Joe Blow is hired at AAA Widgets as an office manager. He turns out to be the shittiest office manager ever and is fired. Mr. Blow applies for UI. Unless AAA Widgets decides they don’t need an office manager, they will fill that position with someone else. In this situation, there is a net 0 increase in the number of jobs (the office manager job counts as one job, regardless of who fills it) and 1 more person who is getting UI.

The BLS number is an estimate of the net number of new positions created. The UI application number is an estimate of the number of people who have applied for unemployment insurance for the first time. People quit, get fired, etc. even in the best of times. Even in a situation where there is full employment, there will still be around 350,000-375,000 new applications to UI per week. It doesn’t mean that the economy is shedding 1.5 million jobs per month.

That’s not the way it works. The BLS estimate is the number of new positions that were added to the labor market in February. That estimate means there is a net 227,000 new jobs that did not exist at the end of January. Just because someone applies for UI does not mean that their previous position is not filled by a new employee.

It helps to understand what the statistics mean before accusing others of lying.

Slay the Obamabot demons in your head, realitychecker. Then, maybe, you won’t embarrass yourself and your community by demanding a complete stranger pass a purity test before you deign to respond to him. My vote is my business, so fuck off.

Sure, if you ignore everything Schneiderman’s done for the past year as NY AG and dday’s post above, and assume the worst about Schneiderman (he’s stupid, willing to destroy his own reputation to provide cover for Obama, etc.), then “all evidence so far is to the contrary.” I, however, choose not to ignore it.

Easy, not everyone who decides to run for office is a corrupt asshole. Also, whatever VP Biden faults, they are his own and not his son’s. Do you have any real grievances with AG Biden performance, or are you just smearing him to sound cool?

Thanks for this post. I wonder how many of the commenters from your posts yesterday will acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, Schneiderman isn’t the moron/Obama toady/sell-out they (mostly) declared him to be. Given the ossified perspective that prevails here, I’m sure that number will approach zero.

The Obamabot demons that inhabit your addled head have left you incapable of participating in even the most basic discussion. If you weren’t so monomaniacal, you would have noticed that I haven’t defended Obama at all. Keep arguing with your demons, though. It makes for fascinating reading.

Excepting the fact that Schneiderman’s character and actions have exactly nothing to do with “[my] President’s performance”, you have a point. TBogg and I are in league to keep you from expressing yourself. I personally asked him to ban you from his blog. MUAHAHAHA! Feel my Obamabot wrath, peon!

P.S. I think it’s really cute how you FDLers keep recycling the same Obamabot/Obot/(O|0)[a-zA-Z ]* “insults” the PUMAs came up with in ’08. Nothing says “my position deserves to be taken seriously” like a tired variation of the president’s name. Everyone gets it! You don’t like Obama. You don’t need to write like tweens to prove it.

Being the lone dissenter doesn’t make you right.

Neither does parroting the conspiratorial, permanently betrayed FDL party line.

So you think the lone dissenting voice in this thread is the kool-aid drinker? I’ll just note that you have no response to anything I’ve written, only silly name-calling.

Yes, Schneiderman is a lion and the criminal banksters will swarm all over him in an effort to destroy him.
They cannot abide honesty and the truth.
Let’s hope he takes them down because no one else appears to be trying.
We may be seeing another Spitzer take-down, or the birth of a great American hero.

Can you guess who said this, Masoninblue? What’s the AG done in the last four months to so sully your opinion of him?

I see plenty of evidence. Schneiderman has spent the last year standing up to the administration and the banks, and he’s refused the shitty deal that was offered. I think that tells us a lot more about the man than the fact that he sat in the President’s box during the SOTU, but, then, I can’t avail myself of the crystal ball so many here have that shows Schneiderman is a possibly corrupt simpleton who’s allowed himself to be used to bolster the president’s populist cred. Unfortunately for me, I have only his past actions by which to judge him.

It astounds me how quickly FDLers will turn on their heroes. Without the least bit of evidence, you folks have taken to accusing Schneiderman (“Justice Democrat”!) of being naive, corrupt, stupid, or some permutation of the three. No wonder you couldn’t find anyone to primary Obama! Who could possibly meet the expectations of this bunch of feckless cynics?

Given that there are local maxima in the percentage of self-identified Independents the year before presidential elections since 1995, and that the margin of error is ±1 percentage point, the most that can be said is that last year, Americans identified with political parties in exactly the same as 2007 (the last year before a presidential election), within the error bars. Anything else is wishful thinking by Mr. Walker.

You’ve put yourself in the position of defending mercury pollution

I’ve done no such thing. I’ve corrected figures that were three orders of magnitude off and were being used to minimize the significance of the new rules adopted by Obama’s EPA, both here and in at least one other comment thread on FDL.

The EPA has a long, successful track record of affecting positive environmental change through the regulation of polluting industries, and these new rules will continue that tradition. To claim that I “[defend] mercury pollution” because I support the stricter regulation of pollutants generated by coal power plants is as confused a statement as I’ve seen on FDL. Did you support the creation of the CFPB? By your logic, you’ve put yourself in the position of defending the abusive practices of credit card companies.

Should be “(1,000 times less than you claim in your comment)”, not “10,000 times less…”. My point still stands.

Actually, if 1 lb of coal ~= 16,000 BTUs, then 62.5 lbs of coal ~= 1,000,000 BTUs and 62,500,000 lbs of coal ~= 1 trillion BTUs.

Per your comment, the new regulations limit the emission of mercury to 1.2 lbs per trillion BTUs, so mercury emissions will be limited to 0.00000192% ((1.2/62.5*10^6)*100) of the weight of coal burned (10,000 times less than you claim in your comment).

Assuming 965,000,000 tons of coal are burned every year, then annual mercury release will be ~18.5 tons (37,000 lbs). Given a population of 307,000,500, if every American were to breathe only the exhaust of coal plants’ smoke stacks, they would inhale approximately 0.00012 lbs (0.054 grams) of mercury per year. If those coal plants released their exhaust evenly over the entire surface of the US, there would be 0.009 lbs per square mile.

Obama haters need to brush up on their math.

F.D.R. did good domestic policy, foreign policy, not so much.

For someone who agrees with General Butler’s assessment that “War is a racket,” that’s a mighty nuanced view (some would say paradoxical, given your assertion that the U.S.A. benefited domestically from FDR’s foreign policy by becoming “a manufacturing behemoth after it’s competition was destroyed by its late entry into WWII”). Maybe you think FDR’s domestic and foreign policy have nothing to do with each other? Please tell me, do you publish a newsletter that explains the nuances of your quixotic world-view?

Well now, if General Smedley D. Butler said it, who am I to argue?

P.S. what a war profiteering prick that FDR was, am I right? The stable of FDL-approved liberal champions shrinks yet again.