Recovery? Hardly. This is the economic disaster wrought by the Obama administration.
TheWeeklyStandard: A new chart from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee details the fact that, since January 2009, for every person added to the labor force, 10 have been added to those not in the labor force.
That is, in nearly the four years, since President Obama took office in January 2009, only 827,000 people have been added to the labor force, while during that same time period, 8,208,000 have been added to those not in the labor force.
The chart relies on data available from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Since January 2009, the labor force has grown by 0.54 percent, or 827,000 people (from 154,236,000 to 155,063,000). Those not in the labor force grew by 10.2 percent during the same period (8,208,000 people), from 80,502,000 to 88,710,000. In other words, for every one person added to the labor force of the United States since January 2009, the size of the U.S. population not in the labor force grew by 10 people.
And the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee concludes, "These figures reveal several troubling trends: That the jobs market is not keeping pace with U.S. population growth; that not enough younger Americans are joining the labor force to account for retirement among an ageing population; and that a large number of workers have become so discouraged that they simply stopped looking for work and left the labor force entirely. These factors pose serious fiscal challenges for the United States. A historically low labor force participation rate—together with an ageing population and a record number of people drawing federal welfare benefits—puts severe strain on the federal budget in both the near and long term."
Why would ANY American prolong this nosedive by four more years?!
Who's smiling now?
Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9/Miami Herald poll (FLORIDA): The survey conducted this week found 51 percent of likely Florida voters supporting Romney, 44 percent backing Obama and 4 percent undecided. That's a major shift from a month ago...
McLaughlin & Associates poll (VIRGINIA): According to a McLaughlin & Associates poll that had an R+.02 sample, Romney leads Obama in Virginia 51%-44%. Among independents, Romney beats Obama by 11 points, 50%-39%.
And TheHill reports that a prominent pollster is pulling out of Florida, North Carolina and Virginia because Obama can't win there!
Suffolk University pollster David Paleologos, whose polls are aggregated into mainstream averages to show where the presidential race stands in the swing states, said he’s finished polling in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia because President Obama has no shot of winning those states.
H/T Rush
Sound familiar?
Not that it would matter to him, but could someone forward this to Ol' Joe?
Ohhh. Yeah, Joe, he is closer to Jack Kennedy than you ever could be in your wildest dreams. Biden knew what Paul was talking about...a similar path to prosperity. He just hoped others wouldn't.
Funny, ain't it, Joe?
The Obama campaign is on damage control today, but not only because of Biden's bizarre behavior, which particularly turned off the ladies and independents out there. Just check out this voter who crosses both those demographics...
...but the White House is also trying to clean up Biden's contradiction, claiming they weren't told about additional security requests in Libya, when members of the State Department just testified before Congress the day before that they had indeed received said requests.
Byran Tau at Politico comments, "The truthfulness of that statements depends on what Biden meant when he said “we” — State Department officials admitted in recent congressional hearings that requests were received from the Libyan missions for additional security resources in advance of the attack that killed four Americans."
Spokesidiot Jay Carney tried to pick up on the minutiae of defining 'we' (reminds one of Clinton's 'is'), seemingly shielding Obama and Biden while tossing blame Hillary's direction, but WeaselZippers makes clear what we all know ol' Joe was saying, "He was talking about the administration, the same administration that denied the request." Precisely. ALL of them.
But Joe didn't stop there. He not only tried to pull a Stephanie Cutter, blaming the desire of the American people, especially those moms, to want to know what happened to four Americans in Benghazi and why it happened, but he actually tried to pin the administration's cover-up on the intelligence community...
theWeeklyStandard: Among the many charges and countercharges at the vice presidential debate here Thursday, two points from Vice President Joe Biden stand out. First, Biden blamed the intelligence community for the administration’s confusing public explanations of the 9/11 anniversary attack in Benghazi, Libya. ... Biden defended the administration’s ever-changing story on Benghazi by hiding behind the intelligence community and suggesting that their information was incomplete and inaccurate.
But then Biden changed his tact towards the intelligence community moments later, when the debate turned towards Iran's national security threat facing America...
