Different Day, Same Shit.

The GOP has a knack for utilizing fear as a prime motivator for their constituents' support. As such, there shouldn't be any surprise over the following story:

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney told a rally in northern Ohio on Thursday night that Chrysler was considering moving production of its Jeep vehicles to China, apparently reacting to incorrect reports circulating online.

"I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China," Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. "I will fight for every good job in America. I'm going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it's fair America will win."

Kinda ironic for a man who once specialized in moving companies overseas to tap into the average worker's fear of seeing their job hop on a slow boat to China just to get their vote come Nov. 6.

Romney was apparently responding to reports Thursday on right-leaning blogs that misinterpreted a recent Bloomberg News story earlier this week that said Chrysler, owned by Italian automaker Fiat SpA, is thinking of building Jeeps in China for sale in the Chinese market.

The Bloomberg story, though accurate, "has given birth to a number of stories making readers believe that Chrysler plans to shift all Jeep production to China from North America, and therefore idle assembly lines and U.S. work force. It is a leap that would be difficult even for professional circus acrobats," Chrysler spokesman Gualberto Ranieri said.

"Let's set the record straight: Jeep has no intention of shifting production of its Jeep models out of North America to China. It's simply reviewing the opportunities to return Jeep output to China for the world's largest auto market. U.S. Jeep assembly lines will continue to stay in operation."

So the Romney campaign takes a story about Chrysler considering building Jeeps in China for the Chinese market and spins it into a yarn about Chrysler moving all Jeep production out of the U.S. to China. That's one way to get a few votes from the low-information set.

Personally, I want to know how moving all Jeep production out of the U.S. and into China would work. Unlike cheap electronics, toys and plastic lawn furniture, shipping a fully assembled car overseas is pretty intensive work. Having a $2.50 plastic toy manufactured on a Chinese assembly line and shipped via boat into the U.S. is one thing. Having a $25,000 American car built on a Chinese assembly line and shipped via boat back into the U.S. raises plenty of questions (i.e. "What the hell where you thinking?")

The Japanese, Korean and German auto manufacturers eventually moved production of their U.S.-bound products to the U.S. -- when it comes to cars, it's usually much easier to build your products where you sell them instead of undergoing the expensive and time-consuming task of shipping them to overseas markets. Economies of scale and all that.

This is just one of many stories our friend Mitt might be glad to develop "Romnesia" over.

“This president’s misguided policies have seem muddled, confused and simply ineffective,” said Romney, speaking at the minority-run Production Products, a military contractor that manufactures shelters to shield from chemical and biological attacks, among others.

“When you look around at America’s economy, three-and-a-half years into this presidency, it’s painfully obvious that this inexperienced president with no experience as a leader was simply not up to the task of solving a great economic crisis,” said Romney. “This is not just a failure of policy; it is a moral failure of tragic proportion. Our government has a moral commitment to help every American help himself. And that commitment has been broken.”

“I will not be that president of doubt and deception,” said Romney. “I will lead us to a better place.’

It's safe to say that just about everything that comes out of Mitt Romney's mouth is a lie. If this man had Pinocchio's nose, it would have traversed the entire globe by now. The tip end is currently hurling along a crash course towards the man's own asshole. Nevertheless, a large swath of Americans are prone to inhaling this hot air with generous gulps, so it's dangerous to sit by and believe that your fellow Americans will see through this BS. Chances are, they won't.

The lovely Angry Black Lady breaks down Romney's latest ploy of deceptive politics with cold, hard facts:

•  The private sector has been adding jobs steadily since the end of Obama’s first year, and today there are more private sector jobs than there were before Obama took office.

• The public sector, on the other hand, has fallen off a cliff: Total government employment is far below where it was when Obama started office.

• Excluding federal government workers, the decline in government employment is downright disastrous.

•  State and local spending levels are at an all-time low.

• Education workers are a huge contributor to the decline in local employment.

• President Obama’s stimulus helped for a while, but it wasn’t enough.

• Also: school construction spending is on the decline, spending on roads is down, public sector spending on public safety (firefighters and police) has collapsed, and public construction on the water supply is way down.

