Chavez Has Our Oil

Hugo can't be allowed be saying things like:

"Iraqi oil should be handled by the Iraqi people. Otherwise it would be going back 200 years, and I don't want to think that the new century is beginning with colonialism."

The Venezuelan president is already(still?) being demonized in Washington and it's not impossible that Chavez might receive an acute, fatal case of lead poisoning courtesy of the U.S. national security state.

I like the following: "if things do not develop in a positive way ... you are going to see the United States taking a more proactive role." So said an unnamed diplomat regarding Chavez's alleged refusal to hold elections.

More proactive role? I'll ask Don Vito Corleone for a translation.

Chavez is a real problem for the U.S. He was democratically elected, is pro-Castro and of course, Venezuela has oil. Talk about a dilemma.

His reforms seem to be helping the poor. Egads! A monster!

The Bush administration has already supported a short-lived coup d'etat against Chavez, and the recycled Reaganites in the administration purportedly support democracy - yet there is precious little evidence to support that policy declaration.

We know what this gang did in Latin America during the Reagan years. That didn't strike me as what I would call democratic reform.

The U.S. is willing to accept open markets sans democracy, but does not appear to be willing to allow democracy without markets open to U.S. corporate interests.

He'll likely be okay as long as the oil tap remains open.

Should the crude stop flowing out of Venezuela, I fear that the U.S. may do something crude - and all too familiar - to Chavez.

Another Day in the Empire

Bombings, explosions, killings and hostage taking - just another day in the empire.

Convoy attacked, marines dead

Iraq remains treacherous after handover

Some conservatives say they hope U.S. troops remain in Iraq indefinitely as a permanent presences in the Middle East.

"Even if we're successful with the internal struggle in Iraq, this will be a Shia dominated proto-democracy in the Arab heartland. It's going to have repercussions and we have to make sure this thing's protected," said Thomas Donnelly, a national security expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

This is how we continue to build American Empire. Neo-conservatism and neo-imperialism are like hand and glove. Of course the policy wonks at the neo-conservative AEI want troope to remain in Iraq. A permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq provides Israel some additional protection - which is paramount to the neo-cons at the AEI, and as an added bonus gives the U.S. effective control of Iraqi material assets. Having the second largest deposits of oil sitting within your(our?) borders is too powerful a resource to be left to those that rightly own it. I'm sure we'll prove good stewards of Iraq's petrochemical wealth.

U.S. Still Failing to meet Iraq's electricity needs

Billions of reconstruction dollars given to U.S. corporate interests in Iraq, while millions of Iraqis remain jobless.

This is no way to run an empire. I think it's past time that we continue trying.

The Post Carbon World

This is amongst the most important post you may ever read. I'm not kidding.

"Saudi oil finance ministers and their U.S. counterparts... lined up to say that the industrial world has nothing to worry about on the oil front for decades. That so many high-ranking Saudi and US officials should gather in public to tell us not to worry should be quite worrisome." - Julian Darley

Oil. How much is really left? What are the viable alternatives? What can we do?

Can industrial society survive or is the "party" over?

I have resources.

Audio interview courtesy of Unwelcome Guests

Hour 1 Hour 2

Julian Darley's Post Carbon Institute website.

Global Public Media's multimedia archive of talks and discussions regarding energy.

At the very least, spend the two hours and listen to the audio interviews. It'll inspire you and or frighten you. Maybe a little fright is just what we need to awake from our collective slumber.

Get out there and stir it up!

Bush Numbers at New Low

A new NYT/CBS Poll finds Bush at the lowest numbers of his presidency.

Lots of interesting stuff here.

I think that there is little doubt that Bush will get a short term bounce due to the Iraqi 'transfer of sovereignty.'

As has been the case in recent polls, Kerry doesn't appear to be benefiting from Bush's ground-scraping numbers.

