MICKEY KAUS: The Case For Paranoia, BLS Edition. “We are getting very exercised denouncing those who doubt the BLS report of a startling September increase in employment, aren’t we? I haven’t heard so much self-righteous post-truth stance-taking since the MSM rose as one to declare that Obama hasn’t undermined welfare reform’s work requirements (which he has). . . . OK, I’m a hopeless paranoid. But one of the worst things about the respectable smackdown of the BLS skeptics is how inept it is at assuaging paranoia. Hostage negotiators will tell you that ‘calm down’ is the worst thing to tell an angry man. And ‘shut up, how dare you question the professionalism of civil servants” is probably the least effective way to convince a paranoid citizen.'”

One lesson we’ve learned from the Obama era is that you can’t rely on “professionalism” very much as a barrier to politics — especially when the politics in question are shared by the “deep state” of career bureaucrats and other unfireables. It’s thus natural to be suspicious. Such cynicism is itself a symptom of the civic rot that the Obama era has brought about. And it’s clearly something about which Obama is either ignorant, or that he’s actually happy with.

UPDATE: An “anomaly” is found.