President Obama delivered a rousing speech last night, pointing out how the GOP ticket doesn’t have any plans or the plans are rehashes of what he says caused the issues. However, he failed to really outline any plan of his own or show where his plans for the last four years really worked. Case in point: the economy. The democrats are claiming that we’re on this road to recovery, we’re adding jobs, and Joe Biden’s “America is not declining” quip. And the White House is continuing that meme even with the poor jobs report for last month. From the White House memo:

While there is more work that remains to be done, today’s employment report provides further evidence that the U.S. economy is continuing to recover from the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
…
Today’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that private sector establishments added 103,000 jobs last month, and overall non-farm payroll employment rose by 96,000. The economy has now added private sector jobs for 30 straight months, for a total of 4.6 million jobs during that period.

The household survey showed that the unemployment rate declined from 8.3% to 8.1% in August.

So the numbers are all true, but are we really experiencing a recovery when, in the last month, for every job added, three (and almost four) people stopped looking for work.  That is reflected in the numbers above as the denominator for calculating the unemployment rate.  You see, the typical unemployment rate is calculated based on the number of people in the workforce or looking for work.  Once people stop looking (according to polling and survey data), they help drive the unemployment down.  This rate is known as the U-3 rate.  Something more accurate to what we commonly think of as unemployment is the U-6 rate.  The U-6 number includes the U-3 data but also factors in marginally attached workers and those working part-time for economic reasons.  The “marginally attached” phrase counts those who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work.  The U-6 rate for August is 14.7%.  When Obama took office it was 14.2% and climbed to 17.1%   Of course, we’re all holding our breath as Obama will deliver on adding a million new manufacturing jobs (he didn’t say “create or save”)…but the August numbers show a loss of 15,000 manufacturing jobs, including 7,500 in the auto industry.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.