I am probably going to open a whole new can worms here. I might regret opening later, but some of the topics being discussed really got me thinking about things. One of the things said that really kind of got me going on this was:

Pattygreen: Christians (usually conservative republicans) for the most part try to live moral, virtuous, nonsinful lives.

I am not a Christian and I live a moral, virtuous, and for the most part nonsinful life. I know several people who live the same, and are not Christian, and have conservative beliefs.

Cleo's Mom: First of all, "conservative republican" is redundant, because they are all conservative. I don't think there are any moderate republicans left particularly among those elected to office.

However, I just wonder if it is MORAL to mislead or outright lie, because listen to what these conservative republicans have said:

Dana Perino said on Fox: We did not have a domestic attack during bush's administration.

A month later Mary Matalin said: bush inherited 9/11 from Clinton.

Yesterday, Rudy Giuliani said that we never had a domestic attack under bush but we had one under Obama.

Now, I ask you - do these people think the American public is really that stupid? Apparently. Those on the right just make things up and keep repeating it. And when they repeat it often enough eventually some people begin to believe it.

They reduce things to some emotional, hate filled sound bite: death panels, obamacare, socialism, hitler, nazi.

This is because they are unable to engage in meaningful, intelligent, fact-based discussions. Maybe they don't want to do that because they don't have the facts on their side.

First I am a moderate Republican. I do tend to lean a little more to the right, but on some issues I lean to the left. Some things I can lean pretty right, and others I lean pretty far left. It really depends on the issue. I'd like to think that would make me moderate. I know many people who are moderate Republicans also. So we are still out there. There are some politicians who are still moderate also.

Second just because you are a Republican does not mean that you can not have a intelligent, meaningful, fact-based conversation. That is like saying liberals have their heads in clouds and live in fantasy nerf world filled with rainbows and butterflies.

Both sides sling mud back and forth. Both sides have their hate filled idiots. Both sides have their good and bad points. Both sides LIE, LIE, and LIE some more.

I get so sick and tired of hearing about how the Republicans have screwed everything up...I mean really they did it all alone.....no help from the left at all???

I personally feel that if you lean too far left or right you can't have a very grip on reality, and when our politicans lean too far left or right it's not good for our country either way. I hope someday too see more moderate politicans in office.

Closing the hedge fund loophole

The tax extenders bill currently being cobbled together in the Senate (the House passed its bill already) would provide some much needed tax break extenders for job creation along with benefits and health care subsidies for the unemployed. This is potentially the last chance this session that Congress has a chance to do much in the way of job creation. This bill doesn't do a lot for jobs, but what it does is critical.

And to do it, it's going to take revenue--revenue in the form of closing a tax loophole for money managers, one that allows their income from money management to not actually be taxed as income, but as "carried interest" as though it were investment income rather than salary or wages. What does the resulting loss of revenue from that loophole look like? This

This is an example of how the rich get richer at the expense of everyone else. Someone has to pay more when they pay so little.

You need to vote into office those who will DO something about this. Obama is NOT that person. He is doing NOTHING to stop this unfairness.

Whatever patty.

[quote} However, the right wing extremists hate the government, hate public schools, hate public school teachers and would never say anything supportive of them so IMO they have zero credibility.

This kind of talk is sooooo like you, Cleo's. The fact is WE don't HATE anybody. We just don't like their actions sometimes. Two different things. You must be the kind of person who literally hates people when they don't act or abide by your standards, cause you often say that others are hateful when they don't like the actions of people. Maybe you hate people for how they are, but most people don't. I don't anyway.

Now, I don't hate public schools or teachers. I sent 2 of my oldest boys all through the public school system, and the other 5 children went up to middle school grades in the public school. I thought most of the teachers were good teachers and they treated my kids respectfully and kindly. I have much to say in support of my kids public school teachers. I was talking generally when I said teachers suck. I was mostly angry with the teachers in CT who refused to forgo their raise when they are making more money than any teachers in this whole Nation!

