cart before the horse? as usual.

Recovery loses speed as consumers turn cautious - Yahoo! News:

The recovery lost momentum in the spring as growth slowed to a 2.4 percent pace, its most sluggish showing in nearly a year and too weak to drive down unemployment.

Hasn't it occurred to you people that maybe, just maybe, the high unemployment and the continued threat of losing a job in an instant due to one little mistake or uncontrollable circumstance (consider 18 nurses, YES! NURSES, PEOPLE WE REALLY NEED MORE OF, fired because they couldn't get out of their homes in an 26" blizzard), might MAYBE be causing people to hold back on excessive shopping for non-necessities?

Jobs have to come first. 

Big companies have to be willing to sacrifice the profit margin a little to keep that one more (dozen) on the payroll.*

Little companies have to be able to get short-term loans from banks to keep cash flow happening.

Until either of those two issues start happening again, the economy will NEVER recover.

So quit looking to the consumer who has no money and look to the banks and the corporations that DO have money but refuse to spend it the way they're supposed to.

[* and if I hear again that blankityblank commercial where a bunch of idiotic hicks spout off about how raising gas taxes would hurt "the economy", when the only reason it would hurt is because Big Oil will raise rates rather than lose that tiny bit of their ridiculous profit margin, I'm going to throw up.]

I'm just getting sick of this...

Joe's Political Jottings - oh that's a good little stunt...:where i describe how the Liars for Jesus have come up with a whole new way to lie...

I can relate...

Anne Rice leaves Christianity – The Marquee Blog - CNN.com Blogs:

Legendary author Anne Rice has announced that she’s quitting Christianity.

The “Interview with a Vampire” author, who wrote a book about her spirituality titled "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" in 2008, said Wednesday that she refuses to be “anti-gay,” “anti-feminist," “anti-science” and “anti-Democrat.”

Rice wrote, “For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.”

Rice then added another post explaining her decision on Thursday:

“My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," Rice wrote. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.”

To further my respect for her, in her twitter/facebook feed, she quotes some of the very same passages I like to "believe" in, and seem ignored by so many, including,

• "If I speak in the tongues[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." (spoken at almost every Christian wedding in America)
  
• "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. "
  

and a nice quote from Ghandi: "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."