Recovery… Except for…

Have you heard the news?  The Great Recession’s over!  We’re in full-on RECOVERY MODE!  Yay!

Well, except for the crippling 19.9% underemployment rate, where nearly 1 in 5 Americans is “working less than they want to” – or in other words, out of work.  Again, since the Democrats took control of Congress (you know – the people that can actually spend Federal money), our unemployment rate has gone from 4.6% to hovering in the 10% range.  Some recovery.

You’re doin’ a heck of a job, Barry.

Read Full Post »

Fishy Unemployment Numbers

I'm Smelling Something...

OK…  you know the mainstream media will be trumpeting this particular success: Unemployment rate drops from 10% to 9.7%.  Better yet, the seaonally-adjusted underemployment rate dropped from 17.3% to 16.5%.  In the article I linked, economists are sighing with relief, saying that maybe – just maybe, the long winter of the Great Recession is over.

But…

The numbers aren’t adding up.  Somehow, the non-farm American workforce lost 20,000 jobs in January…  and yet, unemployment went DOWN?  How can you LOSE jobs and have unemployment drop as well?  In a sane world, when people lose their jobs, that means that unemployment goes up.

I was thinking, “did retirements somehow affect the rate?”  Then, Ed over at HotAir pointed something out…

In January, the number of persons unemployed due to job loss decreased by 378,000 to 9.3 million. Nearly all of this decline occurred among permanent job losers.  (See table A-11.)

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) continued to trend up in January, reaching 6.3 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of long-term unemployed has risen by 5.0 million. (See table A-12.)

To put it in simple terms: they fiddled with the numbers.  Think of it in terms of fractions: if we have a pie and I cut it into thirds and say you can have a piece, that means you have 1/3 of the pie.  If however, I fiddle with the denominator and take away a piece and say you can have a piece…  then I can say that you have 1/2 of the pie!  Yay!

Except that you still only have 1/3 of the pie.

In this case, the government shrank the number by fiddling with the number of available jobs and by “seasonally-adjusting” things.  The facts, kids, is that if we compare January 2009 to January 2010, the underemployment rate has gone up by  between 2 and 3.5%, depending on which statistic you follow.

If we’d dropped an actual 0.3% in unemployment, it would be reasonable cause for a grin or two.  No one wants to see people unemployed and if the number had actually dropped, I’d be inclined to join the festivities…  but it all just smells like someone cooking the books.  You simply cannot lose payroll members and decrease unemployment at the same time without fiddling with the total jobs available.

Read Full Post »

How Many Jobs Again?

The White House Corps keeps screwing up the message.

Well, kinda.  What’s really screwing up the White House message is the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  According to the government itself, the seasonally-adjusted underemployment rate for December 2009 is 17.3% (the “official” rate – non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rate – is 10%).  As we’ve discussed earlier, the “unexpected” rise in unemployment is only unexpected if you haven’t been paying attention.

And now, we’re being told the old yarn again that the Obama Stimulus has “saved or created” (some in Congressional Districts that don’t exist), depending on which White House media jockey you ask, “Thousands and Thousands”, “1.5 Million”, or “2 million” jobs.

Suggestion for the White House: with an underemployment rate of 17.3%, perhaps you should spend a little more time actually creating jobs (via icky things like letting  businesses keep their money so they can invest it in jobs) and a little less time making up numbers of jobs that don’t actually exist.  Talking doesn’t equal doing.

Read Full Post »

The Unexpected Recession

I'm as shocked as you, Kyle.

January 21, 2010: Jobless claims “unexpectedly” rise.

January 14, 201o: Retail sales drop “unexpectedly”.

December 10, 2009: Jobless claims “unexpectedly” rise.

October 28, 2009: New home sales “unexpectedly tumble.

October 2, 2009: Jobless claims rose “higher than forecast”.

August 20, 2009: Jobless claims “unexpectedly” rise.

June 25, 2009: Jobless claims “unexpectedly” rise.

And now for a flashback:

Newsweek (Feb 5, 2009): GOP says stimulus can’t create jobs.  They’re wrong.

ABC (June 8, 2009): White House claims stimulus will save or create 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days.

B. Hussein Obama (January 22, 2009): I won.

It looks to me like the only ones who are surprised to find the stimulus’ inability to “create” – or even “save” jobs are people who bought into the whole Obamanaut theory to begin with.

