As I cobble together a more extended post for the weekend (or, if you prefer, for the weakened), here's the first of a few Twitter threads that caught my eye (and, per Steven Wright, dragged it for twenty yards).
For those of you who choose not to click on the link, it's basically chronicling the assertion of Commander Combover that daughter-wife Princess Snowflake has, perhaps through her incredible magickal prowess at something-something, "created" more than twice as many jobs as have actually been "created" over the past three years.
While most will simply gawp at the seeming audacity of this ridonkulous "14 million" number, I look at it as a stark shortfall from Genius Q. Dealmaker's usual honking bluster. A real master promoter, you see, would have uncorked some fantabulous billionty-kajillionty type of number. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say, and in no instance is this principle more true than when neither word ("penny" and "pound") really means a goddamned thing.
These sorts of numbers serve a bizarre purpose anyway. In the past, they would have served as a sort of totem for Inner Party wonks to populate their talking points with, even as they set their thumbs on the numbers judiciously and worked their voodoo to determine what the real numbers were, so that the NYSE/NASDAQ whales would know where to set the limit prices and call their brokers.
Now the numbers are strictly meant as base prole agitprop, as well as a daily distraction/finger to the professional scriveners who, as they sputter and fume once again at the millionth iteration of open, shameless mendacity, must at least be reconsidering their choice of occupation.
For those of you who choose not to click on the link, it's basically chronicling the assertion of Commander Combover that daughter-wife Princess Snowflake has, perhaps through her incredible magickal prowess at something-something, "created" more than twice as many jobs as have actually been "created" over the past three years.
While most will simply gawp at the seeming audacity of this ridonkulous "14 million" number, I look at it as a stark shortfall from Genius Q. Dealmaker's usual honking bluster. A real master promoter, you see, would have uncorked some fantabulous billionty-kajillionty type of number. In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say, and in no instance is this principle more true than when neither word ("penny" and "pound") really means a goddamned thing.
These sorts of numbers serve a bizarre purpose anyway. In the past, they would have served as a sort of totem for Inner Party wonks to populate their talking points with, even as they set their thumbs on the numbers judiciously and worked their voodoo to determine what the real numbers were, so that the NYSE/NASDAQ whales would know where to set the limit prices and call their brokers.
Now the numbers are strictly meant as base prole agitprop, as well as a daily distraction/finger to the professional scriveners who, as they sputter and fume once again at the millionth iteration of open, shameless mendacity, must at least be reconsidering their choice of occupation.
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