Why don’t they just pass it?

Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Moveon seem awfully anxious to have Republicans sign on to the “stimulus” package.  Why?  They don’t need a single GOP vote to pass it, and need only one to get it through a filibuster if one is attempted.  If it’s such a great deal, why would they want even a single member of the Republican Party to be able to share any of the credit?  Why?

Let’s do the math

Let’s do the math:  $819 billion to “save or create more than 3 million new jobs over the next few years” works out to $273,000 per job.  Even over a period of two to four years, that’s a very bad return on investment.

It’s all a ponzi scheme

American consumers are awash in debt, drowning in it. This is the fundamental issue with the stimulus proposal. We’re trying to borrow our way out of debt. Unfortunately, we need a recession. That is, consumption must decline because for some time we have been consuming more than we produce or have reasonable prospects of producing. Monetary policy has been used to inflate a series of bubbles to avoid the consequences of excess debt, and the more we try to hold it off, the worse it’s going to be. Bourbon works as a hangover cure, but only for a while.

This isn’t from Heritage or Cato or National Review.  This bit of common sense is from the Atlantic Monthly.  There is large bipartisan agreement on the fact that all the machinations in Washington are doomed.  Stimulus, bailout, whatever you want to call it, it will fail to stimulate anything but debt, or bailout anyone but well-connected cronies.  No one else will benefit and a lot of innocent people (taxpayers) will ultimately lose even more if we don’t confront reality. 

The reality is that we’re bankrupt–all of us:  households whose debts grossly exceed assets, banks whose balance sheets include vast real estate holdings that on paper still have inflated values, car companies whose only “profitable revenue” for years has come from forcing their own distributors to “buy” their products financed by loans from themselves, and governments whose obligations cannot be met.  From shuffling credit cards to flipping houses to GMAC to Social Security, it’s all a Ponzi scheme.

We are not going to heal until we expose the wound to air.  Mark to market for mortgage backed securities is not the enemy, it’s the solution to finally giving banks a bottom.  GM and Chrysler both need to fail.  Now.  Actually, that’s wrong; Chrysler needed to fail thirty years ago when it was bailed out the first time.  Houses need to be foreclosed on those who aren’t meeting payments.  Entire regions of the country are overpriced.  My own neighborhood was priced at more than a half million dollars an acre for a vacant lot not too long ago.  In Tennessee!  How stupid is that?  The real value is a fraction of that.  As for SS and Medicare, they are insolvent.  They must reduce benefits that kick in later in life.  That’s reality; it’s time we deal with it.

Read the whole thing.

UPDATE:

Even more depressing is learning who will pay what to afford the “stimulus” bill.  It averages to only $6,700 per household.  But wait, not all households pay taxes.  Broken down by income levels the result is pretty depressing.  The good news, however, is that we will probably never have to pay the nearly trillion dollar bill back.  Not directly.  Instead it will be taken from all of us–even the non taxpayers–in the form of inflation. 

(ht:GR)

MORE:

An alternative view:  Inflation is a good thing.  I joked a few weeks ago to some friends that those who bought houses they couldn’t afford might end up having made a wise investment.  If they can survive past the next few months and years, the coming inflation might bring down the real cost of their mortgages to where they actually become affordable.  Meanwhile, those of us who saved instead of spent, may find the value of our savings depleted.

AND:

Since I mentioned the National Review, Heritage, and Cato earlier, here’s a good resource full of links.  The money quote likens the stimulus bill to “trying to cure dysentery with Ex-Lax.”

Baby burden

Speaker Nancy Pelosi asserted yesterday that children are a burden on the economy.

I agree.  And I have a modest proposal for preventing the children of poor people from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public.

They didn’t give Bush a chance

I’ve not heard the show or even read the full article, but Rush Limbaugh has argued that Democrats “never gave Bush a chance in 2000.”

Limbaugh is correct, of course, but that doesn’t mean that Republicans should follow suit.  Case in point, is Hillary Clinton.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was confirmed this week by a vote of 94-2.  Only Senators Demint and Vitter opposed their former colleague. 

Compare that to a similar confirmation vote eight years ago.  Another former senator, as vilified by the left as Hillary is by the right, was put before former colleagues for a vote.  Political differences aside, he, just like Hillary, was unquestionably qualified for the assignment.  His name:  John Ashcroft.

But there was a very different outcome.  Democrats opposed John Ahscroft 34-8.

Limbaugh is right that since the very beginning, Democrats never gave Bush a chance.  They wanted him to fail, many even to the point that they wanted America to fail with him.  But that doesn’t mean that what Democrats did wrong should now be the Republican response.  Elections have consequences and one of those consequences is that Presidents get to put in place their own qualified advisors.

For the good of the country, Republicans need to take the high road.  But also for the good of the country, they should never stop to remind America how low was the road Democrats drove every day for eight years.

ALSO:

The other McCain and Insty.

Are we still a civilized society?

“It was bad, man,” Kolodjay said. But he and others spoke of a sense of calm and purpose that quickly descended on the passengers and crew as the plane started filling with water and rescue boats swarmed to the scene. They decided women and children would be evacuated first.

“Then the rest of us got out,” he said.

Yes we are.

Not surprised

It seems that everyone in Tennessee was shocked by yesterday’s news.  For some reason I wasn’t; I never thought that a one-vote margin would be enough to win the race.  Somebody was going to switch.  The only surprise was to me was that Jimmy Naifeh didn’t manage to keep the gavel.

Oh, and what is it with Tennessee Republicans name “Williams“?

Thanks . . . and a bleg

It’s the time of year when people take stock.  One of the things I did today was to review the traffic to my blog–something I don’t do very often, probably because I don’t know what to do with the information.

I learned that from February through December of 2008 (January’s data looks like it has already been purged) this website received 1,580,340 page views.  I don’t know how many of those are repeat visitors, but in the site’s busiest month there were over 50,000 unique visitors.

This brings up two points:

First:  THANKS!  I don’t know who all you people are, but thanks for stopping by to view my ramblings.  Don’t let my increasingly infrequent posting give you the mistaken impression that I don’t appreciate you being out there.  I do.  But as you all know, sometimes life gets in the way.  And sometimes you just don’t feel like posting–like after an overly long election season, that quite frankly even though my guy lost, I’m just relieved is finally over.  Thank you all. 

Thanks especially to folks like Glenn Reynolds, K-Lo and J-Go, and James Taranto, who are probably responsible for most of the traffic here.  But equal thanks also goes out to all the other bloggers who have linked here in the past year including Ace, ACK, The Anchoress, Bill Hobbs, Clint Brewer, Dean Esmay, Digital Nicotine, Don Surber, K-Co, MCO, Michael Silence, Michelle Malkin, The Moores, Phil Carter, PowerLine, RedState, Roger Abramson, SayUncle, Sean Braisted, Snowflakes in Hell, Tom Maguire, VolAbroad, Webutante, and my Lib Dem Councillor friend, as well as many, many others.

Second:  The bleg:  Is this a lot of blog traffic?  A little?  Is there any money in this sort of thing?  If so, what next?

UPDATE:

Thanks again to Glenn for the link, and thanks for coming over from Instapundit if that’s how you got here.  Check out the rest of the site to see if it’s something you like.  Thanks also for the comments I’m getting on this question.

Stop the race mixing of the Senate

This is the headline on Drudge right now:

Dems to physically block access to Senate floor if Burris shows up…

The last time this happened it didn’t work out very well for the blockers:

UPDATE:

Ann Althouse sees a similar image.