[QUOTE=Prime95;310199]Cheesehead,

Your reaction to critiques of McElvaine and the earlier article you linked to about "reckless spending spree" comes across to me as "No, no, no, those articles had [I]facts[/I] in them, the article and all its conclusions must be true!".[/QUOTE]That's your distortion, not mine.

[quote]I tried to show in my last post that it doesn't work this way.[/quote]Well, of course the distortion doesn't work.

[quote]McElvaine's article uses 100% true facts to show Obama doing well as a job-creator. Yet I showed a chart that is also based on 100% factual data that shows Obama is the worst jobs-creating President ever.[/quote]Once again, you commit factual error in your very first example supporting your argument. You figure it out, or let someone else explain it to you.

(Perhaps if you didn't habitually distort what I say in these political arguments, you'd be less likely to distort what others say.)

[quote]How can two articles based on 100% factual data reach opposite conclusions?[/quote]Are you sincerely posing that question without realizing the obvious answer?

[quote]The only rational conclusion[/quote](Actually, there's a different, simpler rational conclusion than the one you pose, so "only" is wrong.)

[quote]how facts are used and which facts are used are extremely important in creating a fair picture of reality rather than a propaganda piece.[/quote]That statement would be okay on its own.

[quote]This is also where article analysis become completely subjective.[/quote]No, there's still room for objective analysis.

[quote]McElvaine wants to portray Obama as being a good jobs creator.[/quote]That's a distortion of the article's topic.

Re-read the title: "Has Obama Made the Job Situation Worse?" and the topic paragraph. McElvaine is countering a specific statement made by Paul Ryan (and by many other Republicans).

McElvaine is showing that Obama didn't make the job situation worse, not that Obama is a "good jobs creator".

George, please try practicing paraphrasing someone (whose politics are opposed to your own) else's argument without distorting it, without introducing a spin of your own.

I'll skip commenting on most of the rest because you started off going in a distorted direction. It's a shame that you wasted all that work and words on a wrong track to arrive at a conclusion based on an incorrect premise.

[QUOTE=Xyzzy;310237]Dude, you have to "Double Dog" dare if you really want results.[/QUOTE]It's an experiment to see whether Ernst pays more attention to a repetition (it's not progressively escalated like your cartoon) than to the single instances I've tried before.

Cheesehead, I give up. Despite trying to deal with you on a rational, respectful level, I get a nano-quoted, blind, hyper-partisan, moronic drivel response. You must be as dumb as a post not to see that McElvaine wants to portray Obama as being a good or even moderate jobs creator because it helps him prove his article's title.

Congratulations, you have risen to the level of cmd and others in the "useless posts" thread. As soon as I see that cheesehead is the author of a post, I know I can safely skip the details. The post will be a link to some one-sided crap that won't help anyone learn a thing or a ranting and raving that someone has mis-quoted or mis-characterized you.

I spent the afternoon working on code - what'd I miss?

[QUOTE=Prime95;310241]Cheesehead, I give up. Despite trying to deal with you on a rational, respectful level, I get a nano-quoted, blind, hyper-partisan, moronic drivel response.[/QUOTE]

Ahem ... Allow me to point out that I established trademark rights to the word "nanoquote" in post #484 - I'll see you in court, buddy, as soon as the local judge gets through with your IP-stealing pals at Samsung. Let's see if I can channel my inner cheesehead here:

"Folks, here goes George again, falsely misappropriating a slanderous accusation Ernst actually made ... I demand a detraction, or something ..."

Ack - sorry, I just can't do it ... how can anyone live that way?

Guys, guys! Can you stop please? Before other worse things be said.

I took the habit not to talk politics and religion with my relatives and most of my friends. This is why and how we can stay friends. :smile:

Math/programming/science/etc guys should not talk politics!

One friend of mine, a guy I know on a trading forum, had in his signature something like "majority means that most of the time all the fools are on the other side".

[QUOTE=Prime95;310241]McElvaine wants to portray Obama as being a good or even moderate jobs creator because it helps him prove his article's title.[/QUOTE]No, all he sets out to do is show that Obama didn't make the jobs situation worse as Republicans charge.

