Let's run the numbers

Mis-statements of Dubya Matt Yglesias caught the A.Q. Khan comment, and many more. Go read his list. I'm tired, slightly drunk, and not in the mood to continue fact-checking our incomparably incopetent president. GEORGE W. BUSH, HOW DO YOU MISLEAD ME?

Final Opinion If you liked Kerry better, you'll still like Kerry. If you liked Bush, you'll still like Bush. Kerry was better, but not so much that everyone will lose faith in Bush. Basically because Bush is full of shit, but hey, that's the way politics works in this day and age. Kerry did much better than I though he would. He was articulate, expressed his views, and drew a strong distinction between himself and Bush. I'll be away for the next debate. I'll be on a fishing boat and Mrs. Datanerd will be under a palm tree with a glass of sangria. We're heading for the Florida Keys. Assuming Spirit Airlines takes care of us, we'll be back for the next one.

Korea How many ways can Bush mispronounce Kim Jong-Il. Do it yourself, we'll wait. Okay, Bush called it Kim Jim Il and Kim Shan Il. I've spend 4 months of my life barnstorming around South Korea, I don't want to see it blown to hell. Read my blog from back in April and May of 2003. He just doesn't get the situation there. Read "The Two Koreas" for more info.

Argh Bush just called the threat posed by Saddam Hussein a "Difference of opinion". I've switched from red wine (Goats do Roam, South Africa) to stout (Murphy's, Cork, Ireland). This is a tough debate so far, with respect to saying Kerry's the winner, Bush is the loser. But Bush keeps dodging questions, like he is right now about the International Criminal Court. Nobody asked about it, but he's trying to slime Kerry about being popular in international circles. Also, Mrs. Datanerd noticed that Bush seems to be calling for rebuttals more often than Kerry is. Whiner :).

Bush and Kerry So far, Kerry is trouncing Bush. Bush looks scared, damaged, keeps falling back on pat answers, making non sequiturs from one issue to another. Kerry: "Bush said he'd plan carefully. He didn't. He said we'd only go to war as a last resort, we didn't...We need to be smarter the way we fight the war on terror."

Bush stumbling With this last exchange, he looks like a C student arguing with the professor. The trouble is, he said they're doing everything they can against terror. But the professor knows more things they should be doing. And he tried to fit in a comment about Kerry's tax policy, and Kerry fired right back that we didn't need the last tax cut, we needed security more.

Mrs D has a point Mrs. Datanerd caught a Kerry comment: "We went in to Iraq for weapons of mass destructions, not to eliminate Saddam Hussein." Also, we're glad they're cutting to Bush while Kerry is speaking, because we see how he looks uninterested in Kerry's comments, contemptable of Kerry.

Wrong I call bullshit on Bush in this rebuttal. The A.Q. Khan network is the Pakistani nuclear scientist who developed their nuke, and who was selling his expertise to Iran and North Korea, among others. He was forgiven by Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan. Not brought to trial, not brought to justice. Now, back to turn the beef again. BRB.

Coverage By the way, I'll be watching the PBS coverage. Talk to you soon.

Debate #1 I'll be watching the debate tonight, and I may try to blog real-time during the debate. Let me also plagarize from another blogger(which one I've forgotten). I'll be playing a game. It's called drinking. Every time Dubya opens his mouth, I'll take a drink. Hey, it's probably what he really wants anyway, and with any luck tomorrow I won't remember how stupid his comments were, and won't be torn up about how the media declares him the winner. This is going to be hard for Kerry to win. I think he's up for the challenge. I hope our media is up for the challenge of ignoring fashion and style, and focusing on the issues. I've been noticing signs of that here and there, and I hope they continue. Anyway, on to me making dinner before the debates, and getting set up for the evening.

Florida Elections What amazes me is how the Republican Party refuses to recognize that there was even a problem, and that problems still remain. Instead, slime the messenger, in this case, President Carter. Yahoo! News - Jeb Bush Dismisses Carter on Fla. Vote TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Gov. Jeb Bush said Tuesday that "conspiracy theories" about the state's voting machines are "nonsense," and he criticized former President Jimmy Carter for questioning whether Florida can hold a fair election. Carter said in an opinion piece in Monday's Washington Post that despite changes designed to eliminate voting problems in Florida, conditions for a fair election still do not exist. Carter wrote that a repetition of the problems of 2000 — when some Floridians said they didn't have confidence their votes were counted — appeared likely. "There is this constant haranguing of nonsense, including President Carter — which is a surprise to me because I'v...

