Fresh from firing Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, a Trump official has said that Trump wants his own people running the Bureau. That's worrying because the Bureau is (always had been) a non-partisan, independent organisation that provided information and data to the government of the day that helps the government make decisions. It's important this information is accurate and free of bias or influence - that's something surely we can all agree on.

But not Trump. He wants it under his control and the reason is obvious. He wants to be able to publish only information that is flattering to him and his administration. This is the stuff of dictators, who control information to suit their own ends.

https://edition.cnn.com/2025/08/03/business/kevin-hassett-trump-tariffs-bls-fire...

greggerypeccary wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 10:17am:

Armchair_Politician wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 9:54am:



So the statistician didn't get it right in the past 2 months when she overestimated the jobs by 258,000 - or she didn't get it right now when she reversed those etimates down.

Which one?

scope wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 12:13pm:

Consider the statistician revised, then.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 12:15pm:



Is that 'official' or subject to further revisions?

Statistics is about modeling and sampling. It's not a shopping list that you add to or cross things off from. A quarter of a million jobs in 2 months is a huge margin of error either way.

Lies, damn lies and statistics.

As a KPMG guy said to me years ago about errors in data being exposed, that affected how numbers were reported over time, 'it doesn't matter so much that they're wrong, so long as they're consistently wrong'!

Frank wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 11:33am:


they're ESTIMATES you dumbarse

SadKangaroo wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 1:12pm:

Yep... and wherever self-reporting is required, the data bounce all over the place like a red rubber ball.

The 'I didn't know' thing seems to be a feature of the arsehole posters on this site.

SadKangaroo wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 1:12pm:


I think that's the problem right there.

SadKangaroo wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 1:12pm:

I thought the line was that DOGE didn't nake much difference.

In any case, getting rid of unnecessary bureocracies is a good thing.  And if YOU knew that the DOGE job losses were massive, why didn't the BLS? Hello?!?

As for job numbers, the monthly stats are NOT presented as  vague estimates based on polling and guesstimates that will be second and third guessed in due course. People expect more solid and reliable infirmation. Markets, investors, pension funds etc are treating these reports as reliable, not as guesses based on guesses. What use is a stats bureau if all it does is guesstimate and then revise, revise, revise in hindsight. No point in making monthly announcements of guessworks as if they were rigorous, scientific facts only to revise rhem wildly when actual facts come to hand.

Frank wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 2:05pm:


This is dictators (also wannabe) and authoritarian leaders and how they are presented with information. Quite relevant, even if you disagree.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 2:16pm:



I took the liberty to corrrect your wording so it makes sense.

Frank wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 2:05pm:


The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

greggerypeccary wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 2:55pm:



Well, your are neither a good man nor do anything.

Frank wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 5:24pm:



it's not the BLS speculating you dumbarse, it's the companies they poll

Frank wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 5:24pm:


Just because you didn't know, or chose not to understand because facing reality would shatter your belief system, doesn't mean the rest of us are equally ignorant.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics operated consistently for over a century without issue. Then Trump bulldozes his way in, wrecks the system, and exactly as predicted, the data finally reflects the consequences of his policies. And suddenly, now, you've decided the BLS is the problem?

Instead of investigating the gas leak or evacuating the mine, you're out here throttling every canary because the grifter you built your identity around swore there wouldn't be any gas leaks under his watch.

Pity you're not trapped down there with the rest of the poor bastards who believed him.

greggerypeccary wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 6:05pm:


And golf cheats. Don’t forget that he cheats at golf as well!!!!

Frank wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 6:29pm:


Are you getting sick of looking stupid yet? 

There are obvious reasons why this would be so. There's a lot of money to be made in selling out your country. If you make the mistake of taking the London media seriously, you will be aware of a chap called Morgan McSweeney, "Chief of Staff" to Keir Starmer and the sort of backroom boy the court eunuchs of the press get terribly excited by. He is said to have urged Sir Keir to get tough on these migrants. We now learn that Mr McSweeney's dad, an accountant in County Cork, set up a new company to help provide accommodation for "asylum seekers". In the two years since, he has received six million pounds from the government in Dublin. As Mrs Thatcher was wont to observe, enriching people for managing a problem ensures that you will never be rid of the problem.

Indeed, in fairness to McSweeney Senior, six mil is chump change. My pal Leilani Dowding introduces us to the first refugee billionaire:


The establishment won't stop illegals because there is too much money to be made from housing, feeding, furnishing and providing security for them . It's from our taxes so it's guaranteed money 💴 There's will be brown envelopes flying around... lots of people are getting very... pic.twitter.com/PGuO3mqBR9

— leilani dowding 🌸🚜 ☮️ (@LeilaniDowding) August 3, 2025
If it's making the PM's Chief of Staff's dad and all his pals very rich, why would you want to "fix" the "crisis"?

Here is rare footage from the early hours of Saturday morning, of bus loads of "asylum seekers" being discharged at the four-star Britannia Hotel:


🚨🇬🇧 Under the cover of darkness in the middle of the night - Bus loads of Migrants are ferried into a Luxury Hotel in Canary Wharf, London - one of the Capitals most expensive areas.