A telling item from the poll is this:

In Mr. Kerry's case, 36 percent said they had no opinion of him, despite the campaign's record-setting expenditure on television advertisements. That figure is fairly typical for challengers at this point in the campaign; in June 1992, 44 percent of the public did not have an opinion of Bill Clinton.

The electorate is truly asleep.

If you want to view the NYT poll data without registering, just paste the following URL into your address box: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/politics/campaign/29POLL.html?ex=1089086400&en=bf69cb72a2827a2e&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE

You really should read the piece.

My favorite bit is "Americans were more likely to believe that Mr. Bush would do a better job than Mr. Kerry would in steering the nation through a foreign crisis," and I think it likely more people that think that Bush would be the most likely to foment the "foreign crisis." :)

Read, Learn. Know stuff. Be cool.

CAFTA

Your CAFTA Audio Primer

Listen and learn.

Handoff

Via Reuters

Interestingly, the move was allegedly made two days early in an effort to thwart attacks believed planned for 30 June. Of course, it's U.S. doctrine to never negotiate with terrorists. Pragmatism trumps doctrine.

Conditional sovereignty

The ruling Iraqis do not have authority to:

1) Retake the assets that have been sold and or controlled by allied corporate interests

2) Make "long-term" policy decisions

3) Control the ~160,000 foreign troops still in Iraq

I wish the Iraqis well. I also hope that the U.S. does the right things regarding what are rightfully Iraqi assets.

So ends one chapter in Operation Iraqi Liberation(OIL).

Another New Book

Former Clinton Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich has a book out. The title of which is: Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America.

As a friend of mine loves to point out, any book with a colon in the title is a popular work masquerading as an academic work. I have found that there is more than a bit of truth in his observation.

Nevertheless, this book is going on my reading list. I have listened to Reich a lot since his stint in the Clinton administration, and he is always engaging and never condescending - Reich is a regular on NPR's weekly Marketplace.

I read a review of the book that gives much of it away, but that's okay.

Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America

pbs forecast: Expect "Radcon" to achieve some popular usage. It's Reich's term for the 'slash and burn' economic policies that Gingrich/Limbaugh/Reagan/Bush have endorsed. If you can't eliminate it, as in Social Security, privatize it. This rewards their big donors. In place of the "social contract", the same group of "Radcons" has delivered crippling blows to our future with deficit spending, and a seriously out of control expansion of the DoD budget while almost eliminating taxation on the extremely wealthy.

From what I've read about the book, it offers a pretty convincing case, and Riech is a really effective communicator.

One added bonus is the title, I'm sure it was aimed at Ann Coulter's Treason: Liberal Treachery..blah.

At this rate, I'm going to have to start a pure bs money raising campaign. Nah. I can afford it.

If you've read the book, or have alternate information about it, leave a comment.

Serbia to be Privatized?

Yoo-Essay Today is reporting that "pro-democracy" candidate Boris Tadic has won the Serbian presidential race.

Here's a tiny bit:

The presidential vote was seen crucial to whether Serbia moves closer to the European Union and NATO or sinks back into the nationalist isolation reminiscent of Milosevic's autocratic regime.

Three previous attempts to elect a president since 2002 failed because too few voters showed up at the polls. This vote was certain to produce a president regardless of the turnout, after Parliament earlier this year scrapped a 50% turnout requirement.

Articles like this are fun. They don't tell the reader anything..Or do they?

U.S. Americans equate democracy with capitalism. Pro-democracy means opening up of Serbian markets to multi-national corporate interests. Yes, this is a very wrong way to define democracy, but it is the one that U.S. Americans have been indoctrinated to believe.

Real democracy isn't something that is in the interest of the ruling class. In privatized America, we are conditioned that the "social contract" is a bad thing, and that the Fortune 500's interests are our interests.

30 years of corporatist propaganda has been so effective that legions of people vote for candidates that stand for a platform that is in direct opposition to their own best interests. In fact, if you ask them about American propaganda, they'll either deny its existence, or claim that they're not affected by it.

