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A.P continues carrying water for the dark side, with this headline today:

Economy grows at fastest pace since 1984

Not that it isn't true, as the first paragraph of the story, which was written by Jeannine Aversa, attests:

Oct. 30, 2003 -- WASHINGTON (AP) -- The economy grew at a scorching 7.2 percent annual rate in the third quarter in the strongest pace in nearly two decades. Consumers spent with abandon and businesses ramped up investment, compelling new evidence of an economic resurgence.

Note it says "businesses ramped up investment". You have to go all the way to the bottom of the story, to the very last paragraph, to see this:

But inventory reduction by businesses continued to be a drag on the economy and reduced third-quarter GDP by 0.67 percentage point. And a continuing reluctance by businesses to build up stocks suggest that executives remain wary of the rebound's staying power.

Meaning, of course, that businesses are still over-capacity, which is the real problem in this recession. Until demand increases to exceed capacity, there won't be any meaningful new hiring. You get a taste of that in paragraph 7:

Although the nation's payrolls grew by 57,000 in September -- the first increase in eight months -- the economy needs to add a lot more jobs than that each month to drive down the 6.1 percent unemployment rate, analysts have said.

...then have to wait to paragraph 15 to have the reality spelled out:

Sustained turnarounds in capital spending and in hiring are crucial to the economy's return to full throttle. Economists said business wants profits to improve and wants to be sure of the recovery's vigor before it goes on a spending and hiring spree.

So what, then, is driving the increase? Consumer spending, of course.

In the third quarter, consumers ratcheted up their spending at a brisk 6.6 percent annual rate. That was the biggest increase since the first quarter of 1988 and was up from a 3.8 percent pace in the second quarter.

Consumers in the third quarter spent lavishly on big-ticket items, such as cars, boosting such spending by a whopping 26.9 percent rate. And, they also spent briskly on "nondurables'' such as food and clothes, which grew at a 7.9 percent pace, the strongest showing since the first quarter of 1976.

So what we have is increased consumer spending without an increase in employment. Which suggests even higher increased consumer debt. In other words, consumers are buying on credit, not spending new wealth.

How long can that be sustained if businesses are still playing the waiting game? Can consumers actually throw themselves into debt enough to make demand exceed capacity?

Do they really want to?

Would you?

A few other points of interest in the way this article is written. The first is the immediate credit--in paragraph 5--that's given to Bush:

Near rock-bottom short-term interest rates, along with President Bush's third round of tax cuts, have helped the economy shift into a higher gear during the summer, economists say. The next challenge is making sure the rebound is self-sustaining, they say.

Notice that the credit given the tax cuts is from "economists". In the next paragraph, however, the dissent is qualified as partisan:

Democrats, however, argue that the tax cuts contributed to a record budget deficit in the recently ended 2003 fiscal year and have done little to spur significant job growth.

Thanks, A.P.

Another buried gem, way down in paragraph 17:

Federal government spending, which grew at a 1.4 percent rate, was only a minor contributor to GDP in the third quarter. Spending on national defense was flat. But in the second quarter, military spending on the Iraq war -- which grew at a whopping 45.8 percent rate -- helped to catapult economic growth.

I dunno, I'm at a loss. Does "spending on national defense was flat" mean it stayed at the level from the previous quarter, which represented a 45.8 percent increase? I think that's what this means. If so, it certainly would NOT be considered a "a minor contributor to GDP".

Perhaps Ms. Aversa could look it up, and write a clarification. I won't hold my breath.

The latest line of hooey being disseminated to defend the increasingly indefensible foreign policy fiasco that is the occupation of Iraq crops up in a letter to today's New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/29/opinion/L29IRAQ.html

To the Editor:

Re "Suicide Bombers in Baghdad Kill at Least 34" (front page, Oct. 28): The terrorists are not automatons; they watch the news and gauge reactions to decide their future course. They are going to strike at the people they think are weak and most likely to pull out. I have the greatest respect for the heroic dedication of the aid workers, but if they are going to be in Iraq, then they have to decide right now to stay, no matter what. If everybody hunkered down and refused to give into terrorism, the terrorists would have no reason to attack.

ANDY SCHMIDT
Charlottesville, Va., Oct. 28, 2003

See, the problem isn't thousands of years of religious conflict, hundreds of years of colonial occupation, or even decades of brutal dictatorship and reactionary anti-western zealotry -- and it's certainly not the horrendously ignorant, ideologically-driven foreign policy of the neocons who hijacked George Bush's presidency.

