While Democrats rage on about Obama's amazing skills and performance in rescuing the American economy from the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression - there's a number they're all conveniently overlooking.
But first, we all must be reminded that this is not the worst economy since the Great Depression. This is the worst economy only since the Carter recession. The reason Obama prefers to allude to the Great Depression is that it will make it seem like he inherited a situation so dire that people will easily forgive him for not getting it all straightened out yet.
However, in 1981 Ronald Reagan took office in a much worse economy. Unemployment, inflation and interest rates were all much higher. As were energy prices (relatively speaking). One of Reagan's first acts during his first week as president in January, 1981 was to sign an executive order FIRING 40,000 U.S. GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES! To the howls of Democrats, Reagan stuck to his guns, slashing federal spending where he could, cutting taxes and regulations. All the while being called horrible names by the Left. Their attitude seemed to be - how can you fix unemployment if the government is firing people? Of course that comes from their distorted worldview that wealth is created by government.
Within three years, by 1984, the economy was starting to soar. So much so that Reagan's re-election was never really in question and he won by a landslide the size of which hasn't been repeated since.
This year, 2012 - is 1984 in Reagan years. And not only is the economy far from soaring- it's getting worse.
This is the undeniable and verifiable truth. You can share this with your undecided friends. It's quite persuasive because they can see the number for themselves at the Government's own website BLS.gov
They can take the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistucs website and plug them into Excel and come up with the same graph I've created here.
This graph shows that under Obama nearly 10 MILLION more Americans have simply dropped out of the workforce. America now has almost 90,000,000 million eligible workers who have simply decided to give up on work.
You can tell people that till they're blue in the face. But a simple graph based on government figures that they can see for themselves is a powerful way to get this point across.
As Democrats celebrate their new low unemployment rate of 8.1% - way down from their previous 8.2% - people need to see the reason that rate looks low is because 90 MILLION UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE are no longer reporting in to the unemployment office.
We all know Obama took over under tough circumstances. But he told us at the time that he was the one who could fix it. He even promised us that unemployment would NEVER go above 8.0% if his "stimulus" plan was passed. Well it was passed. Then a second one was passed - for good measure, just in case the first one didn't pan out. So he got a double shot of stimulus - and as you can see in the graph above, the workforce drop-out rate just kept on going up. And in fact, the "official" unemployment rate has never gone below 8% since!
Even if you love the guy and would like him to be your nextdoor neighbor or you would enjoy having a beer and watching a game with him - you gotta admit, his performance hasn't exactly measured up even to his OWN modest expectations.
Who would vote for a man who can't even live up to his own low expectations of himself? In 2009 Obama said the economy should be fixed by the fall of 2010. Then he added that if it wasn't fixed by the fall of 2011 he may as well not even run again. He said there would be no chance he could get re-elected if there had been no improvement. So by his own words - we would be foolish to vote for him. That's not just my opinion - that's HIS opinion!
Fool me once - it's on you. Fool me twice - it's on me. You keep doing the same thing over and over and it doesn't work... it's time to give something new a try, don't you think?
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