Biden, in an attempt to parry an attack from Ryan, suddenly expressed his belief that the U.S. intelligence community is omniscient. There’s no need to consider war right now, he argued, because “we’ll know if they start to build a weapon.”
So the same intelligence community that failed to deliver information in its possession about the attacks on Benghazi is suddenly so all-knowing on Iran that we needn’t worry about the mullahs going nuclear?
His logic just doesn't add up. And that's what happens when you're spinning one lie upon another.
El Rushbo's magnificent commentary on last night's debate...
"The Joe Biden that you saw last night IS the Democrat Party. It's the modern Democrat Party, particular the last 12 years. It's who they are."
"Biden did exactly what was desired, and in the process, hurt himself and Obama."
"Biden personified what we've been dealing with for 12 years, ever since Bush/Gore, ever since the 2000 election and the recount aftermath. This is who they've been. I though it was great. I thought they came out of their shell! None of this so-called 'compassion' and 'understanding'. ...Biden's express purpose was to go out there and get that base revved up. And what does that base want? That base wants blood. The base wants rude, the base wants disrespect. The Democrat base is made up of people who literally hate Republicans. Biden gave them exactly what they wanted."
...and he predicted Raddatz behavior as well...
“Biden is the drunk at the bar; Martha is the unhappy bartender, and Ryan is the unfortunate salesman caught in the middle.” ~ Greg Gutfeld
In the last post, I didn't mention much about the constant interruptions of Ryan by Smiles Biden, as well as the regime-friendly moderator, Martha Raddatz (more on that relationship here), both of whom, as Twitchy heartily points out, "forgot their manners." I thought that annoyance was fairly obvious. Nonetheless, when Ryan was permitted to make his point, he effectively did so...starting with Benghazi...
"What we are watching on our tv screens is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy."
...then moving into the economy and the abysmal failure of the Obama administration's so-called 'recovery' (despite how funny Smiles thinks it is...which was slowly wiped away in this exchange)...
"Look at where we are. The economy is barely limping along; it's growing at 1.3%. That's slower than it grew last year, and last year was slower than the year before. Job growth was slower than it was in August, and slower than it was in July. We're heading in the wrong direction: 23 million Americans are struggling for work today. 15% of Americans are living in poverty today. This is not what a real recovery looks like."
...and then finally in his excellent closing statement:
"At a time when we have a jobs crisis in America, wouldn't it be nice to have a job creator in the White House? The choice is clear: a stagnant economy that promotes more government dependency, OR a dynamic growing economy that promotes opportunity and jobs. Mitt Romney and I will not duck the tough issues, and we will not blame others for the next four years. We will take responsibility. And we will not try to replace our founding principles, we will reapply our founding principles."
It was nice to see that there was at least one adult in the room...who happened to be the youngest of the three on the stage.
"If a wise man contendeth with a foolish man, whether he rage or laugh, there is no rest." ~ Proverbs 29:9
Chris Wallace called Vice President Joe Biden's demeanor "unprecedented" and "openly contemptuous and disrespectful."
"I don't believe I've ever seen a debate in which one participant was as openly disrespectful of the other as Biden was to Paul Ryan tonight."
And after concluding that the televised interpretation trumped the the audio and the transcript, making Biden the loser, Charles Krauthammer agreed with Wallace:
“I agree with Chris Wallace: It was sort of almost unprecedented and hugely condescending. I think that undid the force of his arguments and I think in the end, if television, you lose.”
Rather than reiterate my similar sentiments, I'll simply cast my agreement with ALL of the fthese comments concerning Thursday night's VP debate, specifically centered around Biden's bizarre behavior (we'll save the wealth of Ryan's impressive knowledge & arguments for a separate post)...
John Tabin: "Paul Ryan vs. The Joker"
Joe Biden, Batman's fiendish archenemy, grinned widely and laughed maniacally throughout his debate with Paul Ryan tonight. The vice president and Arkham Asylum escapee repeatedly interrupted Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney's sidekick. Ryan remained unflappable, an extremely brave accomplishment given Biden's history with sidekicks; Biden famously murdered Jason Todd, the second Robin. In a debate that was heavy on foreign policy, defending the Obama administration's record required Biden to cripple the truth as severely as he crippled former Batgirl Barbara Gordon.
