Free Republic

<p>As searches dragged on, many just stopped looking. Now they aren’t even counted among the jobless.</p> <p>Jackson Julien looked for a fun job, then for anything. Finally, demoralization set in.</p> <p>Millions of Americans have vanished from the US labor force in the past three years, many of them so discouraged by long, fruitless job searches that they have given up looking for work, convinced that no employer wants them, according to a new study.</p>

President Obama last week brandished new jobs numbers as proof that his policies were having an effect on the unemployment rate, which the report said declined to 8.3 percent in January. The president is right about one thing: his big government agenda and class warfare tactics are having an effect -- but it's not the one he claims. In truth, last month's drop in the unemployment statistic was due largely to the evaporation of 1.2 million people from the labor force number. When people become so discouraged they stop actively looking for work, they are no longer counted as unemployed...

Obama recently signed a mysterious new law that proclaims all American soil is a "battleground," thereby allowing the president to indefinitely detain any American citizen without charges. Critics fear Obama will use his fun new unconstitutional powers to make his political enemies disappear, but that may not be necessary. The way things are going, most patriotic Americans will soon be six feet under, felled by apoplectic strokes brought on by reading the latest outrage committed by our "Commander in Chief." He may not have a limit to what he'll inflict; but our collective blood pressure may have a limit to...

Growing numbers of New Yorkers seeking food stamps have created an unwelcome spillover effect at some of New York City's job centers: overcrowding that in some cases has grown so severe, benefits were jeopardized. The crush of people grew so large at one Brooklyn center in November that the Fire Department intervened and prevented anyone from entering the building.

As Allahpundit wrote of last night's Senate vote to block the president's jobs bill, the outcome was just about as perfect as it could have been for the president, whose jobs package, loaded as it was with tax hikes Republicans were bound to reject out of hand, wasn't designed to pass in the first place. The vote last night provides the basis for Democrats to blame Republican obstructionism for the next 13 months of a slow-to-no recovery, and blame ‘em they will. But they won’t just blame “Generic Republicans.” As the Senate now lays its plans to vote piece by...

From Powerline.com comes a video that is beginning to go viral and to devastating effect for the Obama Administration. The President's words as a candidate, criticizing the Bush Administration, presented side-by-side with the statistics showing how much worse things have gotten under President Obama is an argument that is nearly impossible for any fair-minded person to rebut. http://www.breitbart.tv/devastating-video-obama-by-the-numbers/

Just out from Challenger, the latest survey of job cuts: Employers announced plans to shed 115,730 workers from their payrolls in September, making it the worst job-cut month in over two years. Heavy reductions planned by the military accounted for a large portion of September job cuts, signaling what may lie ahead as the federal government seeks across-the-board cuts in spending. September job cuts were 126 percent higher than the 51,114 announced in August, according to the latest report on monthly job cuts released Wednesday by global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. They were 212 percent higher than...

No text, just a video at the website playing clips of Obama's speeches while comparing economic numbers when he made the speech, and currently.

THE MARKET IS GETTING WORSE: NASDAQ Off 3%, Dow off 240, Banks Getting Killed Joe Weisenthal Oct. 3, 2011, 2:48 PM UPDATE AT 2:50: With a little more than an hour to go, markets are getting killed even more. The Dow is off about 240. The NASDAQ is down 3^, and the S&P 500 is down 2.6%. All day has been a continuation and acceleration of the concerns that really got rolling in September, especially on the bank front. Morgan Stanley is down nearly 7%. At rival Goldman Sachs, CDS have hit their highest level since October 2008. Bank of...

The data process used to arrive at the administration’s determination that greenhouse gases endanger “the public health and welfare” violated the Environmental Protection Agency’s own peer review procedure, a new report from the EPA Office of the Inspector General reveals.Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, requested this report in April, asking that the OIG determine whether the EPA “followed key federal and Agency regulations and policies in developing and reviewing the technical data used to make and support its greenhouse gases endangerment finding.” Now, Inhofe is calling for a series of...

