Dan, you really are chuggin the out-sourcin kool-aid if you think bush's comments on education, when questions were about jobs went over well. I highly recommend, you talk to people with graduate degrees who can't get a job and tell them to go to "community college" to get more education so they can get a job. Or perhaps you ought to talk to seniors at your school and their experience tryin to get a job in the current market. The education when the question was about jobs market playyed extremely poorly with the crowd I saw the debate with. No one buys it.

I'm not saying education doesn't help, or it isn't a good idea, but education isn't the problem with the current job market.

Overall, I'd give this one to Bush. The transcript favors him on points, as well.

Radical globalization equals slow growth, it's as simple as that. The era of radical globalization began roughly in 1980. If you look at OECD growth from then up until1998, average annual per capita income grew at 1.8% compared with 3.4% between 1960-1979 back in the days of moderate globalization, when national economic borders meant something and the militant economic terrorist organizations, a.k.a. corporations, were still under central government control. The numbers are even more shocking for the developing world, 2.5% growth between 1960-1979 and 0% growth between 1980-1998. The downward trend on growth has only gotten worse since 1998.

We now know what it felt like to live in the communist world back in the 1970's where 98% of the economists believed in Marxist (command) economics and would not allow any dissension within their ranks. How many more years of terrible growth are we going to have to suffer through before people start the realize that nation states do in fact matter in economics and that the out of control corporation--not al-Qaida--is the biggest non-state actor threat we currently face.

Kerry's 'Soprano' line was cheap & witless, but a score. Reagan made a similar low-brow hit on Carter in 1980 with: "That answer reminds me of how a witch doctor would react when a good doctor comes along." We nickname big guys 'tiny' & bald guys 'curly' - Reagan was 'The Great Communicator'.

Towards the end of the night, Bush seemed like he was trying to look, what ..humble? ..paternal? .. reverential? I've seen 3 different GWB's this month. Didn't Gore fry for that type of constant re-invention?

They both used new hand gestures. Bush pounded the lecturn for emphasis - new!

I've noticed that Bush's recent attack ads have a new ending - a fade-to-black and pause for almost 2 seconds before Bush comes back on to "approve this message". In the viewer's eyes, it completely separates his endorsement from the ad's attack.

Yeah, Right.

And if those numbers of yours are to be believed as accurate, Jor, what to make of their similarilty to the "instant-poll" numbers from the first debate, given that *no one* is claiming that the two performances bore any similarity whatsoever?

Anybody know what Bush asked Kerry to talk about at the end?

Bush did better than the first two; albeit, that's not saying much, but is amazing considering he has apparently suffered a stroke, look at the left side of his face droop, a well known symptom of a minor, "non-bleeding" type of stroke.

This debate reminded me why this is a single issue election. I dont trust either of these clowns to do anything useful domestically. For a fiscal conservative its the choice between drunken monkeys.

I like Dan's hybridization of a live-blog. Poli-playoff blogging, anyone?

My take: A-Rod on second was trying to decode Pedro's secret message for the president, who was wired (as the lefty wackos have it) but so he could listen to the GAME, not his Rovian brain. Varitek is actually a CIA agent, Pedro's handler. Jeter is working for the other side (three guesses who for). Schilling, who has come out vocally as a pro-war Republican, was a victim of Kerry's people, who infiltrated Boston's sports medicine program and misdiagnosed his hamstring problem.

The upshot: Kerry isn't really a Red Sox fan, but a Manchurian Candidate in the pay of (who else) G. Steinbrenner. Nefarious. You bet.

given that *no one* is claiming that the two performances bore any similarity whatsoever

Huh? I actually thought the third debate found Bush right back where he started in the first debate - flustered, bumbling, occasionally angry, trying to cover that by smiling over it.

Kerry was consistent (to the point of getting boring) throughout all three debates. Bush's only acceptable performance was in the second debate where he got close to a draw.

