Anyone but Dean

Er... Whatever. Newsweek has a new poll out.

Re elect Bush - 48% say yes, 49% say no.

A Democrat could do a better job - 41% say yes, 42% say no.

Elect Howard Dean or George Bush - 43% say Dean, 51% say Bush.

Got to love those numbers even if your candidate of choice isn't Howard Dean. The RWAP must be quivering in their boots and soiling their Depends diapers over this. Despite having captured the hobo bogeyman formerly known as Saddam Hussein. Despite having the Dow industrial average well over 10,000. Despite all these good things Bush has under his belt, I'm sure Karl Rove is wondering right now who he has to blow to get some good press now a days.

Incentives Lure Many to Quit, Starting Tough New Job Hunt

Fortified with big pension payouts and promises of health benefits, these early retirees are gambling on the devil they don't know rather than sticking with the devil they do.

Until a year or two ago, exit packages drew fewer takers. Now they are more carefully aimed at employees in operations that are shrinking. Although no national statistics are kept, companies that offer these packages say that the response is greater than they had anticipated.

"What people are doing more than in the past is laying themselves off if they get what amounts to a big enough package," said Deborah Hart, a principal at Towers Perrin, a consulting firm that designs exit packages for corporate clients.

Ouch! Damn that liberal press! Exaggerating the problem. Curse them!

Bush Seeks Ways to Create Jobs, and Fast

Unable to do much more to stimulate the economy, administration officials have stepped up their arguments that the three tax cuts over the last three years have made the economic slowdown and job losses shorter and smaller than they might otherwise have been.

"Without the passage of the president's plans, by the second quarter in 2003, the unemployment rate would have been nearly one percentage point higher," Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said earlier this week. "As many as 1.5 million fewer Americans would be working, and real G.D.P. would have been as much as 2 percent lower."

Wow. Really sounds like they're arguing from a position of strength, don't they? "Oh look, it could be a whole lot worse" makes a great show piece of the campaign stump speech, don't it?

So maybe the BushCo patented supply side economics has popped its cork prematurely. Maybe not. Apparently there's another slug of salty good tax cuts for "us".

President Bush may also have an ace in the hole. Last year's tax cuts are expected to produce another big bulge of tax refunds and lower tax bills between now and June - about $40 billion in extra cash flow to households, according to economists at Goldman Sachs and Macroeconomic Advisers.

So Karl's fingers are crossed and he's praying to whatever he holds holy (Dagon?) that his slug of cash will propel BushCo numbers up just in time for November. The last slug he sent through the system upped the stock market, but didn't generate any of those pesky new jobs.