The more interviews Speaker Pelosi gives explaining how vital the STD industry is to restarting the U.S. economy, the more I find myself hearing “syphilis” every time she says “stimulus.” In late September, America was showing the first signs of “primary stimulus” – a few billion lesions popping up on the rarely glimpsed naughty bits of the economy: the subprime mortgage racket, the leverage kings. Now, the condition has metastasized in a mere four months into the advanced stages of “tertiary stimulus,” with trillions of hideous, ever more inflamed pustules sprouting in every nook and cranny as the central nervous system of the body politic crumbles into total insanity – until it seems entirely normal for the second in line of presidential succession to be on TV gibbering away about how vital the federalization of condom distribution is to economic recovery.
The rules in this new “post-partisan” era are pretty simple: If the Democratic Party wants it, it’s “stimulus.” If the Republican Party opposes it, it’s “politics” – as in headlines like this: “Obama Urges GOP To Keep Politics To A Minimum On Stimulus.”
Particularly when blaming Rush Limbaugh, thus creating a distraction instead of debating the merits of the “stimulus”.
Which “stimulus” will mean protectionism:
And they’ve managed to goad the rest of the world into ending the Obama honeymoon in nothing flat. Headline from the London Daily Telegraph:
“U.S.-EU Trade War Looms As Barack Obama Bill Urges ‘Buy American.'”
That would be the provision in the Senate bill prohibiting any foreign-made goods from being used in “stimulus” projects. So, if you own a rubber plantation in Malaysia, and you’re hoping for a piece of Nancy Pelosi’s condom action, forget it. The EU Trade Commissioner is outraged at the swaggering cowboy Obama shooting from the hip and unilaterally banning European goods from American soil. But so are American companies such as General Electric. Bill Lane, an executive honcho with Caterpillar (the 10th-biggest U.S. investor in the United Kingdom), says, “We are students of history. A major reason a very deep recession turned into the Great Depression was the fact that countries turned inward.” Ah, yes. The Buy American Act of 1933. How’d that work out?
This, by the way, is particularly poor timing, as our allies most need free trade to be able to get through the world economic downturn – Colombia comes to mind.
Undoubtedly, the Dems in the Senate will pass this disastrous and insidious piece of legislature which they most likely haven’t read in its entirety. Let’s hope all the Senate Republicans grow a pair and vote against it.
The Dems wrote this “stimulus”, Obama’s endorsing it, they own it: let them alone approve it.
Bonus reading
The Obama Democrats: by the numbers
Republicans grow a pair? Surely you jest… There is Snowe, McCain… ahhh, I get sick typing the names of RINOs.
I commented over at Neo-Neocon that as the Euros come to see what a flop Obama is, they will revert to saying how dumb and provincial we are for electing him. There is truly little hope for change.
Steyn’s bit is grotesque and does not warrant quoting. Certainly an educated professional could find a better way of expressing opposition to condom distribution.
And I don’t oppose condom distribution. I only oppose it as part of a financial crisis intervention. I don’t think condoms had anything to do with my retirement account dropping by 40%. Or did I miss something? Actually, the condoms that could have saved us would have been required for 40 to 70 years ago.