In the front room, the T.V. Commentators are going on about swine flu, wildfires, and, oh yeah, the unemployment figures released this morning. They can’t decide which way to play it. It could be worse, or it could be better. It says unemployment is still rising at 0.4%/month. It’s not accelerating, but it’s not decelerating either. It’s just sitting there. If it just "sits there" for a while, by December we’ll be at 11.7% unemployment [not good news by anybody’s standard.] Here’s the Unemployment data from the Recession in the 1980’s [Bureau of Labor Statistics]:
Notice that the duration was about 18 months. I’ve drawn in the red line. The slope of that line is about 2.5%/year or 0.2%/month. We’re moving about twice that fast as our economy contracts. Now here’s the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933:
The slope of the line I’ve drawn in is right at 0.5%/month.
So we’re going down the tubes a little more slowly than we did in the early 1930’s, but faster than we did in the 1980’s. There’s one more familiar graph to look at:
How did Reagan deal with the Recession? He did the same thing as F.D.R. He spent our way out!
So when I listen to the Republicans talk like this, I want to scream. All this talk of principles and philosophy is empty, as empty as the lies they wrapped around going to Iraq:
With only 20 percent of Americans self-identifying as Republicans, the GOP is searching for a way forward. Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME), along with Colin Powell, have said the GOP must move toward the center to expand its tent. In an interview with Scott Hennen, a North Dakota radio host, Cheney declared that becoming more moderate “would be a mistake“:
HENNEN: … Do you think the Republican Party needs to moderate? Is that the message of the Specter defection, or the state of the party these days?CHENEY: No I don’t. I think it would be a mistake for us to moderate. This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas…what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and Constitutional principles. You know, when you add all those things up the idea that we ought to moderate basically means we ought to fundamentally change our philosophy. I for one am not prepared to do that, and I think most us aren’t. […] So I think periodically we have to go through one these sessions. It helps clear away some of the underbrush…some of the older folks who’ve been around a long time (like yours truly) need to move on, and make room for that young talent that’s coming along. But I think it’s basically healthy. I don’t spend a lot of time or lose a lot of sleep over it. I just think now is the time for people who are committed to get out there and find candidates they like and go to work for them.
Sorry to go off topic again but I needed to share this stuff. In the latest book I’m reading, “The Nine” by Jeffrey Toobin about the Supreme Court.” John Yoo had been a law clerk for Clarence Thomas, and several other former Thomas clerks had also played important roles in formulating the Bush administrao be a bation’s legal justification for the war on terror.” I knew Thomas was not my kind of justice but what kind of people are they to justify such evil. It’s like when a Mom tells her child not to hang around with the wrong crowd.
Sorry for the bad spelling but I’m writing with my mini laptop and it plays games when I type.