McCain advisor Donald Luskin is frustrated, not at Wall Street or the Bush administration, but at you middle class whiners and exaggerators. And he's not gonna take it any more!

But that doesn't make any of it true. Things today just aren't that bad. Sure, there are trouble spots in the economy, as the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and jitters about Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers, amply demonstrate. And unemployment figures are up a bit, too. None of this, however, is cause for depression -- or exaggerated Depression comparisons.

That's what Bushonomics are reduced to? After eight years of being told the next tax cut for billionaires would unleash the long promised economic Mecca, after two straight Presidential terms where critics of Bush's trickle-down mythology were soundly ridiculed as ignorant socialists, after being told We the People don't understand complicated money stuff and we should just shut up, work harder, shop our brains out, and trust conservative economic philosophy, the best case scenario our millionaire conservative cheerleaders can make in the end is 'it's not as bad' as the Great Depression?

"Vote Republican and it won't be as bad as the Great Depression!"

I remember a time when the nation was at peace, its economy driven by technical innovation and stable markets allowing the accumulation of investment capital. Interest rates and unemployment were near historical lows, wages and productivity rose almost as steeply the stock market. Talk of investment banks going broke or market meltdowns was rare to non existent. And no one had to write columns begging people not to compare the economy to the Great Depression. It sounds like a conservative wet dream, but it was actually called the Clinton Years.