Also, I don't hate the government. I hate the tremendous growth of it! I have always stated that every country is in need of governing, and ours is no different. I just don't think that the government should be soooo BIG. When it gets to a point where the government jobs far exceed the number of private sector jobs to pay for them, then there is a BIG problem. When the government is spending more money than it has and the interest alone has become unsustainable, then we have BIG problems. I would like to see our government CUT, yes CUT, most of it's wasteful spending and give aways as well as reduce it's size of employment drastically. I would like to see the corruptness disapear, like when Obama had Clinton offer that guy a job to get out of the race. That kind of Chicago crap. Government is a necessity and I am thankful for it, just not lately now that it is getting too into everything with regulations and laws and interference in business and the lives of people, like Health Care and education, etc. November will be a wake up call for all those democrats who think this is how Americans want to live and have things run. We don't. Obama's progressive, socialistic, welfare, style is gonna go!

You need to vote into office those who will DO something about this. Obama is NOT that person. He is doing NOTHING to stop this unfairness.

The democrats in congress are doing something about this. If the republicans don't obstruct it, and it passes, Obama will sign it so, again, you know not of what you speak.

When people elected republicans in the last adminstration they sure didn't do anything about it.

[quote} However, the right wing extremists hate the government, hate public schools, hate public school teachers and would never say anything supportive of them so IMO they have zero credibility.

This kind of talk is sooooo like you, Cleo's. The fact is WE don't HATE anybody. We just don't like their actions sometimes. Two different things. You must be the kind of person who literally hates people when they don't act or abide by your standards, cause you often say that others are hateful when they don't like the actions of people. Maybe you hate people for how they are, but most people don't. I don't anyway.

Now, I don't hate public schools or teachers.Really? Here's what you said: Parents who complained about homework couldn't stand that the government forced them to hand thier kids over to the public school system or be subject to arrest. Look at the language -government forcing parents to "hand over" their children or be subject to arrest. This is how people who distrust (do you prefer that to "hate"?) the public schools talk. I sent 2 of my oldest boys all through the public school system, and the other 5 children went up to middle school grades in the public school. I thought most of the teachers were good teachers and they treated my kids respectfully and kindly. I have much to say in support of my kids public school teachers. I was talking generally when I said teachers suck. I was mostly angry with the teachers in CT who refused to forgo their raise when they are making more money than any teachers in this whole Nation!

Also, most christian right distrust (or hate) public schools which is why most homeschoolers are christian right. It's as much a political decision as it is a religious decision.

Also, I don't hate the government. I hate the tremendous growth of it! I have always stated that every country is in need of governing, and ours is no different. I just don't think that the government should be soooo BIG. When it gets to a point where the government jobs far exceed the number of private sector jobs to pay for them, then there is a BIG problem. When the government is spending more money than it has and the interest alone has become unsustainable, then we have BIG problems. I would like to see our government CUT, yes CUT, most of it's wasteful spending and give aways as well as reduce it's size of employment drastically. I would like to see the corruptness disapear, like when Obama had Clinton offer that guy a job to get out of the race. That kind of Chicago crap. Government is a necessity and I am thankful for it, just not lately now that it is getting too into everything with regulations and laws and interference in business and the lives of people, like Health Care and education, etc. November will be a wake up call for all those democrats who think this is how Americans want to live and have things run. We don't. Obama's progressive, socialistic, welfare, style is gonna go!

Other than the healthcare reform, which people elected Pres. Obama to enact, Pres. Obama has not expanded any program from the bush regime. He had to add money to the economy to stimulate it. It has worked. We have had 4 months of job growth whearas we were losing 700,000 jobs per month when he took office. Could the economy be better. Absolutely.

This whole socialist, welfare, etc.. accusations are tiresome and untrue. :tongue2:

I have shown statistics, graphs, articles, and so much more that shows where the federal money comes from and where it is spent. The stimulus is a drop in the bucket. The majority is defense, social security, medicare and medicaid and a few other mandated programs.

I have asked what tea party candidate has the nerve to say which of these mandated programs, or even the defense, they plan on cutting. That is the only way to cut spending.

Picking on the poor and welfare is easy. It's an emotional topic. But cutting waste and fraud is a good idea, but again won't make a huge dent in the spending.

