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Mike O'Brien
Byrne Robotics Member
Official JB Historian
Joined: 18 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 10927
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | 1
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By the way - I give Keith a point on that - if you're just talking about, you know, this board, or a few on-line forums, you may be correct. I, personally, side with Matt in regards to the national scene and media and I suspect my earlier analogy about perception coloring things on both sides still might be apt.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | 2
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Keith: But true civility trumps both.
As long as it promotes rather than impedes the expression of wholly honest sentiment, I agree.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:30pm | IP Logged | 3
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Can I get a few minutes to carve out a niche, here? It's a whole lot easier to skip if it's lumped together.
Thanks.
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Scott Richards
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 22 September 2005
Posts: 1258
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | 4
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I agree Keith. But, I don't think anything found on the VPs would be that damaging (unless they eat babies or something). That's why I didn't say anything about Palin or Biden.
McCain could possibly survive a hugely damaging thing from Palin's past because she could bow out and be replaced but Obama couldn't survive the same from his own since he wouldn't have the same option.
The big question is whether or not there will be an October Surprise.
Edited by Scott Richards on 09 September 2008 at 2:32pm
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Valerie Finnigan
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 27 March 2006
Posts: 838
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:31pm | IP Logged | 5
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I can respect, though disagree with, the pro-life movement for their
view that life begins with conception and is sacred. But if life
is sacred, is not all life sacred? Should not one who is pro-life also
support the abolition of the death penalty? I've never gotten that
disconnect.
As for the left or right spewing bile both do it well and in equal amounts. No one side is free of such a charge. ---------- That is assuming that all pro-lifers support the death penalty. Catholic and progressive pro-lifers tend not to, except in rare cases when someone is such an unrelenting danger to others that even life imprisonment without parole cannot put a stop to his or her crimes. However, most of the time, the death penalty is not used to protect people from an unmitigated threat to their lives, but to exact revenge, which is why many pro-lifers oppose the death penalty.
Yes, no human being should take a human life, ever, and if everyone followed that, war and the death penalty wouldn't even be issues.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:34pm | IP Logged | 6
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Michael Retour wrote:
| At least you didn't ask me if I got laid last night. For all those concerned I didn't. |
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Did you smile just a little when you wrote this? C'mon, be honest.
'Wanna see something that made me smile? I mean a really big smile.
Here it is:
Michael Retour wrote:
| We had 130,000 less of those honest chaps in 2007 (due to their own stupidity for choosing a "career" predicated on lying to people about the economic prospects of this company of that company. 170,000 people is a lot. |
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Now, I wonder, Michael, could you provide a source for your figures?
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | 7
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[Insert your assorted quotes regarding the Great Depression]
Michael Retour wrote:
| "Remind you of anyone around here Mr. Myers?" |
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Well, let's see, by examining some of the things I've said...
9/2-"Far more worthy of condemnation are the ratings agencies like the S&P, Moody's, etc, which failed to accurately rate firms dealing in such CDOs. The ratings agencies were faced with an innovation in the financial sector (non-bank mortgage lenders collateralizing whole lots of sub-prime mortgages) for which they were unprepared. It is the doubt engendered by such practices that threaten a credit crunch..."
9/2-"It is NOT the foreclosure crisis, of itself--the fact you're offering of poor borrowers not meeting their mortgages, which necessitated the government's "comfort" move of declaring backstop support--which put them in crisis and poses the greatest threat. It is the the over-inflation of property which put them upside down that causes the problem. They hold more in paper than they do in actual value, quite simply. This is hardly a boon to prospective investors."
9/6-"It's a difficult time? Sure. With the newly released estimates, the unemployment rate has increased by almost a full 1.4% in just FIVE months, and it is only going to get worse before it gets better."
9/8-"If you call a company laying off 7,500 in a year and taking a hit for 80% of its value in seven months insolvent; then yeah, I think you could say there had been a rumor or two. There are more such falls to come."
