revision99

Anybody else tired of hearing about the “blood and treasure” we are spending in Iraq?

What’s that all about, anyway? Is that supposed to be some sort of euphemism, so we don’t think about the dead and broken bodies and the hundreds of billions of dollars that are swirling down the drain? What’s a little blood, after all? Everyone’s cut themselves. No big deal, right? And treasure.  Oooh, you mean like in “Pirates of the Caribbean” Yeah, pirate’s booty, not the pallets of cash, shipped literally by the ton in C-17’s, only to disappear down the Iraqi sinkhole. This happy talk is an extension of the U.S. policy of not showing pictures of military coffins as the dead are brought back, and the policy of not allowing cameras in the hospitals where the wounded are being treated. Sure it’s dishonest, but we’re talking about the Bush Administration, so what else is new?

And why is every military person, especially the grunts, now called a hero? Most of these kids didn’t know what they were getting into when they joined. They thought it was a good way to get out of their boring hometown, or they thought they’d learn a trade so they could later get a good civilian job (ha ha, the jobs are now in China), or they were packed off to the Army to get some discipline into their lives. Some of them were deluded into thinking they’d be defending freedom, or making the world safe for democracy, or liberating an oppressed people, or avenging the terrorist attacks on New York and DC, or [plug in the hyperpatriotic bullshit phrase of your choice]. Sure, now that they’re in, they’re doing a tough job and performing well, but who wouldn’t if the alternative was death or dismemberment? I’d like to see more of them stand up and say “This is wrong and I’m not going to take part in it.” That would be heroic. That would be taking a moral stand against overwhelming opposition.

In the sixties there was a bumper sticker that read “What if they gave a war and nobody came?” It was expressing the foolish idea that if we stopped lending our bodies to take part in the depraved militant fantasies of greedy old men, there would be no war, because there would be no one to fight it. We assumed that the politicians and generals wouldn’t do it themselves, and I don’t think we were wrong about that. And it recognized the reality that we — you know, The People — have the power to change things.  All it takes is unity, across social class and national borders.  If we stand up en masse and say “This is wrong and we’re not going to do it,” it’s over for the depraved, greedy old men who move us around on their chess board map of the world, “sacrificing” a thousand of us here, a million of us there, destroying whole countries, dislocating entire populations.

I’m not stupid enough to think anything like that is going to happen. I can’t say why, but it seems an impossible dream.  Most of us will say we want peace on earth, but we stand ready to join up and kill our enemies, even though most of the time the enemy is us.

(Click here   for the soundtrack to this post.)

As I predicted yesterday, we all get to have guns now.

The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the 2nd Amendment since it was ratified in 1791, probably because it’s so simply written and so clear in its meaning that no interpretation is needed. But the current Cowboy Court has ended that neglect today by declaring that it is our legal — if not God-given — right to own as many guns as we want, and to keep them around the house, assembled and loaded. And oh, by the way, no one can make you use one of those cumbersome trigger locks, either!

The 5-4 decision split pretty much as you’d expect, with the “strict constructionists” Alito, Thomas, Kennedy, Chief Roberts and Scalia toeing the NRA line. They went with a “strict” interpretation of the 2nd Amendment, which states:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

Well, it was strict except for the part about a well-regulated militia. The majority on the Court didn’t include that part in their interpretation. I know — you’re saying “If you leave that part out, it changes the whole meaning of the amendment!” And yes, completely reversing the meaning of part of the Constitution does seem to go against the principle of Strict Constructionism. But, as the right wingers are fond of saying, “You lost! Get over it!”

The other losers will include the sad people who will use their guns to shoot themselves, their wives and children, and the kids who will accidentally shoot themselves or their friends, and the surprised homeowners who will have their guns taken away and turned on them by burglars and home invaders delighted to find that their victims are thoughtfully providing loaded guns for the party.

