Nightly Ramble: The Unemployment Line

Welcome, one and all to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the sphere..The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• UNEMPLOYMENT AT 9.8%: That’s far worse than was estimated… about double, in fact. And if you count those who have simply giving up trying to locate a job, it goes to 17%. Hope and change.
• WHERE’S YOUR HEAD, ROBERT? Robert Reich was  Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, from 1993 to 1997. So it shuld come as no shock that Ol’ Bob is a strong beliver in big govenment. So strong, in fact he can’t see what we pointed out yesterday… that government spending is the problem not the solution to our current economic woes. So it should come as no shock to anyone that he’s come out swinging in favor of even more government spending.
  

  

  Robert Reich

  Let me say this as clearly and forcefully as I can: The federal government should be spending even more than it already is on roads and bridges and schools and parks and everything else we need. It should make up for cutbacks at the state level, and then some. This is the only way to put Americans back to work. We did it during the Depression. It was called the WPA.

  Yes, I know. Our government is already deep in debt. But let me tell you something: When one out of six Americans is unemployed or underemployed, this is no time to worry about the debt.

  Well, no. Actually, Bob it’s exactly the time to be concerned about it… the debt was the cause of the problem, and thereby cannot even on a temporary basis, be the solution to it.

  As James Joyner says this morning and correctly:

  

  James Joyner

  This ain’t 1933.  Most of those hit by the current decline were in service industries — including those requiring rather substantial education and training — rather than unskilled laborers.  Surely, Reich and his follow UCal professors who have suffered salary cuts aren’t going to supplement their income by repairing bridges or cleaning up parks?No worries, though.  In a few years, the Japs will bomb Pearl Harbor again, which will require a massive investment in our defense infrastructure.  That’ll be just the boost we need.

  Heh.  Look, gang… The solution to the issue was demonstrated by Ronald Reagan… lower taxes, and in particular, marginal tax rates. View government as the problem, not the solution. but Robert Reich believes in government as the savior, not the devil, and so will never even consider such ideas… despite those ideas having been proven over and over and reliance on government being shown just as repeatedly as the trap that it is. Now you know where Robert Reich’s head is installed.

• IRAN AGAIN: And a side note to James… it may not be the Japs bombing Pearl, but I’m willing to be Iran will figure prominently in there, given the gross mishandling of the Iranian Nuclear  situation by the Obama White House. Obama has been so bad at this, it is a logical question to ask if it hasn’t been intentionally so.  One cannot possibly be so consistently wrong without some pre planning involved.  Jen Rubin looks at this, this morning:
  

  As the Wall Street Journal‘s editors observe, the Geneva talks have revived the reputation of the despotic regime:

  Responding to an overture from the Obama Administration, the Iranians even talked about the future of the U.N. and other nonnuclear issues. Meanwhile, Washington was “buzzing” (as one newspaper put it) that a one-day visit by Iran’s foreign minister might signal more detente to come. Back in Tehran, Mr. Ahmadinejad floated a tete-a-tete with the U.S. President. In short, this engagement conferred a respectability on his regime that Mr. Ahmadinejad could only have imagined amid his vicious post-election crackdown.

  

  Jenifer Rubin

  And like the missile-defense capitulation, we’ve gotten precious little for this. We’re now sucked into a process of meetings, and the inspection of Qom will take place with plenty of time for the Iranians to “clean the place out.” We now begin the familiar dance of endless talks, quibbles about inspections, and compromises on verification-all culminating in the realization (eventually) that a secretive, despotic regime is on track to engage in nuclear blackmail.

  Of all this Obama seems blissfully unaware. We’re finally engaging! We’re getting down to business. This is constructive, he gushes. Well, for Iran certainly.

  Quite. And it’s so slick, one cannot help but wonder if it wasn’t intended so.  You know,  I wonder if any WWII historians have caught on to the similarity here that James alludes to in his post?  After all, were we not engaged in high level negotiations with Japan even as word of their attack on Pearl reached Washington? Perhaps the Mullahs are better students of history than Obama and understand what a great tool negotiations can be toward flummoxing your enemy. In my view that’s what’s happening here.

• QUICK NOTE TO DAVID BROOKS: The only thing illusionary about Limbaugh, Beck and so on, is the idea that you actually have a grip on why they’re influential and to what degree.  Well, in fairness, let it be said that you, sir,  generally don’t have a grip on much of anything, really.  The fact of the matter is they have a better idea of what’s going on in middle America, then do you.  Example: Has it occurred to you in that great storehouse of knowledge on top of your neck, that New Hampshire might not be middle America?   You disconnection with the facts, is a prime example of the kind of thing that we have come to expect from anyone under the masthead of “New York Times”.  Let me put this as simply and directly as I can.   Get lost. Oh, and I think Stacy may have a thing or two for you as well.  Pay particular attention to this line, David:
  

  

  Stacy McCain

  Nov. 4, 2008, was Crazy Cousin John’s personal defeat, as well as a decisive repudiation of the Republican Party’s leaders, who had utterly abandoned the legacy of Ronald Reagan in favor of the “compassionate conservative” agenda of Bushism, which was nothing but Brooksian “National Greatness” in evangelical drag with a Texas drawl.

  Which brings us rather nearly to….

• THE BITSBLOG BUMERSTICKER OF THE DAY: