Bush Sniggers "The Economy Is A Little Slow But It’s Really Strong. And Little Johnny McCain Will Make It All Better. Heh heh heh."

Yesterday the United States Department of Labor reported job losses of over 60,000 last month.

…the biggest decline in nearly five years and the second consecutive month of job losses. Without government employment, the picture would have been worse. Private employers cut payrolls by 101,000 jobs in February, the third consecutive month they cut jobs.

The Lion’s no mathematician, but that would suggest that the government hired about 40,000 people last month. The Republican government. The party of small government. Remember them? Fiscally responsible Republicans?

Hold that thought while you consider the following:

• Oil went over $105 a barrel this week.
• A record number of homes entered foreclosure in the last quarter of 2007.
• Homeowner equity fell to the lowest point since WWII.
• Stock prices just kept on sliding to the lowest point since October 2006.
• The Federal Reserve is expected to cut rates to as low as two percent soon (meaning older folk living on bank interest are screwed).
• Banks, caught in the subprime creature of their own making, don’t want to lend money.
• Job losses are spread broadly, not concentrated in one or a few industries.
• See Jared Bernstein for a deeper analysis.

The unemployment rate slipped to 4.8 percent from 4.9 percent, but the decline was driven by a shrinking labor force, a sign that workers are becoming discouraged and no longer looking for work.

And of course the Labor Department doesn’t count people who have quit the hopeless task of looking for work. And of course that gives political cover to the politicians. Oh, look, they say, low unemployment – just ignore those beggars on the corner.

But there is always the voice of the optimist abroad in the land. Rich Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research Corporation in New York noted an increase in credit card borrowing indicates that “the job market and consumers still have some staying power.”

The Lion suggests that increased credit card borrowing in a down economy may be more indicative of desperation on the part of people who can’t make ends meet, and smells like deeper trouble sooner rather than later.

The Globe story ended with a quote from Yamarone, and The Lion might hope he blushed when he said it.

“Not all the economic data suggest a recession,” Yamarone said. But, he conceded, “That’s getting harder to defend.”

And what did Fearless Frat Boy, current emperor residing in the Stained House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, have to say?

President Bush, reacting to the unexpected job losses, yesterday acknowledged economic activity has slowed. But he said the recently approved package to stimulate the economy, primarily through tax rebate checks to most Americans, will provide a “booster shot.” In addition, aggressive interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve will provide a further lift.

Translated into English, that reads “Oh, you have the bubonic plague? Take a couple of aspirin and stop bothering me.”

What’s needed is a booster shot, a vaccine, if you will, against Republicanism.

• Tax cuts for the wealthy.
• Corporate lobbyists in charge of agencies regulating their own industries.
• A senseless war paid for with massive borrowings from Asia.
• Corporations friendly to Republicans profiteering off Republican wars and refusing to pay taxes, and getting away with it.
• Political hacks put in charge of government agencies, creating waste and fraud, and abusing the citizenry (Katrina comes to mind).
• The Justice Department corrupted to the point where the entire system, countrywide, can not be trusted.

And just what is it that the Republicans are offering as a panacea for the mess they have created over the last eight years?

Why, their war hero candidate, Johnny ‘McTorture’ McCain, who offers more tax cuts on the one hand, and ‘training’ for workers who have seen their jobs disappear overseas or into the yawning abyss of Republican economic policies.

Good, John, good. Train them for jobs that pay half as much in wages and nothing in benefits and that actually don’t exist. And you can pay for the training with the money you don’t get from the taxes you cut.

The Lion might be forgiven for thinking that little Johnny McT got hit in the head too many times during his sojourn in Hanoi. Cruel remark? Why not? The man was tortured and now he favors letting CIA interrogators torture people. Torture must work, apparently, or he wouldn’t favor it. One might fairly assume that when tortured he betrayed his comrades and his country, and now he proposes policies that are a further betrayal.

Consider that a man who is trying to game the public election financing system, after giving his word and signature to stay in it, may just not have very much integrity. The same might be said of a man who abused his position as a committee chairman, more than once, to interfere in regulatory matters in favor of companies that contributed to his campaign.

And consider that a man who sought the endorsement of a bigoted, ugly little man like televangelist John Hagee might not only lack integrity and honesty, but would sell what little is left of his soul for a vote. So pathetic is McCain in the matter of Hagee that he said he repudiated any views of the man ‘if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics’.

He can’t even give a straight talk answer when he must know that Hagee called the Catholic Church ‘the great whore’ and a ‘false cult system’. To not know the foul and venomous character of Hagee suggests either a failure of his campaign staff, or a complete, abject, and utter failure of character on McCain’s part, or both. And to act as though he can repudiate one part of a bigot like Hagee and believe that that makes it okay suggests that McCain is in fact not only a whore, but has less character and integrity than a common street whore .

But this is the man the Republicans want to put into the White House to continue the policies that have made us the nation we are today.

One might suppose that a hundred more years of war in the Middle East by the United States, lead by a man of unstable emotion, given to fits of apparently uncontrollable rage to the point that the military doesn’t trust him and doesn’t think he’s fit for the White House, is a small price to pay for having such a great man leading the nation. 

If one were a Republican one might suppose that. Anybody with any sanity left will push every button in the voting booth that reads ‘Democrat’, and if that doesn’t work then get out the pitchforks and torches and prepare to drag the creep out of the White House. 

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