The running South Park-inspired joke is that when something goes wrong in the U.S., “blame Canada.” Obamatons also blame Bush, Fox News, Republicans, the tea party, Rush Limbaugh, the Koch brothers, and now, the weather.
Aside from the blame game, Canada and the U.S. are similar in many ways, with a couple of the other notable exceptions being the relative size of the populations, and the relative size of the two economies. Also, Canada is led by a Conservative government (if only moderately conservative), where the U.S. is led by a liberal-left, progressive regime.
Here’s my latest comparison via the January jobs report which came out today in both countries.
It’s good news for Canada, but it’s bad news for the U.S., especially for liberals who thought Obama knew what he was doing. (Some still think he knows what he’s doing, bless their hearts!) It’s even bad news according to their MSNBC division. You can tell because MSNBC is covering every anti-conservative and pro-Obama story in the world today except the January jobs numbers.
Just look at MSNBC’s top 10 stories today, on a day when January job numbers are released, and unemployment is by far the worst problem facing America (I love #9):
The big bad news that MSNBC has decided not to fully inform its viewers about, is that where economists had expected 180,000 new jobs in the U.S. for January, and even that is barely more than what is really needed every single month just to keep up with population growth, the report shows only 113,000 new jobs. What they unwittingly informed viewers is that they’re a terrible, biased news organization.
That terrible jobs news is why the liberals’ New York Times division began their news story with the unusual wording, “the American economy,” instead of “Barack Obama” — the man to whom they attribute all good things.
The American economy added 113,000 jobs…
But then came the Obamaexcuse. The weather. Or maybe not! They allude to the fact that (what they call) the “more optimistic economists” (what we call Obamatons) glibly blame “wintery conditions.” But then in a shocking move that still has me rattled, they call shenanigans on them.
…Wintry conditions that held back hiring were blamed for the weakness in December, a theory popular among more optimistic economists after those numbers came out in early January.
For last month, despite what seems like an endless series of snowstorms on the East Coast and arctic conditions in the Midwest recently, the reference week for the latest survey was Jan. 12-18, when conditions were fairly normal as Januaries go, limiting some of the impact of the weather in this report.
Wow! They could have just blamed Canada and avoided all that splainin’! But no, they’d just as soon ignore Canada because of the poor comparison it reveals. But here’s a hint: Canada invented “wintery conditions.” And Canada’s jobs report was just dandy. Better than economists expected.
Then there was this on CNN, although it wasn’t CNN’s fault. In fact like the NYT, the anchor seemed to press for a better explanation than “weather.” Their guest Mark Zandi from Moody’s actually blamed the weather. I actually laughed out loud. I guess he’s one o’ them “more optimistic economists.”
Mark Zandi: “It’s largely due to the very bad winter weather. It’s been very cold, very stormy.”
As you saw, CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin seemed a little surprised by this “blame the weather” canard. She pressed him to explain in detail just how it could be that the weather caused a poor jobs report. She wasn’t even asking in the context of why it was that The Great White North did just fine in January despite its way worse “very bad winter weather” in January, where it was even more “very cold, very stormy.”
His answer?
Mark Zandi: “…people can’t get to work, they’re not counted as employed…”.
What? You get a snow day and suddenly you’re counted as a job loss in the national job stats? I seriously don’t think so.
The Soviets used to blame all their Communist economic problems on bad weather. They apparently had poor farming weather every year for about 75 years. Otherwise, their whole empire wouldn’t have collapsed and Communism woulda worked just fine!
In Canada, 29,000 jobs were created in January. Economists expected just 20,000 new jobs. Remember Canada’s population is 1/9 of the U.S. and the size of the economy is less than that. So I tweeted this fancy math because it shows a fun, stark reality:
If the U.S. added jobs proportional to Canada's rise in Jan., it would have added 264,600 jobs. Instead: 113,000. #Obama
— Joel Johannesen (@JoelJohannesen) February 7, 2014
Proportionately, Canada created more than twice as many jobs in January. Despite worse weather. Canada would be doing even better if the U.S. economy were doing better. So in a twist, Canadians can rightly blame America. Or more appropriately, blame Barack Obama and his liberal cabal.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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