Pres. Obama has ordered agencies to trim budgets by 5%. Now I know that will never satisfy the Obama haters, but it's a start.

This is what I mean when I say that I best you with my posts. You speak in emotional terms and just throw things out, and it makes your posts seem irrational.

I post legitimate data and try to explain how things are but when someone is so anti- this president and the federal government, it is an exercise in futility.

Other than the healthcare reform, which people elected Pres. Obama to enact, Pres. Obama has not expanded any program from the bush regime. He had to add money to the economy to stimulate it. It has worked. We have had 4 months of job growth whearas we were losing 700,000 jobs per month when he took office. Could the economy be better. Absolutely.

It has NOT worked. The only job growth we have had was TEMPORARY census employees. (another government job that pays 2-3X more than is necessary to the them by the tax payers) The unemployment rate is still at 9.7%.

Temporary help services

added 31,000 jobs over the month; employment in the industry has risen by

362,000 since September 2009.

Edited June 9, 201016 yr by pattygreen

The real unemployment rate? 16.6%

The Labor Department's statistics don't include the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work. This alternative measure creates a much higher number.

[Related content: jobs, construction, manufacturing, economy, financial crisis]

By Mary Engel MSN Money

It's bad enough that the nation's jobless rate is 9.7%. But the real national employment rate is even higher than the U.S. Department of Labor's May figure shows.

The official unemployment index, based on a monthly survey of sample households, counts only people who reported looking for work in the past four weeks. It doesn't account for part-time workers who want to work more hours but can't, given the tight job market. And it doesn't include those who have given up trying to find work.

When the underemployed and the discouraged are added to the numbers, the unemployment rate rises to 16.6%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the Labor Department, began tracking this alternative measure -- known as the U-6 for its department classification -- in 1995 after economists lobbied for a method comparable to the way Japan, Canada and Western Europe count their unemployed.

The truth is that even the broader measure of unemployment doesn't fully capture how difficult the job market is for U.S. workers. It doesn't include self-employed workers whose incomes have shriveled. It doesn't look at former full-time employees who have accepted short-term contracts, without benefits, and at a fraction of their former salaries. And it doesn't count the many would-be workers who are going back to school, taking on more debt, in hopes that advanced degrees will improve their chances of landing jobs.

That broader unemployment rate, or U-6, is up from 16.4% a year ago and from 9.7% in May 2008. It was 7.1% in May 2000.

"It has gone up a lot because a lot of people have been put on short hours," said economist Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. "And there are a lot of discouraged workers."

Jobs data analysis

Shortened work hours are, in fact, one of the ways this recession is different from the ones in the early 1980s and early 1990s, Burtless said. Another difference is the huge number of people who have been permanently laid off.

"Some people have lost their income altogether, and others have seen a drop in hours even if they remain employed," Burtless said. "It was a double whammy for labor income."

The two trends are especially apparent in California, where the official unemployment rate is 12.6%. Severe layoffs in early 2009 wiped out 100,000 jobs a month, according to Michael S. Bernick, a research fellow at the Milken Institute and a former head of California's labor department. And the number of people working less than 35 hours a week has exploded. The recession has left 1.5 million Californians involuntarily working part time, though they are classified as employed.

Factor in these involuntarily underemployed workers plus the burgeoning number of discouraged job seekers, and California's real unemployment rate is 20%.

Another difference in this recession -- and a likely reason for the high number of discouraged job seekers -- is the number of people who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. The Wall Street Journal reports that 7 million Americans have been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, and the majority of them -- 4.7 million -- have been out of work for a year or more. (See "Chronic joblessness cuts deep.") In California, the number out of work more than 27 weeks is almost 900,000, more than the population of San Francis.

"That largely reflects how more severe this recession has been than of 1982 and of the 1990s," said Bernick, who has worked in the job-training field since the late 1970s.

Now, although severe layoffs are no longer occurring, hiring has not picked up significantly.

"The labor market is still very, very slow," Bernick said. "Each job (opening) brings tens, usually hundreds, of applicants."

