Lard (And Love) Is In The Air

Try as they do to stick to substance (and I mean that in the narrowest sense), any typical exchange between the Obama press pimp and the presstitutes in attendance quickly degenerates as follows:

“Has he had a cigarette since the coronation? Where did He watch the Super Bowl? Who was invited to His White House Super Bowl bash? How late does He work? What’s He reading? Has the First Dog been named yet? Does He cry? Is there a twinkle in His eye?”

The idolatry continues on cable well after the news conferences have ended: Huffed Arianna Huffington:

“Omigod, the Godly One just admitted to screwing up. How different is He from Bush, who stayed the course and took the country over the cliff with him.” Yada, yada…

Obama, who badly wants a war he can call his own, plans on adding 15,000 troops to the Afghanistan front and quite a few trillion to the national debt. In warfare and welfare, he may well live up to the “promise” of Bush. What sets Obama and “W” apart, so far, is the response to their wastrel ways.

Democrats howled for the previous Big Spender’s head, but are intoxicated with Obama’s toxically wasteful policy prescriptions. To them, Obama governing means that at last a “moral” man is in charge of deficit spending. We’re safe; someone good has assumed control of the printing presses. Obama spending the country into oblivion is vastly different from the Republicans doing the same.

But let us give credit where it’s due. Was Bush not first to break the bank? And if deficit spending is a salve for insolvency, why did Bush’s non-stop spending not ward off the depression? The Democratic jackass answer is this: Bush did not spend enough. Barack must—and will—step-up.

An example of the new goodness at work is the president’s $900 billion oink omnibus bill. The lion’s share of the money minted (out of thin air) will go to stupendous, centrally planned projects.

After tax consumers are given tax rebates, Obama and his command-economy commandants will attempt—and fail—to artificially “create” a market for exorbitant, inefficient forms of energy (when oil is affordable and plentiful). They will direct debased dollars into scientific endeavors of their choosing, and they will muscle the medical profession, and further socialize existing healthcare structures. As will they see to it that the most expensive and least effective education bureaucracy in the developed world is flush with funds. “Head Start” non-starter schemes will abound. Many more Americans will be placed on the dole.

Republicans, who only a few weeks back had voted for the outgoing administration’s bailout bonanza, and before that for the Bush stimulus, squealed over the porky parts of Barack’s bill. The Republikeynsians agreed, however, with the Bill’s alleged job-creation thrust.

A good republican (like Ron Paul) would know that government make-work schemes are what the brilliant economist Henry Hazlitt called an “optical illusion”:

[I]f we have trained ourselves to look beyond immediate to secondary consequences, and beyond those who are directly benefited by a government project to others who are indirectly affected, a different picture presents itself. It is true that a particular group of bridgeworkers may receive more employment than otherwise. But the bridge has to be paid for out of taxes. For every dollar that is spent on the bridge a dollar will be taken away from taxpayers. … Therefore, for every public job created by the bridge project a private job has been destroyed somewhere else.

Projects invented by government with the intention of “providing employment” have a hidden component, as Hazlitt lucidly and painstakingly explained:

We can see the men employed on the bridge. We can watch them at work. The employment argument of the government spenders becomes vivid, and probably for most people convincing. But there are other things that we do not see, because, alas, they have never been permitted to come into existence. They are the jobs destroyed by the [billions] taken from the taxpayers. All that has happened, at best, is that there has been a diversion of jobs because of the project. More bridge builders; fewer automobile workers, television technicians, clothing workers, farmers.

But why listen to Henry Hazlitt’s irrefutable logic, when the country’s conmen are counseling a lemming’s lunacy: follow Über-Obama over the cliff.

Yes, lard is in the air everywhere. But so is love. As all the fawning seems to suggest, when Obama screws you over, it just feels right. After all, he has that certain je ne sais quoi.