So, I guess it really does mean “Found On Road Dead”, huh? So, I’m chewing over the news of the mass layoffs at Ford recently, and I find myself asking the question that about a zillion other people in this country are asking, namely, “Is there any goddamn’ manufacturing being done at all in this goddamn’ country anymore?” and I suddenly realize, “Hell, yeah! There’s…”

And besides, think about it…you pull the patty out of the freezer, you throw it onto the grill, you throw the cheese on, you let it melt, you throw it onto a bun and wrap it in that funky foil wrap, and whammo! You’ve manufactured a burger! Now, quit whining and get me my fries.

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Almost as if on cue, USA Today, in its classic “everything’s OK, don’t worry, be happy, nothing to see here” fashion, ran a big-ass front-page story this week trumpeting in its headline that the economy was “surging”. Now, if you know anything at all about USA Today — or, as some of us wags call it, USA Hooray — when you see them using words like “surging” in a headline on an economic news story, you can be sure it’s 99 & 44/100% pure bullshit.

But, anyway, assuming you believe USA Today, the economy’s surging again! And, if you checked out the actual breakdown yourself at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you’d see that a pretty good chunk of them are rock-bottom-wage “service” jobs, not including the handful of “freelance” categories you see here — including a newly-emerging job category showing a huge upswing at the end of the month, shortly after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans and the Gulf Coasts of Mississippi and Alabama.

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About this time, the implosion of the Dot-Com Bubble was really starting to ripple through the economy, causing an uptick in unemployment and a “recession-ette” — nothing like the massive Fail we’re experiencing now, of course, but still quite a jolt at the time.

In the midst of all this was the run-up to Iraq War v2.0 — batshit-crazy Neocons throwing absurd lies and fabrications at the wall in hopes something will stick, craven Democrats fighting each other to be first in line to support Bush’s lunacy, and an increase in aggressive military recruiting tactics — i.e. stalking high-school kids coming out of class or at the shopping mall, threatening kids with imprisonment in Guantanamo when they attempted to back out of enlistment.

In this piece, I’m sort of wondering aloud about whether or not the Neocon Mob were actually banking on the increase in unemployment to supply them with the volunteer cannon fodder they needed to properly stomp on Iraq and steal its resources and destroy its culture. Need a job, kid? No prob, dude; the Army is still hiring!

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