Half a dozen years ago there was a "bar poker league" playing here in Ohio.  I was active and did OK.  And just like the "big boys and girls" many of us had nicknames.  "Tall Timber" was over 6'5".  "Short Bus" was, well, a little slow.  "Shake and Bake" were stoner brothers.  And I was "Numbers" due mainly to a pretty good memory for trivia, the use of several mnemonc devices, and the fact thatI was one ofthe few players who actually knew an understood the math behind the game.

Knowing and undertsanding the math behind ANY game is important to "duh, WINNING!"   So here are some important numbers to know and understand:

first from INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Romney’s Right: Obama Did Make It Worse.

There are 2 million fewer private-sector jobs now than when Obama was sworn in, and the unemployment rate is 1.5 percentage points higher.

• There are now more long-term unemployed than at any time since the government started keeping records.

• The U.S. dollar is more than 12% weaker.

• The number of Americans on food stamps has climbed 37%.

• The Misery Index (unemployment plus inflation) is up 62%.

• And the national debt is about 40% higher than it was in January 2009.

Can you stomach some more?  

9.2% — unemployment rate for June.

0.1% — increase since May.

16.2% — underemployment rate for June.

0.4% — increase since May.

8% — conventional wisdom for the maximum allowable unemployment rate to win reelection.

15 — remaining BLS reporting months before Election Day.

255,000 — net jobs that must be created each and every month to reach 8%.

18,000 — net jobs created last month.

44,000 — downward revision to April and May job creation.

3,825,000 — total net jobs needed before Election Day.

2,100,000 — jobs created in the last fifteen months.

11.2% — unemployment rate if the labor participation rate was as high as it was in January, 2009.

290,000 — best monthly net jobs gain during Obama administration.

231,000 — real best gain, minus temporary Census hiring.

14 — months since best monthly gain.

1% — decrease in DJIA in the opening minute of trading, day that jobs figures released.

$1,200,000,000,000 — cost of ARRA “stimulus,” with interest.

1,900,000 — net jobs lost since ARRA was signed.

2 — quantitative easing programs since 2008.

~$2,000,000,000,000 — total of first QE program during Great Recession.

$600,000,000,000 — total of second QE program, just ended.

40% — increase in federal debt since January, 2009.

30% — increase in annual federal spending since January, 2009.

20% — decrease in federal revenues since January, 2009.

12% — decline in value of US dollar since January, 2009.

37% — increase in number of Americans on food stamps since January, 2009.

62% — increase in Misery index since January, 2009.

800 — days since the Senate passed a budget.

1.9% — last quarterly GDP increase.

2.5% — consensus projection for last quarterly GPD increase.

2.7% — official White House projection.

3.0% or better — GDP growth needed to dent unemployment.

3.6% — official White House GDP growth projection for 2012.

2.7% — IMF GDP growth projection for 2012.

30% — federal debt held by public as percentage of GDP, 2005.

60% — federal debt held by public as percentage of GDP, 2010.

180% — federal debt held by public as percentage of GDP, CBO estimate, 2035.

0% — odds of current path being sustainable.

folow up to prior post:

Obama Wrong On Tax Rates.

Most folks were willing to let this one go.  The FIRST time.  And "honest" slip.  But now it's been repeated multiple times, not just by POTUS but by staff (chief political advisor) and should be addressed.

First utterence was thought to be back in February.  "Listen, Abraham Lincoln helped build the interstate…the intercontinental railroad in the middle of the Civil War because he understood this was going to be important."  Turns out he als said itas far back as 2009 (At about the 5:10 mark of this video), and again at That School Up North in May of 2010 in Obama’s commencement speech to the University of Michigan,

An intercontinental railroad would run from New York ... to Rio de Janeiro.  Or from Bejing to Madrid.  Or from Paris to Pretoria.  Linking continents.  What it appears POTUS was referring to was the TRANSConinental RR.  Crossing a continent.  

OK.  That's one.   It was built by the  Central Pacific Railroad of California and the Union Pacific Railroad NOT by the Feds.  This dispute seems to be that anytime the gov't gets out of the way and lets enterprising Americans DO something, the gov't can take credit for it.  Needless to say I don't by that arguement.

Bust as for the case in chief, "one time a gaffe like this can easily be considered a slip up and dismissed as unimportant. We now have at least four examples of Obama and his underlings misidentifying the transcontinental railroad as an intercontinental railroad. It is clear that they really don’t know what they are talking about and are so ignorant of American history as to not be able to see this obvious mistake written down into their talking points and to be able to correct it on the fly.

So much for Obama being the smartest man in human history, eh?

Finally, this whole intercontinental FAILroad issue really does highlight the Old Media’s bias in favor of Obama. Can you imagine any situation where the Old Media would have ignored so many instances of Bush or members of his administration repeatedly blurting out the same incorrect talking point?"  from BIGGovernmet.com

They have.  We haven't

Obama told TV titan Matt Lauer during a Feb. 1, 2009, MSNBC interview that he would be “held accountable” to improve the economy by the American public and, “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

With four simple words — "Give it to me!" — President Barack Obama took possession of the economy.

For months, the White House and Obama's economic team have laid the economic crisis at the feet of President George W. Bush. But there comes a point in a presidency when inheritance becomes ownership. Obama made that pivot Tuesday in Michigan

from Matthew Scheffer over at NRO.com:

"A few weeks ago I was sitting around in a park with some college buddies, and one us asked the rest of us how many friends we had from a different generation. There was silence. So, how many acquaintances? Did we even, excepting our bosses and professors, speak to people one generation older, face-to-face, in a typical day? Did we speak to anybody two generations older at all? More silence.

I thought it was very sad, so I wrote an essay about it for the magazine, now online here."

I spent about 1/3 of my life from 0-18 at my grandparents house surrounded by grandparent, great aunts and great uncles and a few great grandparents.   My stepson and neices?  Maybe 10% tops.  And I daresay it's lower than that in most families.  So what?  As Scheffer points out 

"Alienation from the elderly makes us ahistorical, senseless of what has gone into making our lives possible; it blocks the transmission of tradition; it creates a provincial chauvinism by letting each generation go unconfronted by the standards of the past, making all self-certain of their own, chronologically local mores; we lose humility, a sense of our human weakness and the impermanence of our bodies, when we are exclusively with the physically fit, the healthy, the attractive, the upwardly mobile, and never the declining; and most important is nothing extrinsic, but that we are missing out on other persons who deserve our love and friendship and knowledge, especially in the time when retirement and death of peers make one most vulnerable to loneliness."

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
— Wilkins Micawber