Dow is down another 50 points, chronic unemployment is at Depression era levels, and the Republicans still have not introduced a jobs plan. It’s almost like they don’t give a shit.
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by John Cole| 63 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
Dow is down another 50 points, chronic unemployment is at Depression era levels, and the Republicans still have not introduced a jobs plan. It’s almost like they don’t give a shit.
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Morbo
The “___” plan is to cut taxes on the wealthy. What ___ is is irrelevant.
arguingwithsignposts
The released their “Jobs Plan” coloring book a couple of weeks ago – with 16 pt. type and 1/3 page clip art. What they haven’t introduced is any jobs legislation.
brutishandshort (formerly known as blogbytom)
FTFY.
Villago Delenda Est
0ooh, snap!
Richard S
Because they don’t give a shit. They think that if the country is still in the toilet in 18 months they’ll get to have a nice white president and a docile Senate that licks billionaire ass like good republicans.
That’s where we are – On well.
Poopyman
Ooooh! Just when the Weinergate post was closing in on 200 comments. Well, with Fred down there I’m sure it’ll go over 200 in a coupla minutes.
I was watching the Dow on the Fidelity front page and honestly expected today to be the day it passes 12000. Not to be, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be this week. I think the “jobless recovery” myth is getting exposed as just that.
trollhattan
“Tax cuts for everybody but the lucky duckies.”
I think that’s da plan.
The Main Gauche of Mild Reason
Don’t you know? The budget IS the jobs plan. Once they push through billions of cuts that lay off thousands of public workers, the economy will pick up and produce millions of jobs!
/snark but this isn’t far off from the argument my republican friend was making when we discussed the same issue yesterday. Apparently the only thing holding the private sector back is the excruciatingly high tax burden and government spending. It has sort of an underpants gnome-quality thinking to it, but it is your modern republican party.
Violet
Sure they have. The plan is, tank the economy, increase the number of Republican jobs in the House, Senate and White House.
Anoniminous
The world, not just the US, is in a recession on the razor-edge of a global Depression and the damn fools are busily working to ensure we Go There.
Zifnab
I blame the Democrats!
bleh
Yeah, but corporate profits and income levels of the very wealthy are doing just fine, thank you.
It is really is almost beyond me how Republicans have been able to get anyone in the middle class (outside the 27% Crazy) to support them for longer than it takes to sober up from a bender.
Jenny
Their jobs plan is to hire more locksmiths to pad lock my puszy.
jrg
They give a shit. That’s the whole point.
It’s the same reason they run up massive deficits, then immediately get “concerned” when the Dem takes over, thus forcing the Dem into either taxes or austerity.
If they have to hurt the entire country to hurt the Dems, they will. They just don’t care. They know the dim-witted mooks voting Republican won’t recognize them a month from now if they put on a Paul Revere hat and some fucking pantaloons.
phantomist
There were 535 members of congress before the recession. There are 535 members of congress three years into the recession. What unemployment?
DonkeyKong
Busy building that bridge to the 19th century.
Jazz Superluminar
Of course, Cole pretends to be worried about jobs because it’s an issue that hurts Obamba. He doesn’t have to worry himself because his friends in the not-Repubs-honest-not-really community will pay his wages.
slag
The lessons of Weinergate tell us that just writing this post about the lack of jobs and lack of plan for job creation means you’re gleeful about the current jobs situation. So, why do you hate America?
JPL
They are traitors. They believe if they tank the economy they will oust the President. Hell with all of us.
BTW Andrew Breitbart just took the stage where Weiner was suppose to hold a press conference citing he was a victim or some shit.
lacp
Repubs don’t have a plan, but the Dems sure do. Austin Goolsbee laid it out: low taxes, low regulation….you know, the same plan that won Herbert Hoover four terms in office.
jl
As I have been saying, they DO give a s h * t, just not about jobs. They give a h * g e s h * t about somehow, by hook or crook, making all those bad mortgages good again, and getting the cash money.
Read Krugman’s blog today, and read link to Kuttner article.
