La la land

I've finally got it! The explanation for Bush's behavior. He's nuts! Wacko! 'Round the bend! He's goddam delusional.

Check out this news item:

"President Bush, speaking after [italics mine] a report showing an unexpectedly small gain of 1,000 U.S. non-farm jobs in December, said on Friday all signs pointed to strength in the U.S. economy. 'I'm optimistic,' Bush told a forum on small business. 'All of the signs in our economy are very strong.' Bush's comment was in sharp contrast with the Labor Department's report that said U.S. payrolls outside the farm sector grew a mere 1,000 in December, far less than the 130,000 projected by U.S. economists in a Reuters survey."

The Labor Department is part of Bush's cabinet, for God's sake! Doesn't he read its reports? (Well, we know he rarely reads the news, but don't his minions at least read them to him?)

And check out this article, refering to the same report:

"American employers hardly took on any new workers in December, a disappointing government report Friday said, indicating the economic recovery has yet to translate into sustained jobs growth. The unemployment rate fell to 5.7 percent, the lowest in over a year and down from 5.9 percent in November. But this was mainly because people dropped out of the work force....
"The poor report is a headache for President Bush as he seeks re-election in November with the economy -- specifically job creation -- expected to be a key issue in the campaign. But Bush, speaking to a small business forum, was upbeat, saying all economic signs were 'very strong'. He said the drop in the unemployment rate was a 'positive sign' of an improving economy.
"Economists disagreed. 'It's a shocker. The one ray of sunshine, the decline in the unemployment rate, is ironically a sign of weakness,' said Cary Leahey, senior U.S. economist, Deutsche Bank Securities, New York. 'The only reason it declined is that fewer people were looking for jobs in December.'
"The dollar and stock market fell and U.S. Treasury bond prices rose after the report."

The other explanation is that Bush (and/or his minions) make an announcement--any announcement, regardless of its relationship to reality--to cover up, or cancel out, an unfavorable news item with a headline of their choosing. This makes sense, because Bush no doubt knew of the unfavorable Labor Department report before it was published and chose to make his "upbeat" remarks anyway.

It had the desired effect, too: The two items from AOL News that I refered to above, reporting the same news, carried these two headlines: "December Jobs report worse than expected" and "Bush says US economy 'very strong'." The result, given the level of readership, would be a non-news item, a cancelling out, just as Bush's handlers intended.

And so it goes, all the way to November.

[For accurate analyses of the "job creation" resulting from Bush's tax cut, check out this site.]