Look, we haven’t talked in a while. Ok, not since just about never. And I’m well aware that you don’t trust news or opinions that come from anyone who disagrees with you, but you have to admit that a country and a society can not fully function with everyone backed into their own corners, fist clenched, seething with rage. If we can’t communicate, if the fracture between different social political factions is so great then there is no way that real progress will be made on anything. America will remain locked in the same permanent stalemate it’s been in since 2010.
You don’t want that I believe. I don’t want that either.
So, to that end, even though I’ve certainly had my own rather strident issues and frustration with people on your side of the aisle, I’m gonna try and rise above all that. I’m still willing to take a moment and at least give you guys and your side some props honestly for a few things, as long as you’re will to listen openly to some rational, reasonable views about how things are going then I won’t turn up too much of the blame and attack machine. Maybe a little, but not full bore. Is that a deal?
Ok, let’s get started.
Just to get first things out of the way I’m well aware you’ve been told that the entire Russia/Collusion thing is a big fat “Total Fabrication.” Or that it’s a “Fishing Expedition” all intended as an excuse to explain away Hillary’s “big massive loss.”
To get it out of the way — from our perspective it’s not an “excuse” for anything. The FBI, CIA and NSA all agreed that Vladimir Putin personally ordered Russian intelligence to stage a cyber-war against America, including targeting Hillary Clinton, Democrats, the DNC, DCCC, Clinton Foundation and John Podesta as well as Republicans who opposed Trump then followed up with a propaganda-war through their own media outlets supercharged by online bots and trolls designed to suppress and split the Democratic vote between Clinton, Sanders and Stein then attacked the voting registration systems in 39 states to try again, to suppress and limit voting in key Democratic areas.
Did it work? Nobody really knows.
But we think that it matters that they dared to try this whether or not the effort was enough to help cause the gap of just 77,000 votes in three states that put Trump over the top or not, and even though no one yet knows for certain if any Americans helped them or promised them anything in return for their help along with way — like Don Jr. Manafort, and Kushner who secretly met with a Russian Lawyer and former Russian Intelligence Officer that Don Sr, personally crafted a bogus statement about it and said “anyone would take that meeting” even though it violated FEC rules, Michael Flynn who lied to the FBI about discussing sanctions, illegally took nearly $600k that nearly all tracks back to Russia while members of the WH staff tried to get Russian sanctions lifted for no good apparent reason, Roger Stone who had communicated with Guccifer 2.0 & Julian Assange and somehow knew about the Podesta email hack before it happened, Carter Page who has clear links to Russia and was twice recruited by them as an Intel asset, Jeff Sessions who lied under oath about talking to Kislyak about the Trump campaign, JD Gordon who blocked an additional plank for the RNC platform that Russia opposed and then lied about it or Brad Pascale who handled Trump’s digital messaging which eerily matched the Russian bot program — many of us think that seems fairly likely considering how much their stories keep changing and how little they complained about the help Russia was providing them while attacking America. So far it’s not proven that any Americans helped them or asked for their help [well, except for Trump, Don Jr. and Manafort], their biggest problem has been all their lies and diversions about it all, but there isn’t any serious dispute — well, not from anyone serious — about what Russia tried to do. I don’t expect to convince you any of this is true — I just want you to honestly understand why we think that it matters.
It’s not just sour grapes.
If they can do it once and get away with this they. will. try. to. do. it. again. And next time they might not be rooting for your team, they might be trying to twist our electoral process against you if they see you as a threat to their ultimate goals. We think you should care about that, even if it seems clear that you don’t. Yet.
Finally to finish this subject let me tell you something, a lot of us are still hopping mad at Hillary for her failure more than anything or anyone else. We think, most of us I would argue, that she dropped the ball. That although she did have a strong economic and pro-jobs message that she didn’t emphasize it enough, promote it enough and it just didn’t come through. The sad part is that we think her plan was, and still is, much better than Donald’s and would have been much better for people like you but that’s just a matter of opinion and all just spilt blood under the bridge now.
We all know we disagree on all that, so let’s just let that be what it is.
What we can agree that not everything right now is going badly, there is some good news which has most recently been brought to us by the clearly completely neutral voice of Eric Trump’s wife Lara.
Lara says that Trump has now donated $100,000 of his Second Quarter Salary to the Education Dept and even though we can’t confirm any of that because we still don’t have his tax returns [or his transcripts, or his birth certificate all of which he demanded from Obama for 6 years] I won’t even complain that this doesn't make up for the $9.2 Billion he proposed to cut from Education, it is a good thing.
