Good News: Unemployment is Down: Bad New: Santorum Reacts with Hackery
Independent voters no longer need to watch TV, go to the movies, attend comedy clubs or listen to Donald Trump insist he is really considering a third party run for amusement.
We can just watch the dance of the partisans.
Many of us independent voters are not just turned off to political polemics but we have to turn off the increasingly predictable (and often execrable) ideological talk shows of the left and right. And we’ve become accustomed to not treating the mouthings of many politicians of BOTH parties seriously when something happens because they react with sheer partisan predictability in such a way that it seems like something out of The Onion or Mad Magazine, or SNL.
Rick Santorum has made one for the Guinness World Records. And with this comment he now wins a highly coveted chair — no, let’s make that a sofa — in TMV’s Get A Life Club.
The good news is that unemployment is up:
The United States added 200,000 new jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday, a robust number that came on the heels of a flurry of heartening economic news. Consumer confidence has lifted, factories have stepped up production and small businesses are showing signs of life. The nation’s unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent, its lowest level in nearly two years.
It was the sixth consecutive month that the economy showed a net gain of more than 100,000 jobs — not enough to restore employment to prerecession levels but enough, perhaps, to cheer President Obama as he enters the election year.
The sustained run of positives had economists like Markus Schomer, of PineBridge Investments, feeling much more optimistic than they did back in August, after a spring and summer of lost economic ground and a demoralizing debate over the debt ceiling.
At that time, Mr. Schomer thought, as many did, that government dysfunction was paralyzing the economy. Now, he is ratcheting up his growth forecast for 2012.
“The improving trend in the U.S. labor markets is not just a temporary blip, but seems to be something quite sustainable,” he said, adding that the improvement had come despite continued Washington gridlock.
But, as The Times notes, due to other factors the cup is “half full.”
It is good news. And most thoughtful people of the right, left and center and Democrats and Republicans would leave it at that.
Now the bad news: Rick Santorum says it’s due to…people thinking the Republicans will retake the White House:
Surging Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum downplayed President Obama‘s role in the good news that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5% in December, the lowest level in three years. According to a tweet by Politico‘s Dave Catanese, Santorum claimed unemployment was dropping as a result of widespread “optimism that Republicans will take the White House.”
If so, Rick, I don’t think most people think it’ll be with you as the one retaking it.
Advice to Rick and other Republicans: it hugely undermines your credibility when you say comments like this. On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh will say it and mlllions of listeners will believe it’s so.
It’s clear that short of Barack Obama personally setting up jobs in companies or Christine O’Donnell twitching her nose and creating them, the same old political game will be played.
But it does make for an amusing dance.
22 Responses to “Good News: Unemployment is Down: Bad New: Santorum Reacts with Hackery”
Anticipation, is funny, it makes the cloudy day sunny. Hum along, if you wish.
A more plausible scenario would be that if a Rep had been in charge, the economy would have done even better. Go disprove that one, you nabobs of negativism.
“The good news is that unemployment is up:” Whoa, that’s a hell of a typo!
Hey DDuck, I have an even better one for you to disprove: That the economy is going to continue improving — albeit tad by tad — and that Obama is going to be re-elected.
Now, to make it a little more interesting and if it is not against TMV rules and Joe G. goes along with it, I challenge our Obama doubters/”dislikers” and those who think they can disprove my statement to put your money where your mouth is:
I will accept individual bets of max. $10 each and max $100 total,challenging my prediction that Obama will be re-elected.
Come November 7, the loser(s) will forward their $$ to Joe to donate to his favorite veterans charity.
It will be all on the honor system.
(First we must hear from Joe G.)
DDW, although I don’t think Obama will “lose”, I will sign up for the first deflated $10 bet.
DDuck,
While we wait to hear from Joe, are you betting that Obama will win or lose? (It wasn’t quite clear to me)
BTW, to make it less confusing, I will only accept bets challenging my statement.
Obama “wins”, you bet, I bet Romney “wins”. You collect $10 bucks if Obama gets more votes then Romney (assuming a third party).
I agree with Joe, it makes for an amusing dance. As for Santorum, he is either a complete fool or is just plain shameless. Maybe both.