"Good" and "moderate" are not McElvaine's terms; they're yours. When (falsely) attributed to McElvaine, they make it easier for you to attack than if you stick to what McElvaine actually wrote.

[QUOTE]Ahem ... Allow me to point out that I established trademark rights to the word "nanoquote" in post #484 - I'll see you in court, buddy, as soon as the local judge gets through with your IP-stealing pals at Samsung.[/QUOTE]:confus:

[QUOTE=ewmayer;310217]
The public sector didn't start with serious downsizing until at least a full year after the private-sector contraction speed had peaked. Governments are very-belatedly doing what must be done in order to stave off bankruptcy, as a result of decades of wildly profligate spending increases.
[/QUOTE]

So you want the public sector to cut at the same time as the private sector? Misery loves company. Procyclical policies all the way baby. The time to cut was 2003-2007. Not after the wolf was already at the door. Then you are just making it worse.

Shiller on stimulus and public sector job cuts.
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/your-money/framing-prevents-needed-stimulus-economic-view.html[/url]

[QUOTE=garo;310273]
Shiller on stimulus and public sector job cuts.
[URL]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/your-money/framing-prevents-needed-stimulus-economic-view.html[/URL][/QUOTE]Here is the earlier balanced budget multiplier theory column to which Shiller referred:

"Stimulus, Without More Debt"
[URL]http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/business/26view.html[/URL]

One might think, judging by Republicans' common phrases, that they'd be open to compromise such as stimulus-without-more-debt that would benefit the economy. But they're not, because usually unspoken are Republicans' higher-priority (than national economic health) ideological goals to "starve the beast" and defeat-Obama.

[QUOTE=garo;310273]So you want the public sector to cut at the same time as the private sector? Misery loves company. Procyclical policies all the way baby. The time to cut was 2003-2007. Not after the wolf was already at the door. Then you are just making it worse.

Shiller on stimulus and public sector job cuts.
[url]http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/your-money/framing-prevents-needed-stimulus-economic-view.html[/url][/QUOTE]
Since the public sector has shown itself utterly unwilling to follow the other half of Keynes' countercyclical prescription and downsize during expansions, pray tell, when do we ever get to shrink the public sector back to a historically reasonable fraction of GDP?

Shiller likes to throw around his latest pet theory, a variant of money multiplier theory. Before even discussing it, I want one of the pro-stimulus folks to answer the following question: [u]Averaged over the last 30 years, what has been the multiplier associated with debt expansion?[/u] (I know the answer, but want others to due the due diligence required to take their arguments seriously). We can start with the broadest measure - total public+private debt - and see where that takes us. When it comes to the economic clique which assured us all along that "more borrowing is good" I don't want rehashes of proven-failed theories, I want discussion of data (allegedly) underpinning said theories.

I had to laugh when I saw this snip by Shiller:
[quote]If state and local governments had not cut back so much, the broader economy would be stronger today.[/quote]
...which completely ignores the leveraging-up phase of the issue. Why do I never see quotes like this from the Keynesians?
[quote]If state and local governments had not been so wildly profligate in expanding their payrolls and making irresponsible pension and benefits agreement during recent decades, they would not be facing fiscal crisis and bankruptcy today.[/quote]

Mark my words, big-time government shrinkage is coming to a G7 country near you, soon - the only question is, will at be at least somewhat on prudently-planned terms, or following fiscal catastrophe?

Lastly, USGov has averaged nearly 10% of GDP in deficit spending for over 4 full years now, which by definition is a form of stimulus. How much would it take for you guys to say "enough"? 20%? 50%? 100%?

[QUOTE=ewmayer;310217][a] You have established beyond any reasonable doubt the extremely partisan nature of your political views;[/quote]As I've plainly said multiple times in the past, I specialize in debunking Republican/conservative mythology and falsities by presenting facts that refute those falsities and mythology.

For you to characterize my fact-presentation and myth-refutation as "extremely partisan" is revealing about your motives.