Carpe Datum

Letter to Mark

The ConservaBorg Brain Trust
(Image credit: Steve Jackson Games)

Dear Mark,

I read your eye-opening column in the paper today, and I want to thank you for your insight. You wrote that poor liberals like me have a lot of strange delusions in our pretty little heads. For example, you wrote, "They believe the economy is simply terrible. Nearly every indicator has been more positive than negative in the last few months, so where does this come from?"

And here I thought we were in a recession! Heck, Bush is due to be the first president since Herbert Hoover to suffer a net loss of jobs in America on his watch. Not only that, the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever, thanks in part to all the tax cuts for the rich, all the millionaires in corporations moving their taxable assets and operations off-shore, and the poor are a lot worse off because of all the government services that have been cut back as a result of the lower tax revenue. Plus the deficit is totally out of control.

But, hey, in the last few months, we've added some jobs to the economy! Of course, the rate of job creation hasn't been enough to keep up with the growth in the population of working-age adults, but positive is better than negative, I guess. This kind of thinking has made me reevaluate the baseball game I saw the other day.

See, the Rangers were down 12-2 going into the bottom of the eighth inning, but then Hank Blalock came up and hit a two-run homer. So it was 12-4, and I think the other team may have scored a few more runs in the top of the ninth, but who cares? We scored some runs kind of late in the game, so I don't know where the hell the idea comes from that we lost the game! I must have been delusional!

And think of all the games we "lost" in the last few months! Gah, think of all the Cubs fans, deluding themselves into losses for lo these many decades! Mark, you've given me a whole new outlook. I'll see you at the World Series this year, I guess, and every year to come!

Love,
Observer