The Mathemagics Behind the Unemployment Rate

Four words: Jobs, jobs, jobs (That’s 4, right?)

All righty then: we’ve spent the last year talking about the OWIES esprit de corp, the R-Word’s War on Women, Sandra Fluke’s bloomers, Big Guy’s swankie Frankie fetish, hoodies and racist white Hispanics, composite girls from the past, and oh –  did you hear?  Big Guy killed Osama Bin Laden? Yup, he just whacked him:

Oh sure, he had an assist from those little people, who, as he likes to put it "are out there fighting on my behalf.”  Butt basically, yup, he just whacked him. And George W. Bush didn’t.

Neither did Mitt Romney.

Anyway, with everything that’s been going on it’s been hard to find time to talk about some of the other transformational issues that we care so much about. In fact, it’s been so long since we last hyped our Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! plan that some people have actually forgotten that the Do-Nothing Congress has dropped the ball. They haven’t done anything about recharging our Volt’s batteries so we can drive our economy out of the ditch. Heck, sometimes even Big Guy forgets how bad it is out there.

So maybe that’s why I’m getting so much mail about the economy lately.

Or maybe it has something to do with America’s growing unease over a world-wide recession spurred by France’s recent surrender to a socialist regime. Again.

Cheese eating surrender monkeys!

I know Lady M wasn’t happy about the outcome of the French election. She’d just gotten to the point where she liked the new Carla and all of her chipmunk pouches :

and now there’s a new French hottie on the world stage that she has to deal with.

Valerie Rottweiler, new Queen of France

So we’ve been going through an awful lot of Cheetos around here. And, as it turns out, apparently you CAN reverse a tummy tuck with enough Cristal, foie gras and Kobe sliders.

  Drop that camera and step away from the FLOTUS!    h/t: Krista     

So anyway I thought I’d take today’s lull in big news as an opportunity to respond to one of the most frequently asked questions I get in my mail bag.

“MOTUS, everybody I know has lost their job and nobody can find another one. Butt the unemployment rate keeps going down! What’s up with that? I feel really stoopid, can you explain exactly how Big Guy calculates the unemployment rate?”

Let’s have a little Travelling Music, shall we?

That Old Black Magic: Sammy Davis Jr.

That’s a very astute observation, and a very good question! And today I’m going to explain how it’s done with a little government secret I like to call “Mathemagics!” ®

The Mathemagics of Obamanomics

NOTE: Big Guy’s mathemagics ® are in no way related to Granny R’s rumored (and officially denied) practice of the voodoo black arts.

Although I understand that her powers may be employed in the upcoming election since we need everyone onboard in order to “get out the vote.”

And don’t ask me again how she does it because I’ve already filed an official, plausible denial.

Anyhoo, back to my topic for today. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is Team-Obama’s Ministry of Employment Propaganda source of information regarding Big Guy’s job creation initiative. It is their job to gin up publish statistics showing how Big Guy has pulled our economy out of the ditch George W. Bush and the other R-Words drove us into.

Bureaucrats in the Bureau of Labor Statistics: emphasis on “bureau” and “statistics”

You can go to the BLS website for the official obfuscation explanation of how it’s done, or you can save yourself the frustration and rely on my simplified version of the complex statistical scam calculation.

First, the unemployment rate is made up calculated by dividing the number of persons who do not have jobs AND who are actively looking for work, by the number of persons in the total civilian labor force. Simple, no? Well, you’d think so, butt like everything in government, it’s not as easy as it should be seems.

First, it depends on the season. Is it cold outside, or hot? Is it planting or harvesting season? Road construction season, graduation season, or – as it is currently - historic, first re-election season? The season is important since the official unemployment rate can rise and fall (as needed) depending on the time of year. For example, in winter you don’t need as many people to do your yard work or set up tents for graduation parties, so the unemployment rate rises.

Translation for the gringos:

I voted for Obama

I didn’t think he’d kill the American economy.

I am so, so very sorry!!!

Butt we “adjust” for that and lower it back down again so the numbers won’t look so bad seasonal.

The unemployment rate falls during the summer months because your lawn needs mowing, leaves need blowing and farmers need workers to plant tax subsidized seed corn, in order to produce cornahol so we can save the planet. So, we don’t have to fudge “adjust” the numbers as much in the summer. Our seed corn subsidy also goes for corn that’s turned into fructose corn syrup, butt Lady M doesn’t want you to eat that anymore. So I guess now we can make more cornahol and transfer our reliance on foreign sources of oil to reliance on foreign sources of fructose corn syrup.