I think people will also start to notice that Bush is really the bigger waffler of the two. Who can claim with a straight face that Bush gives plain, straightforward answers after his evasiveness especially in this last debate? He didn't answer a very clear question whether he wants to overturn Roe vs. Wade; he didn't address the question of what to tell someone who lost his job to outsourcing; he didn't say if he wanted to raise the minimum wage (other than to hint that he might support a certain Republican bill if it ever came to a vote); he also evaded the question on the assault weapons ban (the question was why he didn't do anything to get it passed, not whether he was in principle for or against it).

As for the flu shots - Bush got most of the details wrong, as others have already hinted at. Chiron is indeed an American company. Ironically, the other company, which will now provide more than 90 % of flu vaccine for this winter, is not an American company, but a French company, although their American subsidiary based in Pennsylvania is distributing (and producing?) the vaccine.

The real problem here is that the government relies on just two companies to produce almost all of the vaccine. A lot of people die each year from influenza - the average flu season in the US leads to over 35,000 influenza-related deaths. The lack of vaccine this year will almost certainly lead to more deaths - even if there is enough vaccine to vaccinate all high-risk persons who want to get vaccinated, more lower-risk people will become ill and pass the flu on to more higher-risk people who didn't get vaccinated.

It's quite interesting that we are so concerned about theoretical biological weapons wielded by terrorists, but not nearly as much about very real biological dangers that are among us and that kill more Americans each and every year than terrorists ever have.

Dundare said "The line about Tony Soprano represents such a new low in American presidential debates. Thats something I would expect in a state rep race, not from someone who wants to run the country."

I agree completely and am surprised it hasn't gotten more attention.

As a fiscal conservative myself, I'm disappointed with both parties. Bush has presided over the biggest deficits in American history. When you take out defense spending, veterans benefits, interest on the national debt, homeland security, there's very little left to cut other than Social Security. Otherwise, the country is headed for bankruptcy.

Kerry at least does believe, unlike Cheney, that deficits matter. But he has proposed lots of additional spending, even more than Bush.

Either way, I look for deficits as far as the eye can see. I intend to vote for Kerry, not based on fiscal issues. But on fiscal matters, I think Kerry may be marginally better than Bush because a) he at least shows some awareness of the harmfulness of deficits
b) With a likely Republican Congress, he is less likely to get major new spending approved.
c) Bush was given a huge, projected surplus and blew it. I for one was disappointed that he did not push for radical tax simplification (as in 1986), using the surplus to reduce overall rates as a bonus to force simplifcation. I was also disappointed that he didn't use the projected surplus to try and make some steps towards SS privatization. The surplus would have served as a nice transition cushion, now its gone.

"The line about Tony Soprano represents such a new low in American presidential debates."

Why ? I thought it was funny, and it was an absolutely apt example of an appropriate comparison. Perhaps he could have used the fox and henhouse or the Jesse James/bank or the Dracula/henhouse analogy, but the Tony Soprano analogy is reasonable as well. its not meant to compare the President to Tony Soprano, but just to compare their relative positons on a topic. Certainly, the President has no credibility on the issue of fiscal responsibility.

Kerry claims this is the first President in 70-some-odd to lose jobs.

Well, let's blow that outta the water right now;
Let's look at the "Employment Situation Summary" which is posted on the website of the Labor Dept's "Bureau of Labor Statistics". That page shows a total of 139 million people working, about 8 million of which are working more than one job.

Now that 139 million people is more people than we've ever had working at any time since we started keeping records of such things, and one presumes, more than at any time not recorded, as well.

How can we have lost jobs, if we have record worker levels?
It gets better. The unemployment rate is listed on this same document as being at 5.4%... which as a matter of history, is fairly low... Bill Clinton's average over his time in office was 5.6%, for example... and the Democrats are still screaming about how great the employment picture was in those years.

Clearly, what John Kerry claimed doesn't mesh with the facts.
So, John Kerry lied.
Again.

I guess I'm not too shocked the press didn't catch this, or let on that they had.

But, Dan?

Hmmm.

