Trumpite Americans, when will you finally acknowledge your leader is a joke?

In other news:
How a Semi-Retired Guy Cracked Trump's Iraq Visit

We really should be happy he did not start grabbing female soldiers by the pussy and autographing their privates declaring they asked for it.

Yeah, it's fair to question the agenda of person citing statistics, in this case the Chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers (Kevin Hasset). Obviously I'll agree with a skeptical view, it's the same argument I've made about global warming gurus hiding or manipulating inconvenient data that doesn't suit the agenda, so maybe Hassett's claims about Obama's last 2 years or so compared to same period so far under Trump were manipulated somehow, I'll listen if you have something.

But it looks like you just didn't like the data, so you simply ignored it and pointed to the chart of raw unemployment data (which as already mentioned ignores e.g. the falling participation rates, which is huge).

Hassett just compared those two equal periods, since Trump started and equal # of month under Obama - and found the total # of Americans working increased by 36% during Trump. And the total # of Americans working FULL TIME increased by 47% during Trump. And under Trump weekly earnings increased 40%; and the increase in earnings just since tax cuts increased around 76%.

But the reason I said "like growth switch was thrown" wasn't Hassett's presentation of economic data comparisons, but personal experience over past five or so quarters.

You could have just posted "I got mine and fuck everyone else."

Interesting. My personal situation has been largely unchanged over the last five or so quarters, but improved dramatically over the course of the Obama administration.

Data is better than anecdotes, of course ... that is, until you go sifting through reams and reams of indicators, slicing and dicing them a dozen different ways until you finally find a lens that lets you pretend your God-King is accomplishing something that the hated Obama couldn't.

So if we were to pretend this does not come directly from your bullshit dispenser then we have one anecdotal account vs another one. At best, that is even.

You might want to use something more than a biased case study, but then you might have to use something that does not come from your ass. Just saying.

I'm sure it doesn't matter, tafkats, but hopefully it's clear that my flame was *not* directed at you. : P

At worst I might flame you as anc-lite, an elitist without all the policy papers and falderal.

I watch the sources you lot shit on - I haven't seen a single one say "OMG autographs!!!!!!"

It was distributing the merch, and the political speech, that was criticized.

CNN's actual news is still very much middle of the road.

But Zucker gave into the temptation to ape Fox's "opinion" shows a little to closely (not so much Hannity type bullshit but more like Brett Bair's show)

When you have that kind of "what do we think about this?" segments then you mingle your news with opinion and it comes down to who's on any given panel what that looks like.

But I would say that even Fox, when you are getting straight news reporting, is within an acceptable range and the others certainly are too. Folks need to discern between news and commentary.

Also, the problem right wingers have with CNN is that they don't see the world correctly. If the news reflects poorly on your party, it is not an example of bias to report the news - too many people demand you find an equal amount of negative to say about both sides regardless of whether both sides have done an equal amount of shtty thing. That false-balance bullshit is, itself, bias.

It is true that sometimes in life things are unbalanced. Trump is overwhelmingly corrupt and stupid without many good points at all. That is just a fact. Sometimes people are just a disgrace and you should not be pretending people like the republicans are neutral.

I've already pointed out in my previous post that the job openings "surge" point relies on selectively making use of the raw data, once you look at the rate you see nothing out of the ordinary, there's been a steady incline in the pattern since 2010, much as there's been a steady decline in (raw) unemployment figures. That's hard to square with lower participation rates unless there's been a massive swing from part to full time employment skewing the figures and allowing a steady increase in employment to accommodate such a massive decrease in participation which I'll grant fits with Hasset. But that doesn't really help us all that much when you consider Hasset compares cherry picked months and consequently treats that as systematic data, not to mention that low participation being a very unhealthy sign in and of itself. Shame you are closing your borders, seems as though you could do with some migrant labour around now.

Of course we saw an upsurge in the raw figures for openings, there was a wave of optimism which fueled Trumps election in the first place and employers would be expected to create positions in expectations of growth under those circumstances, the same thing initially happens early in most presidencies where there's been an ideological swing. However expectations aren't matching reality and the simple fact is the steady growth observed under Obama is continuing under Trump, implying that drastically different economic policies are in fact not particularly impacting either way on a general trend driven by larger market forces.

I'll confess I'm a bit bemused by your chart, what are we looking at there? Your gross earnings? May I ask your speciality?

If so congratulations but personal experience is hardly a solid analytical tool, especially given you are in a profession frequently noted for booming in weak economies.

