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243,000 jobs in February 2006 and 2.1 million jobs created over the past 12 months - and almost 5 million since August 2003. The unemployment rate is 4.7 percent - lower than the average of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
State Unemployment Rates Fall. As of January, the unemployment rate is now at a record low in five states: Nevada, Florida, West Virginia, Montana, and Idaho. Over the past year, unemployment rates have decreased in 46 states.
Incomes Increase. Real disposable incomes have risen 2.2 percent over the past 12 months. Since January 2001, real after-tax income per person has risen 8.2 percent. Real household net worth is at an all-time high of $51.1 trillion, and the median net worth of American households rose 1.5 percent between 2001 and 2004.
Manufacturing Expansion Continues. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM), a private research group, reports manufacturing activity grew for the 33rd consecutive month in February. The ISM’s manufacturing index reading of 56.7 indicates continued sector expansion. According to the Federal Reserve, over the past 12 months total industrial production rose 3.1 percent and manufacturing industrial production rose 4.5 percent, including 0.7 percent in January.
Inflation Remains Contained. The core Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose just 0.2 percent in January. Core CPI has increased a moderate 2.1 percent over the past 12 months, indicating core inflation remains contained.
Retail Sales Rise. Nominal retail sales rose 2.3 percent in January and are up 8.8 percent over the past 12 months. In January, real consumer spending posted a solid 0.4 percent gain and increased 3.6 percent over the past year.
Service Sector Grows. The ISM reports non-manufacturing business activity grew for the 35th consecutive month in February. The ISM’s business activity index reading of 60.1 indicates continued sector growth.
Productivity Growth Continues. During the past four quarters, productivity has increased 2.5 percent. Productivity has grown at a 3.4 percent annual rate since the business-cycle peak in the first quarter of 2001.
Housing Starts Reach Highest Level In Over 30 Years. Housing starts in January totaled a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.276 million units - up 14.5 percent from December and the highest level in over 30 years.
GDP Growth Is Strong. Real GDP increased 3.5 percent in 2005, and growth was revised up from an original estimate of 1.1 percent to a 1.6 percent annual rate for the fourth quarter of 2005. The economy has been growing for 17 straight quarters, and the composite index of leading indicators increased 1.1 percent in January, indicating continued economic growth. In the last five years, the President’s tax relief has helped spur growth by keeping $880 billion in the hands of the American people. The Administration has reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending every year since 2001, and at the President’s request, Congress cut this spending last year.
Posted by tina1 on Mar 17, 2006 at 9:59 PM
I wonder why liberals are not talking about the economy? Oh ya, because the economy is on fire.
Speaking of the economy… it’s kind of strange that the main-stream LIBERAL MEDIA doesn’t cover/report about how strong our economy has been.
FOR EXAMPLE: Wall Street closed on Friday in an ebullient mood as the Dow Jones industrial average finished a strong week hitting a fresh five-year high. The Dow climbed to 11,279.65, its highest level since reaching 11,301.74 on May 21, 2001. Broader stock indicators also gained ground. The S&P 500 index rose 1,307.25
Posted by tina1 on Mar 17, 2006 at 10:47 PM
The liberal media only reports the negative numbers on Bush.
Why is it that Fox News Channel are the only news channel that reports these numbers.
52 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” support “using wiretaps to listen to telephone calls between suspected terrorists in other countries and American citizens in the United States without getting a court order to do so,” compared to 46 percent or “strongly” or “somewhat” oppose.
75 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” support “promoting the USA Patriot Act, which gives the government greater ability to spy on and prosecute suspected terrorists.”
56 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” support “making the tax cuts of the past few years permanent.”
Posted by tina1 on Mar 17, 2006 at 11:14 PM
TINA1: You are an idiot and unable to see the obvious.
Statistics can be used all sorts of ways, and you’re cherry picking to make statistics fit your own particular view of reality fit.
Sometimes “statistical facts” can be disproven using logic and reason and avoiding #‘s. IF things were as rosey as you say, then Bush and the Repugs would be enjoying phenomenal #s, and be cruising to a landslide midterm election.
They are not. The opposite is taking shape. The great job numbers are proven false indicators when you ask people about job security and job quality, disappearing benefits and the downward trend of jobs from skilled and professional to retail and basic services.
The WAR has been an absolute failure. There is no excusing that trillion $ fiasco.
The Unemployment #s are artificially low thanks to a series of rules pushed through by repugnicans to not count certain unemployed and count the military (which were never counted before) to pump up the #s.
Have fun in your number fantasy land. I enjoy seeing yet another particularly stupid and inane repug. who believes that all the repugs have to do is lie lie lie and winning will follow
The only thing that got the Repugs where they are was 9/11 and the mass hysteria Bush and his team used to work the nation’s nerves and blindly follow their idiocy.
You can only lie so long. You can only use statistics to mislead so long. No matter how you lie, you cannot convince forever the millions of Americans that things are as rosey as your taylored stats paint things to be.
After 6 years of Repug stupidity, Americans are waking up to the deteriorating health network in this country courtesy of Repug. neglect. Americans who happen to have healthcare that is. Millions don’t. Americans are realizing how they Bush and the Repugs. committed this nation to spend a trillion $ in a pointless war, while claiming there was NO money to solve the real every day issues of Americans. Problems formerly hard to find are more visible; childhood malnutrition, environmental distruction to obtain a few weeks worth of oil, or coal; and fighting to worship as they want or don’t want to all over again.
The list of things the Repugs have neglected is much longer than these few items. They got away with it thanks to three things <b> a right-wing press that parroted the Gov’t. and is afraid to challenge any official Gov’t. inforation. A well-oiled lie machine that fed the press stories to print and keep them in circulation via marketing and manipulation of 9/11 hysteria.
Now people are realizing that the fear of terror is yet another fraud, they are looking at the rosey pictures fools like you try to prove exists. A picture that is in stark contrast with their lives and they are saying everywhere NO MORE Repugnican B**LSH*T.
Please though I encourage you continue. Please keep blowing your horn in regards to how wonderful and successful this Repugnican ruled world is. Now that the blinders are off, I am eager to see more Americans respond appropriately as they have been recently.
Posted by johnnyincentx on Mar 18, 2006 at 1:03 PM
What Tina also fails to report is that Republicans in the Senate just voted to raise the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. The “good economy” is analogous to shopoholics who go on spending sprees, unwilling or unable to exercise any kind of restraint. Republicans have reduced tax rates on the richest Americans, leading to this wonderful, exhilarating experience of never having to pay for services. Meanwhile, our infrastructures are crumbling, and we are rapidly moving toward a split society between those who have plenty—and those who have no safety net when times turn bad. The government can’t even pay for the war in Iraq or for the necessary safeguards to increase security against those who really DO wish us harm.
This WILL catch up with us at some point. Times will turn bad, probably after President Bush has left office. At some point, the U.S. will HAVE to pay off its debts. As it is, in 2005, we spent $352 BILLION dollars paying interest on that borrowed money. Interest rates have to rise. In the long run, our economy will suffer and may even implode. All this for some short-term “stimulus” that the President wants to make permanent.