I can see the connection between jobs and education, but you can't let it look as if you are talking about education because you have nothing to say about jobs. That is how Bush made it appear, and I'm not surprised he got low marks from focus groups for that. Most people aren't grading the abstract argument, as Dan is prone to do; what they notice is when a candidate appears to dodge a question about an issue they care about.

So what you're saying is, that Mr. Bush was arguing at an abstract level many couldn't grasp.
So much for the 'Bush is stupid' meme, then.

Bithead, you are using the "household" survey numbers, not the "establishment" numbers, which everybody else is using.

Total non-farm, private sector employment, seasonally adjusted:
12/2000: 111.6 million
9/2004: 109.9 million

This yields the roughly 1.6 million difference of lost jobs that Kerry has been talking about.

As people have pointed out, Kerry has focused on private-sector jobs only. If you throw in government jobs, which have grown under your "small government" conservative hero, the total number of jobs lost is "only" about 900,000.

And these figures of jobs actually LOST don't include the millions of jobs NOT CREATED that would have been needed to keep up with population growth. So in a way the situation is much worse than Kerry's 1.6 million figure suggests.

Clinton created around 10 million private-sector jobs in EACH of his terms. And yet, when his first term was ending, Republicans like you were trying to make the case that his economic performance had somehow been "bad". But we shouldn't be surprised that this doesn't keep you from trying to spin the absolutely abysmal performance of George W. Bush as good, should we?

And Clinton achieved all this with modest tax increases. The minimum wage was raised, too. And yet the right-wing spinmeisters here and elsewhere are still parrotting the old lines that the minimum wage must not be raised and taxes must always be cut.

Just about every independent economist, including Alan Greenspan, thinks the establishment survey is more valid. Using the less reliable household survey and using it to call Kerry a liar is fundamentally dishonest.

Re: Bush's comment about education and jobs. I think its absolutely correct. But the notion that people can't get jobs because they aren't smart enough or don't have a college edewcation is not going to go over well in Ohio, WV, PA. The Dems need to beat this meme along as throughly as they can. You can bet the Republicans would have tied it to Kerry's 'elite' background if Kerry had said that.

Zathras: Nice spin on Bush making an "abstract" argument. Bush was dodging this and other questions in order to run from his amazing record of destroying jobs while busting the budget.

As he paradoxically said himself, you can run, but you can't hide. The Republican campaign machinery has been all about hiding his record by distorting Kerry's record and trying to make that the issue instead. As if Kerry had been President over the last four years, not Bush. Bush seemed like the challenger, Kerry the incumbent. I wonder how many people got that out of the debates - that that's the way it ought to be.

Oh, heck, is Bithead trotting out the Household Survey numbers? I thought that talking point had been retired since everyone knows HS numbers are meaningless: two jobs delivering pizza do not equal one job as a mechanical engineer.

You gotta keep up, Bithead. The latest talking point isn't HS. It's No Child Left Behind, which will apparently produce many high-skill, high-salary jobs. Somehow.

The household survey numbers do not tell a substantially different story, in reality.
Of course ou could argue that the largest sector of unemployment therein... teenagers.... are heads of households... but I doubt the argument will gain much traction.

And Paladin, are you suggesting that education doesn't provide higher paying jobs?

And your point about two jobs doesn't equal a good one... I think I did address that, given the refernece to the number of people holding two jobs.

My original points remain unanswered.

* How is it that a 5.6% under Clinton unemployment better than the 5.4 under Bush? (With a side point; given 9/11 and it's impact how much of that can be directly laid at the feet of Mr. Bush?)

* With demonstrated record employment, how can we have lost jobs?

'* With demonstrated record employment, how can we have lost jobs?'

Because the far more reliable establishment survey shows we have. This is not rocket science. One survey that all unbiased economists, including Alan Greenspan, consider to be valid shows job loss. Another, that is less reliable, does not. The establishment survey is the gold standard for jobs.

(Chcukle)
"Far more reliable"?

And they're only unbiased if their statements can be used to dis the President?

This, as you say, is not rocket science.

