Saturday, December 3, 2011

Fast, Furious and FUBAR

“F.U.B.A.R. – yes, wait a minute, I know what that stands for - just give me a minute!”

Since yesterday was such a big news day, I have a roundup for you. First, the good news:

File this one under “Only in America”  - Unemployment rate DROPS below 9%! For the first time in months, the numbers weren’t unexpected. Get the facts:

120,000 jobs created. 315,000 workers “called it quits” and hung up their work shoes permanently. And who knows how many 18 year olds just decided it was a waste of their time to even look for a job, so they’re just staying in Mommy and Daddy's basement practicing their Xbox skills in case they’re called on to save America from the tyranny of Capitalism.

Butt let’s not bury the lede: unemployment DROPS! We’ve been working on this for months, at the Government Center for Applied Math-a-magics.

us-department-of-labor-office

And believe me – we have been laboring at it. Big Guy and his secretary, Hilda Solis have been trying to convince the middle class white people that they don’t really need a job (because, as you recall, we’ve decided we don’t really need them) while trying to get our illegal immigrants undocumented workers visitors on the job roles, officially and ASAP.

Screenshot Studio capture #333

Anyway, our plans must be working, because numbers don’t lie:

The participation rate dropped to 64 percent, from 64.2 percent in October, representing 315,000 fewer job-seekers.

The total amount of those without a job fell to 13.3 million.

The drop in participation rate is significant in that had the labor force remained steady, the jobless rate would have dropped to 8.8 percent, according to Citigroup calculations. If the labor force had followed trend growth, unemployment would be at 8.9 percent.

"When the unemployment rate declines, we want to see both employment and participation increase as discouraged workers return to the labor force. Today, we got the former, but not the latter, making the 0.4 percent drop look a bit suspect,"

See how all that works? Good. You’re not supposed to.

This next story is not really important, butt I mention it because I believe it is the first time anyone on Ms.NBC has ever said anything nice about any Republican woman. Never-the-less, file this one under “unsolicited endorsement of the week” - Meghan McCain explains as part of her official duties as a commentator that Michelle Bachmann is “just more smarter” than Sarah Palin. Which just goes to show that Ms. Meghan is just more astuter than her fellow Ms.NBC commentators.

meghan-mccain-tila-tequilaWho’e more smarterer: Meghan McCain or Paris Hilton?

Oh, and here’s the bad news, buried as usual in the late Friday document dump. Whoops!

The Justice Department on Friday provided Congress with documents detailing how department officials gave inaccurate information to a U.S. senator in the controversy surrounding Operation Fast and Furious (snip)

When your best defense tactic includes withdrawing a deceptive letter submitted to Congress, I’m not sure the facts are going to be on your side:

"that we will make a rare exception to the department's recognized protocols and provide you with information related to how the inaccurate information came to be included in the letter,"

It sounds like Congressman Issa agrees:

“It is about a failure that seems to be pervasive within Justice that investigations play fast and loose with the expectations of what is right or wrong when it comes to what I am going to call collateral damage,” he said.

Goodness! When Martha Stewart lied to the Department of Justice, she went to the slammer,

Martha-stewart-goes-to-jail

leaving us all without proper Christmas cookies that year.

limecookies

Butt if the DoJ lies to us?

larry and eric swear in

We’ll look into it.

lies studies

 

And remember: Martha was never charged with, let alone convicted of, insider trading. Her crime was much more heinous: lying to a prosecutor. Which explains a lot.

insider trading

You can cheat, butt you can’t lie.

That’s all for now. Oh – one last thing: I too must admit that my “Department” (that would be just moi) “gave inaccurate information” indicating that there were no pictures of Lady M snapping off the head of a gingerbread man. I too “will make a rare exception to the department's recognized protocols and provide you with” the facts: one picture did apparently slip out. Don’t worry, we’re in the process of tracking down the culprit and I assure you justice will be served. Heads will roll!

headless-biscuit

white-house-holiday-preview_thumb2_t

Honestly, it’s just a nightmare around here any more. Ask anyone.

       headless gingerbreadPresidentALmartha-stewart-holding-cookie-tray-1210-s3-medium_new

 

Back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Linked By: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and centralcal on Just One Minute, Thanks!