Okay, I'm back. I was away for a while, but I'm back. It's that the perversion of the word democracy in our society is so damned pervasive.

Democracy does not equate to capitalism in practice. In fact, there is every reason to believe that the two are mutually exclusive.

The 'free-marketers' in this country, and around the world, have concentrated wealth and power for themselves while increasing levels of poverty for virtually everyone else. This is capitalism in practice. Is this democracy?

If you believe it to be so, then it follows that your vote is given equal weight to that of Bill Gates or Warren Buffett. If you believe this, then I have a series of experienced bridges that you might be interested in...Have a look. :)

No, this is not a Democrat versus Republican issue. Bill Clinton mined silicon valley for money like no other before him, and W..Well, there is hardly need for comment.

Okay, I'm back. I was away for a while, but I'm back. It's that the perversion of the word democracy in our society is so damned pervasive, and it irritates me like few things.

Back in The States

Well, I am back in New Hampshire. I must say that after a week in the tropics, that life stateside is highly overrated.

The only thing that I can see as a plus is that here I have a broadband internet connection. Not a great consolation.

I found that I can be a very much 'type b' personality given the proper environment.

A different perspective is vital for growth. Having your biases and realities challenged by others that are trying to get to some kernels of truth in a world dominated by lies and obfuscations is at once both draining and exhilarating.

I managed to read a book while in St. Thomas.

I read Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq by Stauber and Rampton. Cover art courtesy of This Modern World creator Tom Tomorrow, AKA Dan Perkins.

A good read, and while much of the content has since been covered by others, and in more detail, it is still a good primer on how governments of all stripes use propaganda and yes, lies in their push for war, or any other unpopular program.

Fear not. This is not going to become a travel log.

This post is the last time I am going to mention my trip. I need to catch up on what's going on. Our flight back was delayed by five hours by some sort of communication f*ck-up between American(the airline) and the Kennedy Space Center.

I'm really tired.

Thanks to all of you that have checked in over the last week. Yes, my entries were sparce, but I am back! :)

Go Figure

Ripped From Reuters

Majority of Americans Now Call Iraq War a Mistake
Thu Jun 24, 2004 07:45 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - For the first time since the start of the war in Iraq, a majority of Americans now say the U.S.-led invasion was a mistake, according to a USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll released on Thursday.

Amid continuing violence in Iraq and questions about the justification for the war, 54 percent of the 1,005 Americans polled said it was a mistake to send U.S. troops into Iraq, compared with 41 percent who held that view three weeks ago.

The findings mark the first time since Vietnam that a majority of Americans has called a major deployment of U.S. forces a mistake, USA Today reported on its Web site.

In addition, the poll found that for the first time a majority also said the war in Iraq has made the United States less safe from terrorism.

Fifty-five percent said the war has increased U.S. vulnerability, compared to a December poll in which 56 percent said the war made the United States safer.

The war's original justification was to stop Iraq deploying weapons of mass destruction. None have been found.

President Bush has also said the Iraq mission would make America safer by bringing democracy to a key country in the Middle East.

In Iraq on Thursday, insurgents killed about 100 people in a wave of attacks across the country aimed at sabotaging next week's transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government.

Despite Americans' changing attitudes toward the war, the poll found Bush in a statistical dead heat with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry. Among likely voters, Bush edged out Kerry 48 percent to 47 percent. Three weeks ago, Kerry led 49 percent to 43 percent.

In the new poll, 60 percent of respondents said they believe the Massachusetts Democrat could handle the job of commander-in-chief, but most Americans indicated they trust Bush more in that role, 51 percent to 43 percent.

The survey, conducted Monday through Wednesday, has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

I have rarely understood polls(yes, I know the math ;)), hence I don't pay them much heed.

Iraq is almost an entirely a notion of Bush's - as best we can tell - and is now seen as not only a mistake, but a majority also now believe that Georgie's Excellent Iraq Adventure has made the U.S. less safe. Yet, Bush is more trusted in the role of commander-in chief than Kerry?!?!