Let’s be honest for a minute, folks…  this is bad.  As Ed Morrissey over at HotAir and Glenn Reynolds over at Instapundit are both saying, even if this is from an “administrative accumulation”, it’s still a sign that the economy is far from recovery, and it’s quite possible that December’s retail numbers were much worse than predicted.  The Dow Jones is up, sure…  but not because the economy is strong.  The value of the Dow Jones is up because the value on which the Dow Jones is based is worth less than it was before the recession.  There’s an inverse correlation between the increase in the Dow and the value of the dollar that’s been in place since Bush’s stimulus back in October.

In other words: it’s not a recovery.  Jobs aren’t being created, which means people aren’t buying things, which means that it’s harder for companies to stay open and employ people and pay their bills.

And what is Obama’s response?  It’s the 21st century equivalent of “Let them eat cake”…   “tax them“…  because ,obviously, when people and businesses are having trouble making ends meet, the best idea is to take even more money away from them.

I guess that’s what makes all the economic news so “unexpected”.  It’s the same thing makes Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts “shocking”.  It’s a concept that’s best summed up by Adam Savage from “Mythbusters”: they reject reality and substitute their own.

Here’s hoping they’ll be just as shocked and surprised when they get tossed out of Washington on their flabby butts.

Read Full Post »

Most Ethical and Open Congress Ever, Part 12489 In an Ongoing Series

Remember this?

Yeah…  she was full o’ crap, and we know it.  Kinda like when Harry Reid complained about the GOP-led congress “sneaking bills” through.  Yeah.  They were both 100%, totally, completely full o’ crap.  The fact that they were full o’ crap was what led Joe Wilson (Hero-SC) to publicly call Barack Hussein Obama (Liar-IL) a liar.  (Pst!  He was lying about the whole “we won’t cover illegal aliens thing!)

The sad fact is that the reason they lie is because we let them lie.  On election day in 2010, let’s all give them an education in what happens to lying politicians when we kick their collective fannies out of Washington.

Read Full Post »

Feelin’ Stimulated Yet?

Ever wonder where some of that stimulus money that Obama and the Dems swore upon stacks and stacks of copies of “Earth in the Balance” and “The Audacity of Hope” that we needed desperately or all the children of the world would die in a cauldron filled with boiling pig poop? Or something like that?

Well… let’s see what your money went to pay for…

I’ve asterisked my favorites….

*$30,000 to study how methamphetamines affect the sex drives of rats.
*$221,355 to study why young men don’t like condoms.
*$219,000 to study the “hookup behavior” of female college coeds
$59,900,000 to upgrade computers for the California State Government…. that were upgraded 4 years ago
$564,635 for Duke U. students to go on a summer trip to Costa Rica
$1,200,000 for a Horse Museum in Kentucky
*$50,000,000 for fish food
*$122,000 for fish art
*$1,300,000 for signs that say “Recovery.gov”
$100,000 to remodel a Martini Bar and a Brazilian Steakhouse, both in Missouri
$831,700 for the Lone Tree Golf Course in Antioch, CA to use recycled water.
*$117,000,000 for a building makeover of the IRS building in Andover, MA that’s slated to be closed.
*$88,000 to repave a road in Atlanta, GA that was re-paved in 2007.
$389,000 to study marijuana and malt liquor use by Buffalo, NY residents
$100,000 to fund anti-capitalist puppet shows
*$1,570,000 to find fossil fuels… in Argentina
*$350,000,000 to develop a map for a government website that shows broadband availability… that will be obsolete by the time it goes online.
*$54,000,000 for a wine train for tourists in CA
*$1,900,000,000 to cover costs of a failed cleanup of the Hanford Nuclear Site.
$2,000,000 to extend a Tourist Train in Nevada
$4,700,000 to research and develop supersonic corporate jets.
*$5,900,000 to an advertising agency to promote the DTV changeover. Created 3 jobs. For 39 days.
$133,000,000 to renovate a Federal Building in Oregon. A new Federal Building in California recently cost $144 mil to build from scratch.
*$5,000,000 to develop a geothermal heating plan for a mall in Oak Ridge, TN that’s “almost empty”.
*$8,000,000 to build a wastewater treatment center in Oregon – for tourists!
$272,000,000 for improvements at FAA-designated “low-priority” airports.
$15,000 for a storytelling festival in Utah.
$1,100,000 to “beautify” Hollywood, CA’s Sunset Strip. Yes, the same one in tons of movies.
$30,000,000 to Defense Dept. contractors suspended for suspicion of fraud
$1,300,000,000 for Amtrak, which is currently losing $32 per passenger as people use “cars” and “airplanes” more.
$2,000,000 for a new fire station in Truckee, NV. Problem: they have no fire fighters.
*$25,000 for Sykesville, MD. They don’t know why.
*$935,000 for a dance troupe to weatherize homes in DC.
*$255,000,000 for ARC – a government-backed small business loan organization that expects a 65% default rate.
$75,129 for Paragould, AR to purchase iPod Touches for children.
*$49,818 and 53,940 lbs of carbon to send 11 people from Alaska to the Copenhagen Global Warming Conference going on right now.
$800,000 for an Ohio town to create a zone where trains can’t blow their whistles.
$90,000 to teach people to cooperate by watching birds.

