Kelly Anderson Wright

Well, at least Nevadans can say Harry Reid never fails to serve the nation… some ridiculous new gaffe to laugh about.

“Today is a big day in America,” Reid boasted to the Senate Friday. “Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good.”

36,000 people who just lost their jobs walk into a bar . . .

Republicans laughed riotously, bloggers blew chunks and You Tube ran Reid’s boo-boo 24/7 for the world to see. Yes, Nevada’s homeboy, the nation’s most powerful Democrat, stepped in it again.

It’s sad, actually, that Reid could make a comment that was wrong in so many ways.

First, 36,000 jobs were not lost Friday, they were lost in the month of February. Second, why would anyone call February’s jobless numbers “really good news?”

Reid and President Obama are pleased that the nation’s unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent in February and didn’t go higher. Obama even called the report “better than expected.”

Hold on a second. Wouldn’t really good news have been a drop in the jobless rate? Weren’t Obama, Reid, Congress and billions of our taxes supposed to be creating jobs?

Political pundits expressed relief that February’s jobless numbers weren’t higher. The government gurus predicted that February’s record snowfall would drive jobless numbers up, because everyone knows that when it snows really, really hard, more people those their jobs. (I didn’t learn that in econ, did you?)

More supposed good news: compared to February 2009, when the country lost 700,000 jobs, last month’s loss of just 36,000 jobs looks fabulous, boasts House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

But why would we believe politicians? Let’s ask an economist, and a writer in Reno who happened to get a degree in Mathematics, eons ago.

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A more in-depth review of February’s numbers reveals key facts our fearless leaders conveniently left out. Compare February to the previous month, and suddenly we learn that the nation lost 40% more jobs in February than January: 36,000 jobs lost in February vs. 26,000 jobs lost in January. Easy math: 10,000 more jobs were lost in February than January. I told my teenager, and he said, “That’s bad.”

Reid calls that “really good.” Not only is it not good, it’s a very unhealthy trend, folks.

Worse yet, 1.2 million people quit looking for jobs in February, which means 65% more people gave up looking for jobs compared to last February. Bottom line: there are a lot more hopeless people out there than there were a year ago.

All told, nearly 14.9 million Americans are now unemployed, almost double what it was when the recession began in December 2007.

This is certainly not the kind of change anyone hoped or voted for. I know, Obama didn’t become president until January 2009. It’s been just more than a year. Give the nation’s first black president a break. His job is hard. I get it.

But this Congress is the same one hijacked by Democrats, and leaders Pelosi and Reid, in November 2006, nearly four years ago.

Four years is a presidential term, plenty of time to see if someone is “getting the job done,” so to speak.

Nevadans will decide November 8 whether Harry Reid has done his job, or whether he deserves to join the nation’s jobless.

I hear voters in Reno predict a record snowfall that day.

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