Question for Lisa: The NEXT time there is an economic slowdown or recession, should we cut taxes again? How about the time after THAT? And the one after THAT? We don’t need taxes at all, right? After all, we can just keep borrowing and spending and well, as every Republican will tell you, “taxes are BAD!”
Sigh. The GOP trumpets that it is the “party of ideas”. Riiiiiiiiiight.
“Taxes are too high.” And how exactly does one DETERMINE the “right” tax rate if it isn’t based on what we need to spend?
“Cutting taxes” isn’t a policy.
It’s a gimmick.
Posted by linguist on Mar 18, 2006 at 3:10 PM
Linguist: I’m with you
One way to counter this “cut taxes no matter what the consiquences” is to tie the consiquences to the results.
For fear of looking like pro-tax no one ever mentions how much this country’s living standards, infrastructure, healthcare, education, trade Etc. depend on a fair and equitable taxes.
Fair and equitable does sometimes require the wealthiest who benefit from all sorts of tax breaks should pay more for the wealth they’ve mined from living here.
The whole notion expressed by some FRight Wingers that they earned it and have a right to keep it is nonsense.
It totally divorces the concept of work and earning from actual income.
It also exempts the wealthy the concept of social responsibility as preached to us by the FRight Wing Religious clowns.
I don’t say taxes are good. It’s not a good or bad issue.
It is actually one of education.
Ask any anti-tax nutcase what his taxes go for and be ready for an absurd screed of utter nonsense. I remember one fool who said the Gov’t. spends most of it’s money on welfare mom’s having babies to get more welfare. This 10 yrs after the welfare reform act.
Such absolute idiocy is made possible by the absolute ignorance many have of what taxes do for this nation. How a fair tax is the underpinning of what makes us a great nation.
If you want to see what countries look like when the rich pay little or no taxes and companies are exempt look at any 3rd world nation (like Haiti) mired in poverty. Sure they all have astronomically high rates on the books, but collection rates are low single digits. They pay for this by having a country without any basic services, no medical/health care, few schools Etc.
Posted by johnnyincentx on Mar 18, 2006 at 4:18 PM
Hi Tina,
Paul Craig Roberts, the Assisstant Secretary of the Treasury under the late, great President Reagan said
’ During Bush’s presidency the US has experienced the slowest job creation on record (going back to 1939). During the past five years private business has added only 958,000 net new jobs to the economy, while the government sector has added 1.1 million jobs. Moreover, as many of the jobs are not for a full work week, “the country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001.”
’ This is what I have been writing for years, while the economics profession adopted a position of total denial. The first world gainers from globalization are the corporate executives, who gain millions of dollars in bonuses by arbitraging labor and substituting cheaper foreign labor for first world labor. For the past decade free market economists have served as apologists for corporate interests that are dismantling the ladders of upward mobility in the US and creating what McMillion writes is the worst income inequality on record.
’ Globalization is wiping out the American middle class and terminating jobs for university graduates, who now serve as temps, waitresses and bartenders. But the whores among economists and the evil men and women in the Bush administration still sing globalization’s praises. ‘
I think that it will be the “real” Republicans that finally rid this nation of the big government, borrow and spend, anti-constitutional putsch that has seized power under the Republican banner.
No one is more aghast at what our nation has become under the jack boots of the neo-cons than the real conservatives and libertarians of the Right.
‘
Posted by John Francis Lee on Mar 18, 2006 at 7:16 PM
The unemployed are only those recently so, after unemployment runs out, or if you are not registered with the unemployment office you are not a part of the unemployed.
More to the point four years into “Recovery” only the higher incomes have recovered, most peoples (80%) real incomes have declined in real dollars while the top 20% has gone up and the top 0.5% have several hundred percent increases. Just because Bill Gates walks into a bar dosen’t mean everyone in the bar got richer, just because the median income of the customers shot through the roof
Posted by FreeDem on Mar 18, 2006 at 8:13 PM
Ah, the right-wingers say “the economy is on fire.” It sure is, if you’re a multi-gazillionaire or if you own a RepubliCrook Congressman like Randy Cunningham or Tom DeLay or Bob Ney or Mike Ferguson.
But if you’re middle class, you’re probably struggling to pay for heat or gasoline or health insurance. If you’re poor, the GOP thinks you’re lazy and deserve to starve and freeze. And if you’re poor and live in New Orleans, the GOP regards you as subhuman.
As for the “liberal media,” that’s LOL hillarious. Who are they, exactly? Faux News? CNN? WaPo? NY Post? Washington Moonie Times? Maybe the right-wingers refer to Sean Insanity, Bill O’Liar, Brit Hume, Paula Zahn, Kyra Philips, Rush OxyLimbaugh, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, Darryn Kagan, Anne Coulter, Dick Morris, Dana Millbank, Maura O’Donnel, Candy Crowley…..I know! They mean Jeff Gannon! Or maybe they mean the 2 White House staffers just caught posing as Faux News reporters. (As though the rest of Faux News is *not* part of the White House.)
The truth is that Americans are tired of GOP fascism and are starting to throw the bums out.
The red states are almost gone. Check the mostly-blue map at:
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/3-17-06_red_states.htm
Check out how Democrats are beating RepubliCrooks all over the country, even in solid, red areas:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2551/
The Bushevik cult, with its pre-1776 mindset that regards the liar-in-chief as a dictator not bound by any laws is finally being rejected. It will be rejected even further this November, unless Karl Rove manages to steal another election.
Posted by tunghoy on Mar 19, 2006 at 7:54 AM
Whoops—I referenced this very article in my comments. The GOP has me so mad, I forgot which screen I was typing on.
So here’s some more info on the mysterious “liberal media” (which hangs out with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster):
“If it hadn’t been for Fox, I don’t know what I’d have done for the news.”
—Sen. Trent Lott, Republican racist, 2/5/2001
Despite the White House coordinating its energy policy with Enron’s Ken Lay during the energy crisis, Brit Hume said Enron “is not a scandal about the Bush energy policy.”
1/16/2002
“[Bush’s Iraq policy] has created peaceful conditions in more than 90 percent of Iraq.”
—Faux News host Tony Snow 10/14/2003, not citing any source
“We now have documents proving the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq but that’s not enough to convince people. We had weapons dumped in the Euphrates.”
—Sean Insanity, 4/28/2003, providing no evidence (in 3 years, claims have never been substantiated)
An American Research Group poll shows a plurality of Americans favor a censure for Bush and 42 percent of respondents believe that Bush should be impeached for the NSA spying, while various polls show that a majority of Americans disapprove of Bush’s wiretapping. But that doesn’t stop “liberal media” thugs Dick Morris and John Gibson from lying on The Big Story of 3/16/2006:
“The public overwhelmingly supports Bush on the wiretapping issue.”
—Morris
“The vast majority of Americans approve of listening to Al Qaeda’s phone calls and think it is absurd and purely political to push either censure or impeachment over the surveillance program.”