My favorite part of Scalia’s written opinion is where he says that guns are the weapon of choice to defend your home, because you can point your gun with one hand while dialing the police with the other hand. What a dumbass! If he’d watched even a few episodes of Miami Vice he’d know that you’re supposed to use two hands when you point your gun. But probably Scalia is trying to show that only God-fearing law-abiding, police dialing citizens will be pointing guns and that this new Arm America decision won’t create an epidemic of bullet-related civilian casualties.

Me, I’ll be practicing my quick draw.

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PS: This and many recent decisions of the Supreme Court have been split 5-4. Justice Stevens is 88 years old. Ginsburg, Breyer and Souter are near 70. They can’t go on forever trying to uphold justice against an ever more right-leaning Court.  Do you see now why we can’t let John McCain be President?

Today the Supreme Court, which is in no way controlled by large corporate interests or appointed by those who are in the pockets of Big Oil, finally ruled on the Exxon Valdez class action suit, a case that has been going on now for nearly 20 years.

They decided that Exxon should pay just 10% of the original damage judgment.

You remember the Exxon Valdez - a few minutes after midnight on March 24, 1989, the supertanker crashed into a reef in Prince William Sound, Alaska, and dumped 11 million gallons of crude oil into the water, which then washed up on the shore in an incident that has been described as “…a severe environmental insult to a relatively pristine, ecologically important area that was home to many species of wildlife endangered elsewhere.” The ship’s captain was not at the helm, but in his quarters sleeping off a night of heavy drinking. The incident was characterized at the time as the worst environmental disaster of all time. The cleanup lasted a few months. The litigation didn’t end until today.

The first damage award against Exxon, in 1994, was 5 billion dollars. Exxon appealed, of course, and the various courts involved over the years have reduced it bit by bit until the Supremes got hold of it. They decided that 500 million dollars, or 90% less than the original award, would be fine.

This is an amount approximately equal to six hours worth of Exxon revenue, so obviously the 19 years of denying responsibility paid off for them. It’s amazing how useful the Supreme Court of the United States can be when the President works for you.

Not so fortunate are the 32,000 people who lived along the 1200 miles of coastline that was damaged by the spill, some say forever. According to them, the spill has never been fully cleaned up. They say a lot of the wildlife, killed or driven away by the toxic mess, haven’t returned. The full amount of the original judgment wouldn’t have compensated them adequately for what they suffered. This latest reduction is simply the final humiliation for them.

Legal scholars may be scratching their heads trying to figure out the Court’s reasoning here, but, hey, what’s done is done. Fish, birds, plankton, fishermen: You lost! Get over it! Tomorrow, the Court is expected to rule that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is meant to permit all of us to own guns. All of us, not just those darned “well-regulated militias.”

Yeehaw! Once we’re all armed, we’ll be able to assess our own punitive damages in the future.

Just a couple of random thoughts before I start my wild weekend.

I was getting a little tired of Tim Russert. He’s the guy who started the school of broadcast journalism known as “Gotcha.” He’d bring some lying scumbag politician on his show and read him a quote from a speech he made six years ago at the commencement ceremony of the Idaho Skinhead Academy or some such, and then ask “Do you regret making that statement?” Better yet, he’d play the video, and then we’d all get to watch Tim’s victim squirm and wriggle, trying to put some kind of acceptable spin on it. Really, it was a miracle that anybody ever went on Meet The Press.

But the technique was so compelling that everybody on the teevee eventually came around to thinking there was no reason to discuss actual issues with actual newsmakers when it was so much more fun and telegenic to just hoist them on their own petards and watch them sputter in the wind. What Tim was doing was taking advantage of politicos who had not yet figured out that the times, they had a’changed, and there was no hiding anymore. Stuff you said to a racist crowd in the deep South was gonna get played back in New Hampshire, and right before the election, too. Everything was on tape, and modern technology made it all available to the producers at NBC. The problem, in my mind, was that everyone has said something stupid in their lives, and Tim generally didn’t bother making any distinction between the good guys and the bad guys. He tortured them both equally, and he usually let both off the hook at the end.

