Same Old Square Dance
Mark Steyn on the futility of trying the same, tired ideas and expecting different outcomes:
President Barack Obama was supposed to be “cool.” But he isn’t. He’s square. Not just mildly so, but embarrassingly square. He’s squaresville squared. It’s like you’re having a party with your friends, and he’s the cringe-making middle-age parent who wants to show he digs where the young people are at by grooving around in the middle of the dance floor all night long.
How do I know? I’ve been there, and I’ve been square. By “there,” I mean I’ve been in places that have tried all the cool Obama dance moves and eventually wised up to what utter clunkers they are.
A week ago, the House of Representatives passed some gargantuan “cap-and-trade” bill designed to “save” “the environment.” Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, accused those Neanderthals who voted against the bill of committing “treason against the planet.” By that standard, most of the planet is guilty of treason against the planet. I don’t mean just in the sense that China, already the world’s No. 1 CO2 emitter, and India and other rising economic powers have absolutely no intention of doing what the Democrats have done, no way, no how – because they don’t see why they should stay poor just because New York Times columnists think it’s good for them.
No, I mean that most of the developed world has already gone down the paved road of good intentions and is now frantically trying to pedal up out of it. New Zealand was one of the few Western nations to sign on to Kyoto and then attempt to abide by it – until New Zealanders realized they could only do so by destroying their economy. They introduced a Dem-style cap-and-trade regime – and last year they suspended it. In Australia, the Labor Government postponed implementation of its emissions-reduction program until 2011, and the Aussie Senate may scuttle it entirely. The Obama administration has gotten to the climate-change hop just as the glitter ball’s stopped whirling, and the band’s packing up its instruments.
It’s like watching the four millionth rerun of Saturday Night Fever expecting it to end differently. Folks like Paul Krugman are demanding even more “stimulus” spending even though the “old” stimulus has been increasing unemployment instead of producing jobs. Expecting different outcomes is a specialty of the left.
Out of control spend and tax programs beget new, bigger spend and tax proposals. Yet the song remains the same, the tired, dated dance steps go on endlessly under the strobe lights and the glitter ball. It ends the same way every time the movie plays.
The outcomes remain the same. Rapidly rising deficits. The only growth is in a bloated Federal bureaucracy needing ever increasing feedings of tax dollars. Tax dollars that are just not there as more and more people lose jobs as the economy spirals down, crushed under the increasing load of debt and the looming financial disaster all this spending will bring about.
Over and over and over, the same, tired, statist ideas that only lead to more statist ideas.
Go read the whole thing.
By Ropelight, July 5, 2009 @ 6:45 am
Krugman commits treason against reason regularly. Because he sees political and economic issues in terms of Marxist dogma, Krugman simply applies his collectivist template and issues a decree in the NY Times. Presto, none of the copycats or talking heads have to think for themselves, just spout the gospel according to Saint Paul.
It’s so easy even a Neanderthal can do it.
By Glenn Cassel AMH1(AW) USN RET, July 5, 2009 @ 8:37 am
Ropelight, I don’t think the Neanderthals at GEICO would like that comparison LOL
And I have been on occasion been called a caveman/neanderthal due to my prior profession in the Sea Service.
And I do believe Stuart Varney on Fox said the other day that almost eighty percent of the 787 Billion dollars of the “stimulus/porkulus” hasn’t even been touched. It is sitting, somewhere, just rusting away. I guess that is what is to be expected from those who just had to get it passed, with out reading one word. It was passed based on the vision of the current cinc, without anything that resembled real debate. And the same goes for the house passing the crap and tax bill. both of these pieces of legislation were so large and complex, it would require a dedicated team of lawyers and language experts just to interpret them into plain English. And you know where that leaves those of us who will actually pay for this folly. Up that proverbial brown body of water with no apparent means of locmotion.
The likes of krugman and his cohorts have deemed that all the administration seeks and does is now holy writ. One day he will be shown the error of his ways. Hopefully by the Almighty, Himself.
By martian, July 6, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
Why didn’t the American people listen to Obama during the campaign? During the campaign he spoke about his idea for a crap & tax bill and stated that if it was passed, it would cause energy prices in America to skyrocket – his word, not mine. Now, all of a sudden people are waking up and finding out that the only things he didn’t lie about during the campaign were the plans that would bankrupt the entire population.