Forget what the liars in the media and in Congress have to say about the causes of this latest Great Depression. And it is a Great Depression, let no one tell you differently. If you’re skeptical, just check with the old-timers who were around in the 1930s.

You’ll hear it from authorities that in the Great Depression of the 1930s some 25% of the people were unemployed, but today (now that we know that the figures published by the U.S. Department of Labor are “fudged”) only 22% of Americans, at most, are jobless. Sounds like we still have a way to go before we get to a “depression” stage. Right?

Wrong. According to The New York Times World Almanac, the U.S. population in 1935 was approximately 135 million, and the population today is approximately 300 million. If you’re quick enough you’ve done the math – 25% of 135 million comes to 33,750,000 jobless, and 22% of 300 million comes to 66,000,000 jobless. See? Liars figure, but figures don’t lie.

Unemployment is the cause of today’s plummeting economy – not the housing crisis – not the banking crisis – not even the shenanigans on Wall Street. Unemployment, and only unemployment, is the reason we’re in this death spiral. And our troubles didn’t begin in 2007, like they say. Our troubles began in the early 1970s when Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger “opened up” China’s billion consumers to our exports. Well, by now you know that the only thing that’s been exported to China has been our factories and our jobs. Those Wall Street con men are pikers compared to Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kissinger.

So where do we go from here? Do we ride that death-spiral into the ground? At least 43 million Americans are now receiving food stamps every month, so are we supposed to believe that we’ve begun an economic “recovery”? A “jobless recovery”? No one in Washington wants to enter into discussions about job creation because they’ll be seen as ignoramuses if they do. They are clueless.

When it comes to extending benefits for the unemployed, however, those incompetent solons jump right into the fray, insisting that the government just may not be able to afford payment to 3 million of the unemployed whose benefits run out at the end of this month.

The positive effects of that inaction, as far as those politicians are concerned, are twofold: it will reduce the federal deficit, and it will drop off 3 million unemployed from the Labor Department figures – part of the “fudging” process, you see.

But that inaction will reduce something else. It will reduce 3 million families to penury – to starvation. For shame! Those families are having a very unhappy Thanksgiving Day today.

Two days ago Ms. Lockhart wrote, “jobs (now!)” – and we wrote, “all Mr. Obama has to do now is wave the same magic wand that FDR waved – the pen that signs an Executive Order that will revitalize shipyards again.” And that is the only decent way to terminate unemployment benefits.