you know, i read this piece yesterday and thought to myself: “man, someone needs a bong hit right away. or maybe a nice thai massage…”

but james pethokoukis has the smmmmmmackdown (via instapundit):

I dunno, maybe contributing to our low national morale are media that 1) compare a weak economy—although one that has yet to suffer even a single negative quarter—to the disastrous economies of the 1930s and 1970s; 2) forget to mention that the average person buying a home in, say, January 2000, is still sitting on a 66 percent gain; 3) ignore the economy’s sky-high productivity, which helps make it the most competitive in the world; 4) ignore a global economic boom that is pushing up gas prices but also raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty; and 5) for the heck of it, perpetuate the myth that college is unaffordable. (Oh, and since the authors of the article brought it up, it sure looks to this Soviet politics major that Iraq is turning into a situation for al Qaeda that is exactly the reverse of Afghanistan in the 1980s: Militants take on superpower. Get annihilated along with their global brand.)

America’s “can-do” attitude? We are coming off a record year for initial public offerings. I mean, I could go on and on here. I don’t know anyone who is giving up, other than the AP.

(emphasis mine)

the phrase “nattering nabobs of negativism” certainly springs to mind, doesn’t it?

and to whom was spiro agnew referring with that phrase? you guessed it!