POINTS AND FIGURES: Jeff Carter on unemployment and economic calamity: “This number was outside the standard deviation of expectations. I really can’t stress how ugly it is. There is no way to sugarcoat it. The economic policies used since October of 2008 are an abject and total failure. Not only that, but they have put the finances of the country in a precarious position that was not unforeseen.”

Yep. Things were bad in 2008, but if you had been trying to make things worse you couldn’t have done much more harm than Obama’s policies have. Note this column from James Pethokoukis, too.