At the Summit of Jobs

For those of us who are not interested in following a knock-down, drag-out, sucker-punching, cage-style debate on Obama's War between three  old guys pumped up on caffeine, testosterone injections, and nostalgia, the White House Jobs Summit that began yesterday is what's really happening. Summits on the nation's employment, or lack thereof, have not been very productive in the past. But that is because Jobs themselves have never been willing to put down their work and participate. Instead, human beings attend on Jobs' behalf, and these meetings inevitably bog down due to the inherent slowness of organic chemical processes and the essential irrationality of anything that takes its  marching orders from a random agglomeration of protein molecules. The notion that Jobs alone, bereft of human personification or instantiation, might actually be willing to get together to discuss things, is the kind of outside-the-box thinking this Administration has always talked about, but no one believed possible. But Obama declared, "Yes, We Can!" and Jobs of all types and stripes streamed along the highways and byways of America to the Summit, lighting up Washington yesterday like a three-ring circus on steroids. As economists have pointed out in both the peer reviewed literature and the literature read mainly on piers, Jobs react almost instantaneously to changes in the economy.  Your distribution network at capacity? Zip! Truck driver Jobs jump up as if goosed by a cold handed proctologist.  Professional hockey suddenly more popular than adult circumcision?  Zap! Zamboni servicing Jobs to the rescue faster than the Flash on upppers.  Obama's poll numbers blasting past 90% approval? Zowey! Rev. Wright collection plate Jobs race forward like greased ... Uhrm .... uh ... like greased really fast things. Continue ..... In the real world, the only thing holding back Jobs on doing what they do best is the interminable wait while carbon based life-forms finish their Fantasy League season. As near as I can tell, the Jobs Summit has started off without incident, which is encouraging given that not all Jobs get along with each other. There is an historic tension between Management and Labor Jobs, of course, but little noted has been the animosity between Nurse and Doctor-Spouse Jobs. There is also a certain professional envy between Dentist and Gitmo Torturer Jobs, and a vast cultural divide separating the religiously fundamental Amway Sales Jobs from all other Jobs, humans, animal, vegetable, and mineral in existence. The last Summit of this magnitude involving Jobs did not begin well. In 1999, the negotiations of a labor dispute with the miners of Trion ore on Dregocia was seriously imperiled when a shuttle carrying Dregocian Diplomats exploded amidst suspicions of sabotage. That crisis was resolved within an hour (for better or worse, I will let the historians decide). But the lesson we learned then is equally applicable now: "Only with the realization that what we share with our enemy is greater than what divides us, can peace ever be won." President Obama couldn't have said it better. Well, he might have, or maybe he did, but in any event I never heard it.  And that's the important thing.