The rising economy is panicking the Democrats, and this of course is passed on to their media buttmonkeys.

What is this crap about demand not being there? Below is retail sales for the past year. Notice any trends?

The article in which this appeared said that the spending rate went up 0.6 percent in August after a rise in July of 1.3 percent. Headline: "Shoppers Eased Up on Spending in August."

Larger paychecks and other incentives coming from President Bush's third tax cut left people with extra money to spend and contributed to the brisk gain in retail sales in July, economists said. Because July's sales were so good, some economists believed that August's sales would have to show a bit of a slowdown.

Oh, the buttmonkeys are trying. Really trying. An index of consumer confidence from the University of Michigan was latched onto, showing a drop from 89.3 to 88.2 in September.

headlines (mostly for the same basic story at different times) based on this single survey:

"Retail Sales Solid But Sentiment Softens"

"Survey Shows Economic Sentiment Falls"

"Consumer Sentiment Suddenly Sours"

The Conference Board, mentioned in passing in these articles, had this. Oddly, no major headlines appeared on this particular survey.

The Democrat/media objective is the destruction of George W. Bush. A two-pronged approach, Iraq and the economy, is the battle plan. Both of these are being handled almost completely with spin. At least as far as the economy is concerned, I'm not sure how much longer that's going to work. When the employment rate turns around for good, they've got nothing else.