So, are you better off today than you were in 2009?

One of the stunning things about the utterly supine press in the United States is that we have lived through the worst four years of economic mismanagement in this nation’s history. Not even Gerald Ford wearing his WIN (Whip Inflation Now) button and Jimmy Carter declared energy independence as the Moral Equivalence Of War (a contender for the unfortunate acronym award: MEOW) can compete with the utter fecklessness of this administration.

By any conceivable measure, we are much worse off today than we were four years ago. In the best areas of the economy we are stagnant.

Unemployment has only been kept down below 9% by the clever tactic of reducing labor force participation. For men, the labor force participation rate is the lowest on record.

Household income is in a nosedive, dropping an unprecedented 8.2% since Obama began his one-man campaign to turn us into a Third World ineptocracy.

Nearly 47 million Americans rely on food stamps. This reflects an increase of about 12 million people over the highest level under President Bush.

There is no sign that economic activity is coming back. Manufacturing orders fell by 13.2% in August. The GDP annual growth rate was scaled back from a previously anemic 1.7% to an absolutely ossified 1.3%. This growth rate will not keep pace with new entrants to the workforce combined with the rate of inflation. Essentially our economy has stalled and may be contracting in real terms.

While the Obama Cargo Cult is out touting more college loans to train people for careers that do not exist, and will not exist under a Democrat administration, students with college loans have been defaulting at a glorious rate. 9.1% of all student loans were in default according to most recent data. Of course, the upside — I suppose — to that is that virtually all student debt is now owed to the government so this just means more debt for our posterity to deal with.

In a just world, Barack Obama would have fallen to a primary challenger. But he’s been carried on by a press that only grudgingly covers bad economic news and refuses to attach to either Obama or his administration any responsibility for anything.

But it won’t.

Economic growth grew at an incredibly sluggish 1.3 percent in the second quarter, revised down from 1.7 percent. According to business writer Jim Pethokoukis, this is “dangerously slow.” However, NBC skipped the bad news for Barack Obama entirely. ABC allowed it a mere 21 seconds. CBS was the only network to allow the story a full report.

Although Nightly News correspondent Chuck Todd couldn’t find time to mention the scant amount of growth, he did hype the fact that the President is trying “a new line.” Todd then played a clip of the President calling “for a new economic patriotism.” The journalist helpfully parroted that the President’s “idea of economic patriotism includes tax hikes on the wealthy and more government spending on infrastructure.”