More economic recovery:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12648347

 

The US unemployment rate fell slightly to 8.9% in February, down from 9% the month before.

It is the third month in a row that the jobless rate has fallen, with February's figure marking a near two-year low.

Employers added 192,000 jobs last month, the US Labor Department said, above market expectations.

Paul O'Neill, former US Treasury Secretary, described the data as "very positive".

A Labor Department statement said that most job gains were in manufacturing, construction, business services and transport.

State and local government slashed 30,000 jobs, the most since November as budget cuts continue to bite.

The data showed that the jobless rate for adult men was 8.7%, for adult women 8%, and for teenagers 23.9%.

The unemployment rate has come down from 9.8% in November.

____________________

I'll be the first to admit that this is not what the Obama Administration predicted or really wanted when they wanted unemployment to stay where it was when they were inaugurated. However looking at this, the unemployment figures appear to be showing more, and more effective, growth since the Administration's stimulus package has gone into effect. It makes me curious in fact whether or not a larger stimulus package would have had more effect. What do you guys think?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

FDR used Lincoln as a model, and Lincoln used Jackson as a model. By Goldberg Logic not only did the Republicans begin as the first fascist party in world history, but the Jacksonians were fascist, too. So, answer the question. And on this one I'm going to ask it until you give me a straight answer. None of that passive-aggressive anal fumigation.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And frankly, I don't accept FDR's fascism because there were real fascists at the time that considered him a Jew-loving Communist. They were called the Silver Legion of America, led by one William Dudley Pelley. And the actual Communists of the time saw FDR as an aristocrat who saved capitalism. I'm citing what the people of the time thought, what are you citing? Goldberg's book published by the company his mother owned?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

And there are liberals who don't think Obama's a liberal. That doesn't make a) the liberals not liberals or b) Obama something other than a liberal.

Ideologies can disagree about each other.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Disagree with each other is a funny way to put being beaten to death in Lubyanka or machine-gunning women and children in Babi Yar or massacring Arabs in Deir Yassin.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I won't disagree about either of them overall, to be perfectly honest. I haven't really studied Jackson in that context, so I hesitate to go too far down that rabbit hole, but Lincoln I don't have too much problem with.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

So the Republicans in the Civil War were fascists who defeated the equally fascist Plantocracy in the Confederacy. Let me ask a different question: is there a regime in all of history that has not been fascist?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So the Republicans in the Civil War were fascists who defeated the equally fascist Plantocracy in the Confederacy

Not equally fascist, but differently so. It works out pretty well as a great example, though - fascists enjoy power, and the fight in both cases had to do with, well, you guessed it - power.

I'm not sure a regime exists that isn't fascist to some degree. But there's definitely a level of tolerance for it that appears to be more flexible the further leftward one slides down the scale.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, you've shown an ability at last to answer a direct question when you're asked it. *tips hat.*

No, the Civil War was not about power, not in the sense you mean. It was about Southerners expecting with Enuff Jesus they could reverse the tides of time and preserve a Slave Power that was accustomed to everything going its own way. Then Grant led his first attack against them and it was downhill for them from there.

Now tell me another one. The Leftists in the literal sense all have an end goal of anarchism. In fascistland in the Bright Shiny Happiness of the future there is only war.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

No, the Civil War was not about power, not in the sense you mean. It was about Southerners expecting with Enuff Jesus they could reverse the tides of time and preserve a Slave Power that was accustomed to everything going its own way. Then Grant led his first attack against them and it was downhill for them from there.

There are people in my local atheist group who don't drag religion into things as much as you do.

It was absolutely about power - the power of the Southern states to do as they wished against the power of the Union to not let them do that.

Now tell me another one. The Leftists in the literal sense all have an end goal of anarchism. In fascistland in the Bright Shiny Happiness of the future there is only war.