—Gibson
Posted by tunghoy on Mar 19, 2006 at 8:21 AM
No one will be happier than me if Democrats sweep the next elections but unless the voting system is repaired, it will be fixed again, and Republicans will win landslides even if nobody votes for them,
Posted by FreeDem on Mar 19, 2006 at 1:43 PM
The Dow Jones just hit a 5-year high on Friday and who do think is the only news organization to report it? FOXNEWS !! Which is why FOXNEWS IS #1.
Now you would think that if the stock market hits a 5-year high, that would be front page news… right? Not when the GOP is in the White House.
I remember when Clinton was in office, the liberal media always talked about the how great the stock market was doing. Now that Bush is office, the liberal media won’t even report on the great economy.
You liberals are a joke and that is why you keep getting your ass kicked during the elections. And you will lose again during the 06’ mid-terms and in 08’. AND THIS TIME I WILL BE LAUGHING IN YOUR FACE.
LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER
lol… lmao
Posted by tina1 on Mar 19, 2006 at 8:04 PM
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the savings and retirement plans of average Americans were well in the red. Living on credit to a degree that has only been seen once before in United States history. Three guesses as to when that was.
In addition to a nine trillion dollar debt, the highest in American history, there is a rapidly growing gap in the Import/Export ratio of the American Economy. Combined, this means that the value of the dollar is in a precarious position right now. When all those lenders come to call, you’ll be lucky if $20 is worth the same as a 20 Yen. Furthermore, that nine trillion appeared entirely under President Bush’s supervision. Clinton actually left the government with a surplus of funds - a pretty impressive accomplishment, his faults aside.
Posted by Harrower on Mar 20, 2006 at 12:56 PM
Oh thank you tiny one for providing such wunnerful Faux propaganda. I love watching you scream, “I’m melting! I’m melting”. Please don’t stop.
HERE is a link to the Paul Craig Roberts essay that J.F. Lee cites. And to think he was once Ronnie Raygun’s Sec. of the Treasury. The times they are a-changin’.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 20, 2006 at 1:22 PM
Wow
from the record lows of the Bush administration stocks have risen aprox 20%. of course that is still aprox 30% below where they were when he took office.
Of course with the increasing distance between investors and Corporate management, most of the profits have gone to Corporate management.
If there had been an honest fix of the Wall Street cessspool the stock values would likely have doubled. Not to worry, in a couple of years stocks will be up enough that the insiders can do another shearing, like they did when Bush “won” the first time.
If you would say that Clinton did not control the Corportist excesses, I would agree. when it came to helping the corportists Clinton was almost Republican.
Posted by FreeDem on Mar 21, 2006 at 9:59 AM
FreeDem,
I’d go so far as to say Clinton was the best republican president ever. That’s why the Conservative (so-called) Republican Loyalists hate him so much.
Posted by luminous beauty on Mar 21, 2006 at 10:54 AM
MORE BAD NEWS FOR DOOM & GLOOMERS. (AKA .. LIBERALS).
THE LIBERALS JUST HATE HEARING GOOD NEWS ABOUT AMERICA.
lol…
U.S. college graduates are facing the best job market since 2001, with business, computer, engineering, education and health care grads in highest demand, a report by an employment consulting firm showed on Monday.
In its annual outlook of entry-level jobs, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said strong job growth and falling unemployment makes this spring the hottest job market for America’s 1.4 million college graduates since the dot-com collapse in 2001.
The firm pointed to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers which showed employers plan to hire 14.5 percent more new college graduates than a year ago.
The survey also found higher starting salaries this year. Graduates with economic or finance degrees will see the biggest gain with starting salaries up 11 percent to $45,191, while accounting salaries are up 6.2 percent, business management salaries up 3.9 percent and pay for civil engineers 4.3 percent higher.
It’s nice to see that these employment numbers are getting some notice. Of course, in the past, such numbers would have induced paroxysms of delight among the commentariat. Nowadays, they do not. I realize that there are other stories to cover, but the continuing American prosperity does seem to be a subject that people should take note and interest of. It certainly is more newsworthy than the collective rubbernecking exercise engaged in by the mainstream media and the respectable pundit class regarding a whole host of other stories that in days past, would have been left to the tabloids to cover
Posted by tina1 on Mar 21, 2006 at 7:56 PM
HEY TinA1:
Why aren’t our devoted Republican Compassionate Conservatives swimming in a pool of positive love and glee?
Why do you suppose they are more despised than adored?
Why are they losing these little special elections right and left, oops! ...I mean, all over the place?
Why are so many of our good patriotic, most extreme Republicans looking to attend somebody else’s press conference, boycotting the President? And you thought I might be a liberal, a progressive or something…eeeuww! worse, a LEFTY!!
I can be as on point as you. Just don’t shift your figures around too much or they might spill onto your nice, trite, prepackaged propaganda outfit like they did on my multi-colored suit.
I hope you are being paid well for your drivel. Your so-called comments are copied/pasted right out of press releases from the compassionate right.
Are you, too, better off today than you were 6 years ago? I know I’m not, and maybe that’s why your swill doesn’t smell too good, but keep dishing it out. I like the follow up you get. It’s lively, a bit trite, but hey, this is just a blog, isn’t it?
Posted by ezdidit on Mar 22, 2006 at 1:04 AM
<blockquote>FreeDem,
I
Posted by FreeDem on Mar 22, 2006 at 2:12 PM
Posted by ezdidit on Mar 22, 2006
Are you, too, better off today than you were 6 years ago?
———————————————————
Hey ezdidit,
I’m much better off today than 6 yrs ago, and so is everyone that I know. Not sure who your friends are, but I don’t have any friends that are worse off today.
My sister lives in Huntington Beach CA and in the past 6 years the value of her house went from $800,000 to $1,500,000. I can go on and on with friends and family who made money on real estate in the past 6 yrs.
If the economy is so bad, then why has Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Mitsu and Hyundai all built auto plants in the USA in the past 6 yrs?
Why is the DJ over 11,000?
Why is unemployment at 4.8%?
When the economy sucks, what drops? travel & entertainment. Well, Royal Caribeean Cruise Lines has 6 new ships under construction.
The cruise industry is booming…. how does that happen if everyone is worse off?
My cousin went into Executive Recruiting (headhunter) in 2001, and he made $43K in 2001, and only $20K in 2002. That was due to 9/11 and layoffs.
Well, he made $55K in 2003, $68K in 2004 and last year he made $95K.
Now how did that happen?
If you are worse off now than 6 years ago, then you are STUPID.
Posted by tina1 on Mar 22, 2006 at 10:31 PM
Um, this just in: we are not safer now than we were pre-9/11….$ 9 trillion dollars in debt….our diplomatic coin in the toilet….largest number of claims of “recent surge of violence” in history since “Mission Accomplished” ....largest number of people without healthcare….highest cost of healthcare for anyone who has it….largest number of children in poverty….biggest lies ever told to the American people….most costly, most deadly war conducted by man since A.D.50…largest number of human rights violations in our country’s history….even the Christian Coalition is on the run from the moneychangers who are bribing our Congressmen and Senators.
