Here is who is to blame

Didn’t even know Gallup tracked unemployment. Is this different from the government’s unemployment numbers?

UPDATE: Nevermind. I read Gallup’s definition. It’s not the same, but their number is lower than I would have expected.

I understand that FDL has a tendency to look down on putting bodies into the streets, favoring instead an inside game. I am of the opinion that an inside game of petitioning, and shooting off emails of displeasure, will accomplish next to nothing without a strong GOIP get out in protest aspect. Armchair activism, however valuable is simply not enough. It is a failure of imagination and a denial of historical record.

Here is 4min video and commentary by Richard Wolff. ” While workers in the US talk about “One Nation”, workers in Europe are demanding that the rich pay for crisis.”

http://www.zcommunications.org/european-workers-distance-from-us-through-action-by-richard-d-wolff

Bush got us into this mess, but Obama is keeping us there.

Had to get that image up there, just as a reminder for all the people who think that Bush would get any of the blame.

And not good news for the incumbent party. . . and that would be the Democrats.

The real incumbent party is the money party. The corporate, “We can do what we want.” party

I switch between angry and depressed these days. Mostly depressed. When there is no justice for people who destroyed the economy what the hell are you supposed to do?

When the money that should have gone into hiring people to fix infrastructure in the US go to line the pockets of the contractors in Iraq and Organist, what are you going to do?

One thing that the Tea Party rules are very clear about. It’s not the fault of the elite. It’s not the fault of the corporations.

yes it is slightly different system but they track fairly closely

Too late to add: I suspect there may be some sampling bias, like for instance that the employed are more likely to have a phone and a personal residence than the unemployed are.

I really don’t know what you are talking about right now. FDL is heavily focused on GOTV efforts and phonebanking around marijuana reform ballot initiatives in four states. http://go.firedoglake.com/dna/login

So 10.1% reported means, say, 15%, give or take? Any way to get a feel for the real number?

I think that Little Bush was just the apotheosis of bad economic policy, not the start of it. The problem has been a bipartisan one for a long time. A Democratic President signed the repeal of Glass-Steagel (sp?). Mostly Democratic congresses cooperated with Reagan and Big Bush on tax policy changes, etc.

It dawned on me what Obama is acting like: a junior military officer. At best, he is at the 1st Lieutentant rank. Smart enough, but without the experience to know when he is being led by the nose.

Democrats have been in complete control of Washington, and they will likely be viewed as having completely failed at improving the job situation.

Since they have failed completely, they should be viewed that way. And they should face consequences for failing completely.

It’s no big surprise. Plenty of folks were saying at the time that the “stimulus” that got passed wasn’t nearly big enough and included too many tax cuts. And remember, when the stimulus passed, the Democrats still had 60 votes in the Senate. They were quite literally in complete control.

Yeah I know. The money party waits until the Democrats get in to really screw the people. NAFTA, for example.

Tax Cuts are bullsh*t. They companies just sit on the money. The answer to every problem is not fraking tax cuts. Just like the answer to ever international problem is a war. But the men in charge seem to think that you are a wimp if you don’t kill people in a war and you are a stupid socialist if you want to use the government to get the country working.

People in our world are very sensitive to name calling.

The real number is between 22.4 percent and 26.2 percent. I’m basing that on all the people who dropped out of the system who aren’t counted anymore and the people who are “self employed” and making peanuts selling t-shirts to each other.

Democrats get in to really screw the people. NAFTA, for example.” ?????

Signed by Bush, passed back when every economist said free trade was good for every one, passed with promise of future modification which was fulfilled, passed before MIT’s Samuelson showed free trade not always good –

and most important – of the millions of jobs moved to China and the far east, Nafta had about zero effect.