How flattering. One poster thinks I am unintentionally praising Bush for advancing a sophisticated abstract argument about education and jobs; another thinks I am deliberately spinning Bush's answer to obscure his having dodged the question on jobs.

Interested readers can judge for themselves.

How is it that a 5.6% under Clinton unemployment better than the 5.4 under Bush?

The unemployment rate at the end of 1992 was 7.4 %. By the end of Clinton's first term, it was down to 5.4 %. By the end of Clinton's second term it was down to 3.9 %. Now it's back up at 5.4 %. That's how your AVERAGE rate under Clinton is better than the CURRENT rate under Bush.

But the unemployment rate does not capture discouraged workers who aren't even trying to find a job anymore.

Clinton added on the order of 20 million private sector jobs over 8 years, roughly 10 million in each of his two terms. Reagan added about 13 million in 8 years. And Bush sr. a little over 2 million in 4 years. Has the US population and potential work force suddenly stopped growing under Bush jr?

And, oh Bithead, please tell me, if you really believe your own spin, why doesn't Bush himself set the record straight? Why does he need Bithead to do it for him?

Zathras: My apologies for conflating your neutral observation with Bithead's spin.

'And they're only unbiased if their statements can be used to dis the President?

This, as you say, is not rocket science'

Indeed. Here is what Alan Greenspan had to say earlier this year.

"I wish I could say the household survey were the more accurate,'' Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman, said in his testimony at a House hearing on Feb. 11. "Everything we've looked at suggests that it's the payroll data which are the series which you have to follow."

Now, doubtless you'll claim that Alan Greenspan, a Republican, a fan of Ayn Rand, appointee of a Republican President, a proponent of tax cuts etc. is somehow a Democratic shill.

No reputable economist considers the household survey to be more reliable.

Also, what does Wall Street pay the most attention to ? Not to the household survey. Its the payroll survey. Doubtless these are all democratic shills too.

At some point, you have to acknowledge reality.
Incidentally, the household survey showed a 200K drop last month. Are you still willing to claim that its more accurate ?

Hardly 'spin', gw.... More like questioning.

And no, Zathras, I would never acuse you of praising the President. But your point is a good one, and it does seem to raise some serious questions about that 'Bush is stupid' nonsense we've been hearing for the last 5 years or so.

Could a stupid person perform as you suggest Bush has, after all?

Oh, and GV?

doesn't capture discouraged workers... actually, it des which is why I posted the link. Follow it, and you may even notice where it says:

" There were 412,000 discouraged workers in September,little changed from a year earlier. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, were not currently looking for work specifically because they believed no jobs were available for them. The other 1.1 million marginally attached had not searched for work for reasons such as school or family responsibilities. (See table A-13.)"

In terms of 139 million the 412,000 figure while a problem to those 412,000 certainly, only accounts for a very small fraction of the total, and is in fact around 1/5th of the total unemployment figure.

And finally, you've yet to address the side point; That being, given the impact of 9/11 on the economy, how much of that job figire can be laid at Bush's feet? I doubt Clinton or Gore, or Kerry could have done as wwell, given the conditions.

As fpor why Bush didn't say much if anything about this during the debates, I have rather more than 90 seconds to answer. I suspect it took longe rthan 90 seconds for folks to read what I've written so far, much less absorb it's import.

The time limits within a debate environment have always been problematic; How to describe much of ANYTHING complex, in sufficieant detail, in, say, 90 seconds?

Which, in turn, may be why Mr. Kerry has never gotten around to explaining how it is he plans to pay for all the promised government give-away programs, huh?

erg;
The thrust of my comment apparently went right by you. Try it this way;

How would it be if Greenspan came out i the opposite direction? Would you be so quick to quote him?

Our arguing doesn't matter. It's how the people who have not yet become a hard supporter of one candidate or the other (which I think leaves out everyone here) that will matter. All of that said, my own take...

I was bored because there were no fireworks, and I thought the questions were very softball. But I did think that Kerry was very prepared, did an excellent job of what he had to do, and the Bush didn't help himself with anyone except those already supporting him. Pounding the lectern while saying nothing was strange. "Freedom is on the march" is for BC rallies - it says nothing.

