Even though the war is helping with things like affirmative action, it's still hurting us in a lot of other areas.

The fact that news about high unemployment is being mostly ignored shows two things. One, that the stock market is fucked up, because it's actually tracking the progress of the war. As the non-American body count rises, so do the markets. It also shows how the stock market is bullshit, and shouldn't have such heavy attention paid to it. If the stock markey truly was an indicator of our economic health, it would react poorly to news like 108,000 laid off last month. Also, in that article, there's mention of how many layoffs are in the services sector, since consumers have had to "tighten their belts". Remember the article I linked to a few days ago where one analyst said that the consumer is in good shape? I'm going to renew my statements: fuck investors, and fuck Wall Street analysts.

The second thing shown by the fact that high unemployment and a generally shitty economy is being ignored is just how short-sighted Americans can be. We're so caught up in this war that we're ignoring real problems that we have on the homefront. This, to me, goes to show one reason why the Administration got us into this war - to deflect issues like the economy. They knew that getting into a war would help gather support for the Administration. Either people are more fervently in support because they were all along, or others just blindly follow because they buy the rhetoric of needing to rally behind the president in a time of war. So far, that gamble has paid off, because support for the war is still strong.