The Latest Jobs Report, Un-Spun

The kitchen magicians of the Obama regime were very pleased with how their latest batch of cooked employment numbers turned out. They were able to show a HUGE drop in the fake unemployment rate (all the way from 9.4% to 9.0%), accompanied by a jobs increase of a WHOPPING 36,000 for January.

For those who prefer reality to myth and propaganda, here are a few snapshots from the real world via The Economic Collapse blog.

The following are 10 statistics that reveal that the latest unemployment numbers from the government are no reason to cheer....

#1 According to CNBC, economists were expecting the U.S. economy to add 145,000 jobs during January. Obviously the 36,000 figure was a huge disappointment.

#2 Approximately 150,000 jobs need to be added to the economy each month just to keep up with population growth.

#3 The government jobs report also indicated that 504,000 Americans "dropped out of the labor force" in January. That may make the unemployment numbers look better, but the truth is that the vast majority of those 500,000 Americans still need incomes and still need jobs.

#4 According to the latest numbers from Gallup, the unemployment rate actually increased to 9.8% at the end of January.

#5 Gallup's measure of "underemployment" (those that are unemployed plus those that are working part-time but want full-time employment) was sitting at 18.9% at the end of January.

#6 As I reported yesterday, there are approximately 28 million Americans that would like full-time jobs but that don't have full-time jobs.

#7 According to Zero Hedge, the number of Americans that are "not in the labor force" but that would like a job right now has hit an all-time record high. If you add all of those people into the official unemployment figure it would jump to 12.8%.

#8 According to Calculated Risk, this is the deepest and most brutal employment downturn that the United States has experienced since World War II. The current employment downturn started 37 months ago and there doesn't seem to be any indication that we will return to pre-recession levels any time soon.

#9 The U.S. Labor Department has also announced that job growth during 2010 was much weaker than they had previously reported. The numbers for 8 months were revised down, and the numbers for 4 months were revised up. After all of the revisions are accounted for, it turns out that a total of 215,000 fewer jobs were created during 2010 than originally calculated.

#10 According to one brand new survey, 4 out of every 10 Americans are struggling "a lot" to pay the bills right now.

Read the entire article here.

Fed's Money Printing to Cover Bank Theft Leading to Food Inflation

I realize it's not saying much, but it is true -- Dylan Ratigan has the only show worth watching on MSNBC.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Police Brutality in the USA: Americans, Too Are Oppressed

A typically powerful article by Paul Craig Roberts.

Police in the US now rival criminals, and exceed terrorists, as the greatest threat to the American public. Rogelio Serrato is the latest case to be in the news of an innocent person murdered by the police. Serrato was the wrong man, but the Monterey County, California, SWAT team killed the 31-year old father of four and left the family home a charred ruin.

The fact that SWAT teams often go to the wrong door shows the carelessness with which excessive force is used. In one instance the police even confused the town's mayor with a drug dealer, broke into his home, shot dead the family's pet dogs, and held the mayor and his wife and children at gun point. But most cases of police brutality never make the news.

Most who suffer abuse from the police don't bother to complain. They know that to make an enemy of the police brings a lifetime of troubles. Those who do file complaints find that police departments tend to be self-protective and that the naive and gullible public tends to side with the police.

However, you can find plenty of examples of police brutality on youtube, more than you can watch in a lifetime. I have just searched google for "youtube police brutality" and the result is: "497,000 results." There's everything from police shooting a guy in a wheelchair to body slamming a befuddled 89-year old great grandmother to tasering kids and mothers with small children. The fat goon cops love to beat up on women, kids, and old people.

The 497,000 google results may contain duplicates as more than one person might have posted a video of the same event, and the incidents occurred over more than one year. However, probably only a small percentage of incidents are captured on video by onlookers, and many incidents of police brutality have no witnesses. What the videos reveal is that a large percentage of police move with alacrity to assault the public. The number of incidences could be very high. One million annually would not be an exaggeration.

