So argues Jim Pethokoukis. With charts and the like.
Me, I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to all things Obama / Progressive. Even something of a newly-minted conspiracy theorist these days, in fact. Which is why what others are touting as yet another negative jobs report I suspect is just more statistical massaging by the Obama administration, a narrative nodal point in the run-up to the big reveal — which will be a late-game plunge of the unemployment numbers into the 7% range, just in time for the heat of campaign season, when Obama will argue that, despite GOP attempts to block his policies, his plan for getting America back to work is working — and that the numbers prove just that.
Do Americans really wish to change course at a time when the unemployment numbers are dropping, and when Mitt Romney himself has admitted that the economy is recovering?
— At which point conservatives and legitimate economists will rush to point out just how the numbers are being cooked — none of which will matter, because the mainstream press will simply tout the drop in unemployment percentage, and most Americans will be too busy with the beginnings of the NFL season to look too deeply into just how the surprisingly happy numbers are being produced.
At least, that’s what the left hopes will happen. They’re betting on their own propaganda efforts — more specifically, on their ability to convince the American voting public to disbelieve their own eyes and ears and personal circumstances, and believe in the promise of a progressive era of “fairness” which is just over the horizon, and is attainable once the GOP obstructionists are told they have no mandate to block the kind of glorious progress that will usher in a fundamental transformation of the country.
And it’s there. Ahead of us. If only you vote for Obama.
Forward!
Hate to be contrarian, but the history of revision of jobs’ numbers reports would show a tendency to upwardly revise jobless numbers after the report comes out.
That is, the current report is masking much poorer numbers.
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Oh, I agree that the current report is masking miserable numbers, TMI. That’s a given.
But this Administration has no problem fixing the data, and my guess is that they’re laying a trap for the right: triumphalist now about higher unemployment numbers, then forced to combat the trend that the massaging of the numbers will be made to show as we move toward election season.
The real data doesn’t even apply anymore. We’re way past that.
I doubt they’ll be able to pull it off. The Romneybots will counter with “This Administration has lied about jobs numbers every month for the past four years. Look around — are you and your neighbors better off?”
I don’t doubt that there are plenty of rubes who will swallow any shiny lure dangled in front of them. I just don’t think there are enough of them to swing the election. Because, let’s be honest — most of the ignorant rubes are already solidly in the blue camp.
I don’t doubt that Obama will try and fudge the numbers and that the media will play along but that still leaves them with a problem.
You might be able to convince the employed that other people have jobs but you won’t be able to convince the unemployed that they have a job. With that percentage as high as it is, that group is large enough to lose the election right there if they break 70-30 against.
Likewise: gas prices, food prices, declining housing values, going years without a raise or being underemployed and all the rest that you get with this piss poor economic performance. People know their own lives in great detail.
If you really want to try on your tin foil, check out vigilantcitizen.com I don’t agree with all his conclusions (he’s a truther for one thing), but he has a staggering amount of supporting evidence for his basic perspective (IE, the existence of an organized one world order of the “elite”, “the illuminati”, and their methods of manipulation). A lot of it seems silly when looked at in isolation, but taken all together you (well, I) gotta go “Hummm…”
By the way, you’ll never guess who is at the Bilderberg meeting currently being held in Virginia. Peggy freak’in Noonan.
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to take that stuff seriously…
Scary part is that the 99 weekers are dropping off the roles and the 1947 boomers are eligible for retirement now.
oooh, I mean, BAIN FIRED PEOPLE!
It’s tough out there for a Prog; the problem stems from their fantasy-based economic theory (the Great Leap Forward in Greenergy, Krugman’s alien invasion, socialism). Obama’s dilemma is that he needs people pumped up enough to think there is a recovery happening, while not being pumped up enough to actually try to re-enter the labor force.
Look for a new metric – what the unemployment rate would be if people stopped trying to re-enter the labor market until the Light Bringer is ready to deploy them.
I’m still expecting to see a massive expansion of AmeriCorps work programs, where recent grads get paid to do community organizing, consciousness-raising, organic farming, and other critically important national security tasks. It gives Obama his army of volunteers* and fixes the 18-to-29 unemployment figures at the same time. Winning!
* Volunteer (n): drawing a paycheck from the state in exchange for doing doubleplus goodwork.
Me, I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to all things Obama/Progressive. Even something of a newly-minted conspiracy theorist these days, in fact.
You’re no conspiracy theorist, and neither is anyone on this blog.
Traditional conspiracy theorists posit a secret cabal that has been in place for decades or centuries, quietly tugging strings behind the scenes. The cabal has no name (OK, except Bilderbergers and the Illuminati and Freemasonry), no faces, no press reports, no smuggled videos or recordings of them speaking their minds and revealing their plans.
Such conspiracy theorists focus on black-swan events such as assassinations and explosions and market crashes and figure that it couldn’t be the inevitable result of a chaotic system consisting of self-motivated individuals: no, there’s a secret meaning behind it all, and only THEY have the perspicacity to see it.
On the other hand, there’s noticing that Named Persons with Available Paper Trails and Known Goals are in a position to do much mischief and are decidedly up to something, just as they proclaimed they would be, and just as their ideological predecessors planned.
Furthermore, there’s nothing “conspiratorial” about cataloging the road to serfdom and similar trends that have been observed in the past, and then comparing them to what’s happening now (down to the rhetoric and ideological backgrounds of the players), and noticing that the dog is returning to his vomit and the sow to her mire.
Tin-foil hats, indeed. If only the CIA had mind-control technology, we could maybe hijack it to straighten everyone out.
Squid, you reminded me of Obama’s desire for a civilian corp larger than our military. Persistent long term high unemployment would certainly lay the groundwork for such a thing…
Di, the CIA has mind control techniques, as did Himmler before them, and as Madison avenue ad agencies do today. It’s all been studied scientifically since Freud at least, and tin foil or no, I think the worlds population is exposed to an incredible amount of propaganda with a very definite origin and goal.
I read somewhere (I could look, but I don’t remember now) that, like since 1980, the number of corporations controlling media has consolidated from I think it was 45, down to just 5. All media outlets from Verizon to Disney Pictures are subsidiaries of just 5 corporations. During a time when media has exploded from slide rule’s, party lines, and 3 TV stations, to where we are now.
By the way, look for a whole lotta gay people in prime time TV shows soon.
Mind control.
the number of corporations controlling media has consolidated from I think it was 45, down to just 5
Looks like it’s time to watch James Caan in Rollerball again.
Shorter Obama campaign, “Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes. “