Surprise, it's October!

Remember the day before the debate when Karl Rove and the Republicans were already gloating about winning it? They were saying that after the following night it'll be all over. Romney will have bounded right over Obama and pulled way ahead of him. He will be gone, we won't be able to touch him anymore. The election will be in his pocket.

We all thought they were crazy and sorry assed. Now I wonder what they knew that everybody else didn't. When we got to the debate the moderator was fudging everything for Romney and Obama was taking a dive.

First, I thought some of John Perkins' friends, the "economic hit men", might have paid Barack Obama a visit. Then, I thought it must've been a mental health issue. I thought Obama was pushed past his limit and was quitting. I thought we might have the fir suicide in the White House. Now I think Karl Rove's got it fixed.

One thing's for sure, though. He was throwing away his presidential career that night it's just a question of "why?".

An infrastructure program - as was proposed in a bill written and brought to Congress by the Obama administration and was rejected by Congress even when the President broke it up in parts and tried to get each part passed individually - is the way. The infrastructure needs to be repaired and upgraded anyway and when people are employed they spend money and other people are employed. Each dollar of direct spending by the government is four times as effective as a dollar of tax cuts for job creation concludes economists' studies (EPI).

Drilling on public land (national parks, national forests and wildlife refuges ) and using fossil fuels is environmentally unsound. Climate Cange is fast reaching a point of no return and only a very small part of our land is natural and wild and once destroyed is irreplaceable.

The assertions that Romney made about Obama's investment in Green Energy were found to be among the many false claims of the night.

There is more than one way to create jobs.

114,000 jobs is not unusual for the Obama Administration. A year ago 200,000 and 150,000 new jobs a month was common.

Last month's numbers were average for Obama's term and there is no conspiracy just because an election is coming.

We gotta get real. I never heard so many absolutely pitiful and sorry assed rationalizations in all my life. It's no wonder our side gets the livin' daylights kicked out of it all the time.. We can't even face unpleasant realities.

We give occasion for incurable optimism. When the president loses reelection in November we can now say he did it intentionally as a "rope a dope" strategy and that he'll really come out swinging in 2016.

One basic problem with the "rope a dope" theory is that early voting had already started before the debate and by the time of the second debate a substantial part of the electorate will have already voted.

Also, the first was the most important debate for several reasons. It was the Economy debate and there won't be another chance to reargue the same issues. In addition, most Americans don't have the concentration span to watch three debates. Only political nerds like us do that. Most Americans will garner a first impression from one debate and vote accordingly.

Thus a poll of 532 undecided voters taken immediately after the debate showed 70% now supporting Romney with some saying things like, "Romney is a business man who knows how to run an economy, whereas, it is clear from the debate that Obama knows NOTHING about economics." If the purpose of a debate is to persuade the public of your capability over your opponent then Obama failed miserably and Romney was masterful and wiped the floor with Obama.

Sure he was a bully, sure he lied and sure the moderator was cheating for him but Romney won over the audience. It doesn't matter that they were mainly LIVs. He didn't win academically but he won politically. If Obama is running for the most powerful office in the world he can't need to be sheltered from dishonest debating opponents and only be able to prevail when everybody's playing nice. If he can't debate he can't be president.

He could have very easily won. All he had to do was open his mouth.

Romney, the Canary Island Cuckoo, challenging Big Bird has to be the best and only truth established in this debate. It is with a laugh and a chuckle as I sit here contemplating where Romney is coming from. And Romney is one tough Cuckoo Bird. From my view this wild stab at Public Broadcasting by Romney shows the dedication that the Republican Party has to fundamentals in education basic to elements of opportunity. How in the world can a culture evolve or even have a gold age without education. The world including America is at the brink of an historical time as millions are preparing to retire to be the largest consumer society in recorded history. Or the largest oversight community ever to exist.

Besides busting the unions while lying off teachers across the country, the Republican’s in lock step with many, many intellectuals’ curbed and divided education for a long time via the so called “K” system. It was not long ago Reagan with the entire Republican Party wanted to eliminate the Federal Education Department which does seem preposterous with the background of huge educational grants pipelined by our military into the University System. Indeed, over the decades the Congress the Senate and business appropriate money for all kinds of research with development projects through educational grants by the Air Force, Navy, Army, etc. Moreover those very connected siblings and friends have always got the insider advantage to the leading edge studies or developments. Americans have to think about these inside advantages that have always existed while in progress now with your patriotic tax money.

