THE GREAT BUSH ECONOMY....

Many Busheviks brag about how great the economy is doing so it's time for a little fact checking. Since Republicans are supposed to be great for the private sector, let's see how many jobs have been created since Bush became President:

TOTAL PRIVATE EMPLOYMENT
SEASONALLY ADJUSTED
(IN THOUSANDS)

BUSH 2
JAN 2001 111560
OCT 2005 112194

NET == +624

Not exactly a huge gain, especially considering that the U.S. needs at least 140K new jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. Using that as a measure, we would expect there to be at least 8,120,000 new jobs (58 months X 140K) if we were just treading water. Put another way, Bush makes Carter look like a combination of Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman:

CARTER
JAN 1977 65636
DEC 1980 74563

NET == + 8927

Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics (Scroll down to "Create Customized Tables (one screen)"