The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it - Henry David Thoreau

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

No, this post is not about Al Franken..it’s yet another chance to take a big, fat dump all over the Obama economic policy and the media’s reporting of it.  First, from the magnificent Geoff at Innocent Bystanders:

Over the past 3 months we have found that:

The Obama economic team’s peak unemployment predictions were unrealistically optimistic,
Their estimate of the speed of relief by Stimulus spending was also unrealistically optimistic, and
Their actual “economic modeling” apparently consisted of spreadsheet-level estimates of unemployment

Geoff’s post cites a WaPo article that discusses Mark Zandi, a former McCain advisor (as if that alone wouldn’t make everything he said suspect) who has advocated for more, more, more stimulus spending.  One of the commenters calls Zandi a “Al Goreacle powerpoint ranger,” and with good reason--as Geoff shows, he doesn’t seem to know what the hell he’s talking about when it comes to his chosen subject, either:

Now this fellow also made some economic projections, and I presume that they were based on a more sophisticated analysis than the meager efforts of Obama’s team. So let’s have a look at what he predicted on January 21, 2009, back when the stimulus package was weighing in at $825 billion. And just for fun, let’s compare that to what actually has been happening:

This comes on the heels of an AP article today that reaches new lows in unpaid propoganda for the Obama administration:

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The US private sector shed 473,000 jobs in June to cope with a prolonged recession, a survey by payrolls firm ADP showed Wednesday with a warning that unemployment will rise for several more months.

The June job cuts were worse than the 395,000 expected by most analysts but lower than 485,000 in May, which was revised from the previous 532,000 figure.

Monthly employment losses in April, May, and June averaged 492,000, a notable improvement over the first three months of the year (!!!!!), when monthly losses averaged 691,000, according to the ADP National Employment Report.

Yeah, that’s right, wingnuts--an average of nearly 500,000 job losses a month over the last quarter is a “notable improvement.” This is like claiming the 150-yard 30-.06 hit to your pelvis isn’t as bad as the point-blank shotgun blast to your chest.

Did I say a couple of days ago that the Obama administration wears clown shoes 24/7?  The media is the whole fucking college where they go to learn.  And yes, it’s no coincidence that David Axelrod is a former journalist.