No, the problem is anyone who criticizes the Bush administration or their policies. That's what's REALLY motivating the terrorists. If we'd all just get on board the terrorists would "have no reason to attack".

Because they don't think they're fighting a titanic religious struggle that goes back eons -- they're really just reacting to Paul Krugman.

Why do we just know there was some Russian hard-liner spewing this same nonsense while Russians soldiers were up to their armpits in blood in Afghanistan? Or in England, for that matter, while they were mired in this same Iraq.

The blame for this particularly stinky poop-throwing rests squarely on the head of the President himself, for it was he who first slung it, in his State of the Union address.

Oh and by the way, as Mr. Schmidt points out, everyone, including international aid workers, should just hunker down and go along with Mr. Bush's brilliant operation. Or else, presumably, they're "with the terrorists".

Of course we may be cynics, but listening to President Bush and Paul Bremer explaining away the escalating violence in Baghdad as either evidence of US success there (Bush) or, really, not as bad as it looks (Bremer) we couldn't help thinking of Ken Lay's upbeat and encouraging remarks to Enron employees a wee bit before the wheels fell off that cart.

Well, Bush said he'd be the CEO President. He said he had an MBA and would run the country like a business, and that's what he's doing: he's putting out the company line and expecting all patriotic employees to get with it, despite all evidence to the contrary.

You ARE company-minded, aren't you? Because, frankly, there's no room here for employees that question the decisions or motives of upper management.

"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here. It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents--it's disgusting.

"As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."

- Former Senator Max Cleland, committee member of the federal "National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States".

Apparently Florida Speaker of the House Johnnie Byrd isn't the only one who feels it's ok to misrepresent court proceedings to make a point. Here's a letter to the editor in today's New York Times:

The writer is a medical ethicist.

To the Editor:

I represent 14 national disability organizations that filed a friend-of-the-court brief to support keeping Terri Schiavo alive (editorial, Oct. 23).

They did so because two doctors whom the Florida court found to have "very impressive credentials" testified that Mrs. Schiavo was not terminal, comatose or "vegetative" but rather severely disabled.

The idea expressed in your editorial that "true respect for life includes recognizing . . . when it ceases to be meaningful" is disturbing. Many would lump into this category people with severe autism, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy who, like Mrs. Schiavo, are nonverbal and are often described as being "in their own world."

The judicial sanctioning of such attitudes moves America back to the days when the sterilization and elimination of people with disabilities did not merely reflect private prejudices but were embraced as the law of the land.

MAX LAPERTOSA
Staff Counsel, Access Living
Chicago, Oct. 23, 2003

Yikes. Let's parse this disturbing revisionism.

"...two doctors whom the Florida court found to have "very impressive credentials" testified that Mrs. Schiavo was not terminal, comatose or "vegetative" but rather severely disabled."

Mr. Lapertosa tries to create the impression of a convincing legal argument by juxtaposing the courts' acceptance of his preferred experts' credentials with the conclusions of those experts. Of course there is no connection between the two. The courts accepted their credentials but disagreed with their opinions in this matter, preferring the testimony of other experts--period. Mr. Lapertosa's experts lost. Their credentials are irrelevant.

It's interesting that this is precisely the rhetorical technique used by Speaker Byrd on The Newshour earlier this week. Byrd referred to this same specific testimony as "the testimony...in this case", as if it were definitive and not the losing argument.

"The idea expressed in your editorial that "true respect for life includes recognizing . . . when it ceases to be meaningful" is disturbing. Many would lump into this category people with severe autism, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy who, like Mrs. Schiavo, are nonverbal and are often described as being "in their own world."

No one--in the courts or at the New York Times--lumped anything anywhere. This case was about Terri Schiavo--not autism, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy--and the courts made their decisions based on voluminous expert testimony. Mr. Lapertosa's suggestion that "many" would agree to eliminate anyone who is "nonverbal" or "often described as being 'in their own world'" is specious--unless he believes "many" would agree to eliminate newborns.

Of course Mr. Lapertosa knows the courts' decisions to remove Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tubes were not based on these symptoms but on their underlying medical cause.

It may be illustrative here to compare the diagnosis of poor Mrs. Schiavo with that of a well-known DJ here in Boston who passed away earlier this year. As a result of catastrophic stroke, the man (who was in his thirties) was completely unable to move, but was conscious and in full possession of his faculties. This hellish condition is known as "locked-in syndrome"; it left him alert and aware but unable to move much more than his eyes.

