This story claims that unemployment was down in 8 out of 10 battleground states. The 8 are listed below but note that the story was comparing August 2004 to September 2004. The report also notes that unemployment rose in 22 states during the month and fell in 23 states. One of the 8 states mentioned […]

We just learned about the missing 380 tons of explosives from the New York Times even though the Administration has known about this for some time. The Times had to learn from the Iraqis as the Administration apparently wanted to keep the lid on this until after November 2. And the Administration’s prime concern seems […]

This story, originally just reported in the NYTimes but now being picked up by other news organizations, is big. And awfully, awfully bad, for all of us — but especially for our soldiers in Iraq. BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 24 – The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly […]

According to conservative wheeler-dealer Grover Norquist, if Bush is re-elected, “the Democratic party is toast.” There are two prongs to his plan to keep the Republicans in power. The first is to “defund the left,” which includes relatively well-known proposals like tort reform to get rid of the trial lawyers and contracting out government jobs […]

While ABC reported on Tuesday that Kerry is ahead of Bush by 50-47, the race remains exceptionally tight. Real Clear Politics, which tracks polls state by state, shows that when the seven Ohio polls taken from 10/14-10/21 are averaged the result is an exact tie, 47.4% to 47.4%. Certainly, some portion of Ohio voters are […]

The Bush campaign is releasing a new ad entitled “Wolves“, that explicitly plays the fear card. Its intent is to generate a mood of danger, and then claim that Kerry would not be a good protector of the US. Some are already thinking that it will be an effective and memorable ad, though I’m not […]

CBSMarketwatch.com has a couple of interesting stories for China-watchers. The first reports that it seems increasingly certainl that China will not revalue the yuan any time soon. The second surveys some of China’s recent economic statistics. Some highlights: Third-quarter gross domestic product grew 9.1 percent compared with the July-September period last year, slowing from the […]

The biggest single decision that Bush has made during his presidency – to launch a US takeover of Iraq in order to protect the US from Iraq’s WMDs – revealed substantially poor judgment. UN inspections could have achieved exactly the same result as the invasion as far as WMDs are concerned, but with dramatically lower […]

Sometimes I get so focused on Bush’s terrible job-creation record that I forget that, while not as bad, GDP growth hasn’t been particularly impressive under Bush II. In fact, it’s generally not as good under Republicans as it is under Democrats. Reader and commenter Spencer (thanks!) was kind enough to construct the following graphic illustration:(*) […]

Normally I don’t pay too much attention to the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators. I’m not at all convinced that they have good predictive power; at best I think they reflect the overall trend in the economy at a particular point in time. But this story caught my attention: Economic indicator sinks for […]