I fear that this spate of Republicans have blown it for a generation. I do not see how they can win, or even be a factor in the next 12 to 14 years, or more! A true one party system is right around the corner, and the Dems didn’t even have to do too much critical thinking to win it…..biggest gap between rich and poor in history….you think the Republicans were bad for governance? You ain’t seen bad yet. I am a Democrat, Tina, a Clinton Democrat. I have never and will never vote Republican. But I am wary as hell about the lack of balance in our system. When the Dems take back Congress, as they are predicted to on a wave of reaction against the “recent surge of immorality,” do you think that Bush will have served his constituents, his executive branch and his God better by disabling that balance. Nah….it’s been too extreme, too fast….too costly…..too immoral.
Payback is a bitch….yuh, i’m sTuPiD…..but my eyes are wide open. CNN, NYTimes, Fox,...they all benefit from the high cost of political campaigns, want to sell more airtime and newspapers….so, don’t believe everything you read. Think two moves ahead, Tina….why do you think that the Republicans are losing in virtually every single local election? A Republican will not be able to get elected dogcatcher in the ‘06 midterms. This is bad, real bad. (With Frist, make that catcatcher as well!) What a scam….fuel shortages might make it a real pressure cooker over the next few years. I am thinking maybe Canada, maybe the Caribe….where are you going?
Posted by ezdidit on Mar 23, 2006 at 9:15 AM
Tina
I am happy your sister owns a home, and it went from 800k to 1.5 mil. I am just glad I am not trying to buy one there. I live in what was a working class area that went hollywood. Houses that went for $50k a few years ago have been torn down and made into 800k townhouses two to a lot.
Whats the problem with that? Well if you were renting (and most were) you are flat out of luck with no place in the area to live. Lucky me, I bought a place, so I am rich now?
Not! I can’t sell because I would have no place to live either, except to buy one of those cruddy townhouses (and I wouldn’t want one for 10k except to resell) and hope the bubble doesn’t burst. If California does your sister might not get even the 800k. And I can’t cash out because I can barely afford the mortgage now, and the taxes are shooting up because we are so “rich” now.
If I hadn’t been luckier and had a nest egg to fall back on I would have been fleeced in the early Bush years when I went backwards 30k. Most folks are below zero in savings. Some folk made a lot of money picking the bones of those who fell, but that was not a good thing.
In any case to rent the house or the money for the house runs in the ballpark of one percent of the value per month, what doesn’t go to mortgage goes to taxes insurance etc. with a 800k house that would be about 8k a month. well shoot, with that kind of income you are making near enough to benefit from a Bush tax cut, that is not middle class!
Most middle class folks I know make between a quarter to half that in Total! and I have a lot of friends with jobs that pay around an eighth of that in Total, and that has to include rent, car, food etc, some for good size families.
Perhaps you are in such a Marie Antoinette bubble world, things really do look rosy. But your world includes less than 5% of Americans. If you had the slightest gag reflex, you might see that other people are suffering all around you. But then if you had the slightest gag reflex you would no longer be a Republican.
Ps I expect the Republicans to do very well in the coming elections, even if nobody votes for them. If that vote is more than 5% off the exit polls you will know that that happened again. And before you explain about how the Democrats were just as bad years ago, just remember that most of the Democrat Crooks in those days are now Republicans.
Posted by FreeDem on Mar 23, 2006 at 4:36 PM
Tina1, you have mobilized me.
I’m going door-to-door because of your drivel. See, The Christian Coalition has really been hijacked by Corporations. The lobbyists are running this country, and I can’t sit idly by while well-educated numbnut yuppieslike you (and I am sure that you are well-intentioned) are hoodwinked into believing that this is the nation our parents fought for, died for, or immigrated to after WWII. Some of us sheltered under our school desks in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, wept bitter tears for Robert, Martin, John and Malcolm, marched and struck for peace in ‘Nam and Cambodia, (yes, Cambodia) in 1970. My 4 years of college had to be extended a semester because we shut it down to demonstrate for killings at Kent State.
100% healthcare, equal education for all, and a pension system that isn’t sanctioned to implode—-these are honorable goals. Read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution before you spread your half-truths and perverted statistics on this website.
I urge each and every reader to go meet your neighbor, talk about Clinton and oral sex, bribery and Tom DeLay. We are all neighbors in what should be a two-party system. We are perilously close to a one-party system in all three branches of government. If payback is the bitch I fear it is, even the Democrats won’t be able to repair the damage. The pendulum swings too far this time and the next. I may have to go vote Republican of all things in 8 years, God forbid!!
So, thanks, Tina1. Enjoy the economic tsunami, keep those blinders on, whatever you do.
Posted by ezdidit on Mar 23, 2006 at 9:11 PM
(June 2005) >> 5 DEMOCRATS WERE CONVICTED OF VOTE FRAUD
Convicted of conspiracy and vote fraud and facing five years on each count were:
* Kelvin Ellis, a Democratic precinct committeeman and former East St. Louis city government department head who served a federal prison term for extortion in the early 1990s.
* Yvette Johnson, secretary to the city Democratic organization.
* Democratic precinct committeemen Sheila Thomas and Jesse Lewis.
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/12021188.htm
———————————————————-
(Feb 2006) >> MAN PLEADS GUILTY ... VOTE FRAUD
Democrat voter fraud case traced to Defiance County registrations volunteer: (124 registrations falsified, for crack cocaine)
Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick said that Mr. Staton was working on behalf of a Toledo woman, Georgianne Pitts, to register new voters. She, in turn, was working on behalf of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which was formed by the NAACP in 2000 to register new voters.
Sheriff Westrick said that Pitts, 41, of Toledo, admitted she gave Mr. Staton crack cocaine in lieu of cash for supplying her with completed voter registration forms. The sheriff declined to say how much crack cocaine Pitts supplied Mr. Staton, or to say whether Pitts knew that the forms Mr. Staton gave her were falsified.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050219/NEWS02/502190352&SearchID=73199766722272
————————————————-
(October 2005) >> More Democrats to be Indicted in East St. Louis
The St. Louis area has seen 16 Democrat election workers convicted of voter fraud or similar charges this past year.
This past week an obstruction of justice and plotting to murder a government voter fraud witness can be added to that list of Democrat convictions:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2005/10/more-democrats-to-be-indicted-in-east.html
Posted by tina1 on Mar 23, 2006 at 11:19 PM
Gee Tina
you have a list of local Democrats involved in local vote fraud, you left out the only one I know the specifics of, where a Democrat got paid for collecting absentee ballots. The local Republicans have made a big deal of it for years now, going to court, losing, and appealing, and making big news at every turn, all slanted to make them the agreaved party.
I had a friend who was contacted by the Republican party to be paid to do the same (for Republicans only). But that never even made the news.
There are lists hereand hereand here and here documenting not just individuals getting a few votes here and there, but a massive national semiopen Republican effort to destroy any semblence of Democracy, and making a mockery of every election since y2k.
And that doesn’t address the Gerrymandering of Florida, Colorado, and Texas, as well as some less on the radar.
Posted by FreeDem on Apr 28, 2006 at 6:21 PM
and perhaps while you are making lists this little list should be handy
* Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.
* Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.
* Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.
* Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.
* Republican campaign worker Mark Seidensticker is a convicted child molester.
* Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.
* Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.
* Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
* Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.
* Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.
* Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.
* Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.
* Republican anti-abortion activist Nicholas Morency pleaded guilty to possessing child pornography on his computer and offering a bounty to anybody who murders an abortion doctor.
* Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.
* Republican racist pedophile and United States Senator Strom Thurmond had sex with a 15-year old black girl which produced a child.
* Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.
* Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.
* Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was charged with molesting his 9-year old step-daughter after including her in an anti-Gore television commercial.
* Republican activist Lawrence E. King, Jr. organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
* Republican lobbyist Craig J. Spence organized child sex parties at the White House during the 1980s.
* Republican Congressman Donald “Buz” Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.
* Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.
{link has a dozen more and the links to other pages}
I think they left out the Republican Mayor who wanted to keep his job while he served his 25 years in prison and a few others
It is amazing how sexual repression brings out the beast in folk
Posted by FreeDem on Apr 28, 2006 at 6:24 PM
Page 1 of 1 pages
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Reader Comments
243,000 jobs in February 2006 and 2.1 million jobs created over the past 12 months - and almost 5 million since August 2003. The unemployment rate is 4.7 percent - lower than the average of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
State Unemployment Rates Fall. As of January, the unemployment rate is now at a record low in five states: Nevada, Florida, West Virginia, Montana, and Idaho. Over the past year, unemployment rates have decreased in 46 states.
Incomes Increase. Real disposable incomes have risen 2.2 percent over the past 12 months. Since January 2001, real after-tax income per person has risen 8.2 percent. Real household net worth is at an all-time high of $51.1 trillion, and the median net worth of American households rose 1.5 percent between 2001 and 2004.
Manufacturing Expansion Continues. The Institute for Supply Management (ISM), a private research group, reports manufacturing activity grew for the 33rd consecutive month in February. The ISM’s manufacturing index reading of 56.7 indicates continued sector expansion. According to the Federal Reserve, over the past 12 months total industrial production rose 3.1 percent and manufacturing industrial production rose 4.5 percent, including 0.7 percent in January.
Inflation Remains Contained. The core Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose just 0.2 percent in January. Core CPI has increased a moderate 2.1 percent over the past 12 months, indicating core inflation remains contained.
Retail Sales Rise. Nominal retail sales rose 2.3 percent in January and are up 8.8 percent over the past 12 months. In January, real consumer spending posted a solid 0.4 percent gain and increased 3.6 percent over the past year.
Service Sector Grows. The ISM reports non-manufacturing business activity grew for the 35th consecutive month in February. The ISM’s business activity index reading of 60.1 indicates continued sector growth.
Productivity Growth Continues. During the past four quarters, productivity has increased 2.5 percent. Productivity has grown at a 3.4 percent annual rate since the business-cycle peak in the first quarter of 2001.
Housing Starts Reach Highest Level In Over 30 Years. Housing starts in January totaled a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 2.276 million units - up 14.5 percent from December and the highest level in over 30 years.
GDP Growth Is Strong. Real GDP increased 3.5 percent in 2005, and growth was revised up from an original estimate of 1.1 percent to a 1.6 percent annual rate for the fourth quarter of 2005. The economy has been growing for 17 straight quarters, and the composite index of leading indicators increased 1.1 percent in January, indicating continued economic growth. In the last five years, the President’s tax relief has helped spur growth by keeping $880 billion in the hands of the American people. The Administration has reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending every year since 2001, and at the President’s request, Congress cut this spending last year.
I wonder why liberals are not talking about the economy? Oh ya, because the economy is on fire.
Speaking of the economy… it’s kind of strange that the main-stream LIBERAL MEDIA doesn’t cover/report about how strong our economy has been.
FOR EXAMPLE: Wall Street closed on Friday in an ebullient mood as the Dow Jones industrial average finished a strong week hitting a fresh five-year high. The Dow climbed to 11,279.65, its highest level since reaching 11,301.74 on May 21, 2001. Broader stock indicators also gained ground. The S&P 500 index rose 1,307.25
The liberal media only reports the negative numbers on Bush.
Why is it that Fox News Channel are the only news channel that reports these numbers.
52 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” support “using wiretaps to listen to telephone calls between suspected terrorists in other countries and American citizens in the United States without getting a court order to do so,” compared to 46 percent or “strongly” or “somewhat” oppose.
75 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” support “promoting the USA Patriot Act, which gives the government greater ability to spy on and prosecute suspected terrorists.”
56 percent “strongly” or “somewhat” support “making the tax cuts of the past few years permanent.”
TINA1: You are an idiot and unable to see the obvious.
Statistics can be used all sorts of ways, and you’re cherry picking to make statistics fit your own particular view of reality fit.
Sometimes “statistical facts” can be disproven using logic and reason and avoiding #‘s. IF things were as rosey as you say, then Bush and the Repugs would be enjoying phenomenal #s, and be cruising to a landslide midterm election.
They are not. The opposite is taking shape. The great job numbers are proven false indicators when you ask people about job security and job quality, disappearing benefits and the downward trend of jobs from skilled and professional to retail and basic services.
The WAR has been an absolute failure. There is no excusing that trillion $ fiasco.
The Unemployment #s are artificially low thanks to a series of rules pushed through by repugnicans to not count certain unemployed and count the military (which were never counted before) to pump up the #s.
Have fun in your number fantasy land. I enjoy seeing yet another particularly stupid and inane repug. who believes that all the repugs have to do is lie lie lie and winning will follow
The only thing that got the Repugs where they are was 9/11 and the mass hysteria Bush and his team used to work the nation’s nerves and blindly follow their idiocy.
You can only lie so long. You can only use statistics to mislead so long. No matter how you lie, you cannot convince forever the millions of Americans that things are as rosey as your taylored stats paint things to be.
After 6 years of Repug stupidity, Americans are waking up to the deteriorating health network in this country courtesy of Repug. neglect. Americans who happen to have healthcare that is. Millions don’t. Americans are realizing how they Bush and the Repugs. committed this nation to spend a trillion $ in a pointless war, while claiming there was NO money to solve the real every day issues of Americans. Problems formerly hard to find are more visible; childhood malnutrition, environmental distruction to obtain a few weeks worth of oil, or coal; and fighting to worship as they want or don’t want to all over again.
The list of things the Repugs have neglected is much longer than these few items. They got away with it thanks to three things <b> a right-wing press that parroted the Gov’t. and is afraid to challenge any official Gov’t. inforation. A well-oiled lie machine that fed the press stories to print and keep them in circulation via marketing and manipulation of 9/11 hysteria.
Now people are realizing that the fear of terror is yet another fraud, they are looking at the rosey pictures fools like you try to prove exists. A picture that is in stark contrast with their lives and they are saying everywhere NO MORE Repugnican B**LSH*T.
Please though I encourage you continue. Please keep blowing your horn in regards to how wonderful and successful this Repugnican ruled world is. Now that the blinders are off, I am eager to see more Americans respond appropriately as they have been recently.
