[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

fangblackbone wrote:

He said something to the fact that he didn't really see enough of it or look into it that much.
Well? When are you going to get around to it senator? Its kinda important no?

I had hope for a brief dull-glowing moment that Romney might be a spark for more GOP members to haul us back from the brink...

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/gWeyAIb.jpg)

It never was.

Quoth the Raven "nevermore".

Can someone explain to Rand Paul that being the dickhead is not something to aspire to?

Rand Paul suggests that Anti-Lynching bill (making it a federal crime) is too broad.

He argued the bill as written is overly broad and said that his amendment "would apply the criminal penalties for lynching only and not for other crimes." The GOP senator then asked for unanimous consent to pass the bill with that amendment.
JC wrote:

GOP senator says she's 'struggling' on whether to back Trump

"I am struggling with it. I have struggled with it for a long time I think you know that. I didn't support the President in the initial election, and I work hard to try to make sure that I'm able to represent my state well that I'm able to work with any administration and any president," Murkowski said. "He is our duly elected President I will continue to work with him. I will continue to work with this administration but I think right now as we are all struggling to find ways to express the words that need to be expressed appropriately, questions about who I'm going to vote for not going to vote for I think are distracting at the moment."

Struggling? Spare me your BS and platitudes Murkowski.

This might help with the struggles.

OG_slinger wrote:

Prosecutors: 3 men plotted to terrorize Vegas protests

AP wrote:

Three Nevada men with ties to a loose movement of right-wing extremists

Fun fact: a “loose movement” is the term for a group of right-wing extremists.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Prosecutors: 3 men plotted to terrorize Vegas protests

AP wrote:

Three Nevada men with ties to a loose movement of right-wing extremists

Fun fact: a “loose movement” is the term for a group of right-wing extremists.

Extra fiber is indicated for over-50 white men.

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

Prosecutors: 3 men plotted to terrorize Vegas protests

AP wrote:

Three Nevada men with ties to a loose movement of right-wing extremists

Fun fact: a “loose movement” is the term for a group of right-wing extremists.

In my day on GWJ, we called them a murder of douchebags.

Related, in the category of "Things That Have Aged Insanely Well".

Peter Turchin is a Russian-American scientist who specializes in population biology and devises theories, backed by cumulative scientific evidence, that, in their essence, predict the future by tracking “temporally varying processes and the search for causal mechanisms” throughout history. He calls his field of study “cliodynamics,” after Clio, the Greek Muse of history, and it’s been getting a lot of attention lately following an article about his research in the science journal Nature.

Peter’s work suggests that peaks of violence in the US work on a 50-year cycle, with the next state of upheaval set to hit humanity in 2020. It’s sort of like that 2012 Mayan-apocalypse nonsense, except Peter’s theory is the result of the hard work of a modern, living, and well-respected scientist rather than a bunch of dead Central American dudes whom hippies like to talk about while taking heavy psychedelic drugs. We spoke to Peter to find out what’s supposedly going to make the US descend into a horrifying, dystopian pit of violence in eight years’ time.

Unexpectedly, unemployment went down this week:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 2.5 million in May, and the unemployment rate declined
to 13.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Seems to be driven by temporary layoffs ending but with with permanent layoffs rising somewhat, so we'll see what things look like in a few months, but at the moment it's less dire than it was expected to be.

Gremlin wrote:

Unexpectedly, unemployment went down this week:

Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 2.5 million in May, and the unemployment rate declined
to 13.3 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

Seems to be driven by temporary layoffs ending but with with permanent layoffs rising somewhat, so we'll see what things look like in a few months, but at the moment it's less dire than it was expected to be.

I'm still confused why people are excited about this. Stay at home orders were modified which allows people to go back to work. Therefore, it makes sense that we would see a decrease in unemployment and an increase in worker roles.

And lets not forget... April's unemployment was 14.7%, so a decrease of 1.4%. We're still at historically high levels of unemployment, neck deep in a pandemic, and a have a gigantic BLM effort.

I'm not sure celebrating is the right action here (not aimed at you Gremlin, just in general).

