I've mentioned before my suspicions that part time and temporary employment growth is what's behind the statistics that the government tries to pass off as "good news" about employment.

It turns out that, at least as far as part time employment goes, someone has been collecting rough but worldwide statistics for a 10-year period.

CNN lists the most profitable coporations on the Fortune 500 for 2005.  Twenty-five of them had more than $5 billion in profits:

From a state that has given us Ronald Reagan, Duke Cunningham, and Arnold as stalwart examples of Republicanism, I guess we should have pretty low expectations of the new crop.

I know this won't shock you the way it might have a few years ago:  a study of the IRS and audits has found that in 2005, people reporting less than $25,000 in income were six times more likely to be called into the IRS for a personal audit than those reporting income of more than $200,000.

Proving that zealots dedicated to an abstraction known as "free markets" learn nothing that doesn't fit within their zealotry, the Bush administration is now running into severe criticism of a $6 million no-bid contract given by  the National Nuclear Security Administration to Hutchison Whampoa, a Hong Kong based company, to scan U.S. bound cargo going through the Bahamas.

Most people underestimate the degree to which the Bushster is succeeding at changing the country in the direction that he and his corporate supporters have long desired. For example, on March 17, a federal District Court ruled against the Bush administration's claim--via its appointees at EPA--that the EPA could water down the Clean Air Act's requirements that older power plants must meet the Act's emission standards if they upgraded their plants rather than retiring them from service as they wore out.

But in 21st century "Bush's America" good news is never more than a prelude to more bad news, and the Bush admin certainly didn't disappoint, according to a news release today from the National Resources Defense Council:

Fresh from the Orange County Register, on April Fool's Day, no less: O.C. voters were duped into GOP registration--Petitioners lie, cajole and commit forgery while duping more than 100 O.C. residents into joining the Republican Party

These are strange times.  Very strange times.  The daily headlines are often enough to provoke uncontrolled laughter, vomiting, or both.  The oddest statements can lurk beneath innocuous headlines.  Reality's getting hard to find.

Here's a small selection of the above:

John Mulaa, of Nairobi, has a dead-on description of our president in the East African Standard:

Bush is not saddled with an opaque vision. Not at all. His problems stem from having too clear a vision but being unable to reconcile it with reality.

Just in case you've forgotten, some anonymous staffer once bragged about Bush and friends not being constrained by reality the way a lot of us other fools were.  I believe the phrase was that Bush & Co. were "not reality-based."  And now we've got multi-millions willing to sign affadavits to that effect.

Our esteemed president caused quite a stir in his State of the Union speech by calling the country "addicted to oil," and announcing efforts to increase research geared to reducing the nation's oil needs to operate our vehicles.

WTW has already discussed the contradiction between that speech and the budget cuts that forced staff layoffs at the government's primary renewable energy research center.  Now it turns out that the government has been actively fighting a federal law mandating use of alternative fuel vehicles as a conservation measure.

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