The GOP is doing all it can to bring about economic and social ruin. It's like a contractor who takes a sledgehammer to your roof and when it starts pouring rain, points at the holes he's made and says "There!! That's why you need me to patch this mess up!" The GOP is doing the same thing to education, healthcare, Social Security and other government programs, under the assumption that people will vote in the very folks who were busy destroying these programs (and the jobs and benefits they provide) to save them.

The GOP also has a pathological tendency to project their own failures onto the president, in hopes that if people start believing this "big lie," they'll either grow disenchanted with the president and not vote or start voting Republican. Mitt Romney is simply capitalizing on the GOP's rampant projection of failure and obstruction. He has to, otherwise people will realize there are no other redeeming qualities that make him worthy of the presidency.

Speaking of moral failures, Mittens should ask himself why he faked his way into being in uniform, yet avoided a chance to wear it for real.

Unemployment going down in Alabama! Why is this? Illegal Immigrants are leaving and Americans are getting their jobs. Amazing how law and order works. I wish the Democrats could understand this simple concept!

This is the meme conservatives tout when exhorting how well Alabama's immigration law is "working." The above relies on a non-understanding of how unemployment rates are counted and the suggestion that Americans are grabbing onto these jobs for dear life.

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The basic concepts involved in identifying the employed and unemployed are quite simple:

• People with jobs are employed.
• People who are jobless, looking for jobs, and available for work are unemployed.
• People who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force.

Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work. Actively looking for work may consist of any of the following activities:

Contacting:

• An employer directly or having a job interview
• A public or private employment agency
• Friends or relatives
• A school or university employment center
• Sending out resumes or filling out applications
• Placing or answering advertisements
• Checking union or professional registers
• Some other means of active job search

Passive methods of job search do not have the potential to result in a job offer and therefore do not qualify as active job search methods. Examples of passive methods include attending a job training program or course, or merely reading about job openings that are posted in newspapers or on the Internet.

Workers expecting to be recalled from temporary layoff are counted as unemployed, whether or not they have engaged in a specific jobseeking activity. In all other cases, the individual must have been engaged in at least one active job search activity in the 4 weeks preceding the interview and be available for work (except for temporary illness).

A decrease in unemployment rates does not mean that more people have found work. To wit, if a person simply stops any and all efforts to look for a job, they're not counted as a person looking for employment and are therefore not counted in the statistics. Neither is a person who moved to another state seeking employment. As far as those who do become employed, those who became self-employed or found some form of freelance work may not be counted in the stats.

Plenty of illegal immigrants have packed their bags and moved out, leaving the jobs they used to work open and available for the taking by legal American citizens. But those folks aren't picking up those jobs, most of which happen to be laborious, backbreaking farm and production plant jobs, jobs that most Americans are woefully out of condition for and not desperate enough to take.

Conservatives believe that ordinary Americans are falling all over themselves to fill in the jobs left behind by their illegal immigrant counterparts. This may shed some light on why Americans aren't as enthusiastic about the new openings as conservatives believe they are:

On a sunny October afternoon, Juan Castro leans over the back of a pickup truck parked in the middle of a field at Ellen Jenkins’s farm in northern Alabama. He sorts tomatoes rapidly into buckets by color and ripeness. Behind him his crew—his father, his cousin, and some friends—move expertly through the rows of plants that stretch out for acres in all directions, barely looking up as they pull the last tomatoes of the season off the tangled vines and place them in baskets. Since heading into the fields at 7 a.m., they haven’t stopped for more than the few seconds it takes to swig some water. They’ll work until 6 p.m., earning $2 for each 25-pound basket they fill. The men figure they’ll take home around $60 apiece.

Most Americans believe themselves to be far more valuable in regards to labor than $60 for 11 hours of work, or $7.50 to $9.00/hr. They have families to support and unlike illegal immigrants, not enough family members in the home able or willing to commit 95% of their time spent to working minimum-wage jobs. At least when the illegal immigrants go home, they'll live very comfortable lives on the U.S. dollars they brought with them (provided they aren't robbed, harassed or killed by one of the many cartel groups prevalent in most areas of Mexico and other Central American nations). Meanwhile, Americans remain mired in a knee-deep morass of debt, with no way of pulling themselves out anytime soon.