Wtf? Rely on personal or anecdotal data? It was the whole fucking country according to US national statistics, that includes sea to sea, the usa, norte americano for gringos, whatever you call it. America, flyover country between the two left coasts.

"since Trump started and equal # of month under Obama - and found the total # of Americans working increased by 36% during Trump. And the total # of Americans working FULL TIME increased by 47% during Trump. And under Trump weekly earnings increased 40%; and the increase in earnings just since tax cuts increased around 76%."

No, you stated:

And offered this chart, without explanation, which seems to be sales figures for a company with a grand total of three outlets:



So no, that's not systematic data and nor is picking two arbitrary months raw data and claiming that tells a story, which is all that you've offered from Hasset.

Here are a couple of articles that dive into the crazy train that is Kevin Hassett's systematic statistical dishonesty:

https://slate.com/business/2018/09/...dit-for-the-economy-kevin-hassett-graphs.html

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...mist-turns-to-alternative-data-to-boost-trump

It appears one of his favorite games is to use six-quarter rolling averages for many of his indicators ... an incredibly transparent, not to mention flagrantly dishonest, attempt to pull quarters that took place under Obama budgets far enough forward that people might be willing to give Trump credit for them.

Oh, and I have no idea what the hell is up with that Excel spreadsheet. What's next, ignoring unemployment, job totals, the GDP and the stock market and insisting that the only measure we should look at is lawnmower sales in Carbondale, Illinois?

Total number of Americans working full time, 1990-2017
https://www.statista.com/statistics/192356/number-of-full-time-employees-in-the-usa-since-1990/
(shows a very constant upward trend since 2010)

As of November '18 (this adds 2018 to the previous chart)
https://www.statista.com/statistics...thly-number-of-full-time-employees-in-the-us/


Using those two, because I ain't spending all night on this, The first Fiscal year with Trump's fingerprints on it began October 1, 2017 and the first major economic policy from his desk was the #TaxScam law which was passed in December and needed at least some weeks to potentially have a measurable impact. So rationally the VERY first figure Trump could claim some credit on is November '17 which happens to be where the second link above begins.

That shows 126.4 million
In November 2018 it was 129.46

An increase of 2.4%

the three previous years in the upper chart work out to 1.8, 1.8, and 4.0 increase.

From the low point in '10 (the first pure Obama year) to '17 (the last fiscal year with his fingerprints on it) the increase was 14.26% which works out to an average increase of...almost 2.4% annually.

It's almost like there's.....gasp!.....been no upsurge at all except in people's imaginations.

It's amazing what a smooth talking criminal can convince you of.

It is difficult to maintain the contortion that the US occupation is just whereas the Soviet one was not. Trump seems to have problems adjusting to the doublethink required. It's causing him problems across a whole range of foreign policy issues.

For one Afghanistan did absolutely nothing to the Soviets to justify an invasion. Afghanistan was harboring Bin Laden at the time the U.S. invaded and what OBL did to the U.S. is well documented (and admitted to by OBL).

Of course, because if that was justafiable, then so is the invasion of Crimea. It's pretty simple, really.

This, exactly. Acting as if the U.S. and Soviet occupations of Afghanistan are morally equivalent is like saying it's wrong for the U.S. to not want North Korea to have nukes.

How is it anything to do with North Korea having nukes?

There are significant differences so it's not "morally equivalent", but it's fairly clear that the initial response to Al Qaeda and the 18 year occupation of Afghanistan are separate issues. The occupation is not legitimate and Afghans have long expressed their opposition to it.

Let's hope so, because Maddow pointed out that NO-ONE in the US seriously thinks Russia was right to go into Afghanistan or that they did so because of terrorism, but Putin's party IS currently pushing a rewrite of history to declare that it was justified. So the alternative to the above two options is - at best - that Trump just believes any old shit that Putin tells him. At worst, he's actively pushing the guy's agenda.

Trump is a small, insecure little man who is easily impressed by any guy he views as "tough."

It's pretty sad, really.

The US shitting on the Lakota, say it ain’t so. If you are interested, Nick Hodges has a really good analysis on Dances With Wolves, my favorite movie BTW, that covers this. It’s long, but worth it.

The analysis is long? If Kevin Costner would have made it we're looking at seventeen hours - for the shortened version that is!

There's a bit after the review that covers the pipeline protests.

This is Wordforge, five minutes is too long for most.