During our historic re-election season, the unemployment rate drops faster than Sandra Fluke’s bloomers in order to help Big Guy Win The Future. For America.

WTF?

Ok, I understand, butt it is starting to get complicated. Stick with me; we’re still working thought the mathemagics!

 

See?

Our BLS nerds take the hard numbers: the size of the labor force and the number of unemployed persons, and fudge adjust them to reflect the most advantageous accurate unemployment rate for that moment in time. They call “a whole bunch of” households and ask if anybody who lives there is unemployed, and if so, are they enjoying Big Guy’s generous unemployment compensation gift? Are they actively looking for a job or have they just given up any HOPE of ever finding a job again?

Homeless and HOPEless

All the people who have given up HOPE, together with all the people whose unemployment gifts welfare benefits have expired (times 10³⁾, are promptly and permanently removed from the labor force. This makes the denominator (that’s the bottom number in a fraction for Rush’s friends in Rio Linda) smaller relative to the numerator. And that results in a lower unemployment rate! Just like that. Shazam!

 

It’s just like taking a poll: you call the right people, ask the right questions and ipso fatso, you get the right answer - every time! Take it from me, by September, we’ll throw enough people out of the work force create enough jobs to get the unemployment rate down to around 1.5%.

    I’ll Buh-rock your vote, baby!       h/t: Ironic Surrealism

At which point the economic engine will be back on track, our high speed intercontinental railroad will be roaring along the highspeed internet just looking for the right off ramp to jump the track and WTF.

Hey! Where did all that manure come from?   h/t SadHill

So don’t worry, we are on correct path now, comrades. WTF.     h/t Vereteno

Linked by: Larwyn’s Linx on Doug Ross@Journal, and American Digest, and Clarice on JustOneMinute, and Adrienne’s Corner, and  NOBO2012 on Free Republic, and MRM on twitter, Thanks!

I Reflect, You Perceive

Four words for today: The image of quality.

Lady M is all over that little hissy fit she threw over being left behind by the Wonce on the tarmac. Now that Big Guy’s followed her sage advice and gone on record as America’s Great Gay HOPE, she’s totally back in the game with him.

See? Here she is yesterday looking all mellowy yellowy with Dr. Jill at our Mother’s Day Joining Forces photo op party for children of military families:

As you see, everyone’s having a great time! Little children just love Lady M!

Bra strap alert

So whew! That’s a relief. What a difference a day makes. On Wednesday we were sweating bullets over how to handle Joey’s “gaffe” and then all of sudden, there we were yesterday,  back in everyone’s good graces! We even sent chills up the legs of our brave lapdogs again, who are out there preaching our gospel. 

And look at this other big sea change from one day to the next: here’s Big Guy’s energy plan from his website on May 9:

And here’s that same plan on May 10:

Did you notice? Unspecified (presumably government mandated) “energy efficiency” has been replaced with…“clean coal” – and you probably thought there was no such thing!

To what can we credit this energy “evolution?” Jim Hoft blames felon Keith Judd. Butt I think that’s a little cynical, just because he nearly whooped Big Guy in an insignificant primary is hardly the basis for a major change in energy policy. No, it’s a bit more nuanced, it’s based on the current perceptions of our Energy Department. And what Dr. Chu was recently perceived is that end of the world as he knows it is at hand, and he figured a little more green house gas one way or the other won’t make much of a difference after all.

Nuclear Iran: artist’s rendition

Nuclear American Plan: voter’s rendition

And did you hear Big Guy say the other day that “Sometimes I forget the magnitude of the recession.” Really?  I’m guessing that’s probably because our jobs and unemployment numbers are constantly improving. Or something.

Butt I guess there are still a lot of other ‘folks’ – just like Julia – who never forget. No sir, not when their unemployment has run out and they still can’t find a job in George W. Bush’s ongoing recession. Unfortunately their perception is that it’s a magnitude 9.8.

So it looks like things are still hard out there for a pimp. Did you hear that J.P. Morgan Chase lost $2 billion in its hedging operations? I hope they aren’t too big to fail, because  Ann Barnhardt scared the begeezus out of everyone trying to warn us about just this sort of thing. Although she seemed to focus on thieves like Jon Corzine stealing client funds at MF Capital. Yes - that Jon Corzine - Big Guy’s good friend and Wall Street bundler: Jon Corle-Ozine, the first person Big Guy and Joey B called when they drafted their economic recovery plan. 

