I recently passed a milestone by living 60 years. As a kid I thought this was when mental paralysis would engage. I’d start drooling, become forgetful and suffer the challenges of loose bowels, restricted urethral issues and in general answer all questions with the question: “Ehhhh”? Turns out I wasn’t too far off of the mark.

I’m a “baby boomer”, a child generated from the sexually repressed members of the greatest generation” during the post-World War II era of expansive upward mobility in all matters. I remember certain things not proving as slippery as the memory of where I displaced my pants. Soviet Russia launched a dog into space proving American education was woefully behind the times when it came to training Jack Russell Terriers to fly spacecraft.

To counteract this obviously embarrassing educational disenfranchisement the federal government decided we needed a vastly improved educational system and modification of our attack on mastering Math and the Sciences. Our limited storehouse of calculating brain cells were assigned to master the subject then known as: MODERN MATH. It soon proved many people’s assumption I was uneducable in math. (But, I do understand the meaning of the word “uneducable”. That was pounded into me.)

Go figure.

The feds mandated Algebra, Geometry and Calculus drop to lower limbs of the educational tree. These subjects heretofore taught in High School, College and post-graduate school, would be started in rudimentary formats in Elementary School as low as Fifth Grade. Hence the name: Modern Math.

This was a trial for those of us looking at the pencil as an evil nemesis sent from some comic book defined Hades. It was meant to destroy us in the eyes of our socially hyper-competitive parents looking to ascend within the hierarchy of the Parent Teacher Association (PTA). If we had trouble properly holding the lumber (the humble pencil) given us to solve the greater mysteries of the universe, you can image how difficult it was to force answers from it for such question as: “if Dick leaves the station for Detroit on a Sunday at 3:00 P.M and travels at a speed of 55 miles per hour, how low are your chances of ever again enjoying your childhood?”

So; where’s this going? Beats the heck out of me. But, I decided I could be acceptable in society even though I’m mathematically challenged. I became an EMT, a Cop and now a Writer. None require I plot the navigational programs for NASA. (Thank you Lord, otherwise nobody would ever come home.)

Now we’re challenged to understand the numbers published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showing there were 114,000 jobs created in September. This led to a percentage drop of .3% for the month. In furtherance of our understanding, Obama’s number jugglers say over 873,000 people started entrepreneurial home-based enterprises and took part-time work sure to guarantee an economic surge. It’ll propel us into instant solvency after one of the nastiest recessions we’ve suffered during OBAMA’S residency in the White House. Isn’t the timing of this miracle fantastic (bizarre, strange, weird; maybe even imaginary, 9o possibly incredible, unbelievable and preposterous)?

Earlier in the year the BLS said there would be a mark of 113,000 jobs created and this would show an unemployment rate remaining near, and above, 8%. Anything above 8% is a number described as a death knell for any incumbent presidential candidate suffering this disturbing statistic. But the numbers were juggled and by the addition of 1,000 jobs to the 113,000 job gain estimated, we managed to drop .3%, bringing the deadly statistics below Obama’s threshold needed to survive the election.

EUREKA! A miracle has been delivered just in time for the election. Somehow, the federal government has shown that with the addition of 1,000 jobs above a formerly low estimate, and we added 873,000 improbable and unsubstantiated self-employed Warren Buffetts, we now approach economic solvency.

Only in Americas could an imagination be so boundless as to trust we’ll swallow the opportunistic and fabricated numbers presented by an administration desperately struggling to prove its non-existent worth.

Ain’t Modern Math wonderful? It’s positively magical in its Washingtonian application.

Thanks for listening.