Cat on a hot tin airliner I just knew this would turn out badly. For those of you who don't follow 1970's singer-songwriters, Cat Stevens, now known as Yusuf Islam, was flying to the Washington, DC from London this past week, when the plane he was on was diverted to Bangor, Maine, so that he could be removed from the aircraft. He was removed and driven to Boston, then to Washington, where he was put on the next flight out. I've kept quiet about this one, because he has said some boneheaded things in the past about the fatwa on Salman Rushdie. I've had a feeling, though, that this was a colossal cockup on the part of the Homeland Security people and it would come back to bite us in the behind. Guess what? It's a spelling error. Yahoo! News - Cat Stevens deportation linked to spelling error : NEW YORK (AFP) - An incident this week in which former pop star Cat Stevens was deported from the United States to London as a 'no-fly' terrorist risk was ...

Additions to the blogroll Brad Delong, in addition to being a great and prolific economist, can be screamingly funny at his team blog, Shrillblog. I have added them to the blogroll on the left. Here is a snippet from the explanation for the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill. BTW, Paul Krugman is the Eldest of the Shrill. Go forth, and read all of this. Shrillblog: In Which We Answer Your Questions : We are broadcasting from our studio high in the tall steel-and-glass building that is the Hermetic Arts Tower here at Miskatonic University in picturesque Arkham, Massachusetts. Down the hall we have one laboratory where graduate students are trying to make hands of glory out of pigeons feet. If we look down into the courtyard we can see the unholy creations that have escaped from the Mechatronic Lab shamble off into the hills. And we? We are here in the small suite of offices that make up the world headquarters of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill, here to an...

Marion Barry?!?!?!? At 9:34 PM News Channel 8 was reporting that former Mayor-For-Life, Marion Barry, was winning in the D.C. Ward 8 Democratic Primary with 50% of the vote. The incumbant, Sandy Allen, his former campaign manager for mayor, was trailing with 23% of the vote. The winner of the Democratic Primary is a shoo-in for the general election in the heavily Democratic (85% or so) District of Columbia. So we may have Marion to kick around some more.

This was powerful television Mrs. Datanerd and I watched NOW with Bill Moyers last night. "9/11: For The Record". It basically takes the 9/11 commission's report and analyzes it to look for who should be held accountable for this devastating failure of the government to protect its citizens. The report itself says that the system failed; the program looks at the report, at the testimony before the commission and finds that the Bush administration failed in key points to take the Al-Qaeda threat seriously. They were told many times, by Richard Clarke, Thomas Pickard, and others, and didn't want to pay attention to it. I wish every Republican could see this. Granted, most would say it's all partisan and not let it interfere with their world view that George W. Bush is making us safer, but a few would see the truth, that this administration was only paying attention to "threats" that their world view believed in. Like Iraq. It's very scar...

Where I've been, and where I am now Sorry again about being away. I got hung up on a post I was writing about the lack of quality jobs in the economy, and I didn't want to post anything else until I finished it. I'm a bit of a perfectionist. Anyway, so I'm on a short trip home to Tennessee, and I'm relaxed enough not to worry about that and get something up about the Emp Sit report. Oh, and I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Bush Dynasty and thinking about posting on that. More to come later.

What's wrong with this month's Employment Situation? Basically this month's Employment Situation report looks decent. 140,000 new jobs, unemployment rate down. What's wrong with that? Here's the key. To stay at the same unemployment rate, with the same labor force participation rate, you have to create about 120,000 new jobs every month. We created about that with the 140,000. So, for the unemployment rate to drop, the labor force participation rate had to decline, because of people leaving the labor force due to other factors, like becoming discouraged. Here's the quote. After rising in July, the labor force participation rate edged down to its June level of 66.0 percent. (See table A-1.) In the aggregate, we have more jobs than we did last month. But at the individual level, it's still just as hard as it was before.