Joe Diffie was well ahead of today’s trend line when he released the country / western hit “Prop Me Up Beside the Juke Box (If I Die)”. The lyrics humorously describe the last wishes of a barfly and the mythical image makes you chuckle or at least it did in 1993. Look around. Do you see any dead people? Look hard because apparently dead people are harder to spot today than they were 18 years ago. The perfect example of this desensitization was seen (or not seen) last week in an internet cafe in Taiwan. A 23-year-old was sitting in the corner playing video games when he cardiac arrested. With 30 other patrons passing in and out of the café, his corpse continued playing Angry Birds for nine hours and no one noticed he was dead. Granted, this is a news story from Asia, but I see no reason why this couldn’t have happened in the electronic cafes of Seattle, San Francisco or Denver. Could progressives capitalize on this inattentiveness for nefarious purposes? Ponder that thought while I appear to change horses. Don’t worry, I’ll be back.

Let’s say you own 100 cows and ten of them disappear through the fence. When your banker learns of your ten percent loss he will prolapse, so you saddle up, call your dog and ride the neighboring pastures. Your search is futile. While commiserating with fellow cowboys over pie and coffee at the local sale barn cafe, an eavesdropping official from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics approaches your table. “I couldn’t help but overhear your problem, but I have some very good news about your cows,” he explains. “Look at this way: Since your cows were smooth mouthed and skinny, very likely only eight of the missing cows were actually carrying a calf, so do not count the two non-pregnant escapees. On paper, this drops your loss from ten percent to eight percent. Does that help?” You thank him for his useful insight, but resume banging your head on the table because you know you are still missing ten cows regardless the magical calculations of the shiny man in the three-piece suit. He takes you for a fool; the kind who could play video games for nine hours while unknowingly sitting next to a corpse and this brings me to my point.

The Whitehouse is trumpeting Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) headlines the unemployment rate has dropped to 8.3 percent and our economic recovery is underway. This message is targeting a very specific audience. Voters playing video games at the electronic café are expected to look up, read the MSNBC headlines, elbow the cold stiff guy sitting next to them, and mumble “Obama’s stimulus plan must be working.” They then click to the next kingdom of their game and retreat back into their cocoon. Just like not counting the non-pregnant escaped cows, the BLS mathematically dropped 1.2 million unemployed Americans from the job hunting list, so the unemployment figure magically dropped to 8.3 percent.

Folks, you are being played for the fool. The fact is the number of Americans pulling the wagon for the Americans riding in the wagon has dropped to 30-year low of 63.7 percent. Congressional Budget Office figures released earlier in the week are not as polished. They list our actual unemployment rate at 10 percent, our federal budget down another 1.1 trillion for the year, and are projecting tax increases of 30 percent over two years on those of us who still actually have jobs and are pulling the wagon. If we do not recognize the job numbers as cooked it is likely we will accept equally preposterous things like Obamacare will magically both cheapen and expand health coverage for all Americans. It is time to wake up and look around for dead people. Remember, a zombie’s vote counts just as much as yours. (Did that scare you?)