It’s a shame that it’s not September 2012 already.  Because then, President Obama, who we can now call “Mr. 47%” would probably get to join all of the people that his policies have put into the unemployment line.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President’s performance. That’s the lowest level of total approval yet recorded. The President’s ratings first fell below 50% just a few weeks ago on July 25. Fifty-two percent (52%) now disapprove.

We get something of a hint as to why this is,

Nationally, support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low. Just 42% favor the plan while 53% are opposed. Other data shows that 51% fear the federal government more than private insurance companies. Forty-one percent (41%) fear the insurance companies more. Overall, 32% favor a single-payer health care system for the U.S. while 57% are opposed.

I guess the President’s strategy of telling people to shut up because “he won” and “he’s President”, suggesting that legitimately concerned citizens at town hall meetings are really just kook right wing fringe extremists to whom we don’t need to listen, and trying to sneak 1000+ page bills through Congress before anyone can find out what they contain isn’t working.  For a change of pace, maybe Obama might try a little honesty, transparency, and responsiveness to the will of the people?

Nah, that’s just crazy talk.

More bad news for Obama, the Democrats, AND all of us Americans who will have to continue to suffer because of the obtuse policies of these buffoons – Last week’s new jobless claims rate was, ah, “revised upward” to 558,000 claims.   But but but, I thought that unemployment went down 0.1% last month and that prosperity was just around the corner? 

Reality check – the reason the unemployment rate went down 0.1% last month was not because new jobs were being created.  It was due to the vagarities of the way the “unemployment rate” is calculated, coupled with the fact that many workers are becoming classified as “discouraged workers” and being factored out of the labour force entirely.   What’s worse, when you calculate the U6 unemployment rate – which is basically the entirety of people completely out of work plus those who are want to work full-time hours but are only able to obtain part time work (which is also a factor in employment slowdown), it’s at 16.3%.  Folks, that’s in the range that was consistently seen throughout the Great Depression, when we had another socialist pushing through grandiose deficit-spending schemes and make-work programs which utterly failed to do anything beneficial.