Is this a major lack of critical thinking, or am I merely insane?

Okay, my sanity aside, it is still a most perverse thought process that doesn't make the sledgehammer-to-the-forehead obvious disconnect that while Bush got the U.S. involved in a war now seen as a mistake on several levels, the voters trust his military leadership more than Kerry's. Hey, you can't make this stuff up.

This could be attributed to Bush's wholly unwarranted cult of personality, but I think not.

I'm sticking with Americans' general lack of critical thinking skills. It seems most likely. If the results of this poll aren't an outcry for better education in this country..Then I am insane.

Who's Buying a President?

I like charts, graphs and the like.

Let's take a very cursory look at how Wall Street buys access.



From this chart we can see the top 5 Wall Street influence peddlers paid to their guy in order to garner favorable legislation. I'm sorry, rather they did so out of benevolence. opensecrets.org lists $2,173,703 to the Bush 2004 campaign, whilst Kerry was awarded $528,237.

Remember the Internet ad"Unprincipled" that the Bush team ran in February? We do. That was a major distortion.

Truth is, Bush has taken far more "special interest" money than Kerry.

(Can you really call a GOP candidate taking tobacco money a "special interest?"..I'd argue it's a "regular interest" of the GOP's)

More fun courtesy of opensecrets.org:

Special Interest Money

 

(Selected Industries)

 

(Donations to 2004 Presidential Campaign)

 

                            Bush          Kerry

Paid Lobbyists            $960,154       $234,920

 

Lawyers & Law Firms      $7,085,942     $3,474,264

 

Real Estate              $6,678,976      $787,124

 

Securities               $4,820,780     $1,087,925

 

Health Professionals     $3,010,576      $392,187

 

Insurance                $1,850,532      $134,250

 

TV/Movies/Music           $522,725       $475,050

 

Pharmaceuticals           $393,100        $55,650

 

Telephone Utilities       $285,250        $10,000

 

Health Services/HMOs      $171,450        $33,950

 

Tobacco                   $107,500         $5,300

Those are some of the numbers.

As Greg Palast so aptly put it: The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

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Staying with the literary bestseller topic, I am not at all interested in reading W.J. Clinton's My Life. I think the next tome I am going to read is Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present. I know where Zinn is coming from, and I think that a counter to history written by the ruling class is necessary.

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I know that my spelling, syntax and punctuation have been really awful this week. I blame it on a combination of all-too-cheap rum, and this mind-warpingly slow web connection. See any psychology text for a comprehensive definition of: rationilization :)

More Messy Democracy

Iraqis launch seemingly coordinated attacks across 5 cities. According ot the linked WaPo article, the cities of Baqubah, Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul and Baghdad all came under attack by 'insurgents.'(Will we be calling these same people 'residents' next week after the "handover?")

I don't mean to make light of the ongoing violence, but the attacks underscore the ongoing lack of any real security in Iraq.

WaPo is reporting at least 69 dead, including more than 20 Iraqi police and 3 U.S. soldiers.

Update: The death toll is now being reported as 100

Shifting Terror Tallies

Terrah data follies..Bush style. I'm sure you've all heard about the Administration's shell game concerning the numbers of terrorist events, and resultant casualites - but did you know this?(I didn't)

Bush and top aides have blamed terrorists for deadly attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq, but few of those assaults were included in the total. The administration does not count attacks aimed at on-duty troops because they are combatants.

One can only wonder what the totals would have been if they had included those attacks in the totals.

More:

New figures released yesterday by the Bush administration show dramatically higher terrorism casualties last year than the State Department documented in an April report that U.S. officials heralded as evidence of great progress in the battle against terrorism.

The statistics show that 625 people died in terrorist attacks last year, not 307 as first reported. The corrections also reveal a larger number of incidents deemed "significant" by government analysts than at any time since U.S. authorities began issuing figures, in 1982.

