The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy

Look, I don't know if the new unemployment figures are cooked. I don't see how they could have. I know that here in New York City, and in the suburbs, a lot more people seem to be working, feeling happy, and acting confident, but we were not hit that hard in the recession anyway.

But there is one thing I do know, one thing that you can count on, and that is conservative conspiracy theorists. Most famous conspiracy theories come from the left. As Noam Chomsky said, the left has a pathological need to see conspiracies everywhere (or something like that--look it up). But the right has gone absolutely bonkers with conspiracy theories over the last, well, lets say three and three quarter years. Obama was not born in Hawaii. Obama is a secret Muslim. Obama is a Manchurian Candidate for Al Queda. Obama is a socialist. Obama is a secret racist. Hilary Clinton and the Obama Administration are conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to bring Sharia Law to America. The left has its whackos, sure: but on the right seemingly intelligent, competent people, when it comes to our first Black president, show themselves to be stark raving nuts. It is so odd coming from a liberal background in San Francisco and now living in New York, because I see everything that they see and my reaction is "huh?". I get that we live in different worlds and have different paradigms, but this is crazy. A lot of the things they accuse him of, like being a racist, just sound ignorant and stupid where I live. (I watched the tape that supposedly shows him using racially divisive language. None of it was inflammatory, none of it was racially charged, and all of it was so obviously true that when Tucker Carlson stood up and shouted about it my reaction was "well, yeah, and?")

And so we come tot he jobs report. Unemployment fell to 7.8% and Jack Welch's brain exploded. He tweeted that the numbers had to have been cooked, and every conservative blog and radio show picked the idea up. Of course they had to have been cooked! Good numbers would be good for the president, and so they must have been manipulated, because anybody can see how bad the economy is! It's a vast left-wing conspiracy!

But housing, both new construction and existing homes, were both up in the last report. Retail sales are at a four month high. We've all seen how the stock market is doing: in fact, it is obvious that Wall Street believes the jobs numbers, because as i write this the Dow is up 52 points.

Mr. Welch, as a rather disreputable Marine once put it "you can't handle the truth!"

The truth appears to be that the economy is doing better over the past few months. This is obviously good news for President Obama, and helps him after his horrible debate performance on Wednesday. But the right wingers see a commie behind every tree (or hugging it), and know that (a) the sky is falling because we have a black radical socialist professorial East Coast elitist America hating president, and (b) the people will throw him out if they can just be made to see the truth (most of which these yahoos are making up).