All Military Age Fighting Men who look like they're dressed in Uniform clutching an envelope.... pic.twitter.com/oRp2RrlmVh

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) August 2, 2025
The tweeter is not wrong. This is the most age- and sex-distorted "refugee" population cohort in history: not a single old person, not a single child, not a single woman; just young fit men from some of the most barbaric cultures on earth. By "barbaric", I mean countries where your ten-year-old's desirability as a Saturday-night date is perfectly normal, and doesn't require a corsage and a box of chocolates.

Needless to say, the Government lies about this as it does about everything else that matters. Cabinet ministers go on the BBC and assure viewers that the majority of small-boat arrivals are "children, babies and women" - and the incompetent hack who hosts the show fails to call him on it.

Frank wrote on Aug 4^th, 2025 at 11:44pm:


So you lose this argument and are now just posting random garbage?

You'd all reduce your risk of arthritis in the fingers if you realised that Trump is not a cause, he's a symptom.

He's the bastard child of a strange alliance between American conservative immigrant peoples and Appalachians.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 6:56am:


You're overanalysing.

Trump is just a good marketer who understands how humans " buy".

They buy on emotions.

Skippy thinks they sit down and analyse the statistics from the department of trade.

People can't even watch a 15 second tok tok without fast forwarding it.

When there is zero focus. People just fall into the frame of whoever has the more stimulating  and self confident narrative.

The more the left react to Trump. The more he seems like the legitimate dude who everyone is reacting to.

We are hard-wired to accept whoever gets the most attention as the legitimate person of high status.

Trump would wither on the vine if the millions of Skippy's just ignored him.

Donald who ?
Never heard if him.

Truly they are the foundation on which his power is built.
His core investors.

Like a submissive in a co dependant relationship, they can't leave the abusive relationship because they are addicted on the emotions he provides.

Ask them to come up with a democrat leader and they too lose focus immediately and go back to the source of stimulation.

The very definition of TDS 

aquascoot wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 7:59am:

You're under-analysing.

American culture is predicated on four core religio-social cultures that drive American politics and culture:

Traditional northeast/New England Puritanical culture.

Traditional Southeast/Southern culture.

Traditional Appalachian culture.

Collective immigrant cultures.

Trump has captured the minds of conservative immigrant cultures and traditional Appalachian culture.

Trump's lies and bullshit only work because his conservative, libertarian base wants to believe him.

His lies and bullshit have the least traction in the US northeastern and western lower 48 states.

SadKangaroo wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 9:13am:

Of course!

In the US, deep religio-cultural roots surface during political debates and elections, suppressing healthy scepticism.

It's similar to those Americans expressing their uber cultural-religiosity when they quickly forgive, then vehemently defend, an errant pastor's moral/legal failings... except for child abuse - hence Trump's current problem with Epstein.

It's interesting that the most successful modern Democrat presidents - Johnson, Carter, Clinton and Obama have southern roots, or imitate them, in the case of Obama.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 9:51am:


They forgive Republicans for everything: rape, abuse, corruption, you name it. There's no line they won't cross, no crime they won't excuse, so long as it serves the narrative.

But the Epstein files were meant to be their moment of vindication. The grand unmasking of the Deep State, the Hollywood elites, and every Democrat they've ever projected their own depravity onto. It was supposed to prove Pizzagate. It was the sacred pillar beneath the whole MAGA mythos, a leftover fantasy from the QAnon delusion that Trump was secretly saving children, even as his public and private behaviour reeked of predation.

They had to invent a messianic backstory for Trump because the real man, petty, cruel, sexist, racist, and steeped in filth, wasn't someone any sane person could idolise on merit. So they told themselves fairy tales. And now those lies are colliding with reality.

Trump can sack the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labour Statistics and replace them with a sycophant who'll falsify the numbers, but he can't suppress the collective craving among his cultists for Epstein file vindication. They were sure it would be the Democrats. They needed it to be the Democrats.

And now? The more we learn, the more we see why Trump wanted to bury it. Because the files are damning. Maybe even fatal.

Sure, most of the MAGA cult will still line up behind him as we see the most ardent of their brethren do here, just as they did for every other Republican predator. But there's a non-zero chance that what's in those files will finally puncture the illusion. Not because they care about the victims, mind you, but because their fantasy doesn't survive the realisation that their saviour was part of what they claimed to hate.

And the irony?

It's all his fault.

He fought to keep it buried. And by doing so, he made sure everyone started looking.

It's delicious.

SadKangaroo wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 10:13am:

JFK, MLK, RFK... All files in which the CIA are likely involved have been largely suppressed, regardless of what any US president orders.

Kennedy famously quipped that he joined the House of Representatives to use political power to get things done, but found there was no power there. So he became a US senator... no power there, either...  and when he became president... Power? Nada!

