This morning the BEA released its figures for personal income and spending in September. Personal income increased $15.1 billion, or 0.2 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) increased $9.0 billion, or 0.1 percent, in September, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $49.8 billion, or 0.6 percent. The most striking […]
So now we come to it: the single most important reason that I’m going to vote for John Kerry. It is the near-certainty that Kerry will do a far better job than Bush when it comes to reducing the threat of terrorism. This might strike you (as it has me) as ironic, given that lots […]
If Kerry is elected, he will likely lead a divided government. Although the Democrats have some chance of taking back the Senate, the conventional wisdom says the odds are against it, and also says that the Republicans will almost surely keep control of the House. For some conservatives and libertarians, the prospect of gridlock is […]
One of the Bush cheerleader excuses for the 377 tons of missing explosives from Al Qaqaa was that this was only 1% of the total amount of explosives in Iraq since we recovered 400,000 tons of explosives. Jesse Taylor mocks this argument with Math is Fun. But this news suggests the rightwingers have the math […]
Memo to NBC: Fire Tim Russert. Even Sean Hannity would be a better moderator for Meet The Press. Russert first grilled Bob Kerrey, which is fine as Kerrey was on the mark. But did Russert get this question from Karl Rove? But is it inconsistent for John Kerry to be criticizing the missing weapons of […]
appearing on CNN yesterday: But I would say that given the fact we’ve had nearly two dozen audiotapes and videotapes from bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the chain of custody of these tapes is one way you can definitely get back to them, to me it’s extraordinary that we haven’t been able to follow […]
I was going to write this Monday but the missing explosives story took off. And good thing I waited as I just saw the latest Bush-Cheney pathetic ad. Showing pictures of Carter and Dukakis to suggest Democrats can’t be tough with pictures of Reagan and Bush41 as if Republicans are always tough on the enemies […]
In terms of importance, this doesn’t quite rank up there with missing high-powered explosives, but since the administration seems to have definitively failed in its efforts to spin that story, we can move back to lesser questions like, What the heck was under the President’s coat durning the debates? Salon is still trying to find […]
Kash noted that the third quarter advanced estimate for real GDP, which appears to be only 3.9% higher than it was in the third quarter of 2003. Real Federal government purchases rose by 4.8% continuing the recent trend of increasing faster than real GDP – also noted by Kash. But nondefense Federal purchases fell by […]
Federal government purchases of final goods and services, as a share of GDP (two quarter moving average), including today’s new data: Remind me again exactly why someone who truly believes in reducing the size of the federal government should ever vote for the Republicans? Kash