9/8-"however, when the Fed, as under Greenspan, begins to abuse just one aspect of money supply theory and supports backed bailouts at every whif of a crisis--in order, the '87 stock crash, Gulf War, Mexican Peso devaluation, Pacific crisis, the Y2K joke, the tech bubble, September 11th attacks--then you are giving the unmistakable impression that everything is risk free because the government will step in if it goes sideways. And, this is moral hazard."
Reminds you of me, Michael? How are you supporting that interpretation?
Michael, the difference between the two of us is that my assessments are based on actual facts and are NOT tainted by your penchant for wildly unsupportable predictions of the imminent collapse of the worldwide financial system in every facet and a metaphorical return to the stone age.
I thought you at least understood that it is this idea working in concert with the notion of your conspiracy theories which defines you as a whackjob. As it is, you just happened to pick a subject that holds interest for me.
QUOTE:
| It reminds me a bit of you except none of them asked me if I had gotten laid last night." |
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Corpses generally make for an incurious lot. 'Doesn't mean they're not rooting for you, Michael.
Edited by Michael Myers on 09 September 2008 at 3:07pm
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Keith Elder
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 16 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 1973
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:42pm | IP Logged | 8
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Keith: Either one could have their campaign scuttled with one unfortunate fifteen-year-old videotape.
Mike: Crap! Keith discovered Obama's October Surprise!!
I confess I would have mixed feelings regarding the discovery of such a Palin video; I'd feel bad while downloading it.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:44pm | IP Logged | 9
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Since you like quotes, Michael.
Myself on Bear Stearns:
9/6- "The managers MISREPORTED assets for at least three quarters, Michael."
And you:
9/9- "Oh yeah, I read Bear Stearns was involved in some insider trading?"
Myself on Lehman Brothers:
9/6- "If you call a company laying off 7,500 in a year and taking a hit for 80% of its value in seven
months insolvent; then yeah, I think you could say there had been a rumor or two. There are
more such falls to come."
And you:
9/8- "I'd bet (and I am not a gambler) it will get much worse for that "industry" and soon."
9/9- "I see Lehman is going down a bit boys."
9/9- "Lehman will be cutting some heads soon I would imagine."
Hey, Michael, try biting off someone else's style for a while, huh?
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Geoff Gibson
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 21 April 2004
Location: United States
Posts: 5744
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:49pm | IP Logged | 10
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I'd push for death for that kid that shot that gay kid in the head at school.
Was that the case that was reported in Newsweek? I'm totally Anti-Death Penalty so I am a bad barometer, but is the case that clear cut that it rises to the level of a death penalty case? I thought of the case more as much a failing of the support systems for both kids (and a huge dolup of failure on the part of the school system) than a black and white case of a bias crime. Not that I think the shooter should be given a light sentence if convicted (not by any means) but I didn't feel it was a capital level crime (again not the best judge of such things).
Edited by Geoff Gibson on 09 September 2008 at 3:01pm
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:50pm | IP Logged | 11
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Michael Retour wrote:
| "I didn't "mean" to ask anything." |
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Michael, I didn't write your post. If you didn't ask, then who was I quoting?
You, first, stated flatly that the BLS doesn't offer any figures for discouraged workers and, then, as I quoted, you demanded to know why they couldn't estimate that figure as well. Well, you were flatout mistaken in your assumptions and I demonstrated this by responding to your request for an answer to what you had asked.
Look at something else you wrote: "One would have to break down what sort of jobs, what do they pay, etc. and then factor in all the folks who are no longer counted as being unemployed because once their benefits run out they are no longer counted as being unemployed. Then count the ones who want full time work but can't find it. Then you might have a rough approximation of real unemployment figures.
The government won't do this sort of calculation because it would expose certain uncomfortable truths."
Well, all of these factors and more are addressed by the Employment Situation release. It even goes farther by including trend data, seasonal adjustment (invaluable for states like Minnesota), etc., etc, etc.
