Tuesday, July 7, 2009

And now, back to our regularly scheduled program...

Dry your eyes and pay attention folks. Michael is apparently NOT staging the greatest comeback but for Jesus. Meantime he knocked a crushed revolution in Iran off the news pages, allowed another in Honduras to simmer unwatched, and Kim Jong Dillweed is still trying to scare us into bombing his pathetic little regime so he can in turn blast Seoul. Al Franken is now officially Senator number 60 in the Democratic roll call. Good luck with that Harry Reid you lousy cat herder you. Only that soon-to-be retired salmon killer Sarah Palin has made a dent in the news cycle since Michael moonwalked off this mortal coil.

Guess what folks, that pissing in the ocean feeling I described a few months ago is about to get a lot warmer. Stimulus One did exactly what it was meant to do - whet the appetite for Stimulus Two: The Real Thing. I suggested when the first one flew in that it wasn't much and was merely intended to allow my friend Barry to get somewhat settled in office. Then he could take a moment to see how reactive the economy might actually be before going whole hog and doing what really needs to be done to bring this country up to date after 30+ years of baby boomer economic masturbation. Yep, it feels real good but boy do we now have a mess of our hands.

Quick review: TARP provided a parachute to a free falling economy. Stimulus One provided a touch of brakes to further downward sliding. But neither provide any improvement in any substantial manner. The toilet has not finished flushing and I'm running out of colorful metaphors. National health care is around the corner, I hope, and that should be followed by Stimulus Two which will really address infrastructure rebuilding. Energy production and distribution. A manufacturing base to supply it. Research and development to constantly upgrade it all. Give us a trillion dollars to pay for the untapped ingenuity in the American psyche and watch what happens.

It was all signaled by that titan of understatement Joe Biden when he admitted they got it wrong about how bad the economy was when they brought out Stimulus One. I don't buy it for a second but politically it was necessary for a rookie president to take two bites on the money apple. Watch the references to additional stimulus start to pile up. Then get back to me to ask what's next.

4 comments:

The Sotten Libertine said...

I didn't buy it for a second when bush acted like it was a surprise how the economy was tanking and that it was an emergency situation to sell the first stimulus package. Barry and Biden would have to have been living in a fooking cave with a Bear for a neighbor to not see the red. The American people deserve to be leveled with after being lied to for the past 8 years.

barbara said...

Let me know your thoughts and how Obama plans on paying for Stimulus Two.

Tom Garcia said...

85% of the stimulus funds have not yet been spent yet...for some reason they designed a "gradual-release" fiscal medicine.

By the time a new package was fully realized it would arrive in time to stimulate inflation.

The admin(s) took the "troubled assets" money and instead gave it to Wall Street banks.


When the government DID SPEND quickly it was to purchase worthless stocks and warrents in a failing auto company.

As much as I love Obama I am not ready to give him another wad of cash that will NOT STIMULATE OUR ECONOMY once we have to make increasingly higher interest payments to foreign lenders ( i.e. China ) to servce our record debt

Money spent on interest DOES NOT STIMULATE ( nor does it buy health insurrance, clean energy, education etc )

People are trying to pressure Obama to break him promise to not raise taxes on the middle class. They want to run up the tab so he has no choice.

If he break this promise the GOP will take back the House in 2010 and the DEM majority may fall to 58-59 in the Senate.

Tom Garcia said...

...and, if at the end of the year the stimulus package needs a little push we can still pass one later if needed.

Perhaps a stimulus for small business will restore jobs since employment flows from smaller companies.

( and we might need a stimulus when the negative impact of carbon taxes kick in...higher energy costs will depress the economy unless there is an offsetting credit )

But we should NEVER EVER ram thru so quickly another unread pork-ladden bill without proper hearings. Obama promised openness. He promised that p[roposed legislation would be posted online for public comment for weeks befor a vote was taken.

We paniced and rushed the flawed package through too quickly and now we are not getting the desired results. ( we needed a faster acting package, not a slow trickel )

let us not make the same mistake twice...Any stimulus should be better thought out.