Even with the exchange rate where it is, I think you’re overpaying.
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Do you? I’m not aware of vast, publicly-funded, civil engineering projects piping truffles to my house.
But, I have to admit that would be swell.
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Ugh - don’t. It was horrible. Starting with the premise. ETA - oh wait, WATCHED - I’m too late.
The economy sucks, but it doesn’t suck as bad as it did 8 years ago or so. Fun fact though, for the most part presidents don’t have a lot to do directly with the economy. Yes they can nudge things. Yes they can present plans and encourage congress. And even when congress passes laws, it is hard to gauge how much specific laws help or hurt the economy. It seems to me, factors outside of the government have the most hard hitting effects. Such as the crash in 2008.
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I would disagree only in that entry level white collar jobs do not need BA/BS and MA/MS level education to do. They some base levels of skills and critical thinking and group dynamic experience. Project Management, Product Management, many support roles and functions can be easily done by someone with 3-6 months of training/experience.
Many small team management roles also require only a base education, and candidates merely need on the job training and experience in the team dynamic and function.
Yes there are plenty of other roles and work that need advanced education; however, many roles are things like Technology Project Manager and its filled with someone who has a BA in History.
Props to Stephanopoulos for keeping composed through this. I certainly would have cracked up laughing.
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The economy is us.
Not an index. Not a metric. Us.
There is no such thing as a ‘jobless recovery’. The economy isn’t an intangible meta-god emergent from the trillions of transactions of people. It is the people. Here in the U.S., we’ve got about 320 million of 'em. And a lot of them are hurting even worse than they were before. For the first time in 130 years, over a third of those age 25-35 are living with their parents. And it’s not to save on rent.
The unemployment rate indicates just that: the proportion of people looking for a job and don’t have one. Because of this, it doesn’t take into account all of the people who have stopped looking for a job. It also doesn’t tell us anything about how many hours employees are making available to each of their workers, how much the employed are earning, nor what (if any) benefits the employed is receiving. Which means that the head count of those employed includes all of those currently working a part-time, shit-wage job while on Medicaid.
That is not what I’d call a ‘recovery’.
Look, I’m not trying to come down on ya like a ton of bricks—okay, maybe a half-ton if I’m being honest—but this is a misperception that the media seems so eager to push that I am done letting this kind of shit slide.
ETA: My response here is the product of misunderstand and frustration, and we all know that’s a volatile mix. Read @quorihunter’s post below, which articulates his position—and one I can’t help but agree with.
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Yeah, the Cold War really was kind of on hold in the mid 1970s. But later of course you had the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the boycott of the Moscow Olympics, and then the election of Reagan and his “Evil Empire” rhetoric to start things up again.
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I like to think of it as “Cold War 2:Electric Boogaloo”…
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It means whatever he says it does, I guess. And whatever his followers believe in between klan rallies and gay bashing.
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“I’m not entirely sure what the situation is, but whatever you’re saying is wrong has gotta be all Obama’s fault!”
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Sure, Ukraine. He’s an idiot on that front. But even more importantly, and fundamentally, immediately before being confused about Ukraine he admitted that he has no clue about what is contained in his party’s platform.
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I think he knows more than he’s letting on. It was a peculiar party platform negotiation:
…one of the most enduring dynamics of GOP conventions … is … mainstream nominees battling conservative activists over the party platform … This is one thing that made the Trump convention very different. The Trump Camp was totally indifferent to the platform. So party activists were able to write one of the most conservative platforms in history. Not with Trump’s backing but because he simply didn’t care. With one big exception: Trump’s team mobilized the nominee’s traditional mix of cajoling and strong-arming on one point: changing the party platform on assistance to Ukraine against Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine…
This does not mean Trump is controlled by or in the pay of Russia or Putin. It can just as easily be explained by having many of his top advisors having spent years working in Putin’s orbit and being aligned with his thinking and agenda. But it is certainly no coincidence. Again, in the context of near total indifference to the platform and willingness to let party activists write it in any way they want, his team zeroed in on one fairly obscure plank to exert maximum force and it just happens to be the one most important to Putin in terms of US policy…
( http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump-putin-yes-it-s-really-a-thing )
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Considering his VP is a scumbag I loathe even more as a human being than Trump, that does not comfort me. Pence is Ted Cruz with a less punchable face and experience in executive power.
The top reasons Pence is a douchebag:
- Signing an abortion restriction bill which were so messed up that 2 women are serving long sentences for having miscarriages
2 Singing in a “religious freedom” bill which amounted to Jim Crow 2.0 for gays.
3 Making lame promises to roll back Roe v Wade - Using gubernatorial campaign finds to pay his mortgage. (He was run out of Indiana for that)
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Man. “Pence” seems to overstate his value.
Can we start a petition to rename him to “Mike Farthing?”
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Actually, at least in the US the monied interests (eg, Gates Foundation) are investing quite a lot in efforts raise the level of education, at least in select fields which they view as useful for the labor force. Unfortunately, an awful lot of that is coming in the form of disruption for which there is little supporting evidence, and is a threat to other fields which are equally important (and useful) though maybe less obviously so.
