The economy has grown for more than four straight years and added 6.5 million jobs. Yet Americans are giving it flunking grades. A Gallup Poll from early August shows that only 22 percent of Americans think the economy is getting better. That’s down from 28 percent in July.

It’s easy to explain the disconnect. Most people are not enjoying the benefits of the current economic expansion, and that includes those who went to college. The same tentacles that have squeezed blue-collar pay for two decades are now encircling the wallets and purses of white-collar workers.

Using figures compiled by White House economists, the Los Angeles Times recently reported that real wages (adjusted for inflation) for college graduates fell by 5.2 percent between 2000 and 2004. By contrast, their wages rose 12 percent between 1995 and 2000. The last time sheepskin-toting workers faced such a long pay slump while the economy was expanding was the 1970s.

The reasons for the decline are familiar to blue-collar workers. Businesses are lowering labor costs by moving jobs offshore and eliminating full-time salaried positions in favor of part-time slots with limited to zero benefits. Nearly half the jobs created since 2001 are of the non-salaried variety.

All of which leads us to the sector that is thriving and driving the current expansion. Corporate profits are up – way up. So is the pay for executives making these wage-constricting decisions.

At the same time, the business community is pushing to improve accountability in education and thus increase the number of college-educated workers.

Question is, will employers be offering satisfactory wages and consistent raises once they get the kind of workers they’re seeking?

Tinfoiled again. If you think the government caused the Sept. 11 attacks by setting explosives at the World Trade Center and ramming a smaller plane or missile into the Pentagon to stoke the desire for war, then you won’t want to visit the Web site of Popular Mechanics or read its new book that debunks such nonsense.

The site to skip so you can continue to believe the U.S. government is capable of such a monstrous atrocity is www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense. You won’t be missing political spin, just the pesky scientific explanations for why the various tenets of that conspiracy theory melt upon examination.

So, why is this debunking even necessary? Well, according to a recent Scripps-Howard Poll, 36 percent of Americans think the Sept. 11 attacks could’ve been an inside job.

Idaho makes the Final Four! What do Idaho, Wyoming, Utah and Oklahoma have in common? They’re the only states that still give President Bush a positive approval rating, according to the latest results released Thursday by Survey USA.

Last year at this time, 10 states were staying the course, with two equally split. But since then, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, North Dakota, Montana, Alabama and (drumroll, please) Texas have gone sour on the president.

Meanwhile, the Top 10 list of most popular senators in their home states included eight Democrats and two Republicans. The GOP was represented by the moderate duo from Maine: Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Those two are often derided by conservatives as RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only.

One of the “real” Republicans, Conrad Burns of Montana, got the lowest approval rating.