Job One
Filed Under Bullshit, Work | Leave a Comment
One of the bedrocks of being alive and being anywhere near ‘successful,’ is having a job — working a wage.
And although job openings in the U.S. rose in March to the highest level in more than three years, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond President Jeffrey Lacker noted yesterday unemployment remains at “a very elevated rate“ and the whole process will take time — a long time.
Numbers involving employment can be way-deceiving, creating a picture that’s more Pablo Picasso than Norman Rockwell.
(Illustration found here).
Arithmetic is nowhere near my strong suit.
Bloomberg explains:
The Labor Department reported that as of April, 58.4 percent of the U.S. population was gainfully employed.
That’s down from 58.6 percent in February, and exactly where the employment-to-population ratio stood a year ago.
The decline reflects the fact that job gains aren’t keeping up with population growth.
It also demonstrates the illusory nature of April’s reduction in the unemployment rate, to 8.1 percent from 8.2 percent in March.
The Labor Department, in its monthly household survey, counts people as unemployed only if they’re in the labor force, meaning they’re actively looking for work.
In April, the estimated number of people in the labor force fell by 342,000.
So the unemployment rate fell, too, even though the survey counted 169,000 fewer people with jobs.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, there’s about 12.5 million US peoples unemployed right now with about 5.1 million of those on what’s called ‘long-term unemployment’ (27 weeks or more) and those guys are the in the pits.
Despite all that, US employers added 3.74 million job openings in March, the highest in nearly four years, to create a sense of a kind of sunshine: That means an average of 3.4 people competed for each open job. While that’s far better than the nearly 7-to-1 ratio when the recession ended. In a healthy job market, the ratio is usually around 2 to 1.
Jobs are still hard to come by and customers at the liquor store I manage are always waxing sad about finding a job — the unemployment rate up here in northern California is way above the average at about 11.3 percent, pretty heady.
Along with the precarious job market, there’s the assholes working to strip what’s left off the bones.
In the defeat yesterday of Indiana’s Dick Lugar to a Tea Party nit-twit is just another sampling of what’s in store for the job market.
GOP peoples blame the jobless for being without a job.
One asshole Tea-Bagger is Maine’s Governor, Paul LePage, who blubbered that to get these shiftless people off their asses is to gut unemployment benefits.
(Via Think Progress):
There is such thing as a free lunch, but you’re picking up the tab.
Maine’s welfare program is cannibalizing the rest of state government.
I am compassionate and committed to our children, our elderly, and our disabled.
But to all you able-bodied people out there, get off the couch and get yourself a job.
What a liar — compassionate?
Paul Krugman in his new book — “End This Depression Now!” — discusses the job market and how being employed is part and parcel of the so-called American Dream.
In an excerpt found at HuffPost, Krugman talks about working and how the GOP/Tea Party looks at the jobless, as in ‘involuntary unemployment’ and how to gaze back at them:
The classic answer to such people comes from a passage near the beginning of the novel The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (best known for the 1948 film adaptation starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston): “Anyone who is willing to work and is serious about it will certainly find a job. Only you must not go to the man who tells you this, for he has no job to offer and doesn’t know anyone who knows of a vacancy. This is exactly the reason why he gives you such generous advice, out of brotherly love, and to demonstrate how little he knows the world.”
Quite.
Also, about those McDonald’s applications: in April 2011, as it happens, McDonald’s did announce 50,000 new job openings.
Roughly a million people applied.
Later, he offers up this insight between the 1930s and the nowadays:
Nor is America immune.
Can anyone deny that the Republican Party has become far more extreme over the past few years?
And it has a reasonable chance of taking both Congress and the White House later this year, despite its radicalism, because extremism flourishes in an environment in which respectable voices offer no solutions as the population suffers.
Krugman paints a picture worse than we think it is, and although he claims the problems can be lessened with more cash flowing into US peoples pockets, this country is still a Tea Party world, and those with the biggest mouth, whether lying or not, still gets the most attention.
A full-time job just listening to the shit.
Frightful
Filed Under Bullshit, Everything, Politics | Leave a Comment
In a most-personal and open manner, Rick Santorum endorsed Mitt Romney for president — the broadcast via e-mail at about 11 o’clock last night.
Who’s the wiser?
Reportedly, last Friday Romney visited Pittsburgh where he and Santorum clinched together for “an over-hour long one-on-one meeting,” and three days later, the endorsement came in the middle of the night.
These Republicans sure love their presidential nominee.
Why — Romney is scared of everybody.
(Illustration found here).
Yesterday, during a town hall meeting in Ohio, a women in the audience commented that President Obama “should be tried for treason.” She didn’t explain why Obama had committed treason — which is punishable by death. Her comments received a big round of applause from the audience.
Romney, however, didn’t say a thing about right or wrong, in fact, asked the lady to again pose her question.