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The crash in 08 was related to government though, or rather a lack of oversight in the financial realm. When Glass- Steagal ended it was a massive boon for banks as a single entity was allowed to do both investment and savings & loan and mixes between the two. Then we have the agencies that were supposed to certify bond ratings and the ultimate game of hot potato. Granted off hand, IIRC the Agencies were private entities, but the fact that a sector had grown that large without oversight just begs to be exploited by corporations. The uncontrolled sale of debt turned into a game of hot potato. There are lots of the things the government could have done to prevent the crash, but didn’t. Which is not to say that the government can make everything better, I’d say it’s not in its best interest to really fix the problems, which is why we need a new generation of governors and congressmen.
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Trump Jr. has already implied that daddy would essentially abdicate the office to Mike “Evil Race Bannon” Pence, while he concentrated on “making America great”, which I guess means playing golf.
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“I never ate that baby. If I ever ate a baby, you better believe I would be great at it.”
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That’s how you transliterate the Ukranian spelling of the place. Russians spell it Kiev. And it is a thing among the more scrupulously correct to use the Ukranian transliteration 'cos, you know. It’s a Ukrainian city and all. You certainly wouldn’t like it if your homeland was called S-SH-A by everyone just because Russians happen to spell it that way. So your common Western spelling is in fact Russian. (This point, I only now see, is made by others. Still true, though).
Second, you do realize that people occasionally disagree with you who aren’t paid for it, right? I swear that I’ve seen more cut-from-the-same-cloth “You are a shill!” comments then I have seen actual shill comments. I guess it is possible this user joined three years ago (only days after you, in fact) to make this one specific pro-Russia post and disappear into the ether but it isn’t… very likely.
I mean if you say I’m a shill—you won’t embarrass both of us by doing so, will you?—how do I defend myself against the charge? Do I ritually condemn Putin for something unsavory he’s done[1]? Do I dox myself?[2] Do I record myself in a non-Russian city holding a current newspaper and a printout of this post? What?
It’s an unanswerable charge, a cheap way to poison the well, and making it is unworthy.
And one quick thing I disagree about: You can hate Yanukovych all you want. He’s an oligarch scumbag as far as I’m concerned, but he wasn’t a Russian puppet. He was properly elected by the Ukrainian people who deserve to have their vote recognized. You can’t claim that people whose policies you don’t like are dictators or puppets or improperly elected when this is in variance with the simple truth of the matter. That makes any accusation you can make on grounds of the illegitimacy of results instantly less credible and it is vitally important to point out when democracy hasn’t been followed.
Also, recall that he initiated the EU thing. He wanted in. He panicked when Russia said that if he entered they couldn’t enjoy the same deals as before (this was 20% tit-for-tat diplomacy, and 80% that maintaining a porous border with a EU member state would mean that Russia would have drawbacks of EU membership and none of the benefits, the biggest risk, of coursed, manufactured goods dumping) which would have caused huge problems especially with gas. Ukrainian forums at the time bandied about something like 20% GDP gone. The Ukrainian economy is heavily integrated with the Russian one, especially in the east because of obvious historic reasons. Anyway, he panicked, withdrew, and chaos began.
He was, however, against NATO membership preferring to be in a treaty with both Russia and NATO as a neutral buffer. This is not a pro-Russian position (compare Belarus) but it isn’t a pro-West one. I think he may have been trying to evolve a foreign policy of his own, as shocking as that seems for Mr. Yolka himself. (Old Ukrainian joke. Now less funny than before.)
He did have some pro-Russian positions but these, from all I can recall and all I can read now, are pro-Russians-in-Ukraine not pro-Russian-Government. Which makes sense. Ukraine has a natural fault line between the east and the west because the population in the East is heavily Russian and is also Russian-speaking. I make the distinction because Yanukovich himself is an Ukrainian whose first language is Russian. It is not uncommon at all, and neither is the opposite situation. His party was the ‘Party of Regions’ which indicated that he had poor support in the capital but was heavily favored among those in the East Ukraine.
Am I defending him? Hell no. He was an oligarchic thug who couldn’t lead his country and helped screw it up. Am I defending Putin? Hell no. He’s your basic strongman whose sole positive trait is that he appears downright saintly if you compare him to the outside perception of America. Why? Recall: your current president claimed the power to kill anyone, anywhere, for secret reason he has no plans to disclose, and with no recourse or legal remedy. He actually did this. And while in America this seems an interesting debate about the limits of executive power and the ethics of preemptive warfare, outside of it this is the cause of stark terror compared to which Putin’s relative lack of random bombing of countries half a world away seems statesmanlike and diplomatic. More people would dislike Putin if you lot raised the bar.
Instead this November you are picking between the Big Orange Thing and someone apparently hell-bent on starting WWIII.
Great.
So if I’m not defending anyone (except possibly m_holloway, only insofar as I don’t plan to judge him on as far as I can make out no evidence at all) why am I making this post? Because facts matter and your sense of political rightness does not absolve you of the need to heed them, I guess.
[1] I think the conduct of the Russian military in the Chechan wars was deplorable and he has command responsibility for that one. Mm… lesseee… I think the Georgian conflict was not justified at the level it was pursued. Protest, I can see. Intervention, even. But that was war and that was too much.
[2] I’d prefer I didn’t.
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