The following subjects have been banging around in my head over the past few weeks, so I thought I would deal with them this Sunday.

Privileged Few: The Wall Street Firm of Goldman Sachs, where average salaries are about $90,000 a year, got 200 doses of the H1N1 vaccine from the government to treat their “high risk” employees.  That’s the same number of doses provided to Lenox Hill Hospital in NYC.  Yeah!  Government health care!  Power to the people!

“Saved Jobs”: The official unemployment rate has now risen to 10.2 percent, yet the Obama administration is continually talking about the jobs it has created and “saved.”  Nowhere in labor economics terminology has the term “saved job” ever been used.  Plenty of government jobs have been “saved” with taxpayer stimulus funds, but a review by the Associated Press found the government’s early report overstated the number of public sector jobs “saved.”  For example, the report indicated that 114 customer service and meter reader jobs were saved in the Palm Beach (Fla) Water Department, but only 57 people are employed in that department.

“Jobless Recovery”: As long as we’re talking about Obama-isms, why don’t we examine the term “Jobless Recovery.”  As a labor economist I consider this the most ridiculous and incredulous term that the administration has ever tried to sell.  When an economy recovers unemployment falls.  Increased employment is THE definition of an economic recovery.  There is no such thing as a “jobless recovery”.

Coattails: Last month Obama went to Copenhagen representing the city of Chicago, which won 4th place in its bid to host the Olympic Games.  Last week he went to New Jersey to stump for the re-election of Governor John Corzine, who was defeated by Republican Chris Christie.  Anybody else want to jump on those Obama coattails and take a ride?

Clueless Man Child: Rush Limbaugh now calls Barak Obama a “man child”.  This is insulting to the President and a bit bold, even for Rush.  But the longer I think about it, the more it fits Obama.  His knowledge about the economy is indeed “child like.”  I was hopeful that Barak knew something about economics.  Bubba Clinton understood economics.  Barak is clueless.  Virtually every policy he has proposed (cap and trade, health care tax penalties, new regulatory agencies) are job and enterprise killers.  If Obama’s not clueless, he’s purposely trying to destroy the American economy.

Obama Terminology: Terrorists are now “Enemy Combatants.” The “War on Terror” is now referred to as “overseas contingency operations”.  The State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff no longer use the term “bad guys”.  It has been replaced with “the ostensibly malefic.”

Government Healthcare: Why would any sane person want to expand Government’s role in healthcare?  Our existing government health care system, known as Medicare, has $78 TRILLION worth of unfunded liabilities.  Meanwhile, the government is currently in the middle of bungling the delivery of the HINI vaccine, which will cost hundreds if not thousands of lives.

Phony Liberal Peaceniks: Two weeks before the 2008 election I took my grandson on a 16-block stroller ride in highly liberal south Minneapolis.  I counted over 120 Obama signs and one McCain sign (which had been vandalized several times).  There were also roughly 50 anti-war signs (“Get out of Iraq”, “War is not the Answer”, “Peace not War”, etc.).  Last week I walked the same 16 blocks and saw ONE anti war sign.  The “silence” of our liberal friends in south Minneapolis is both horrendous and hypocritical.   They ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Our young men are dying in greater numbers in Afghanistan today than they were before Obama was elected.  Apparently south Minneapolis liberals believe that the political career of their great leader is more important than their (alleged) opposition to war.