Afterwards, away from the crowd and their crazed faces, Romney told reporters, “No, of course not,” when asked whether Obama should be tried for treason — scared of everybody.
In the true words of an asshole on the flap last week about Romney’s gay foreign policy adviser:
“How is he going to stand up to Putin?
How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me?” asked the man who led the charge against Grennell, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer.
Yes, indeed.
And why would Fischer even make such a statement if he had any real regard for Romney.
If US peoples go to the polls in November and put Romney in the White House, talk about a shit-storm, but it’s a storm of shit we all gotta eat.
Apparently, US peoples are not really wide awake yet, or they’re maybe just dumb.
From a CNN/ORC International poll:
According to the survey, 44 percent of people questioned said they have a favorable view of Romney, up 10 points from February, while 43 percent said they have an unfavorable opinion, down 11 points, and 13 percent were unsure.
According to the poll, 53 percent of Americans plan to give Romney a second look when the primaries are officially over, with 45 percent saying they already know enough about Romney to decide whether he would be a good president.
The survey indicates Romney’s popularity still lags well behind Obama’s: 56 percent have a favorable view of the president, with 42 percent saying they see Obama in a negative light.
“The Republican Party’s favorable rating has also rebounded now that the nomination fight is all but over, from 35 percent in March to 41 percent,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
“That still puts the GOP several points behind the Democratic party’s 46 percent rating, but it is an indication that the wounds have started to heal from the primary season.”
Wounds?
If the American electorate can’t figure it out, we’re f*ucked.
Although the Obama presidency has pretty-much cratered since 2009 — he’s going to end up probably being considered the way-most disappointing president in US history — but he’s still a trillion times better than anyone/anything the GOP has to offer and at least with Obama there won’t be any bat-shit crazy stuff, even if it hurts to watch.
The US voter is fickle — it’s gonna be frightful and pure scary until all this is behind us.
In the sage words of Mr. Carlin: “Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!”
Indeed.
Climate A Go-Go
Filed Under Cloud gazing, Environment, Weather | Leave a Comment
Moist weather here early this morning along California’s northern coast — a seemingly continuous drizzle which turns into a deep, wet fog and then back again.
Fairly normal, though, for this region, but it still gets old, and everyone appears jolted with a zest for life at each sliver of sunshine, which comes infrequently.
Rare last Sunday, however, was an EF-1 tornado with winds between 73 and 112 miles-per-hour punching across a portion of southern France, south of Toulouse, a near-unprecedented twister which collapsed walls, uprooted trees, and cars moved out of place.
The storm was accompanied by baseball-sized hail — France has about three tornadoes a year, compared to the nearly 500 reported in the US since 2009.
Welcome to weather’s new-normal.
(Illustration of tornado in southern France found here).
Along with the twister, Europe felt the heat last weekend with records set all over — Moscow was at 84 degrees last Sunday, a new record since data collection began 130 years ago, authorities said.
The reason is a large low pressure system off the coast of France pumping hot air from the Sahara Desert northwards into Europe, which should be keeping things real-warm the remainder of the week.
In my humble observation, there’s never been an event so humongously-devastating as climate change in the history of the entire-whole world, and apparently the shit is getting worse.
Which might be a good thing.
US peoples are starting to take more notice — a poll a couple of weeks ago: When invited to agree or disagree with the statement, “global warming is affecting the weather in the United States,” 69 percent of respondents in the new poll said they agreed, while 30 percent disagreed.
And:
“Most people in the country are looking at everything that’s happened; it just seems to be one disaster after another after another,” said Anthony A. Leiserowitz of Yale University, one of the researchers who commissioned the new poll.
“People are starting to connect the dots.”
Some people — others are criminally lying.
Nut-house Heartland Institute, a right-wing, bat-shit crazy bunch, unleashed a new bowel-movement aimed to further confuse the issue of global warming.
An excerpt via Care2.com:
The Heartland Institute is clearly attempting to sway people into thinking that those who accept that global warming is happening are marginal kooks: “The point is that believing in global warming is not “mainstream,” smart, or sophisticated. … The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.”
The assholes know they’re on the fringe, but these clowns will one day pay as their children and grandchildren will end up loathing their name — if there’s any grandchildren of anybody’s still alive.
Folks, climate change is real-bad shit.
Bill McKibben at tomdispatch calls climate change “the most important story of our time,” and time’s a-wasting:
This is a full-on fight between information and disinformation, between the urge to witness and the urge to cover-up.
The fossil-fuel industry has funded endless efforts to confuse people, to leave an impression that nothing much is going on.
But — as with the tobacco industry before them — the evidence has simply gotten too strong.
…
The one institution in our society that isn’t likely to be much help in spreading the news is… the news.
Studies show our papers and TV channels paying ever less attention to our shifting climate.
