The Seattle Times April 16 headline read:

"Shareholders' Fury Forces Policy Changes at WAMU".

Underneath this headline describing the rage shareholders of stock in Washington Mutual Bank felt as they saw their investment in one of the biggest banks in the U.S.A. collapse, the article continued to explain how this devastating economic meltdown shattered their faith in Washington Mutual Chief Executive Officer Kerry Killinger.

But before Killinger announced another huge loss of $19 billion in more bad loans, Alan Henry, a retired radio executive, blasted Killinger's record as Washington Mutual's CEO.  Directing his diatribe to the bank's stockholders, he reminded them, "You're the owners, not them (referring to the bank's executives).  They're employees."

To those wild spending, much vaunted moral guardian Republicans, their Halloween celebration is all tricks and no treats.

The other evening I listened to a tricky talk on TV by glib talking Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas.  As I heard her rant on about what a good job Republicans had done for the U.S. economy I thought that, in all fairness, Kay Bailey should instantly change her name to Kay Baloney Hutchison.

It took a lot of gall to declare that the Bush-led Republican robots had helped the U.S.A. economically.

The wild spending spree of the unneeded Iraq War with the ever-ascending $350 billion ever rising price tag debt represents the biggest national debit in the history of planet earth.

For that matter what are the job prospects for any of us? A soft economic recovery and an increasingly level (or "flat," to borrow Thomas Friedman's  strange phrasing) global marketplace are rapidly reducing the options of American workers across a range of careers and vocations.  Harold Meyerson of the Washington Post asks "Will Your Job Survive?" Meyerson's alarm bells were tripped by a disturbing report from Princeton University economist Alan Blinder. I hate to go all "Lou Dobbs." But Blinder's prognostication about the job market of the not too distant future should send a chill down the spine of any American concerned about the future of the US economy.

In the new global order, Blinder writes, not just manufacturing jobs but a large number of service jobs will be performed in cheaper climes. Indeed, only hands-on or face-to-face services look safe. "Janitors and crane operators are probably immune to foreign competition," Blinder writes, "accountants and computer programmers are not."

There follow some back-of-the-envelope calculations as Blinder totes up the number of jobs in tradable and non-tradable sectors. Then comes his (necessarily imprecise) bottom line: "The total number of current U.S. service-sector jobs that will be susceptible to offshoring in the electronic future is two to three times the total number of current manufacturing jobs (which is about 14 million)." As Blinder believes that all those manufacturing jobs are offshorable, too, the grand total of American jobs that could be bound for Bangalore or Bangladesh is somewhere between 42 million and 56 million. [emphasis mine] That doesn't mean all those jobs are going to be exported. It does mean that the Americans performing them will be in competition with people who will do the same work for a whole lot less.

Bush's much heralded trade deal with India begs a significant question.  Was Bush, in effect, trading India joining the Nuclear Club so American businessmen can outsource more jobs to India?  Pakistan wasn't overjoyed over Bush's visit.  It was greeted with the tragic death of an American Ambassador.  Riots erupted everywhere Bush went.

With the unpopularity of Bush's presidency he must be operating under the illusion that he is welcome anywhere.  Bush chases around the world almost as if he was on a perpetual Air Force One continuous trip.  Bush seems to be an attachment of Air Force One.

No wonder he claims he was in the dark about the Dubai U.S. port outsourcing to the Saudi-based company.  Trusting U.S. Homeland Security to the Saudis begs the question:  Don't you trust American workers, Mr. Bush?

Bush did a little fancy footwork, explaining how wonderful outsourcing jobs away from American workers could be.  Bush cracked what amounts to a joke, saying "Education eases outsourcing!"  Considering what a mediocre student Bush's college career revealed, maybe his position as President should be outsourced as fast as you can say Impeach George Bush!

The New York Times today published an article on the topic of outsourcing. Steve Lohr, the author of the article, contends that outsourcing is climbing the skills ladder. What he means by this is that the jobs that were originally outsourced were simple assembly tasks. After these jobs were outsourced, companies began to outsource higher skill jobs, such as computer programmers. Now, outsourcing has progressed up the skills ladder to include such highly skilled jobs as engineers and scientists.

The Republicans need some more propaganda to justify the sorry contribution they have made to The State of the Union.

Please tell me how they can justify the War on Iraq; which causes the U.S.A. to be considered by some nations as the number one terrorist nation.

A nation capable of launching war based on lies and deception causing, by some estimates, 100,000 Iraqi deaths, over 2,500 U.S. service personnel's deaths, and over 15,000 service personnel injured, is definitely not something to be proud of or cheer.

The State of the Union now has the distinction of saddling future generations of U.S. citizens with the biggest burden of national debt of any nation in the world.  Is that something to be proud of?

What will the Republicans and Democrats who voted for the Iraq War, we now know as based on lies, forgeries and deception do when George Bush caries on about bringing "democracy" to Iraq?  Will they, robot-like, rise to their feet and give Bush a hefty round of applause in the light of what we see about the real Iraq every night on TV?

In C. M. Kornbluth's 1951 sci fi short, The Marching Morons, a modern day huckster takes a one way trip to the future and discovers that progress didn't quite go as expected.  The breeding rate of smart, educated people versus that of the not-so-bright underclass has left the world with an average IQ less than the temperature of Milwaukee in January, and only said conman can save the few smarties left from moronic domination.  The story is racist, classist, elitist, terribly dated, and really quite funny.

But of course, Kornbluth got everything wrong -- well, everything but the results   Because if some researchers are right, America is facing a huge shortage of a resource that can't be fixed no matter how many national parks we're willing to drill, or how many old growth trees we chop down.  We're running out of smart people.