According to Wikipedia (yes, consider the source)…. here is the definition of Stagflation:

In economics, stagflation is a situation in which the inflation rate is high and the economic growth rate slows down and unemployment remains steadily high.

Well, under Barack Obama’s economic policies passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress from 2009-10…. we at least have two of those three.  And inflation is higher than most of us have been used to since at least the 1990s.

Bob Krumm says the USA is now Stag-Nation.

This is what a stagnant economy looks like.  The gain of 115,000 jobs is less than enough to keep up with population increases, and was below the median economic forecast for April.  The only reason that the unemployment rate “fell” to 8.1% is because the labor force participation rate keeps dropping.  If you stop looking for work, you aren’t unemployed.  But you’re not employed either.  You’re just “missing.”  You don’t count.

Welcome to the country we now live in:  the Stag-Nation.

And this from the bloggers at ZeroHedge:

It is just getting sad now. In April the number of people not in the labor force rose by a whopping 522,000 from 87,897,000 to
88,419,000.  This is the highest on record. The flip side, and the reason why the unemployment dropped to 8.1% is that the labor force participation rate just dipped to a new 30 year low of 64.3%.

GP Ed Note: My post yesterday about the “invisible 86 Million” is now dramatically out of date…

Here are the official FedGov numbers:

Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services, retail trade, and health care, but declined in transportation and warehousing.

Household Survey Data

Both the number of unemployed persons (12.5 million) and the unemployment rate (8.1 percent) changed little in April.

Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rates for adult men (7.5 percent), adult women (7.4 percent), teenagers (24.9 percent), whites (7.4 percent), and Hispanics (10.3 percent) showed little or no change in April, while the rate for blacks (13.0 percent) declined over the month. The jobless rate for Asians was 5.2 percent in April (not seasonally adjusted), little changed from a year earlier.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) was little changed at 5.1 million in April. These individuals made up 41.3 percent of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployedhas fallen by 759,000.

The civilian labor force participation rate declined in April to 63.6 percent, while the employment-population ratio, at 58.4 percent, changed little.

Whether Obama & his team studied Martian or Marxist Applied Economics, one thing is clear: They didn’t learn any lessons from the unprecedented US economic expansion that resulted in the 1981-83 economic policies pushed through a Democrat Congress by Ronald Reagan.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Let’s imagine that George W. Bush’s Department of Justice had a program going that funneled weapons to the drug cartels of Mexico and then that directly to the murder of a US Border Patrol Agent. I have no doubt that the network news would be on full-scale nuke alert and heads would be rolling, including the President’s.

Now let’s imagine the truth:

In the growing Fast and Furious scandal, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death in Peck Canyon, Arizona was previously described as a chance meeting that led to a firefight: an illegal alien “rip crew” working for the Sinaloa cartel was hoping to find other illegal aliens and to rob them at gunpoint. Instead, they stumbled across a Border Patrol unit and murdered Agent Terry.

Last week, the Washington Times offered a new version of the encounter: they reported that the rip crew was not hunting illegals, but Border Patrol teams — with the intention of engaging them in combat.

Sources now tell PJ Media that neither version of events is accurate: the rip crew was not waiting for a chance encounter with other illegals, nor did the members intend to engage American law enforcement agents.

The rip crew was in Peck Canyon that evening with the intention of stealing money and drugs from a specific shipment of which they had prior knowledge.

Sources claim the Department of Justice has been trying for almost a year to hide the key information — how the rip crew knew the shipment was coming through that night.

Criminal informants (CIs) are a common tool of law enforcement agencies. When agencies apprehend criminals, agencies often reduce or drop charges in exchange for information leading to the arrests of higher-ranking criminals. Earlier this year, reports claimed that Operation Fast and Furious weapons smuggled over the border were actually chosen by an FBI informant, and paid for with money provided by the federal government.

The rip crew knew to be in Peck Canyon that December evening because a CI working for the FBI found out about a smuggling run — from the FBI.

