And with the stimulus package (some tax money refunds but, even more important, some tax law changes to favor business profitability) going to start kicking in next month, with the stock market showing a turnaround, it looks like any downturn will be quite brief.

No reasonable person expects perfectly steady, upward growth in an economy or in a stock market. The longest-running boom went from 1983 to 2000, which was a nice 17-year run, but even that remarkable boom came to an end during Clinton's last year. But back to the unemployment figures.

One has to break down the figures further to really make sense of them.

The rate is higher for blacks, and it's higher for the uneducated, and it's higher for teenagers.

All that seems understandable if one notes that more blacks fall into the uneducated category, and the low-paying entry-level jobs that teenagers take are often the first to be cut by employers.

The higher unemployment rate among blacks is not higher because they are black, but because they haven't studied hard and learned the skills that would make them employable. It's not due to racism, folks.

It can't be fixed by affirmative action. It could be fixed if black parents stayed together more and if black parents emphasized education and if black parents had the option to send their kids to better schools. Can anyone spell "vouchers?"