Mary Engel is a freelance writer from Portland, Ore., who has written for the Los Angeles Times, Anchorage Daily News and Albuquerque Journal. More from MSN

Edited June 9, 201016 yr by pattygreen

pattyg: This kind of talk is sooooo like you, Cleo's. The fact is WE don't HATE anybody. We just don't like their actions sometimes. Two different things. You must be the kind of person who literally hates people when they don't act or abide by your standards, cause you often say that others are hateful when they don't like the actions of people. Maybe you hate people for how they are, but most people don't. I don't anyway.

Now, I don't hate public schools or teachers. I sent 2 of my oldest boys all through the public school system, and the other 5 children went up to middle school grades in the public school. I thought most of the teachers were good teachers and they treated my kids respectfully and kindly. I have much to say in support of my kids public school teachers. I was talking generally when I said teachers suck. I was mostly angry with the teachers in CT who refused to forgo their raise when they are making more money than any teachers in this whole Nation!

Also, I don't hate the government. I hate the tremendous growth of it! I have always stated that every country is in need of governing, and ours is no different. I just don't think that the government should be soooo BIG. When it gets to a point where the government jobs far exceed the number of private sector jobs to pay for them, then there is a BIG problem. When the government is spending more money than it has and the interest alone has become unsustainable, then we have BIG problems. I would like to see our government CUT, yes CUT, most of it's wasteful spending and give aways as well as reduce it's size of employment drastically. I would like to see the corruptness disapear, like when Obama had Clinton offer that guy a job to get out of the race. That kind of Chicago crap. Government is a necessity and I am thankful for it, just not lately now that it is getting too into everything with regulations and laws and interference in business and the lives of people, like Health Care and education, etc. November will be a wake up call for all those democrats who think this is how Americans want to live and have things run. We don't. Obama's progressive, socialistic, welfare, style is gonna go!

This kind of talk about hate when somebody else uses it? YOU're the one who has been so quick to accuse the progressives of hate! You even started a thread using that word. So you have no right to call somebody else on it. Maybe you've reformed and don't accuse everybody of hate now but you sure used to, ad nauseum.

We DO want Obama's progressive style and way of doing things. We DO. And our only complaint is that he isn't progressing fast enough. Your mavericks didn't get elected. Our candidates did. So stand back and wait your turn.

We want major cuts in needless spending just like you do. And who in the world doesn't? Well the actual Republican legislators are who doesn't. They only talk about cutting spending. In fact they don't do it once they're elected. They still talk about it after elections but when they vote and draft legislation it's making the government bigger, not smaller. So be careful whom you vote for. If you think you're getting what they're promising when you vote for them, you'd better think again.

As for offering a job to someone they don't want to run against someone they do want elected, get real. That's not just Chicago politics, it's the way politics works everywhere! That's what happens when people in politics become elected and powerful. They get to control things. For you to act like this president invented politics is just plain disengenuous and you're not fooling anyone with that talk.

Edited June 9, 201016 yr by BJean

Other than the healthcare reform, which people elected Pres. Obama to enact, Pres. Obama has not expanded any program from the bush regime. He had to add money to the economy to stimulate it. It has worked. We have had 4 months of job growth whearas we were losing 700,000 jobs per month when he took office. Could the economy be better. Absolutely.

It has NOT worked. The only job growth we have had was TEMPORARY census employees. (another government job that pays 2-3X more than is necessary to the them by the tax payers) The unemployment rate is still at 9.7%.

Temporary help services

added 31,000 jobs over the month; employment in the industry has risen by

362,000 since September 2009.

The unemployment fell from 9.9% to 9.7%. You are referring to only the month of May job statistics when you talk about temporary census workers. In April there were thousands of private sector jobs added. And regardless of whether some of the jobs were census workers or not, we have had FOUR months of positive job growth, as opposed to loss of jobs. Of course the Obama haters would never focus on THAT.

The real unemployment rate? 16.6%

The Labor Department's statistics don't include the underemployed and those who have stopped looking for work. This alternative measure creates a much higher number.

[Related content: jobs, construction, manufacturing, economy, financial crisis]

By Mary Engel MSN Money

It's bad enough that the nation's jobless rate is 9.7%. But the real national employment rate is even higher than the U.S. Department of Labor's May figure shows.