I haven't been under the impression that anyone not named Donald Trump actually thinks this is worth celebrating. I think it's more "what was expected to be very bad news is instead just regular bad news".

JC wrote:

And lets not forget... April's unemployment was 14.7%, so a decrease of 1.4%. We're still at historically high levels of unemployment, neck deep in a pandemic, and a have a gigantic BLM effort.

Buried in the BLS report (my emphasis):

The Employment Situtation--May 2020 wrote:

In the household survey, individuals are classified as employed, unemployed, or not in the labor force based on their answers to a series of questions about their activities during the survey reference week (May 10th through May 16th). Workers who indicate they were not working during the entire survey reference week and expect to be recalled to their jobs should be classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. In May, a large number of persons were classified as unemployed on temporary layoff.

However, there was also a large number of workers who were classified as employed but absent from work. As was the case in March and April, household survey interviewers were instructed to classify employed persons absent from work due to coronavirus-related business closures as unemployed on temporary layoff. However, it is apparent that not all such workers were so classified. BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are taking additional steps to address the issue.

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.

OG_slinger wrote:

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.

Oh good grief. At least they admit that. So... the numbers are just as bad as expected or worse.

OG_slinger wrote:

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.

Am I understanding that statement correctly... If we hadn't put people into this "other reasons" bucket, our unemployment rate for May would have been 16.3%

Which is an increase from April's numbers.

JC wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.

Am I understanding that statement correctly... If we hadn't put people into this "other reasons" bucket, our unemployment rate for May would have been 16.3%

Which is an increase from April's numbers.

Yes.

And the numbers for March and April were revised down by nearly 650,000 jobs.

"The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised down by 492,000, from -881,000 to -1.4 million, and the change for April was revised down by 150,000, from -20.5 million to -20.7 million. With these revisions, employment in March and April combined was 642,000 lower than previously reported."

OG_slinger wrote:
JC wrote:
OG_slinger wrote:

If the workers who were recorded as employed but absent from work due to “other reasons” (over and above the number absent for other reasons in a typical May) had been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, the overall unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher than reported (on a not seasonally adjusted basis). However, according to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reclassify survey responses.

Am I understanding that statement correctly... If we hadn't put people into this "other reasons" bucket, our unemployment rate for May would have been 16.3%

Which is an increase from April's numbers.

Yes.

And the numbers for March and April were revised down by nearly 650,000 jobs.

"The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for March was revised down by 492,000, from -881,000 to -1.4 million, and the change for April was revised down by 150,000, from -20.5 million to -20.7 million. With these revisions, employment in March and April combined was 642,000 lower than previously reported."

Not so fast.

whitehouse.gov wrote:

There were 15.3 million people on temporary layoff in May, in addition to an estimated 4.9 million people who had temporarily lost their jobs but were counted as employed but "not at work for other reasons." Including all those ho were potentially on temporary layoff...

Thanks! So in summary- We're cooking the books to make things look better than they really are.

Paleocon wrote:

Not so fast.

whitehouse.gov wrote:

There were 15.3 million people on temporary layoff in May, in addition to an estimated 4.9 million people who had temporarily lost their jobs but were counted as employed but "not at work for other reasons." Including all those ho were potentially on temporary layoff...

JC wrote:

Thanks! So in summary- We're cooking the books to make things look better than they really are.

The BLS isn't cooking the book. The BLS is struggling to accurate collect employment survey data during a pandemic because their survey system didn't have a "I'm unemployed because of COVID-19" response that could be selected because it would screw with their data integrity and they had to retrain the people who gave those surveys on the fly while those survey givers were working from home themselves.

The BLS explained how COVID-19 impacted their data collection in this month's job numbers and also provided an extensive FAQ that answered questions about why so many people were misclassified.

The Trump administration can try to spin the numbers however they want. I'm still going to trust the BLS because I have (hopefully not misguided) faith that the people at the BLS are civil servants who understand the important and non-partisan role they serve in accurate tracking employment data.