It is not clear if the information was provided intentionally, but a possible motivation for the FBI to provide the information is known to exist: the CI had previously lost a shipment of drugs, and wanted to regain the trust of the cartel with an offering of drugs or money. The other possibility is that the FBI mistakenly allowed the CI to discover the information.

The CI used this information to organize an ambush of the drug convoy. A source tells PJM that the FBI knew from wiretaps that the CI was using their information to set up an ambush.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — through its own CIs and communications intercepts — was also aware of the planned assault.

Neither the DEA nor FBI warned Border Patrol about the expected criminal activity.

This is completely outrageous. But the American news media is laying on their backs like supine sheep. Please call your Member of Congress & US Senator TOMORROW and demand that Attorney General Eric Holder resign and that President Obama be held to account for these crimes.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

YAY Arab Spring!!!!

Judges overseeing the vote count in Egypt’s parliamentary elections say Islamist parties have won a majority of the contested seats in the first round. The judges spoke on condition of anonymity because official results are expected to be released later Thursday.

They say the Muslim Brotherhood could take 45 percent of the seats up for grabs. The liberal Egyptian bloc coalition and the ultra-fundamentalist Nour party are competing for second place.

Together, Islamist parties are expected to control a majority of parliamentary seats by March. This week’s vote was the first of six stages of parliamentary elections that will last until then.

Obama = FAIL.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Bruce alerts me to a tweet from Michael Johns, “Remember when Biden said they used to call @joncorzine for advice?”

“The reason why we called Jon,” the Vice President said (at about 0:44 above), “is that we knew he knew about the economy, about world markets, about how we had to respond unlike anyone we knew.”  Later, the Delaware Democrat reports (at 2:00) that they talked with Corzine a “long time about what the elements of a national package should be.”

Indeed, Biden wanted to start a mantra about where “Jon was right.”  Doesn’t look like the defeated Democrat of a pretty blue state was right about this: MF Global Trustee Says Shortfall Could Exceed $1.2 Billion. According to the New York Times,

The amount of customer money missing from the collapsed trading firm MF Global may be more than $1.2 billion — double previous estimates — the trustee dismantling the firm’s brokerage unit said on Monday.

. . . .

Regulators currently suspect that MF Global — at the time run by Jon S. Corzine, the former Democratic governor of New Jersey — improperly used customer money for its own purposes in the days before filing for Chapter 11 protection on Oct. 31.

Well, $1 billion is chump change to the Obama-Biden Democrats whose failed “stimulus” cost the country about 800 times that.   Can you imagine how much coverage the above clip would get if a top Republican had said this about a fellow partisan who led his company into a (possibly) billion-dollar bankruptcy?

Well, now we’re getting a better idea of what the “stimulus” failed; just look at the economic knowhow of some of the folk who designed it.

When our President is beholden to union special interests and a failed Keynesian economic dogma, most of us could have  did predict his “recovery” plans would have been a complete FAIL.

From Ed Morrissey at HotAir.com:

When running for President, Barack Obama decried the decline of American household income, which certainly dropped during the 2007-2009 Great Recession.  Since the recovery began in June 2009 — a recovery for which Obama has repeatedly claimed credit — that trend has gotten worse, not better.  A new report shows that the percentage of decline in household income during the so-called recovery actually doubled that of the recession:

During the recession, which economists say lasted from Dec. 2007 to June 2009, the median annual household income fell by 3.2 percent, from $55,309 to $53,518, according to a report authored by two former U.S. Census Bureau officials. But in the post-recession period from June 2009 to June 2011, the figure fell by 6.7 percent, from $53,518 in June 2009 to $49,909 in June 2011. …

The study found that during the post-recessionary period, families with just a male or female head with no spouse present saw a 7.3 percent decline in income compared to the 4.5 percent drop for married-couple households. Income for households with a head under the age of 25 fell by 9.5 percent, significantly more than the 5.5 percent decline for households with a head who is 45 to 54 years old.

Again, I repeat: Our President Spent $787 Billion Dollars Of Our Money And We Got Was This Lousy 9.1% Unemployment Rate (Forever…)

-Bruce (GayPatriot)