Long ago my study for an engineering degree was an adventure. For an interval I found myself in a Calculus math class with all Iranians and Iraqis. It was unforgettable; the language spoken was very charming and attractive at the time. However the instructor, a borrow out professor from IIT made an extraordinary comment that the calculus was taught wrong the last semester. Sheesh. Reflecting back it was more rote and crunch then the dimensionalism it should have been. And now the same book used in that calculus class can be downloaded in PDF format for free. Moreover popular Physics books are online.

All that shows that there is a progressive movement which makes me speculates that perhaps within ten years a young average High School Grad could achieve undergraduate level knowledge.

With that said compulsary education in America should now include the two years of college. At least that much.

Moreover this could very well be implemented via the Postal System approach, which is established in the Constitution, done were all citizens are connected via fiber optic in a new level of internet.

You have mail via not the old hard copy but through an electronic water mark specifically, like a social security number, made for the individual citizen. The Caveat, this system which “could be” regulated for legal purposes preventing schemes and fraud. Then daily government documentation could be distributed easy, business, security, medical, law, science and education research and development also distributed easier. However, would have NO PORNO, Hollywood, and or the regular now as we know it free market internet. Leave the porno people there in that free speech or money dimension. The job possibilities are incredible, perhaps no bound.

I was a little surprised that the unemployment rate dropped from 8.1 to 7.8% with the small number of jobs, and part time at that. Also, oil and gas prices dropped recently, but then we all know why they're high. Almost exactly double from 2004. Unfortunately, there are still way too many who listen to Limbaugh almost exclusively and/or watch Fox News. I've actually had e-mails suggesting that I should listen to Limbaugh from an old school mate of mine. She is of Native American ancestry so I don't get why she's all for these right winger tactics of hate mongering,racist and gender biased crap.

From Robert Reich's blog on the Huffington Post:

The White House is breathing easier this morning. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent -- the first time it's been under 8 percent in 43 months.

In political terms, headlines are everything -- and most major media are leading with the drop in the unemployment rate.

Look more closely, though, and the picture is murkier. According to the separate payroll survey undertaken by the BLS, just 114,000 new jobs were added in September. At least 125,000 are needed per month just to keep up with population growth. Yet August's job number was revised upward to 142,000, and July's to 181,000.

In other words, we're still crawling out of the deep crater we fell into in 2008 and 2009. The percent of the working-age population now working or actively looking for work is higher than it was, but still near a thirty-year low.

But at least we're crawling out.

Romney says we're not doing well enough, and he's right. But the prescriptions he's offering -- more tax cuts for the rich and for big companies -- won't do anything except enlarge the budget deficit. And the cuts he proposes in public investments like education and infrastructure, and safety nets like Medicare and Medicaid, will take money out of the pockets of people who not only desperately need it but whose spending is necessary to keep the tepid recovery going.

Romney promises if elected the economy will create 12 million new jobs in his first term. If we were back in a normal economy, that number wouldn't be hard to reach. Bill Clinton presided over an economy that generated 22 million new jobs in eight years -- and that was more than a decade ago when the economy and working-age population were smaller than now.

Both Obama and Romney assume the recovery will continue, even at a slow pace, and that we'll be back to normal at some point. But I'm not at all sure. "Normal" is what got us into this mess in the first place. The concentration of income and wealth at the top has robbed the vast middle class of the purchasing power it needs to generate a full recovery -- something that was masked by borrowing against rising home values, but can no longer be denied. Unless or until this structural problem is dealt with, we won't be back to normal.

ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/the-politics-of-the-jobs-_b_1943420.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Dear Michael8, you are right on. Romney was comparing the president of the United States to a teenage boy. Romney has no shame and no good judgment. If Romney is elected president the world leaders would be ashamed to stand next to him. They would fear he would stab them in the back. Romney has no idea what he believes in, whatever comes to mind spurts out of his mouth without a thinking process. I used to think that George W. Bush was as bad as it could get; Romney would certainly establish new lows.

We had a good employment report, but there is much still to do. We have to create lots more jobs if we are to fill the gap that was created during the Bush years. What follows is my take on the whole problem.

Iit all comes down to "how do you create jobs and thus demand and growth"?

One aspect of this problem is little discussed and that is, how did the number of unemployed get to be so large? That is the real elephant in the unemployment waiting room.

The answer is in the unemployment that grew during the first decade of the 21st century. During the 8 years of the Bush presidency, only 4.5 million private sector jobs were created, fewer than were created under Obama during the past 30 months. Because of the crash of 2008, all the jobs created during the Bush years were lost, plus about 2 million more, so that by the end of the decade we were about 5 million jobs in the hole.