Still, I admit I watched the show every chance I got, and I’m sad that Russert is gone. I mean, he milked the Democratic primary as hard as all the other pundits, trying to make it seem as if there was really any suspense to it, but when it was over (after the Indiana primary) he was the first to just come out and say it was over. I could tell he was crestfallen about it, too, not because he didn’t like the way it turned out, but because he was enjoying the ride and he didn’t want it to end.

I can’t even remember who the hosts of Meet The Press were before Tim Russert, and I can’t imagine the show without him.

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The concept of habeas corpus is the basis for a little thing I like to call “the rule of law.” Yesterday the Supreme Court upheld our right to have a legal proceeding before a civilian court whenever any part of our government wants to put us in jail. They have to say why they want to lock us up, and they have to prove their case. They can’t just lock us up because… well, just because. Let me rephrase that: Without habeas corpus, we got nuthin’.

The Bush Administration has been doing that whole detention thing without charges, hearings or evidence for six years now, and yesterday the Court smacked them down for it. But, of course, negative guy that I am, all I can think about is that four Supreme Court justices voted against the preservation of this precious right, which has been a sacred, untouchable part of Anglo-Saxon law for at least 500 years. That’s four votes out of nine.

We are one vote away from becoming a police state.

The next president will likely make the appointment that could change the balance, either in favor of the Constitution, or against it. So if you’re thinking you’re going to vote for McCain because of “the way Hillary was treated,” or because “there’s no difference between the two parties,” or because “the country isn’t ready for a black president,” or for the perfectly logical reason that Barack Obama is a Muslim, you might be really surprised at the way things look in this country in a few years.

As always, my heart beats only for you. Have a great weekend!

For the past five years I have been a one-issue voter.

My issue? Stop the war.

I’m not much of a fighter. I grew up with a father who was haunted by his experience in World War 2. He could not stop reliving it, and forcing his horrible memories on me and my brothers and sisters. Despite this, my understanding was that it was a “good” war, one that we all could be proud of. In 1950’s America this was the overwhelmingly predominant sentiment, and even today I think most would concur.

But when my war came along — the one in Vietnam — I was no longer a child, and I didn’t think about it in that childlike way: Oh boy! Competition! Let’s kick some ass! I love kickin’ ass! Our leaders say we have to do this, so I’m going to do this. We have to stop the spread of communism — if Vietnam falls, all of Asia will go down like dominoes. My nation is superior and in this way we will prove it. Better dead than Red. The honor of my country is at stake. God is on our side.

We have at least one war every generation, and I have now been around long enough to know that there are two reasons: one is that wars are profitable for old guys. The other is that young guys like to fight, and are thus easily manipulated into believing they must fight.

I can look back at World War 2 now and see that it didn’t have to happen. International competition for land and resources, the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, the profit motive of arms dealers and the utter failure of diplomacy led to that conflagration. Don’t get all “Hitler was crazy” on me. I know that, but then what about Mussolini, Roosevelt, Tojo, Hirohito, Churchill? What about Charlemagne, Napoleon, George Washington, Che Guevara and Ghengis Khan? Were they all crazy? Are we all crazy? Because don’t we always, haven’t we always, resorted to robbing, raping and killing each other to resolve our differences? As if there were no other way! And doesn’t the end of each war set the stage for the next one? Didn’t we recently (90 years ago) have “the war to end all wars”? Heck, maybe we’re not crazy. Maybe we’re just stupid.

Look, I’m aware of all the practical arguments you can give me for fighting all these wars, and I’m sure to many of you I seem unpatriotic or naive. I admit I’m more interested in the world than the nation. I’d rather promote the survival of humanity than of Americans, and by definition this is unpatriotic. I can live with your censure for that. As for practicality, how many times are we going to “settle” things with mass violence, only to discover 20 years later that things aren’t settled at all, and we have to saddle up and go fight again? How many millenia of bloody destruction must we endure before we try something else? How practical is it to keep doing the same thing over and over and expecting the results to be different?

