New poll shows 79% of people think their kids future won't be better than their own.

◼ MSNBC: “Total disconnect” between Obama’s rhetoric on economy and reality for voters - HotAir

Worth a watch, especially on this particular network even though Morning Joe offers much more reality than most of the rest of MSNBC’s schedule. Today’s reminder of reality comes from Wall Street Journal’s White House correspondent Carol Lee, who points out that the sunny rhetoric from Barack Obama and his administration has a “total disconnect” to the reality for most Americans, as seen in the latest NBC/WSJ poll.

Time for another pivot?

◼ CNN: Abysmal New Obama Poll ‘Very Ominous Sign For Democrats’ - Daily Caller

◼ America's Fed Up: Obama Approval Rating Hits All-Time Low, Poll Shows - NBC

"The public seems have moved beyond the plaintive cry of ‘Feel our pain!’ to the more angry pronouncement of ‘You are causing our pain!’"

Attempting to reverse sagging approval ratings, President Obama plans to continue his pointed pitch to members of Congress in his annual State of the Union speech Tuesday night -- that he will use his executive power to take action on his own to help reduce income inequality in the country.

◼ After Tuesday speech, Obama to take 'year of action' theme on the road - Susan Crabtree

...Dan Pfeiffer, White House communications director, sent out an email Saturday to supporters saying Obama's message Tuesday night can be summed up in three words: “opportunity, action and optimism.”

He also promised that the president would lay out a set of “real, concrete, practical proposals to grow the economy, strengthen the middle class and empower all who hope to join it.” In the days after the speech, Obama plans to hammer the message home with travel to Maryland, Pittsburgh, Pa., Milwaukee, Wis., and Nashville, Tenn.

◼ OBAMA SHIFTS FROM 'INCOME INEQUALITY' TO 'LADDERS OF OPPORTUNITY' - Warner Todd Huston/Breitbart´s Big Government

In an apparent effort to blunt criticism over his intent to engage in full-blown class warfare during his second term, Obama is softening the harsher term with a new label.

The Associated Press reports that Obama has shifted his rhetoric from "complaining" about income inequality toward language that creates an appearance that he is offering support for the middle class.

Since his December 4 economic speech where he used the word "inequality" 26 times, the word is nonexistent in subsequent posts on his website, his press releases, and his speeches.

Obama's new tact is to sound like he is "lifting people up," as Paul Begala recently said.

DECEMBER JOBS DISASTER: THE WORKFORCE COLLAPSES AGAIN92 MILLION AMERICANS NOT IN LABOR FORCE

◼ A polar vortex of “unexpected” failure sends icy winds of pathetic job growth and workforce collapse howling through the December jobs report... - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

The real problem here is the still-dismaying number of people who insist on looking for work. Knock it off, you guys, and drop out of the workforce already. You’re making President Obama look bad.

◼ People Not In Labor Force Soar To Record 91.8 Million; Participation Rate Plunges To 1978 Levels - Zerohedge

◼ Record Number of Women Not In Labor Force - CNS News

◼ Sessions: 'For Every One Job Added, Nearly 5 People Left the Workforce' - Weekly Standard

◼ Labor force participation rate, welcome back to 1978 - Doug Powers/Michelle Malkin

◼ MEDIA AGAIN HUMILIATED AFTER HYPING UNRELIABLE ADP JOBS NUMBERS - John Nolte/Breibart

More terrible economic news hit the struggling American people today when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that only 74,000 jobs were created in December, the fewest number in five years. The unemployment rate dropped from 7% to 6.7%, but that is due only to the disheartening fact that 525,000 of the unemployed stopped looking for work. As a result, the labor force participation rate dropped to its lowest point since 1978. Still, President Obama enjoyed a week of celebratory news about job creation thanks to our objective, unbiased, not-at-all liberal media once again hyping the notoriously unreliable jobs report from ADP. The result of this, naturally, is to give Obama a couple of good news cycles, but to do so based on numbers the media know are frequently wrong and just as frequently overstate the number of jobs created.

