Showing posts with label Rush Limbaugh 2016. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rush Limbaugh 2016. Show all posts

Monday, December 12, 2016

Personally, I think Rex Nutting's a commie, but he couldn't be more right about the fake news of "not in the labor force"

Rex Nutting is right. Our side has been trafficking in this piece of fake news for years, a factoid originating with Zero Hedge and endlessly repeated by the Goodyear blimp of gasbags Rush Limbaugh, touching all and sundry from Donald Trump on down to little known radio hosts on low power stations in Michigan like Steve Gruber in Lansing. Correct it try though you may, every attempt to stop it fails. It's embarrassing, not in the least because it exposes the endemic inability to think critically and the proclivity to believe in authorities which share your political opinions.

For all the good it will do, Rex Nutting goes once more unto the breach, here, with excellent links and a good graph, too:

There are a lot of “fake statistics” bandied about in service of some ideology or another, but I’d like to focus on just one example in which I have expertise from my work covering the monthly employment report over the past 20 years: The idea that there are 95 million Americans who are out of work but not counted as unemployed.

This statistic pervades the conservative discourse about our economy (or at least until Jan. 20). The implication of this statistic is that the government and media are lying to us. Instead of an economy that’s slowly improving as President Barack Obama has been telling us, our economy is actually a catastrophic failure, unable to provide any work for nearly 100 million people. ...

This is the perfect fake statistic, because it’s absolutely true. And completely meaningless.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Rush Limbaugh is ecstatic today about Trump's cabinet picks

The guy never was on our side on illegal immigration, the income tax, Elton John, etc.

The leader of the conservative liberals, as someone once said. 

Monday, December 5, 2016

What a hypocritical gasbag Rush Limbaugh is about Trump's spending plans

Why, Donald Trump could be another FDR!, he says today. He could consolidate Republican rule for decades if he spends the money correctly!

Rush doesn't have a clue about the Obama stimulus, let alone have any principles. He thinks the stimulus was $1 trillion or so, when it was actually nearly $5 trillion, so far. I say so far because the damn thing was built into the outlay train. And look what we've gotten for it. A big fat nothing-burger. Crummier economic growth than under Bush, full-time jobs over 6 million behind trend, and a big fat national debt of nearly $20 trillion.

But Trump's version is going to be successful! Sure it is. $1 trillion or $5 trillion or $10 trillion under Trump isn't going to do anything it couldn't do under Obama.

The February 2009 Obama stimulus got added to Bush's 2009 fiscal year spending, and to every frickin' year thereafter. The fiscal 2008 baseline outlays were $2.9825 trillion.

And here are the annual outlays thereafter in excess of that baseline:

2009: $535.2 billion
2010: $474.6 billion
2011: $620.6 billion
2012: $554.5 billion
2013: $472.1 billion
2014: $523.6 billion
2015: $776.1 billion
2016: $1.017 trillion.

The giant joke on the American people here is that Republicans went right along with this charade the whole time Obama was president.

And now that Trump is running the show, an even bigger joke is about to be played on the American people.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Thanksgiving weekend's big laugh: Ted Cruz calls Trump's cabinet "a team of all-stars coming together"


Real courageous there, Ted, waiting for Limbaugh to say so first.

What a miserable cretin.


Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Laugh of the Day: Rush Limbaugh says Betsy DeVos is a staunch conservative

The woman supported Kasich for crying out loud. And little Justin Amash is the DeVos' libertarian tool in the US House who thinks the future of the Republican Party is in inclusiveness of LGBTQLSMFT.


RUSH: "Donald Trump has chosen charter school advocate Betsy DeVos as his secretary of education."  A charter school advocate!  This is gonna cause heads to explode in every teachers union building and bunker that there is.  Holy smokes, this is big! Betsy DeVos! You know the DeVos family.  Staunch conservatives, Rich DeVos, Amway, owns the Orlando Magic.  Great, great, great guy.  This woman becomes the second woman chosen to fill a spot in Trump's cabinet. 

Rush Limbaugh just called liberals mentally ill

Hm. Where have I heard that before?

