Wow. Obama has been touring the nation making sure we know how many jobs he has saved or created. It is looking more and more like he is saving or creating the jobless.

Unemployment this morning topped 10.2%, even though the number seeking employment has declined. Many have just given up. Likewise, and more troublesome, the average hours worked in a week is at its lowest in decades — 33 hours. That suggests employers are going to just expand hours worked in the future, instead of hiring new people. So the unemployment number will stay high for a while.

On January 18, 2009, Obama’s top economics advisor Larry Summers said Barack Obama’s stimulus plan would keep unemployment below 10%.

On July 17, 2009, Larry Summers said

“Both administration and independent forecasts predicted that only a very small part of the total job creation expected from the Recovery Act would take place within six months,” he continued. “Indeed, a Council of Economic Advisers’ study predicted that only 10 percent of the total job impact of the Recovery Act would take place during calendar year 2009. Given lags in spending and hiring, the peak impact of the stimulus on jobs was expected not to be achieved until the end of 2010.”

In other words, an ever growing number of Americans have to sit on the unemployment line until next year by design. Why? So in 2010, Barack Obama and the Democrats can run on falling unemployment. They’d rather you starve now so they can have recovery happen in an election year.

We’re all political pawns to Barack Obama.

One more thing: remember, outside economists say passing the Democrats’ health care plan will slow the recovery further, stagnate wages, and increase unemployment. Do we want to do that?

I though the stimulus was working.

Sean Hannity brings us some video of Joe Biden this week contradicting everything we have heard from the White House so far. According to Joe Biden, the American economy is not in a recession, but a depression.

We’ve got the video. And we owe Hannity a big thanks because you and I both know everyone else would bury this but for Sean and Fox News. No wonder the White House has declared war on them.

H/t to Justin Hart too.

As word comes out that unemployment in the United States is even higher than Barack Obama’s worst case estimates, Obama is stepping up the public relations campaign.

President Barack Obama said on Monday he expected to create or save 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days by expediting 10 major projects funded by a huge stimulus package that Congress passed in February.

Sorry folks, the more Obama tries to create or save jobs, it seems the more people lose their jobs. You know, I am a locally elected official in Macon, Georgia — I serve on City Council. And we have been dealing with stimulus funds already.

Most of the funds we have handled have focused on funding bureaucrats. Just last week in City Council, we were asked to ram through a $120,000.00 spending bill. It has to be done quickly and spent within 100 days on a “shovel ready project.” A lot of worthy projects in town got axed, because of the time limits. And most of the money will just go to the bureaucracy.

Here is an email from a friend in the private sector dealing with stimulus funds. He is having, in the private sector, the exact same experience I am having in government:

I am an environmental engineer by trade. As you know, much of the ARRA/stimulus money that is being proposed by the administration is being “pumped” into infrastructure projects. I deal specifically with municipal infrastructure every day and have clients across the state that are currently competing for this money. I can’t speak for all infrastructure, but I can speak in great detail on water and sewer specific projects.

Not one penny has been spent on construction projects in the state. The only people kept busy by this program so far have been the bureaucrats. The regulators (EPD/EPA and the funding agencies (GEFA, USDA- both state and federal) are the main folks that are benefiting from this money so far. There is so much red tape to actually get the money through to the end user that everything is stuck with the paper pushers. I have got to laugh when we hear how this money is impacting the economy. From a state standpoint, we have only helped to keep state agencies from cutting back staff… wow, what a great policy…

Exactly. This is exactly how Obama’s stimulus is working in the real world. And that is exactly why unemployment projections are so radically worse than what Obama projected.

Articles on personality conflicts do not end up getting great exposure in the New York Times by coincidence. Someone has to push the story. Someone has to give the story credibility. And someone has to get sources to talk.

That is why Larry Summers should be starting his own death watch this morning. Jackie Calmes paints a picture of a sell out hindering the economic recovery of America. With unemployment numbers coming in even higher than what Obama said they’d be if his stimulus did not pass, someone must be made the scapegoat. Scapegoat, thy name is Larry.

How do I know it is Rahm Emanuel? Well, there are a couple of reasons why I know it.

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Moe has already pointed this out. It is worth reiterating and paying attention to.

Below is a chart prepared by the Obama administration — at least the blue lines were prepared by the Obama Administration. The light blue line shows what unemployment would be like if Barack Obama’s stimulus plan had not been passed.

The dark blue line shows what unemployment would be like with Barack Obama’s stimulus plan.

The assertion was that with the stimulus plan, the growth of unemployment would slow dramatically during the second quarter of 2009, taper off in the third quarter, then begin heading back down. Without the stimulus plan, unemployment would continue skyrocketing well into 2010.

There is some additional data added to the chart. Some red dots showing where unemployment is now that Barack Obama’s stimulus plan has passed. The result?

Actual unemployment has risen faster and higher than Barack Obama said would happen even without his stimulus plan. In other words: Barack Obama’s stimulus plan has failed to do what he claimed it would do and we are in greater debt and greater unemployment than if we had done nothing at all.

On January 10, 2009, Barack Obama delivered his Weekly Address to the Nation as the then President-Elect.

He said

We start this new year in the midst of an economic crisis unlike any we have seen in our lifetime. We learned yesterday that in the past month alone, we lost more than half a million jobs – a total of nearly 2.6 million in the year 2008. Another 3.4 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs. And families across America are feeling the pinch as they watch debts mount, bills pile up and savings disappear.

Then he went on to say

It’s not too late to change course – but only if we take immediate and dramatic action. Our first job is to put people back to work and get our economy working again. This is an extraordinary challenge, which is why I’ve taken the extraordinary step of working – even before I take office – with my economic team and leaders of both parties on an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that will call for major investments to revive our economy, create jobs, and lay a solid foundation for future growth.

Eight days later, Larry Summers, Barack Obama’s head of the National Economic Council, told the world that Barack Obama would keep unemployment below ten percent.

Incumbent on keeping unemployment below ten percent was Obama’s stimulus plan.

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Welcome Andrew Sullivan readers! Remember: PETA likes pleather, not leather.

I am sitting in a Dean & Deluca enjoying a café au lait (hey, I’m from Louisiana, deal with it) looking out at the scrolling news sign at NBC News. The headline that just scrolled past read “Bernie Madoff Spends First Night in Jail.”

We have a guy who ran a ponzi scheme that stole billions of dollars from people to fund God knows what. Granted the American people elected him President, but compare what Barack Obama is doing to what Bernie Madoff did and I fail to see a substantial difference beyond Obama having a “mandate” from voters and Madoff not having one.

Both Madoff and Obama have put people out of work. Both Madoff and Obama have destroyed the financial health of lots of people. Both Madoff’s and Obama’s schemes have convoluted accounting schemes designed to obfuscate the criminal mismanagement of other people’s money.

The difference is that Madoff did it to powerful billionaires who are now millionaires. Obama did it to the rest of us.