Hope! Change!

Read Full Post »

Obscene Liberal Profits

The mainstream media has finally gotten around to fact-checking some of the claims being made by the left on health care.  The latest…    the “health insurance industry makes obscene profits” line.

Now, I’m not one to be overly upset over profits.  Typically, I prefer profitable companies to non-profitable companies.  Much like with successful individuals and families, companies who make good profits usually do so because they’re strong companies that have developed good products that people want to buy.  Yes, there are individual cases of corruption, but entire industries?

And typically, they’re going to be larger than 2.2%.

Let’s put it another way – in the same way that companies that make large profits are considered to be “successful”…   an industry involved in malfeasance that only squeezes out a 2.2% profit probably isn’t very good at it.  In fact, a reasonable, logical human being would look at such an industry and question as to whether said industry was indeed criminal at all.

In comparison: Congress’ pay raise (in the middle of a recession when unemployment has shot from 6.5% to 9.5% since Obama’s election) in March 2009 was…  2.7%.

Profit Margin on a DVD purchase?  20-30%.  If you download the movie from iTunes or Amazon?  60-70%.  Michael Moore’s idiotic propaganda crapfest “Fahrenheit 9/11″ made $222,446,882 off of a shooting budget of around $6,000,000.  That’s a 97.3% profit margin.

How about profits for Carbon Credits?  Huge, with tons of money spent and no actual products produced.

Apparently, profits are only obscene when they go to causes liberals don’t like.

Read Full Post »

Paulsen and Bernanke’s Stimulus Lies

Today, we learned that we weren’t being told then entire truth when it came to the Bank Bailout Stimulus Crap Sandwich.

In other shocking developments: water is wet.  Details at 11.

When the bailout circus began last September, fiscal conservatives around the country screamed at the top of their lungs that this was the dumbest idea since the GOP nominated McCain for the Presidency – and I was one of them.  Yes, “something” needed to be done.  That “something” was NOT the Keynesian boondoggle that was perpetrated upon the American taxpayer by the Bush Administration.  That “something” was to let the free market do what it does best: take out the weak companies that are damaging the economy, resulting in short-term pains but long-term strength.  Yes, the recession would’ve been a little deeper – but if the market had been allowed to correct itself, it would have CORRECTED itself.

And here we sit…  broken hearted…  how IS that economy doing again?  Nine point eight percent unemwhatment?

Now, here’s about the time that liberals start prancing about like hippies and mumbling something about it all being Bush’s fault.  And you know what?  Yeah – this one was.  His last 3 years in office were a gigantic abandonment of conservative principles – something echoed by the party at large – and yes, this massive government stupidity is a perfect model of what happens when you push an economy run on the basis of government rather than one based on economic freedom.

But I am also not so quick to leave Obama in the free and clear on this.  Obama, lest we forget, voted for the bailout.  His Presidency followed it up with even larger bailouts – and is planning even more.  They have done nothing to correct these mistakes because, frankly, they were party to them.  And now we find out that the 2 men most responsible for this overstated the stability of the banks they entrusted the taxpayers’ money to.  Well, we find out officially…   some folks were on the ball last year.

It’s enough to make one want to toss a few cases of Lipton into Boston Harbor.

Michelle’s got a run-down of the hilarity over the past year.

Ed at HotAir’s got a few words.

Read Full Post »

Obama is a Liar, Part 53924 in an ongoing series

First, Obama claimed that illegal aliens wouldn’t be covered in the Health Care Monster.  Joe Wilson yelled “You Lie” at THE ONE.  THE ONE gave him a gaze and the left howled like monkeys all too eager to toss their feces at zoo visitors.  How DARE he call THE ONE a liar!  THE ONE would never lie!

Plus, he'll now have the title of "Undocumented Climbing Expert" and will be employed as a government sherpa.

And then the White House comes out and admits that, indeed, public funds would go towards the care of illegal immigrants.

But fear not!   THE ONE has a plan…   kinda like the Cylons, except that Obama’s plan is stupid, convoluted, and will probably lead to more dead humans than the Cylons ever took out.  His plan?

