The more things change...

Comments

[Jennifer]

This is from 1998.

[Docfernanda Interrogate]

So what you're saying is that doom and gloom and Minister of Optimism aside, things really AREN'T getting worse?

What an optimistic thing to say!

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

I HEARD that!

vvv
~

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

Unemployment, 1998: 4.5%

Today, I learned on from a poster on some other blog that we should thank Obama for today's great unemployment number: the rate dropped to 8.5%.
~

[zombie rotten mcdonald]

well, I have little illusion that under President McCain Palin, that number would be more like 3%*

*because they would have issued orders to not count union workers, or non-white workers, or women workers, or non-Republican workers, or workers who once said a bad word. Otherwise, 23%.

Not that Obama deserves credit for it. He definitely deserves a pile of shit that the rate isn't 5%; it could have been done. I believe Krugthulhu on that.

However, ARRA did save my bacon, in that the last two projects I did were completed using those funds, at least partially. The tax credit parts of that were shit, but I am certain the GOP would really have preferred take everything but the tax credits OUT.

[zombie rotten mcdonald]

Unemployment, 1998: 4.5%

Also, 1998: WTC existed.

And GWB's damage was limited to Texas. And Molly Ivins.

[Jennifer]

He's got a point.

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

Sure, zrm. But remember the Republican party in January, 2009?

They were wiped out. Many of them deserved to be indicted. It was Obama who said, hey, I need some of them in my cabinet. And no, we're not going to investigate any of them. We'll go after those pesky whistle-blowers instead. Come to think of it, we need bipartisan votes for healthcare reform (I strongly suspect this was Rahmbo's way-too-clever attempt to get a corporate friendly bill without seeming to do so).

And we'll ignore all the liberals who've been right about everything for the last three decades. Let's just put some proteges of Larry Summers and Bob Rubin (the people who originally put the dynamite in place and lit the fuse) in charge of economic policy.

And here we are. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan are going to win in 2012, either way. How about the rest of us?
~

[zombie rotten mcdonald]

I'm not disagreeing, thndr.

[zombie rotten mcdonald]

Of course, if Al Gore had won, I suspect we at least would have managed a soft landing, rather than the full-on economic disaster; and in 2008 would have been looking at Holy Joe angling for the Big House.

I just scared the living hell out of myself.

[blue girl]

if Al Gore had won, I suspect we at least would have managed a soft landing,

Doubt it. Clinton got the ball rolling way too fast. You really think Gore would have stopped it? Why? Nah.

[blue girl]

Read this, Neil:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/iowa-the-meaningless-sideshow-begins-20120103

[blue girl]

Just take a look at the lists of top donors for Obama and McCain from the last election in 2008.

Obama’s top 20 list included:

* Goldman Sachs ($1,013,091)
* JPMorgan Chase & Co ($808,799)
* Citigroup Inc ($736,771)
* WilmerHale LLP ($550,668)
* Skadden, Arps et al ($543,539)
* UBS AG ($532,674), and...
* Morgan Stanley ($512,232).

McCain’s list, meanwhile, included (drum roll please):

* JPMorgan Chase & Co ($343,505)
* Citigroup Inc ($338,202)
* Morgan Stanley ($271,902)
* Goldman Sachs ($240,295)
* UBS AG ($187,493)
* Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher ($160,346)
* Greenberg Traurig LLP ($147,437), and...
* Lehman Brothers ($126,557).

...as Dylan Ratigan continually points out, is that the candidate who raises the most money wins an astonishing 94% of the time in America.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/iowa-the-meaningless-sideshow-begins-20120103#ixzz1ijdMO4S8

[Another Kiwi]

Uh, you are rather, bought and sold. We have such donations here but at nowhere those levels due to
1)The business people have arranged it so that it doesn't matter who is in power.
and 2)Decades of Gubblement sell-offs mean that there is fuck-all left to be dealing with.
It's a brave new world, my friends.

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

I'll take the other side of that, beegee. Al Gore wouldn't have lied us into Iraq. Iraq plus forgetting Afghanistan cost us $3 trillion.

Then there were the Bush-Cheney tax cuts...Medicare Part D...
~

[blue girl]

Glimmers of hope:

1) Comments in that yahoo article

2) OWS

3) This article in FORBES. Repeat FORBES: The Dumbest Idea In The World: Maximizing Shareholder Value

http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/11/28/maximizing-shareholder-value-the-dumbest-idea-in-the-world/

[blue girl]

I think the Tea Party might be a glimmer of hope too in that Enemies Make Strange Bedfellows sort of way. But, they might already be co-opted to the point where they are useless.

[blue girl]

I'll take the other side of that, beegee.

I understand those points. And they're probably true. But, the housing bubble might've burst faster -- or whatever. Gore would have been owned too.

Who can help it? It's the way the system's set up. No one can escape it without fundamental changes occurring. (See glimmers of hope for that above)

I think the Republicans just ruin things *faster* than the Democrats. But sooner or later we end up at the same place.

[Jennifer]

Hi kiddies! Did I miss anything?? :)

[zombie rotten mcdonald]

But sooner or later we end up at the same place.

Worm food.

and eventually, the Big Ice Ball.

So set em up and drink em down, Shriners!

[ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®©]

Lots of splaining, Jennifer.
~

[zombie rotten mcdonald]

I think BG is bucking for the Minister of Optimism job...

[Big Bad Bald Bastard]

I finally got "Griftopia", and it doesn't lead me to be optimistic.

[blue girl]

MOOJ instead of BEEG?

[blue girl]

BBB, Blue Kid read that over Christmas break and loved it. He read a couple of quotes to me that were hilarious. In that "OMG, I hate 'em!" sorta way.