Additionally, the BLS has anticipated and answered questions about the data they reported which is something the lazy as f*ck Trump administration would never bother to do. They'd just lie and stick to the lie.

Frequently asked questions: The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on The Employment Situation for May 2020 wrote:

8. Household survey: Were interviewers provided with any special guidance?

Due to the unusual circumstances related to the pandemic, Census Bureau interviewers were given additional training prior to collecting data in May. Supervisors held all-interviewer training sessions and reviewed the guidance that had been provided in March and April on how to record answers to the three survey questions detailed below. Information was not provided for other survey questions.

The guidance can be summarized as follows:

If someone who usually works full time (35 hours or more per week) reports working 1 to 34 hours during the survey reference week, interviewers ask them the main reason why they worked less than 35 hours. If a person says they were under quarantine or self-isolating due to health concerns, interviewers were instructed to select “own illness, injury, or medical problem.” For people who were not ill or quarantined but say that their hours were reduced “because of the coronavirus,” interviewers were instructed to select “slack work or business conditions.” An example would be “the store cut back hours during the coronavirus.”

For those who do not work at all during the survey reference week, if a person says they were under quarantine or self-isolating due to health concerns, interviewers were instructed to select “own illness, injury, or medical problem.” For people who were not ill or quarantined but say that they did not work last week “because of the coronavirus,” interviewers were instructed to select “on layoff (temporary or indefinite).” Examples include “I work at a sports arena and everything is postponed” or “the restaurant closed for now because of the coronavirus.”

To be classified as unemployed on temporary layoff, a person has either been given a date to return to work by their employer or expects to be recalled to their job within 6 months. (They must also be available to return to work if recalled.) Additional guidance was also provided to household survey interviewers regarding the question “Have you been given any indication that you will be recalled to work within the next 6 months?” If, because of the coronavirus, a person is uncertain when they will be able to return to work and thus is unsure how to answer the question, interviewers were instructed to enter a response of “yes,” rather than “don’t know.” This would allow the individual to be included among the unemployed on temporary layoff. In light of the uncertainty of circumstances related to the pandemic, this unusual step was taken as part of an attempt to classify people who were effectively laid off due to pandemic-related closures among the unemployed on temporary layoff.

...

12. Household survey: How many more workers should have been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff in May?

Other than those who were themselves ill, under quarantine, or self-isolating due to health concerns, people who did not work during the survey reference week (May 10–16) due to efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus should have been classified as “unemployed on temporary layoff.” However, as happened in April and March, some people who were not at work during the entire reference week for reasons related to the coronavirus were not included in this category. Instead, they were misclassified as employed but not at work.

Of the 8.4 million employed people not at work during the survey reference week in May 2020, 5.4 million people were included in the “other reasons” category, much higher than the average of 549,000 for May 2016–2019 (not seasonally adjusted). BLS analysis of the underlying data suggests that this group included workers affected by the pandemic response who should have been classified as unemployed on temporary layoff. Such a misclassification is an example of nonsampling error and can occur when respondents misunderstand questions or interviewers record answers incorrectly. BLS and the Census Bureau are investigating why this misclassification error continues to occur and are making changes for the June collection. (See item 14 below.) According to usual practice, the data from the household survey are accepted as recorded. To maintain data integrity, no ad hoc actions are taken to reassign survey responses.

...

14. Household survey: What are BLS and the Census Bureau doing about the misclassification error?

BLS and our partners at the Census Bureau take the misclassification error very seriously, and we’re taking additional steps to address the problem.

Prior to the March data collection, instructions were provided to survey interviewers on how to answer the temporarily absent question if a person said that they had a job but did not work due to the coronavirus pandemic. (See item 8 above.) Prior to April data collection, an email was sent to all interviewers that included instructions with more detailed examples and a reference table to aid in coding responses. Prior to May data collection, every field supervisor had a conference call with the household survey interviewers they manage. In these conference calls, the supervisors went over the detailed instructions and examples and were available to answer interviewers’ questions.

