets where more higher-level thinking and training is required(ex. software development), there is already a backlash being experienced. Those companies will realize that the loss in quality of their product hurts them more in the long-run than the money they saved from outsourcing the dev centers. The pendulum will swing back.

Not necessarily. In fact, Dell actually moved some of those Indian call-center jobs BACK to the U.S. because the Indians were doing such a rotten fucking job of it. Unfortunately for the little guy, they only moved the support for their REALLY BIG customers.

I'll give you an example of what I think is corporate responsibility.

Shortly after 9/11, the advertising market hit the shitter. I mean, within like 1 month. Many of my company's clients were tourism-related clients, and at least 1 big client went under during this time. Our executive board looked at the numbers, projected somethings out, and figured out that we were going to have to cut expenses or the agency might fold.

Now, they could have cut all the department's staffing numbers. At the time, we had 3 web developers. They could  have gone to 2 and made us work harder. But they didn't. Instead of laying people off, they made an across the board salary cut, as well as freezing spending on some things like tech upgrades. The salary cut hurt EVERYONE, but, and here's the really responsible part, the people who made from than I think 50k (which is a good salary here), got cut MORE than the people at the bottom. I think those under that number took maybe a 3-5% cut, while those higher took like a 6-8% cut. That included every VP, the CEO, all the department heads and people with seniority. Everybody took the hit, and no one got laid off. In addition, for Xmas that year, we got some of that money back in lieu of Xmas bonuses that we wouldn't have gotten anyway.

Now granted, that's only with about 120 employees in 2 locations, and taking a salary cut SUCKED ASS.

But it sure as hell beat pounding the pavement in a recessed economy. The heads of the company, the top executives (all stockholders) took the responsibility to find a way to not lay off anyone, even though it hurt their own wallets. Meanwhile, other firms in our area laid folks off, and some ended up folding anyway.

But I kept my job, and I'm eternally grateful to the company for that. They ain't perfect, but they are at least responsible to more than just their shareholders.

This months jobs report: 250K jobs added. Past quarter: ~1,000,000 jobs added to the US economy.

Someone float new new canard please. This one is done.

If that mattered I would say, "Yes, thank you, I appreciate that new facts have come to light that I may no longer take that as a problem and I'll stop bringing it up."   I did back on page two when somebody else said that.

However, you might find The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0156006561/qid=1086376749/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-3446467-1402317?v=glance&s=books) an interesting (if depressing) read about just how misleading numbers can be when taken out of proportion.

Take a look at  the official government graph personman provided (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls).   Yes, there has been 250k more jobs over the past quarter.   Unfortunately, it was just barely enough to keep up with our population increase.   Unemployment rate has noticably decreased since this time last year, and that's a good thing.   However, the unemployment rate has remained at 5.6 - 5.7% for the past 6 months!  That's not an improvement!

Why should 250k jobs make such little impact?   That's where The Universe and a Teacup comes in: You really have to do the math to appreciate it.     According to that graph personman brought up, currently 8,203,000ish people are registered as unemployed as of the end of may.   250k jobs should take care of 3% of those who are currently looking for work.   That's not 3% of the overall employment rate, because out of the overall registered employment force of 138,772,00ish people, 250k jobs would be less than one quarter percent, about 0.18% if I know how to calculate a percentage.  

In other words, that 250k jobs line is an extremely small drop in the bucket of the overall problem.   Clinton was able to manage at least that much nearly each and every month of his presidency, sometimes two or three times as much.   That was just cruising on interia for the most part, it would seem.  

In order to reach the 4.2% unemployment rate we had back in early 2001, we'd need to have over 2,000k more jobs, and we'd need them now, as the working population increases by about 200k every month.      That many jobs that fast is technically an impossibility, and barring major population-influencing catastrophe, that added number of eligable workers per month just gets bigger as time goes on.     We're in deep dog doodoo.

I have to wonder why between Jan 2001 and Feb 2001 the number of those employed actually went down when it usually goes up.   The Dotcom bubble burst either had occured years before (remember when Lum The Mad was telling us the internet exploded back in 1996?) or wasn't going to occur until March of 2001 depending on who you ask.   9/11 was still 8 months away.    I don't think Bush Jr. even had a chance to do anything yet.  

I'm guessing that simply the fact that the administration was changing at all was enough for employers to go, "Wooah! This guy's gunna suck.  Stop hiring!  Fire those slackers we could afford when the economy was good and hire cheap Indian labor to do their jobs instead!  Back off and observe for awhile!"  But I wasn't in the board room hearing them say this, so that's just an unneccessary dramatization.

To Bush Jr's credit though, I will point out that there was a good decrease in unemployment between June of 2003 and Dec of 2003 when it went from 6.3 (the highest it's been in a long, long time) to just 5.7 (which is still a full 1.7% higher than it was at the best Clinton managed).   I just wish it would go lower instead of just idling there like it has for the past 5 months.

Also, I'm starting to hear people say "Oh yeah we're hiring, drop an app" where past 5 months I've mostly been hearing "We did all our hiring for awhile, we're good".   I suspect that just because Bush Jr.'s really laying it on thick about how the economy is actually improving people are crawling under their shells.   If I'm a right, for this psychological effect alone now's a good time to go at the job market, and I've been redoubling my efforts.

Anyone see the trailer to Michael Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11? The official web site was hammered so hard that they had to take the clip down. Fortunately for anyone who is interested, Apple has a working copy on their site.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/fahrenheit_911/

I've never been interested in political movies before but I am interested in seeing this one.

Michael Moore is an overblown, fatheaded jackass, who spouts unsubstantiated half-truths and claims they are from God's mouth to his ears. He stopped being funny years ago, and was relevant for about the 15 minutes Warhol might have afforded him.

Hell, you might as well have linked to Ann Coulter footage for all the relevance Moore has.

Yes, he's a lot like Rush Limbaugh. Even so I've heard nothing but good things about this documentary not to mention that it won the Palme D'Or. Despite how you feel about Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11 is suppose to be a very good movie.

Moore's an easy target, because people really want to believe that Bush's real actions are made up by the loony left.  Even the left seems to want to believe that.

F/911: how about seeing it and then giving an opinion?  Anyone?

It is more comforting than believing he is a C student corporate schill cowboy in charge of the world's last remaining superpower.

Depends on what you mean by canard.  If all we care about is that we're seeing any sort of job growth again I agree with you.  It's a shallow victory to make though, useful only for political partisans.

The analysts I'm reading are unanimous the job growth is by far in non-quality services, which is to say Home Depot clerks and Walmart greeters are the better placements.

Fewer people are losing everything - that is good.  But we're not ready for snoopy victory dances either.  The real lessons learned are the quality of jobs and the stats on real household disposable income.

Anyway this is a pretty common hallmark of a real recovery - the quality job growth always occurs after growth of any sort of job.  What was disturbing about Friday's announcements last week is that durable purchases were sharply down, both new home and first time buyer purchases were significantly down, and inventories were down.

In other words this recovery is gasping for breath.  The amount of direct to business stimulation pumped in by the Bush administration is the largest ever in our history, even more than FDRs.  And all we've seen again is what we learned in the Reagan years: businesses don't grow just because we give them cash; the execs just personally pocket the difference.

Economies only grow when the populace has disposable income.  Trickle down theory is again shown to be voodoo economics.  Bread and circuses for a middle class eager to be deluded as the big boys plunder the government.

Moore is a loudmouth idiot, but Ann Coulter scares me.  I think she's on the wrong side of the line between shouting from a soapbox, and leading the firing squad.

Christ almighty, I go away for a few days and Pug loses his fucking grip on reality.

Hey Pug, when has minimum wage ever been enough to support a family? Not in my lifetime, I can assure you of that. That's why some people on hard times work 2 or even 3 jobs.

You can make the minimum wage $50k per year, and it's just going to inflate the living shit out of the domestic economy, and weaken the dollar. Other rates of pay will increase proportionately to what the market will bear, and we stay pretty much where we are.

Despite popular belief, this is not the land of milk, honey, universal prosperity, and the everlasting (http://www.levitra.com) hard-on (http://www.viagra.com).



The only "pay raises" I've gotten have been when I sold nearly double what I had the previous year. My quota increased 60% over the previous year, my salary was cut by 25%. I increased my sales by roughly 93% year-over-year, and maintained a gross profit of 22% on my deals. Between the salary cut and the cut in commissions, I lost roughly $10,000 over what I would have with the same performance in the prior year.

Also, did I note that my company sells integrated solutions that includes products as well as services? The more new business we secure in sales, the more employees we need on the service end. At the high-end of the sales spectrum, a single deal can create several new jobs within my company.

Fuck, if it weren't for the sales organization in my company, we'd be losing jobs as our client base diminimishes. Just be retaining current customers, we preserve the support and service jobs in our organization.

How again is it that I am greed personified? Because I want to see my lifestyle improve a bit when my performance and job responsibilities increase significantly?



Who the fuck are you? How fucking dare you presume that I have no sympathy or compassion for people that have lost their jobs, or are facing a cut in pay, like the one that I experienced?

If you want to talk about God's gift, might I suggest Galatians 1:3-5 in the NIV?

Then try again and tell me what I think, feel, and believe, motherfucker.



My business (i.e. the business of my empoyer) had trouble because what we do is often viewed as discretionary spending in the B2B world. In truth, the solutions we provide are often done to improve employee efficiency through technology and process improvement.

But tell that to a purchaser or CFO that can't see past that short-term increase in costs, despite a substantial ROI within a 5-year span....or cannot authorize such a transaction because the company had a spending freeze in effect. In some cases where we could overcome those obstacles, my company even helped to PRESERVE jobs.



