It is taking a hell of a long time to crawl out of the pile of shit they dumped on this country.

I think when Osama said he was going to bankrupt America

he did with Bush's help

the Iraq war will go down in history as the breaking of America

all orchestrated by the corporations...remember when cheney has these big closed meeting with the heads of various corporations...this goes right to the SC....and they started this years ago....

At the end of 2008, the US was losing 750,000 jobs a month - after 8 years of outsourcing, something that has never happened on this scale before in the history of the US.

The US is now adding jobs at 250,00 per month, and it will take a while to undo the Bush damage. Eight years to break, eight years to fix?

If you are interested in more positive news, which I highly doubt, try these charts:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/speakerpelosi/with/6812356495/

and here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/speakerpelosi/sets/72157623367757714/

People here are not clueless as at Fox.

just a warm up. n/t

We are seeing a concerted effort on the part of the corporatists to change the nature of this country, what it provides for the 99 percent, and our expectations in that regard.

Corporate profits are up, but we are seeing a constant onslaught of legislation to cut salaries, eliminate pensions, do away with collective bargaining rights, and accustom all of us to the idea that safety nets are no longer possible or to be expected in their previous form.

The corporatists in Washington do not envision a return of the 99 percent to the standard of living we used to enjoy. They are teaching us a new normal, while simultaneously putting authoritarian structures into place to manage the inevitable pushback when the austerity becomes even more severe and people finally wake up to what they are doing to us.

This is why it is so important to occupy now.

because neo-cons and neo-libs are so last century.

In the 1950s, when a third of homes didn't have full plumbing? In the 1970s, when stagflation was the norm and the GDP per capita was half of what it is today?

Don't romanticize the past.

Wraith, I have seen this general type of post from you many, many times before. It not only ignores the very specific points I made about the legislative assaults we are now seeing from both Republicans and Democrats on safety nets, pensions, and unionization (do you really mean to argue that these are acceptable?), but it also attempts to deny or breeze over the larger patterns in our economy (and more importantly, our economic structures...because these things have not happened magically and by chance) that have recently led thousands into the streets to protest what is being done to them.

I will simply point you back to what those who are not invested in defending the status quo at all costs already know about the patterns in this economy for the one percent versus the rest of us over the past 20 years. Here is one nice little collection of data, charts, and graphs, but there are many, many more online to choose from:

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

Of course you will continue to ignore the data, as you have in previous threads of this nature. But let's have it here anyway, for anyone else who may be wandering by. Pay particular attention to the clear patterns with regard to wages since 1950, share of workers' salary versus CEO compensation, social mobility, the collapse of personal savings, distribution of wealth, and soaring levels of debt for average Americans.

And, Wraith, just one final comment before I let you end this with whatever comparisons to a 1950's bungalow you like. It is as offensive when corporate Democrats ignore these larger patterns and insinuate that poor, struggling, or debt-laden Americans are doing just fine because they happen to have working plumbing and own a microwave or a CD player, as when Republicans do it.

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1

Instead of cooking up strawmen to try and deflect the argument. You're romanticizing the past, claiming some lost era of a higher standard of living which simply does not exist. The only way you can justify that claim is by cooking the numbers, when raw inflation calculations show that both average income and standard of living have been consistently rising for decades, with the exception of the last 3 years or so. But anyone who points that fact out, and notes that this idealization of the past is based on rose-colored glasses, is then immediately and viciously attacked as an "advocate of the status quo" or a shill because some of us don't beat our chests and rend our garments wishing it were the 1950s again. If we were back there, you would rapidly find out that it's a hell of a lot worse than you ever imagined, and that a lot more people were struggling in the '50s, or even the '70s, than you'd like to admit. What you're doing is no different from the Republican desire to paint up the past as some kind of happy time when "traditional morals" reigned and everyone was white, straight, and happy, even though they weren't.

Moreover, what you're doing is nothing more or less than arguing that the last 50 years of social progress never really happened, that workers aren't better protected and more secure today than they were decades ago, that the per capita income--double today what it was in the 1950s adjusted for inflation, and still far higher than in the 1970s--isn't important, that advances like Medicare, Medicaid, OSHA, etcetera are irrelevant, and basically you are basing your arguments on that liberalism has spent half a century failing completely. I disagree with that premise. The fact that the world isn't perfect is not an excuse to overlook the very real and very important steps that have been made.

Really? I would view this with a bit of skepticism.

what the unemployment rate would be if we looked the fat cat corporations in the eye and told them that they had a choice to either take the billions they have horded away and start hiring people or it would be taxed at 90% and the government will do the hiring?

unemployment numbers are cooked?

Just look at how rapidly the labor force participation rate has dropped. All those millions and millions of people who have decided to quit participating in the labor force. And if you look at the employment numbers for those over 50, there is no noticeable drop so people aren't retiring.

The unemployment numbers at about 8% was done by merely reducing the labor force participation rate (the denominator of the equation so to speak). If the Obama administration continues along these lines, we'll be down to 3% unemployment without creating a single job.

It amazes me how people use to bash the bushes for their crooked unemployment numbers and when Obama took over, and didn't change a thing about how they figure unemployment, all of a sudden people decided to believe the numbers. Now, as every president does since Raygun, Obama has made a few changes of his own and low and behold the unemployment dropped to 8%.