What Tina also fails to report is that Republicans in the Senate just voted to raise the debt ceiling to nearly $9 trillion. The “good economy” is analogous to shopoholics who go on spending sprees, unwilling or unable to exercise any kind of restraint. Republicans have reduced tax rates on the richest Americans, leading to this wonderful, exhilarating experience of never having to pay for services. Meanwhile, our infrastructures are crumbling, and we are rapidly moving toward a split society between those who have plenty—and those who have no safety net when times turn bad. The government can’t even pay for the war in Iraq or for the necessary safeguards to increase security against those who really DO wish us harm.
This WILL catch up with us at some point. Times will turn bad, probably after President Bush has left office. At some point, the U.S. will HAVE to pay off its debts. As it is, in 2005, we spent $352 BILLION dollars paying interest on that borrowed money. Interest rates have to rise. In the long run, our economy will suffer and may even implode. All this for some short-term “stimulus” that the President wants to make permanent.
Question for Lisa: The NEXT time there is an economic slowdown or recession, should we cut taxes again? How about the time after THAT? And the one after THAT? We don’t need taxes at all, right? After all, we can just keep borrowing and spending and well, as every Republican will tell you, “taxes are BAD!”
Sigh. The GOP trumpets that it is the “party of ideas”. Riiiiiiiiiight.
“Taxes are too high.” And how exactly does one DETERMINE the “right” tax rate if it isn’t based on what we need to spend?
“Cutting taxes” isn’t a policy.
It’s a gimmick.
Linguist: I’m with you
One way to counter this “cut taxes no matter what the consiquences” is to tie the consiquences to the results.
For fear of looking like pro-tax no one ever mentions how much this country’s living standards, infrastructure, healthcare, education, trade Etc. depend on a fair and equitable taxes.
Fair and equitable does sometimes require the wealthiest who benefit from all sorts of tax breaks should pay more for the wealth they’ve mined from living here.
The whole notion expressed by some FRight Wingers that they earned it and have a right to keep it is nonsense.
It totally divorces the concept of work and earning from actual income.
It also exempts the wealthy the concept of social responsibility as preached to us by the FRight Wing Religious clowns.
I don’t say taxes are good. It’s not a good or bad issue.
It is actually one of education.
Ask any anti-tax nutcase what his taxes go for and be ready for an absurd screed of utter nonsense. I remember one fool who said the Gov’t. spends most of it’s money on welfare mom’s having babies to get more welfare. This 10 yrs after the welfare reform act.
Such absolute idiocy is made possible by the absolute ignorance many have of what taxes do for this nation. How a fair tax is the underpinning of what makes us a great nation.
If you want to see what countries look like when the rich pay little or no taxes and companies are exempt look at any 3rd world nation (like Haiti) mired in poverty. Sure they all have astronomically high rates on the books, but collection rates are low single digits. They pay for this by having a country without any basic services, no medical/health care, few schools Etc.
Hi Tina,
Paul Craig Roberts, the Assisstant Secretary of the Treasury under the late, great President Reagan said
’ During Bush’s presidency the US has experienced the slowest job creation on record (going back to 1939). During the past five years private business has added only 958,000 net new jobs to the economy, while the government sector has added 1.1 million jobs. Moreover, as many of the jobs are not for a full work week, “the country ended 2005 with fewer private sector hours worked than it had in January 2001.”
’ This is what I have been writing for years, while the economics profession adopted a position of total denial. The first world gainers from globalization are the corporate executives, who gain millions of dollars in bonuses by arbitraging labor and substituting cheaper foreign labor for first world labor. For the past decade free market economists have served as apologists for corporate interests that are dismantling the ladders of upward mobility in the US and creating what McMillion writes is the worst income inequality on record.
’ Globalization is wiping out the American middle class and terminating jobs for university graduates, who now serve as temps, waitresses and bartenders. But the whores among economists and the evil men and women in the Bush administration still sing globalization’s praises. ‘
I think that it will be the “real” Republicans that finally rid this nation of the big government, borrow and spend, anti-constitutional putsch that has seized power under the Republican banner.
No one is more aghast at what our nation has become under the jack boots of the neo-cons than the real conservatives and libertarians of the Right.
‘
The unemployed are only those recently so, after unemployment runs out, or if you are not registered with the unemployment office you are not a part of the unemployed.
More to the point four years into “Recovery” only the higher incomes have recovered, most peoples (80%) real incomes have declined in real dollars while the top 20% has gone up and the top 0.5% have several hundred percent increases. Just because Bill Gates walks into a bar dosen’t mean everyone in the bar got richer, just because the median income of the customers shot through the roof
Ah, the right-wingers say “the economy is on fire.” It sure is, if you’re a multi-gazillionaire or if you own a RepubliCrook Congressman like Randy Cunningham or Tom DeLay or Bob Ney or Mike Ferguson.
But if you’re middle class, you’re probably struggling to pay for heat or gasoline or health insurance. If you’re poor, the GOP thinks you’re lazy and deserve to starve and freeze. And if you’re poor and live in New Orleans, the GOP regards you as subhuman.
As for the “liberal media,” that’s LOL hillarious. Who are they, exactly? Faux News? CNN? WaPo? NY Post? Washington Moonie Times? Maybe the right-wingers refer to Sean Insanity, Bill O’Liar, Brit Hume, Paula Zahn, Kyra Philips, Rush OxyLimbaugh, Wolf Blitzer, Chris Matthews, Darryn Kagan, Anne Coulter, Dick Morris, Dana Millbank, Maura O’Donnel, Candy Crowley…..I know! They mean Jeff Gannon! Or maybe they mean the 2 White House staffers just caught posing as Faux News reporters. (As though the rest of Faux News is *not* part of the White House.)
The truth is that Americans are tired of GOP fascism and are starting to throw the bums out.
The red states are almost gone. Check the mostly-blue map at:
http://www.allhatnocattle.net/3-17-06_red_states.htm
Check out how Democrats are beating RepubliCrooks all over the country, even in solid, red areas:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2551/
The Bushevik cult, with its pre-1776 mindset that regards the liar-in-chief as a dictator not bound by any laws is finally being rejected. It will be rejected even further this November, unless Karl Rove manages to steal another election.
Whoops—I referenced this very article in my comments. The GOP has me so mad, I forgot which screen I was typing on.
So here’s some more info on the mysterious “liberal media” (which hangs out with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster):
“If it hadn’t been for Fox, I don’t know what I’d have done for the news.”
—Sen. Trent Lott, Republican racist, 2/5/2001
Despite the White House coordinating its energy policy with Enron’s Ken Lay during the energy crisis, Brit Hume said Enron “is not a scandal about the Bush energy policy.”
1/16/2002
“[Bush’s Iraq policy] has created peaceful conditions in more than 90 percent of Iraq.”
—Faux News host Tony Snow 10/14/2003, not citing any source
“We now have documents proving the connection between al Qaeda and Iraq but that’s not enough to convince people. We had weapons dumped in the Euphrates.”