Today's BLS jobs report -- the real jobs report -- is unqualified in its awfulness. And yet...

◼ El-Erian to Bloomberg TV: Jobs Data Between Puzzling and Worrisome - Investment Watch

“It is very surprising. It is somewhere between puzzling and worrisome. Puzzling because it is such a strange number – the 74,000 jobs that were created — even if you add in the revisions from last month. It is still half of what consensus was, and it is inconsistent with lots of other data. But it is also worrisome and I think we have to remember that. Because if you look within the report, you get some pretty worrisome things in terms of what is happening to labor participation. We’re back to levels that we haven’t seen since February ’78. Long-term unemployment still stuck 37%. So we’re going to learn a lot more about what is the impact of the weather, how much of this is real, how much of this is temporary. It is a shocker, to put it mildly.”

“Poverty has of late become a subject of concern in both political parties.” The inequality business is booming. Obscene wealth is unfashionable. Poverty is “in.”

◼ Poverty Chic: The latest political fashion - Matthew Continetti/Washington Free Beacon

Politics, like fashion, is a matter of whims, of fast-changing impulses, of consensus that has all the staying power of New England weather. In fashion as in politics one must know which clothes to wear, which opinions to have in hand. A commonly accepted accessory, like a commonly accepted opinion, is a badge of membership in the tribe. The wrong choice, the sartorial misstep, the injudicious comment mark one as an outlier, out of sync with his environment, disconnected from the currents of opinion that govern the world....

Today that sense has given us a politics of poverty, inequality, and social justice, and has launched political celebrities such as de Blasio and Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama. But fashion is fickle. Trends vanish. And the next fad might not fit the New York Times’ definition of haute politique.

◼ Pinch’s Poverty Chic - Ed Driscoll/PJMedia

Democrats and their Pathetic Unemployment Decoy

◼ Republicans have an opportunity to speak with moral clarity and show a bold contrast: the conservative plan of cutting government red tape on job creators vs. the Democrat plan of engendering job losses and then offering permanent dependency – subsidized by future generations of taxpayers – as a panacea for their man-made disaster. - Daniel Horowitz/Red State

It’s understandable why Democrats would feel embarrassed about unemployment. Employers are cutting jobs, reducing hours, and lowering wages as a direct result of the Obamacare mandates and taxes. Instead of putting out the fire that they set, Democrats have decided to distract our attention by offering band aids for the economic burns in the form of unprecedented long-term unemployment benefits.

Typically, the Unemployment Insurance program lasts for 26 weeks of unemployment with an additional 13 weeks during recessions. Most of the cost is purveyed by employer payroll taxes. Since 2008, however, Congress has funded Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits for up to 99 weeks of unemployment.

As part of the fiscal cliff deal, they extended benefits for up to 73 weeks. In total, extended unemployment benefits have been renewed 11 times since 2008. Over the past 5 years, the federal government has collected roughly $240 billion in federal unemployment payroll taxes, while paying out about $600 billion in benefits. We are already in uncharted waters and dangerously close to creating another permanent entitlement program.

◼ Democrat incumbent Mike McIntyre announces retirement in vulnerable Congressional district (NC-7) - Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion

◼ Congressional Exodus Grows: Two House Dems Call It Quits - WPRO

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, a nine-term Democrat from New York, and Rep. Mike McIntyre, a nine-term Democrat from North Carolina, both announced Wednesday that they have had enough.

White House pleads for ´emergency´ unemployment benefit extension just 17 days after Obama boasted the lowest jobless rate in 5 years

◼ The White House made a strong defense Monday of a U.S. Senate push to extend ´emergency´ federal unemployment benefits by three months, just 17 days after President Barack Obama told reporters that his administration has done a remarkably good job putting jobless Americans back to work. - David Martosko/Daily Mail [UK]

Fifteen of those intervening days were consumed with a presidential vacation in Hawaii, placing those two statements on nearly back-to-back working days.