John O. Brennan, a 23-year CIA veteran who oversaw the effort, took "personal responsibility." He blamed antiquated computers and personnel shortages for the errors and dismissed suggestions that the administration purposely fabricated the figures.

"Anyone who might assert the numbers were intentionally skewed is mistaken," said Brennan, director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC), created by President Bush to produce efficient and comprehensive assessments of domestic and international terrorism.

When the April report was released, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage said it provided "clear evidence that we are prevailing in the fight." Yesterday, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said Armitage's words were based on incorrect information.

The revised figures show that more people were killed by terrorists last year than at any time since 1998, apart from 2001, when the Sept. 11 hijackings caused 2,973 deaths. Terrorist bombings and shootings left 3,646 people injured around the world -- more than in any year in the past six.

Via WaPo.

Do I think that this juggling is related to election year politics? To "an exceptionally antiquated database?"

Was the d-base antiquated last year?

The Bush administration is likely playing 'three card Monte' with the data.

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I'll try and post another entry after me and my SO have a couple of rum drinks..That should be entertaining. *hiccup*

Be Very Afraid

Rumor has it, she's moving in.

I don't fear much. But I fear pop stars. And clowns. And pop star clowns. *shiver*

Do Something Good

It won't hurt a bit. While it's always a good idea to buy the least environmentally damaging vehicle, the specter of long term higher gasoline prices gives you an additional incentive to buy a fuel efficient automobile.

Here are the top ten as compiled by the EPA for city driving.

                            City/Hwy  

Honda Insight               60/66 mpg  

Toyota Prius                60/51 mpg  

Honda Civic Hybrid          48/47 mpg  

VW New Beetle TDI           38/46 mpg  

Volkswagen Golf TDI         38/46 mpg  

Volkswagen Jetta TDI        38/46 mpg  

Volkswagen Jetta Wagon TDI  36/47 mpg  

Toyota ECHO                 35/43 mpg  

Toyota Corolla              32/40 mpg  

Scion xA                    32/38 mpg

No, they are not exciting.

I can't be the only one to notice a total lack of U.S. branded autos on this list. Disturbing, no?

An easy Corporate Average Fuel Economy(CAFE) primer.

The commonly cited reasons against raising CAFE standards would be humorous - if they weren't so scary - and are such an obvious ploy by U.S. automakers to attempt to maintain the status quo regarding average fuel economy. Here are the condensed arguements:

Critics maintain that, increasing CAFE standards would actually have a reverse effect in terms of the environment. They argue that once people begin paying less and less for gasoline as their vehicles get more efficient, they are more likely to spend more time driving. Opponents cite fears of the safety implications of downsizing vehicles, claiming that raising CAFE would lead to more unnecessary on-road deaths per year.

This is pure bs. There are no rules of physics that equate smaller vehicles with higher rates of death. In fact, cars are much smaller today than they were in the '50s, '60s, '70s..And death rates are down substantially.

On the other hand, those high-domes at the National Academy of Sciences(NAS) think higher CAFE standards are a good idea, but what do those scientists know? *sarcasm*

The best counter arguement is that if we continue to burn hydrocarbons at an ever-increasing rate, it now seems likely we'll hasten the demise of civilzation - yes, civilzation. Habitable planets are hard to find.

Full pbs disclosure: My finely tuned '92 Toyota Tercel gets no less than a combined 37MPG.

If you're in the market for an new automobile, keep the environment in mind. It's amongst the most important decisions you'll ever make.

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Beheading is bad. Can we please stop this heinous act?

Island Time

It's going to be a light blogging week, as this is the week I'm in the Carribean.

I'm in St.Thomas. It's very nice, but I'm also on dial-up :(

I'll see what's going on tomorrow.

Kwazy Kurds

In another show of messy democracy, the Kurds in northern Iraq are expanding their territory. Problem is, the territories that the Kurds are claiming as their rightful homeland areas are now populated by tens of thousands of Arab Iraqis.

