Happy Labor Day, especially if you are getting up tomorrow and heading for work, an interview or some meaningful way to make money and provide for yourself and your family...if you aren't well, the 1600 Crew only cares if you ... well they don't really care at all. See, enough of their Cheap-Labor Conservative buddies will kick in the bucks to buy TV ads, to get votes from non-thinking drone voters who hear words like "Saddam" and "Terrorism" and "Security". They will pin their hopes on the fears of these folks and ignore the real fears and economic devastation that they have wrought over the last three years...or blame it on the Clenis™.

President Couldn't-find-Ohio-without-Air Force One was here in Richfield, which is north of Columbus...towards Cleveland, I think. An affluent republican-leaning burb I'm told, so it's no surprise that Chimpy went there, after all, he doesn't understand how poor people think, and it would be a bad time to start the education process now...especially in the rain! But he came here to talk about jobs and stuff...so let's see what he said

Bush said the nation has lost "thousands of jobs in manufacturing." In fact, the losses have soared into the millions: Of the 2.7 million jobs the U.S. economy has lost since the recession began in early 2001, 2.4 million were in manufacturing. The downturn has eliminated more than one in 10 of the nation's factory jobs.

The president attributed the erosion to productivity gains and to jobs flowing to cheaper labor markets overseas. He suggested that jobs moving to foreign shores was his primary reason for creating the new manufacturing czar.
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Bush spent most of his speech expressing empathy for anxious workers, and wiping rain from his head, which became thoroughly drenched despite his union hat.

"I want you to understand that I understand that Ohio manufacturers are hurting, that there's a problem with the manufacturing sector," Bush said. "I understand that for a full recovery, to make sure people can find work, that manufacturing must do better," Bush said.
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The White House chose politically friendly territory for the event. Although surrounding communities tilt Democrat, Richfield leans Republican. Bush's motorcade route took him along stately homes in an affluent neighborhood, and clusters of supporters waved signs backing the president.

His crowd applauded when Bush argued that two rounds of tax cuts had kept the recession shallow and had helped spur factory jobs.

A little bit north in Michigan, where there's a bit of a different outlook, here's what some folks are saying on Labor Day...

After filing for unemployment benefits last week, veteran salesman John Kavalick reflected on what it means to be out of work this Labor Day.

"This has been a very tough year," said Kavalick of Warren. "Up to this point, I've been reasonably successful. I'm 56 years old. Many of my friends have the same problem. We've had two or three jobs this year."

Though out of work, Kavalick at least won't be lonely on the unemployment line. The State of Michigan reported last month that the state's unemployment rate in July rose to 7.4 percent -- its highest point since 1993.
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What's especially troublesome to many observers of the labor market is the duration of this hiring slump. Economists say the recession officially ended in November 2001, or nearly two years ago, yet the unemployment rate keeps climbing.

New hiring typically lags behind other economic indicators, because employers want to make sure the recovery is real before they spend on new staff. But a recovery in the labor markets is taking longer than usual this time, and many economists are calling this a jobless recovery because of persistent unemployment.
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AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said last week, "After watching the disastrous policies of the Bush administration, union members are ready to take on the challenge of electing a working-people's president."

But Paul Kersey, a labor research associate with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank based in Midland, said the solution for Michigan workers is to weaken the grasp of unions in the state.

"We have some of the strongest unions in the country, and employers are leery about going into the kind of heavily unionized environment we have in Michigan," he said.

Do the folks in Michigan believe that a "manufacturing czar" will answer all their problems? And how are President Halfwit's fellow conservatives going to react to the notion of manufacturing being "controlled" or regulated by a Czar?

Jeebus, it's starting to sound more like the Soviet Union all the time...if Chimpy ever says KGB good, USA bad, I'm moving to Tahiti or something.