I spent the first two debates moaning and shouting at the screen each time I thought Kerry missed a point and could have come up with a better "nail him" answer. I wasn't moved to shout at the screen tonight. There were places where I would have had a different answer, but few that I felt that mine necessarily would be better than Kerry's. He was organized, wove in lots of detail that made him seem very knowledgeable, and brought it back around quickly to the point he was making.

What he was there to do was come across as a viable alternative as a president. I think he did that in all 3 debates, no matter who you give the most points to, and I think he nailed that in the 3rd one.

I also thing Bush made several terrible gaffes that WILL hurt him, no matter what the pundits say.

1) The Osama bin Laden "ex-aaaaa-geration." He just set up a week of television showing that statement, backed by the video where he said exactly that. By the way, Kerry quoted him precisely ("not that concerned") and Bush was the one who said "I never said I wasn't worried." That was a stupid, stupid giveaway that he should have ignored, but for some reason just couldn't.

2) There are a LOT of educated out-of-work people out there. Telling a 50-year-old master machinist or a qualified EE whose IT job was outsourced to India that he or she needs to go to a community college to retrain for some vague "21st century job" is not going to resonate well. What resonates even less well is that the NCLB is a solution, which implies that those people are out of work because they didn't learn reading or arithmetic. I suspect that there are people who are feeling personally insulted, and that some of them are people who were not yet hard Kerry supporters.

3) Minimum wage/immigration. Maybe it's true that minimum wage people don't vote or watch debates. But there seem to be a lot of people who were previously politically apathetic (I know some of these) who are registering to vote, and they're not doing it because they like the way things are going. This combination of answers sounded like he was saying that educating children solves the problem of the minimum wage not being enough (and maybe it does in 15 years, but not now), and bringing in a lot of Mexicans to do the minimum wage jobs (which is now). I may be making too much of this (or I can see it and others can't), but that was my perception.

4) The other REALLY stupid thing Bush said was, basically, that the VA health care system is wonderful and perfect. Any veteran who has used it (or tried) knows of their own knowledge that that is simply not the case.

What Bush should have done was make some vague statement about "continuing to look where we can improve our care of the men and women who have fought for our country yadda yadda" and this would have been a non-answer but a non-problem. Instead, he really caused himself a problem by not only saying something that veterans know is not true, but that also essentially said "and I'm not going to make any changes or fix anything about it."

As I said, it doesn't matter what we think, it matters what the remaining moveable voters think, or the people who could vote but might not. And I think Bush hurt himself in both of those. But we'll see.

The thrust of my comment apparently went right by you. Try it this way

How would it be if Greenspan came out i the opposite direction? Would you be so quick to quote him?

Bithead

If you were claiming the Earth was flat and I produced Professor Erasthothenes, noted authority, who said that the Earth was round, would it be a defense of the Earth's flatness on your part to say "Yes, but if Erasthothenes had claimed the Earth was flat, would you have quoted him".

Would that make any difference in whether the Earth was flat or round ?

In this case, the facts are what they are. We're debating the Bush administration's employment record (or lack of the same) and your using a known-to-be-less-accurate survey to butress your claim that the Bush administration has created jobs. Whether I would have quoted Alan Greenspan if he felt the other way is irrelevant, what is relevant is whether your claims about job growth are correct. You also 'chuckled' with the notion that the Establishment Survey was far more accurate -- go chuckle at Greenspan and the Fed. Or go chuckle at Wall Street, that marketplace that values the establishment survey far higher.

But to answer your question -- at least, I wouldn't have the balls to claim an increase in employment based on the household survey when its contradicted by the far more reliable payroll survey and chuckle at the accuracy of the payroll survey. Not if I wanted to retain even a patina of credibility, that is.

The fact is that Alan Greenspan says this.

If you were claiming the Earth was flat and I produced Professor Erasthothenes, noted authority, who said that the Earth was round, would it be a defense of the Earth's flatness on your part to say "Yes, but if Erasthothenes had claimed the Earth was flat, would you have quoted him".

