DAR
It seems to me an answer would be that these are two different numbers that don’t necessarily follow each other well. “Job losses” would be the category of jobs disappearing due to contraction and businesses closing. Saying it declined also refers to a “rate.”

Many of these people may find employment so because they experienced “job loss” they don’t necessarily go into the unemployed column. Or, as is very common, they are people who hold more than one job, so they don’t go in the unemployment column. Also, people who are unemployed for too long, and give up, tend to not be counted anymore.

D.

There are no end of ways of counting the unemployed and the numbers are adjusted seasonally and for other variables. It’s a mess and I think the US, for political reasons, has cooked their numbers a bit. And for quite a long time.

And it’s not true I am an expert on everything. For instance, I know nothing about sports.

D.

DAR
How frustrating it must be to the righties to find that their old hobby horses and boogiemen don’t work anymore. They try to bring them out and play with them but people just point at them and snicker.

Obama doesn’t care about your guns or the gun issue but the NRA likes to lie and try to scare people by saying he wants to “grab them.” Yawn. Nobody believes it anymore. The generation that cared about keeping the gays down is dying and quickly becoming irrelevant and a farce. Abortion is what it is, Roe v. isn’t going anywhere. Terrorism is a concern but it’s a tactic and a law enforcement issue. You don’t start a conventional war over a tactic (with the wrong country), that’s just stupid.

“Obama’s gonna outlaw guns!” “The gays are coming for your kiddies and they want to wreck your marriage too!”

These are now punchlines for jokes. Your party platform I mean. What else do you guys have?

D.
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“What is a political party that is vastly white, middle-aged, male, Southern, pious, conservative, aggrieved, impotent, nostalgic, rude—and regarded negatively by more than half the respondents? Time magazine’s Republican political consultant Mike Murphy looks at the demographics and warns of a coming “ice age” for the party. That is grossly optimistic. No longer in second place, the voter self-identification polls place the Republicans well behind the leading independents and the second-place Democrats. The GOP is the equivalent of a shrinking third party on its way to becoming a museum piece beside the Whigs, the Greenbacks, and the Prohibitionists. The GOP is like a zombie cartoon reading the daily headlines of the last four years and asking, “Am I dead?””
–Conservative, life long republican, John Batchelor, LINK

Carter was worst in inflation. Nixon was second worst. The seventies, and oil prices we bad for that.

The categories considered in this chart are normal categories we judge the health of the country by.

Total of average rank (lower number better)

Demo’s: 22.9

Repub’s: 32.2

D.