Gilda Radner’s character from old Saturday Night Live shows, Emily Litella, was a hard-of-hearing commentator on the show’s Weekend Update segment.  She would, for example, go on and on with her outrage that the Supreme Court was considering a "deaf" penalty case, or with her support of "Youth in Asia".  When Chevy Chase nudged her and let her know that it was instead a "death" penalty case or "euthanasia", realizing she’d misheard the subject, she meekly turned back to the camera and gave her trademark line, "Never mind."

Apparently, Miss Litella went on to become our first woman President.

Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.

Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation’s "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn’t be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.

The president’s proposals for major health care, energy and education changes in the midst of economic hard times faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as senators questioned his budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.

(Emphasis on the "Never mind" added.)  This is why many of us are skeptical of the hand of government trying to direct the economy.  We wind up with "cures", such as these massive spending debt packages, that could be worse than the disease.  Just ask a Democrat in the know.

Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Budget Committee called the track of future deficits "unsustainable" and singled out Obama’s proposal for adding $634 billion in health care spending over the next 10 years.

"Some of us have a real pause about the notion of putting substantially more money into the health care system when we’ve already got a bloated system," said Conrad, D-N.D.

"Unsustainable"?  I thought Obama was supposed to be the responsible, sustainable lifestyle kind of President. 

Now, frankly, I don’t know for sure if even this new analysis of the economy is correct, and there’s no doubt we’ve in the middle of a significant downturn right now.  The point is, rushing through a "fix", and especially a "fix" we’ll be decades paying for, should never, ever be done.  But cries from Washington Democrats, liberal bloggers and pundits that this had to be done now and be done big (with some still saying that it should be much bigger than it is) are irresponsible. 

The size of the "stimulus" is one thing.  The rush to do something, anything, is the worst kind of "government is the solution" thinking.

David Brooks is shocked — SHOCKED — that Barack Obama tuned out to be liberal! 

You wouldn’t know it some days, but there are moderates in this country — moderate conservatives, moderate liberals, just plain moderates. We sympathize with a lot of the things that President Obama is trying to do. We like his investments in education and energy innovation. We support health care reform that expands coverage while reducing costs.

But the Obama budget is more than just the sum of its parts. There is, entailed in it, a promiscuous unwillingness to set priorities and accept trade-offs. There is evidence of a party swept up in its own revolutionary fervor — caught up in the self-flattering belief that history has called upon it to solve all problems at once.

So programs are piled on top of each other and we wind up with a gargantuan $3.6 trillion budget. We end up with deficits that, when considered realistically, are $1 trillion a year and stretch as far as the eye can see. We end up with an agenda that is unexceptional in its parts but that, when taken as a whole, represents a social-engineering experiment that is entirely new.

And the real kicker:

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Emphasis mine.  Well, actually, emphasis of this was made by Republicans long before election day.  One only had to look at his record, such as it was, to know this.  And yet these "Brooks Moderates" were so caught up in the words and the history of it all that they apparently turned off those parts of their brains responsible for critical thinking.

Looks like the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune did the same thing.

Whoa!

The Obama administration and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate are blowing the lid off of spending restraint. But they’re finally meeting some resistance within their own party.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), in an essay published Wednesday in The Wall Street Journal, ripped a spending bill passed by the House last week as "a sprawling $410 billion compilation of nine spending measures that lacks the slightest hint of austerity from the federal government or the recipients of its largesse."

He said he will vote against it, and he urged President Barack Obama to veto it if it passes the Senate. We second that motion.

(Hat tip: Don Surber)  The Tribune endorsed Obama, and now they’re thinking they can pull back the reigns.  They sound like they’re saying, "Obama’s a big spender?  Who knew?"

I will heartily agree that Republicans spent very irresponsibly during their tenure with control of the Legislative and Executive branches.  But Democrats, true to their ever-constant form (a form that moderates like Brooks should have look to history, even recent history, to confirm), have outspent Republicans by a huge, huge margin.  "Tax and spend" wasn’t a catchphrase made up by Ronald Reagan; it’s a description of their MO.

The Democrats who "rediscovered" fiscal responsibility during the Dubya years have shown that outrage to be mere window dressing than principle.  There are indeed Republicans who had the same problem during the Clinton years and while Democrats held Congress.  But there is simply no real equivalence here. 

