October 05, 2012
— Ace "Unfair," seems to be the consensus.
One "Rebel Pundit" is responsible for this outrage. more...
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08:04 AM
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— Ace I just heard Obama use this in his Fairfax, VA rally. It's an old chestnut, used by Al Gore when Bush and Cheney suggested the economy was entering a recession in 2000 (it, um, was, and did).
I assume he'll use it as Gore did -- suggesting that even mentioning that the economy is awful makes the economy awful. He will therefore attempt to suggest that Romney is behaving unpatriotically, and as an economic sabateur, by simply noting the economy is in a deep lingering recession.
Just an FYI.
Oh, and the jackass crowed about how awesome a 7.8% unemployment rate is.
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07:34 AM
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Among Those Certain to Vote, It's Romney, 51-48
— Ace Eh, more than those "certain to vote" will be voting, but it's something.
The important thing here -- maybe -- is that this the first poll taken in Ohio after the debate.
Fingers crossed.
The GOP has reduced a 14 point gap in absentee ballot requests down to 5 points in the Buckeye State.
In VA, it's also closed to one point, per Rasmussen. Correction: Romney's actually ahead by one in VA, 49-48.
As a cob said yesterday: Those who are predicting a 2008 level of Democratic enthusiasm and participation are probably in for a big disappointment.
Thanks to @johnekdahl and @conartcritic
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06:41 AM
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— Ace Yes, that sounds about right.
The best news anywhere in the U.S. economy over the past three months has been in the government sector, where unemployment has dropped dramatically from 5.7 percent in July to 5.1 percent in August to 4.3 percent in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.Both the federal and state governments increased their employees in July, August and September.
Romney, meanwhile, has issued a statement on the still-awful unemployment (at a level which no incumbent president has been reelected with):
“This is not what a real recovery looks like. We created fewer jobs in September than in August, and fewer jobs in August than in July, and we’ve lost over 600,000 manufacturing jobs since President Obama took office. If not for all the people who have simply dropped out of the labor force, the real unemployment rate would be closer to 11%. The results of President Obama's failed policies are staggering – 23 million Americans struggling for work, nearly one in six living in poverty and 47 million people dependent on food stamps to feed themselves and their families. The choice in this election is clear. Under President Obama, we’ll get another four years like the last four years. If I’m elected, we will have a real recovery with pro-growth policies that will create 12 million new jobs and rising incomes for everyone.”
Hmmm... Has the Labor Department changed its methodology without telling anyone?
The Real Jobs Report. As Pethokoukis explains, it's still awful.
Among his points:
3. The broader U-6 rate — which takes into account part-time workers who want full-time work and lots of discouraged workers who’ve given up looking — stayed unchanged at 14.7%. That’s a better gauge of the true unemployment rate and state of the American labor market.4. The shrunken workforce remains shrunken. If the labor force participation rate was the same as when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be 10.7%. If the participation rate had just stayed steady since the start of the year, the unemployment rate would be 8.4% vs. 8.3%. Where’s the progress? Here is RDQ Economics:
Such a rapid decline in the unemployment rate would be consistent with 4%–5% real economic growth historically but much of the decline is accounted for by people dropping out of the labor force (over the last year the employment-population ratio has risen to only 58.7% from 58.4%). We believe part of the drop in the unemployment rate over the last two months is a statistical quirk (the household data show an increase in employment of 873,000 in September, which is completely implausible and likely a result of sampling volatility). Moreover, declining labor force participation over the last year (resulting in 1.1 million people disappearing from the labor force) accounts for much of the rest of the decline.
...
6. The 114,000 jobs created would have been a good number Â… but for 1962, not 2012. The U.S. economy needs 2-3 times that number every month to close the jobs gap (which is the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels while also absorbing the people who enter the labor force each month.) At 114,000 jobs a month, the jobs gap would not close until after 2025, according to the Hamilton Project.
7. We are still on pace to create fewer jobs this year than last year. In 2012, employment growth has averaged 146,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 153,000 in 2011.
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06:17 AM
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— Ace I know conservatives want to argue about this but I'm not sure why. There's a kind of Won't Back Down ethic in us, a kind of reflexive stubborness, but the while 47% of the country does not pay income taxes, I don't think one can argue that that all of these folks have an "entitlement mentality." Obviously, a segment of the population does, but there's no perfect overlap with the percentage who pay no federal income taxes.
Plus, some people who do pay federal income taxes -- like Sandra Fluke -- do have an entitlement mentality.
So he was talking about two different things, and there is truth in both of the individual points, but to suggest there's perfect overlap between the 47% and the entitlement mentality is simply wrong. There is a difference between the entitled and the striving, after all, though many of both may be poor; and there's a whole lot of entitlement in the upper strata of income.
