Resolved:President Bush's tax cuts have jump started the GDP.

You whooshing me or what, John? I’ll assume not. Let’s put on our thinking caps. Do most people in America work for others or work for themselves? I don’t have the exact numbers, I’m sure there’s an approximation out there somewhere if you’re interested, but frankly, the notion that most people are self-employed or own a business as their primary way of making money is so ridic … er, counter-intuitive, that I’ll let YOU look it up.

Your other approach is to claim that people who are employed aren’t at all concerned about the loss of their job, their prospects for finding work elsewhere if their jobs suck, their bosses’ ability to pile shit on them because they know there’s nothing out there, or job losses among family and friends.

This, too, makes no sense. Of COURSE people care about such things. It’s part of being human and employed.

If you have some other point to make, make it.

"Joblessness" won’t "go away’? What does that mean? If you mean that the unemploywment rate won’t go down, then there’s really no need to speculate. We’ll have numbers at the appropriate time to clarify the situation.

Boy, you really pounded the heck out of THAT straw man! Way to go!

I’ll keep my eyes and ears open for “shady stuff”, especially from the Pubs. Those guys are just so “shady”!

The ones who run the Bush admin and the NRC certainly are. Good to hear you admit it.

It’s not that anyone is giving the prez credit here - it’s just that when people are heavily invested in the market, they feel much better about the economy when their stocks are up. And there’s the ‘wealth effect’ - when people see their portfolios go up $20,000, they may decide that they can afford to buy things they otherwise wouldn’t - and they can also leverage their stocks.

I agree completely here. Bush is vulnerable on the ‘stewardship’ angle - fiscal responsibility and some other domestic policies in particular. But again, I think these issues will have fairly low traction compared to security, the war in Iraq, and the overall economy. Those are the big three.

But man, it’s really early to even be predicting issues, let alone winners and losers. Anything could happen in the next year. A major setback or victory in Iraq, a flare-up in North Korea, a major terrorist attack in the U.S… Any of these things could completely rewrite the calculus of the next election.

Sure, anything could rewrite the calculus for next year’s election, but if you wait for all potential factors to come in, you haven’t really made a prediction, have you?