Other posters have diaried today about the jobs report and the media's absolute saturation of how "disappointing" the numbers were (thanks as usual, NPR!), but there's one little thing that needs to be clarified:
Year Aug
2002 -11
2003 -45
2004 122
2005 193
2006 183
2007 -18
2008 -274
2009 -231
2010 -51
2011 85
2012 96(P)
Anything stand out to you?
http://data.bls.gov/...
Wow, who would have guessed from the media's breathless reportage of the dark, dark shadow settling over the president's campaign that in terms of job creation, the economy had its strongest August in six fucking years. You know, even stronger than the two years before the Bush recession started - the alleged "boom" years.
But no, not one peep about that (and I was listening to NPR a lot today because I was in the car a lot today). Nor one word about that FACT on the Times website. Lord only knows how other news organizations have managed to spin the news as a dark omen for Obama. It's almost like the media has decided that a jobs report that fell 30,000 jobs short of some ill-defined and unsourced "prediction" has trumped the incredible Democratic National Convention. I wonder why that is? We wouldn't want the president getting too much of a bounce, now would we? I just love our nation's liberal media, don't you?
You want to know what else is unforgivable? That the president's political team hasn't been pushing back with the incontrovertible FACT of the best August in six years all goddamn day. I'm not saying they need to make the figure out to be a victory (I fully concede that it's not, but it's not, oh, say, 185,000 jobs LOST), but the fact that the media has been allowed to spin 96,000 jobs ADDED as some sign of mortal danger to Obama's reelection chances is sickening.
As a related aside: the president's team has GOT to get better at politicking and pushing back the inevitable media "Democrats are doomed" memes; a prime example of malpractice was seeing Plouffe and Axelrod hem and haw about whether we're better off. Their lack of an instant "YES" was shocking to me - these guys are supposed to be the braintrust in charge of re-electing the President? Jesus, just say yes, but things could be better if we didn't have radical Republicans blocking everything.
In short: get out there, spread the word, and don't let the media's beating of the funeral drum with a drumstick composed of 96,000 new jobs ADDED go unanswered. Write LTEs, call into local NPR shows, whatever it takes to challenge the media's desired dampening of Obama's convention bounce.