By Tribune-Review

Published: Thursday, July 5, 2012, 8:44 p.m.
Updated: Tuesday, February 19, 2013

President Obama visits Pittsburgh today. He's said to be attempting to shore up his Western Pennsylvania base by touting his economic policy achievements.

Lots of luck with that one, Mr. President.

The June jobs report isn't expected to be anything to write home about, let alone stand on the stump with. And last month's aggregate manufacturing numbers show national factory activity is constricting and not far from suggesting another recession.

Unemployment remains stubbornly above 8 percent.

Investors, bracing for one of the largest tax hikes in history come January, are said to be sitting on their cash. (And for that, they are derided by those who seek to conscript ever more from the private sector to yet again cover government profligacy.)

Yet Obama will spin yarns and tell tales tall that blame everything and everyone rather than his administration's interventionist policies that, as was the case with the Great Depression, have perverted the rule of law and retarded recovery from the Great Recession.

Pay no attention to that sobering bolus of reality behind the curtain. Or as the late novelist Saul Bellow once put it, “A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

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