The official unemployment index, based on a monthly survey of sample households, counts only people who reported looking for work in the past four weeks. It doesn't account for part-time workers who want to work more hours but can't, given the tight job market. And it doesn't include those who have given up trying to find work.

When the underemployed and the discouraged are added to the numbers, the unemployment rate rises to 16.6%. The Bureau of Labor Statistics, a unit of the Labor Department, began tracking this alternative measure -- known as the U-6 for its department classification -- in 1995 after economists lobbied for a method comparable to the way Japan, Canada and Western Europe count their unemployed.

The truth is that even the broader measure of unemployment doesn't fully capture how difficult the job market is for U.S. workers. It doesn't include self-employed workers whose incomes have shriveled. It doesn't look at former full-time employees who have accepted short-term contracts, without benefits, and at a fraction of their former salaries. And it doesn't count the many would-be workers who are going back to school, taking on more debt, in hopes that advanced degrees will improve their chances of landing jobs.

That broader unemployment rate, or U-6, is up from 16.4% a year ago and from 9.7% in May 2008. It was 7.1% in May 2000.

"It has gone up a lot because a lot of people have been put on short hours," said economist Gary Burtless, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. "And there are a lot of discouraged workers."

Jobs data analysis

Shortened work hours are, in fact, one of the ways this recession is different from the ones in the early 1980s and early 1990s, Burtless said. Another difference is the huge number of people who have been permanently laid off.

"Some people have lost their income altogether, and others have seen a drop in hours even if they remain employed," Burtless said. "It was a double whammy for labor income."

The two trends are especially apparent in California, where the official unemployment rate is 12.6%. Severe layoffs in early 2009 wiped out 100,000 jobs a month, according to Michael S. Bernick, a research fellow at the Milken Institute and a former head of California's labor department. And the number of people working less than 35 hours a week has exploded. The recession has left 1.5 million Californians involuntarily working part time, though they are classified as employed.

Factor in these involuntarily underemployed workers plus the burgeoning number of discouraged job seekers, and California's real unemployment rate is 20%.

Another difference in this recession -- and a likely reason for the high number of discouraged job seekers -- is the number of people who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks. The Wall Street Journal reports that 7 million Americans have been looking for work for 27 weeks or more, and the majority of them -- 4.7 million -- have been out of work for a year or more. (See "Chronic joblessness cuts deep.") In California, the number out of work more than 27 weeks is almost 900,000, more than the population of San Francis.

"That largely reflects how more severe this recession has been than of 1982 and of the 1990s," said Bernick, who has worked in the job-training field since the late 1970s.

Now, although severe layoffs are no longer occurring, hiring has not picked up significantly.

"The labor market is still very, very slow," Bernick said. "Each job (opening) brings tens, usually hundreds, of applicants."

Mary Engel is a freelance writer from Portland, Ore., who has written for the Los Angeles Times, Anchorage Daily News and Albuquerque Journal. More from MSN

We didn't use these figures about the unemployment rate when bush was in office. The official unemployment rate is 9.7% - down from 9.9% in April. It is going to take awhile for the economy to rebound from 8 disasterous years of bush. Employment will be the last to improve. The GNP is about 4% a year, a good indicator. But everyone wants Pres. Obama to perform miracles. Clean up all bush's messes, get the economy on track, deal with (and pay for) bush's two wars, etc, etc,.

This kind of talk about hate when somebody else uses it? YOU're the one who has been so quick to accuse the progressives of hate! You even started a thread using that word. So you have no right to call somebody else on it. Maybe you've reformed and don't accuse everybody of hate now but you sure used to, ad nauseum.

We DO want Obama's progressive style and way of doing things. We DO. And our only complaint is that he isn't progressing fast enough. Your mavericks didn't get elected. Our candidates did. So stand back and wait your turn.

We want major cuts in needless spending just like you do. And who in the world doesn't? Well the actual Republican legislators are who doesn't. They only talk about cutting spending. In fact they don't do it once they're elected. They still talk about it after elections but when they vote and draft legislation it's making the government bigger, not smaller. So be careful whom you vote for. If you think you're getting what they're promising when you vote for them, you'd better think again.

