In a move befitting the scheister in the White House, there's an effort afoot to recategorize food service jobs as "manufacturing"... causing at least one congressman to ask "should we recategorize special sauce a durable good?"

Seems like a pretty clear sign of how Bush sees the future of America. Your job in the New Economic Recovery will be to ask "do you want fries with that?" If you're lucky. Actually, that's a sales position, and you have to work your way up to it. In time, you'll even qualify for minimum wage, so you'll be able to pay for your healthcare.

Does anybody really buy into the shell game? I can hardly believe that this fellow is the best the Grand Old Party can field. I can just imagine the grimmacing behind the scenes. Sensible Reps biting their lip for the sake of party unity. Meanwhile, deficits are higher than ever, our economy looks like it's getting better—on paper, anyway—but everywhere you see jobs going overseas. "We don't need those jobs", you hear the Captains of Industry say. The idea is that all those highly trained professionals need to be retrained for new positions. The fluid nature of a dynamic economy and the proper allocation of resources, and all that.

And according to the Bush administration, that retraining will consist of knowing the proper order of pickles, lettuce, and tomatoes.