In one of his more well-publicized gaffes, Vice President Biden said of John McCain:

"Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs."

Actually, of course, it's a four-letter word, and it was his job and the president's to create a climate for job expansion, and they failed. The evidence is now overwhelming: they have created the worst employment climate in decades.

Tyler Durden at Zerohedge sums up the week's bad economic news:

Things just keep getting worse for the American worker, and by implication US economy, where as we have shown many times before, it pays just as well to sit back and collect disability and various welfare and entitlement checks, than to work. The best manifestation of this: the number of people not in the labor force which in March soared by a massive 663,000 to a record 90 million Americans who are no longer even looking for work. This was the biggest monthly increase in people dropping out of the labor force since January 2012, when the BLS did its census recast of the labor numbers. And even worse, the labor force participation rate plunged from an already abysmal 63.5% to 63.3% -- the lowest since 1979! But at least it helped with the now painfully grotesque propaganda that the US unemployment rate is "improving."

With so many out of work, the administration safely counts on a feckless media and an equally feckless opposition to be distracted by issues like gay marriage, immigration, and guns.

As the sensible Alicia Colon observes of the gay marriage kerfuffle, a typical Democrat ginned-up social issue that has nothing to do with the most significant domestic and national security problems facing us:

Never once discussed, however, by advocates is how this issue has anything to do with the economic state of the nation today. Legalizing gay marriage will not improve the economy nor is it really that important to the average homosexual. Celebrity nuptials and endorsements may garner news coverage stressing it as a civil rights issue but ironically these come from a wealthier than average demographic. The average homosexual has concerns that are much more aligned with the general population -- jobs.

Nor will the laws allowing same-sex marriage impact our national security so why is it even being discussed as a potential hot-button issue for conservatives? Why are we seeing more and more articles on the discord in the GOP between the social conservatives and the moderates? For the Republicans to regain the Congress they are going to have to wake up and smell the coffee. Social issues are emotional weapons that the Democrats use to obscure the fact that they haven't one good idea on how to save our economy.

[snip]

When the GOP candidates are asked what their positions are on the hot social issues like same-sex marriage, contraception and abortion, they should fire right back with the questions, "What does that have to do with saving our country? How are these issues affecting the economy? Why aren't you concerned with that and our national security? Why aren't you more interested in closing the borders to terrorists? Why are you ignoring the continual threat against us by radical Islamists? Why aren't you wondering why the State Department didn't respond to Ambassador Stevens' request for additional security before he was brutally attacked and murdered? How come you're not interested in the Fast and Furious scandal in the Justice Department? Do you think that's just the name of a movie instead of the Justice Department and ATF giving weapons to gun cartels that ended up with hundreds killed and maimed including a U.S. Border agent? If you want to know our positions on social issues, read the party's platform. We are all pro-life and for the sanctity of traditional marriage. That's all you need to know. Now for once ask me an intelligent and pertinent question."

Where once the left and the media could blame everything on climate warming, now it's the sequester they reach for as the bogeyman.

"Look: We all over-shot it," [Austan] Goolsbee said on CNBC, referring to the projections of much higher job gains. "This is a punch to the gut. This is not a good number. And I think now you're going to interestingly start seeing a lot of discussion about maybe the sequester's a bigger deal than people thought it was."

The jobs report showed the unemployment rate dropping a bit, to 7.6 percent. But the number of jobs created -- 88,000 -- was far less than expected, and a big reason the unemployment rate fell is because nearly half a million people dropped out of the workforce.

But it had nothing to do with the sequester, and a lot to do with ending the payroll tax cuts and rational employer concern over the coming impact of Obamacare:

From Business Insider:  

Professional and business services, which includes lots of gov[ernment] contractors, was +51k jobs, well within its recent range.

From the Washington Post:

The sequester! Well, no. Public-sector jobs were down only 7,000. The payroll tax hike? Could be. While the president was haggling over the top marginal rate, no one in the administration seemed to care about the significant dip in take-home pay that would hit low- and middle-income consumers and, in turn, deal a blow to retail, restaurant and other consumer-based industries. Could it be that tax hikes are bad for the economy?

The president, rightfully so, will take another pummeling for failing to focus on jobs. And the push by the president and Senate Democrats for tax hikes will appear even more ludicrous (as liberal economic gurus bemoan the impact of the payroll tax hike).

Still... there is for would-be government remoras some hope on the horizon that they will be spared the unemployment compensation line. The administration plans to hire thousands of them at salaries beginning at $20 to $48 per hour as "navigators" to help people apply for the as yet nonexistent -- and overdue if not practically dead in the water -- ObamaCare program. It's true doctors are leaving the workforce in substantial number and we soon will face a significant shortage of them, but those who can translate the forms for non-English speaking applicants and otherwise get more people to sign on will be well provided for. If this continues, liberal arts majors will substantially outnumber the health care providers under Obamacare. (How better to pay back those less-educated workers who supported the program in the first place?)

As much as I mourn the low job prospects of those out of work, there are some at the RNC whose pink slips I wouldn't mourn.

For starters, there's Reince Priebus, RNC Chairman who, as Alicia points out, swims with the gay marriage tide, ignores his party's platform, and fails utterly to respond to the vicious attacks on those who oppose the shift.

Then there's the RNC Chief of Staff Mike Shields:

At a meeting of the Ripon Society held in Washington, D.C.'s exclusive Capitol Hill Club on Tuesday, new Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Mike Shields effectively declared war on the conservative grassroots. In a strong attack, Shields coined a new derogatory term, "the professional right," to refer to groups that have publicly criticized the recent RNC "Autopsy" report.

"It's a term I'll be using often in the coming months," he told the crowd of about 40 Ripon Society members, RNC insiders, and Capitol Hill staffers. But Reagan biographer Craig Shirley, who was not one of those in attendance at the meeting, was quick to note that Shields's new term had already backfired. "As opposed to what, unprofessional Republicans?" he shot back.

Two days after Shields insulted the "professional right," the party's grassroots supporters who are keeping the Republican Party above water, I received an email from the RNC begging for more money. Guess how much I sent them?