Facts About Jobs Before and Since Obama (August 2012)

The Bureau of Labor Statistics provided unemployment and job market numbers on Friday for the period of August 2012. With 103,000 private sector jobs added in August and 7,000 public sector/government jobs eliminated, the report reflected a disappointing net gain of 96,000 new jobs.

The Bureau's August release also shows a reduction in the unemployment rate from 8.3% to 8.1%. While this is positive news on its face, the decline in the unemployment rate results mostly from a decrease in the number of Americans who are seeking work, not from an increase in the number of newly created jobs.

The big picture bad news embedded in the August job statistics is that the economy and job market continue to recover at a pace which almost everyone, including the President, finds to be unacceptably sluggish.

The good news is we now have 30 consecutive months of positive job growth. Additionally, according to Steve Benen on the Maddow Blog, in the first eight months of 2012 the economy yielded 1.2 million new private sector jobs, which is already better than five of the eight Bush/Cheney years in their entirety.

Our choices in the upcoming presidential election are becoming increasingly clear. Some of us will decide that President Obama has made the right choices and opt to give him four more years to finish the job of repairing a devastated economy. Others will conclude that the speed of the recovery is simply unacceptable and will opt for the Romney alternative.

Regardless of your choice, I believe it's important to pursue and process the unadulterated facts. The graph above represents actual job growth results and trends (red = Bush, blue = Obama), which I believe illustrate simply and plainly the real world impact of the policies of the current and prior White House administrations.

By the end of the Bush administration, we were losing more than 600,000 jobs per month. Under President Obama job growth has been slow, but steady and positive.

My question for Mr. Romney is this - what specifically are you proposing that is different from the Bush-era policies that led to so much of the "red ink" and job loss in the chart above?

Game of Thrones Puts Bush's Head On a Spike

Prop head of President GW Bush,
with medieval wig/hairdo.

If you watched season one of HBO's Game of Thrones, then you looked on in horror as the bastardly and scathingly cruel King Joffrey forced his bride-to-be to gaze upon the severed and staked head of her father.

What you probably didn't notice was the decapitated head of former President George W. Bush a few spikes over.

The shows creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, pointed out the appearance of the presidential prop on the commentary portion of the Game of Thrones DVD.

You can see the short clip here where the image of Bush's head makes its acting debut, and you'll hear Benioff deny any political motivation for the use of the former president's likeness. Explained Benioff, with so many beheaded characters in the episode, "we had to use what heads we had around." Riiiight.

SNL - Will Ferrell's George W. Bush Visits Biden

Will Ferrell returned to Saturday Night Live to guest host last weekend. In the show's hilarious opening skit, Ferrell reprised his role as President Bush in order to console and commiserate with an adolescent-acting Vice President Biden.

I particularly enjoyed when Bush draws a distinction between "smarty pants" types like Obama, and "speak first" guys like Bush and Biden.

"They're all brains. You and me, we're all gut and balls."

5 Signs "W" Plans to Endorse Romney

Romney and the elder Bushes

George H.W. Bush, our forty-first president, has officially endorsed Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee.

One of the senior Bush's sons, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, made the same announcement last week, but his other political progeny, George W. Bush, a man whose name is uttered in GOP circles these days only slightly less often than Voldemort's name is spoken at Hogwarts, has been silent thus far about which candidate he prefers in 2012.

If you've been eager to find out which contender will be the lucky beneficiary of W's endorsement, your wait is over. I have leveraged my enormous journalistic resources and keen instincts for truth to ferret out the answer. 

Here are 5 recent actions that George W. Bush has taken which are evidence of his plans to endorse Mitt Romney for President. 

1. Hired a web developer to post "Mission Accomplished" banner atop Romney campaign website.

2. Asked the Supreme Court to interrupt primary season and declare Romney the winner.

3. Called Dick Cheney to ask for permission. 

4. Announced plans to finally put an end to torture - by halting televised Republican candidate debates.

5. Nominated Mike "Good job Brownie" Brown to clean up debris scattered by the Gingrich disaster.

Thanks to these Bush family endorsements (and also to delegate math and the absence of any other reasonable candidates) there's virtually no way Mitt can lose the nomination. 

2012 - Most Important Election of Our Lifetime?

Winner of the actual "most
important election" of my lifetime

After a robust spanking in the Florida primary on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich took the stage to deliver his concession speech, and he told a crowd of supporters the 2012 election is the "most important election" of our lifetime.

Really? I don't think so, Newt.

As I recall, that's exactly how Democrats felt about the election in 2004, and we were right. Democrats desperately feared the impact of four more years of President Bush, and history has proven those fears to be justified.

We lost the 2004 election to GWB, and as a result: we saw our government continue to mismanage an illegal and unjust war, we exploded our national debt, we experienced a devastating housing bubble, and we saw the near collapse of our financial industry. All of this together resulted in the worst period of American economic recession in eight decades.

So is 2012 the most important election in our lifetimes? Nope. The 2004 election was and we blew it.

Obama Faces Same Re-Election Hurdles as W

An Andrew Sullivan Dish reader provides a good summary of the President's accomplishments. As I reviewed the list, it occurred to me that President Obama and former President Bush face some of the same challenges in seeking re-election.

President Obama's greatest accomplishment is avoiding the total collapse of our economy, which he did in large part by pumping gargantuan sums of money into key U.S. industries. Consequently, we incurred the loss of American confidence and amassed an incomprehensible amount of national debt.

President Bush's greatest accomplishment is avoiding another devastating international terror attack in the post-9/11 years, which he did in large part by waging war(s) in the Middle East. Consequently, we suffered the loss of thousands of lives and amassed an incomprehensible amount of national debt.

Bush was confronted by an all-consuming terror attack and security crisis just a few months into office. Obama was confronted with the threat of an impending economic disaster and financial crisis. Both presidencies are largely defined by the perceived success, or lack thereof, in managing through these crises, and in both cases, Americans underestimate the enormous good that was achieved.