A snippet:

[snip]...In Baghdad, American officials say they are struggling to keep the displaced Kurds on the north side of the Green Line, the boundary of the Kurdish autonomous region. The Americans agree that the Kurds deserve to return to their ancestral lands, but they want an orderly migration to avoid ethnic strife and political instability.

But thousands of Kurds appear to be ignoring the American orders. New Kurdish families show up every day at the camps that mark the landscape here, settling into tents and tumble-down homes as they wait to reclaim their former lands.

The Kurdish migration appears to be causing widespread misery, with Arabs complaining of expulsions and even murders at the hands of Kurdish returnees. Many of the Kurdish refugees themselves are gathered in crowded camps.

American officials say as many as 100,000 Arabs have fled their homes in north-central Iraq and are now scattered in squalid camps across the center of the country. With the anti-American insurgency raging across much of the same area, the Arab refugees appear to be receiving neither food nor shelter from the Iraqi government, relief organizations or American forces.

"The Kurds, they laughed at us, they threw tomatoes at us," said Karim Qadam, a 45-year-old father of three, now living amid the rubble of a blown-up building in Baquba, northeast of Baghdad. "They told us to get out of our homes. They told us they would kill us. They told us, 'You don't own anything here anymore.'"...[/snip]

I suspect the most troubling aspects of the Kurdish activity are that:

• The activity of resettling into their former lands is accelerating as the 'transfer of authority' draws nearer.



• The Kurds are threatening to pull out of the Iraqi national government if they don't feel that they have 'sufficient autonomy.'



• The Kurdish 'up yours' to the U.S. plan of a gradual reclaiming of their homeland could spark civil war, and the issue of perhaps a hundred thousand new Arab Iraqis without adequate services isn't likely to win the Kurds friends amongst the Arabs not displaced.

As the Kurds are likely our only allies inside Iraq, there is little doubt that the U.S. is in a quandary as to what to do about them.

Why am I getting a sense of we've seen this sort of U.S. ambivalence between different populations inhabiting the same geography before? Yes. That is a rhetorical question.

Are the Kurds going to 'demand' that the lines of Iraqi statehood be redrawn? Two countries - one Kurd, one for the rest? If that occurs will the Shia and Sunni populations then demand the same, resulting in three new countries?

It's not unfathomable that this could happen, although I think it unlikely at this time.

Yes, democracy can be messy. The birth of the U.S. was plagued with many of these same questions.

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In keeping with the Kurdish theme, here's an AFP piece I found while article mining at NewsNow

From the AFP newswire:

Armed Kurds abduct 10 taxi drivers in revenge for murders

20/06/2004 AFP

KIRKUK, Iraq, June 19 (AFP) - 20h25 - Armed Kurds abducted here 10 taxi-drivers from Samarra to avenge the murders there last week of five Kurdish Iraqi army recruits, a police spokesman said Saturday.

"Armed Kurds abducted from Kirkuk bus station 10 taxi drivers from Samarra, where five Kurds were recently kidnapped, killed and their bodies burnt," the police officer said.

He said he did not know where the taxi drivers had been taken.

A Kurdish official here announced the deaths of the five Kurdish recruits on Monday.

Their car had broken down near Samarra, 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of Baghdad and they were heading to a garage for repairs when they were attacked, he said.

Kirkuk, 255 kilometres (157 miles) north of Baghdad, is known for tension among its Kurdish, Turkmen and Arab populations.

I have a feeling it's going to be a long summer.

Hearts and Minds

It is being widely reported that A U.S. air strike in the Iraq city of Fallujah has killed at least 18 and as many as 24 Iraqis. It is being reported that women and children are amongst those killed.

The strike was ostensbly an effort to kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - who may or may not be linked to al-Qaeda. As we've reported previously, al-Zarqawi's group, Jamaat al-Tawhid wa'l-Jihad, was at odds with bin Laden's al-Qaeda, and a member proclaimed that al-Zarqawi's group was created to be an alternative terrorist group for "Jordanian's not wanting to join al-Qaeda."

