Wait, what?

One in a series that takes a look at the bizarre, the absurd and certainly the unexpeceted.


In the news a couple of day ago:

Still, through eight months of the 2011 fiscal year the nation is facing its third straight $1 trillion-plus deficit -- totaling $927.4 billion so far compared with $935.6 billion during the same period in 2010, about $8 billion less, according to the report.

Vice President Joseph Biden and congressional leaders will meet several times next week to discuss a way to tackle the burdensome debt and increase the $14.3 trillion debt limit before Aug. 2, when the Treasury says the U.S will default.

And the solution for this would be...

Senior Senate Democrats are growing frustrated by what they see as President Obama’s passivity on the economy, and are beginning to discuss a large infrastructure package funded by tax increases.

Some Democrats, such as Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, who serves as chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, think such a package could lower the unemployment rate by as much as two percentage points.

“I am concerned about the Obama administration’s approach on this,” Harkin said. “It always has been about jobs. I think the administration kind of got snookered talking about the deficit and the debt after the last election.

“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” he said.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsed Harkin’s argument for more infrastructure spending, and said it is gaining support in the broader caucus.

“There’s very broad support,” Rockefeller said. “There’s no other way to get at this problem.”

(italics, ours)


Wait, what?




We may be losing it a bit in our advanced age, but didn't we just do some stimulus, some federal government pump-priming 2 years ago? And didn't "they" tell us that the $787 billion stimulus package that was passed in February of 2009 wouldn't let unemployment rise above 8%? Didn't they? Why, yes... yes, they did.

You all remember this graph, dontcha?

At the link, The Hill, doesn't even bother to point out the screaming obvious: we've been down this road before and congressional Democrats either want everyone to forget Porkulus or are such single-track dogmatists that they cannot conceive of any other solutions than Piled-Hire-and-Deeper government activism.


Lazy-ass journalism and zombified politicians who would rather us not pay any attention: not a good combination.





P.S. We may need to drop "unexpected" from our tag line at the top of the post.