He could easily have been described as "nonverbal" or "in his own world'"--but no one would have dreamed of "eliminating" him. Because, of course, it is not upon those properties that such decisions are made, but on the fundamental underlying medical situation that creates them.

"Many", and more importantly in this instance, the courts of Florida, can distinguish what Mr. Lapertosa pretends they cannot.

"The judicial sanctioning of such attitudes moves America back to the days when the sterilization and elimination of people with disabilities did not merely reflect private prejudices but were embraced as the law of the land."

Perhaps I'm not old enough to remember the days when America sterilized and eliminated people with disabilities--although I understand that we once elected one President for four terms. I am old enough to have read that in this case the court did not find that Terri Schiavo was "disabled", but that she was in a permanently non-conscious vegetative state. The experts the courts agreed with stated that what her poor parents perceive as reaction is just lower brain-stem reflex.

Now I don't know whether the courts or the experts are right--I'm not a doctor. But I do know what the courts decided, and I'm pretty sure that the courts are charged with the responsibility of settling disputes in this country--even in Florida.

No one should be fooled when Mr. Lapertosa and Speaker Byrd attempt to reargue the points that lost in the courts, or pretend the ultimate legal outcome was other than it was. The reason Mrs. Schiavo has been returned to her feeding tube is that the Florida House of Representatives unconstitutionally overturned the courts' ruling.

And lest there be any doubt about that--or that the House's action won't stand--consider this exchange from last night's Newsnight with Aaron Brown:

BROWN: With us now in Gainesville, Florida, is Lars Noah who teaches law at the University of Florida. Nice to see you.

LARS NOAH, PROFESSOR OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: Thank you.

BROWN: I got to be honest, I spent a fair amount of the day looking for someone who would say to us the law is fine and it will stand up--and we couldn't.

Not that we want to jump in on the sad case of Terri Schiavo, the comatose woman at the center of the ugly legal dispute in Florida, but some things said on Wednesday's The Newshour by Florida's Speaker of the House left us shaking our heads.

Having presided over the House's decision to override a court order allowing Schiavo's husband to disconnect her feeding tube, Speaker Johnnie Byrd of the Florida House of Representatives--who is a lawyer, mind you--said this:

The legislators make public policy. I think, you know, if the step back away from this case, you know, we have three branches of government. I'll say that the legislatures have maybe, you know, delegated their authority too much to the court system. We've relied too much on the judicial system to make public policy when, in fact, the judiciary is very good at resolving disputes but very poor at making public policy.

The judiciary is very good at resolving disputes but very poor at making public policy.

Isn't the Schiavo case a dispute? Isn't it a disagreement between her husband and her parents? Hasn't it been in dispute for 13 years? And didn't it go all the way to the Florida Supreme Court?

What else is it but a dispute? How is it "public policy"?

Byrd:

We had to intervene to give a clear signal to the Florida courts what the legislative intent and the public policy of Florida would be in cases such as the Terri Schiavo case.

In fact, the legislation is so narrowly written that it specifically names Schiavo. If that's Byrd's idea of setting "public policy" then the Florida legislature is going to be awfully busy from now on.

No doubt recognizing the weakness of this argument, Byrd's political instincts take over and he quickly moves from the open fields of legality to the more hilly terrain of rhetoric:

The testimony I think in this case was that she could have therapy and live a higher quality of life. And it's not for us to say whether her life was worth living.

Byrd of course knows that testimony in the case was presented by both sides and that the Court decided between them. Nevertheless he purposely states "the testimony was that she could have therapy and live a higher quality of life"--conveniently failing to mention that this was the testimony that lost in court.

He has to--otherwise it's all too clear how dreadfully the legislature is interfering in the judiciary process.

Sensing, perhaps, that the ground here is still a bit too well-lit, Byrd drops a phrase meant to lure any pro-lifers that may be half tuning in, then dives directly to the gutter:

We just need to err on the side of life. And I believe now with this new law, we will have another guardian ad item appointed, someone who has no conflicts of interest, you know, there were monetary incentives, I understand that Mr. Schiavo has another lady that he lives with and maybe even a child or one or more children by this other person.

Well, at least Byrd isn't trying to solve a dispute.