The men lean against the car, smoking cigarettes and trying to figure out how to finish the job before day’s end. “They gotta come up with a better pay system,” says Rayford. “This ain’t no easy work. If you need somebody to do this type of work, you gotta be payin’. If they was paying by the hour, motherf—–s would work overtime, so you’d know what you’re working for.” He starts to pace around the car. “I could just work at McDonald’s (MCD),” he says.

Now there's an idea. Raising the pay would be a worthwhile incentive to most folk who wouldn't touch these jobs with a ten-foot pole. Most employers won't do this because it will eat into their bottom lines. Others aren't able to do it, since they're already operating on bleeding-edge margins:

Rhodes says he understands why Americans aren’t jumping at the chance to slice up catfish for minimum wage. He just doesn’t know what he can do about it. “I’m sorry, but I can’t pay those kids $13 an hour,” he says. Although the Uniontown plant, which processes about 850,000 pounds of fish a week, is the largest in Alabama and sells to big supermarket chains including Food Lion, Harris Teeter, and Sam’s Club (WMT), Rhodes says overseas competitors, which pay employees even lower wages, are squeezing the industry.

Conservatives just don't realize that people won't go for just any job because it happens to be there. A job that entails backbreaking, monotonous work for 12 hours or more per day won't be filled unless it pays a wage that working people can support themselves and their families on. They won't put themselves at risk for developing arthritis, joint pains, back trouble and other health problems unless they know they're getting a working wage that will hopefully compensate them for putting so much wear and tear on their bodies. And a bit of health insurance wouldn't hurt, either. This was why unions came to be in the first place.

I suspect most conservatives already have jobs -- salaried ones that trend towards the six figures. They already got theirs, and they're scratching their heads over why their poorer fellow Americans won't just shut up and take whatever's given to them. They have no concept of how hard most of these agricultural and factory processing jobs are. No concept of standing on one's feet for 12 hours a day, up to six days a week if necessary, for wages that barely support a single person, let alone a family of four.

Individual states are grabbing the issue of illegal immigration by the balls because they feel the federal government isn't doing enough to enforce immigration statues. Perhaps President Obama would do good to find a way to put immigration law back under the purview of the federal government before states like Alabama hurt themselves further.

You had legislation reaffirming that “In God We Trust” is our motto? That’s not putting people back to work. I trust in God, but God wants to see us help ourselves by putting people back to work.

Sorry, Mr. President. The GOP-led legislature has better things to do than make jobs for unemployed Americans. In fact, they'd rather not see a single job created until your black ass is thrown out of the Oval Office come January 20, 2013. Besides, brushing up their "pious asshole" credentials by reaffirming "In God We Trust" as the official U.S. motto. "Separation of Church and State" means nothing to a bunch of folks angling for a "Christian nation" or such other nonsense.

Seriously, "E pluribus unum" sounds much better and also avoids that whole "Separation of Church and State" business. Besides, the president thought it was cool. Maybe that's what got all the pious assholes in the House all upset:

As evidence of this "disturbing trend," Forbes pointed to the fact that in a 2010 speech in Indonesia, President Obama called the phrase "E pluribus unum" the nation's motto. He also pointed to the dispute over the use of the phrase "in God we trust" in the relatively new visitors center at the Capitol Building.

Meanwhile, the Obama White House has its hands full with pushing the jobs bill through. Congress is allowing choice bits and pieces to go through, but any hope of the whole hog coming through died in the Senate.

The GOP seems more interested in thumping bibles, guaranteeing corporate wealth, preserving the sanctity of life until it manages to leave the womb and regulating how females handle their own reproductive organs. Oh, and sandbagging the economy so your black ass can look bad and lose on November 4, 2012. The next time the GOP and conservatives say they want to "help" America, take a look at the above and ask yourself, "is this the kind of 'help' I should expect from these people?"