He gave away money. He also gave out some medals and stuff. And he gave the Boy Scouts a light little pep talk at their Jamboree which they really enjoyed. Ok some of them liked it.
Also the Unemployment Rate is now at the lowest point it’s been in 16 years at 4.3%. That’s a good thing too.
As you can see from the above chart the overall unemployment rate is now lower than it was at it’s previous lowest rate during November of last year under Obama at 4.6%, which is a amazing 9 month decrease of 0.3%. That is indeed progress. I mean, it’s not like Obama could have possibly done that, all he did was this:
He just took unemployment that had peaked in 2009-2010 at 9.6% all the way back down to 4.6% during his eight years. Clearly, that’s not a big deal compared to 0.3% in 9 months, right? Pfft!
Also a total of 1 Million Jobs have been added to the Economy, again good news.
The U.S. economy added a strong 209,000 jobs in July, more than economists had expected. The unemployment rate fell to 4.3%, matching a 16-year low. Just after the Great Recession in 2009, unemployment peaked at 10%.
"The economy is looking pretty good," said Cathy Barrera, chief economic adviser at ZipRecruiter, the job posting site.
However, there is this one teeny tiny potential issue:
Many economists say the United States is at or near "full employment," meaning the unemployment rate won't go down significantly more.
So that could be problematic, but still — good on Trump. He’s doing it. Thank God we don't still have the Obummer guy in the White House because last year during the same six month period he only generated 1.2 Million jobs.
Trump's record of 1.1 million jobs in six months is less than the 1.2 million added during the same period a year ago under Obama. It essentially matches the first six months of Obama's second term, when 1.1 million jobs were added.
So again Yay!.
Anyway, on to the stock market where there is also more good news, as Lara points out the DOW hit an all time high this month of 22,000. That is a record, it’s never been this high before. I mean, it’s not like the DOW has had a habit going back for a while of hitting new records over and over again.
When the Dow breached 22,000 on August 2, 2017, it was the first time in history that it hit three thousand-point milestones in one year. On March 1, 2017, it went above 21,000 .On January 25, 2017, it hit 20,000.77 just moments after the New York Stock Exchange opened at 9:30 a.m. EST. It closed at 20,068.51.
Just 42 trading sessions before, it had hit 19,000 on November 22, 2016. That is the second-fastest rise in U.S. history. The record is the 24 sessions it took to go from 10,000 to 20,000 in 1999. (Source: "Dow Hits 20,000 for First Time," The Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2017.)
As it turns out the DOW has had 33 record highs so far this year. And not to worry that’s better than last year when it only had 26 records highs. And better than 2015 when it only had 6 record highs, so again things are looking up. I mean it’s not like there was a point where the DOW has more than 33 record highs, like say in 2014 when it had 39 of them.
The Dow closed at 18,053.71 on December 26, its high for the year. It's low for the year was 15,372.80, reached on February 3. Share repurchases among the S&P 500 companies were 59 percent higher in the first quarter of 2014 than the first quarter in 2013. In total, $159.3 billion was spent, the largest amount since 2007 — right before the stock market crashed. (Source: Bert Dohrman, “Why Are Stocks Still Rising? Is This a Bubble?” Forbes,July 24, 2014.)
Or in 2013, when there were 52 of them.
The Dow gained 3,472.56 points during 2013, greater than any prior year on record. Its percentage increase was 26.5 percent.
It recovered from the Great Recession on March 5, 2013. It closed at 14,253.77, taking five years to surpass its previous record of 14,164.53 set on October 9, 2007. It rose above 15,000 for the first time on May 7.
Here are the 52 closing records for the year:
www.thebalance.com/…
So as you can see, Jobs are good and the stock market is doing better than it’s ever done before under Trump, except for all the previous times it did great. It’s amazingly good. No one else could have possibly done as good a job*.
And again, thanks to Trump we have lots of manufacturing jobs coming back — he’s told us he would.
“Since my election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart, and many others, have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs,” Trump said during his first address to a joint session of Congress in February.
I mean it’s not like any of those deals had already been made.
Ford announced on Tuesday the company would invest $1.2 billion in three facilities in Michigan where it will build trucks and SUVs, and store electronic data.
President Donald Trump took to Twitter to link the news to his efforts to increase manufacturing by automakers within the US.
The problem? The investment announced on Tuesday actually stemmed from a 2015 deal negotiated between Ford and the United Auto Workers union.