So why “Nafta for example”

The premise based on the last 2 years appears to be correct – but we have a corporate Dem President these days – rather than a Dem that could work with business – one hell of a difference (to be sure I did not like “could work with business” but little that was bad resulted from that approach – and that little can be put at the feet of the GOP controlled Congress that Bill Clinton worked with – I have never before seen such corporate obedience by a Dem that control both houses of Congress).

just like they have 100 year flood zones where, you know , it never floods they also get the occasional recession that turns to depression in the boom bust continuum.

I think the number is more around that level since this doesn’t factor in discouraged workers who have given up out of feeling hopeless and it also doesn’t include all those that retired because they didn’t feel they could get another job (SS has spiked up dramatically with people in SS even saying high unemployment was causing this).

Gallup competes with DOL’s 60,000 sample survey that is tied back to actual payrolls and polling that is 20 times his in size via less than a thousand phone calls????

Interesting – based on the concept of polling he should track over time in the same direction – but I would not make investment decisions based on his results.

But an investment house has put out a 10.2 % guess – so he is not the highest estimate.

Since when does Gallup do UE. Well it makes no difference because their UE data series is ignored by everyone. It is the Labor Departments number which counts. Tax withholding were OK for Sept. so more likely than not the UE number will ‘surprise’ to downside.

That is precisely what I was talking about GOTV without mass public protests will get us mo better Democrats, who once seated will become Dinos.

The linked video is what America should be experiencing and then GOTV may make a difference. Otherwise, co-mingling fresh fruit with rotten fruit will get you, you know what.

Got to quibble with that phrase, “democrats were in complete control in Washington.”

Don’t you know Dems are never “in complete control?” It just looks like they’re in control, since they always have to compromise and give away the store before they even begin to negotiate.

Or the alternate view – a good many of those “60 votes” in the Senate aren’t really Democrats. Blue Dogs are really Republicans.

National unemployment rates mean nothing in terms of voting in the state and congressional elections this year. It is the unemployment rates in individual states and the congressional districts therein, that counts. About the only thing the national average for unemployment serves is the flash trading on the dow jones index when it used as a pretext for buying and selling by the institutional flash traders who reportedly control 70% of the volume on shares traded within the dow jones index. And those traders are not unemployed.

The unemployment increase combined with rising oil prices will predictably leverage the self interest of voters, to vote against their self interest, as usual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:WTI_price_96_09.svg

Solar Panel manufacturer in China is infused with 9 billion dollars for jobs development and aggressive implementation of solar technology and we spend $3.6 billion a month, probably more today, on war.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/63121-crs-calculates-cost-of-us-troop-presence-in-afghanistan.

Meanwhile, we mandate everybody must buy book they can’t afford, for without that book, you can’t go to public school learning to live and prosper. A school that has no library, in a town where, there is no public library to get a book, which one might use to go to public school, if you can play the “repeat keep game” with out making the book overdue? The reasons why you really have to buy the book, or get the book at the public library, to go to the public school? The cost of the book, the library and the cost of school can’t be controlled. They’re controlled by, and at the mercy of the the price of oil and the expenditure of billions of dollars “to secure access oil,” via war!

So America, voting for “rethugs” is suicidal while voting for “demorats” is like being a “cutter.” The thrill of self inflicted wound! However the epitome of stupidity is to think that 2 years of any administration could resolve the “sins of generations,” and that “fuck-headed mentality,” of man. But I do know one thing. We are trying,

“Gallup competes with DOL’s 60,000 sample survey that is tied back to actual payrolls and polling that is 20 times his in size via less than a thousand phone calls????
Interesting – based on the concept of polling he should track over time in the same direction – but I would not make investment decisions based on his results.”

The problem with the government’s numbers is that they then go an manipulate the numbers to the point where they don’t even fully reveal how they sliced and diced the numbers. The Gallup pool is much more direct without any secret sauce added.

If we got back just half of the jobs outsourced overseas to cheap-labor markets, outsourcing of American jobs facilitated by foreign-bankrolled culture-of-corruption multi-national-corporatist Republicans, we wouldn’t have any unemployed.