Ann is obviously not as impressed with Jon-Jon as the Wonce and his sidekick Cletus are:

“You have to understand, people like Jon Corzine, these are evil, evil people. You have to stop thinking that these people are just misguided, or there’s some sort of difference of opinion on economic theory. These people are nefariously trying to destroy everything in this country. It’s called the Cloward-Piven strategy. Go in and destory and collapse the entire economy, everything. And then re-build a new Marxist Socialist Fascist State out of the burning rubble of this destruction. This is not a function of incompetence. It’s a function of malice of forethought and conscientious theft and destruction.”

“Malice of forethought and conscientious theft and destruction?” That’s rather harsh, don’t you think? Only the 1% and Tea Party racist haters would describe the redistribution of wealth as theft, and refer to Obamacare as “destruction.” That’s the other thing about the rightwingnutz, they’re totally given to hyperbole.

Anyway Big Guy’s got much bigger fish to fry. And we’ve just got to get over this cynicism.

"Folks are still hurting out there and those frustrations with Washington and the nonsense they see on the news is making them more cynical than they were in 2008," Obama said. "So we're going to have to fight against cynicism and a belief that maybe things can't happen and maybe the game is rigged, what's the point. That's what we're going to be fighting against this time."

Got that? We’re going to have to fight the perception that the game is rigged. That reminds me of the 80’s, when the Big Three Automakers were fighting the perception that American cars were inferior to their foreign competitors. So they decided right then and there that they had to start marketing the image of quality.

We all know how well that worked out.

After all, perception is in the eye of the beholden.

I reflect, you perceive.

Linked By: Clarice Feldman on American Thinker, and Clarice on JustOneMinute, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, and MRM on twitter, Thanks!

Manscara and Mantyhose: It’s Nothin’ Butt MONEY!

Four words for today: gay, gay-er, gay-est, gay-er-est

Boy, for what was supposed to be just another quiet hump day around here, yesterday turned into quite the brew ha-ha.

 

First, I apologize for not giving you a heads up on Big Guy’s surprise endorsement of gay marriage. I swear, the last I heard he was planning on “evolving” right on through the election season. Butt then one of three things happened, depending on who you listen to:

1. Polls and focus groups following Joey B’s “trial balloon” gave him the go-ahead
2. The Gay Wing of the Democratic party threatened to withhold their kazillion dollar contributions if he didn’t come through as promised.
3. One of Big Guy’s former “composite girlfriends” threatened to out him.

BO’s not the only one with composite “girlfriends”

Regardless of the driver, BO is now firmly on record as being pro-gay marriage. And let the record reflect we are already enjoying several positive outcomes of this bold move:

1. Nobody is talking about defunding of the military, Chinese takeovers of U.S. banks, Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!, the economy, Nuclear Iran, Eric Holder or even medical marijuana.
2. We’ve launched a new fundraising campaign based on the polling data cited above, which is expected to haul in millions.
3. We’ve now firmly established that Conservatives flip flop while Liberals “evolve.”

Butt while gay marriage is all anyone’s talking about, there was a lot of other important information communicated in Big Guy’s ABC News interview that everyone ignored. For example, we found out that Big Guy was in the dog house for forgetting Lady M in Columbus last Saturday:

h/t Gateway Pundit

The special treatment for the first lady comes nearly a week after President Obama deplaned Air Force One in Columbus, Ohio,  accidentally leaving his wife behind — all as the cameras looked on.

“Oh, it was embarrassing,” a smiling Obama told Roberts. “She gave me so much grief. It was terrible.”

So he’ll be spending the rest of this term trying to make up for that. He started yesterday by expressing his heartfelt admiration for Lady M:

“What I’m so proud of is how her core values as a mom, she’s been able to translate into stuff that I think has given moms all across the country some additional tools to, you know, do what they care most deeply about…”

Things Lady M cares most deeply about:

                          This.                                                        Not this.

Above all, MO’s committed to fairness and justice, which is why she firmly supported Big Guy’s firm support of gay marriage:

The first lady is impassioned about fairness, aides say, and she has confessed to impatience with the pace of change her husband has been able to accomplish. Though she does not interfere in day-to-day policy matters, she has helped guard and protect the original mission of the Obama presidency: to be ambitious, rise above Washington battles and make the nation more equal and just. When Mr. Obama wanted to overhaul health care and immigration laws, she backed and bolstered him against the advice of aides who urged a more cautious approach.