Under that 2015 collective bargaining agreement, Ford committed itself to investing $9 billion in US plants with the expectation of creating or retaining 8,500 jobs across a number of states, including Michigan.
Since then though, in all honesty, well, things haven’t exactly gone quite as planned. Trump has said that he will bring jobs back from overseas, particularly from Mexico and China, but that’s not exactly as easy as it seems.
The U.S. has lost 5 million factory jobs since 2000. And trade has indeed claimed production jobs - in particular when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. Nevertheless, there was no downturn in U.S. manufacturing output. As a matter of fact, U.S. production has been growing over the last decades. From 2006 to 2013, “manufacturing grew by 17.6%, or at roughly 2.2% per year,” according to a report from Ball State University. The study reports as well that trade accounted for 13% of the lost U.S. factory jobs, but 88% of the jobs were taken by robots and other factors at home.
If not China, what then explains these jobs losses? It’s simple: factories don't need as many workers as they used to, because robots increasingly do the work.
Investment in automation and software has doubled the output per U.S. manufacturing worker over the past two decades. Robots are replacing workers, regardless of trade at an accelerating pace. “The real robotics revolution is ready to begin” writes BCG and predicts that “the share of tasks that are performed by robots will rise from a global average of around 10% across all manufacturing industries today to around 25% by 2025.”
Trump managed to secure a deal with iPhone manufacture FoxConn for 3,000 jobs in Wisconsin. So that’s all “Win!” Good Job, Trump.
Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics supplier for Apple and other tech giants, said Wednesday it would open its first major American factory in Wisconsin, a boost both for the battleground state’s economy and the Trump administration’s efforts to bolster domestic manufacturing.
White House officials noted President Trump’s direct negotiations with Foxconn for the project, which they said would create at least 3,000 jobs and represent a $10 billion investment.
And it’s not like they’ve ever promised to build a factory and then simply not done it.
In 2013, Foxconn’s chairman sent a jolt through this state capital when he said his company — best known for making Apple iPhones in China — would invest $30 million and hire 500 workers for a new high-tech factory in central Pennsylvania.
Locals were giddy. Foxconn had a small office here, but this seemed like the start of an entire new industry. Pennsylvania’s governor boasted about the deal. The Brookings Institution think tank hailed Foxconn’s decision as a sign of U.S. manufacturing’s strength.
But the factory was never built. The jobs never came. “It just seemed to fade to black” after the announcement, recalled a local official. It was the start of a mystery, created by a chief executive known to promise projects all over the world that never quite pan out. Yet few people seem to notice. Foxconn and others continue to get credit for deals that never take place. In December, Pennsylvania’s economic development staff was still touting the $30 million factory that never was.
So, um, ok let’s put a pin in that one for right now and get back to it later. We’ll have to see how the Wisconsin deal turns out.
Either way, the important thing is that without Obama or Hillary in office things are better, because everyone knows that Obama really didn’t do anything to help with manufacturing jobs — he even claimed he’d created “800,000” manufacturing jobs which is clearly ridiculous.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States stood at 12.561 million in January 2009, when Obama became president. As of November, according to preliminary estimates, there were 12.26 million manufacturing jobs.
That’s a loss of 300,000 manufacturing jobs. So how does Earnest end up with a gain of more than 800,000?
Earnest is counting from when the low point in U.S. manufacturing was reached in February 2010, when there were just 11.453 million manufacturing jobs in the country. That was about 1.1 million fewer than when Obama took office — and nearly 2.3 million fewer than when the Great Recession officially began in December 2007.
So 807,000 jobs represents the number of jobs created since the low point in Obama’s term, not “while he was in office.” (Earnest made his comments before the November numbers were announced, so the figure changed from 805,000 to 807,000.)
The fact that the economy was in a literal freefall when Obama took office in 2009 as a result of lax management on Wall Street, one that continued for the next half a year before finally halting and reversing is no excuse. After losing 1.1 Million jobs over the previous year beginning under George W. Bush, 800,000 manufacturing jobs came back — well, I think that’s just dumb luck don’t you? They just came back all on their own didn’t they, it’s not like he specifically invested in Wind, Solar and other clean energy sources to help bring those jobs back.
President Obama boasted Friday that the stimulus bill he signed into law in 2009 helped create green energy jobs that still exist today, and said those jobs are a sign the U.S. is still leading, despite what Republican presidential candidates are saying.