The Health Care Monster won’t cover illegals, because he’s just going to make illegals…..   legal!  Ta-da!  Problem solved!  Joe Wilson and all those darned evil teabaggers were wrong!  Illegal Immigrants won’t be covered because there will be no illegal immigrants!  Why…  what could possibly go wrong?

Now, look…   I’m all for immigration.  You’ll be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t think it’s awesome that we have such a great country that so many people want to live in.  I think the fact that there are people who want to come to live in the blessing of America is awesome.

But…   there’s a legal process.  Yes, it’s convoluted.  Yes, it’s hard.  Yes, it means that someone can’t cross the border, become a legal immigrant, and immediately start suckling on the welfare teat.  And that’s a good thing – mostly.  It means that those who want to come here have to prove that they want to be a contributing part of the American community, and I certainly think that streamlining the process is a reasonable goal for us to pursue in order to lessen the legal costs and burden on good, law-abiding people who want to be American.

But blanket amnesty is not a good idea, and grating blanket amnesty so that you can add even more people to the health care insurance industry government takeover is beyond the pale.  These are not people who want to be American.  They have no interest in being American.  They simply want the benefits America offers with none of the real responsibilities that come along with citizenship.

Yes, I am aware that they have personal hardships.  Welcome to life.

But what is more irresponsible than the chief law enforcement officer in the country publicly stating that we should ignore and forgive the law breaking of a group of people is the same law enforcement officer doing it so that he can then turn around and provide them with the largest government welfare program in the history of government welfare.  That’s what we call a “reckless disregard for the Constitution and the Laws of the United States”.

That kind of thing should get you impeached.

Read Full Post »

Puppetry in Action Part 1: The Media

So there I was…  looking directly into the gaping void of ratings and intellect that was the CNN website.  On the front page, right at the top, was the following headline: “Death Panel Rumors False”.  I found this interesting, since I’ve actually read the bill and, including pages 425-431 about the nonexistent death panels.  Apparently, they’re groups of bureaucrats (aka “panels”) that manage how you’re going to die (aka “death”).  Where would I ever get the silly idea that these things are “death panels”?

It's not the news, It's Fishwrap

So, I’m off to read the article.   Ah!  It’s COMMENTARY.  The headline isn’t actually the story.  There’s actually not a story.  It’s opinion.  But if I were just, say, scanning CNN’s website for headlines, I would’ve never known that this was just another Obamabot rant masquerading as news on what is quickly becoming the digital and cable television version of fishwrap.

On and on the article droned, as if the doctor (one Douglas Blayney of the University of Michigan – not surprisingly, an Obama supporter and donor according to OpenSecrets.org) and the nurse (one Brenda Nevidjon, clinical professor of nursing at Duke University – another Democrat donor) had actually read the bill they were criticizing.  They obviously hadn’t, but did that matter?

To CNN, this was headline news worthy of their front page (and apparently unworthy of anything labeling it as “commentary”).

Today, CNN again announced that “False Rumors” abounded in the health care debate.  How do they know?  Why – they unleashed their “Truth Squad”, who seemed to come up with the exact same answers as the latest talking points from the Obama Administration.  And since they’re a “Truth Squad”, they must be trustworthy…  right?  Just take their quiz!

Seriously.  Take it.  It’s hilariously biased.  And just more commentary masquerading as fact.

So who exactly is on this “Truth Squad”?  Well, frankly, I don’t know.  A Google search of “CNN Truth Squad Members” and “Who is on CNN Truth Squad” revealed very little in the way of things like “people” or “names”.  It did reveal a large number of links to articles the “Truth Squad” had produced showin’ them danged Republicans who’s boss.  These are the same yahoos who laughed at the whole idea that The Glorious One could ever have been associated with known terrorist Bill Ayers.

It probably stuck in the their craw that shortly after this announcement, one of their fellow CNN employees outed them as not being in complete touch with the truth.  In fact, they completely ignored the whole “Obama’s Big Coming Out Party at Bill Ayers’ House” thing.  Obama tried to bury the story using his connections to the Annenberg Foundation, but the fact is that Barack Obama and terrorist William Ayers were closely tied for many years.  And CNN covered it up.  With their “Truth Squad” (aka “Commentarians” – yeah, I know it’s not a word – it is now).

And it’s not the first time.  And liberals wonder why Fox News consistently creams CNN and PMSNBC in the ratings.  And conservatives wonder why liberals keep trying to shut them down and silence conservative voices.

Liberals are cowards, and they want to make us as afraid of them as they are of us.  Don’t let them.

http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3200/text

Read Full Post »