STATE OF THE UNION: Shadows Within Shadows

I sure feel better now that our president has pronounced that the “shadow of crisis” on our nation has passed. And here I was thinking we were getting into a deeper mess on all fronts.

We were told Tuesday night that we are now out of recession and our economy is creating jobs at a rate not seen since the 1990s. We were told that the situation in the Middle East is well under control and there’s nothing more to see there. So the president wants to get back to doing what a good little Marxist does best – spread the wealth.

Well, not so fast. Methinks there be a bit of the blarney there. Let’s take a closer look at how things really are with our economy and with our effort to preserve something at least remotely resembling second millennium civilization in the Middle East.

The economy is creating jobs, but it seems progressives aren’t very nuanced when it comes to defining what constitutes a job. For them, one job seems to be just as good as another for judging the state of the economy. A job working thirty hours a week at minimum wage running a cash register is just the same as a full time structural engineer working on, dare I say, a shovel- ready new bridge project. Seems we could use a little more granularity here. Most of the jobs this administration touts are of the thirty-hour retail variety rather than the more value producing engineering type.

Of course, the unemployment number is now below six percent, that has to be good, right? Could be, but you have to understand that this particular measurement called the U3 is quite easily manipulated. You can get whatever number you want just by making a judgment on who is really looking for work and who isn’t. (I would have bet the house this number would have been below eight percent before the 2012 election and dang if it wasn’t.) In any event, non-citizens have taken all the net jobs created anyway.

The more accurate jobs number to look at for judging the state of the economy is the labor participation rate. This now stands at sixty three percent, a FORTY-YEAR LOW! Don’t be alarmed though. We’ve added thirteen million to the food stamp rolls since this president took office and we know that people living on government assistance add just as much to the economy as a structural engineer (at least according to Nancy).

Our operating deficit is now over $18 trillion and counting which means that we each owe around $57000. Now I understand why the administration wants to let more people in to the country. With just a couple of hundred million more immigrants, what we each owe becomes much more manageable. However, don’t forget the $150 trillion we owe in unfunded liabilities too. No one in Washington seems to want to talk about that.

So our economy is still in deep shadow but what of the Middle East? Does it not seem that everything this administration does in the Middle East promotes the advance of Islamist jihadists and does nothing to reduce the threat we face? Consider the following points:

1) This administration refused to help the protesters in Iran seeking western type freedom back in 2009.
2) This administration has refused to rein in the Iranian pursuit of nukes and is standing alone against further sanctions.
3) This administration refuses to properly label Islamic violence. Fort Hood was workplace violence? You gotta be kidding me.
4) The strategy against ISIS is ineffective and in fact, ISIS controls more of Syria now than at the start of the effort to defeat them. The administration’s actions seem to solely check a box that they took some action rather than effect victory.
5) This administration is releasing dangerous Islamists from Guantanamo with a high percentage chance of their return to the battlefield.
6) This administration has all but cut off diplomatic relations with Egypt after they threw out the Muslim Brotherhood.
7) This president refuses to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu when he visits Washington next month and continues to poke Israel in the eye every chance he gets.
8) This administration sponsored and presided over a symposium of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation that promoted Islamic blasphemy laws that were in direct opposition to our First Amendment.
9) This administration lied about what precipitated the Benghazi attack and is still stonewalling on what our ambassador was doing there.

Do you get the picture here? I can add much more to the list, but these dots knit into a very ugly picture of what this administration’s intentions are with respect to the Islamic threat.

Speaking of Benghazi, has anyone seen Trey Gowdy? I had really high hopes that we might get to the bottom of what happened in Libya on 9/11/12 but so far very little has come of it. If the Citizens Commission on Benghazi is right, this administration could have been providing weapons and support to the very Al Qaeda Islamists we are supposed to be fighting. The specter of treason would cast a very dark shadow on Washington. And yeah, where was our president for those hours when Americans were dying in Benghazi. That answer remains in shadow too.

Image: http://fabiusmaximus.com/2012/08/31/42830/