Obama visited the Saft America Battery Plant in Jacksonville, Fla., Friday afternoon, a factory built partially using $95.5 million in federal stimulus funds. The facility produces lithium-ion batteries for electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels.
…
A decade ago, the plant site had been swampland, Obama said, but thanks the stimulus funds, it is now employing 300 workers, 40 percent of whom are veterans. The stimulus, he argued, was key to reviving the flagging economy.
"We turned recession into recovery faster" than other countries, he said. "We took an empty swamp and turned it into an engine of innovation.”
Alright, fine, he did invest in new job growth. Whatever.
But yeah, I mean Trump’s been decisive and did approve the KeyStone XL overriding Obama on it. And that’s good for jobs even though that particular company has a long history of oil spills. But, wait, well… hmm.
After nine years of political rhetoric, protests and lobbying, TransCanada's fight to build the Keystone XL pipeline seemed to end in victory for the company in January, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order approving the project.
But fast forward half a year, and the controversial project to bring Canadian oilsands product to the U.S. Gulf Coast is no closer to reality. In an earnings call last week, the company's brass — while remaining optimistic — pretty much admitted the project may never happen.
TransCanada's executive vice-president Paul Miller told analysts and reporters the company hasn't made a decision yet on whether or not to go ahead with the project.
"In November, we'll make an assessment of commercial support and [Nebraska]
Uh oh. FoxConned again. Never mind Keystone XL for now.
There's still all the Coal Mining Jobs that Trump has promised us.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said on Meet the Press on Sunday that “in fact since the fourth quarter of last year to most recently added almost 50,000 jobs in the coal sector. In the month of May alone, almost 7,000 jobs.” Aside from being ungrammatical, that’s wrong. And it represents a willful misreading of the data from one of the reportedly central voices behind Trump’s decision to withdraw from the climate pact. (Needless to say, Chuck Todd didn’t correct him.) As the government’s own numbers show, there were only 51,000 coal-mining jobs in the entire U.S. in May. Last month, 400 coal jobs were added—not 7,000. It was the overall mining sector, which includes oil, gas, and metals mining in addition to coal, that added 7,000 jobs in the month and 50,000 since last 2016.
Regardless of the facts, the Trump administration seems committed to puffing up high-emissions, high-carbon businesses like coal as massive job producers. The administration is touting the planned opening this week of the Acosta coal mine in Pennsylvania. It will create between 70 and 100 jobs.
Not to be discouraged, more recent information has shown those numbers are getting better. Really, they are.
The claim: "Y ou know all the people that were saying the mining jobs? Well, we picked up 45,000 mining jobs in a very short period of time," Trump said on July 17 at a White House event showcasing American-made products. "And everybody was saying, well, you won’t get any mining jobs. We picked up 45,000 mining jobs, and the miners are very happy with Trump and with Pence. And we're very proud of that. But that's just the beginning. We have jobs coming from all over."
The facts: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are currently 50,800 coal mining jobs in the United States — only 800 of which have been added since January, when Trump took office. It's possible Trump was referring to the larger mining and logging sector, which now boasts about 715,000 jobs — up from 673,000 in January, according to the BLS. That figure represents an increase of 42,000 jobs, which is closer to Trump's estimate, though it includes more than just mining jobs.
See, “Better.” Or something.
And as we all know Trump did a great job saving those 1,000 Carrier Jobs.
About 1,400 positions were on the chopping block, per company estimates. Over the past year, Trump has claimed he could maintain at least 1,100 of those jobs in the United States. But on Monday, the company gave official notice to Indiana officials that it would start laying off workers at the factory on July 20 and keep slashing staff until approximately 800 factory employees remain.
“This action follows a thorough evaluation of our manufacturing operations,” wrote Steven Morris, a Carrier manager in Indianapolis, in a memo Indiana’s Department of Workforce Development received Monday,“and is intended to address the challenges the business faces in a rapidly changing industry.”
The dismissals, he added, are “expected to be permanent.”
And Trump did a great job with the F-35 Cost savings.
In an interview with the
Associated Press published on Monday, Trump reiterated that he was directly responsible for helping save $700 million on a February order of 90 F-35s -- adding that costs will continue to shrink as more planes are delivered.
"Now you know that's a saving of billions and billions of dollars, many billions of dollars over the course of — it's between 2,500 and 3,000 planes will be the final order," Trump said in the interview, projecting additional savings as the aircraft ramps up production.
"This was a thing that was out of control and now it's great," Trump added, referencing a February statement in which Lockheed Martin credited Trump for helping to "accelerate negotiations."
