For those less than intuition-savvy out there, let me explain why the traditional media blows.

I pulled this number from MSNBC. For now I will concentrate on a single paragraph:

Job growth is expected to be a key issue as November’s presidential election nears, and President Bush could be vulnerable. The economy has lost more than 2 million jobs since he took office, giving him the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover.

Filtering out the normal opinionating and projectionism of what may or may not happen in 9 months and the flying of it under the "News" banner, and you still find a disturbing "fact"

the worst job creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover

Simply put, the criterion of “worst” is impossible to define. In a field of study as number conscious as economics there is at least a dozen ways to define "bad" and "good" any of them would likely work in this situation. But "worst" has a better ring to it so it makes it in.

I’m going to go ahead and assume the writer means lower number of jobs = bad, and higher number of jobs = good. However if the writer were to use the same logic through out the article, it wouldn't have anything to do with unemployment it would be touting the magnificence of the U.S. economy, because to be consistent he would have to define the "wellness" of the economy by the GNP, so in that respect our economy is the absolute best to ever exist in the history of the world. Hey numbers don't lie do they?

So that's the rub, it's not really the numbers that matter; it's the relation of the numbers to other important indicators, so as to put them in some "context". Now where getting somewhere!

In context, lets just compare Presidents Hoover and Bush 43. Shall we?

In 1929, when Hoover took over there were 47.6 Million people employed, and 1.6 unemployed, for a pretty little unemployment rate of 3.2%. Roar'n 20's eh? Now compare that to 1932 when there were 38.9 million employed, and 12.1 million sitting on the sidelines. This equates to a 23.6% unemployment rate, and a net drop of 8.7 million jobs. Now that my friends is a recession.

In 2001 when Bush took over there were 136.1 million people employed, and 6.0 million not, and an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent. Today there are 134.5 million people employed and 8.3 million not. This equates to an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent. All told that’s a drop of 1.6 million jobs.

Using this logic, It's an absolute forgone conclusion that someday we will have a president with a "worse" employment record that Hoover. We will eventually get to the point where a 12.1 million jobs drop off the face of the earth and nobody notices because it's a statistical anomaly compared to the 1.5 billion other people who are working.

All of this is of course pointless, since no president or political leader deserves any credit what so ever for an economy. Government can only slow, hinder, or delay economic growth. Giant recessions are a result of exponential government control, and giant expansions are the result of bottled up capital being released from the burden of taxation and control.

And before you jump on me for ignoring the numbers I just presented, sit down and think of the current situation in context. The Leftists of the media and this country would have you believe that nobody has jobs, the economy blows, and it's all Bush's fault. But 5.6% unemployment is the statistically average rate of this country since 1948. This country essential spent 20 straight years above that level in 70's and 80's (save for 1988). So before you go all Chicken Little/Doomacrat on me, realize unemployment is about average and it's dropping, and realize that we as a country are making more money right now that any country has ever done since the dawn of time.