corrente

Many people are unemployed, right? Around 1.3 million by "official" numbers, although between new people coming into the labor market, those whose benefits ran out but who still don't have work, and the general propensity of Bushco to cook the books on government-issued statistics it's hard to say for sure.

Many people, even if employed, don't have health insurance. True? True. Trust me on this one.

Those people, we hate to tell you, are just lazy whiners. Because the Bush campaign is on top of these problems, dammit! Per Yahoo news

(Reuters) - A campaign worker for President Bush (news - web sites) said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

The comment was apparently directed to a colleague who was transferring a phone call from a reporter asking about job quality, and who overheard the remark.

When told the Prozac comment had been overheard, Sheybani said: "Oh, I was just kidding."

Now we would hate to take a casual comment by a campaign worker, whose experience base appears to consist of working for Dick Armey and winning a low-level beauty pageant, as the official position of Dear Leader. That would be cruel, and class warfare, and all that. Almost as bad as taking a video of a candidate's wife, telling a guy who's been stalking her for a decade to "shove it," and playing it umpty-zillion times without context or background.

So let's look back a little ways, to July 16 or so, during the National Governor's Conference. I posted one rude crack from that event but managed to miss this other item entirely, possibly because it seems to only have appeared in an obscure paper in Olympia, called, logically enough The Olympian:

July 16, 2004--Washington Gov. Gary]Locke said Washington state spends about $1 billion a year paying for services for seniors that Medicare doesn't cover.

Reed Dickens, a spokesman for the Bush-Cheney campaign, said Locke's criticisms were off-target.

Dickens said Bush has proposed different solutions to help the uninsured. He added, "Most Americans who don't have health care don't have health care by choice."

So there you have it. Ambition, willpower and Prozac. Just like Dear Leader himself, and look where he got in life having started out as the son of a lowly turd miner.