Am I naive to suggest that we find another way? Now that there are six billion of us and we can see the end of existing global fuel supplies and the very climate is changing as a result of our presence, isn’t it time we stopped with the mindless killing and started to work together, to pool the world’s talent and try to save our planet — our home? I’m not a doomsayer. I’m really quite optimistic about what we might achieve if we cooperate, if we learn how to listen to each other, if we stifle the greed of old guys and derail the bloodlust of young guys and focus instead on making a better life for all of us and for our descendants.

Somehow I’ve lost sight of my one issue over the past year. Healthcare, Reverend Wright, Hillary’s brave campaign, our government’s blatant corruption, Larry Craig’s foot-tapping, cyclones, earthquakes, the unconscionable profits of Exxon, dappin’ on the podium — so much has crowded out my one issue. Meanwhile, way out on the edge of the media bubble, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drag on. Atrocities are being committed every day. Even the legal stuff, the killing that has been officially sanctioned, the affronts to human dignity that are approved by international treaty, are hardly mentioned in the news anymore. I’m not blaming the press. It’s my bad that I’ve let this slip from my consciousness.

My One Big Issue is the reason I would have voted for any of the excellent Democratic candidates for president in 2008, and why I will now support the finalist, Barack Obama. It’s the overriding reason why I wouldn’t vote for McCain under any circumstance (although there are plenty of other compelling reasons not to vote for him). I know that the mess we have created in Iraq precludes any kind of immediate withdrawal of forces, but we must begin to wrap it up there and stop shooting, even if we can’t pull out for years. President Bush is trying to work out a deal — a “Status of Force Agreement” — that will make McCain’s dream of a hundred years there a reality. Congress needs to block this any way they can, and the next president needs to work out something that makes sense and actually leads to the U.S. departure from a country where we do not belong, playing a role that cannot be sustained, at a cost that is simply unimaginable.

Whatever the hell is going on in Afghanistan, it isn’t working. The Taliban is back big time, and the locals seems to be hiding and abetting Osama bin Laden, which I think makes our effort there a complete failure, so I would suggest looking for an alternative to the deployment of troops. The terrorist problem has always seemed to me a police matter anyway — it was the Bush Administration that tried to make it into an excuse for military action.

Nobody really wants to deal with this as a serious issue. Nobody wants to get at the causes and try to make real change. Six months ago all the candidates for President of the United States said, in response to prompting from the press, that they couldn’t promise we’d be out of Iraq by 2013 — the end of a first term, which to me was sort of a promise that we wouldn’t be out by then. So we don’t have an antiwar candidate, and the wind is out of those sails.

Nevertheless, as the earth’s population continues to explode, water and energy supplies dry up and pollution threatens all humanity, we may be at a tipping point, a point in history at which we do something together, or die separately in bunkers, proudly waving our tattered flags.

Can anybody tell me what the heck Hillary Clinton is up to?

I mean, God love her, she ran a helluva campaign, and she would have been a helluva president, and the road to power is a helluva lot smoother for women now than it was a year ago at this time. But everyone in the country knows that it’s over and she didn’t win.

Everyone, that is, but Hillary Clinton.

OK, there is something to be said for perseverance against great odds. The British in World War 2, for example. They should have surrendered. They were totally outmatched, and their great cities were being bombed at will by the Germans. It was only a matter of time. But they held on — against all odds, I might add — and miraculously they were saved. Sure, it took a gigantic effort on the part of their American friends, but it happened because the Brits simply wouldn’t quit, even when it looked as if they were already defeated.

