Barack Obama will have to be a true friend of Friday the 13th, particularly if Congress agrees today on the Great and Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package deemed absolutely essential by his presidential decree. If the Great and Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package does clear Congress today, one rather doubts Mr. Obama will sign the bill on Friday the 13th, despite his promise to sign it immediately. (And if he does not sign it today†, rumor has it that Stevie Wonder will be performing "Superstition" during the formal signing ceremony.)
The Friday the 13th bill, hereafter known as the Jason Act, is the economic equivalent of global warming legislation. Barack Obama's urgent and rather plaintive pleas for quick action, and his dire warnings about imminent disaster and catastrophe, have not been the least bit scientific. He has been warning us in religious terms: this MIGHT happen; this COULD be the consequence; repent, and follow me. His alarmist, fear-mongering rhetoric (I've long noted that the left, including Barack Obama, is the fear-mongering set in domestic and international politics) about stimulating the economy is built on the identical fallacies global warming activists rely on -- the non causa pro causa fallacies where correlations are confused with causalities (a word which, I note, looks a lot like casualities).
Since Barack Obama is unable to tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package is not passed "immediately," he therefore cannot tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package IS passed. Knowing this, he and his disciples, particularly those posing as economists, have already begun to change their language. This stimulus is not so much meant to get America out of recession. It is meant to prevent the recession from being as bad as it MIGHT be. This is not a stimulation of the economy as much as it is a bandage: it is not meant to make things better, only to make things "less worse." Sort of like Al Gore's pleas to make imminent global devastation "less worse."
Such vagueness is endemic to liberal political agendas; you find obfuscation and red-herrings rubbed all over the landscape of liberal political arguments. Liberals don't really want you to follow the actual logic trail. They'd rather cloud and misdirect. They'd rather you not actually ever catch the fox (because that would be cruel).
The stimulus package as it stands is set to hit the streets at about the same time the economy might be reviving -- on its own. The huge economic windfall that has hit America in the form of vastly lower fuel costs WILL show up in a few months as a recession of the recession; lower fuel costs are stimulating the economy right now though proof of such a stimulus will not be seen for some time. And all this WITHOUT Obama's stimulus package. But throw his package into the mix, and attempts to clearly discern what aided the soon-to-be lauded "Greatest Recovery Since Roosevelt" will be clouded by political pollution. Was it just the lower fuel prices that turned the economy around? Was it just the natural cycle of the market? Was it the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus package? Was it the expansion of government programs and projects? Alas, we will not know. And that is why this stimulus is a joke: Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have placed every idea, good or bad (mostly bad), into this package in hopes that, throwing it at America, something will stick.
One good thing: We've got nearly four weeks behind us of America's Great National Embarrassment.
Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.
†And if Barack Obama signs it tomorrow, will the Great And Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre Package? One wonders.
©Bill Gnade 2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
The Friday the 13th bill, hereafter known as the Jason Act, is the economic equivalent of global warming legislation. Barack Obama's urgent and rather plaintive pleas for quick action, and his dire warnings about imminent disaster and catastrophe, have not been the least bit scientific. He has been warning us in religious terms: this MIGHT happen; this COULD be the consequence; repent, and follow me. His alarmist, fear-mongering rhetoric (I've long noted that the left, including Barack Obama, is the fear-mongering set in domestic and international politics) about stimulating the economy is built on the identical fallacies global warming activists rely on -- the non causa pro causa fallacies where correlations are confused with causalities (a word which, I note, looks a lot like casualities).
Since Barack Obama is unable to tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package is not passed "immediately," he therefore cannot tell us what WILL happen if a stimulus package IS passed. Knowing this, he and his disciples, particularly those posing as economists, have already begun to change their language. This stimulus is not so much meant to get America out of recession. It is meant to prevent the recession from being as bad as it MIGHT be. This is not a stimulation of the economy as much as it is a bandage: it is not meant to make things better, only to make things "less worse." Sort of like Al Gore's pleas to make imminent global devastation "less worse."
Such vagueness is endemic to liberal political agendas; you find obfuscation and red-herrings rubbed all over the landscape of liberal political arguments. Liberals don't really want you to follow the actual logic trail. They'd rather cloud and misdirect. They'd rather you not actually ever catch the fox (because that would be cruel).
The stimulus package as it stands is set to hit the streets at about the same time the economy might be reviving -- on its own. The huge economic windfall that has hit America in the form of vastly lower fuel costs WILL show up in a few months as a recession of the recession; lower fuel costs are stimulating the economy right now though proof of such a stimulus will not be seen for some time. And all this WITHOUT Obama's stimulus package. But throw his package into the mix, and attempts to clearly discern what aided the soon-to-be lauded "Greatest Recovery Since Roosevelt" will be clouded by political pollution. Was it just the lower fuel prices that turned the economy around? Was it just the natural cycle of the market? Was it the tax cuts in the Obama stimulus package? Was it the expansion of government programs and projects? Alas, we will not know. And that is why this stimulus is a joke: Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have placed every idea, good or bad (mostly bad), into this package in hopes that, throwing it at America, something will stick.
One good thing: We've got nearly four weeks behind us of America's Great National Embarrassment.
Peace -- and prosperity -- through dissent.
†And if Barack Obama signs it tomorrow, will the Great And Necessary Salvific Stimulus Package be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre Package? One wonders.
©Bill Gnade 2009/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.