So why defend it? Just say "I got that wrong" and move on.
Which is what he's decided to do.
In an interview Thursday night with Fox News, Romney was asked what he would have said had the "47 percent" comments come up during his debate in Denver on Wednesday night with President Barack Obama."Well, clearly in a campaign, with hundreds if not thousands of speeches and question-and-answer sessions, now and then you're going to say something that doesn't come out right," Romney said. "In this case, I said something that's just completely wrong."
He added: "And I absolutely believe, however, that my life has shown that I care about 100 percent and that's been demonstrated throughout my life. And this whole campaign is about the 100 percent."
Eh. I think it's hard enough to defend the things we get right against a hostile liberal media; we do not have the luxury of excess time to defend the mistakes, too.
Posted by: Ace at
05:09 AM
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— Ace Obama's big happy shiny news here is the drop of the unemployment rate from 8.1% to 7.8%.
The labor participation rate finally stopped falling, and inched up slightly by 0.1%.
Revisions, Revisions: They revised job creation numbers for the past two months by around 40,000 per month. A commenter says they actually revised for the past three months, but I didn't see that last revision.
On CNBC, the liberal-seeming analysts are joking that of course Obama blew off his debate, he had this awesome 7.8% unemployment rate month coming.
Yeah. Pretty super.
Jack Welch: Obama's Manipulating Numbers. Hey, we were all thinking it.
I'll be interested to see an analysis of the data.
Via Hot Air, some "contradictory" numbers.
Anyway, after almost four years, Obama's managed to reduce the unemployment rate... to what it was when he assumed office.
Yay?
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04:36 AM
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— Gabriel Malor Happy Friday.
REMINDER: the September jobs report will be out this morning from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Most are saying there will be no change in the unemployment rate.
Investigators are looking into whether the shooting of two Border Patrol agents on Tuesday was the result of friendly fire. Agent Nicholas Ivie was killed; another agent was wounded.
Former NBA player and CBS basketball analyst Greg Anthony has recorded a TV ad for Mitt Romney to air in Nevada. It's another one of the "it's okay to vote against Obama" ads.
UBL TV movie will air the weekend before the election.
A Democratic candidate for Maine's state senate is getting slammed in a mailer sent by the Maine GOP for leading a "bizarre double life." She plays World of Warcraft. I don't know how PR savvy this Democrat is (as a rule, state legislators aren't the brightest bulbs in the sky), but she could probably play this into a ton of donations from WoW gamers. It's what I'd do if I ever got hit for leading a "bizarre quadruple life" in Guild Wars 2, as I tend to do...
Democrats are hyperventilating that Romney surrogate Gov. Sununu said Obama was lazy for not properly preparing for the debate. I rather like Byron Tau's summation here, though: "Obama and his staff spent a good deal of time participating in the usual Beltway media game of lowering expectations — emphasizing how little preparation Obama was doing and how he spent last Sunday watching football." In other words, Obama was asking for it.
Posted by: Gabriel Malor at
02:59 AM
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— Ace Expectations:
Economists expect employers added 113,000 jobs in September, while the unemployment rate edged up to 8.2 percent from August's 8.1 percent, according to a Reuters survey. FridayÂ’s report will be the second-to-last before the November election.
That, of course, is very weak. But in setting up such a low expectation, it gives the media room to play up 140,000 as an "unexpected rebound."
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02:52 AM
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October 04, 2012
— Maetenloch
A Fascinating Interview with Nolan Bushnell
Nolan Bushnell is most famous for founding Atari and creating the entire video game industry in the 70's and starting the Chuck E Cheese pizza chain in the 80's. These days he's now focusing on micro-games and software to improve learning.This may not sound so exciting but then this is Bushnell we're talking about.
Bushnell is also famous for hiring a local kid - Steve Jobs - despite his lack of a college degree or any formal training in electronics. Later Jobs brought in his friend, Steve Wozniak, as consultant on the Atari video game, Breakout. Jobs always admired Bushnell and considered him a mentor in business and in life. Watch this video and you can begin to see why Jobs was so impressed with him.
It's a long interview but well worth it to hear Bushnell discuss the connection between video games and learning, the importance of 'flow', why college loans are slavery, how welfare is a poison to the soul, the Arab Spring, the existence of God, as well as how to protect your privacy on Facebook and Twitter. I think I now know where Dos Equis got the idea for their ad campaign.
If you're in a hurry and don't care about Atari history, jump to 18:00 where it really starts getting good.
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06:06 PM
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— Dave in Texas Wore out from post debate wanking. And there's a game on, Arizona and St. Louis.
Speaking of debate wanking, Biden's advice to Obama for debate prep, via the Onion.
January 1979. I remember that one.
It's a winner.
Posted by: Dave in Texas at
05:06 PM
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