Don’t Feel Stimulated? That Was Never the Idea, Peasant

How is your celebration of the fifth anniversary of our Dear Esteemed Historic Leader’s stimulus going?

Remember when Barack, determined to rescue our economy from the ruin that he “inherited,” demanded that Congress pass that all-important, “emergency” stimulus back in February of 2009? In what we now know would become a disturbing pattern for this administration, the One declared that the bill must be passed immediately, even before members of Congress had any chance to read it. The final version of the bill wasn’t completed until about 4 hours before the vote was held, appropriately on Friday, February 13.

My congressman is a Democrat, so, of course, he voted as Obama instructed; that is, to throw over $800 billion down a socialist/crony capitalist rathole. When I called my congressman’s office to ask him how he could have managed to read a bill that was over 1500 pages long, which even given the most generous assumptions would take at least 13 hours to read, in such a short time, there was awkward silence in the conversation. Seriously, I wanted to know what speed reading system he was using because that’s quite a trick, one I’d like to bring into my productivity toolkit.  It being the telephone, I could only visualize the baffled look from the staffer, who eventually said, “I’ll pass your concerns on to the Congressman.” 

You might be saying to yourself “Ter, the fifth anniversary was on Monday, and that’s the 17th, not the 13th.” Ah yes. I was never able to get one past you. The bill was passed on 2/13/09. It was not signed until the following Tuesday at a photo op in Denver. In between the “emergency” passage and the signing ceremony, Barack whisked Michelle back to Chicago for a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at an exclusive, and very pricey, five-star restaurant. 

Back at my house, we wanted to celebrate the stimulus anniversary the way Barack and Michelle celebrate, with an elaborate, multi-course dinner with a different extravagant bottle of wine for each course, followed by a live concert featuring some A-List talent. Instead, we ended up with a movie from the Red Box and a frozen pizza from Wal-Mart, which was actually quite appropriate. It’s been that kind of 5 years in most of real America.

We did take some comfort, and got a few laughs, remembering when Barack joked that “shovel ready” was not as ‘shovel ready’ as we thought.” That was a real leg slapper, wasn’t it? Now that so many of us have been “liberated” from the pain and agony of a 40-hour a week job, with a regular paycheck, we’ll have more time to enjoy fond memories like that. I think many homeless shelters actually do a few computers with internet access so that we can watch YouTube videos, don’t they?

Now that Barack has fixed that icky “job lock” problem, some people are scratching their heads, asking “wasn’t the stimulus supposed to create more jobs so that people would be actually working, rather than navel-gazing and dreaming of writing the Great American Novel? If jobs are something that we need liberating from, why did we spend almost a billion dollars to make more of them? And why didn’t we get more of them? Also, why is Barack telling us we need to borrow more money to fix ‘roads and bridges?’ Isn’t that what the stimulus was supposed to be used for?”

These sorts of questions are the reason that my work is never done. The “stimulus” had nothing to do with those afore-mentioned “shovel ready” jobs. It was about three things and three things only; specifically, (1) making sure that the members of one of Barack Obama’s mascot groups, members of public employee unions, especially teachers, were protected from layoffs (2) funneling cash into the pockets of his special interest cronies, especially “green” energy frauds and (3) getting himself re-elected.

It is particularly fitting that this study, which states that the children of street cleaners in Shanghai out perform the American children of doctors and lawyers in math, was released during this “stimulus” anniversary celebration. Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony? We borrowed almost $1 trillion from China, a country that is apparently educating its children in math, to protect those who are supposed to be teaching it to our kids, union dues-paying teachers, from layoffs, no matter how lousy they might be at their jobs, all to insure that Barack Obama would be re-elected. 

The only things that the “stimulus” stimulated were the bank accounts of Obama’s pals. Now, Peasant, enjoy that frozen pizza.

Politics, Pop Culture, the Hottest Issues of the Day, and Your calls. The Teri O’Brien Show, featuring America’s Original Conservative Warrior Princess, Live and in color, Sundays 4-6 pm Central time  at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/Teri-OBrien. Daring to Commit Common Sense, Fearlessly, and More Important, Cheerfully, in the Age of Obama.