QUOTE:
| "The government does not count workers who fall off the wagon, so to speak, in their unemployment figures so the unemployment numbers you so blindly believe are fake." |
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As I've demonstrated, discouraged workers are just as much a component of the ES release as any other. Hell, Michael, the questions you asked regarding 'workers who have fallen off the wagon' were answered in summary on the first page of the fucking release. I only had to go to the actual data to give you the .4% increase from July to August and verify the summary.
Michael, prior to this exchange you did not understand what data was actually contained in an Employment Situation release, because you had never read one. The idea that you would persist in this, argues that you still haven't read the data.
QUOTE:
| "They don't count what they call "discouraged workers" either so there is another category of people who are unemployed but when the BLS reports come out they are not in there. |
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Michael, what you call "workers who fall off the wagon" is what our government and every financial analyst in America terms a discouraged worker and has done since the inception of unemployment insurance. A so-called discouraged worker is someone who has EITHER exceeded their six-month allotment of federal unemployment insurance coverage (hence the breakdown by number of weeks in ALL categories from one week enrollment up to those counted as discouraged workers who have exceeded six-months and one week for any period of time) OR a someone who, for whatever reason (lack of suitable employment in their chosen field, for instance), is not employed though being physically capable of employment and has been employed at *sometime* in the past. Period.
QUOTE:
| The BLS doesn't use UI either. |
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Michael, do you realize what you are saying? First, you argue incorrectly that the BLS doesn't estimate "workers who fall off the wagon," then you turn right around and state that the BLS should use UI data and that not using unemployment insurance stats is a shortcoming?
Michael, to qualify for Unemployment Insurance benefits, applicants must have earned sufficient wage credits, be unemployed through no fault of their own, be willing to work, and be actively seeking suitable employment. Not every unemployed worker applies for Unemployment Insurance benefits; so, if we adopted your suggestion of using UI as a baseline; then we WOULD be leaving out a HUGE data-set in the attempt to determine unemployment levels. As it is, the BLS figures ARE indicative of UI data to the extent that such data is but one of the hard data sets relied upon in correction and verification of the statistical sampling process, hence the estimated figure of 1.8 million long-term unemployed. I don't know how I can make this any easier for you to understand.
Clearly, you have misunderstood someone else's argument or magazine article and have turned it upside down, as what you are arguing makes no sense for YOUR argument. I suspect you are somehow confusing the MONTHLY Employment Situation release with the WEEKLY Initial Unemployment Insurance Filings report. As I've explained--and in direct contradiction to your argument--doing so would, then, not be indicative of the overall unemployment situation. It IS, however, used as a trending indicator and such figures are used to verify the Employment Situation release methodology.
QUOTE:
| They guess. They do a random sampling of households. |
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Michael, in my above quoting of your words, you laid out what you thought the BLS should do...well, they do it all and then some. Why are you not happy to learn that they surpass even the factors you suggested?
Now, there is the Household survey and the Establishment Survey, in ADDITION to actual taxation and employment hard data used in verification of methodology. Does the Establishment Survey sound to you like it would cover households, Michael?
Random? Once again, not in the sense you imply. Unless it's absolutely necessary, I'm not going to school you in statistical analysis, too, Michael.
QUOTE:
| 1500 BLS employees survey 60000 households and feeds it into Computo and gets about what LTCM's computer model got them: Garbage in, garbage out. |
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It's clearly your grasp of the BLS methodology which is nothing but garbage. So, you ARE suggesting the idea that we line up anywhere from 160,000,000 to 310,000,000 people...every week...and have them raise their hands.
Good luck with that one. You...Are...A...Nut.
QUOTE:
| I won't be eating any words quite yet. |
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I'm actually glad you didn't.
Your idea that Unemployment Insurance rolls would be a better way of accounting for people who no longer receive Unenmployment Insurance...while, simultaneously, arguing AGAINST the obvious reality of the FACT that the Employment Situation presents the ONLY accounting possible of such people...is priceless.
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Michael Myers
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 28 December 2004
Posts: 831
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| Posted: 09 September 2008 at 2:51pm | IP Logged | 12
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Michael, so, did I miss anything you feel is important?
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Topic Closed)