Liberals widely hailed Biden's performance. Everyone else was aghast. Like most vice presidential debates, the evening did not affect the election in any way.
Aaron Goldstein: "Biden sounded like he spent six hours at a bar"
My lasting impression of the sole VP debate between Vice-President Biden and Paul Ryan is that Biden sounded like a loudmouth at a bar who had spent the past six hours drinking and should have been cut off by the bartender five hours earlier. Paul Ryan, by contrast, was a paragon of sobriety.
Mark Levin: "Joe Biden was off his meds"
Martha Raddatz was awful, stepping all over Paul Ryan's statements. Joe Biden was off his meds, flailing with his hands, interrupting, repetitive, and whiny, which is what most of his base has wanted. And Paul Ryan was calm, cool, and collected, with a better second half in the debate.
And in J.P. Freire's piece 'Biden's goal was the wrong one', I particularly appreciated his final comment:
PS. I have another theory about why Biden was smiling so much:
So, I'll leave you with these words from Jeffrey Lord, and the brand-spanking new ad from the RNC...
The Biden smile tonight was glaringly out of place for reasons of simple respect to Ryan, not to mention the individual topics being discussed. What's to smirk about when discussing a dead Ambassador? Iran and the bomb? The unemployment rate in Biden's hometown of Scranton? Which, by the way, was clearly news to Biden.
ADDENDUM: Well, doesn't look like the smiles or 'malarkey' worked for ol' Joe. A CNN/ORC poll has already declared Ryan the winner...yes, I said Ryan!
'We didn't exclude California, we just didn't include their jobless claims...but we put the numbers out anyway,' so says the Bureau of Labor Statistics...
WSJ: An unexpected shift in seasonal reporting by one state sent jobless claims tumbling last week.
Initial jobless claims–a measure of layoffs–were down by 30,000 to a seasonally adjusted 339,000 in the week ended Oct. 6, the Labor Department said Thursday.
The Labor Department factors this trend into its seasonally adjusted figures. But last week, a Labor economist said one “large” state didn’t report additional quarterly figures as expected, accounting for a substantial part of the decrease. The official wouldn’t disclose which state, but said it would be released with next week’s report as usual.
“One omission by one state–you wouldn’t think it would be a big deal, but in this case it drove the number down by 10%,” said analyst Stephen Stanley with Pierpont Securities.
Well, that state has now been revealed: California. And thus the initial paraphrasing of the BLS' attitiude.
The BLS told BusinessInsider that ALL STATES WERE INCLUDED in this week's jobless claims. Assertions that "a large state" was excluded from the report are patently false.
...BUT...
It is likely that some of the jobless claims in one large state--California--were not included in the claims reported to the Department of Labor this week.
Within every inch of this administration, it's all about semantics and the optics, preferably favorable to Obama's reelection at all times. But ZeroHedge has had enough with the BLS antics, releasing a stark graph comparing the headline-grabbers on jobless claims (the blue line) versus the true weekly 'revisions'. Notice how miserably constant the red line remains...
"Just in time for tonight’s debate, let’s give Uncle Joe some talking points, even if he and the “knucklehead vote” are the only ones who believe them." ~ politicalwoman @ RedState
I should have added this one a few posts ago, but...this one can stand alone, while standing for ALL...
"This was never about a video; it was never spontaneous; this is terror. And I want to know why we were lied to."
Dead on, Mr. Gowdy.
This is heartwrenching. Pat Smith, mother of Sean Smith, who was murdered in the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Libya, says the Obama administration won't tell her the truth about her son's death.
"I look at TV, and I see bloody hand prints on walls, thinking, 'My God, is that my son's?' I don't know if he was shot. I don't know...I don't know! They haven't told me anything. They're still 'studying it'. And the thing that they are telling me are just outright lies. That Susan Rice, she talked to me personally, and she said this is the way it was...because of this film that came out."
"I don't trust you anymore...I don't trust you anymore!"
They know how they've screwed up, and by now, they know how her son died. They're lying to her like they've lied to all of us, and this is simply unexceptable that this woman, this mother, is being kept in the dark.
H/T: RCP
