March 04, 2004

• yes, not sure I could handle much more of this job growth...if I get any less employed I suppose I will be retired, right?? hahahahah! I'm so funny...hey, no one's laughing....
• If both myself and my wife enjoy the kind of job growth that cheney is talking about we'll be dead. Might as well be, since we've both been layed off. Fuck Cheney and Bush. Damn, did I just say that? Well hell.
• I left the country because I couldnt get a job, and I didnt think Bush's forthcoming war policy was very promising. I really hope he loses in november so I can come back sooner or later, but not with a war-mongerer while I am still in draft-range.
• That's ok, folks. You'll all have jobs when they start drafting you.
• Draft range, lkc? You'd be surprised how far that can extend, although if you're in the right country, you can confuse them into giving up. My father in law likes to tell the story of an American friend living in New Zealand during the Vietnam war period; because he still had his citizenship and was the right age, his draft callup came in the mail. It wanted him to report to his last US address; a bit awkward. You are allowed to have your report changed to somewhere nearer by, so he sent back a letter explaining he was in New Zealand. Back came a letter explaining he could report for inspection in Hawaii (closer, it's another island chain in the Pacific with Polynesian natives). He wrote back explaining where New Zealand was relative to Hawaii, and that this was still not especially convenient. More letters flowed back and forth as the millitary worked its way across the Pacific; this was beginning to look a little like the WWII island hopping campaign, as suggestions moved from Hawaii, through to Guam, then American Samoa then Australia, and then, finally, someone remembered the US has what is technically a millitary base in New Zealand - the Antarctic supply base in Christchurch. Seeing as this was in the South Island and he was in the North, he wrote back explaining this still wasn't especially convenient. They gave up at that point, and he got back a letter deferring his service, so the story goes.
• How the Republican party could see Cheney as anything but a liability astounds me. What is he good for, the Illuminati vote?
• Last time I looked Cheney was polling in the 30% range. I think his bad heart could beat him in an election.
• Pay the newly drafted with salt. Salt would be so much easier to counterfeit.
• Hmmmm---2004 and Bush/Cheney are reelected. Now it is 2005 and Bush is "incapacitated". Cheney ascends to presidency. WE are soooo screwed!
• Most of the time the Busg presidency scares the shit out of me by reminding me of the Reagan presidency (that is, even acts of treason like Iran-Contra get a free pass because el Prez is dumb and lovable); whenever I think of Cheney I think of Nixon and Spiro. I hope Cheney gets fucked up bad like Agnew in the end. It's the least he deserves.
• Cheney just might go the way of Spiro Agnew.

  A February 5 report by UPI titled 'Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe' begins as follows: "Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said. According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, were the two Cheney employees. 'We believe that Hannah was the major player in this,' one federal law-enforcement officer said." Lewis Libby is one of the most important people on Cheney's staff. Along with John Hannah, who served as one of Cheney's Middle East Policy advisors, Libby was deeply involved in the activities of Rumsfeld's hand-picked Pentagon group, the Office of Special Plans. This group was put together specifically to re-engineer data regarding the threat posed by Iraq so as to manufacture justification for a decision to make war that had already been made. On several occasions, Libby visited CIA headquarters at the behest of Cheney to browbeat CIA analysts into "toughening up" their assessments of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Given all the work Libby and Hannah put in to make sure Bush got his Iraq war, it is no wonder they were less than thrilled with what Ambassador Wilson had to say. Did these men out a CIA agent and destroy a network that tracked weapons of mass destruction? We may soon know. Attorney General John Ashcroft has recused himself from the investigation. A bulldog of a U.S. Attorney named Patrick Fitzgerald is special prosecutor investigating the matter. Several members of the Bush administration have been dragged before a Grand Jury, including White House spokesman Scott McClellan, McClennan deputy Claire Buchan, former press aide Adam Levine, Republican consultant Mary Matalin, who served as a counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, White House communications director Dan Bartlett, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and Cheney aide Cathie Martin. According to a Newsday report from February 22 titled 'Panel Questions White House Aides,' during the grand jury sessions, "Press aides were confronted with internal White House documents, mainly e-mails and telephone logs, between White House aides and reporters and questioned about conversations with reporters. The logs indicate that several White House officials talked to Novak shortly before the appearance of his July 14 column. According to the New York Times, the set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff and national security adviser." Further reports indicate the journalists who were called may be questioned. Fitzgerald's first act as special prosecutor was to ask White House staffers to sign a waiver which allows those journalists to speak without violating confidentiality. This would determine, immediately, which administration official violated national security, destroyed a WMD network, and endangered the life of an agent. George W. Bush has promised to cooperate with Fitzgerald's investigation, but as of this date, those waivers have not been signed. Her name was Valerie Plame, and she was a NOC. She was keeping weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of terrorists. What was the Bush administration doing?

• Cheney, shmeney. Of course he's going to say things like this. That's his job. Look, it's simple math. There are approximately 80 million baby boomers. They are going to start retiring any day now. There are approximately 40 million gen-xers. There will be plenty o' jobs for everyone who wants to work. Not even a greedy, conservative agenda can change the fact that it's already starting to be a worker's market despite whatever fear-mongering, consumer inducing tripe the current administration is fond of shoving down our throats. (p.s. badgerbadgerbadgerbadger mush-ROOM, mush-ROOM!)
• Kimberley: They won't be retiring, ever, if Alan Greenspan gets his way.
• Ok fine, they'll start keeling over soon. ;) I think there's a lot to be said to re-thinking what retirement means. There is going to be a serious shortage of managers and phasing out and mentoring will probably have to happen. In any case, I still think there will be plenty of jobs. People are just freaking out because the way we work and the type of work we're doing is drastically changing. It's all growing pains.
• Ha ha ha. What temperature is the sand, Kimberly?
• Type of work we are doing is drastically changing and we suffer from growing pains? Growing pains is when you are getting bigger, and generally experienced in adolescence. The whole slant of the article is that the job market is getting smaller, and the only thing adolescent about this is Cheney still thinks he's got what America wants. So it's really more like shrinking pains. i concede that your optimism is very nice, and that i like pies. i also want more than to just replace some retired shmoe. i want progress. And pies.
• Nostril: Feel free to spend your time believing all the doom and gloom about life that is being thrown at us from every direction. I choose to live my life seeing opportunities everywhere and working on developing myself and my career. So far it's worked out very well for me. The trick is actually seeing the opportunities. Zenon: The workplace is rapidly changing. How we work and what kind of work we're doing and the rewards for doing said work are being redefined every day. The signs are everywhere. You won't be replacing some retired shmoe, you'll be discovering new ways to get things done. Also, here's some pie. A la mode.
• *applauds Kimberly for raising, instead of lowering the tone* can I have some pie a la mode, too?
• Kimberly, darlin', pure optimism aint gonna turn around the economy, no matter the intensity of warm-fuzziness. Sorry about that, but go ahead and feel positive. What colour are your panties?
• This is from the United Stes Department of Labor. Total employment was down in February to 138.3 million, and the employment-population ratio--the proportion of the population age 16 and older with jobs--declined to 62.2 percent. The ratio was at or near that level for most of 2003. Over the month, the civilian labor force decreased by 392,000 to 146.5 million, and the labor force participation rate fell to 65.9 percent. (See table A-1.) Now that is job growth we can take to the bank (when we are cashing our unemployment checks.)
• P.S. May I now offer everyone pie love?
  from the same guy who did your badgers. mmmm, pies.