While it is still true that Republicans will overspend less than Democrats, it pains me to have to put it that way.  Nonetheless, if you value fiscal responsibility, convincing Republicans to slow down on spending seems to me to have a far better chance of success than convincing Democrats of that.  Mr. Brooks, please take note.

Frugality.  Thriftiness.  These terms are being redefined by the NY Times as "dead weight". 

As recession-wary Americans adapt to a new frugality, Japan offers a peek at how thrift can take lasting hold of a consumer society, to disastrous effect.

The economic malaise that plagued Japan from the 1990s until the early 2000s brought stunted wages and depressed stock prices, turning free-spending consumers into misers and making them dead weight on Japan’s economy.

Today, years after the recovery, even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry, a popular way to save on utility bills. Sales of whiskey, the favorite drink among moneyed Tokyoites in the booming ’80s, have fallen to a fifth of their peak. And the nation is losing interest in cars; sales have fallen by half since 1990.

Never mind those government types that encouraged banks to give loans to those who couldn’t afford them.  Never mind the investors who spend too much money on too much risk.  No, you, dear person living within your means, you are the reason we’re in this mess. 

I’m sorry, but this reasoning is utterly upside down.  Instead of trash-talking responsible living, perhaps a recession is what we need to pare back some of the overspending we’ve been doing, personally and federally. 

(In fact, some economists say that we would normally have mini-recessions now and then that would serve to do these corrections little by little if the federal government didn’t manipulate monetary policy to keep them away.  Now, after other poor government decisions have come to a head, they’re all hitting at once.)

One of these excesses is arguably federal pensions.  The world is finding out (again) that a one-size-fits-all social security program means when we fail, we all fail since all our eggs are forced to be in fewer baskets (sometimes just one).  Japan is seeing this.

Japan’s aging population is not helping consumption. Businesses had hoped that baby boomers — the generation that reaped the benefits of Japan’s postwar breakneck economic growth — would splurge their lifetime savings upon retirement, which began en masse in 2007. But that has not happened at the scale that companies had hoped.

Economists blame this slow spending on widespread distrust of Japan’s pension system, which is buckling under the weight of one of the world’s most rapidly aging societies. That could serve as a warning for the United States, where workers’ 401(k)’s have been ravaged by declining stocks, pensions are disappearing, and the long-term solvency of the Social Security system is in question.

Other countries, like France and Germany, have had to come to terms with this in the past, and now it’s our turn. 

Spending our way out of overspending is not the answer.  Letting the market roll, with its ups and down, would hurt far, far less than the climbs and crashes we’re having to get used to.

And it’s blowing away the rage that Democrats would have had if Bush had done this.

The economic stimulus signed by President Barack Obama will spread billions of dollars across the country to spruce up aging roads and bridges. But there’s not a dime specifically dedicated to fixing leftover damage from Hurricane Katrina.

And there’s no outrage about it.

Democrats who routinely criticized President George W. Bush for not sending more money to the Gulf Coast appear to be giving Obama the benefit of the doubt in his first major spending initiative. Even the Gulf’s fiercest advocates say they’re happy with the stimulus package, and their states have enough money for now to address their needs.

What a difference an administration makes.

It’s a significant change in tone from the Bush years, when any perceived slight of Katrina victims was met with charges that the Republican president who bungled the initial response to the disaster continued to callously ignore the Gulf’s needs years later.

Just last summer, Democrats accused Bush of putting Iraq before New Orleans when he sought to block Gulf Coast reconstruction money from a $162 billion war spending bill. Bush was pilloried for not mentioning the disaster in back-to-back State of the Union addresses.

Bush couldn’t miss mentioning Katrina let alone sending more money there.  But Obama doesn’t spend a dime in a 3/4 of a trillion dollar spending spree and cue the crickets.

What, does Obama hate black people?  That’s preposterous now, and it was preposterous then.

Chuck Colson explains that we disregard the past at our own peril.

One of the best exponents of [the role and importance of tradition] was G.K. Chesterton. In his book Orthodoxy, he wrote, “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.” And he wrote that “tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”

It’s not only respect for tradition that’s involved here—it’s prudence. These institutions and arrangements have helped to preserve the moral order, which is our first duty to maintain. They have been shaped by people who took into account the world as it is—filled with fallen human beings—instead of an imaginary utopia filled with perfectible people.

