Thanks For Nothing *

Okay, so first, the asterisk. Well, it's like Fats sang so happily at the end of the workweek, "And Friday I get my pay." Hence, those of us still fortunate enough to be working and getting paid, in this 9.2 %  and climbing rate of unemployment economy, could hardly fail to feel thankful.

Craning an ear to the economic drumbeat of the nation and world at large, however, one hears little more than discordant noise. And, ominously, the sickening sound of rising right wing street thuggery and violence. All of this, all of it, is the direct result of the greed and stupidity of the right.

In Europe where the austerity prescription of the right wing philosophy has been most severely imposed so far, street beatings of immigrants and calls for fascist style political solutions are becoming the order of the day.

Here, the ignorant rantings and calls for more disastrous economic pain for the middle class and poor, by crazy, clueless, zealots like Rush Limbaugh are getting ever expanding audience.

This, even though Nobel laureates like economist and NY Times columnist Paul Krugman, have been diligently toiling in the vineyards of enlightened intellectual discourse, reminding us daily that the way out of this mess was revealed in the Great Depression, not on the almost always wrong editorial page of the WSJ.

Even the likes of David Frum, a most decidedly committed conservative functionary of the Bush administration, and regular public commentator, has recently averred in light of all the evidence, maybe his "enemies" have been right all along.

But the wrong marches on. So, unlike the meaning of Black Friday following Thanksgiving, when retail businesses do so well and get their books out of the red, this Friday is feeling mighty black, but not the same way.

So, to those idiots of the right who want the government to do nothing but dry up and blow away, instead of step in and move the national economy forward again, thanks for nothing.

UPDATE: The July unemployment rate came in at a microscopically improved 9.1%. Hooray? Keep the champagne corked.