Category Archives: Politics

The New Republican Conspiracy

Today, Jack Welch became the latest spokesperson for the Republican Party’s conspiracy theorists. The Jobbers, as they are being called, are now the latest of the many fringe elements of the Party. Just a few days ago the conspiracy theorists were bringing the allegation of rigged polling, of course, because all the polls favored Obama. Now with today’s report of the unemployment rate falling to 7.8% in September, JW thinks that the numbers are “unbelievable”. Only minutes after today’s official unemployment rate announcement by the Labor Department, JW was tweeting his nonsense, and he didn’t stop there. He followed up his tweet with further ridiculous commentary implying that the President’s camp somehow had changed the numbers. Chris Matthews of MSNBC tried to get him to walk back his verbal attacks that implied that the numbers were rigged by the “Chicago guys”. Of course, JW refused to back down. What a surprise.

Is this guy serious? Yes. These Republicans actually believe their own lies and rhetoric. Take Allen West, for example. As an African American, I find Allen West to be the worst kind of African American politician. Allen West is a black version of Newt Gingrich, a blowhard who is always trying to be seen and heard by making the most audacious and ridiculous of commentary. He was so quick to agree with Welch and add fuel to the fire when every sensible person not only found JW’s comments implausible, but ludicrous.

What the Republican conspiracy theorists won’t talk about, or more than likely, it’s that they just don’t know about it, is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics produces the unemployment rate under strict security so as to not influence financial markets. In fact, the data was compiled prior to Wednesday’s presidential debate, and according to a Bloomberg Businessweek report, the data is locked down for a whole week prior to making the information public.

The fact that the rate dropped by three-tenths of a percent in a month (August rate was 8.1%) is reportedly not unusual and has happened many times in the last decade. According to Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors, “at least once a year, you should expect that large a move”.

What these Republicans hate is that they were stripped today of one of their main talking points. The unemployment rate is the lowest it has been in four years and it is now officially under 8%. Apparently, we are better off than we were four years ago. Oh, I guess that Republican talking point is gone now too. Two Republican talking points destroyed with one unemployment report…gotta love it.

I know a lot of people were freaking out about Obama’s debate performance this past Wednesday, but, Obama’s debate performance will not make or break his campaign. JW disingenuously linking today’s unemployment rate announcement as a cover for Obama’s lackluster debate showing is just stupid. These two things have no bearing one upon the other, and to link them is nothing less than slanderous and disrespectful to President Obama.

Today, Republican fears have come into fruition, because the unemployment rate announcement of 7.8% clearly establishes and validates that Obama is moving the country in the right direction. That’s good news for Dems and bad news for thems. FORWARD.

L. Jackson/10.5.12

NUNS ON THE BUS

Nuns On A Bus: Romney’s 47 Percent Comments Show ‘He Has No Idea How Hard It Is’ To Be Poor

By Travis Waldron, Think Progress  on Sep 25, 2012 at 1:40 pm

The leader of the Nuns On A Bus tour that has criss-crossed the nation highlighting the effect the House Republican budget would have on low-income Americans said Monday that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s recent comments about the “47 percent” “show that he is “out of touch” and “has no idea how hard it is at the margins of our society.”

ThinkProgress spoke to Sister Simone Campbell, the executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby, in New York, where the Nuns got off the bus and onto the Staten Island ferry to highlight the GOP budget’s impacts on poverty programs in New York City. Aboard the ferry, Campbell said Romney’s comments “broke my heart” because they demonstrated his lack of knowledge about the living conditions of America’s poorest citizens:

CAMPBELL: I mean, it was shocking to me that a person who says he wants to be the leader of our nation believes that 47 percent of our country is basically lazy or dependent or indolent. That was shocking to me. But then, it broke my heart that he would be so out of touch, that he would so not know the truth of folks at the margins of our society who work so hard. And he obviously doesn’t know that if you work a minimum wage job, if you’re a child care, if you’re providing janitorial services, or if you’re a day laborer, if you work for minimum wage, you’re still in poverty. He has no idea how hard it is at the margins of our society.

The Nuns tour, which hit nine states earlier this year, was in New York to protest the House GOP budget authored by Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan. Even before he chose Ryan as his running mate, Romney supported the Ryan budget, which makes a majority of its spending cuts from programs that benefit the poor, including food stamps, Medicaid, and other assistance programs.

The Nuns On A Bus tour invited Romney and Ryan to join them during a stop in Ohio early in October but have yet to get an answer. But that visit, Campbell said, might be exactly what Romney needs. “That’s why we’ve invited them to come October 10 to Cincinnati, to have him listen to folks experience,” Campbell said. “Not speak, we want him to listen, to let his heart be broken by the truth of people in the U.S. That’s what he needs.”