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Once again Rush Limbaugh is full of it about the late, great recession

Here's Rush on November 15th:

In the first place, this so-called recession, the worst since the Great Depression 2008, I don't care, folks, it wasn't! ... Democrats have lived off of this economic collapse narrative for eight years now, and it's horse hockey. The truth of it is that there hasn't been a recovery from it. ... Hell, the recession that Reagan inherited in 1980 dwarfs this one. I mean the thing that Reagan inherited when he became president in 1980, this doesn't even get close to touching it, how bad it was. ... This has really been a sore spot for me for all these eight years, is how supposedly bad that was and how Obama single-handedly rescued us from it, and it was all the Republicans' doing, and it all happened because of the Iraq war. ... We haven't replaced these jobs that were lost. They keep talking about the employment rate being way down, record lows, what a crock.

Rush doesn't remember the 1980s very well, when he was in his 30s. Without a college education and a long enough personal history to compare things to while experiencing the hard knocks of life trying to get his radio career going, those years understandably seemed worse to him than they really were. Honest people everywhere recognize it was that way for them, too. Unfortunately Rush still doesn't seem to be able to measure the 1980s properly let alone put them in their proper perspective economically.

Take first time claims for unemployment. Reagan's weekly average 1981-1988 was 406,000. Obama's  weekly average 2009-2016 (still unfinished) is 373,000, 8% less severe overall. But the averages around each recession peak are much closer in severity. First time claims 1981-1983 averaged 491,000 weekly, while claims 2009-2011 averaged 477,000 weekly, the latter only 2.85% less severe overall. Peak claims in 1982 averaged 30.1 million, in 2009 only 2% lower at 29.46 million.

While the Obama jobs recession was not quite as severe in terms of the persistence of high first time claims for unemployment, full-time jobs took forever to recover under Obama. Under Reagan they had bounced back almost immediately. In 1981 the pre-recession peak in full-time averaged 83.243 million. By 1984 that level had been recovered with 86.544 million full-time jobs on average. Three years, that's it. In 2007, by contrast, the pre-recession peak in full-time averaged 121.091 million, but it took EIGHT YEARS to recover that level. Full-time finally averaged 121.492 million in 2015. That's why it hasn't felt like things are looking up until this year, in 2016.

If you were an adult in the 1980s, you probably remember the Savings and Loan crisis from 1986-1995, but you probably don't think of the Reagan era as a period of widespread bank failures comparable with what we recently experienced in the Great Recession, and you would be right. Losses from such failures as estimated by the FDIC for the period 1981-1988 total $8.9 billion. But for the period 2009-2016 estimated losses from bank failures soared to $57.3 billion, 544% higher. Even adjusted for inflation the recent losses were well in excess of 200% higher than in the 1980s. 

Or take housing. The Case-Shiller Home Price Index fell at most about 14% from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s through the Reagan recessions. I remember my dad was pretty unhappy about it because he retired in 1980 and was sitting in a house he hoped to sell for more money one day, but the value kept declining. But that was nothing compared to what happened between 2006 and 2012 when the index tanked over 36%. The foreclosure rate averaged just 0.5% in 1980-81, but soared to 3.8% in 2008-09, an increase of over 600% in the rate. Many millions of people lost homes in the Great Recession, but they are nameless and faceless to Rush Limbaugh because to him things were much worse in the 1980s. But not in reality. I saw homes in foreclosure in my own middle class neighborhood in 2007 that I never saw back in 1980 in my dad's hometown.

Perhaps the best way to visualize how much worse the most recent recession was compared with the early 1980s is to examine quarterly current dollar GDP. You had one tiny blip in quarterly current dollar GDP between December 1981 and March 1982 when it declined all of $0.01 trillion, 0.3% that's it. The truth is GDP recovered the next quarter ending June 1982 and never looked back.

Fast forward to 2007-09. There were four quarterly declines: A decline of $0.02 trillion between 12/31/07 and 3/31/08; a decline of $0.29 trillion from 9/30/08 to 12/31/08; a decline of $0.17 trillion from 12/31/08 to 3/31/09; and a decline of $0.04 trillion from 3/31/09 to 6/30/09. The previous peak level in quarterly current dollar GDP wasn't recovered until a year later, in June 2010. It took almost two years, not one quarter as in 1982. All told GDP fell from peak to trough by $0.5 trillion or 3.37%. 

The recession of 1982 was child's play compared with 2007-2009. Rush just can't see it because he was already rich during the Great Recession.

