Zero Hour

I always enjoy a good political difference of opinion, and a reasonable, rational discussion over it.  But as we've seen for the past six years, "reasonable, rational" have been off the table when it comes to the Far Right's fear and wrenching hatred of a black man sitting as president.

Yes, yes, I know that that's a harsh criticism to use, but it's the only one I can find that even remotely explains the over-the-top hysteria that comes with such gut-wrenching angst over pretty much anything that comes from Barack Obama.  I'm not suggesting that all disagreement over Barack Obama is racist -- it's not.  Just when it reaches otherwise inexplicable Twilight Zone hysteria level.

I know I don't have to reiterate the whole list, which most people do grasp at this point.  The Kenyan, Muslim, Nazi, Socialist imperialist radical who hates white people and hates America tripe.  I mean, seriously, even if someone is so crazed as to believe all that, even they have to acknowledge that it's unprecedented hatred of an American president.  After all, George W. Bush crashed the economy and started a war based on a lie, and I've never heard mainstream charges or really most-any charges that come within even shouting distance of malevolence like that.

This all comes up again as a topic of interest because of some Tweets I've received this week.  But even without the Tweets, I have to admit, it's almost reached the level of funny lately, in a borderline sick way, when Rudy Giuliana (R-NY) made his head-crunching comment the other week about President Obama not loving America and then defended it as not being racist by seemingly suggesting that the president was white, since he had a white mother and was raised in a white community.  But it's all been head-spinning loony after the most-recent unemployment numbers were released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and showed that unemployment had dropped from 8.1 percent when the president took office down to 5.5 percent today.

I've written subsequently about the bizarre reaction from the Radical Right trying to explain this away as non-existent, when you'd think that most Americans would rejoice at positive news for the country.  But there they are, having a meltdown about the BLS and conspiracies and oh-who-knows what detritus goes rumbling around in their scared little, mean-spirited heads, never mind that the BLS is not only set up to protect against interference from any Administration, but if a president could fix the numbers, why did Barack Obama wait six years to get them this low and do so after the most recent election?  And never mind that the conservative Forbes magazine wrote last September -- "This is the best private sector jobs creation performance in American history."  And the numbers have only kept improving since then.

I bring all this up again because just the other day, as I said, I received several crazed Tweets from someone unwilling to accept good news for America from this president, and one note he sent was so off-the-wall sad and pathetic it bears noting..  He wrote --

"'In The Past 7 Years America Added 17 Million People, And Zero Full-Time Jobs' via Zero Hedge"

Now, there's a limit to how far one can "debate" when reduced to using only 140 characters -- and an even smaller limit when trying to respond to someone unwilling to think rationally and whose mind was made up about everything six years ago,.so I haven't gone very deep into my replies.  Mostly, I've just wondered why the good fellow isn't celebrating for America such positive numbers as reported by the BLS, and my asking if -- seriously -- he believed what he was writing here.

Given more than 140 characters on these pages here, I felt it worth making clear how truly cracked such thinking is.

Zero full-time jobs added???  Zero?  Who on earth could even semi-responsibly think that not a single, new full-time job had been added during the Obama presidency?  And if you did truly, honestly think it, why do you think anyone should ever take anything you say with even a wisp of seriousness?  Even if you raised that "zero" to "a thousand" or 10,000, it would be off-the-wall ridiculous.  But stating zero because your "news source" said zero is just doubly head-spinning.

Also, though, if you're throwing around numbers to support your source's expertise...how expert can they be with numbers if they're referring to "seven years," when the president has only been in office for six years?  Surely, given the point of their supposed-research, they weren't including the final year of George W. Bush's Administration, when the economic crash started.  So...seven years?  Where did that come from?

But further, their claiming of 17 million new jobs is a massive 50% off what all other statistics have reported. That's  not an outlier number, that's from another Solar System, And the bizarre thing is that they're 50% too high!!!  (Though being "high" might explain a lot...)  I'm sure that President Obama would love to take credit for 17 million new jobs, but all other studies show that the number is 11 million.  Now, 11 million is significant, but it's a lot less than 17 million, especially for numbers guys.  So, that "expertise" label is falling lower and lower down the ladder.

Yet still, trying to be fair, I did decide to look up this "Zero Hedge" and find out more of who they are.  I did a web search, and the first results made it look to be like a very detailed website, not just a couple of crazed guys out ranting.  So, I was intrigued.  The first link I saw that seemed to describe more about the organization was on Wikipedia, so I clicked on it to take a look. The very second sentence said -- 

"It has been described as offering a 'deeply conspiratorial, anti-establishment and pessimistic view of the world."  And this first paragraph ended by stating that "the news portion of the site is written by a group of editors who collectively write under the pseudonym 'Tyler Durden,', a character from the novel and film Fight Club."

Oh.  

Okay.  Well...there's a news source for you.

In fairness, Zero Hedge has a solid following and, on occasion, has apparently printed some real news.  In equal fairness, so does "Fox News" and Bill O'Reilly, who is now on record for making up news stories.

Anyway, the larger point is that any group of people who actually, truly, honestly, seriously believe that ZERO new full-time jobs have been created in the past "seven" years do nothing more than discredit every single word out of their mouths.

Which I suspect isn't much news.