What is been really a passing comment in the Main Stream Media is a big deal. The US Economy is not doing well at all. The US Government todau SLASHED it’s esimate of first quarter gtorth by over half, from 1.3 to a pathetic 0.6%.

From AP via Yahoo

Economic growth skidded to a near halt in the first quarter, with the worst showing in more than four years raising concerns about how long the country’s sluggish spell will last.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product increased by just a 0.6 percent pace in the January-through-March period, much weaker than estimated a month ago. Government statisticians slashed by more than half their first estimate of a 1.3 percent growth rate for the quarter.

The main forces behind the downgrade: the bloated trade deficit and businesses cutting investment in supplies of the goods they hold in inventories.

“We got close, but the economy did not slip under the waves in the first quarter,” said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors.

What largely prevented the economy from going under: consumers, who showed an even bigger appetite to spend.

For nearly a year, the economy has been enduring a stretch of subpar economic growth due mostly to a sharp housing slump. That in turn has made some businesses act more cautiously in their spending and investing.

The economy’s 0.6 percent growth rate in the opening quarter of this year marked a big loss of momentum from the 2.5 percent pace logged in the final quarter of last year.

Q Tony, American deaths in Iraq have reached 2,500. Is there any response or reaction from the President on that?

MR. SNOW: It’s a number, and every time there’s one of these 500 benchmarks people want something. The President would like the war to be over now. Everybody would like the war to be over now. And the one thing that we saw in Iraq this week is further testimony to the quality of the men and the women who are doing that, and the dedication and determination to try to ensure that the people of Iraq really do live in a free, effective democracy of their own creation and design.

Any President who goes through a time of war feels very deeply the responsibility for sending men and women into harm’s way, and feels very deeply the pain that the families feel. And this President is no different. You’ve seen it many times. You saw it, you saw it when he was in that ballroom, Terry, and you had this crowd of servicemen and women who were cheering loudly for the President, and he got choked up. So it’s always a sad benchmark, and one of the things the President has said is that these people will not die in vain.

And part of what happened this very week when the President went to Baghdad, and he sat down with the Prime Minister and he sat down with the cabinet, and he sat down with the President and Vice President, he sat down with the national security team, and he sat down with the leaders of all the major political parties, what he saw now is that after all of this, what you have in Iraq is a freestanding government that has been elected by the Iraqi people. It has a Prime Minister who is going to be there for four years, who is determined to act as a Prime Minister, who is determined to lead, who is setting priorities, and he’s somebody we can work with. You have a Minister of Defense who has significant experience and is already working with his colleagues, not only here at the Pentagon, but also General Casey and others in the field. The President understands that those deaths cannot be in vain, and you’ve got a government now that can help ensure that that is not the case.

Q Was he told about the benchmark, the President?

MR. SNOW: I don’t know. I’m sure he will hear about it.

You should go and see what 2500 really looks like, MoreThanANumber.org

USAToday - President Bush’s approval rating has slumped to 31% in a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, the lowest of his presidency and a warning sign for Republicans in the November elections.

Poll: Gas Prices, Iraq Weigh Down Bush

Only 33 percent approve of his job performance, Mr. Bush’s lowest approval rating yet in CBS News polls. A majority – 58 percent of those polled – say they disapprove of the president. Mr. Bush appears to be losing support from his own party. His approval rating among Republicans has dropped to 68 percent. (Read the complete poll results here.)

The Pew Research Center has done a poll, and the outcome is Bush is almost as crappy a "President" as Nixon was. I mean like 5 or 6 points and he will be in Nixon Watergate range.

In the aftermath of the Dubai ports deal, President Bush’s approval rating has hit a new low and his image for honesty and effectiveness has been damaged. Yet the public uncharacteristically has good things to say about the role that Congress played in this high-profile Washington controversy.

Most Americans (58%) believe Congress acted appropriately in strenuously opposing the deal, while just 24% say lawmakers made too much of the situation. While there is broad support for the way Congress handled the dispute, more Americans think Democratic leaders showed good judgment on the ports issue than say the same about GOP leaders (by 30%-20%).

The new Pew survey underscores the public’s alarm over the prospect that an Arab-owned company could have operated U.S. ports. Fully 41% say they paid very close attention to news about the debate, which is unusually high interest for a Washington story and is only slightly lower than the number tracking Iraq war news very closely (43%). There was broad opposition to the proposed deal from across the political spectrum, including two-to-one disapproval among conservative Republicans (56%-27%).

Bush’s overall approval measure stands at 33%, the lowest rating of his presidency. Bush’s job performance mark is now about the same as the ratings for Democratic and Republican congressional leaders (34% and 32%, respectively), which showed no improvement in spite of public approval of the congressional response to the ports deal.

The president’s ratings for handling of several specific issues, particularly terrorism, have also declined sharply. Just 42% now approve of Bush’s job in handling terrorist threats, an 11-point drop since February. In January 2005, as Bush was starting his second term, 62% approved of his handling of terrorist threats.

The Red state of Indiana has some great news as we come into the 2006 election season. Bush won Indiana handedly, but now he has a rating of a whooping 37%. No kidding, 37%. This is great news for the Democrats, because more GOP drones will stay home. This is what is really worrying the GOP across the country, unhappy Republicans do not bother to vote…

From the IndyStar.com

Indiana voted twice to elect George W. Bush to the White House, but an Indianapolis Star poll indicates more than half of Hoosiers now disapprove of the job he’s doing as president.

Only 37 percent of those surveyed last week think Bush is doing a good job as president, while 56 percent disapprove.
The poll, conducted from Feb. 28 to March 2, is based on the responses of 501 Hoosiers statewide.

From CNN

The only Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to fight with American troops backing them up, the Pentagon said Friday.

Another total failure on the part of this administration. Thanks Bush for spending all of our money, can you tell me again why?

The total cost of the "War on Terror" so far.

How much is that?

• If each dollar was really a mile, we could do 80 trips from the Sun to Pluto.
• Bush has spent so much that you could walk up and give $88 for every human on earth.
• If you laid the money out ($1) end-to-end, they would go around the Earth 8 times
• That is $1487.87 for every person in America