Krugman blog, NY Times
June 6, 2011
The Rentier Regime
Bob Kuttner has a very good column (pdf) in The American Prospect about “debt politics.”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/the-rentier-regime/
Xenocrates
I will echo what several others have already posted here. The name of the game for the GOP is preventing (or trying to prevent) President Obama’s re-election. They are clearly willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish that goal. If the economy does continue to tank and unemployment goes up any further, that’s just “collateral damage.” The degree of cynicism and total lack of moral courage exhibited by Rethuglicans today is beyond shocking, and more importantly, beneath contempt. John, don’t listen to the idjyits that post here. They are all “entitled to their opinions” but you have the facts on your side.
trollhattan
Kevin Drum shrilly quotes Christine Romer.
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/06/no-job-tough
RandyH
Here’s a cartoon to go with this theme.
CynDee
@Jazz Superluminar: Buzz off, Snarkle. John Cole doesn’t pretend.
Redshift
No, no, it’s “uncertainty” that’s holding back job creation. And their answer to that is to play chicken with the debt ceiling.
The only possible explanation for that combination is that it’s some kind of test signal to make sure the media are still in stenography mode.
Pat
They don’t, and neither do the president or the Democrats for that matter. We have a “Don’t Give A Shit” (for the people) government.
Ash Can
Jobs, shmobs. We have more important things to worry about, like Weiner’s Wiener, or Wiener’s Weiner, or whatever the hell it is.
Anoniminous
@trollhattan:
Fiscal stimulus won’t work. The global economy has liquidity out its ass. We need a structural change of the US economy back to producing goods and services – the American System – rather than reducing employment opportunities by off-shoring jobs and importing goods and services while pretending to pay for them with borrowed money.
cleek
Republican Badger doesn’t give a shit. look at that lazy fuck. go take a nap, sleepy.
Turgidson
@jrg:
This is close to what I was going to say. They absolutely do give a shit. But what’s happening is by design. They have total faith in their ability to pin the blame for high unemployment on Obama in 2012 and reap further electoral gains from it.
Hopefully them following the Ryan plan off the cliff will thwart their ambitions but I doubt it. Ultimately, [Insert overused Carville quote here.]
PeakVT
Between inflation hawks at the Fed and Obama hawks in the House, the only possible jobs plan at this point is the passage of time. Maybe if U-3 ticks up to 9.5% or so the Fed will think about QE-III, but otherwise we’re at the mercy of fate until January of 2013.
Dave
They don’t give a shit. The GOP is trying to tank the economy on purpose for 2012 because it is the only shot they have at taking the White House.
stuckinred
Great Wiener fucking lied.
Chuck Butcher
This is how it goes when one Party goes winging off in some ridiculuous manner and the other wanders along behind looking for some mythical middle.
Fred
Well at least you are half right. There is no chronic unemployment at depression levels. In 1933 25% of Americans were out of work. So who told you that? Greenwald. Can you not process information on your own or do you need to listen to agenda driven pundits to get informed?
The majority of ecomomists say we are still recovering. What EVERONE ignored on Friday was manufactures index which beat expectations. So just about every credible economist is saying the recovery is still intact.
Oh btw, these jobs numbers are always subject to significant revision down the road. I’ll bet you 2 things will happen at that time or when next months number come out positive. One will be that you will not have ANYTHING to say about it and continue to obess over Weiners weiner or some other idiotic thing. The other is that I will be on here reminding you!
jl
TPM 06.06.11 — 4:26PM
Weiner Confesses
Weiner: I have made terrible mistakes.
Confesses to sending original Twitter pic.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/06/weiner_confesses.php?ref=fpblg
How stupid. Not so much the dumb pics but to lie about it.
If Mr. Cole were nice, he would erase two comments making fun of a certain John Cole (whoever that is) I made on a certain thread earlier today.
Hey, thanks in advance, Cole.
Turgidson
also, to add to my and others’ thoughts – the GOP and the moneyed class that backs them learned their lesson after FDR. NEVER let a well-meaning Democrat deficit-spend to help the serfs. Takes decades and decades to unring that bell. Which is why they do the deficit spending on useless shit that only helps their moneyed backers and then scream about the deficit after they lose an election.
Dave
@stuckinred: Yeah…this sucks.
Only thing that sucks more…
Democratic Congressman texting his wang = SCANDAL!
