Jobs are being created, but no one's noticing:

An Associated Press survey of 788 registered voters conducted Monday through Wednesday shows that while they may be gaining confidence in the economy and Bush's performance, 57 percent said the nation has lost jobs in the last six months. The Labor Department has reported just the opposite - nearly 1.2 million jobs gained in half a year....

Funny thing is, this type of assumption of the negative is self-fulfilling. Confidence says a lot in a market economy, if individual people don't realize growth then they tend to asct in ways that hold it back.

Of course, then there's people who are just partisan hacks...

"The jobs are being created for college students at McDonald's," said Barbara Mulkey, a Democratic voter from rural Floyd County, Ky. She said jobs had been lost, then didn't budge on her opinion of Bush when told she was wrong.

"college students at McDonald's"?

Perhaps Barbara would like to explain what would make a difference, if in fact Bush's economic policy is only creating low-wage jobs. Last I checked, hiring was a private matter, the unemployment rate counted unemployment and not "under-employment", college students weren't supporting families on their pay on a regular basis, and federal policy wasn't directly traceable to immediate results.

At least others realized DC doesn't have a button marked "make jobs":

Michelle Blundy initially said U.S. jobs had been lost and called herself a "probable" Bush voter. Informed about the jobs gain, the Grand Rapids, Mich., woman said she would vote for Bush - and chalked up her original skepticism to Michigan's poor economy.

"They're going to say all the jobs in Michigan are going here or there, whereas there may be jobs created in Colorado that of course we don't know about because we're not there," she said.

State policies matter too. Remember the uproar when some states promptly ate up the tax relief enacted on the federal level by raising their own taxes? Somehow I doubt that was recieved well...

Unfounded assumptions sure are popping up a lot. Check out Ashcroft's recent encounter w/ the Senate Judiciary Committee:

Ashcroft said because the al-Qaida terrorist network is not a "high contracting party" to the international treaties known as the Geneva Conventions that prohibit physical abuse of prisoners of war, the treaties' protections do not apply to members of the militant Islamic group. But Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, retorted that "there's a reason why we sign these treaties -- it's to protect my son in the military" in the event he is ever captured by enemy forces.


Uh....John? If no one bothers to check whether or not the people in custody actually are al-Quaeda operatives then how can anyone be so sure that they aren't covered? See, the detainees are by default to treated as POWs until they're verified to be otherwise, then when their status is clear moves can be made w/ clarity. IMO, if a person is captured who IS part of al-quaeda, go ahead and torture them for all I care, they deliberately violate such agreements simply by existing -- but treating all detainees like we have is counterproductive in the sense we get nothing from it but the wrath of arabs who consider it proof we're total bigots. The standard should be simple: treat people like normal human beings until they show themselves to be otherwise by not extending the same to others.

Joe Biden's comment isn't much better, in that he seems to assume a knee-jerk willingness on the part of the opposition to stop short of breaking out the knives with "Wait! They signed Geneva!" The reason we should honor these type of rules is not because it'll make others honor them, but because it's simply the right thing to do, consistent w/ the idea of innocent-until-proven guilty. By his logic, since so many nations overtly violate international rules on a regular basis all bets are off.

This isn't helping...

Jesse Walker, on the coverage of Reagan's funeral preps: "enough already"

Readers of National Review Online (basically): "shut up, commie!"

No wonder Craig Kilborn sucks up to him so much...

Morrissey, smack dab in the middle of a concert Saturday: "Reagan just passed. Wish it was Bush instead..."

I'm sure this is a minor thought among the outpouring triggered by the death of Ronald Reagan over the weekend, but I feel it needs to be said. Consider the following:

U.S. stock markets will close this Friday to mark the death of former President Ronald Reagan, several Wall Street sources have said. Official word of the closure is expected later Monday, the sources said. The New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stock Market declined to comment on a possible closure.

While the markets have yet to officially announce the closures, Securities Industry Association guidelines on "unexpected market close" dated April 13, 2004 notes that, over the past 30 years, there have been nine unexpected market closes.

I wasn't politically coherent during Reagan's terms in office, and as such I'm not going to attempt to make an appraisal on that time. However, I know this much: regardless of anything else, his mantra included a firm belief in the unparalleled resilience of free-market capitalism. He went so far as to bet the entire country on it, that the buildup in defense would drive the Soviets over the edge playing chicken without hurting the US -- we had the market on our side, nothing could stand in the way.

So, what I must ask is this:

For someone so enamored with the market, is it really the most appropriate of tributes for an artery of it to close off?

Must capitalism pause out of respect, as if to trade is to snub a fellow human being?

Where is this implied shame in commerce coming from?

The free market is bigger than any one of us, and we owe more to it than even us rabid pro-market types realize. IMO, it would be a more fitting recognition if in the face of Reagan's passing stocks still traded like usual. It'd say something to the world:

"we do not stop"

Civil liberties-wise, we haven't seen the half yet:

In today's America, prisoners are held incommunicado for years, newspapers can't photograph soldiers' coffins returned from Iraq and the government can secretly track the books citizens read and the movies they watch. But civil liberties can erode much further before Americans will say enough is enough, say experts in social history and political behavior....

"We're at war," said Ken Weinstein of the Hudson Institute, a policy think tank. "That's why it doesn't bother us." Nor is there a clear "tipping point" to swing opinion the other way, added Karlyn Bowman, a polling expert at the American Enterprise Institute. "We don't seem to be anywhere near it at this time."

Just after Sept. 11, 2001, polls showed two-thirds of Americans felt it would be necessary to give up some civil liberties to protect the nation. A year later, that number still stood at about half, Bowman said.

Someone should do a poll asking people just what civil liberties they'd be willing to toss out in the name of "security" -- and then promptly throw it out, since it'd be irrelevant. Whatever one might think is acceptable to give up in time of crisis doesn't hold as a limit, that isn't how our political system - or ANY that I've heard of - works. You find out only after the line has been crossed and then have to slog through trying to reverse the tide.

Anyone deluding themselves into thinking that there's a natural backstop is doing this country no favor. Yes, we have to be vigilant to defend ourselves, but without more attention we won't have anything worth defending left. Freedom does not protect itself.