As for offering a job to someone they don't want to run against someone they do want elected, get real. That's not just Chicago politics, it's the way politics works everywhere! That's what happens when people in politics become elected and powerful. They get to control things. For you to act like this president invented politics is just plain disengenuous and you're not fooling anyone with that talk.

You're right on, BJean. When someone talks about the legitimate collection of federal taxes as stealing, or playing Robin Hood, this is from someone who distrusts the government now, because we have a democrat in the White House. I guess the collection of taxes under republican presidents was okay. And I might add, middle class, working americans are paying LESS in taxes under Pres. Obama than under bush.

Also, she posts about pork barrel spending or waste as if that didn't happen under bush. Or wasteful spending, like it just started on Jan. 21, 2009. Or she'll go on and on about all this spending, but when asked to list one NEW entitlement program under Pres. Obama that isn't paid for, she doesn't have any.

She ignores and believes that most of what we spend federal tax dollars on is somehow frivilous spending - which is defense, medicare, medicaid and social security. This spending happened under bush, too, and is mandated. She offers no solution for this mandated spending (neither do any of the tea party candidates - to ask for elimination of these programs is political suicide and they know it - so they are vague, as she is, about cutting spending)

Sure there is waste and cutting it is a start but the real spending is for what I have discussed above.

Also, she ignores that much of the spending Pres. Obama is doing is on bush's programs - the two wars, medicare part D and the lost revenue from the 2 tax cuts for the rich.

She's all about - "you just wait and see" whether it's the "real" cost of healthcare or how marriage will be defined if we allow gays to marry. Let's just deal with the here and now and not some neocon's opinion about what might happen.

I had an appt. with my oncologist today and while in the waiting room was reading an old (April) Newsweek. Imagine my surprise when I turned the page and saw this huge headline: Regulate, baby, Regulate. That's MY second mantra and someone stole it!! :smile: It was about the EPA. I'm sorry but if those who get paid to write articles keep stealing my ideas, I going to have to ask for royalties. :thumbup:

So, are we saying we had NO job growth at all? This month we got the report that we added 400K of census jobs and 41K of private jobs, but what about the previous months of jobs? Those are census jobs as well? So from here on out, the jobs report will be recording census jobs? I am trying to understand the point of making a big deal out of census jobs, when they are jobs? If next month they come out with less than 41k in private jobs then we have something to talk about. As of now, everybody who understand the job report understands that census jobs would be in this report and is not a pattern or trend to a downward spiral. What is needed is another stimulus to get us through another dip.

So, are we saying we had NO job growth at all? This month we got the report that we added 400K of census jobs and 41K of private jobs, but what about the previous months of jobs? Those are census jobs as well? So from here on out, the jobs report will be recording census jobs? I am trying to understand the point of making a big deal out of census jobs, when they are jobs? If next month they come out with less than 41k in private jobs then we have something to talk about. As of now, everybody who understand the job report understands that census jobs would be in this report and is not a pattern or trend to a downward spiral. What is needed is another stimulus to get us through another dip.

That's right. Those who are smart can see that we've had four months of positive job growth, regardless of how few jobs were added this past month. They were on the plus side, which contrasts sharply with the 700,000 jobs being lost each month under the bush regime.

Those who are anti-Obama will just focus on how many jobs created were census jobs. Just another deflection from the fact that Obama's economic stimulus and agenda are working and the republicans have zip to offer.

Associated Press:

The tally of laid-off workers continuing to claim jobless benefits fell by the largest amount in almost a year, suggesting that more unemployed workers may be finding work.

At the same time, new claims for unemployment insurance dipped slightly for the third straight week.

The Dept of Labor says the total unemployment benefit rolls fell by 255,000 to a seasonally adjusted 4.5 million. It was the lowest total since December 2008. Analysts polled by Thomson Financial expected a much smaller drop

The number of first-time claims fell by 3,000 to a seasonally adjusted 456,000. New claims have been stuck at 450,000 since the beginning of the year.