John McCain would do well to consider just how bad the State of the Nation really is, before pandering hate above telling the American public just how he plans to create jobs. That the failed Bush economic and fiscal policies are behind the current maelstrom of pain and suffering goes without question. Barack Obama has had little or nothing to do with this fiasco, in fact, has been the only candidate to offer concrete broad plans about what to do to ameliorate the problem. I can't say the same of Sen. McCain, who just seems to have nothing better to do than waste my time with his slurs, innuendos, misstatement of fact and obvious doublespeak. At this point, his inflammatory old school Huey Long rhetoric just wears on the nerves of any sane human being living in 2008. McCain redefines anachronism in his own time; he is a stopped Railroad Pocket Watch, period.
Just how badly have the Bush shadow economies impacted the real economy in terms of jobs? Follow below the fold.
Looking at the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, issued for last week, we see that we are in the ninth straight month of job losses in this country. Since December 2007, total payrolls were down 760,000. If you exclude the public sector job gains, the actual private-sector employment is down 969,000 jobs since the beginning of the 2008 year.
Senior economist Jared Bernstein remarked that the numbers clearly portrayed a recessionary job market that has been taking a toll on working families' living standards.
Bernstein and economist Heidi Shierholz have also analyzed the remarkable loss in their most recent Jobs Picture. Many people, they wrote, are settling for part-time employment. So many in fact, that they felt the numbers justified an extension of Emergency Unemployment Compensation.
Congress adjourned without taking any action to expand the program.
Everyone knows about the "meltdown" in the equities markets. The DJIA looks like it was hit with an elephant gun. Major world markets are also having more than their share of problems.
It seems to me that McCain would better serve the voters of this country by coming up with some apologies, first off, for having contributed in the past to the failed Bush fiscal and economic policies; and second, to quit wasting the public's time stirring up rhetoric that went out with Huey Long. He's living in the past, that is clear. There will always be people who love to go along with the herd, screaming and shouting for lynchings and hangings, but I submit to you, in 2008, would it not be smarter to concentrate on a twist of phrase that we expressed in 1968: Make Jobs, Not Hate.
The Make Love, Not War slogan just seems to be one that John McCain never got his mind wrapped around. Not then, Not now. No how.