Is this what Senator Clinton thinks will happen to her? That maybe she’ll get that One Big Endorsement that will change everyone’s minds, or that Barack Obama will be caught on video swearing allegiance to Osama bin Laden? I mean, she’s not winning the popular vote, states won, the pledged delegates or the superdelegates. This whole idea that Florida and Michigan should be counted feels way too much like changing the rules after game has started. Her argument about winning in the big states is weak — New York and California, to name two, are solidly Democratic. The fact that she beat other Dems in those state primaries doesn’t mean that they’ll turn Republican in November if she’s not the nominee.

But Clinton is not stupid, and I don’t see her as delusional, so I have to ask: What the heck is she up to? What’s the point of continuing to campaign past the end? Some would say it’s the money. Her campaign is in the hole big time, largely to her, and she wants to keep the donations coming in so she can retire that debt. But I think she’s too honorable to pull a scam like that, getting people to send money for a goal she has already abandoned.

So…

• Is she making a power move for the Vice Presidency?
• Is she trying to retire that huge debt?
• Does she have something horrible on Obama that she’ll pull out around convention time?
• Is she gunning for 2012?
• Fill in your own answer here.

Help me out, people. I’m just trying to understand. I’m not one of those who has already decided that she will drop out of the race, and the only discussion is when she will do it and what she will negotiate for in exchange. I’m not standing by the door glancing at my watch and jingling my keys. I think she’s got something up her sleeve, and I want to know what it is.

And I want to know before she springs it, because I’m just that special kind of guy.

Let’s say he gets elected.

Because of his age, he will inspire the young. Kids are idealistic. You can call it naivete or foolishness, but they tend to have faith until it’s destroyed by a few years of watching cynical “leaders” hustle their sleazy scams for their own aggrandizement at the expense of everyone else. A president who shows them it’s OK to care about each other, the environment, peace and justice on earth should bring thousands — if not millions — of them out to get involved in public life one way or another. This kind of thing could backfire, or it could change the world for the better.

Because of his origin, he will be a source of pride for African Americans. The sense of helplessness and anger they must feel after the past two hundred years should be reduced just a bit by knowing that they have elected a president, a leader for the entire country, and that a whole bunch of white folks went along with them. I personally think the whole concept of “race” based on color, and the idea that some colors are better than others, is bullshit, but that’s easy for me to say, and if the many beautiful people of color want to claim Obama as their own and look up to him and begin to believe that things must be getting better and that they have a fair chance for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that’s all to the good, don’t you think?

Because he is human, he will make mistakes. The mystique surrounding Obama threatens to raise expectations so high that when he does something normal, or supports an unpopular program or says something that sounds condescending, some will be so shocked that they will reflexively attack him — for letting them down. He has been pretty diligent in trying to let us know that this is bound to happen and that he’ll deal with it intelligently when it does, but many of us don’t want to have the gold diluted, and we’re not listening. And let’s also remember that Obama is getting a lot of money from big corporations, and he is being advised by people from those interests, and typically many of those contributors end up in appointed government jobs if their man wins. He owes those people, and it probably will not be possible to deny them everything they want, so he might have to hand out some distasteful favors while in office. Nobody’s perfect.

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“Old Friends, Part 4″ coming soon!

I think tonight is the night Barack Obama won the presidency.

Senator Clinton’s win in Indiana was by the thinnest of margins, while Obama’s win in North Carolina was commanding. He is now ahead in pledged delegates as well as states won. Mrs. Clinton has been trying to say that she has momentum because of her win last month in Pennsylvania, and that she is ahead in the popular vote if we “count all the votes,” meaning those in Florida and Michigan. The latter argument was flimsy and would have been vigorously contested by Obama’s campaign. Clinton might still try to tie things up in the DNC rules committee and credentials committee, but as of tonight, Obama can give her Florida and Michigan, where he wasn’t even on the ballot and where they knew their primaries would not count, and still be ahead in the popular vote.

Mrs. Clinton’s only hope is to convince most of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates that she has a better chance of winning in November than Obama, but that argument will fall on deaf — or at least disinterested — ears.