Your guiding light in this time of tumult he is not.   

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Democrats blame their own Bernie Sanders left for not showing up at the polls to elect Hillary, ignore that she was a horrible candidate

It's like Rush Limbaugh blaming 4 million phantom conservatives for not showing up to elect Romney, who bested McCain by a million votes, when the Democrats can point to 4.6 to 8.2 million actual Obama voters who abandoned Hillary.

When it comes to the establishment in the two political parties not getting it, the Democrats do it better as usual.


In an election determined by enthusiasm, some blame Bernie Sanders supporters for either not showing up or for suppressing turnout by refusing to rally behind Clinton at an earlier date.

“The Sanders people should be mad at themselves,” said one well-connected Democratic strategist. “If they had come out to vote, Donald Trump wouldn’t be president. If they were trying to prove a point, all they’ve done is further damage everything they claim to be fighting for. It’s somewhat typical of that crowd.” ...

“Progressives showed up,” [Jacob] Limon said, noting that the election in Texas was closer than it has been in 20 years. The problem, he said, was Clinton’s trustworthiness.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Rush Limbaugh is repeating stupid from National Review, that Trump could have beaten Obama in 2012

This will become the new factoid to replace the "94 million not working but eating" myth and the "4 million stayed home in 2012" myth and the 99ers myth.

Heavy sigh.

Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Rush Limbaugh's memory of 1980 is terrible

He just said the unemployment rate in 1980 was in the double digits, but it wasn't.

In 1980 the unemployment rate averaged 7.2%. In July it peaked at 7.8%.

That hurt a lot because it had been as low as 5.6% in 1979. 

Monday, October 24, 2016

Rod Dreher blames the Republican rank and file who voted for Trump for the coming "mess"

Reminds me of Rush Limbaugh blaming the so-called four million Republicans who stayed home in 2012 for Romney's loss.

Yeah, like it's all of a sudden a government of the people, by the people and for the people when we lose, but the rubes never get the credit when we win.

Meanwhile the guys with the microphones and the high profile blogs get off scot-free.


"[T]he bitterness and spite among Republican regulars is going to blind them to their own role in creating this mess." 

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Rush Limbaugh: Trump could have been so much better in Debate Three

Well yeah, but that's been the story since Iowa when Trump sided with the ethanol industry against Cruz.

The guy isn't a conservative policy wonk.

If conservative talk radio had any brains they'd have accepted this from the beginning, supported him, and supplied what was lacking.

Instead it's nag, nag, nag all the way to the destination.

Saturday, October 8, 2016

Joe Pags thinks "not in the labor force" does not include the retired, but it does

It's shocking how many people still think, wrongly, that "not in the labor force" includes huge numbers of people who could be or should be working but aren't.

Today on his show Joe Pags said the number not in the labor force, currently over 94 million, does not include retired people, when, for example in 2014 the retired constituted 44% of those "not in the labor force". The truth is the retired always constitute the single largest proportion of those "not in the labor force".

The sick and disabled in 2014 accounted for almost 19%, and people going to school made up another 18% of the total "not in the labor force". Tell me there are some claiming disability who don't have one who should be working, but don't tell me the damn kids should be working. 15.5% were homemakers while 3.5% had other reasons. There's probably many people in these categories who might want a job but can't find one, or ought to be working but aren't, but nothing even remotely close to the almost 39 million retired at the time.

Joe Pags joins a long list of idiots who are quite outspoken in their ignorance about this, including Zero Hedge, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Donald Trump, et alia. Thinking there might be vast numbers of hidden unemployed in "not in the labor force" is just plain lazy stupid.

None of these apparently have had the slightest interest in checking this out on Al Gore's amazing internet using the google machine, which takes you to this page at the Bureau of Labor Statistics with one of the better explanations out there.

I can only conclude the ignorance in the case of Joe Pags is willful because Joe Pags is smarter than that. But then again, he thinks Ted Cruz is a natural born citizen.

His bad.

Monday, October 3, 2016

Rush Limbaugh understands nothing about the tax returns of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump: Comparing them is comparing apples and oranges

The two tax returns couldn't be more different.

Trump in 1995 reported cumulative losses from his many pass-through entities on page 1 of his personal tax return as Net Operating Losses from businesses, which can be carried forward 15 years to offset net gains in those years and 3 years in arrears. All perfectly legal, but that's why he gets audited like hell, year after year.

