Why report the news when you can just make it up. The L.A. Times isn't about to let any good unemployment numbers rain on their "Bush Bashing" parade. Instead, they count people who are no longer getting sports cars as signing bonuses and six figure dot.com incomes as "underemployed" to come up with a new number that fits their "bad economy" agenda. To make the numbers even worse, they throw in those people that aren't even looking for work, and then parrot the Democrat response to their new and improved 9.7% unemployment figure:

No wonder the Democratic presidential candidates have seized on jobs as a potentially powerful weapon.

Howard Dean criticized President Bush for "the worst job creation record in over 60 years." Richard Gephardt said that "I have three goals for my presidency: jobs, jobs, jobs." John Kerry said "the first thing" he'd do as president would be to fight his "heart out" to bring back the jobs that have disappeared in recent years.

Bush, meanwhile, is quick to seize credit where he can. When the unemployment rate for November fell one-tenth of a point, he went out immediately to give a speech at a Home Depot in Maryland.