Ok, yeah, great, people are getting jobs and soldiers and whatnot. Bring back the Lara Flynn Boyle picture. DO it. DO it.
Thank you.

I wonder how this growth in manufacturing is connected to the steel import tariffs that Bush put in place to allow the industry some breathing room to "reorganize and consolidate". Tariffs that were ruled illegal by the WTO and lifted "too soon to do any real good" according to "industry analysts". The thing that really boosts my confidence in the Bush re-election prospects time and time again ( Besides seeing John "Imperious and Unappealing" Kerry drop in the polls every time he gets a national audience) is that this guy knows where to expend political capital. He spends it wisely and judiciously. It's great to have a Republican President with an MBA from Harvard that stayed awake during the "cost-benefit analysis" lecture.

heh, the Blue Oyster Cult cowbell segment on SNL was the best ever, i even went to the trouble of finding a copy of it online.

*tuk* *tuk* *tuk* *tuk* *tuk*

Cowbell's the kinda thing that there's just too little of........

So many people still think the economy is bad, it is incredibly frustrating.

And then there are the people who will cling to pessimism because it serves their agenda.

True anecdote, happened to me last week;
I was in my store helping a customer, and as always I have the radio set to local news talk station.
We hear a quick blurb about some little toddler girl who was abandoned by her father, he left the baby with some strangers. My customer (an older woman) and I both made the same noises of disgust and dismay. I said, 'Can you believe the things that people do??' and she said;

You won't believe what she said.

She said, "Well with the economy the way it is, people are struggling to take care of their children."

I stared at her as if her head had transformed into a wheel of cheese. I said, "The ECONOMY? You think the economy made this guy abandon his kid??"

Well I listened to her nonsense briefly and changed the subject. She was an ancient hippie trying to push stealth politics by me and I wasn't having it.

Can you believe that crap?? Still get mad, especially when I see that the networks are embargoing the good news.

Y'know, if by some weird chance I'm ever an absolute dictator, (yeah right) I won't ask for much. Hell, I'll let ya do any damn thing ya want, long as ya don't trample on other people's rights.

I just want the privilege of kicking the shit out of aging pacifist hippies without repercussion. Is that too fucking much to ask?!

It's Marx's theory that everything in society is founded on economics. Whatever is right or wrong in art, history, morality, politics, language, philosophy, science, or anything else, is the direct result of the economic system in place. With a view like that, all bad news must stem from some economic cause. There's no other explanation.

I don't know all the nitty gritty details of Marxism; are you saying that it doesn't allow for natural born scumbags? It just assumes the economy creates scumbag behavior?

That's pretty much it, yes. But the economic system is also responsible for everything good. Economics is responsible for everything. His philosophy of history was that economic systems were evolving and would eventually bring mankind to a perfect state where there would be no crime, no hate, no greed, no evil of any kind. And there would be no government--it wouldn't be necessary when man was perfected.

See, that's what I love about Capitalism. Human foibles are built right into the equation. Its crudity is its strength. Humans are greedy? We have the system for that.

Evolve to a perfect state later when it suits you.