Just in Time for April Fool's!

Bush's Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said in an interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer that the practice of moving American jobs to low-cost countries "is part of trade" and that "there can't be any doubt about the fact that trade makes the economy stronger" (story picked up and reported in the New York Times this morning). The euphemism these cats favor is "outsourcing."

Secretary Snow said those words in O-H-I-O, the 2004 swing state hard hit by the loss of jobs. Which led the NYTimes reporter to remark that, gee-whiz, "Mr. Snow's comments, published on Tuesday, reflect a growing willingness by the Bush administration to defend global free trade even in hard-hit industrial states" and to recall that Bush's chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, got into very hot water last month for saying almost exactly the same thing. Mankiw had to write a letter of apology to Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert for saying what he said.

Now, about the campaign strategy of sending a cherry "outsourcing is good" message into deepest Ohio ... WAY TO GO, TEAM!