Fla. Rep. Allen West was asked if President Obama is just inept or if he is intentionally harming the economy. West says he’s definitely doing this on purpose. (Video at the Fox News link.)

Orders for long-lasting goods unexpectedly fell during August, the second drop in three months as manufacturers struggle with a bad economy. Durable-goods orders decreased by 0.1% from the prior month to $201.76 billion, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had forecast a 0.2% rise in orders during August for durables, which are goods designed to last at least three years. The drop followed a 4.1% surge in July and a 1.1% decline during June. In an encouraging sign within an otherwise uninspiring report, a barometer used to gauge spending by businesses on equipment rose. Orders...

“Get out of the way.” With this statement, John Galt articulated the simple and necessary policy solution to the disastrous centrally-planned economy in Atlas Shrugged. It’s also sage advice that President Obama should consider before he unveils his latest jobs plan before the Joint Session of Congress tonight. This advice is strikingly prescient as our nation’s economy moves ever-closer to mirroring the calamitous state of affairs that befell society in Rand’s novel. During his two and half years in office, Obama has crushed the labor market with a pro-statist agenda, which includes ObamaCare, the stimulus package, coziness to Big Labor,...

If history is a guide, the odds that the American economy is falling into a double-dip recession have risen sharply in recent weeks and may even have reached 50 percent. Economies have a strong self-reinforcing nature. When people are optimistic, they spend, which begets hiring and then more spending. When people are anxious, they pull back, which leads to a cycle of hiring freezes and further anxiety that often lasts for months. The United States appears to have entered some version of the vicious cycle. Most ominously, job growth has slowed to a pace that typically signals the start of...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: There weren't any jobs. What is there to say? In fact, I'll tell you, I don't know how they're gonna revise this number down. They revise the number down every month, right? How are they gonna revise zero down? Well, yeah, there had to be a net loss of jobs. Now, actually, there was a guy hired in August. And all of the networks had planned live interviews with the guy who got the job in August, but he got laid off on August 31st, so there was no job created. There was one guy who got...

<p>WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Job growth was unchanged in August, the weakest performance in almost a year...lower than the 53,000 gain expected.</p>

Yes, you read correctly. “Spread the jobs around.” You’re probably familiar with Barack Obama’s well documented intentions to “spread the wealth around.” In a discussion about his vision for economic recovery back during the campaign of 2008, he expressed that intention using those precise words (do a web search with the President’s name and the phrase, and see what pops up). Today, the President struggles with the political consequences brought about by the stifled economy, which has been brought about his own “wealth spreading” ways. Yet within the Obama worldview, it makes sense that a President who has displayed no...

The rising impatience with the leadership of President Obama was epitomized on Aug. 8 in the middle of one of the now-habitual Wall Street roller coasters. His speech on the economy was 53 minutes late. What showed on TV screens was an empty White House podium, an image suggestive of the absence of leadership. When the president did speak, the best he could come up with was "We've always been and always will be a triple-A country." The market's response was a Bronx cheer, a drop of another 300 points. Mr. Obama seems unable to get a firm grip on...

New applications for U.S. unemployment compensation rose 5,000 to 417,000 , the Labor Department said Thursday. Initial claims from two weeks ago were revised up to 412,000 from an original reading of 408,000... The average of new claims over the past four weeks, meanwhile, increased by 4,000 to 407,500...In addition, the Labor Department said the number of Americans who continue to receive state unemployment checks fell by 80,000 to 3.64 million in the week ended Aug 13. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag.

Deep prices waiting to pounceWe well remember candidate Barack Obama’s ’08 throngs laying in breathless wait for the “Lightworker” to appear and speak as “sort of like God” from his teleprompter on high. Now, with nearly everything this president has touched lying in shambles, a shrunken Obama whines from town to town, transported in a taxpayer-purchased bus that resembles a big, fat hearse — the perfect symbol for the harbinger of economic death that Obama’s presidency has become.It’s painfully apparent now that the American people were scammed in ’08 by Barack the Bamboozler in what will be known historically as...