We will continue to investigate the reasons why the misclassification error persists. In addition, we are making further changes prior to the June collection. The Census Bureau will conduct additional training to review the guidance. Also, we are embedding instructions into the data collection instrument to make them more accessible during survey interviews.

That's a good summary, OG_slinger.

All I see is lies, damned lies, etc.

BadKen wrote:

All I see is lies, damned lies, etc.

Stats is all about adjusting the confidence intervals and non-quantitatives. Whole cloth. Useful, but born from a eugenic perspective.

JC wrote:

Thanks! So in summary- We're cooking the books to make things look better than they really are.

To be fair every administration does this. Just his is so much worse.

They've been cooking those numbers since the late '90s, and they're only loosely correlated with economic reality at the best of times. The fact that Trump is trying to spin those numbers is telling.

Law Enforcement Files Discredit Brian Kemp’s Accusation That Democrats Tried to Hack the Georgia Election

ProPublica wrote:

It was a stunning accusation: Two days before the 2018 election for Georgia governor, Republican Brian Kemp used his power as secretary of state to open an investigation into what he called a “failed hacking attempt” of voter registration systems involving the Democratic Party.

But newly released case files from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation reveal that there was no such hacking attempt.

The evidence from the closed investigation indicates that Kemp’s office mistook planned security tests and a warning about potential election security holes for malicious hacking.

Kemp then wrongly accused his political opponents just before Election Day — a high-profile salvo that drew national media attention in one of the most closely watched races of 2018.

“The investigation by the GBI revealed no evidence of damage to (the secretary of state’s office’s) network or computers, and no evidence of theft, damage, or loss of data,” according to a March 2 memo from a senior assistant attorney general recommending that the case be closed.

The internet activity that Kemp’s staff described as hacking attempts was actually scans by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that the secretary of state’s office had agreed to, according to the GBI. Kemp’s chief information officer signed off on the DHS scans three months beforehand.

Although there was no malicious hack, the GBI files also report that the state’s website where voters can check their information did have a significant vulnerability — a flaw Kemp’s staff still won’t acknowledge a year and a half later.

Candice Broce, Kemp’s spokeswoman, continued to insist Friday that elections officials responded to a “failed cyber intrusion,” despite the GBI’s findings that scans came from DHS.

John Dumbf*ck, Jr. was arrested this week for 3rd Precinct fire.

Jr., a homeschooled idiot, was fired at the age of 23 from his Menard's security job after he posted on social media, boasting of his arson and looting.

Said John Dumbf*ck, Sr., of Macon, GA.

The Pride of Macon, GA wrote:

As for the alleged arson, he said, “I’m still proud of him, whether he burned down the police station or not. He didn’t hurt nobody, did he?”

Defund homeschooling.

Edit: This comes out unintentionally harsh towards Macon, Georgia. Clearly, we have Dumbf*cks in MN as well.

When he was arrested, Wolfe was wearing body armor and a police-issued duty belt and carrying a baton. The belt had handcuffs and a knife, and his name was written in duct tape on the back of the body armor, the complaint says.
.
Law enforcement later recovered from Wolfe’s apartment additional items belonging to the Minneapolis Police Department, including a riot helmet, a 9mm pistol magazine, a police radio and a police-issued overdose kit.

my FO3 character standing in his house in Megaton flashed in my mind

Reaper81 wrote:

John Dumbf*ck, Jr. was arrested this week for 3rd Precinct fire.

Jr., a homeschooled idiot, was fired at the age of 23 from his Menard's security job after he posted on social media, boasting of his arson and looting.

Said John Dumbf*ck, Sr., of Macon, GA.

The Pride of Macon, GA wrote:

As for the alleged arson, he said, “I’m still proud of him, whether he burned down the police station or not. He didn’t hurt nobody, did he?”

Defund homeschooling.

Edit: This comes out unintentionally harsh towards Macon, Georgia. Clearly, we have Dumbf*cks in MN as well.

It seems like the father agreed with your assessment of his son.

“He has grandiose ideas, a lot of them … and zero common sense,” Robert Wolfe said.