“In addition, average wages in private industry ticked up by 4 cents an hour, though over the year wages have not kept pace with inflation.”
They sure haven’t. All of us who enjoy the convenience of cheap products, fast food, clean buildings, 24 hour gas stations and stores, etc. are doing so on the backs of a huge American labor force working at close to minimum wage. Given the value of that national embarrassment of a minimum wage, it isn’t terribly far from indentured servitude.
Btw, I won’t be taking Dorian’s bet, but I’m still quite unhappy with Obama – most recently because of this NDAA business, which my own Senator, Carl Levin (D) is a huge supporter of. And all this time I thought Levin was one of the white hats. Fool me once..
@Dorian
If Romney is the Republican nominee, then I honestly won’t care who wins.
Now, if you want to have a separate pool for the economy on election day . . .
DDuck and ProfElwood,
Wow, they must call you the “complicators” in real life.
How about just a straight bet: I say Obama wins, you say Obama loses — forget about Romney or the economy, or by how many votes, etc. Too much room for fudging ..
How about it? It’s for a goof cause i.e. Obama, the economy and charity
“It’s for a goof cause i.e. Obama”
I just have to giggle at this slip!
roro80 says:
“It’s for a goof cause i.e. Obama”
I just have to giggle at this slip!
As long as we don’t call it a Freudian slip
No sir, Mr De Wind.
Straight bet Obama wins, you win, he loses you fork over $10 to Joe.
dduck says:
“Straight bet Obama wins, you win, he loses you fork over $10 to Joe.”
Let me see if I can clarify this:
Obama wins, DDuck forks over $10 to Joe. Obama loses, I fork $10 over to Joe.
At this rate, the elections will be done and gone before we can place the bets
“As for Santorum, he is either a complete fool or is just plain shameless.”
I’d say he’s attempting to get out in front of an issue which the eventual GOP nominee might have to face: An improving economy.
It has been improving slowly and tentatively for some time now, but the real threat for the likes of Frothy Rick, Mittens the Pander Bear, and Mr. Potato Head is that this is not just another slow tentative step, but a tipping point for the economy.
If job creation continues at this pace or accelerates, and if growth continues to accelerate, then it will be much harder for the GOP to argue that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and in need of a major change in course.
Six or eight months from now, it could be quite difficult to point to the “failed economic policies” of Obama and have people believe you, so they’ve got to consider other options and have them in place should things continue to improve.
Santorum is doing it in a ham fisted and clumsy fashion, but he’s essentially on the right track.
Factors beyond the control of the White House or Congress will determine the strength of the economy and unemployment this year, such as the European sovereign debt crisis, Chinese growth rate, etc. Of course, the Republicans will blame Obama and Obama will blame Congress for whatever problems arise. Santorum will say it’s because the Europeans didn’t realize that the Repubicans were going to retake the White House that their economies did poorly.
DDW, yes, yes, agreed.
Now Robert, don’t try to bring that reality thing into play here. Remember: everything that goes wrong was started by Bush, anything that looks good is because of Obama.
Bush bad. Obama good. Got it?
It’s only logical.
Plus, even if it is a continuation of a Bush policy/tactic/whatever, it is an “improved” version and the previous owner misused or misapplied it.
P.S., we missed all those cool anti-war rallies, OWS was a washout.
“It’s only logical.”
The step missing in the logic of course is that people who think your statement is true think that both Bush and Obama have actually done things with policy. If you’ve done a reasonable amount of research into what Bush did and realize it broke us, and then look at what Obama’s done to try and fix it as well as he has been able to, then yeah, Bush bad, Obama good**. Trying to pass that off as some reflexive gut feeling by the collective imagination of Obama worshipers isn’t true.
**ETA: my point is not that you, who don’t think it’s true, hasn’t done the research. It’s that a reasonable person can come to the stated conclusion (on the economy) without being some sort of illogical nitwit, and without harboring illusions that Obama is perfect or Bush is evil.
@roro80
I guess it depends on the research, because my research says we’ve got both financial and foreign policy problems that have been building for decades, and both administrations (and quite a few before them) have been playing on the sidelines.
Prof., too busy running for reelection.