Medary.com

A survey of recent American news site headlines, via Google News:

USA Today, 5/6/05: Job growth explodes in April, up 274,000.

But then, we have:

ABC News/Reuters, 5/6/05: Jobless claims rise more than expected.

Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel/Knight Ridder/Dallas Morning News, 5/6/05: The wrong diagnosis: U.S. economy is slow, but this isn't stagflation.

Sioux Falls Argus Leader/AP, 4/29/05: U.S. economy slumbering.

Bloomberg.com, 4/28/05: U.S. Economy: 1st-Quarter Growth Slowed, Inflation Accelerated.

Then, you have: Washington Times, 5/6/05: Poll: Consumers dour on U.S. economy.

I wonder why? Do you suppose it might be in part because of the steady drip-drip-drip of negative news from our friends in the "mainstream media?" One of the most admirable things about "The Greatest Generation" was that, in the words of the song popularized by Bing Crosby, would "accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative."

It isn't that they had any fewer problems than we did, but it's about how they went about tackling them.

And before you go off about how naive they were back them, remember that when that song was popular, the world was in the midst of a war more terrible than anything happening today, coming on the heels of an economic depression the likes of which today's Boomers, Gen-X'ers, and Millenials can scarcely imagine.