What we have here is no less than the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives retrying a settled case in two sentences on national TV. Byrd gives us the villain, the motive, and the verdict all conveniently packaged for easy consumption in one paragraph. Schiavo's husband is a cad and a bounder, "the testimony" was that she "could have therapy and live a higher quality of life", and the court has too much authority--granted, ostensibly, by the legislature--which Byrd has courageously reigned in.

Thank goodness Floridians have such legislative leadership; otherwise how would they ever settle disputes?

Maybe someone there should come up with a legal forum for deciding between opposing parties. You know, an arena where arguments are heard and measured against the law and each other, then decided by impartial figures. Some happy day.

In the meantime Floridians will have to rely on the shamelessness and mealymouthed rhetoric of its politicians.

The GOP media has been trying out various anti-Clark scripts lately, tossing them like spagetti against the wall to see what sticks. They've marched a gaggle of ex-military talking hens out to take potshots at Clark's character--most of which have been either transparently false or transparently green-eyed.

Clark, of course, was a Rhodes Scholar as well as a four-star general, so expect the right-wing poop-throwers to toss the same anti-intellectual stinkers they always do when they're running a mentally challenged or flat-out incompetent candidate. Some recent examples may come to mind.

It does work. Most people don't like "eggheads", and while I suspect Wesley Clark would beat up any two or three guys that called him that, the GOP will undoubtedly try to turn his academic achievements into some sort of sneered insult, just as they did with Al Gore--who was defeated as much as anything by the fact that he knew what he was talking about, the smug bastard.

America is in love with the idea of itself as a tall, quiet cowboy--the strong silent type who takes a licking and keeps on killing Japs, Nazis, Vietcong, or hippies, depending on the movie. When it looks in the mirror the country wants to see--according to its age or mood--Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, or in an ironic sign of the times, Russell Crowe--staring back.

This "mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the toughest of them all" game always requires some suspension of disbelief. But America often sees what it wants to see, and that includes when it looks at its President--which these days takes a suspension of disbelief worthy of Norman Bates.

Indeed, it sometimes seems as if the only person who truly believes the President's PR is the President himself. His handlers surely know his image is crafted; after all, they crafted it. But it's not always clear he himself does. At times it appears he actually believes that he's a cowboy, a fighter pilot, and a regular guy who went to public high school in Texas.

If so, it's what we call "believing your own press clippings", and it's never pretty to watch. It's one thing to play the part of the Lone Ranger for the benefit of the voters, as Reagan did; it's another to have "Kemo Sabi" embroidered on your bathrobe. But that's the danger of being the boss' son: no one ever tells you the ugly truth--they just pretend to laugh at your jokes, and drink a lot when they go home at night.

In any event, the quiet tough guy is the ideal American, we collectively agree; he's the man who settled the west, forged the steel that won the war, beat the Nazis back to Berlin and the bad guys off the streets of San Francisco, and always got the girl, even if, as in High Plains Drifter, the girl wasn't so sure she wanted to be got. Ah, she'll come around.

There's no denying this load of mostly Hollywood-created rubbish has its appeal, and is based to a degree on reality. America was a wilderness that took enormous courage and fortitude to tame. Also more than a little cutthroatedess. But hey, this is the wild west--there's no room for eggheads.

Except for the little fact that the founders of this country were some of the most brilliant men who ever lived. And we're not talking frontier smart, we're talking book smart. Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin...with the possible exception of Jefferson none of these guys would be much help in a bar fight or on the gridiron. You could make a case for Washington, but let's face it, the first President George was the high school quarterback of the founding fathers; he may have ridden on the lead float at the homecoming parade, but he wasn't exactly writing policy papers for the student government.

The fact is, the men responsible for building the framework for the most successful democracy in history were a bunch of book smart eggheads. Diplomats, writers, inventors, so called "gentleman farmers"--those were the men that created America.

We won't hold our breath waiting for a country song glorifying brainiacs; it's much easier and more profitable to sing about lonesome cowboys and truck drivers. But when the right-wing smear machine gears up its attack on Wesley Clark's being a Rhode Scholar--and it will--bear in mind that the America our strong silent types fought so strongly (and so silently) for was created by a group of brilliant eggheads with wills of iron and nerves of steel.

This has probably already been observed, but as we're in the process of moving we're a bit out of touch, and have only caught a little news.

However, can you IMAGINE what Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly would be saying if Al Franken had been caught paying his housekeeper to get him thousands of pain killers for years?

Can you IMAGINE?

On Vacation. Back next week.