Unemployment Stimulated! Now Up to 10.2%

What fresh hell is this? It's the worst unemployment rate in the US since 1983.

Now perhaps I misremembered, but didn't the government previously scream that if we didn't pass that utterly execrable stimulus bill, we would have unemployment at almost 9%? and that by golly, we'd stop at 8%?

So we have a horrible stimulus bill (that I opposed), and our current unemployment rate is at double digits.

Well, well, well. Take a look at this graphic. Or this one.

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle has found the worst Democratic Party talking point ever about unemployment. I swear those apparatchiks are living in utter denial and defiance of reality. So here we go, as in the middle of a job-slaying recession that lunatic party insists on spending trillions, terrifying the private sector and small business, running up the already-crazy deficit, demonizing everyone who has contrary opinions or full piggy banks, and wanting to raise taxes. OH, FOR GOODNESS SAKE, PEOPLE. Someday historians will look back and sum up the situation with the line "the inmates have taken over the asylum."

One more thing: I do NOT want to hear any more whining and pewling about how the financial mess was "inherited" from the Bush Administration. As another president said, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. Besides, the buck stops here, at the president's desk. You wanted the job, and now you have it. You've been in the big chair since January. OWN IT. And grow up. Whining and making excuses is still whining and making excuses no matter how graceful and modulated the rhetorical tones and tropes. As I often want to tell my whining students, "Shut up and get back to work." Ditto for all the deplorable clownish lot on Capitol Hill. Then again, seeing as how all ham-fisted efforts by government at stimulating the economy have done nothing or -- more likely -- backfired and produced the exact opposite effect, maybe it'd be better for all of us if you just sit and whine instead of meddling still more and making everything worse.

Anyway, click on the "stimulus bill" tag for other stimulating (ha ha) posts. The only things that the stimulus bill has clearly stimulated are satire, rage, cynicism, and unemployment.

I have a huge headache now. I'm going to go listen to the Financial Apocalypse Soundtrack.