Republicans are crowing about job growth in March, which hit a four-year high. This means rate of hiring was as good as a typical month when Bill Clinton was president. A respectable 308,000 people found jobs in March, which beats the 46,000 newhires in February and the famous 1,000 in December.

 

On the other hand, the number of hours worked is down, and the number of people working only part time increased. Also, there was no increase in manufacturing jobs. The March boom was set off by construction hiring. Find commentary by Stirling Newberry and friends here.  

 

As the Bushies robustly pat themselves on the back, let us remember that we are still nearly 2 million jobs short of where we were in 2000.

 

The "Enemies" Phenomenon

 

Josh Marshall: Capitulation?

 

Eleanor Clift: Weakness at the Top

 

Bush Losing Credibility on Terrorism

 

"Bremer Has Destroyed My Country"

 

William Saletan: All the President's Suckers

We know what the men and boys who did the atrocity of Fallujah look like; they posed for the cameras. We know exactly what they did--again, the cameras. We know they massed on a bridge and raised their guns triumphantly. It's all there on film. It would be good not only for elemental justice but for Iraq and its future if a large force of coalition troops led by U.S. Marines would go into Fallujah, find the young men, arrest them or kill them, and, to make sure the point isn't lost on them, blow up the bridge.

Whatever the long-term impact of the charred bodies the short term response must be a message to Fallujah and to all the young men of Iraq: the violent and unlawful will be broken. Savagery is yesterday; it left with Saddam.

The brutalizing of the bodies was done in a way that seemed imitative, as all have noted, of the incident in Mogadishu, Somalia, where in 1993 a frenzied mob dragged the dead body of a U.S. Army Ranger through the streets. The civilized world was horrified, and everyone knows what followed: a quick American retreat.

It is not a stretch to imagine the young murderers of Fallujah had this on their minds: Do it again to America, kill them and string up their corpses, because when you do this America leaves.

Although we are calling them security, the four American civilians killed were very likely ex-US military, most probably from special operations units like the Navy Seals. The special ops units have been losing men to the private security firms, who pay between $100,000 a year and $200,000 a year, rather more than do the US armed services. And, it seems to me likely that the people in Fallujah knew that they had hold of US military men.

What would drive the crowd to this barbaric behavior? It is not that they are pro-Saddam any more, or that they hate "freedom." They are using a theater of the macabre to protest their occupation and humiliation by foreign armies. They were engaging in a role reversal, with the American cadavers in the position of the "helpless" and the "humiliated," and with themselves playing the role of the powerful monster that inscribes its will on these bodies.

This degree of hatred for the new order among ordinary people is very bad news. It helps explain why so few of the Sunni Arab guerrillas have been caught, since the locals hide and help them. It also seems a little unlikely that further US military action can do anything practical to put down this insurgency; most actions it could take would simply inflame the public against them all the more.

The Bushies and their Neocon cohorts believe that they can use power to shape the world as they will. This proves they are fools.

He who knows how to guide a ruler in the path of Tao
Does not try to override the world with force of arms.
It is in the nature of a military weapon to turn against its wielder.

Wherever armies are stationed; thorny bushes grow.
After a great war, bad years invariably follow.

What you want is to protect efficiently your own state,
But not to aim at self-aggrandisement.

After you have attained your purpose,
You must not parade your success,
You must not boast of your ability,
You must not feel proud,
You must rather regret that you had not been able to prevent the war.
You must never think of conquering others by force.

For to be over-developed is to hasten decay,
And this is against Tao,
And what is against Tao will soon cease to be.

-- Tao Teh Ching, verse 30

WASHINGTON - Citing executive privilege, the White House refused to allow President Bush's chief health-policy adviser, Douglas Badger, to testify Thursday before the House Ways and Means Committee about early administration estimates that the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit would be far more costly than many lawmakers believed when they voted for it.

In a previous episode, the House Ways and Means Committee discovered that the recently passed Medicare perscription drug benefits would cost a whole lot more than the White House had said they would cost. Medicare's chief actuary, Richard Foster, told a House panel that the real numbers were known months ago, but the White House pressured Foster to keep those numbers to himself. 

Where does Doug Badger fit in?

The panel's Democrats focused on Foster's allegation that he had provided projections showing the administration's Medicare initiatives would cost between $500 billion and $600 billion to Doug Badger, the White House's senior health policy analyst, and to the White House Office of Management and Budget. Those officials had Foster's projections at a time when Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill were requesting the information.

Congress barely passed the Medicare bill in November using CBO projections that the measure would cost $395 billion over a decade.... [Cyril T. Zaneski, Baltimore Sun, March 25, 2004]

I suspect we will hear many more claims of "executive privilege" in the next few months.

GOP-Controlled Senate v. Democracy

"Executive Privilege" and Political Reality

Robert Kuttner: Bush Fails to Keep America Safe

Of course, the president did mention terrorism, terrorists and counterterrorism 24 times before 9/11. But eight of these comments referred to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Another eight involved a range of terrorist threats, including ethnic terrorism in Macedonia and Basque separatists in Spain.

In the remaining eight references to terrorism, the new president offered his idea for how to combat it: the Reagan-era missile-defense system formerly known as Star Wars.

On Jan. 8, 2001, after a meeting in Austin, Texas, with congressional defense experts, the president-elect referred to missile defense as necessary to guard against "the real threats of the 21st century." In a Feb. 10, 2001, radio address, Bush said, "we must make sure our country itself is protected from attack from ballistic missiles and high-tech terrorists." On Feb. 27, in Bush's first address before a joint session of Congress, the new president delivered the clearest exposition of his thoughts on terrorism.

"Our nation also needs a clear strategy to confront the threats of the 21st century, threats that are more widespread and less certain. They range from terrorists who threaten with bombs to tyrants and rogue nations intent upon developing weapons of mass destruction," Bush said. "To protect our own people, our allies and friends, we must develop and deploy effective missile defenses."

"The administration's attempts to discredit Clarke have backfired. They have merely given the story legs and hurt the administration. The issue of whether Rice should testify should keep the story alive for several more news cycles," said University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape.

"The Bush administration and its allies have certainly not helped the story go away," said Howard Opinsky, a Republican operative who ran media relations for Arizona Sen. John McCain during his 2000 presidential bid.

"Instead, they adopted the risky strategy of trying to refute his charges, which makes it appear that they have something to hide," he said.

Of course, it's no time to celebrate. Shrub's approval numbers are slightly down, but so are John Kerry's.

See also: The Truth of the Matter.