Barbra Streisand may not be the brightest star in Hollywood.
In fact, sometimes you look into her eyes and get the feeling someone else is driving.
The starlet, who once compared President Obama to “kings” and “gods,” penned a March 30 commentary in the Huffington Post singing the praises of the president for “creating” so many jobs in the last five-and-a-half years.
The piece, titled, “Have you heard the good news?,” promptly heaps praise on Obama: “In the wake of the financial crisis, President Obama took the helm of a sinking economic ship and help to right it. The unemployment rate is now once again at pre-recession levels – the lowest in seven years (5.5%).”
Streisand blasts Republicans’ relentless “opposition” to Obama’s purported efforts to save American workers.
Unfortunately, the “good news” from Streisand, the renowned economist, is indeed news to the 93 million Americans currently out of work.
As WND reported just last week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the number of Americans 16 years and older who did not participate in the labor force rose from 92,898,000 in February to a record high of 93,175,000 in March.
It was first time the number of Americans out of the labor force has exceeded 93 million.
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In fact, the 5.5 percent unemployment rate Streisand cites doesn’t indicate Americans are finally back to work. It means so many have given up hope of getting jobs that they aren’t even counted as “unemployed” anymore.
The labor force participation rate plunged from 62.8 percent to 62.7 percent from February to March. Nearly 100,000 more Americans dropped out of the labor force last month.
But take heart, America.
Babs has more “good news”: “President Obama’s Administration, with only opposition from the Republicans, has steadily helped put more than 11 million Americans back to work in the private sector.”
But is 11 million jobs really a robust milestone worthy of praise – and an indicator that Republicans should be thrown out of office for their “opposition” – as Streisand suggests?
According to a Forbes analysis of the issue, “President Reagan entered office in a period of high inflation which was stamped out by high interest rates that in turn led to the 1982 recession. His job-creation record after that may fairly be termed outstanding: nearly 20 million more Americans were employed when he left office than when the recession ended. Overall, including the recession on his watch, Reagan’s net job growth over eight years was 16.1 million.”
Forbes added, “Charting Obama and Reagan’s job-creation against overall U.S. population increases makes the picture look even worse for Obama, and the Reagan-era U.S. had a much smaller population.”
And through his executive amnesty, the Daily Caller notes, Obama “is giving out one work permit for every two jobs created since his inauguration.”
Streisand is known for her long history of leftist advocacy and exaltation of Obama – even comparing him to “gods” and “kings” in a September 2014 interview with the Associated Press:
“I think we have advanced with Obama, and I think people are giving him a hard time, which is not fair because this Affordable Care Act is working and it’s going to help a lot of people,” she said. “But it’s like Greek tragedy, you know, they always try to bring down the gods, bring down the kings, bring down the leaders.”
She has even dubbed Obama “more fiscally conservative” than his recent GOP predecessors.
In 2012, Streisand declared, “Compared to George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, Obama has been more fiscally conservative than any other president in recent history, with the exception of President Bill Clinton.”
