Weasel Words

Last night, Mr. Mendacity gave his State of the Union Message. I could not bring myself to listen to his modern-day equivalent of “War is peace.  Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (George Orwell, 1984).  But there were listeners, some of whom found that Obama was stretching the truth well past the breaking point.  Even NPR this morning  found many of his more audacious remarks to be questionable.  To catch up on his speech, I found the following fact-check listing of many of Obama’s truth-twistings.  It is well worth a read:  Breitbart Analysis.  (Actually, even the Lily Ledbetter analysis is incomplete.  There have long been laws that guarantee equal pay (for women) for equal work.  The Lily Ledbetter law did nothing more than extend the period over which lawyers could sue employers for such misfeasance.)  After pulling out your hair over these whoppers, you might consider a stiff martini.

I have also heard that, last night Obama bragged that his administration has created six million jobs since he took office … an oft-repeated misdirection.  This may be true in the sense that six million Americans have found new jobs.  But what he doesn’t enumerate is how many Americans have lost jobs during this same period.  When His Royal Highness took office in January of 2008, there were 145.4 million workers.  Now, there are 143.3 million workers in this country … which means that there are now 2.1 million fewer workers … while at the same time our population has grown by 10.9 million (Source Bureau of Labor Statistics).  Basically, 6 million Americans may have found jobs, but 8.1 million have obviously lost jobs.  If one were measuring the height of the tide last year this way, it would be 2 miles high because one would never count for all its ebbs.

The real sad part of this narrative is that obviously maybe half of all Americans are taken in by this claptrap … the uninformed voter if you will.  Are you one of them?

"Just the Facts Ma'am"

Jack Webb

As is often said, there are lies, damn lies and then there are statistics ... particularly when uttered by politicians.  Debbie Wasserman Schultz, (D, Florida and Chairman of the Democrat National Committee) recently justified this aphorism when she said that unemployment had not gone up under Obama (see: Schultz Spins).  So, I have gone back to my source, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to see if this were the case. The actual series (A-1) facts (see BLS.gov) are reprised below.

To update from my previous Fact Check, when The Barry took office the civilian non-institutional population (CN-IP) of the United States was 232.6 million and the seasonally-adjusted number of people employed was 142.2 million (after the shock of the sub-prime mortgage crisis in late 2008). As of the end of November, 2011, the civilian non-institutional population was 240.4 million (up 7.8 million) whereas the equivalent employment number was 140.6 million (down 1.6 million). More interestingly, the percentage of the CN-IP that had jobs when The Barry took office was 61.1%; whereas today it is 58.5% (down 2.6 percentage points.) 

Or, if the employed percentage of the CN-IP had stayed the same as when Obama took office, then this country's employed labor force would total 146.9 million jobs ... up 6.3 million jobs. To fully recover from the shock of the sub-prime mortgage crisis (a loss of 3.0 million jobs as of January, 2009), President Obama's economic cabal would have had to cause allow 9.3 million jobs to be created ... let alone give  permit us any true job growth.

So, as we used to say when I was much younger dude, Debbie Wasserman Shwartz appears to be blowing smoke up our collective arses.

Addendum:  Don't forget that, to figure the grand total job creation shortfall under Obama, you need to add his actual jobs decline of 1.6 million to the above 6.3 million normative figure to get a 7.9 million deficit ... or a 10.9 million shortfall if one factors in the sub-prime job losses under Bush (again, before any true job growth.)