But that was only a small part of the problem. It is generally understood that it takes about 125,000 to150,000 jobs per month to keep up with the number of new people that enter into the job market each month. Over 10 years that amounts to 15 to 18 million jobs that were not filled, or a total of 20 to 23 million unemployed that were added to the roles by 2010. You can see that adding 4.5 million jobs is barely making a dent in that number. And, of course, as these people are without work for longer and longer periods, they use up their saving and become more and more destitute, which accounts for the increase in the number of people in povery and on food stamps.

How to Create 10 - 15 million Jobs Without Increasing The Deficit

Until we create a significant number of jobs so that people begin paying taxes and having the funds to buy goods and services, rather than receiving unemployment payments and other benefits, we will not work our way out of the recession we are in. The 4.5 million private sector jobs that have been created during the past 30 months is a good start, but there are no major efforts being proposed that will likely increase the rate of job growth. The proposal defined below is designed to achieve the job growth we need while not increasing our deficit and debt but instead, if implemented it would begin the process of significantly reducing the deficit and in time, the debt as well.

Why Job Growth is the Key

The causes for the high unemployment are many, including the financial crash that occurred in 2008, the out sourcing of manufacturing jobs for more than a decade, the higher efficiency achieved as a result of applying automation to many jobs that were previously done manually, and the fact that employers have found ways of producing their goods and services more efficiently with fewer employees. The result is that up to 23 million potential workers are now out of work.

What Can We Do To Create Jobs

There is no shortage of work that must be done to move our country into a better competitive position. Our electric grid needs updating so that power transmission is more efficient, there are fewer black outs and brown outs, more renewable energy sources are incorporated, more of the power lines are moved underground, to prevent electrocutions and fires, and the grid made less vulnerable to cyber attack. Our broadband network needs to be expanded to cover more of our population and made faster, so that it better accommodates the coming extensive use of cloud processing. Many of our school buildings need better weatherization to save energy and rewiring to accommodate new technology. Much software needs to be written to make better use of technology and improve the learning ability of all of our children. Finally, we know about the need to upgrade our roads and bridges.

How do we pay for all of this work?

The answer lies in the trillion plus profit dollars that are being held overseas by major corporations because they don't want to pay the taxes they would owe if they brought the money in. The companies that have this money include companies like General Electric, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Caterpillar, etc.

Suppose the government made a deal with them that they could bring in $100,000, tax free, for each job they created and suppose the job creation was not just willy-nilly, but that they submitted proposals for the work they would do. The companies doing these projects could make a profit on the work as it's being done and could also collect fees in later years taken out of the saving that come from the increased efficiency of the improved systems. Included, as a job, would be any job training that would be required because the workers being trained would be paid.

If all of the trillion dollars were invested in this way, it would create 10 million jobs on these projects and probably another 5 million jobs in the industries that are peripheral to the primary work. As the work progressed over time and additional funds were required beyond the original $100,000, the companies could invest those funds or the Government could provide the money as they would under any Government contract. Eventual profits would go either to the company or come back to the Government, depending on which had provided the additional funds.

This kind of major effort would allow the nation to return to prosperity and the deficits to shrink and soon disappear.

I've never witnessed an election like this one with Mitt Romney. He vacillates on every issue. Mitt Romney acts as though it is a foregone conculsion that he will be President. I'm afraid that Mitt Romney will win the election through election fraud, voter suppression, and the changing of the votes with the Diebold voting machines. It has been announced that 19 states will not use Election Exit Polling and we will have no way of kowing if the election was honest which make me even more suspicious.

According to my PollTracker app as of Friday night Mitt's bump was "0.4%".

Yes, #4 that type of "boldly take-command of an out-of-control situation," is what the Left MUST learn do do. We are way out-financed by big-money; so we gotta remove the power of big-money -- rather than simply continue begging for spare-change. I've not had one solicitation, that included a plan for either using the donation, or for post-winning programs. They all follow the identical format: "The Repugs are attacking, send $3 or $9 or $12."

We gave the (Radio/TV) spectrum media-monopolies away under Reagan' deregulation and now simply don't have access to commercial media-outlets across the nation -- we gotta find ways to break outta-that-box.

For years now, The Left has been behind the curve, playing catch-up, "reacting" defensively while being lead hither and yon by the Right -- rather than aggressively taking an independent lead.

If there is any hope for the reforms Thom mentions, there simply must be the Legislative Votes to do so. And unfortunately that goes way beyond a simple majority -- when you deduct the "Blue-Dog-Dems" and the increasing Legislators who have been bought and paid-for, and now owe primary alegiance to their patrons. We need a landslide to break-even.