Axelrod's Imbecile Math: US. Lost 288 Million Jobs in 2009

Axelrod displays his 23,143 fingers

June 7, 2012 - Last Sunday, I heard David Axelrod make an incredible statement on CBS's "Face The Nation." I had to shake my head. "Did I hear that right?" I wondered. Yes, I did: Axelrod said that when Obama first took office, the U.S. was losing "800,000 jobs a day."

A day?!? "That can't be right," I thought. It isn't, and if it was correct it would mean that the U.S. lost 24 million jobs in 30 days. At Axelrod's rate of "800,000 jobs a day," it would mean 144 million lost jobs in only six months - or 288 million jobs lost over 12 months. Impossible? I think so.

From the June 3 show transcript, Axelrod is quoted as saying, "Bob, first of all, obviously the-- the numbers this month were disappointing. The President said when he took office back in 2009 and-- and the country was losing eight hundred thousand jobs a day..." Full transcript...

A CNN report in February, 2009 noted that "Employers slashed another 598,000 jobs off of U.S. payrolls in January." That's per month. Divide 598,000 by the 31 days in January and that comes to just over 19,290 per day, considerably less than Axelrod's hallucinatory 800,000. Story at CNN...

Of course, host Bob Schieffer - as he often does - just let that incredible statement slide past without comment. Was Schieffer just not listening carefully, or does he not know that the entire population of the U.S. is not much more than the number of jobs that Axelrod claimed were lost in the first year of Obama's presidency. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. population estimate for Jan. 1, 2009 was 305,529,237 people. That's everyone of all ages. So how could Axelrod - and Schieffer - think that 288,000,000 jobs were lost in 2009?

I was beginning to wonder what kind of drugs they hand out in the West Wing these days, but then I was made aware that drugs might not be the cause of Axelrod's math stupidity. After all, Boss Obama is not very good with math, either. Remember when Obama said there were 58 states ("we've been to 57 with , ah, one more to go")?  Yes, well, today I saw this beautiful headline: "Obama Can't Do Fourth Grade Math; '60 Mil. Divided by 600 Thous. is $54.94'" over at PunditPress.com, where they have that and other fun Obama math items to laugh at. And think about this: If everyone in Obama's administration is this math challenged, how can we trust them with the mathematics required to balance a budget?