The U.S. military hasn't said anything that I can find as of posting time that would lead one to believe that al-Zarqawi or any of his people were killed in the strike.

Stating the obvious, this is likely to further inflame anti-U.S. sentiment ahead of the 'transfer of sovereignty' to Iraq on 30 June.

It doesn't matter how we perceive this event. What matters most is how Iraqis and the Arab Street views this operation, and how they will respond.

I read the English version of Islam Online to get a perspective that the U.S. corporate media simply will not be allowed to broadcast.

A breaking story without any link I can find is that Iraqi women are marching to show support of Moktada al-Sadr.

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Random bs.

I think the U.S. should abolish the oxymoron: smart bomb

Blog Stuff

I'm working on another template for the blog. I want to really clean up the RH column, and style the LH column. I'm leaving the center column as it is....I like it just the way it is.

I'm also going to do away with the style switcher. The two upper links to pop-ups are going to get a face lift as well.

I hope it's a change for the better.

Oh yeah, the best part about this new template is that I'm going to work on it as the plane carries me to the Carribean next week.

I'll be on dial-up, but it's only nine days. Oh, the things I endure. :)

Wage Depression

There has been a lot of partisan tit-for-tat bickering over the strength, nature and yes, even the reality of the current economic expansion.

It's no secret that Bush has been actively talking up the economic recovery recently, saying the economy is in "high gear".

Equally apparent is Kerry's downplaying of the current economic expansion. Kerry is - as late as last week at least - invoking comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Leaving aside the long term issues that ever-widening deficits and lack of spending control is likely to have, what is the current and likely near term state of the economy? How is the state of the economy affecting wage workers?

I'll make a meager and incomplete attempt to answer these two questions(please bear in mind I'm an engineer, not an economist).

I'd say it's a mixed bag. This rising tide hasn't lifted all boats. In fact, while corporate profits have been quite robust - startlingly so - the wage worker has actually lost ground.

Where's my evidence, you ask. From the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Right from the Feds.

As far as their respective statements on the economy, both Bush and Kerry are right, and also wrong.

By the numbers:

Corporate profits have risen ~62.2% since the peak, compared to average growth of ~13.9% at the same point in the last eight recoveries that have lasted as long as the current one. This is the fastest rate of profit growth in a recovery since World War II.

This certainly bolsters Bush's statements about the current state of the economy when he talks about "company profits" and so forth. I have no qualms about that. It's accurate.

Total labor compensation has also turned in a historic performance: growing only 2.8%, the slowest growth in any recovery since World War II and well under the historical average of 9.9%.

Most of the growth in labor compensation have not gone toward larger paychecks, they have gone into non-wage items. Rising health care costs and pensions account for the majority of the growth.

Growth in wage and salary income - the primary barometer of the health of wage workers - has been negative for private sector workers: -0.6%, versus the ~7.2% gain that is the average increase in private wage and salary income at this point in a recovery.

This affirms Kerry's position that the economy is currently in a rather weak phase. There is independently verifiable data to make comparisons on some data sets between the economy today, and the Great Depression. Again, I have no issue with this part of Kerry's position. It is supported by facts available to anyone.

I wish that I had ready access to historical 'real' wage data to back up what I have heard cited by commentators on the Left and a few on the Right.

That position is this: growth in corporate profits combined with a drop in wage and salary incomes suggest that the recovery has a narrow base, with most American consumers only able to increase their purchasing power through debt.

Personal debt levels are either at, or within a fraction of a percent of all time highs in the U.S.

This WaPo piece from January of this year highlights both the record levels of consumer debt, and also points out that personal debt will rise along with interest rates.

In summation, both men are right on some key elements of the economy as it is today, and they are also demonstrably errant in their rhetoric about others.

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(I'll leave the bigger picture stuff to Brad DeLong and others :)