Legalectric

Just the facts, ma’am…

This is a chart showing the unemployment rate from 1948 to 2012, marked every six years.  You can find the numbers for yourself at the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data page, plug in whatever years you want, and there it is:

Bureau of Labor Statistics Data

Take a look at trends.   This is not rocket science…

I’ve been seeing so much, opinions expressed by people who should know better, a handful or more I hear from regularly (maybe not so much anymore!), making statements so far in contradiction to easily discoverable facts, it’s so disturbing, and this mantra of “say it enough and it becomes true” is driving me nuts…

I went on a little Labor Day rant earlier:

Labor Day… Yes, it’s true, my great-grandfather on my mother’s side was a union organizer and buddy of Debs; my father often told us of being a kid hanging at the outskirts of the teamster strike and shootings in his Mpls. neighborhood by Hiawatha-Lake, guns going off and running to safety. Here it is Labor Day, and we should be expressing gratitude for 8 hour days, overtime pay, weekends, minimum wage, elimination of much child labor… and taking a day off! I’m seeing the rants of people clueless of those who gave so much and fought so hard for things today’s workers take for granted, so much so that they’ll roll over and give it up, act against their interests… and then when they’re hit with economic reality, to vilify unions (Wisconsin is just across the Mississippi from here) and blame the current unemployment rates and economic disaster on Obama? Even my life-long Republican father sitting in diapers at the nursing home had the sense to give Bush the finger every time his mug appeared. Repeating the propaganda over and over does not make it true, though it does a lot to keep me outraged and fighting! Dog grant me the serenity…

And let’s be clear — I have a personal and professional disgust about Obama’s support of coal gasification a la Excelsior Energy’s Mesaba Project, and his fast-tracking SEVEN transmission projects, including “my” Susquehanna-Roseland and CapX? 2020 Hampton-Rochester-LaCrosse (What does Obama’s Xmsn push mean?), and then there’s fracking… I spend hours writing the White House (rattling the cage enough to get a call from Lauren Azar!), the campaign, and pieces here, and you all know about that disgust in detail, but the alternative?  Romney is so repulsive, repugnant that I have no words, and I am going to have to hold my nose, and vote for Obama the corporate toady.  But more than that, if there’s any chance Romney could get in, it’s time to act and do what I can to keep that from happening.  It’s time.  I now feel I have to kick into gear and do more, the prospect of Romney getting elected is more than I can bear, and it’s a lot more than Seamus:

It’s a lot more than giving my Social Security to Wall Street, or Romney and Ryan’s desire to eliminate Medicare (though having health care in a few years is something I am so looking forward too).   This is a “Drill, Baby, Drill” guy, a proponent of nuclear power, his Energy Plan is embarassing, that he put something like that out in public, OH MY DOG, and yet, people aren’t rolling on the floor laughing?  WAKE UP!  Read the stupid thing:

Romney’s Energy Plan – much ado about nothing

How is it that someone this monumentally stupid, look up vacuous and there he is, he and his handlers, how can he be deemed Presidential material?  Did you see his facial expressions during his big speech last week?  OH MY DOG!  Scary… utterly phony.

And they’re calling this election close.  How is it that people I know and respect and care about can have their heads SO implanted?  In large part, I think we’re seeing the result of our “educational” system, zero critical thinking abilities…  So it’s time to do more than hitting reply and send the Obama team scathing emails about their horrible policy positions (don’t worry, I’ll be doing that too).  But its time ramp up the challenge to the falsehoods that are being tossed about, over and over, in an effort to make it true. I just can’t stomach it anymore.  I’ve seen one too many “Obama is responsible for this mess” rants.  I’ve had enough.

Again, Dog grant me the serenity… and this situation, yes, we do indeed have a situation, this is something that raises the obligation humans have to change the things we can.  Onward!