And in view of her weak showing tonight, her funding will probably dry up, leaving her deeply in debt and at a distinct disadvantage against the Obama money machine.

I have tried to remain neutral in this since my guy John Edwards dropped out, and I would still vote for Clinton if she became the nominee. But now that it’s over I realize I have been pulling for this outcome for quite a while. Obama is a strong candidate, an intelligent man who doesn’t talk down to the electorate (like I would). I have said all along that a Democrat will win the White House this time.

Despite what various Democratic commentators and partisans have been saying, John McCain isn’t really more of the same, but after this disastrous administration, just being a Republican is the kiss of death. McCain would be well-advised not to let it get too dirty, so he can retire with a little dignity.

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Thanks to you Precious Few who are enjoying my story of how my roommate and I saved the world from Richard Nixon. I really can’t tell you how much it means to me.  I took a break from it tonight to watch the election returns, and tomorrow night I have a gig (old guys ROCK!), so I’ll be getting to the next installment on Thursday night, Friday at the latest.

Coming soon: Nixon doesn’t like our whiskey, and makes us buy his brand.

I’m not enjoying the Democratic primary campaign.

I wish Clinton and Obama would just tell us why we should vote for them, rather than harping on why we should not vote for the other guy/gal.

But as you know, Jones’ First Law of Social Interaction (Bullies always win) has a corollary: Negative campaigning works. So now Clinton is giving Obama shit because he said this:

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest,” he said, “the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them… And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

To me, this seems like an obviously true statement. Doesn’t it to you? I mean, take religion for example. Let’s use Christianity, because that’s the one all the candidates have to pander to. It got started among the dirt-poor in the ancient Roman Empire. The early Christians were the conquered “citizens” of Rome who were consigned to having nothing, and doomed to stay that way, while the Emperor had the ancient equivalent of hot tubs and plasma televisions. For the little guy, life was a hardscrabble forty years, followed by a short illness or a fatal accident and then back to dust.

Along comes Jesus with his promise of a kingdom in the afterlife, open to all, free of want and pain. Your lot in this life is less than irrelevant to your chance for eternal happiness in heaven. In fact, the worse things are for you here, the better they’ll be in heaven, as long as you shut up and accept your lot in life. Throw in a little ritual hocus pocus and is it any wonder people would cling to it? Like, what else would helpless, powerless, dispossessed people have to cling to? Their brutal work in the fields and mines and shops of ancient Rome, where they earned just enough to slowly starve themselves and their families to death?

As the wealth in the United States continues to be stolen and given to the rich, as the middle class is slowly turned into the lower class, then the working poor, and finally The Poor, it’s no wonder that some look for solace in their beautiful fantasy of God’s love, redemption and eternal, ecstatic life in heaven. Who’d go along with all those rules and restrictions and requirements if they weren’t desperate for something to give them hope?

I applaud the fact that there is a politician in this race with the brains to see this reality and the balls to speak of it in public. What Obama said to me with those words is “The economic policies of this government are making people desperate, and it’s got to stop. We have to give folks a way to earn a decent living, have some self-respect, educate their children and keep some hope for a dignified old age. Then they won’t have to cling to fantasies, however beautiful.”

I just hope we don’t crucify him for saying it.

The President of the United States seems to be a complete asshole.

I’ve been in a state of humiliation since the “election” of 2000, or at least since I got over the disbelief and rage. I can say from first-hand knowledge that this has been easily the worst seven years the U.S. has endured since the middle of the 20th century. Sorry, I can’t speak first-hand about stuff before the midpoint. The Great Depression was probably a pretty rough time, but at least for most of it there was not an idiot at the top of the government.

Yes, George W. Bush is an idiot. Worse, he is under the control of a cabal of ultra right-wing ideologues who have no clue how to run things, or maybe they just don’t give a shit about justice or morality, as long as they get theirs, which they most assuredly are. Since I live here and people around the world have no reason not to believe that I am OK with his presidency, I am humiliated.