And you don't see the relationship between the anarchist war against so-called organized power and fascism? Anarchy is decidedly fascist - it's fascism with a power vacuum, where it's no longer a central authority telling you what you have to do, but a powerless void doing so. Anarchists never really think that through, but do anarchists ever really think?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

They had that power already, they didn't need to secede to keep that.

Oh. My. God. Anarchism is totalitarianism now? Forget Bizarro, this is the Crazy Kool-Acid Trip. Anarchism is not fascism. Fascism is a statist ideology, one that just wants society turned into one gigantic army. Anarchism wants to completely erase the state altogether and somehow humans will not be bastards without a state.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

You don't see the authoritarian contradiction inherent in anarchism? Really?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, I don't. As in reality anarchism turns into a bunch of local warlords, the exact opposite of totalitarianism where literally everything revolves around centralism. For my next trick would you like me to explain that water is wet?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I honestly, didn't think you were serious there. I've got to think about where to go from here.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, Jeff, in your world 1920s China and contemporary Somalia are totalitarian despotisms. I understand that. In the real world, OTOH, words have meanings, and inverting them is improper.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

"The Leftists in the literal sense all have an end goal of anarchism."


ROTFL

You actually believe that line?

I have yet to encounter a single leftist who was not totally enamoured of using the police power of the state to make those damn people do what they wanted.

I mean seriously, the most left wing (in American Parlance) movie character I have ever encountered was Anakin Skywalker, he is the perfect model of the American left wing, idealistic, whiny, and convinced that people need to be controlled and told what to do for their own benefit because they are too stupid to do the right thing themselves. Then when push came to shove more than willing to use violence to make it happen.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I actually believe that line because even Communism's ultimate utopian goal is anarchist hippieland. I think you're missing the words "end goal" and that I'm well aware that reality tends to bugger theory to the point theory can't sit down normally for weeks.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

Honestly, it seems like you define fascist as someone you don't like. That's hardly very scientific.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

No, fascism is simply someone that's pushing the extreme end of authortarianism, full state control. There were absolutely fascistic aspects to the South, and it's hard to view Lincoln, in my mind, as much of anything but.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually anything people criticize Lincoln for Davis did much more of. He ordered USCT men and officers to be executed summarily and any of the men to be sold into slavery, he used martial law like it was going out of style,he tried to micromanage the war and did more to help the Lincoln Administration put paid to Southern treason than he ever understood, Davis had his opponents massacred where Lincoln just put his in jail, Davis wanted brown-nosing cronies for generals where Lincoln wanted people who could count to 21 without dropping their pants......

If anything Lincoln's USA was far more "small-government" than Jefferson Davis's Confederacy.

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

That's just revisionism though. Fascism exists in a historical context that includes more than just authoritarianism (or even extreme authoritarianism). For one example, even in the Confederacy, there wasn't the cult of personality aspect that helped define classical fascism (i.e., Mussolini's Italy).

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it's revisionism. Not all fascism needs a "cult of personality" to be fascist.

With that said, can we say those didn't exist in some form around Lincoln and the Confederacy in general?

[http://users.livejournal.com/-wanderer-/]

I think the real definition of fascism requires the use of modern media (i.e., radio and to some extent film) to really spread and become the all-powerful presence that we associate with the word. I mean, I'm sure that Napoleon was at least as authoritarian as Lincoln or even Mussolini for that matter, but the infrastructure of his day didn't support what we could rightfully call fascism. In any case, at least for Lincoln, there was public and vocal opposition in the 1864 election IIRC, which to me puts him in a different category from real fascists.

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

That's interesting. So you see fascism as a purely modern (modern being within the last century, give or take) movement?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The real definition of fascism requires a paramilitary and an ethnocratic concept of society. Arguably that describes the Solid South to a T, but that would offend too many Right-Wingers to point out that Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond were relics of the US experiment with fascism.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, there was one around Robert E. Lee whose record was one that indicated that he really didn't need one or deserve one. I should note not to argue facts or specifics with Jeff. He'll anal fumigate you to seeing white as black and black as white.