Why is that again? Because I agree with the notion of dismissing 5 people so that another 95 can keep their jobs? I do...I'd rather that 5 people lose their jobs than 100....what a silly, heartless notion. But perhaps you missed that part about me being pissed off that I make less money to do more work.

I want those people to have their jobs, and a healthy rate of pay....but when push comes to shove, I realize that's not always possible. It's about priorities...the good of the many has to outweigh the good of the few. If that means that I lose my job, so fucking be it....I'd accept that with the same understanding that I've accepted the current circmstances.

Moron.

Bring the noise.
Cheers...............

I just want to say, to see a cool trailer, go see the trailer for the Hunting of the President. Far better trailer than Moore made, much more Hollywood in stlye.

It's the trailer Michale Moore would make if he was writing Tom Clancy (it even has Morgan Freeman in it!).

No shot of helo's low over the water, or submarines, but in that genre.

I'll keep that in mind when I read your next 8-10 paragraph diatribe that contains fewer than 3 question marks. You are making more statements than you are asking questions.



I'm not the one who tried to claim the neutral position here.



If you have questions, there is this amazing new thing people are doing....it's called "asking questions". IIRC, it is a relatively new phenomenon, it only goes back to about THE DAWN OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE.



So now Bush is responsible for your inability to handle your job??? More work for less pay....I seem to recall saying something about that. I've also been in my job for 4 years. Amazing how I'm not yelling at people and getting my ass canned.



Amen to that.



Again, how is Bush to blame for that? Was he supposed to somehow give you the ambition to quit your previous job to find something better?

No offense, but I don't see how Bush is to blame for the state of your resume, or your career choices.



I'm certain it isn't "Bush Jr's" fault. Our President, George Walker Bush, does not have Junior as a suffix to his name. Some have referred to him as "W", "Dubya", or even simply "Bush 43". His dad, George Herbert Walker Bush (note the difference), was the 41st President, now sometimes being called "Bush I", or "Bush 41".

Back to the point, it's pretty hard to say that the economic trouble from 2001-2004 are entirely George W Bush's fault. Lots of issues impacted the world and domestic economy that had little to NOTHING to do with White House policy.

As for overseas outsourcing, the potential for this have existed for quite some time, and have only been helped by the advancement of technology. You can blame Bush for not changing laws to prevent it from happening....but then again you could blame Clinton for not doing it during his term as well.

As for what to do now, it's a tough situation...you don't want the recovering economy to take one on the chin, yet you want to spur the recovery in the job market, both in terms of quality and quantity. Bush and kerry both have workable plans...Kerry seems to be favoring the "penalize outsourcing & incent new jobs creation" route, while Bush likes the "cut corporate taxes to make us more the US competitive in the world labor market, and cut personal taxes so US workers have more money to spend" plan. I actually side more with Kerry on this one, just because I think the best route is to reduce the cost savings from outsourcing...though both plans could work, and the Bush plan appears less restrictive overall.



The job market is poor, but it is improving. You understand the concept of improvement, right? My Detroit Tigers lost an AL-record 119 games last year, I expect them to make a 20-30 game improvement....that's still 89-99 losses. Just because it's improving doesn't mean it no longer sucks.

I still don't see how you getting canned for yelling at people, and then being unable to find work is a direct fault of Bush. All I see is a lot of shifting personal responsibility away from yourself and shifting the blame onto the President. Certainly easy to do...but that doesn't make it correct.

It's entirely possible that you lost your job because of your own actions, and then are unable to find a new one because your resume, education, job experience, and/or interviewing skills suck ass. Hate to splash you in the face with that bucket of cold water, but I think you should focus more on improving your situation than blaming people for your current job woes.



Good to hear you're going to school. That should certainly help the resume, and make it possible to get a better job, with a stronger career path. I'm leaving the rest of that statement alone, because I've heaped plenty of abuse on you already, and the subject of faith is one best left out of this discussion.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

I like to call him Bush the Younger, but only because then I can giggle at the historical parallels to the Punic wars. But don't you think you just play semantics for the sake of them now, Dark? Its not like anybody doesn't know what is meant when you call him Bush Jr, so why the frenzy about that? Of all things said about him, the Jr. is the most harmless, ain't it?

Because in this case, it's symptomatic of a larger problem. Namely, the notion of geldon educating himself on the subject matter before posting.

I'm just never understood how anyone considered "Bush Jr" a better shorthand for the Prez than Dubya, Bush 43, Bush II, GWB, or even simply "W".

It was a minor point anyway, certainly not central to the post. Don't read too much "frenzy" into it. Re-read the paragraph with the patient tone, inflection, and tempo of a preschool teacher that is correcting a child's grammar...that's how it was intended.

Bring the noise.
Cheers................

This my friends is the epitome of wit!