The new job numbers came out this morning... and if you were waiting for a sign that the stimulus was working... well, you still have to wait.
Despite Obama's economic stimulus (that was supposed to keep the unemployment rate below 8 percent) the national unemployment rate went up to 9.4 percent last month (up from 8.9 percent in April and 5.5 percent a year earlier) -- the highest in more than 25 years. Congratulations, Obama, your economic record truly is historic.
Oh, but wait, somewhere there must be a silver lining. If is ask Barack Obama, the jobs that were lost are not as important as the jobs he claims "were saved." Karl Rove explains in his latest column in the Wall Street Journal.
Mr. Obama has an ingenious approach to job losses: He describes them as job gains. For example, last week the president claimed that 150,000 jobs had been created or saved because of his stimulus package. He boasted, "And that's just the beginning."
However, at the beginning of January, 134.3 million people were employed. At the start of May, 132.4 million Americans were working. How was Mr. Obama magically able to conjure this loss of 1.9 million jobs into an increase of 150,000 jobs?
As my former White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto points out on his blog, the Labor Department does not and cannot collect data on "jobs saved." So the Obama administration is asking that we accept its "clairvoyant ability to estimate," and the White House press corps has let Mr. Obama's ludicrous claim go virtually unchallenged.
Obama is asking us to believe that two plus two is five. His attempt at calling jobs lost "jobs saved" or his harsh rhetoric against deficits as he borrows and spends at an unprecedented rate is reminiscent of Orwellian doublethink. It certainly appears that in 2009, ignorance is strength -- at least for Obama. Based on his high approval numbers, Obama's strength is a result of the ignorance of the people.
One thing we should take from Obama's deliberate distortions of the jobs numbers is that he wouldn't bother with nonsensical explanations to explain how two plus two is five if he didn't feel some ownership of the current economic situation. He's more than willing to say that he inherited an economic "crisis" to avoid ownership of the state of the economy, yet, he feels compelled to put a positive spin on jobs numbers. He's simultaeously trying to take credit for positive that cannot be quantified, yet absolve himself of responsibility for the current economic climate. It's a tangled web he is weaving, and once the unemployment rate breaks into double digits, the voters will start to remember that two plus two is really four.