C I P R I A N I

Maybe it’s all the Iowa talk.  I really don’t want to spend so much time on politics. But this speaks to the sheer insanity of our times:

Millions of americans are out of work. Recession, depression, tax, cut, spend – Whatever you want to call the current state of the American economy, it’s unprecedented.  We have to be honest: A lot of the jobs that are gone aren’t coming back. A lot of folks out there need a job and are having a damn hard time finding one.  

There’s plenty of blame to go around, but simply put:  the democrats blame the republicans and the republicans blame the democrats, specifically the President.  Did the “stimulus” work?  Are we doing enough to create jobs?  What can we do?  And truthfully it seems like a lot of the stuff folks are yelling about is just misdirect.  “Look over here!” while the folks shuffle the shells around…

But let’s be fair, even if you believe that Barack Obama is not only the worst President in United States history, but the most incompetent leader in the history of western civilization, assigning the entire blame for the shape of our current economy (as if everything was just honky dory until the moment he took office) completely defies all reasonable discourse.  

That said, this mess, like it or not, is now his responsibility and the electorate will judge how The President handled things in the 2012 election.  There’s speculation that he might raise as much as a billion dollars to keep his job and I think it’s safe to say whomever the Republican nominee winds up being will raise a hefty amount of cash to try and take it.  And then we’ll all go to the ballot box and decide which one of these guys (or gal in the event that Michele Bachmann wins – in which case, all this talk of the forthcoming Apocalypse will take on a very eerie resonance) is best suited to get us out of our fix.

Again.

And as we try to figure out who to blame, democrats or republicans, and try to find a way out of this mess as they fight about whether or not we’ve done enough to create jobs, all the while insisting theirs is the best approach, We, as a country, are going to spend roughly 2 billion dollars on one person getting one job.  And sadly, that too, seems to defy all reasonable discourse.