Thanks for the vote of confidence but I don’t deserve it. I really don’t get it and it isn’t because I’m deliberately obtuse it’s because I’m pretty old and everything that goes with becoming older. I don’t want a debate because I’m to damn dumb to debate.
One wonders about the definition, given that you’ve just included the employed among those who are unemployed: “[The unemployment rate] is the employed and those who have given up.” 
If you are gonna claim part-time workers and people who have “given up” (which I think you’ll have to agree contains a significant number who don’t really want to work and who can get by anyway as a result of being given money taken from those who do) among the unemployed, then you’re also going to have to subtract from that number the jobs which they could fill and which go begging in newspaper and online want ads all over the country.
And besides, who says part-time workers are all people who want and need full time work? A great many either have family or school considerations or are working simply for spending money or to supplement the main family income.
If everyone who could work, did work, the unemployment figures would be much lower.
P.S. - I’m pretty sure you already know that, but you conveniently ignore it because acknowledging it wouldn’t make for good Pubbie/Bush-bashing or welfare promotion, would it?
I’m sorry. I truly thought you were just being snarky. To explain, then: All I meant is that the author of the original article being black is a mitigating factor, to my thinking. Yes, I think it would have been worse if the author had been white. It’s the same with black comedians, who can get away with material which would get a white comedian booed offstage. That doesn’t mean it’s perfectly wonderful that Mr. Saltsman and Mr. Limbaugh passed around their parody version of it, but IMO there are more egregious things to get offended about.
Again, my most sincere apologies for lashing out at you like that. I mistook your questions for snarky sarcasm.
Republicans might be more sensitive to issues of race if they actually had any non-white people in the party. I’m thinking this CD is not going to help in that respect.
Saltsman had a good education in liberal private schools. He’s been the chair of the Tennessee Republicans for ten years and knows better. What would possess him to do this? I would suppose that his bigotry overwhelmed his good sense.
I wonder how appreciated the CD was by committee members. Saltsman apparently thinks it suits their tastes.
Nothing mitigates this.
How long will it take for the decent Republicans to weed out leaders like this?
There are non-whites in the party and at every level of government, including the Supreme Court.
The thing is though, they think conservatively so they get portrayed by the left as Uncle Toms and so forth, so they get no credit for their accomplishments and/or the offices they hold, and they count for nothing when it comes to lessening leftie stereotyping of ‘Republican insensitivity’.
The fact of the matter is that Saltsman is no more typical of the average white Republican than Rev. Wright, Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson are typical of the average minority Democrat.
Oh, it’ll help a lot…in terms of giving ammo to people who want to stereotype Republicans as racist.
I don’t know, but it won’t be soon enough for me.
And hi, Zoe! How you doin’? 
(Thanks for the artist comment the other day, btw. I haven’t made it back to that thread yet but wanted to let you know I’d seen it and that I appreciate it.)
Oh, bull. Frostillicus was clearly employing hyperbole. And many Republicans who are black or Indian or Hispanic are disparaged for working on behalf of an organization that, judging solely from its xenophobic rhetoric (Macaca, anyone?) and the immigration reform effort semi-recently, doesn’t want any more people who look like them to enter the country.
By the way, look at pictures of McCain rallies. I’ve yet to see a non-white face in them, though admittedly I haven’t looked all that hard. Obama crowds were a spectrum.
Your most gracious apologies are accepted; now that you have explained things, I can see why you made the comments. Even someone as lost in the fog as I should have clearly seen what you meant.
What a hoad of looey!
What are you saying? That immigration laws are bullshit and we should just throw our borders open to all comers? And that Republican Mexicans are racist against their own race?
What utter nonsense!
My guess is that, like most conservatives, they believe that laws exist for a reason and that they shouldn’t be broken. Illegal immigration is breaking the law! What is so racist about that? Every country on the face of this planet manages its immigration and has laws to keep people from entering illegally.
Perhaps you could explain why it’s racist when we do it?
Yeah! And those guys who claim to be “homeless”, they’re not really homeless, they just do that until they cash their food stamp checks, so they can smoke LSD and shoot up Mary Jane! The rest of the time they’re gigolos! Or mimes. There weren’t any mimes in the 50’s. Except for Red Skelton. Now there was a real comedian…
I’m confident there are no Cirque du Soleil acrobats who would ever attempt leaps like some of the leaps of logic that come from the impassioned do-gooders of the left in this country.
What did I say that even remotely relates to homelessness, food stamps, LSD, Red Skelton, the 50s, anything? Anything?
Care to try to relate all that to what I said, luce, or do you just want to admit you have no adequate refutation for the fact that every country has immigration laws and that we’re no different, and so you chose to fall back on the tried and true liberal tactic of attempting to portray your conservative opponent as unhip, uncool, uncaring and hateful…and all without a lick of logic to bring it all together?
Can’t really blame you though. It’s a tactic that has worked amazingly well for forty years.
Meanwhile the Republicans have gained in the Tennessee legislature using precisely these politics of division.
I am in Nashville, and learned a bit about this from a fine old gentleman who has been a life-long Democrat in Middle-Tennessee.
Actually it’s completely obnoxious to not include a link, particularly if you think it’s the responsibility of your reader to look it up. Going to Google requires at least two dozen more steps for your reader than clicking on your link. So if you didn’t include a link in the past you were just being an asshole.
I think you must be doing it wrong
Click link page loads. 1-step
Go to toolbar in Firefox 1-step
Click the Google icon to make the search function google 2
Type search 3
browse search items 4
Now you can stop at 4 if of course the first page reveals the desired result. If not…
Don’t be an asshole, cite your sources, or at least don’t be a dick about it when someone asks you to.
Well, you know, Lib, it does make it easier to check the same source that you found if you provide the link to the page that brought the matter to your attention.
Hmmm…I’d leave this alone but for your additional statements; I think you need to either familiarize yourself with the technical definitions in play or be more precise. You said eariler that “a 5% unemployment rate = 95% employment rate”, and that’s technically correct when restricted to the labor force. However, people who have “given up” are not part of the labor force.
Voyager’s mention of the “underemployed” indicates (to me) that he is considering the population as a whole, not just the labor force. Technically sloppy and therefore incorrect, but no more so than your suggestion to “to subtract from that number the jobs which they could fill and which go begging in newspaper and online want ads all over the country” (which, actually, is explicitly ruled out in the data gathering and statistics compilation).
For reference on definitions, see here. For actual numbers, see here; running some quick numbers, I got ~10% unemployed/discouraged for the whole population and ~40% (?!) non-employed.
Yeah, it would be if I thought that. But when a story is already two days old, is in rotation on CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC, has 1400 Google news entries, and is already familiar to half the civilized western world — I think people who demand a link are pretty much clueless cave dwellers anyway whose participation in the discussion I’m not really hoping for and doubt I’ll find useful. I realize you’re not proud of these cockroaches in your party, but if your response to them is to bitch at me about a two-step process, then you need help. By the way, for me it’s (1) Click new tab, (2) type “Obama magic negro <enter>” — bingo.
It is a bit handy if we ever look at the article a few months later, Lib. Really, I consider it basic internet manners.
I am offended by the lack of Magic Indian characters in film. Other than that bartender dude from Keeping the Faith, maybe.