Unemployment Numbers and Conspiracy Theories

A quick post on today's unemployment numbers. According to job creator douchebag Jack Welch, "the fix is in" and the numbers were cooked!

Look, I think it's a good thing when these so-called non-partisan captains of industry like Trump and Welch expose themselves for the ratfuckers they are. It gives us the opportunity to undercut their image as unbiased wise old sages. Really they're just a bunch of lucky idiots who can't figure out the basic premise of their business model which should read, in short, that people NEED MONEY to spend on their products. Squeezing every last penny out of the middle and lower income classes, cutting their benefits, eliminating infrastructure investments and reducing their social services will not sell more dishwashers. The path to economic prosperity is not, as they suspect:

1. Tax cuts for the rich
2. ????
3. PROFIT

But anyway, the right-wing is convinced that Obama cooked the books in order to bring the unemployment numbers under 8%. There are two things I find funny about today's trendy conspiracy, which has obviously been given serious mainstream media attention, because, uh, um, the media is liberal? Or something?

One, it's funny that the Obama Administration and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which are, like, totally in cahoots with one another, are corrupt enough to game this month's job reports numbers, but apparently not smart enough, or not corrupt enough, to game the last two years of job numbers. Did it just occur to the "corrupt" Obama Administration to trick the job numbers now? Is it possible that David Axelrod only realized now that declining unemployment numbers might give the Obama campaign a boost? That seems like a pretty glaring oversight for a man considered to be somewhat of a campaign savant. And is 7.8% unemployment really some kind of magical number when it comes to re-election? I mean, that number still seems pretty bad to me. If this is the Obama administration cooking the books to win a presidential election, they are pretty fucking miserable at it. Better corrupt Democrats please!

Two, the consistent right-wing harping of today's "bogus" unemployment will only ELEVATE the amount of media attention paid to these numbers. Generally, who the hell pays attention to the monthly unemployment numbers? Nobody. But now, when everyone following the Twitters and the Facebooks and the color TVs are talking about unemployment numbers, and they hear, "Hey, the unemployment numbers are really good this month but the crazy Muslim socialist may have cooked the books," well they're just going to discount the crackpots and take away the message that the economy is slowly but surely getting better. These conspiracy theories may work on the true-believers, but they turn off the so-called independent swing voter (or so I'm told). All it really does is remind people that the economy is getting better and that the right-wing can get pretty fucking crazy. And that's not a particular welcome reminder for the Romney campaign.

Another billionaire, another self-deluded whiner

Are there any billionaires who aren't delusional sociopaths? I mean besides Bill Gates and Warren Buffett? Today's whine of the day comes from "The Man Who Owns L.A.", aka Tim Leiweke, the latest con man trying to extort a city for a publicly-funded stadium intended to line his own pockets with billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Here, in The New Yorker, he complains that Barack Obama hurt his fee-fee's so he's taking his ball and running home:

"Look, I personally came from nothing," he said. "Someone making me look like a bad guy because I'm making money now? I resent that. I'm really upset about the way he is positioning this now about protecting the rich. I was never rich in my entire life! I earned everything, built my life from the ground up, and never got one damn break in my life! I resent the fact that when my mom was sick, and my dad had to pay for her treatment, it took every dime from my dad and broke him as a human being and he was never the same. And then, after we have overcome that, now to make me look like I'm bad, I'm evil, I'm greedy, I don't give. Terrible!"

God, there is so much delusion in this statement its hard to figure out where to begin. First, the statement that he was "never rich in his entire life" must, for some reason, omit the fact that he has been extremely wealthy for the last two decades of his life. Funny that. It's also humorous how he's suggests that he "never gotten a break in his entire life" - I suppose the City Council's decision to seize thirty acres of public land through eminent domain and give it to Leiweke to build the Staples Center wasn't a break for some reason. I wonder how lucky the citizens and businesses evicted from their homes felt about that.

But the most unfortunate rant concerns his feelings about his mother getting sick when he was younger. By his own admission, the experience broke his father. And yet, in the very next sentence, he attacks the very people who would fight to ameliorate this healthcare disaster. I'm not sure what interpretation of this cognitive dissonance would be worse. Does Leiweke think that Americans need to individually experience catastrophic personal and financial loss in order to rise above and achieve great economic success (i.e., "How dare we spare the poor this essential life lesson!"). Or is Leiweke, this "modern-day Horatio Alger", too dumb to understand that he is attacking the very politicians and policymakers that would have supported the healthcare reforms needed to spare his mother and father this life-altering calamity?

God I just can't deal with these assholes. I'm pretty sure if I was ever invited to this man's house, and he started spouting nonsense like this, I'd nod politely, go pound some more of his booze, and then take an "upper decker" in the main bathroom.