—Sean Insanity, 4/28/2003, providing no evidence (in 3 years, claims have never been substantiated)
An American Research Group poll shows a plurality of Americans favor a censure for Bush and 42 percent of respondents believe that Bush should be impeached for the NSA spying, while various polls show that a majority of Americans disapprove of Bush’s wiretapping. But that doesn’t stop “liberal media” thugs Dick Morris and John Gibson from lying on The Big Story of 3/16/2006:
“The public overwhelmingly supports Bush on the wiretapping issue.”
—Morris
“The vast majority of Americans approve of listening to Al Qaeda’s phone calls and think it is absurd and purely political to push either censure or impeachment over the surveillance program.”
—Gibson
No one will be happier than me if Democrats sweep the next elections but unless the voting system is repaired, it will be fixed again, and Republicans will win landslides even if nobody votes for them,
The Dow Jones just hit a 5-year high on Friday and who do think is the only news organization to report it? FOXNEWS !! Which is why FOXNEWS IS #1.
Now you would think that if the stock market hits a 5-year high, that would be front page news… right? Not when the GOP is in the White House.
I remember when Clinton was in office, the liberal media always talked about the how great the stock market was doing. Now that Bush is office, the liberal media won’t even report on the great economy.
You liberals are a joke and that is why you keep getting your ass kicked during the elections. And you will lose again during the 06’ mid-terms and in 08’. AND THIS TIME I WILL BE LAUGHING IN YOUR FACE.
LIBERALISM IS A MENTAL DISORDER
lol… lmao
The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the savings and retirement plans of average Americans were well in the red. Living on credit to a degree that has only been seen once before in United States history. Three guesses as to when that was.
In addition to a nine trillion dollar debt, the highest in American history, there is a rapidly growing gap in the Import/Export ratio of the American Economy. Combined, this means that the value of the dollar is in a precarious position right now. When all those lenders come to call, you’ll be lucky if $20 is worth the same as a 20 Yen. Furthermore, that nine trillion appeared entirely under President Bush’s supervision. Clinton actually left the government with a surplus of funds - a pretty impressive accomplishment, his faults aside.
Oh thank you tiny one for providing such wunnerful Faux propaganda. I love watching you scream, “I’m melting! I’m melting”. Please don’t stop.
HERE is a link to the Paul Craig Roberts essay that J.F. Lee cites. And to think he was once Ronnie Raygun’s Sec. of the Treasury. The times they are a-changin’.
Wow
from the record lows of the Bush administration stocks have risen aprox 20%. of course that is still aprox 30% below where they were when he took office.
Of course with the increasing distance between investors and Corporate management, most of the profits have gone to Corporate management.
If there had been an honest fix of the Wall Street cessspool the stock values would likely have doubled. Not to worry, in a couple of years stocks will be up enough that the insiders can do another shearing, like they did when Bush “won” the first time.
If you would say that Clinton did not control the Corportist excesses, I would agree. when it came to helping the corportists Clinton was almost Republican.
FreeDem,
I’d go so far as to say Clinton was the best republican president ever. That’s why the Conservative (so-called) Republican Loyalists hate him so much.
MORE BAD NEWS FOR DOOM & GLOOMERS. (AKA .. LIBERALS).
THE LIBERALS JUST HATE HEARING GOOD NEWS ABOUT AMERICA.
lol…
U.S. college graduates are facing the best job market since 2001, with business, computer, engineering, education and health care grads in highest demand, a report by an employment consulting firm showed on Monday.
In its annual outlook of entry-level jobs, Challenger, Gray & Christmas said strong job growth and falling unemployment makes this spring the hottest job market for America’s 1.4 million college graduates since the dot-com collapse in 2001.
The firm pointed to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers which showed employers plan to hire 14.5 percent more new college graduates than a year ago.
The survey also found higher starting salaries this year. Graduates with economic or finance degrees will see the biggest gain with starting salaries up 11 percent to $45,191, while accounting salaries are up 6.2 percent, business management salaries up 3.9 percent and pay for civil engineers 4.3 percent higher.
It’s nice to see that these employment numbers are getting some notice. Of course, in the past, such numbers would have induced paroxysms of delight among the commentariat. Nowadays, they do not. I realize that there are other stories to cover, but the continuing American prosperity does seem to be a subject that people should take note and interest of. It certainly is more newsworthy than the collective rubbernecking exercise engaged in by the mainstream media and the respectable pundit class regarding a whole host of other stories that in days past, would have been left to the tabloids to cover
HEY TinA1:
Why aren’t our devoted Republican Compassionate Conservatives swimming in a pool of positive love and glee?
Why do you suppose they are more despised than adored?
Why are they losing these little special elections right and left, oops! ...I mean, all over the place?
Why are so many of our good patriotic, most extreme Republicans looking to attend somebody else’s press conference, boycotting the President? And you thought I might be a liberal, a progressive or something…eeeuww! worse, a LEFTY!!
I can be as on point as you. Just don’t shift your figures around too much or they might spill onto your nice, trite, prepackaged propaganda outfit like they did on my multi-colored suit.
I hope you are being paid well for your drivel. Your so-called comments are copied/pasted right out of press releases from the compassionate right.
Are you, too, better off today than you were 6 years ago? I know I’m not, and maybe that’s why your swill doesn’t smell too good, but keep dishing it out. I like the follow up you get. It’s lively, a bit trite, but hey, this is just a blog, isn’t it?
<blockquote>FreeDem,
I
Posted by ezdidit on Mar 22, 2006
Are you, too, better off today than you were 6 years ago?
———————————————————
Hey ezdidit,
I’m much better off today than 6 yrs ago, and so is everyone that I know. Not sure who your friends are, but I don’t have any friends that are worse off today.
My sister lives in Huntington Beach CA and in the past 6 years the value of her house went from $800,000 to $1,500,000. I can go on and on with friends and family who made money on real estate in the past 6 yrs.
If the economy is so bad, then why has Nissan, Toyota, Honda, Mitsu and Hyundai all built auto plants in the USA in the past 6 yrs?
Why is the DJ over 11,000?
Why is unemployment at 4.8%?
When the economy sucks, what drops? travel & entertainment. Well, Royal Caribeean Cruise Lines has 6 new ships under construction.
The cruise industry is booming…. how does that happen if everyone is worse off?
My cousin went into Executive Recruiting (headhunter) in 2001, and he made $43K in 2001, and only $20K in 2002. That was due to 9/11 and layoffs.
Well, he made $55K in 2003, $68K in 2004 and last year he made $95K.
Now how did that happen?
If you are worse off now than 6 years ago, then you are STUPID.
Um, this just in: we are not safer now than we were pre-9/11….$ 9 trillion dollars in debt….our diplomatic coin in the toilet….largest number of claims of “recent surge of violence” in history since “Mission Accomplished” ....largest number of people without healthcare….highest cost of healthcare for anyone who has it….largest number of children in poverty….biggest lies ever told to the American people….most costly, most deadly war conducted by man since A.D.50…largest number of human rights violations in our country’s history….even the Christian Coalition is on the run from the moneychangers who are bribing our Congressmen and Senators.
