Do they cling to a recession like conservatives "cling" to guns and religion?

"They need to have a course in college called common sense and everyone should take it. Problem is there isn't too many people that could pass or teach it." -my grandfather

If McCain is elected, you can expect reporting like this for the next four years.

On the other hand, if Obama is elected, expect reporting like this to fade away in the 1st quarter of 2009. That is, once "the market greets the new administration enthusiastically" and "the new administration's policies have started making their impact".

Much like the whole global warming issue is continually flogged, despite evidence to the contrary!  The evidence itself is spun to reinforce their agenda.

Listening to their constant drone of doomsday reporting while trying to keep your glimmer of common sense alive is like trying to overcome the effects of anesthesia:  You can count backward all you like but the blanket of fog and darkness is going to bury you unless someone takes out the anesthetist! 

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war"  - Shakespeare

The facts seem to have little currency on either side in the prevailing political environment. While we are techincally not in a resession, there are disturbing forces at play in the economy. For instance, each day their are fewer dollars b/c of the bursting of the credit bubble. Usually as things become more scarce they get more valuable, but the value of each dollar continues to fall as they become more scarce. And we import so much of what we consume this means that the economy is slowing while inflation is increasing, aka "stagflation". And as far as credit contraction causes the economy to slow, there is no end in sight. OTOH logic would tend to dictate that the dollar will stop falling at some point due to the decreasing number in circulation. But that will ironically slow the increase of exports and the increase of foreign investment in the USA.

In any case, all of the political talk about the economy is "sound-and-fury", as concerns economic fact, though we can expect this BS to increase during the general election. To bad its so specious, if it were real the price of fertilizer would drop by 75%.

My local partisan newspaper, the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass., has run an AP story on the claimed current recession or tough economic times and unpleasant news on most days this year, along with similar stories from the New York Times News Service and Bloomberg News. I've read about how the economy will hurt Republicans, a shrinking services sector, fewer luxury cars being sold--as a headline claimed, "When the affluent spend less, many affected," railcars being idled somewhere in Montana, people raiding their retirement funds to get money, and much more, including this: 

 "Rising food and fuel prices, falling interest rates and screeching declines in worldwide stock markets have [Lea] Wait and thousands of other retirees paring spending to levels some haven't seen in decades, forgoing dinners out, cutting back on groceries and canceling plans to visit grandchildren." (Without going into personal detail, I don't think all retirees have reacted the same way to "screeching" declines in stock markets, or so altered their lives that they are "canceling plans to visit grandchildren.")

I hope that someone will have the time and resources to compare current economic news coverage with how the mainstream news media covered the recession that started in 2000 and ended early in 2003. That should be illuminating. (The timing and duration of that recession are in dispute, as is the question of whether the U.S. economy is currently in recession.) I recall nothing from  a fw years ago that matches the intensity of the current attempt to provide bad economic news.

Consumer confidence and thus consumer spending are important to the economy--and the press has done all it can to undermine confidence. Why? Perhaps many journalists lust for an Obamination. That collapses Obama Administration into one, more descriptive, word, and also references his desire to remake the nation, almost surely as Fidel Castro wanted to remake Cuba.

Tom. Crustywhiner said.... Many analysts think the country has already toppled into a recession

You know, technically, he's probably correct. There are many. A friend of mine (with a "Change" bumper sticker) told me that his "analysis" tells him that we're in a recession.  

Of course, if Crustywhiner was an ethical and responsible journalist, he would have said, Most analysts understand that the country has not fallen into a recession.

Thanks for keeping on top of their political spin. (;~> gary