Maybe Our Leaders are Completely Incompetent

The one thing I could be persuaded to give props to Our Leaders for (other than a historical level of corruption) is the economy: If they could have done a better job, they could have also done a worse job.

And then I read this from Combrade Abelson in Barron's Marxist Economic Review:

...Treasury Secretary Paulson continued to provide good cheer to the president by flat-out claiming that this is the strongest economy within his memory. He must have been born yesterday, what with productivity growth grinding to its lowest level in nine years, housing gurgling ever deeper in the tank, gasoline prices inching back up toward $3 a gallon, the hoopla about ethanol driving prices of grains higher, to be followed shortly by rising costs of meat (as old McDonald could have told Mr. Paulson, cows and pigs and chickens got to eat, too, and what they eat is grain) and the feeblest job creation of any recovery in a half-century.

Aw, nuts!

Not maybe Our Leaders really are completely incompetent... :(