Month: June 2011

Nate Silver calls the relationship between unemployment numbers and the presidential election "maddeningly inexact." Silver emphasizes that a weaker economy will definitely hurt Obama. But:

Unemployment increased by 1.9 percentage points over the course of Richard Nixon’s first term, but he won re-election overwhelmingly. It also increased during George W. Bush’s and Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first terms, and their re-election bids were also successful. The unemployment rate fell to 3.9 percent from 5.3 percent, meanwhile, during Bill Clinton’s second term — but his Vice President, Al Gore, could not beat Mr. Bush in the Electoral College.

I did my insta-fisking of his empty announcement speech yesterday. The AP follows up:

The gross domestic product, the prime measure of economic strength, shrank by a severe 6.8 percent annual rate before Obama became president. The declines eased after he took office and economic growth, however modest, resumed. The recession officially ended six months into his presidency. Unemployment, however, has worsened under Obama, going from 7.8 percent in January 2009 to 9.1 percent last month. It hit 10.1 percent in October 2009.

A case can be made for and against the idea that Obama’s policies made the economy worse than it needed to be and that the recession lasted longer than it might have under another president. Such arguments are at the core of political debate. But Obama did not, as Romney alleged, make the economy worse than it was when he took office.

More signs – along with a recent staffing shift – that the neocon re-programming is beginning to misfire:

“Four American vets stood up, men from Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne who had been under fire with Tim and me many times in eastern Afghanistan. They filed out of their pew carrying two folded American flags that had been sent by Senator John McCain, himself a veteran of Vietnam. The young men presented my country’s flag to the Hetherington family and then to Idil [Hetherington’s girlfriend whose parents emigrated from Somalia]. I missed most of that beautiful moment because I was crying too hard, but later I did savor one comforting thought: this may be one of the few countries in the world where a senator would see fit to present the national flag to a woman of Somali origin in honor of an Englishman killed in Libya,” – Sebastian Junger on the memorial service for Tim Hetherington.

Sometimes a blogger's relationship to his readers can get a little strange:

I am a 60 year old sexually repressed woman.  One of the reasons that I read your blog is because it pulses with sexual energy.  This morning I had a dream and you were in it.  We were dancing, you and I, and I had my feet on your feet but I was somehow draped over your back, rather than in front of you.  You were somehow carrying me piggyback, but still, my feet were on yours.  We were in an old house, dancing around through the rooms.  Other people were there partying.  

I was getting kind of turned on and you carried me (I'm still on your back, with my feet on yours) up to what I presumed was your bedroom.  You tossed me onto the bed, which was covered with this green, parachute like thing and got onto me, your lips lightly touching mine.  So, we're going to do it, I thought.  And then the parachute began to lift.  A man was at the side of the bed, pulling it up off of the bed with a pulley contraption.  He pointed out some stirrups that were there in the middle of the parachute if I wanted to use them (boy, this is kinky, I thought).  I saw that we were each, you and I, in a sort of slot – like a spoke – around the parachute, and that other people were there as well, our feet converging in the middle.  It wasn't just me and you, anymore, and I was a little disappointed (because sex wasn't going to happen?) but still a little intrigued.  You assured me that this was what "play" was all about, and that sex was a vital part of it.

Anyway, I want to tell you that.

Er, thanks.

Seymour Hersh's new piece (paywalled) questions whether Iran is really pursuing nuclear weapons. Greenwald flogs Politico:

[T]wo cowardly, slimy Obama officials ran to Politico to bash Hersh while hiding behind the protective womb of anonymity automatically and subserviently extended by that "news outlet" … But the most hilarious part of this orgy of cowardly anonymity comes at the end, when Politico explains what is supposedly the prime defect in Hersh' journalism:

Hersh has faced criticism for his heavy reliance on anonymous sources, but New Yorker editor David Remnick has repeatedly said he stands by his reporter’s work.

A somewhat overheated examination of the Clarence Thomas hearings. Yes it's close to a Moore Award, but the notion that the right nurtures grievances and seeks revenge over long periods of time is not crazy. I should say I believed Anita Hill and Paula Jones. But I really have no idea what Weinergate really is about. And since no one seems to be crying foul, I'm not sure it matters. And Weiner, of course, will face the voters soon enough. Thomas got a lifetime appointment.

Calculated Risk updates his graph:

Unemployment is back up to 9.1%. Felix Salmon finds no good news in the report:

If you do want to go beyond the headlines, things look if anything even worse: the average duration of unemployment, for instance, just hit another new record at 39.7 weeks; a full 44% of all unemployed people have now been jobless for more than six months. And on top of that, it turns out that the government’s statisticians were overly optimistic for the past couple of months: the payrolls numbers for March and April were revised downwards by 39,000 jobs.

Jonathan Cohn:

Temporary factors, including supply disruptions from the Japan earthquake and tsunami, were a major factor in the slowdown. And it's just a one-month snapshot, never a good basis for broad conclusions. But, as the Times' David Leonhardt notes, this is consistent with five months of weak growth numbers. The economy just isn't creating jobs quickly enough to make up for the huge losses of 2009 and 2010.

Chad Stone graphs the new numbers. Pete Wehner resurrects the Carter meme the right so desperately wants to affix to Obama. If you want to know why I refuse to rule out the possibility of a Palin presidency, look at the chart above.

John McWhorter, a critic of the drug war, argues that it isn't:

The drive to parse the War on Drugs as “the new racism” is its own manifestation of paranoid style. It reduces a complex amalgam of good intentions, unintended consequences, and mission creep—in sum, history—to a Manichaean opposition between clueless, overfed white oppressors and powerless black subalterns. It is an easy score, appealing to the part of us that played cops and robbers as children, and gets off on conspiracy theories as adults.

(Hat tip: Damon Root)