In fact, in 2011 ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox spent twice as much time discussing Donald Trump as global warming.
Don’t expect representatives from Saturday’s Connect the Dots day to show up on Sunday’s talk shows. Over the last three years, those inside-the-Beltway extravaganzas have devoted 98 minutes total to the planet’s biggest challenge.
Last year, in fact, all the Sunday talk shows spent exactly nine minutes of Sunday talking time on climate change — and here’s a shock: all of it was given over to Republican politicians in the great denial sweepstakes.
…
If we’re going to tell this story — and it’s the most important story of our time — we’re going to have to tell it ourselves.
People always ask me after we starting talking about the weird weather: Do you ‘believe‘ in global warming?
And as always, I tell ‘em climate change ain’t no religion, it don’t depend on a belief system or any other mode/function in a dream-like state to know reality from delusion.
Real as a sharp pain in the guts.
The rub, however, is greed for economic growth.
From Grist yesterday:
It’s not about climate sensitivity or forcings or feedbacks; it’s not about biophysical systems at all. It’s about what nations will do, what sort of treaties will be signed, what sort of policies will be implemented.
In other words, it’s a question about politics.
Politics and power.
This is kind of obvious, but it often goes unremarked: Predictions about the impacts of climate change involve politics as much as physics.
Scenarios devised by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change don’t just involve different estimations of climate sensitivity, they involve different projections of the spread of renewable energy and efficiency, the development of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), the rate of deforestation, and all sorts of other social, political, and technological trends.
Just one example — the crazed desire for energy to push the economics can be seen in the problems within the new-booming shale oil industry, where waste is flared-off into the environment, creating even more CO2 in the warming air: According to a World Bank official, gas flaring bumped up by 4.1 percent in 2011 — roughly totaling the gas demand from Denmark.
And we gotta put on the brakes, or else…
A new study from the University of Michigan reveals it’s the economy, stupid, but going the other way:
It is the first analysis to use measurable levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to assess fluctuations in the gas, rather than estimates of CO2 emissions, which are less accurate.
“If ‘business as usual’ conditions continue, economic contractions the size of the Great Recession or even bigger will be needed to reduce atmospheric levels of CO₂,” said Tapia Granados, who is a researcher at the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).
…
In years of above-trend world GDP, from 1958 to 2010, the researchers found greater increases in CO2 concentrations.
For each trillion in U.S. dollars that the world GDP deviates from trend, CO2 levels deviate from trend about half a part per million (ppm), they found.
Concentrations of CO2 are estimated to have been between 200-300 ppm during preindustrical times.
They are presently close to 400 ppm, and levels around 300 ppm are considered safe to keep a stable climate.
To break the economic habits contributing to a rise in atmospheric CO2 levels and global warming, Tapia Granados says that societies around the world would need to make enormous changes.
“Since the 1980s, scientists like James Hansen have been warning us about the effects global warming will have on the earth,” Tapia Granados said.
And this ain’t no ‘cry wolf‘ bullshit — it is the wolf.
Near-Pure Crazy
Filed Under Bullshit, Media | Leave a Comment
Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
– George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946 (h/t Juan Cole)Politics is weird.
And creepy.
And now, I know, lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality.
– Shepard Smith, Fox News, May 2, 2012 (h/t Crooks and Liars)
Smith was waxing truthful on yesterday’s who-gives-a-shit-news of Newt Gingrich’s final curtain call on his bid to be president, blubbering near-incoherent while pushing aside last December’s narcissistic bluster it was ‘obvious‘ he “…was going to be the nominee.”
Well, Newt ain’t the only fruitloop left in the bowl.
We still got Mittens, and anybody with the initials GOP.
(Illustration found here).
Beyond, but not far from politics: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco blew off a lawsuit yesterday against John Yoo, the pompous author of the now-infamous “torture memos” which allowed George Jr. to waterboard, prick pricks and pull fingernails against anybody who moved during the most-successful war on terror.
And dumb-ass, bat-shit craziness from Judge Raymond Fisher: “…we cannot say that any reasonable official in 2001-03 would have known that the specific interrogation techniques allegedly employed against Padilla, however appalling, necessarily amounted to torture.”
What can any sane, non-delusional person say to that — maybe how about international law, Ronald Reagan, common decency, Nazis, etc.
Besides, were there anyone working for George Jr. resembling a ‘reasonable official‘ in 2001-2003?
Yoo’s response: “He has now lost before two separate courts of appeals, and will need to find a new hobby for his remaining time in prison.”
One asshole among so many that should themselves be behind bars.
And this should be a man the barricades, Occupy everything call to arms:
Between 1979 and 2005 (the latest data available with these breakdowns), the share of total income held by the top 1.0 percent more than doubled, from 9.7 percent to 21.0 percent, with most of the increase occurring since 1993.
