The latest unemployment figures show better than expected hiring in the month of January, and the media pom-pom wavers are practically orgasmic.
To hear the breathless coverage on CNN and the dinosaur networks Friday, you'd think we had suddenly transformed our economy into 1998, with robust growth, $1.11/Gal. gasoline, 4 percent unemployment and budget surpluses. ANY bit of good news on the economy means President Obama's chances for re-election are improved, and this gladdens the hearts of so many of our lefty journalists.
They absolutely cannot contain themselves, and were gushing that this presages many months to come of consistent growth in GDP and reduction in unemployment. The possibility that this might be a blip on the screen, or that the numbers are misleading because of the large number of people who are hopeless about their job prospects and have given up looking for a job... These are considerations that cannot possibly enter into the noggins of the partisan and corrupt media talking heads.
If a Republican president had presided over the past three years of misery, the news reports would be about how most of the newly created jobs are just service industry jobs (e.g., flipping burgers), many people are working part-time when they want to work fulltime, and many Americans with college degrees are earning minimum wage or something close to it. Never mind if these things are true, you won't hear it while Obama is president.
I suppose it's possible there will be moderate job growth in the next few months, and a reduction in the rate of unemployment. The media will go ga-ga as they cheer Obama on to reelection and do their best to cast aspersions on the Republican nominee.
But Obama's plans to raise capital gains tax rates and the income tax rate on the wealthy, compounded by the labyrinth of smothering regulations and massive bureaucracy spawned by Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial "reform" bill, will undoubtedly stifle further job creation and drag out the economic malaise. Doubtless, Barack Obama, a rigid progressive ideologue who has blind faith in Keynesian economics, just cannot and will not grasp that fact.
If the American people are duped into four more years of hope and change, they deserve what they get. But I remain cautiously optimistic that "fool me twice" ain't gonna happen.
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