OOPS. UNEMPLOYMENT IS VERTICAL AGAIN

Stimulus. We need more stimulus. Yesterday, we reported that retail sales had risen due to Our Leader's brilliant dole out of funny money to everyone who's breathing.. The sales increase was encouraging, but now it's "Flying High In April, Shot Down In May." The stimulus was apparently too little. The jobless numbers zoomed, as did oil prices, and the stock market index fell more than 400 points. Woe is we. This is serious - we cannot afford to wait for Stimulus I to work beyond the retail level. We need Stimulus II to improve the employment factor.

It's all so simple.

Thoughts While Shopping for a Scooter

- Watch for the Bush administration to print up another $300 for each of us. These neoconservatives are so proactive. Herbert Hoover would have napped through this crisis. (But the dollar would have remained sound.)

- Japan sends a lot of foreign aid around the world, they have for years. They are spreading yen around Africa. Some critics point out that Japan is just buying friends and gaining influence. That might be true, and I'm sure proud that Uncle Sam never had such motives with all the aid he's been giving for decades and decades and decades.

Overheard at Duffy's

-"What's with this workforce housing scam? They're going to build ticky tacky apartments for the government employees who can't afford the same rent the less essential workers pay? You gotta be a fireman or a cop or a teacher - then you get favored housing. How's about my brother-in-law who works hard as a taxi-cab driver? He serves the public, too, but he lives in a dump and pays too much rent."

- "Don't tell me we'll ever pull out of Iraq. We're still building military bases."

Overheard at a Bank

"What are you doing this weekend?"

"I'm engaged, so we're getting our shots on Saturday."

"Really? Times have changed, in my day you didn't have to have shots to get married."

- "No, no. Photograph shots, You know, click, click."