Mad Kane is back from vacation and feeling very fair and balanced. So much so that she has written a fine fair and balanced tune :
Fair and balanced,
Fair and balanced.
Empty slogans, rabid views, and shrill rants.
Fox calls critics liars.
O’Reilly’s filled with angst and ire.
Go sing the rest.
And, being so excited to have missed the blackout, she created a special dubya blackout cartoon but The Village Voice thinks maybe Pataki should be blamed.
Yep, I feel better now that bush has kind of told us all will be well:
“We’re upbeat about the chances for our fellow citizens who are looking for work to be able to find a job,” Bush said. “I firmly believe that what we have done was the absolute right course of action in order to help people find a job.”
I’m not so sure the folks who held those 2.6 million jobs that have evaporated feel the same. Maybe, though, they can move to India.
Rob Schaap at Blogorrhoea pretty much sums up the latest economic news:
A blogorrhoeaic summary: Shrubya’s promised job splurge ain’t coming, rather direct investment is down, unemployment is up and wages are all but static in real terms. Excess capacity stalks the manufacturing sector and the information technology is having trouble growing demand – and we must doubt that clever marketers can entice consumers to ignore their mounting debt for much longer.
Go here to read the rest.
This is the good news:
On Thursday August 7th, the Bureau of Labour Statistics offered the latest evidence of America�s productivity revival: output per worker soared by 5.7% in the second quarter, at an annualised rate.
And this may be very bad news for Bush reelection prospects if not for the rest of us:
Arthur Okun, an American economist, showed that employment would fall, even if the economy were growing, if an �output gap� opens up between actual output and the economy’s long-term �potential� output. Okun�s razor appears to be at work in the American economy today, shaving payrolls in the non-farm sector by 44,000 in July.
After promising to cure all ills with his tax cuts bush’s failure to deliver may lead the armies of unemployed to vote for anyone but bush.
Hmmmm, for the conspiracy theory set Pirates ‘rule the high seas:
Violent acts of piracy at sea have hit an all-time high,…..
The number of reported ship attacks soared 37% to 234 in the first six months of 2003, compared with 171 in the corresponding 2002 period.
Good marketing suggests that this activity should be increasing as a buildup to this.