In protest of the presence of the "Kenyan Marxist Occupier in Chief" in the Oval Office and his desire to impose socialist measures such as "Obamacare" on the hapless American people by dictatorial decree, business owner and Tea Party supporter Melissa Brookstone is going on strike!

But she won't be toting picket signs in front of her own place of business or taking bus trips to D.C. to protest against the Brownish Usurper. Instead, she resolves not to hire a single person until Obama and the Democrats concede defeat in the war against her businesses and others throughout the U.S. And she's encouraging her fellow Teabaggers to join her!

Too bad she'd probably fire her employees if they ever decided to go on strike. And with jobs being few and far between, people who are lucky to have them can ill afford to lose them over a strike. Seems like the only people who can afford to dabble in workers' rights are the people with the power to hire and fire others, and rest assured they're not doing this on behalf of those who need jobs, no matter what they say to the contrary.

The last time I worked for anyone "for free" was back in college, when I was fulfilling my internship requirements at the university's public relations department. Even then it wasn't necessarily "free" - in exchange for an extra helping hand and a number of professionally-made promotional pieces, I received the necessary credits needed to move on in my undergraduate career. The "Georgia Works" program resembles something of the sort, but there are a few things that made it stand out to me.

The program "works" like this: if you're a currently unemployed individual drawing benefits from the state, you have to undergo "workforce training." To fulfill this requirement, you spend up to eight weeks with a willing employer participating in the program. You get to "show your stuff" to what could be your future bosses and fulfill the "workforce training" bit. The employer gets eight weeks of "free labor" from the state, with no obligation to hire anyone from the program. If they do, they save time and money on training. The "intern" still draws unemployment benefits and receives a $240 stipend for transportation, child care, etc,. It's unclear whether that's $240/week or just $240 for the entire period, period.

The reason it stood out to me was because it smacked of "free labor," in the sense that participating employers enjoy what is essentially "free labor" - they don't have to pay these people because the state is taking care of that for them. No benefits, either, unless you consider Medicaid/Medicare one. And when the period is over, the employer has the luxury of dismissing their "intern" for a fresh face and another eight weeks of "free labor." Granted the "intern" can only work under 24 hours per week, but if there was a way to increase the number of required hours per week, you can bet your bottom dollar they would be increased.

"Georgia Works" seems like a win-win situation, except:

• Job seekers are tied down with a single potential employer for up to eight weeks, when they could be spending their time applying for multiple employers for an increased chance of landing a job.
• Job seekers are still "working" for peanuts -- those unemployment checks are not as glamorous as the hardened Teabagger conservative makes them out to be. Compared to a genuine job with a paycheck and benefits, they're still barely getting by.
• Single-parents are once again burdened the most by the program -- it's the hassle of locating and securing daycare arrangements for their kids that makes this program a bitter pill to swallow, and a $240 stipend doesn't go that far when it comes to child care.

Right now, I'm watching President Obama's speech outlining the $450 billion dollar "American Jobs Act" on YouTube. A lot of people accused Obama of not making good use of the "bully pulpit," but in this video, it looks to me he's putting his foot down. It's good to see the man being on point about the current state of the country and how we can move our economy forward again.

Anyone else notice Mr. Orange Julius looking uncomfortable as hell back there? If the man could excuse himself for a 3-martini lunch and a "message" right then and there, he would have.

Meanwhile, the USPS looks to be in dire straits, with a $5.5 billion dollar payment required this month to essentially pre-fund retirees’ future health care benefits. It's the only major organization with a mandate to do this, and if it didn't have to, the USPS would be in the black right about now.

Chances are this mandate won't be rescinded anytime soon, as the GOP can use the manufactured crisis to push the postal service's privatization. For those who want a sneak peek at what the American postal service might look like under a privatized future, read this article. And for those wondering why couldn't UPS or FedEx simply take over, ask yourself why both companies only bother with large parcels and not "first-class" mail. Under a privatized system controlled by UPS or FedEx, the days of grandma sending greeting cards in the mail or the mailman paying a visit 6 days a week will be long gone, in the name of profitability.