I fear that this spate of Republicans have blown it for a generation. I do not see how they can win, or even be a factor in the next 12 to 14 years, or more! A true one party system is right around the corner, and the Dems didn’t even have to do too much critical thinking to win it…..biggest gap between rich and poor in history….you think the Republicans were bad for governance? You ain’t seen bad yet. I am a Democrat, Tina, a Clinton Democrat. I have never and will never vote Republican. But I am wary as hell about the lack of balance in our system. When the Dems take back Congress, as they are predicted to on a wave of reaction against the “recent surge of immorality,” do you think that Bush will have served his constituents, his executive branch and his God better by disabling that balance. Nah….it’s been too extreme, too fast….too costly…..too immoral.
Payback is a bitch….yuh, i’m sTuPiD…..but my eyes are wide open. CNN, NYTimes, Fox,...they all benefit from the high cost of political campaigns, want to sell more airtime and newspapers….so, don’t believe everything you read. Think two moves ahead, Tina….why do you think that the Republicans are losing in virtually every single local election? A Republican will not be able to get elected dogcatcher in the ‘06 midterms. This is bad, real bad. (With Frist, make that catcatcher as well!) What a scam….fuel shortages might make it a real pressure cooker over the next few years. I am thinking maybe Canada, maybe the Caribe….where are you going?
Tina
I am happy your sister owns a home, and it went from 800k to 1.5 mil. I am just glad I am not trying to buy one there. I live in what was a working class area that went hollywood. Houses that went for $50k a few years ago have been torn down and made into 800k townhouses two to a lot.
Whats the problem with that? Well if you were renting (and most were) you are flat out of luck with no place in the area to live. Lucky me, I bought a place, so I am rich now?
Not! I can’t sell because I would have no place to live either, except to buy one of those cruddy townhouses (and I wouldn’t want one for 10k except to resell) and hope the bubble doesn’t burst. If California does your sister might not get even the 800k. And I can’t cash out because I can barely afford the mortgage now, and the taxes are shooting up because we are so “rich” now.
If I hadn’t been luckier and had a nest egg to fall back on I would have been fleeced in the early Bush years when I went backwards 30k. Most folks are below zero in savings. Some folk made a lot of money picking the bones of those who fell, but that was not a good thing.
In any case to rent the house or the money for the house runs in the ballpark of one percent of the value per month, what doesn’t go to mortgage goes to taxes insurance etc. with a 800k house that would be about 8k a month. well shoot, with that kind of income you are making near enough to benefit from a Bush tax cut, that is not middle class!
Most middle class folks I know make between a quarter to half that in Total! and I have a lot of friends with jobs that pay around an eighth of that in Total, and that has to include rent, car, food etc, some for good size families.
Perhaps you are in such a Marie Antoinette bubble world, things really do look rosy. But your world includes less than 5% of Americans. If you had the slightest gag reflex, you might see that other people are suffering all around you. But then if you had the slightest gag reflex you would no longer be a Republican.
Ps I expect the Republicans to do very well in the coming elections, even if nobody votes for them. If that vote is more than 5% off the exit polls you will know that that happened again. And before you explain about how the Democrats were just as bad years ago, just remember that most of the Democrat Crooks in those days are now Republicans.
Tina1, you have mobilized me.
I’m going door-to-door because of your drivel. See, The Christian Coalition has really been hijacked by Corporations. The lobbyists are running this country, and I can’t sit idly by while well-educated numbnut yuppieslike you (and I am sure that you are well-intentioned) are hoodwinked into believing that this is the nation our parents fought for, died for, or immigrated to after WWII. Some of us sheltered under our school desks in 1962 during the Cuban missile crisis, wept bitter tears for Robert, Martin, John and Malcolm, marched and struck for peace in ‘Nam and Cambodia, (yes, Cambodia) in 1970. My 4 years of college had to be extended a semester because we shut it down to demonstrate for killings at Kent State.
100% healthcare, equal education for all, and a pension system that isn’t sanctioned to implode—-these are honorable goals. Read the Bill of Rights and the Constitution before you spread your half-truths and perverted statistics on this website.
I urge each and every reader to go meet your neighbor, talk about Clinton and oral sex, bribery and Tom DeLay. We are all neighbors in what should be a two-party system. We are perilously close to a one-party system in all three branches of government. If payback is the bitch I fear it is, even the Democrats won’t be able to repair the damage. The pendulum swings too far this time and the next. I may have to go vote Republican of all things in 8 years, God forbid!!
So, thanks, Tina1. Enjoy the economic tsunami, keep those blinders on, whatever you do.
(June 2005) >> 5 DEMOCRATS WERE CONVICTED OF VOTE FRAUD
Convicted of conspiracy and vote fraud and facing five years on each count were:
* Kelvin Ellis, a Democratic precinct committeeman and former East St. Louis city government department head who served a federal prison term for extortion in the early 1990s.
* Yvette Johnson, secretary to the city Democratic organization.
* Democratic precinct committeemen Sheila Thomas and Jesse Lewis.
http://www.belleville.com/mld/belleville/12021188.htm
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(Feb 2006) >> MAN PLEADS GUILTY ... VOTE FRAUD
Democrat voter fraud case traced to Defiance County registrations volunteer: (124 registrations falsified, for crack cocaine)
Defiance County Sheriff David Westrick said that Mr. Staton was working on behalf of a Toledo woman, Georgianne Pitts, to register new voters. She, in turn, was working on behalf of the NAACP National Voter Fund, which was formed by the NAACP in 2000 to register new voters.
Sheriff Westrick said that Pitts, 41, of Toledo, admitted she gave Mr. Staton crack cocaine in lieu of cash for supplying her with completed voter registration forms. The sheriff declined to say how much crack cocaine Pitts supplied Mr. Staton, or to say whether Pitts knew that the forms Mr. Staton gave her were falsified.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050219/NEWS02/502190352&SearchID=73199766722272
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(October 2005) >> More Democrats to be Indicted in East St. Louis
The St. Louis area has seen 16 Democrat election workers convicted of voter fraud or similar charges this past year.
This past week an obstruction of justice and plotting to murder a government voter fraud witness can be added to that list of Democrat convictions:
http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2005/10/more-democrats-to-be-indicted-in-east.html
Gee Tina
you have a list of local Democrats involved in local vote fraud, you left out the only one I know the specifics of, where a Democrat got paid for collecting absentee ballots. The local Republicans have made a big deal of it for years now, going to court, losing, and appealing, and making big news at every turn, all slanted to make them the agreaved party.
I had a friend who was contacted by the Republican party to be paid to do the same (for Republicans only). But that never even made the news.
There are lists hereand hereand here and here documenting not just individuals getting a few votes here and there, but a massive national semiopen Republican effort to destroy any semblence of Democracy, and making a mockery of every election since y2k.
And that doesn’t address the Gerrymandering of Florida, Colorado, and Texas, as well as some less on the radar.
and perhaps while you are making lists this little list should be handy
I think they left out the Republican Mayor who wanted to keep his job while he served his 25 years in prison and a few others
It is amazing how sexual repression brings out the beast in folk
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