DNC Bookends: $16 Trillion In Debt & A Bad Jobs Report

The Democrat's convention, characterized by Mitt Romney as a "celebration of failure," now has brutal reality for its bookends.

First there was the debt clock ticking over $16,000,000,000,000 on day one of the DNC. It is another step on the march to becoming Greece. Any question of the import of this was highlighted by the Democrat's refusal to acknowledge this dangerous milestone at any point during their convention.

And less than 12 hours after Obama's speech asking for reelection on his vision rather than his performance, the BLS has released a very bad August jobs report. It shows only 96,000 new jobs created. Note that it takes our economy creating approximately 150,000 new jobs each month just to keep us treading water, so this actually puts us on a downward trajectory.

And worse, even the 96,000 new jobs were dwarfed by the report that 368,000 people stopped looking for work. Because of that, the U-3 unemployment number was reported by BLS as 8.1% - an illusory .2% "improvement" over last month. But as AEI points out, "if the labor force participation rate was the same as when Obama took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate would be 11.2%." Further, "if the participation rate had just stayed the same as last month, the unemployment rate" would have risen to "8.4%." It also means that the number of work age Americans working or actively looking for work is now at its lowest point in 30 years.

Image via Instapundit.

Mitt Romney responded to the jobs report:

If last night was the party, this morning is the hangover. For every net new job created, nearly four Americans gave up looking for work entirely. This is more of the same for middle class families who are suffering through the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. After 43 straight months of unemployment above 8%, it is clear that President Obama just hasn’t lived up to his promises and his policies haven’t worked. We aren’t better off than they were four years ago. My plan for a stronger middle class will create 12 million new jobs by the end of my first term. America deserves new leadership that will get our economy moving again.

This election is shaping up to be a real world referendum on post modernism versus objective reality that is there for all to see. What makes this so different then past years is that only willful ignorance can allow one to ignore the objective reality.

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