SadKangaroo wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 10:13am:


It sure is   

More deflection from Frannie   


IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
---------------------------------------------------------------
JANE DOE, proceeding under a pseudonym,
Plaintiff,
v.
DONALD J. TRUMP and J EFFREY E. EPSTEIN,
Defendants.
)
)
)
Case No.:
JURY TRIAL DEMANDED
---------------------------------------------------------------
COMPLAINT FOR RAPE, SEXUAL MISCONDUCT, CRIMINAL SEXUAL ACTS,
SEXUAL ABUSE, FORCIBLE TOUCHING, ASSAULT, BATTERY, INTENTIONAL
AND RECKLESS INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS, DURESS, FALSE
IMPRISONMENT, AND DEFAMATION

aquascoot wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 10:37am:


You're not "right on this one," Scoot.

You're just repeating a marketing cliche and confusing it for psychological insight.

You're mistaking understanding how people buy a toaster with how they assess the moral and legal fitness of a national leader. That's not psychology, it's shallow salesmanship, and Trump has coasted on it because people like you keep mistaking manipulation for merit.

The "leftie intellectuals" you sneer at are criticising Trump's actions, not because it's politically convenient, but because those actions are corrupt, dangerous, and in many cases, criminal. You're trying to reframe that as emotional overreaction so you can ignore the content and pretend it's just about tone.

It's not.

This isn't about hurt feelings or bruised egos. It's about a man who has been credibly accused of sexual abuse, who attempted to overturn an election, and who is neck-deep in a cover-up involving one of the most prolific child traffickers in recent history.

And your response? "Be nicer to his fans."

Mate, are you serious?

This "we need to be gentle with them" routine only makes sense if you think they're emotionally fragile toddlers rather than adults responsible for their choices. You're trying to guilt-trip people into silence because your side can't defend its actions on the facts.

That's not "understanding psychology," that's emotional blackmail dressed up as strategy.

You want less polarisation? Great. That starts by not asking people to turn a blind eye to abuse, corruption, and authoritarianism just so Trump fans don't feel sad.

Call it what it is, Scoot, complicity.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 11:05am:

I blame their amydgala.

Must be.

Appalachians + amydgala  = America explained.

MeisterEckhart wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 12:37pm:




Way too over interpreted.
I was listening to a podcast on the court jester and court jester privilege in medieval times.
They were allowed to say outrageous things to get the plebs to have a good laugh at the establishment.
They had to be unstifled, outrageous, over the top, self amused and irreverent to the social norms.

I thought.....that's Trump.
Stop taking the guy so seriously.
Just have a laugh and move on

Trump may present as thin skinned to vibe with his audience but I think he has the hide of a rhino.

A thin skinned coward would retire and just go play golf.

Instead Trump put himself in the position where if he lost in 2024. He was likely going to die in prison.
I don't have the guts to do that.
On a toss of the coin result.

Pretty dam gutsy if you ask me.

The left like to call.h captain bonespurs.
But again, if I had 35 lawsuits coming at me, I wouldn't be able to sleep.

Donny is an oaf and uncouth but I don't buy he is some cowardly shmuck.

Now that Trump is "officially" a dictator does that give him more or less power that the President of the USA. I thought that President of the USA was the most powerful job going. I just don't see Trump giving up the power he has and stepping back.

aquascoot wrote on Aug 5^th, 2025 at 7:52pm:




It was veteran journalist Zito who said in her 2018 book The Great Revolt: Inside the Populist Coalition Reshaping American Politics that Trump’s supporters took him seriously but not literally, while his opponents did the opposite.
....

The activists of the far left were quick to respond to the assassination attempt. One faction immediately declared that the whole thing was staged so Trump could win sympathy. Another group lamented that the gunman had missed. Unfortunately for them, Thomas Crooks was a figure too shadowy and confused to be portrayed as a Mangione-style heroic martyr.

How, wonders Zito, did American society get to this level of polarisation, so that a significant part of the population would advocate murder as a legitimate tactic against their enemy? There has always been a strong strain of us-versus-them extremism in US politics but the level of hatred directed at Trump is a new phenomenon. Some of it is simple snobbery, the view that Trump is too uncouth to be the leader of the country. Other leftists say that they oppose him on policy grounds but that does not explain the prevalence of Trump Derangement Syndrome. There is also a class element, with Trump supporters seen as uppity hicks. All of these answers are plausible but none seem complete. Maybe that will be revealed with more time and perspective.

...
Zito believes that Trump’s rise presages a fundamental realignment in American politics and society, although she adds the caveat that it might be too early to know for sure. She describes a dichotomy between the ‘placed’, who value roots, family and community, and the ‘placeless’, who value their credentials, income, and are essentially nomads. It is an interesting, useful way of looking at the dividing lines.

To the ‘placed’, Trump’s shout of ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ while he was still bleeding was packed with positive meaning. It was not, as some of Trump’s virulent detractors claimed, a call for violent insurrection. Instead, according to Zito, it was a call to his supporters for resilience, courage, and a belief in themselves.


From a review of Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland
Salena Zito
Hachette, pp.256, $50.00