Trump's optimistic outlook regarding what is already the most expensive weapons system in history stands in stark contrast to projections made by the
Government Accountability Office in its annual review of the F-35 program. That was also released on Monday.
Citing "cascading testing delays," the GAO concluded that additional flight testing will delay full production of the aircraft, which is scheduled for April 2019, by a year and could cost the Department of Defense more than a billion dollars more than what was budgeted in 2011 when the program was restructured.
And he got a great deal with he renegotiated the price on Air Force One.
President Donald Trump said the projected cost of new Air Force One aircraft was too high, so the U.S. Air Force found a way to lower it: by buying a pair of Boeing 747 jetliners abandoned by a bankrupt Russian airline.
Air Force officials are now finalizing a contract with Boeing for the two planes, according to three defense officials with knowledge of the deal. The Pentagon could publicly announce the deal as soon as this week.
“We’re working through the final stages of coordination to purchase two commercial 747-8 aircraft and expect to award a contract soon,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said in a statement.
And lastly Trump doesn’t take so many Vacations, like that Obama guy did.
Actually, Trump gets out of town quite often. So far, he has spent 13 of 28 weekends in office away from the White House, mostly at his properties in Palm Beach, Florida, or in Bedminster, New Jersey, according to an Associated Press count. The figures include a weekend during official travel overseas and Father’s Day weekend at Camp David, the government-owned presidential retreat in Maryland.
Contrast Trump’s frequent getaways with his criticism, before and during last year’s presidential campaign, of Barack Obama’s vacations and frequent golf outings.
“@BarackObama played golf yesterday. Now he heads to a 10 day vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Nice work ethic,” Trump tweeted in August 2011.
So we may not agree on everything. Not all of us care about Russia this or Russia that. That’s cool. I’m ok with people thinking some 20 year-old who got murdered in DC was the real DNC Hacker.
[Ok, really no I’m not because then who hacked the DCCC, Clinton Foundation, Marco Rubio, 39 State Registration Systems all months after Seth Rich died, then setup all the cyberbots and trolls and posted hundreds of false news stories on RT and Sputnik News about a fake coup at a Airport in Turkey, Hillary’s “health scare” or connection to a “pizza parlor sex ring.” and ….. Ok, right, never mind. I’m not here to fight that fight today. Let’s just skip it.]
Anyhoo — Most of us, one way or another, care about America. We care whether Americans do better this year than they did last year and the year before. We want the best for all of us, better jobs, better schools, safer neighborhoods, a better and brighter future. On that we do all agree.
We may not agree on the specifics of getting to that better future, but we all want that.
So ok, sure, Obama did a little something something on jobs and “brought the economy back from the brink of destruction” and all that stuff yadda yadda. Maybe not quite as much as he claimed, but he did something. I admit I am not above admitting that TRUMP is doing gang-busters on jobs, and created almost as many this year as Obama did last year so I for one can openly give him credit for. frankly, not fucking up Obama’s economy. At least, not yet he hasn’t and that’s a good thing.
Trump is clearly trying to do things that help people. I mean, not all people — not immigrants, or desperate war refugees, voters, people under siege by violent brutal police forces, the poor, the elderly or the sick — but some people.
We know that most of you are not one of those “other” people — well except for poor, elderly and sometimes sick — and you clearly don’t much care what happens to them as long as you wind up doing better than you did before on the whole. We get that.
It’s only been six months since he took office and it’s a bit early to really tell what’s going to ultimately happen, but could you do me a small favor? Think about what he promised, think about how it’s really going in another six months, if he’s still largely in the same place and things are slowly continuing to improve or if we’re still talking about 800 Coal Mining jobs and not 40,000, if he’s still promising a factory here and there and those things aren’t showing up, If the jobs numbers — which they say are about as good as they can possibly get already — start to slide, or the DOW starts to dip when congress struggles to get a debt ceiling bill and a continuing budget reconciliation bill passed…
if his chaotic management style which has people like Flynn, Scaramucci, Preibus and Spicer jumping on and off his ship over the coarse of a couple days, weeks and months like vermin escaping the Titanic, if his boasts, his wild accusations and pronouncements — like his now proven false claim that Mexico was ever going to pay for the wall — all begin to fall apart, will you at least consider the possibility that it’s not because of “#Fake News”, “Leaks” or “Russia”?
Maybe, just maybe, perhaps, it’s him.
Just think about it. Ok?
* Yeah, right!