Fascinating interview this on the March 17, 2013 edition of ABC’s “This Week” with House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), on two counts. First is the headline, “House Speaker John Boehner says he ‘absolutely’ trusts Obama, trying to bridge differences.” I guess the qualifier is the “trying to bridge differences” part. But I’d really like to hear Boehner define that in his own words. For example, what basis do you have to trust President Obama after he said that the Affordable Care Act would not add one dime to the deficit and to the national debt? It was the president himself who said that he would not sign the Affordable Care Act if it would add a dime to the deficit. That’s just two examples, but there is a laundry list of similar cases where the words are 180 degrees from reality. Just where does this basis of trust come from Mr. Boehner?

Next in the theater-of-the-ridiculous is that Obama and Boehner agree that the country doesn’t have an immediate debt crisis. Boehner says a debt crisis does loom in the years ahead because entitlement programs are not sustainable if they aren’t changed. Once again, I guess it all depends on what the meaning of “immediate” is. The Associated Press apparently doesn’t have a clue, or independent thought on the subject either. They just report what “some conservatives” say. What it means to each of these two is the crisis won’t happen until I’m out of office (if not Speakership) so it may as well not exist. It also means that they, unlike House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, don’t have the balls intestinal fortitude to tackle the problem before it becomes a crisis. When the fix will be more painful. The lack of leadership in both of them is astounding. I am reminded of a line that James Carville said about then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and candidate Obama; ‘if Hillary gave [Obama] one of her balls, they’d both have two.’

Daily Beast and Newsweek contributor Michael Tomasky defines the Left’s alternate universe in one sentence. On advising Obama on how he should respond to the “deficit hawks” over House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan’s budget (that the president should listen to advice from the media is another topic), Tomasky says, “Obama should ignore them—and make it clear that jobs, not deficits, are his main priority.”

The alternate reality is that the only thing we’ve seen grow since Obama took office is deficits and debt. Not jobs. Which for normal people, begs the question whether Obama is sincere, lying, or has a clue on how to create jobs in the private sector? The left-leaning media, like Obama, don’t care about deficits and the national debt. In fact, reducing the national debt and arriving at a balanced budget isn’t in Obama’s proposed budget. And that alone should be cause for concern.

The reality is that Obama’s policies and deficit expansion have only worsened unemployment and expanded the need for government help. It doesn’t matter that he says jobs are his main priority. He’s been saying that since before his first inauguration. Both he, and Mr. Tomasky are of the belief that we can spend our way to prosperity and borrow our way out of debt. How’s that working for you? The reality is, the only way either of those things will turn around is by turning loose this economy and let it grow, instead of sapping the blood from it and holding it back. That’s when real jobs, not government jobs, will be created.

Note too that the Left has a word for being responsible with the people’s money. If you think that the government should not spend more than it takes in, then you’re a deficit hawk. Which ostensibly must be as bad as a defense hawk or war hawk. It follows that you’re a deficit dove (or ignoramus) if you think money grows on trees and can spend and borrow as much as you want, with no limit whatsoever. Which label do you think the low information voters identify with?

Link: How Obama Should Respond to Ryan

There’s a reason Obama’s economy and so-called recovery is referred to as the recoverless recovery. For much the same reason that drops in the unemployment rate don’t mean that we are creating jobs.

This video illustrates the performance of the last eight recessions and why the last three all look different.

In Obama’s jobless recovery, the unemployment rate is going down. Not because more people are working, but because fewer people are working.  296,000 less in February than in January. The BLS simply shrinks the job universe of workers, referred to as the labor force participation rate, before computing the unemployment rate. It is as though those unemployed whose 99 weeks of unemployment have run out, and are still unemployed, have died. The government stops counting them.

This is how the BLS describes it . . .

The civilian labor force is the sum of employed and unemployed persons. Those persons not classified as employed or unemployed are not in the labor force. The unemployment rate is the number unemployed as a percent of the labor force. The labor force participation rate is the labor force as a percent of the population, and the employment-population ratio is the employed as a percent of the population.

• When you include those unemployed as still living, the real unemployment rate, the U-6, is 14.3%.
• Multiple job holders, those needing and getting two or more jobs, grew by 340,000 since January 2013.
• There are 1,129,000 fewer workers in the work force in February 2013 than in February 2012.
• The number of unemployed that have been unemployed for 27 weeks or over increased by 89,000 from January 2013.
• Unemployment rate for “Black  or African Americans” ages 16 to 19 years old went from 37.8% in January to 43.1% in February 2013. Same age bracket for “White” was 20.8% in January and 22.1% in February 2013.

The “highlight” that The White House and the media report is “Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 236,000 in February, and the unemployment rate edged down to 7.7. And, that 236,000 number includes second and third jobs found by the still employed. And,  when you consider that due to retirements and population growth, a break-even in job creation would be 250,000 jobs per month, that we not only have a recoverless recovery, but a jobless recovery as well.

The details are here . . .

Employment Situation for February 2013 by