We, of course, won’t say to what extent Lady M influenced BO’s decision to support gay marriage, butt I can tell you this: she did hire Kristina Schake as our personal Big White communications director. Don’t remember Kristina? Allow me to refresh your memory circuits:

Ms. Schake is the first lady’s communications director, with the day job of carefully managing Michelle Obama’s image. But it’s hard to name another White House aide with her level of experience in the fight to legalize gay marriage. Her specialty is conducting years-long campaigns to influence public opinion, gently rinsing controversy from issues…

Before arriving at the White House in late 2010, Ms. Schake was one of the leading architects in California’s fight for gay marriage, initiating a lawsuit against Proposition 8, the state’s ban on gay marriage, along with Chad Griffin, then her business partner, now president of the Human Rights Campaign and a top Obama donor. She worked on recasting gay partners as upstanding mothers and fathers who just wanted to be married like all the other parents in the PTA…

In other words, she fits right in: she’s a top notch propagandist. Or as we like to refer to it around here “raising people’s consciousness.”

Oh, and by the way, Kristina is also the one who brought us the “softer side of Lady M” – remember? Just like one of us, slipping out for a little cheap shopping at Target?

Yep. That was Kristina. She’s brilliant. Just like everyone else around here.

That’s why we’re WINNING!

Butt back to Big Guy’s important ABC interview: he spills the beans on what he and the girls will be getting Lady M for Mother’s Day:

President Obama says  he and daughters Sasha and Malia will be “concocting some things” for first lady Michelle Obama in honor of Mother’s Day, to “make sure that she knows how much we love her and how much we appreciate her.”

“She deserves to be spoiled,”  Obama said of his wife in an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts.

She deserves to be spoiled, and so do her friends and family

Oh, and I almost forgot! Big Guy’s coming out wasn’t the only Gay event going on around here yesterday. We also enjoyed a wonderful concert last night at the Big White in honor of this year’s Congressional Gershwin Awards. No, I don’t know why Congress gives Gershwin Awards either, butt I can check into it. I think it started out as either a pork barrel project or a grant from the National Endowment of Arts. Now it’s just a big party.

Anyway guess who was here – again: Stevie Wonder! He’s been here almost as many times as the 3 Hilary Rosens. As usual, we had the photo embargo in play due to this being an exclusive television broadcast, butt you can enjoy the entire show on our PBS funded network on May 21: check local listings!

Here are a few shots I was able to nab:

Lady M, Big Guy and Burt Bacharach; listening attentively. Big Guy, all ears.

 Lady M’s Randy Jackson style standing O (waiting for the others to stand, as directed)

Other performers included Diana Krall, Mike Myers, Sheryl Crow and Lyle Lovett. Everyone’s still trying to figure out what Mike Myers was doing there - aside from the fact that he’s an international man of mystery (like Big Guy) and a humongous fan and donor of BO’s. Here he is singing “What’s up, Pussycat”  with Dionne Warwick and Stevie.

That’s Diane Krall behind Mike and Dionne, butt I can’t find any more pictures of her from last night – skinny white girl, you know. Then they sang some of Big Guy’s favorite show tunes from Promises, Promises! and called it a night.

Since the evening was dedicated to the music of Bacharach and David, we didn’t have any Conga lines or spontaneous outbreaks of Dougie dancin’. And while it was still fun, it wasn’t like anyone “died and went to black heaven” fun.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Tonight’s the big Dinner with Bo and George at George’s hacienda; and while I can’t reveal their names yet, I can tell you that the winners in the $15 million lottery for the Won are fired up!

I understand the evenings entertainment will include make-overs by Hollywood professionals!

Ka-Ching, Baby!

Linked By: Adrienne’s Corner, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, and infidel1 on Stormfront, Thanks!

Evolving

Four words: The authentic self. Evolving.

What the heck is going on around here? France elects an openly socialist president, and Indiana throws a perfectly a good ole boy moderate overboard in favor of a…right wingnut  Tea Party candidate!? Are you kidding me? Somebody didn’t get the memo about the world tilting to the left again.

And then North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage? Is nobody paying attention to Big Guy’s message of HOPE and CHANGE anymore?

“Yeah, what Joey said. Butt don’t quote me while I’m still evolving.”

                

And boy, he doesn’t want to get anywhere near that gay marriage grenade. Which is why, instead of delivering his message on gay marriage in person like he did his message on missile defense, he sent Joey B out last Sunday to cue the troops that he’ll take care of that little problem after he gets reelected, and has a little more flexibility.