Kick out of public office all the Banana Republic Republicans. Replace them with patriotic Americans who support American workers and small businesses, who support ending outsourcing, who support returning these outsourced jobs to American soil, who support our democracy. Stop treading on America, you right-wing mofo’ers!!!!

Dems have never had 60 votes. For a while, they had 58 + Sanders (Independent) and Lieberman (Lieberman). With Nelson and Baucus wandering off the reservation every minute, they never could get 60 without a republican or two, and with Byrd dead, well…

Really. I must have missed Obama losing 10 million jobs in the last two years. He may be the President but he can’t force companies to hire people when they are sitting on billions in cash.

When did Firedog become tea bagger central.

Obama is running out of time. He’s got to decide very quickly if he wants to be Hoover or FDR. Obama was sold the Geithner/Summers/Paulson/Bernenke “kick the can down the road” strategy for handling the banking crisis. The idea is to have the government absorb the losses (very unpopular) and grow our way out of the problem. But there are troubling signs that it’s not working.

Unemployment up.
Foreclosures up. (at least until maybe frozen)
Economy stalled.

A forecast discussion:

http://www.epi.org/publications/entry/americas_fiscal_choices

Gist of it – outlook bad to worse.

There are disturbing signs that the TBTF banks are going down any ways despite Geithner’s best efforts to prop them up. Chris Whalen on a panel at the AEI discussing TBTF bank health:

http://pragcap.com/chris-whalen-describes-why-2011-could-make-2008-look-like-a-cakewalk

Talk is at one hour and seven minute mark.

Gist of it (as near as I can tell) is TBTF banks are going down despite Treasury/Fed support, and we may have missed our opportunity to force a “controlled” restructure.

Combine this with the mess in foreclosures (i.e. possibility of income disruption due to foreclosure moratoriums) and the banks may go over the edge again. Ratigan/Denninger clip today too:

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/karl-denninger-explains-foreclosure-gate-dylan-ratigan

Obama’s plan of just sort of smoothing everything over and having things “good enough” by 2010 didn’t really work out. The stimulus was too small, and letting Wall St and the TBTF banks off the hook did not force a fundamental change in their actions. So 2010 is baked in the cake, and Obama will be LUCKY if all he deals with is gridlock rather than impeachment or shutting down the government. I’m sure he didn’t think he would have to deal with the economy imploding AGAIN even worse than last time courtesy of Wall St, the TBTF banks, and a crummy plan by Geithner to deal with it all.

I am praying the Democrats in DC get to a tipping point on this whole mess where they realize we must deal with the TBTF banks and Wall St. Democrats will be staring at rising unemployment and midterm blowouts. They can decide to support the American people like FDR now, or there is a very real possibility we get gridlock, a second Wall St disaster, and at that point all bets are off. Obama will be forever know as the Democratic party’s version of Herbert Hoover, and the Republicans will get a free ticket to the WH.

Obama will be forever know as the Democratic party’s version of Herbert Hoover, and the Republicans will get a free ticket to the WH.

If the Democrats could actually learn a lesson from that, then it might be worth it.

The problem has been a bipartisan one for a long time.

Conservative economic policy has created a mess which defies explanation in 30 second campaign commercials. The Democrats are going to pay for not having captive media.

these are not stupid people. You know, i know the stimulus was too small, the smart economists that these people ignored told us so. This coming depression has been engineered because there is some serious money to be made and whatever else they want to take from people.

How dare people hold the President responsible for anything! /s

Rigth wing lunatic Economic policy that Democratic President Barack Obama has signed on to and wholeheartedly supports. Obama has changed the unemployment rate from 8.1 percent in February of 2009 to 10.1 percent in September 2010! Now that is definitely change we can believe in!!!!!

Rising unemployment in Third World America. This is good for the country. The American people are getting exactly what they voted for and deserve…………..

Voted for and deserve? They didn’t think they were voting for more of more of the same when they voted for Change and Hope. But that’s what they got. Now the Obamabots want us to believe somehow we got Change and should stop complaining about what we didn’t get.