Right, this is a political rant-- not a study of economics. Words like "recession", "employment", and "deficit" still have meaning.for people who are working to find out what's really going on. Political hacks first decide which economic perception would benefit their agenda, then they twist words and numbers to fit.
The really goofy thing about all this is the fact that the graph's headline really is true-- large deficits do mean high unemployment but not the way they mean. Economies oscillate, when they expand employment, earnings and tax revenue goes up, and deficits go (or should go) down. During a contraction, the reverse happens - especially because that's when we want the gov't to increase deficit spending to goose the economy.
The bottom line is that leading indicators (e.g.. stock prices) showed that Clinton screwed up the economy in 2000, and lagging indicators (e.g. lowering unemployment) show the recovery is well under way.
If you look at the entire two-decade-long period of Reaganesque tax cutting, America's economic success rate is apparent to all. In inflation-adjusted terms, the American economy has increased $5.4 trillion, or 3 1/2 percent at an annual rate, in this time. New job creation has exploded by nearly 40 million, even with the passage of free-trade agreements with Canada and Mexico, a horde of new immigrants entering our borders, and a spike of outsourcing to Asian countries like India. The Dow Jones, meanwhile, has increased by 9,400 points — or 899 percent.
I know Democrats like to forget about the despair of the late 1970's (when they ruled EVERYTHING) and their willingness, then, to accept that the best we could hope for was slow growth, a worse future for our children, stasis with the Soviet Union that appeared to be ascending around the globe, etc. They all just make me feel like p*king!