Republican senator banging his aide’s wife, violating federal laws to get him a lobbying job and then bribing them to shut up = JACK SHIT
cleek
on the bright side, employment at the pie factory is up
Violet
@jl:
What a dumbass. Do whatever the eff you want with your own private parts and those of any consenting adults, but don’t LIE about it, fercrisssakes. It’s the lying that gets you in the end. Idiot.
Zifnab
@cleek: I fucking love pie.
cleek
nah. it’s still a big Brietbart conspiracy. you can tell by the timing. questionable!
Anoniminous
@Fred:
See any problems, here?
Davis X. Machina
@bleh:
Two words: team spirit. A lot of people besides the head-trauma brigade think of the GOP as ‘their team’, for reasons of race, or region, or religion, or tradition, or what-not.
There are a lot of people who never think about politics….
Citizen Alan
@JPL:
Shhh! Ixnay on the Aitor-tray! Even though the Republicans are deliberately trying to trigger a Second Great Depression and utterly destroy the American Middle Class, we can’t call them traitors because it doesn’t meet the technical definition of treason as laid out in the Constitution and it hurts the fee-fees of Fifth Columnists like burnsesq.
Fred
@jl: Why? Because Cole threw a dart blindfolded and hit the bullseye?
If you are that obsessed about schoolyard arguments over who was right or wrong. Fine. I was wrong. The end.
Does not change my original criticism of his attitude about this.
Fred
@Anoniminous: No I don’t. You have a point or are we playing 10 guesses? You want me to provide the links for you or can you use Google on your own without adult supervision?
Jazz Superluminar
then why is he sockpuppeting under your name?
jl
There is more than one ‘manufacturing index’
One popular one, from the Instutue of Suppy Management (ISM), says manufacturing declining.
ISM Manufacturing index declines to 53.5 in May
Calculated Risk blog, poste June 1, 2011
… This was well below expectations of 57.5%, but pretty much in line with the regional surveys.
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/06/ism-manufacturing-index-declines-to-535.html
Some regional manufacturing indexes have been increasing though. But they are exceptions not the rule right now.
Kansas City Manufacturing Survey at Record High, Chicago PMI Strong in March
http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/03/kansas-city-manufacturing-survey-at.html
Martin
So, what time do they film The Daily Show? Could be entertaining…
Anoniminous
@Fred:
OK, fuckhead.
Your second statement destroys your first statement.
Or do I have to teach you Propositional Logic?
CynDee
@Jazz Superluminar: If he were, I think he’d be a bit more imaginative than my four little words.
Villago Delenda Est
Too late, Weiner.
You’ve screwed the fucking pooch.
Dumbshit.
cleek
@Martin:
late afternoon
Fred
@Jazz Superluminar: Oh to be one of the people who can see IP addresses. Perhaps one of them can verify this. That is as long as they do not have their head too far up John Galt Cole’s ass.
Frankly I give Cole a bit more credit than to do that. But then again I gave Weiner more credit and look where that got me.
Fred
@Anoniminous: How? Oh and sugarcoating it with sweet talk calling me affectionate names won’t get you off the hook.
PS: You obviously have no clue how macroeconomics works.
dj spellchecka
of course they have a jobs plan
Stop spending and give another tax break to the rich
Stop spending and give another tax break to the rich
Stop spending and give another tax break to the rich
Stop spending and give another tax break to the rich
Stop spending and give another tax break to the rich
i’m not saying that’s a REAL jobs plan but that’s their plan
CynDee
@Fred: Fred, just curious: have you been out of work at all?
Jazz Superluminar
I think I can agree with that…
Anoniminous
@Fred:
Your argument is:
A -> B
~A
therefore: B
Since you are so educated in macro-economics please point me to a paper proving how macro-economics necessarily and predictably an affects micro-economic behavior.
TenguPhule
The only way they will ever give a shit is if a GOP Politico gets executed every day the unemployment rate remains over 5%.
Literally nothing else will make them get it in gear.
Pliny
@TenguPhule:
A quote from an interview with Gore Vidal fits here:
“The President wants to be liked by everybody, and he thought all he had to do was talk reason. But remember – the Republican Party is not a political party. It’s a mindset, like Hitler Youth. It’s full of hatred. You’re not going to get them aboard. Don’t even try. The only way to handle them is to terrify them. He’s too delicate for that.”