Happy Fourth of July to everyone on our blog. The Turleys will hold our annual Fourth of July celebration with fireworks tonight with a cookout, pies, and of course fireworks. However, this year I am also going to watch my Chicago Cubs play the Nationals as the guest of a friend. I will then return to watch them again on Sunday with one of my sons and a very generous friend and his son. (Yes I am completely scarfing off friends).
I love this holiday. Despite the continued assault on civil liberties and our rather dysfunctional politics, it is a day that unites Americans over a common convenant of faith in representative government. While a new Gallup poll shows a record drop in the satisfaction of Americans over their freedoms, this holiday reminds us that we do have the ability to change our government — and a duty to do so. Moreover, this holiday we have a victory to celebrate in the unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court in rejecting the Obama Administration’s effort of strip citizens of privacy protections over their cell phone records and data.
Indeed, the erosion of our civil liberties should only make us more appreciative of our Framers and more committed to regaining what they left us . . . and what we have lost. I remain an optimist about this country despite a depressing decade as a civil libertarian. Hell, I am a Cubs fan . . . I was raised looking at next year for a turn around.
So there for a great Independence Day to everyone on the blog. I will hoist a burger and a beer in your honor today.
This link is much more interesting. It shows that jobs have been lost during the entire reign of Obama.
http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
I did not see the full link you posted but t appearedto me that yours did not put up the full picture, maybe I was wrong,
@leejcaroll
What was the point of your last comment? That PDF is exactly the same as the BLS link I provided except for the graphs.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/empsit.pdf
THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION —JUNE 2014
Bureau of labor statistics.
To follow up on my employment post, look at the current Employment Situation Summary (www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm).
It states: “Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 288,000, and the unemployment rate declined to 6.1 percent.” That’s what Obamaphiles tout as a sign of his greatness.
But it goes on to say: “The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) increased by 275,000 in June to 7.5 million.”
So, essentially all of the jobs created in June were part-time ones. And these are low-paid retail and restaurant jobs for the most part. These people are “involuntary part-time workers,” so they really want a full-time job but there are none on offer.
The Bush and Obama presidencies have been an unmitigated disaster for the American worker.
leejcaroll wrote “salon is not onlyplace saying this”
No? Let me guess: the Huffington Post, MSNBC, and the Atlantic are also saying it.
“52 straight months of employment growth”
To make such a statement one would have to be completely ignorant of how the BLS generates its figures. For almost every month of Obama’s time in office, the BLS unceremoniously dropped hundreds of thousands of Americans from its roles because they were too inconvenient to count. More than a few months resulted in 500,000 people being declared unpersons. BLS makes this impossible to research because its monthly report, the Employment Situation Summary, always uses the same URL. It is true that Obama is not the one who created the scheme of cooking the employment books — Reagan has that honor and it was further revised downward in 1994 — but he sure uses it to his advantage.
The U6 indicator is the best measurement of true unemployment. It’s currently at 12.1%. That’s nothing to be proud of.
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
The #1 Paul wrote “As far as Marxism is concerned a lie is okay for the cause, in fact it is expected”
Are you sure that is from Karl Marx? I think philosophy is exceedingly boring so I have not read Das Kapital, but I suspect that is actually communism, applied Marxism, if you will.
P.S. Everyone knows that Marxism refers to fans of the Marx Brothers. I am a proud Marxist.
saucy – I like a couple of the Marx Bros, but not all of them. However, what they did to Margaret Dumont was criminal. Can’t stand the Three Stooges either. Buster Keaton is my favorite. What are artiste!!!
The #1 Paul wrote “Nixon inherited the war”
If I inherited a box of turds, I certainly would not keep it for five years.
“Part of being a good general is being willing to send men to their deaths”
I never said anything about American deaths; I specifically referred to Vietnamese ones.
And part of being a good general is telling the civilian leadership that the war had no bearing on U.S. interests and therefore was a bad idea. We have very few good generals.
“blame someone for Vietnam you have to go back to FDR, who thought he could handle ‘Uncle Joe’”
I think FDR was a terrible president with respect to international affairs. FDR refused to intervene in the Winter War when the Soviets invaded Finland under false pretenses. H. Hoover was the one to organize aid, as he often did. FDR gave the Soviets aid when it was actually in our best interest to see the Nazis and Soviets beat each other to death.
But worst of all was his appointing of Joseph Davies as ambassador to the USSR. Davies intentionally ignored the plight of a good number of Americans who became caught in Stalin’s purges (“The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia” by Tim Tzouliadis).
“Truman allowed the French back into Vietnam”
It’s much worse than that. Dulles offered the French two nuclear weapons for use in Indochina, though knowing him, it is unclear if he had the approval of Eisenhower or not. The cost of France’s war was 80% paid by the U.S.
“let’s pick on FDR, rather than Nixon”
I wasn’t aware we could only pick on one.
P.S. Whiskey Joe McCarthy was dead wrong about the U.S. having “lost” Poland and Eastern Europe to the Soviets. Poor Poland was screwed because it was on the other side of Germany; the Baltic States were even worse, geographically-speaking. We blundered in not keeping at least part of Czechoslovakia, however. Did you know that Patton’s troops made it as far as Plzeň (Pilsen), home of the tasty Pilsner Urquell? There is a plaque in the pavement celebrating the event (I was there probably ten years ago).
Being independent, I see both sides of the hatred, love, etc. Post JFK, the only President who didn’t seem to engender hatred was Bush 41. Now, watch the haters come out of the woodwork.
I don’t know about being in the pocket etc but if you look at some of the sites like Huckabee on FB for instance, Reagan is adored. People absolutely forget some of the awful things he did/caused and lap up the repubs whitewash of him
leejcaroll – I have enough trouble with my own FB account without looking for others. However, I am well aware the disinformation is the hallmark of the left. As far as Marxism is concerned a lie is okay for the cause, in fact it is expected.