That's why they say Bush may be the first president since the Great Depression to have fewer people working at the end of his term than the start.

The unemployment rate however is much worse than the figures are saying. The percentage of people in the work force is dropping, with larger numbers of college males not looking for work. This makes it look like a jobs recovery is happening and it isn't.

You have to think about that one, the things you are saying about jobs recovering aren't true. What is happening is that large umbers of people are giving up and therefore the numbers of people seeking work is going down.

Now the main reason for this is probably to do with the baby boomers. Since they will be retiring en masse in about 7 years a lot are starting to retire early, especially ones discouraged in the current job market. This happens to be an enormous trend that may accelerate for the next 7 years regardless of whether there is any recovery.

That means those people won't be paying taxes on wages any more and so can't help pay off the deficit. So this Bush madness of the huge deficit is at the same time when tax payers are starting to drop out, and this will accelerate from now on.

Clinton was trying to balance the budget and pay off debt to meet this mass retirement. Bush has gone the opposite way to the point where many economists now believe the country can no longer recover.

That's why virtually all the economists who comment on Bush say he's done the worst possible thing for fiscal health of the country. That's why you don't elect a crook and a fool to be president. I have no problem with the idea of a Republican president as long as their name isn't Bush and they don't know anyone named Bush.