Molt Be Blog

If you remember Animal Farm, there was this constant theme throughout that no matter how poorly the farm was doing, Napoleon and his pig friends would always say that production was at an all time high and that everything was great. What I'm starting to wonder is this: Why is it that, as soon as the mainstream media starts reporting that Bush is going to need to focus on the failing economy to win the election, production takes a jump? Who's reporting that production is jumping? The US Department of Labor, of course. Now, I'm not saying that the Dept. of Labor is the only group reporting on productivity jumps and a more lively economy, there are tons of news agencies reporting on the Dept. of Labor's findings too.
What I really want to know is this:

It's pretty obvious at this point that there was some kind of outside pressure on the CIA and FBI to promote certain threats as being more imminent than they were. Who's to say that this same outside pressure might not be put on certain labor departments to encourage them to promote certain statistics as being better than they certainly are?
Conservatives will say that this is totally ridiculous. That suggesting that the Department of Labor would skew statistics to make it look like tax cuts had saved the economy is completely insane. Then again, President George W. Bush nominated Elaine L. Chao, the current secretary of Labor. He also nominated Kathleen P. Utgoff the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which reported this productivity jump.
Now I'll make my concessions: I'm not saying that anything happened. I know that there are a lot of other people in each of these departments who actually collect this information and make it available and weren't appointed by a conservative "president". I also know that tax cuts can boost the economy. But for how long and at what cost?
But here's what I want to leave with: Three actions that seem like oddly coincidental reactions:

Bush's approval ratings were at huge lows, then Sept 11th happened. No one bothers to mention that the conservative thinktank where half of Bush's cronies come from, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), talked about the US needing a pearl harbor type event to get the American people to back another war.

Despite starting a war in Afghanistan, someone wanted another war in Iraq. There wasn't a host of evidence for ousting Saddam Hussein without backing from the UN, but we did it anyway, thanks to the "imminent threat" they posed. Later, we find out that this threat wasn't so imminent and that information was trumped up to justify a non-UN backed war, a preemptive war, something I thought was called an attack.

Now the newest Bush Ball-Buster is the economy. Suddenly everyone is mentioning why Bush's Dad lost the last election and thinking that Bush wouldn't have been prepared for the same thing. Someone on his staff must've remembered, because all of the right people are in the perfect places to make some "adjustments".
It's a depressing outlook, but doesn't it seem extremely coincidental that everytime it would be useful for something to happen to this administration, it happens? 9-11 is a bit of a stretch, but this other stuff? Child's play when you've got enough money and leftover Daddy-politicos.