I have proof. First, this:

Summer box office sets new record

[This summer,] almost everything worked for the studios.

The school’s-out movie season concludes this weekend, and domestic ticket sales so far total $3.9 billion, up a little more than 1% from last year’s record summer, according to Media by Numbers…

Don’t you dare speak of that naughty R-word “recession.” How can you have a bad economy and at the same time break record-numbers in the entertainment business? If gas prices were really hurting families and “middle-class” Americans, they wouldn’t be piling into their SUVs to see The Dark Knight for the 4th time.

Oh, what’s that? You want substative proof that the economy is strong? Ok, check this out:

Gross domestic product, or GDP, grew at a 3.3 percent annual rate in the April-June quarter, its fastest pace in nearly a year, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. The revised reading was much better than the government’s initial estimate of a 1.9 percent pace and exceeded economists’ expectations for a 2.7 percent growth rate.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has warned the economy will be weak through the rest of 2008. Economists believe growth will slow in the July-September quarter to a pace of around 1.5 percent, and will turn even weaker in the fourth quarter.

3.3% eh? Not too bad for a country waging 2 wars and fighting record gas prices at the same time. So don’t believe the politicians telling you that the whole country is going to fall apart soon — it won’t. At least not until Social Security and Medicare blow up in our face.

Also, let’s look at Bernanke’s estimate: a third quarter growth of 1.5%. Well, the government predicted 1.9% last quarter and ended up with 3.3%, so a 1.5% estimate should give us around 3% growth. I’ll take that.