Today's retail sales report for May revealed a much better-then-expected jump of 1%, the best monthly showing in six months (year-over-year growth of 2.5% is still sluggish). It wasn't just spending on gas either (core sales, ex-autos, ex-gas were also up 1%).

Given what we know about incomes and the job market right now (and what we know ain't pretty), the sales report strongly suggests folks are spending their rebate checks. Yes, I know there's too much spending and too little saving in our economy, but at a time like this, with the economy growing well below trend, we really need folks to kick up their consumer spending (it's 70% of the economy!), most usefully on non-imports (i.e., not just on gasoline).

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Thanks much to Arianna Huffington for inviting me to respond to her posts this week.

First, let me say that Right is Wrong is an important and enlightening read. Many of us are already there in terms of the book's main message (see title), but what I'm finding indispensable is its collection of pointed examples of just how out of touch the right has been for lo these many years. My latest favorite--somehow I missed this one in real time--was Bush's erstwhile Treasury Sec'y, John Snow, saying that the best remedy for the damage from Katrina was to make the Bush tax cuts permanent (see pg. 253).

That's some real chutzpah. It's also mindless, callous, and infuriating.

Now, on to Arianna's first post re the role of the fear card in 2008.

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