Joe Biden: Job Killer!

President Joe Biden wasn’t on the job a full day before Republicans on Facebook were screaming that he was a job killer. Said jobs were being murdered in their crib by Biden pulling the plug on the Keystone XL pipeline. 

This is great news! People are back to squabbling over actual policy and using something resembling facts to do so.

Whatever side you fall on, the fact is, some number of jobs will never materialize if the pipeline doesn’t. The KeyStone XL pipeline was going to create jobs for those who fabricated and laid the pipes, for those who maintained the pipes, for the refineries down in the gulf, and even those who had to come in and clean up hundreds of miles of Montana wilderness and apply Dawn dish-washing liquid to wolves and grizzly bears after the first rupture.

Arguing over policy is far preferable than people making excuses for a lunatic in the White House who in the span of one week tried to threaten the state of Georgia into manufacturing votes, called his super-Christian Vice President a “pussy” for not shredding the Constitution, and then inciting a mob that, among other things, tried to have that VP murdered. 

Wow. What a wild and whacky time it was two weeks ago.

Granted, there are still people posting ridiculous things about Trump, portraying him as a victim, a patriot, and, most laughably, a Christian. I call this one “The lion, the bitch, and the big bird.” 

But let’s leave it to someone else to deprogram the hardcore cultists.

We’re here to talk about Joe Biden killing jobs. Not Trump trying to kill Democracy. Or, for that matter, Trump’s incompetence in handling COVID-19 (happy anniversary, America) killing, you know, 400,000 actual people. After all, the Trump version of the Republican party doesn’t care about actual adult humans. Once you’re out of the womb, you’re on your own. And if you have the gall to have diabetes, or a weak heart, or, god forbid, be an old person in a nursing home — well, sorry Charlie, it’s just your time to die. 

Anyway. Jobs. Here’s a chart!

Here’s another chart for folks who think the stock market is the economy and claim with a straight face that their retirement accounts didn’t grow every year for the previous 10 years.

Here’s the interactive version of the unemployment chart if you want to play with it.

Did unemployment drop under Trump’s first three years? Why, yes. Yes, it did. That’s fabulous news. But as with almost everything in his life Trump inherited this from super socialist Barack Hussein Obama. Unemployment had been dropping for six continuous years.

And as with most of the other stuff he inherited, he squandered it. See that huge spike there? Yes, that’s COVID-related. And while Trump did not cause COVID, his complete refusal to have any sort of cohesive federal response not only led to the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives, but to the loss of millions of jobs.

Would another president — any of other president of any party — have done a better job? Who knows?! But yes. Absolutely yes. 

COVID would have led to a spike in unemployment regardless of president. But had we done what New Zealand had done — a full on lockdown for six weeks and adults wearing masks instead of whining like three-year-olds — we could perhaps be getting back to something approaching normal.

And any other president would have at least shown some humility when jobs temporarily started to come back last summer. But of course, folks had to brag — actually BRAG — that this was the best employment growth ever. Firstly, it was a lie (shocker). Secondly, even if it were true, so what? This is the equivalent of me swiping all of the money out of your savings account, waiting two weeks, then giving you a $100 back and bragging that you haven’t seen this sort of income growth in your entire life. 

Now, I fully expect that folks can run off and get their own charts and talk about the types of jobs being created and lost, about balancing environmental concerns with human concerns. But again, we’re arguing politics, rather than “Should we torch democracy and anoint Donald Trump as our God King to own the libs?!” And the focus is on Biden, an unremarkably average politician, as opposed to someone who fancied himself the second coming of Stalin until it turned out it took more than watching TV, tweeting, and playing golf.

That almost feels like progress. Boring, stupid, almost pointless, American politics.

Until Trump’s impeachment trial starts up.