Facts Are Stupid Things — November 8, 2015

With the great news that real wages are finally actually climbing as unemployment sank to 5% with 271,000 new jobs created in October, almost all exclusively in the private sector, the right wing is absolutely up in arms about the truly “bad” economic news: The labor participation rate is at an all time low!

Google it.  You will find nothing but right wing media obsessing over the number.  James Woods actually flipped out over it to the delight of the minions.

The implication here, is that despite all the hocus-pocus involved in faking nearly 9 million new jobs (almost all in the private sector) and the lowest unemployment in a generation, the truth is the Obama economy is a failure because “everyone” has actually given up on finding a job.

A big problem with that theory is it would only be true if the labor participation rate was exclusively a metric of those who have given up looking for work.  It is not.

In short, other than “other,” those who gave up on finding a job make up the smallest category of those not participating in the labor force.  Heading the pack are retirees,  followed closely by the disabled, then students and then people working in the home.

Maybe the headlines should read:
“Retired Baby Boomers Relaxing on the Beach Are Not Participating in the Labor Force in Droves.”
That would be more accurate

Here’s a WSJ blog post with two pretty graphics that help clarify.

What We Know About the 92 Million Americans Who Aren’t in the Labor Force

Bottom line, the “bad news”  Obama haters are determined to unearth  has again failed to materialize.

While in no way endorsing the 70 something adolescent with arrested development, facts are facts. George W. Bush had been president for about nine full months when the United States suffered the first attack on it’s own soil since Pearl Harbor.  At the time, to deflect blame, I remember Bush used the analogy that he’d “only been here nine months. I mean a man barely get’s his coat on ….”  Yes. Go check my facts. That is more or less the exact quote. He drew an analogy between nine months as president of the United States and barely getting one’s coat on.  As I’ve said many a time before: any man needing nine months to put on a coat, clearly is not ready to be President of the United States.

Read this AP article.

What it says beneath the headline is that Trump pointed out an irrefutable fact. We were attacked on GW’s watch. There can be no debate on that simple truth.

Trump, Bush call each other ‘pathetic’ in 9/11 spat

And the article above does not even mention that Bush recieved a Presidential Daily Briefing on August 6, 2001 titled: “Bin Laden determined to strike within U.S.”  That is recalled by the NY Times here:

The Deafness Before the Storm

Now Jeb!, in trying to defend the family brand, is saying ‘wait a minute, my brother kept us safe.’  And whether you look back to his inability to heed the warning of August 6, 2001, or look straight ahead at Isis, which in part was born of US torture of prisoners of war, Jeb! has a big hill to climb in trying to back up that claim.

So facts are stupid things.  And in this case,  even I can’t fault Donald Trump for stating the obvious: George W. Bush  was president on September 11, 2001.

What Trump did not say, but what is also true is that G.W.Bush had nine full months to get his coat on.