Butt given the conservative mood of the country in some quarters, we’re all getting a little touchy about the whole gay marriage thing. Even me. For example, as I was scanning the newsy yesterday, I read this headline: “Obama's vague gay marriage under scrutiny.”

It turns out I skipped over a rather key word, “stance”: Obama's vague gay marriage stance under scrutiny. And then the next headline I saw said this: “Time for Obama to come out” butt that, too, turned out to be my browser’s truncated version of the full headline Time for Obama to come out on gay marriage.  Which isn’t really a whole lot better, now that I think about it.

Anyway, that last article wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Big Guy’s “evolving” position on gay marriage either:

If you wonder whether the president actually opposes same-sex marriage, doesn’t evolution imply change? And if you think perhaps he’s still conflicted — well, that’s hardly an advertisement to be leader of the free world.

That’s harsh. What part of the nuance of “evolving” don’t these people get? Apparently it’s the part about the metamorphosis not being done until after Big Guy’s reelection.

We’ve got a lot of special interest groups we have to keep up in the air. I mean, how crazy would it be for BO to come out of his chrysalis now and risk alienating any of our voting blocks?

And speaking of special interest groups, that reminds me of a special contest in our ever evolving contest meme: “Pimp my Presidency.”

      

          

        

        

and the best is yet to be:

This week’s contest is dedicated to a special subset of one of our very special, special interest group: women. Be sure to enroll your Mom today in our “Win your Mom a shout-out from Big Guy,” contest that ends at midnight tonight! All you have to do is get 5 of your friends to contribute to BO’s reelection coffers and your Mom will automatically be entered (be sure to include her email, so we can contact her – you know, in case she wins). This is a real twofer: you help Big Guy WiN and Mom might win a special Mother’s Day greeting from Big Guy himself! So be sure not to miss your chance to “Pimp your Mom for Obama.”

Seriously though, people are overreacting to Big Guy’s evolving positions on all these issues where taking a position runs the risk of alienating some of our fans. Let’s face it; politicians by definition are constantly “evolving” - if by “evolving” you mean dodging, evading and lying.

It hasn’t always been this way. Oh sure, lying and politics go way back, butt Big Dawg Clinton can be credited with taking this concept to the level it enjoys today. Once you can say “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’, is” with a straight face, you’ve evolved “evolving” to another whole dimension. Now, as long as you can say something with a straight face, you can say anything.

Take the case of Pochahontas Warren for example. This blonde haired, blue eyed princess so wanted to relate to the victims that she hoped to one day represent that she actually claimed to be “one of them.”

Elizabeth Warren, the undocumented Cherokee princess demonstrates how much Indian blood she actually has.

Victor Davis Hansen comments on the nature of this recent fraud scam identity “evolution:”

Anyone who has taught in a university has come across the “Cherokee” con, especially given the Oklahoma diaspora in California. By the time I retired from CSU, I was exhausted with “1/16th” Cherokee students, who claimed success with their gambits. This was a world of Provost Liz Smith-Lopezes, José Beckers, Simba Bavuals, and all the other attempts to traffic in victimized identities.

Still, Warren, as no other recent examples, reminds us of the bald fakery in America these days. “Van” Jones was not born Van Jones. Louis (note the Jehmu Greene bowtie) Farrakhan was not born Farrakhan (yet just try to be a cool black racist as the Caribbean Louie Wolcott, aka Calypso Gene). In his twenties, Barry Dunham Obama went from Barry (a not very useful preppie suburbanite-sounding name) to Barack Obama. In the La La lands of academia, high journalism, and big government (though not in the landscaping business, farming, or short-order cookery), we sometimes wear identities in America as we do clothes, a different outfit as the occasion demands, given that our present-day Jim Crow racialists are busy figuring out to what degree pigment, ethnic ancestry, nomenclature, or assumed identity “counts.”

Ever since that “first black president” shtick worked so well for Big Dawg everyone started to adopt a minority persona for political gain. And then, sure enough, along comes Big Guy to seal the deal on the value of “minority” heritage. Of course his is authentic.

And now the other half of the original two-for-one presidency has come out firmly on the side of authenticity too. Apparently no matter how, uh…authentic it gets.

Eeee-yikes! Are those Frankenstein stitches? Maybe we aren’t completely “authentic” after all.

Apparently there has been some “airbrushing” going on in the past. I know, hard to believe. Butt now I guess we’re, uh, evolving.

Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.

Linked By: sb on Weasel Zippers, and anniej on PJ Media, Thanks!