Hillary reported a long term capital loss of almost $700,000 in 2015 for something on page 17, which would be interesting to know more about, but which she can't carry forward, and most of which she just had to eat because she's not organized to use pass-through entities like Trump is. If Rush had simply read page 18 of Hillary's return he'd have seen that Hillary did just that, eat it, like all taxpayers in the same situation, being entitled to only $3000 in long term capital losses in the reporting year. That's all she got. And none of the rest can carry forward because the loss was in that year. She ate it. People do it all the time, and quite unhappily.

That's what makes Trump smarter than Hillary, and smarter than most taxpayers. His affairs are arranged in a complicated fashion in order to maximize the tax consequences in his favor. Hillary isn't a fool for missing her tax-saving opportunities from such an arrangement, but Trump is very wise. It also probably costs him a tidy sum every year to keep it all straight.

Here is where Rush gets it all wrong:

RUSH:  We've got Hillary's tax returns from 2015, last year, the one that she just released her tax returns on, and it shows something strange, something awkward on page 17.  Line 14, long-term capital loss carryover.  Enter the amount, if any, from line 13 of your capital loss.  And the amount is $699,540.  Now, that's not on the scale of Trump's $915 million, but, in a nutshell, Hillary Clinton took a capital loss of $699,000 in 2015, as was reported on her tax return.
  
Where is the outrage?  Nobody even cares to report it.  That capital loss, she's allowed to carry that forward and it will affect how much income tax she owes in future years.  Same thing that we're dealing here with Trump.

Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Mark Levin is right to be upset about Trump's proposal to grant paid maternity leave and childcare, eldercare subsidies

This is the same sort of objectionable thing rammed through by George W. Bush in the Drugs for Seniors legislation. Totally unaffordable, but helpful for reelection purposes.

The difference this time is that it ain't gonna pass, unless of course you idiots out there give the House to the Democrats.

I think it's all politics and will get drastically pared down. Some token thing may pass, but not the full monty.

If Trump wins, which is what this is really all about.

It is noteworthy, however, that other radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham are nearly rolling over for this thing. The program is objectionable out of the box, except to people like James Pethokoukis, but those two today were almost paragons of equanimity. I think Laura even took a call praising the pro-family aspects of the plan. The worst argument for the idea being repeated is that it will encourage single mothers to work. So we'll subsidize single motherhood? Yeah, that's a Republican value.

I don't expect the Limbaughs and Ingrahams to diss Trump at this stage of the game, but it is this stage of the game. They could have at least hinted at the politics.

Thursday, September 8, 2016

Dear Rush Limbaugh: Publius Decius Mus doesn't get it at all, and neither do you

From the conclusion of the anonymous conservative intellectual, here:

"The possibilities would seem to be: Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see … which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three. Oh, and, I suppose, for those who like to pour a tall one and dream big, a second American Revolution that restores Constitutionalism, limited government, and a 28% top marginal rate."

A 28% top marginal rate?

He must be kidding.

The income tax is the cornerstone of the contemporary part of the anti-American revolution which made big government and rabid anti-constitutionalism not just possible but plausible. The 16th Amendment shredded the intent of the Founders, so why not shred the rest? They have, and they will.

Dreaming big means shedding the shredding, and along with that the imperial presidency and the Leviathan State implied by that, which was bequeathed to us by Abraham Lincoln.

But the followers of Harry Jaffa will never be able to imagine that, which makes them nothing more than the hollow men of Conservatism Inc.



Tuesday, August 30, 2016

A caller got on Rush Limbaugh today to slam Trump's deportation flip-flop

The Hill noticed here.

Rush hardly skipped a beat and poo-pooed it.

You've heard of Democrats being compared to a bucket full of eels.

Rush Limbaugh swims in a pool full of manatees.


Wednesday, August 10, 2016

If Rush Limbaugh had done this good of a job defending Trump during the primaries, maybe the GOP would be more unified today

I'm referring to Rush today playing the audios of both Clinton and Biden actually talking about Obama being shot, either during the 2008 primary, in which case Hillary would have been the last man standing, or if Obama came for Biden's guns. 

Tuesday, August 2, 2016