But that isn't the question here, is it?

There is no point in arguing with BitHead, the job numbers aren't contreversial -- if he can't accept that, just ignore him.

Just to state it bluntly, the majority of republicans are now living in some delusional alternative reality. Facts don't matter. Facts don't exist if they don't agree with their idealogy. The hackery is spectacular. InstaHack, Hewit, Maguire -- they've called every debate for Bush -- and each time the polls have thoroughly REJECTED them. Give me a break. Republicans have no shame. NONE whatsoever. Pure, unadulterated HACKS.

Dan, P-VALUE -- you can run, but you can't hide. Even Andrew "Leave no wingnut behind" Sullivan has gone shrill. ITs time to join the ORDER. You know you want in.

There is no point in arguing with BitHead, the job numbers aren't contreversial -- if he can't accept that, just ignore him

Uh huh.
Which of course is an interesting cover for not being able to answer the questions as posed.

Which of course is an interesting cover for not being able to answer the questions as posed

You have so far failed utterly to answer the questions or statements I posed, going off on long diversionary comments, and hypothetical questions about what I would do if Greenspan had said the exact opposite of what he did say .

SO answer these questions

1) Do you agree that the payroll survey shows that Bush has not created any jobs ?
2) Do you believe that the household survey is more reliable than the payroll survey ?
2a) If so, why do practically all economists, including Republican Alan Greenspan, our own Fed, Wall Street practioners think the payroll survey is more accurate ?

Sorry, Bithead, but you haven't yet refuted the fact that the low unemployment rate is not a function of a larger numerator, but of a smaller denominator.

Unless you wish to argue that the population of the USA has suddenly stopped growing, it would appear people have been leaving the labor force.

Involuntarily owing to long unemployment would be a good first guess, wouldn't it?

You might want to read up on this and graduate to Bytehead, or at least Nibblehead.

Interesting to read that some supporters of the President find the possibility that he tried to advance a sophisticated abstract argument as such a positive thing, when identically 'nuanced' arguments from the challenger are considered such a negative.

1) Do you agree that the payroll survey shows that Bush has not created any jobs ?

I should think this rather obvious.... No.

2) Do you believe that the household survey is more reliable than the payroll survey ?

Depends on what you're looking for... as was discussed in this space the last time thie topic showed up.

And by the way. Wouldn't you think that consumer spending would be down by a fair margine if things were as bad job wise as you claim? funny thing; it's up by a fairly healthy amount, says the government this morning.. about 1.5% more or less... (My memory, sorry, but it's close)

Oh, and wishIwuz2?

Interesting to read that some supporters of the President find the possibility that he tried to advance a sophisticated abstract argument as such a positive thing, when identically 'nuanced' arguments from the challenger are considered such a negative.

The difference is, he doesn't dwell there all the time like Kerry has.

Does anyone know what Kerry's 'plan' is yet?

And by the way. Wouldn't you think that consumer spending would be down by a fair margine if things were as bad job wise as you claim? funny thing; it's up by a fairly healthy amount, says the government this morning.. about 1.5% more or less... (My memory, sorry, but it's close)

Consumer spending is entirely driven by "easy credit" which is itself symptomatic of the disease from which our society suffers; a terminal disease it is, and only the time of death is a valid point of debate.

) Do you agree that the payroll survey shows that Bush has not created any jobs ?


Bithead: I should think this rather obvious.... No.

So you're saying the payroll survey shows that Bush has created jobs ? That is wrong. Or are you saying that you don't agree with the payroll survey ?

2) Do you believe that the household survey is more reliable than the payroll survey ?


Bithead: Depends on what you're looking for...

In terms of measuring jobs created, the payroll survey is the gold standard. Thats what the Fed says. Thats what Wall Street says.

And by the way. Wouldn't you think that consumer spending would be down by a fair margine if things were as bad job wise as you claim?

Consumer spending was being driven by cheap credit, lower interest rates, housing refinance and the like. Not by a better jobs picture, in general.