90 Million In Dead Weight

From Zero Hedge:

Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work .The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% - the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is "improving."

Those 'Not In The Labor Force' At Record Highs

From Zero Hedge:

The unemployment rate drops to 8.2% for one simple reason: the number of people not in the labor force is back to all time highs: 87,897,000.

This is actually worse news than if the unemployment numbers went up.Remember what our mama's said about idle hands,'they are the devil's playground.'If people are not up and going to work,what are they doing?

'Lies, Damn Lies & Government Statistics: How Bureaucrats Use Numbers To Manipulate Us'

Government statics are nothing more than a shell game.We are told that the unemployment rate is falling,but we find out that less than 2/3rds of working aged Americans are actually employed.Something just doesn't smell right.

Real Inflation 'Up Some 8%'

From CBS Money Watch:

Forget the modest 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, the government's widely used measure of inflation. Everyday prices are up some 8 percent over the past year, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.

The not-for-profit research group measures inflation without looking at the big, one-time purchases that can skew the numbers. That means they don't look at the price of houses, furniture, appliances, cars, or computers. Instead, AIER focuses on Americans' typical daily purchases, such as food, gasoline, child care, prescription drugs, phone and television service, and other household products.
The institute contends that to get a good read on inflation's "sticker shock" effect, you must look at the cost of goods that the average household buys at least once a month and factor in only the kinds of expenses that are subject to change. That, too, eliminates the cost of housing because when you finance your home with a fixed-rate mortgage, that expense remains constant until you refinance or move.

This is part of the shell game the Federal government plays with us.They measure inflation through purchases we may make once every few years,or as in the case of home purchases,maybe once in a lifetime.This is not only crazy,but also deceitful.

The reason for this deceit is all for the purpose of trying to keep our out of control Federal budget in the same universe as we are in.If our government used an honest method to measure inflation,entitlement spending would go through the roof,because entitlement spending is tied directly to the rate of inflation.

This Is Crazy Talk

White House Press Secretary,Jay Carney:

"I understand why extending unemployment insurance provides relief to people who need it, but how does that create jobs," Wall Street Journal's Laura Meckler asked Jay Carney at Wednesday's WH briefing.

Carney responded: "Oh, uh, it is by, uh, I would expect a reporter from the Wall Street Journal would know this as part of the entrance exam."

"There are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance," Carney said.

Carney answers the question: "It is one of the most direct ways to infuse money directly into the economy because people who are unemployed and obviously aren't running a paycheck are going to spend the money that they get. They're not going to save it, they're going to spend it. And with unemployment insurance, that way, the money goes directly back into the economy, dollar for dollar virtually."

"Every place that, that money is spent has added business and that creates growth and income for businesses that leads them to decisions about jobs, more hiring. So, there are few other ways that can directly put money into the economy than applying unemployment insurance, Carney said.

This is ridiculous,next Carney-a.k.a. Obama- is going to pee on our leg and tell us its raining,an absolute joke!

"The Shape Of 2012 To Come"

Victor Davis Hanson;
.

The outburst from Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the so-called Shanghai Cooperation Organization should close the chapter on the much bandied about “outreach” to Iran voiced by candidate Obama in 2008. Events in Syria, despite the administration appellation of Assad as a “reformer,” likewise ended another chapter in the supposed reset diplomacy of reaching out to illiberal Middle East regimes that might not have been so illiberal had Bush & co. just given them a chance.

I don’t think the outreach to Russia is paying any dividends; they were silent as Ahmadinejad went on his rampage, have been sounding off about missile defense and U.S. ships in the Black Sea, and are clearly not “helping” to curtail the Iranian nuke project.
We hope for the best in Egypt, but for now the military interim government is jailing more people than did Mubarak and a plebiscite would probably elect an Islamist government that would reject the Camp David Accords with Israel. Pakistan just arrested those who helped us kill bin Laden, most likely in fear that someone would leak information that its own intelligence services were involved in shielding him for a decade. The Europeans are leaving Afghanistan despite the presence of a new multilateralist in the White House. Given that the Bush administration followed the War Power Acts by obtaining congressional decrees to go into Afghanistan and Iraq, one waits for the liberal anger at Obama for following in the footsteps of Clinton in the Balkans and not consulting Congress; all that is academic, since the Anglo-French and the lead-from-behind U.S. are still flummoxed by 6-million-person Libya.
Pressuring Israel has led nowhere; since the apparent Palestinian coalition government-to-be that includes Hamas includes de facto a charter calling for Israel’s destruction. And the subtext behind much of this administration’s foreign policy abroad and redistributive plans at home — emulation of the soft-power, socialist European Union — has imploded: The only strange thing about the massive U.S. debt is that Europe’s is worse and with less available in the way of mechanisms to address it. And if the air strikes over Libya are evidence of a new EU rapid-response force, well, enough said on that. If European redistribution and antagonism to private enterprise have shown us the way, it has been the way to their problems: near-steady 10 percent unemployment, massive deficits, sky-high gas and food prices, and an immigration mess.
All of the above can neither be defended as something positive nor blamed on George Bush, so the third alternative of simply not talking about the state of the nation and world, and instead focusing on either trivia, Republican heartlessness in trimming away entitlements, or the quasi-racist and illiberal criticism of Barack Obama is about all that is left