In contrast, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, in 2009 (the most recent year for which data is compiled), there were 806,000 aggravated assaults (not including assaults by police against the public) by criminals against the public, of which 216,814 were committed by hands and feet and not by weapons. (In the U.S. if you merely push a person or grab his arm, you have committed assault. "Freedom and democracy" America uses any excuse to multiply the number of felons.)

Considering the data, one might conclude that the police are a greater danger to the public than are criminals.

Indeed, the trauma from police assault can be worse than from assault by criminals. The public thinks the police are there to protect them. Thus, the emotional and psychological shock from assault by police is greater than the trauma from being mugged because you stupidly wandered into the wrong part of town.

Why are the police so aggressive toward the public?

In part because their ranks attract bullies, sociopaths and psychopaths. Even normal cops are proud of their authority and expect deference. Even cops who are not primed to be set off can turn nasty in a heartbeat.

In part because police are not accountable. The effort decades ago to have civilian police review boards was beat back by "law and order" conservatives.

In part because the police have been militarized by the federal government, equipped with military weapons, and trained to view the public as the enemy.

Screwing the Vets and the Families

"Screwing" is probably the gentlest, least offensive word to describe this.  In more plain terminology, if this scheme involving the Veterans Administration and their so-very-literally partner in crime, Prudential, does not piss you off then you are likely dead or unconscious.

For How Long Will You Allow It?

Do the Math

As of right about now, the U.S. "official" National Debt is

$13,454,937,607,142.23

The U.S. population just hit

310,240,882

Calculate your share.

BP's Myth Busted - The Oil is Still in the Gulf

The fact that this report comes via mainstream corporate media channel ABC News, should put the reader on notice that the actual story is worse yet that what is disclosed here [which in itself is plenty to confirm suspicions that BP and the Obama administration have been lying].

Oil from the BP spill has not been completely cleared, but miles of it is sitting at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, according to a study currently under way.

Professor Samantha Joye of the Department of Marine Sciences at the University of Georgia, who is conducting a study on a research vessel just two miles from the spill zone, said the oil has not disappeared, but is on the sea floor in a layer of scum. “We’re finding it everywhere that we’ve looked. The oil is not gone,” Joye said.

[. . . .]

Joye said the oil cannot be natural seepage into the gulf, because the cores they’ve tested are showing oil only at the top. With natural seepage, the oil would spread from the top to the bottom of the core, she said.

“It looks like you just took a strip of very sticky material and just passed it through the water column and all the stuff from the water column got stuck to it, and got transported to the bottom,” Joye said. “I know what a natural seep looks like — this is not natural seepage.”

In some areas the oily material that Joye describes is more than two inches thick. Her team found the material as far as 70 miles away from BP’s well. “If we’re seeing two and half inches of oil 16 miles away, God knows what we’ll see close in....”

This oil remaining underwater has large implications for the state of sea life at the bottom of the gulf. Joye said she spent hours studying the core samples and was unable to find anything other than bacteria and microorganisms living within. “There is nothing living in these cores other than bacteria,” she said. “I’ve yet to see a living shrimp, a living worm, nothing.”

The Obama administration announced on August 4th that 74 percent of the oil was gone -- having broken down or been cleaned up or been magically disappeared by pixies and mermaids. Days later, however, studies conducted by the University of Georgia and the University of South Florida found "that almost 80 percent of the oil that leaked from BP’s well is still out in the waters of the Gulf."

Lying bastards.

EPIC Sues NSA for Info re Google Relationship

From the Electronic Privacy Information Center [an organization that's been fighting the good fight since the early 1990s] web site:

EPIC Files Suit For Documents Regarding Google/NSA Partnership
Today, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the National Security Agency in the United States District Court in the District of Columbia. The agency failed to respond to EPIC's FOIA request for documents about an "Information Assurance" partnership with Google. EPIC previously appealed to the agency to comply with its legal duty to produce the documents, but he agency failed to respond. EPIC is also seeking the Presidential Directive that grants the NSA authority to conduct electronic surveillance in the United States. For more information, see EPIC: Open Government.