Except every now and then the rage comes out again.

I don’t usually do this, but here’s an entire op-ed from today’s (March 16, 2008) New York Times. I know no one ever follows my links, so I’m putting the whole thing here. It’s short and easy to read, so you should read it, especially if you are one of those who think Bush is a president kind of like other presidents, that he’s good at some things, not so good at others, that he’s essentially an honest man with the best interest of the nation and the people at heart, that he makes sensible decisions that intelligent people might disagree with, but they’re still sensible. Here you go:

Through Bush-Colored Glasses

Published: March 16, 2008

President Bush admitted on Friday that times are tough. So much for the straight talk.

Mr. Bush went on to paint a false picture of the economy. He dismissed virtually every proposal Congress is working on to alleviate the mortgage crisis, sticking to his administration’s inadequate ideas. And despite the rush of serious problems — frozen credit markets, millions of impending mortgage defaults, solvency issues at banks, a plunging dollar — he said that a major source of uncertainty today is whether his tax cuts, scheduled to expire in 2010, would be extended.

This was too far afield of reality to be dismissed as simple cheerleading. It points to the pressing need for a coherent plan to steer through what some economists are now predicting could be a severe downturn. Mr. Bush’s denial of the economic truth underscores the need for Congress to push forward with solutions to the mortgage crisis especially bankruptcy reform to help defaulting homeowners. Lawmakers also must prepare to execute, in case it is needed, a government rescue of people whose homes are now worth less than they borrowed to buy them.

Mr. Bush said he was optimistic because the economy’s foundation is solid as measured by employment, wages, productivity, exports and the federal deficit. He was wrong on every count. On some, he has been wrong for quite a while.

Mr. Bush boasted about 52 consecutive months of job growth during his presidency. What matters is the magnitude of growth, not ticks on a calendar. The economic expansion under Mr. Bush which it is safe to assume is now over produced job growth of 4.2 percent. That is the worst performance over a business cycle since the government started keeping track in 1945.

Mr. Bush also talked approvingly of the recent unemployment rate of 4.8 percent. A low rate is good news when it indicates a robust job market. The unemployment rate ticked down last month because hundreds of thousands of people dropped out of the work force altogether. Worse, long-term unemployment, of six months or more, hit 17.5 percent. We’d expect that in the depths of a recession. It is unprecedented at the onset of one.

Mr. Bush was wrong to say wages are rising. On Friday morning, the day he spoke, the government reported that wages failed to outpace inflation in February, for the fifth straight month. Productivity growth has also weakened markedly in the past two years, a harbinger of a lower overall standard of living for Americans.

Exports have surged of late, but largely on the back of a falling dollar. The weaker dollar makes American exports cheaper, but it also pushes up oil prices. Potentially far more serious, a weakening dollar also reduces the Federal Reserve’s flexibility to steady the economy.

Finally, Mr. Bush’s focus on the size of the federal budget deficit ignores that annual government borrowing comes on top of existing debt. Publicly held federal debt will be up by a stunning 76 percent by the end of his presidency. Paying back the money means less to spend on everything else for a very long time.

The fiscal stimulus passed by Congress, and touted by Mr. Bush on Friday, could juice growth for a quarter or two later this year. But the economy’s fundamental weaknesses indicate that Americans are ill-prepared for hard times. That makes the need for clear-eyed policies all the more urgent. We need them from the president, Congress and the contenders for the White House.

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You can read this for yourself at the Times’ web site. They no longer charge for any of their content. It’s a great paper. They have made some mistakes, but let me know if you know someone who hasn’t. Mainly, they hold their fire until they’ve got the facts. They give you the benefit of the doubt.

There is no more doubt about George W. Bush. He’s either a liar or a boob, or both. I hope there’s something left to govern when his successor is sworn in next January.