The top 0.1 percent led the way by more than tripling its income share, from 3.3 percent to 10.3 percent. This 7.0 percentage-point gain in income share for the top 0.1 percent accounted for more than 60 percent of the overall 11.2 percentage-point rise in the income share of the entire top 1.0 percent.
…
From 1978–2011, CEO compensation grew more than 725 percent, substantially more than the stock market and remarkably more than the annual compensation of a typical private-sector worker, which grew a meager 5.7 percent over this time period.
And this from old Romney buddy Edward Conard and how the rich are different…and better, and you boys and girls at the bottom should accept that fact, just get way-greedy and life will be wonderful.
From the NY Times on Tuesday:
At a nearby table we saw three young people with plaid shirts and floppy hair.
For all we know, they may have been plotting the next generation’s Twitter, but Conard felt sure they were merely lounging on the sidelines.
“What are they doing, sitting here, having a coffee at 2:30?” he asked.
“I’m sure those guys are college-educated.”
Conard, who occasionally flashed a mean streak during our talks, started calling the group “art-history majors,” his derisive term for pretty much anyone who was lucky enough to be born with the talent and opportunity to join the risk-taking, innovation-hunting mechanism but who chose instead a less competitive life.
In Conard’s mind, this includes, surprisingly, people like lawyers, who opt for stable professions that don’t maximize their wealth-creating potential.
He said the only way to persuade these “art-history majors” to join the fiercely competitive economic mechanism is to tempt them with extraordinary payoffs.
Conard’s book, “Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong,” has been dubbed to be most-likely “…the most hated book of the year.”
Does one have to be an asshole to be bat-shit crazy?
The answer: No, but apparently being an asshole sure accelerates the process.
Pump the Dollars
Filed Under Bullshit, Economy, Energy, Environment, Politics | Leave a Comment
One item that’s fallen off the news radar the past few weeks is gas prices — no more the hand-wringing stories of people going without food to fuel their vehicles and all is well.
Out of sight, out of mind?
You betcha.
Yesterday, I put another $20 worth of gas in my Jeep with the pump price still at $4.49 a gallon for regular — it’s stuck at that price and although national pump prices fell $.06 cents to $3.84 a gallon and overall prices are 1.3 percent lower than a year earlier, up here in northern California, time seems frozen.
The state average has dropped 1.7 cents to about $4.18 a gallon for regular.
An IMF consultation document reports oil and mining companies might be “under-taxed” relative to their profits and internal rates of return.
No fracking’ shit, sherlock.
(Illustration found here).
Just to keep the oil flowing, barrel prices rose with reports there’s been growth in U.S. and Chinese manufacturing sectors, creating a demand for way-more energy: Benchmark crude rose $1.29 to finish at $106.16 per barrel in New York. That’s the highest settlement price since it hit $106 on March 28. Brent crude increased 19 cents to $119.66 per barrel in London.
The drop in gas prices is due to US peoples cutting back, this while oil-related profits are NOT cutting back.
However, as long as the GOP has breath in its collective assholes, there will be no change in the tax schedule and the money keeps flowing.
No matter the harm, no matter the long-term side effects of a major f*ck-up.
Just ask the most-wonderful BP.
Via Think Progress:
Two years after the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP is reporting profits of $5.9 billion for the first quarter of 2012.
…
BP has also returned to pre-disaster levels for campaign contributions.
It has nearly surpassed 2010 spending with $122,410 in political contributions so far this cycle, 65 percent of which has gone to Republicans.
Its lobbying is much more expansive, with $8.1 million in 2011, and nearly $2.2 million so far this year.
Meanwhile, CEO Bob Dudley received a raise of $6.8 million in compensation, while BP paid out $1.1 million in shares to former CEO Tony Hayward, who resigned in the wake of the Gulf disaster.
And all is indeed well in them warm, sweet Gulf waters: We are also finding eyeless crabs, crabs with their shells soft instead of hard, full grown crabs that are one-fifth their normal size, clawless crabs, and crabs with shells that don’t have their usual spikes … they look like they’ve been burned off by chemicals.”
The GOP and Mitt Romney keeps the subject on the DL.
From Politico:
What does Big Oil get in return for its $200 million investment in Romney?
It gets to keep its billions in special tax breaks every year.
So middle-class families pay twice — high gas prices when they fill up the tank and $4 billion in taxpayer-funded subsidies for an industry where the top five companies combined made $137 billion in profits last year.
At the same time, Big Oil gets one of its own dictating Romney’s energy policy.
Harold Hamm, Romney’s top energy adviser, is a billionaire oil executive who says clean energy is a “magical fantasy” and wants high gas prices.
He admitted as much when he declared in 2009 that cheap oil would be a “disaster.”
Welcome the elephant to the room.