This respect is why true conservatism is a disposition, not an ideology. It doesn’t seek to reinvent man and his world—its concerns are about what T.S. Eliot called the “permanent things.”

In contrast, perverted modern liberalism, which includes many who call themselves “conservatives,” is about innovation, breaking from the past, upsetting the established order, and maximizing individual autonomy.

Colson is responding to the liberalism that is being taught in our universities, as exemplified in a quote from a Harvard faculty committee.  Read the whole thing.

Kevin Schmiesing of the Acton Institute considers the bill from another angle.

The ARRA [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] makes clear that we have not learned one great moral lesson: You can’t have something for nothing. Or, among economists, there’s no such thing as a free lunch.

I’m not even sure that anybody is seriously arguing that most of the items contained in this bill constitute “stimulus.” Congress can genuinely stimulate the economy in two ways: decreasing taxes and decreasing regulation. In other words, by putting fewer hindrances in the way of those who wish to produce and consume. Everything else is smoke and mirrors. Government puts money into one person’s hands only by taking it out of someone else’s; or by creating it ex nihilo, which amounts to the same thing (moralists have been condemning the debasement of currency at least since the Late Scholastics).

If the bill has any positive impact, it will be psychological, making people believe that the economy will improve and therefore generating positive economic activity. This possibility seems doubtful at this point. It appears instead that the measure’s most significant effect will be to increase the cynicism with which the American people view their government. I’m undecided yet as to whether that is a favorable development.

Keep an eye on the Acton Institute PowerBlog.  This is a great group and their take on religion and economics are invaluable.  (More PowerBlog entries on this specific topic are found linked from this post.)

Mickey Kaus is alarmed that the stimulus package has the effect of rolling back welfare reform.  Moe Lane, in responding to Kaus’ shock, wonders why this reaction.

The thing that I enjoy most these days when I read a moderate Democrat’s first realization that he or she really did go out and vote against their core principles/class interests/better judgment this go round is the startled tone that’s usually taken.  Of course you did that.  We told you that you were.  But you were too busy living in the moment to listen.  So, yeah, Mickey: the Democrats – who don’t really care about Obama’s big plans – are going to gut welfare, and it’s entirely possible that Obama doesn’t realize this.  Or if he does, he doesn’t particularly care about your feelings.  Why should he?  He can win you over again, right?  After all, who needs to be faithful if you can sweet-talk your way out every problem?

Go to the link to find out which woman politician had predicted this as well.  Oh yeah, she got that right.

All that’s left for the economic stimulus bill is for President Obama to sign it.  A round-up of reaction:

Dan Spencer at RedState notes an Obama quote from the day before the bill passed, “We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying.”  The accompanying graphic is the ultimate irony.

CBS news reports that the President is going to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” on February 23rd.  Again with the irony.  The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

And finally, satirist Scott Ott engages in some wishful thinking:

President Barack Obama said today that “after a restless night’s sleep” he will veto the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by Democrats in Congress on Friday.

“I had a dream,” said a visibly shaken Mr. Obama. “that my daughters, Sasha and Malia, were trapped under the 1,100-page legislation. In the dream I saw my girls as women in their forties and they were still paying for this. I woke up, and did the math, and realized that it wasn’t just a dream. Has anybody read this thing yet?”

Read the whole thing, even if Congress won’t.

There is no way that we could possibly eliminate single parenthood.  It’s not an ideal environment to raise a child, but sometimes it simply can’t be helped. 

However, single parenthood by choice — mostly single motherhood — is certainly something we ought to discourage.  Dan Quayle got castigated by Hollywood when he pointed to the TV character Murphy Brown, who chose single motherhood, as a bad example.  He was right.  Obviously so to those of us who understand how important it is to be raised by a mother and a father, but not so much for those that think everything’s cool.

It took a long time to see some of the effects, but in Britain, it’s revealing itself.

A deputy head who sat on a Government taskforce aimed at improving behaviour in schools yesterday condemned a generation of modern parents as ‘uber-chavs’.

Ralph Surman said the parents of today’s pupils were themselves the children of the ‘first big generation of single mothers’ from the 1980s.

He claimed they – and in turn their children – have been left with no social skills or work ethic and may be impossible to educate.

Mr Surman spoke out in response to figures unearthed by the Conservative Party, which show that the number of 16 to 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training – known as NEETs – is rising across Britain.

‘We must talk about a class of uber-chavs,’ he said.

‘They are not doing anything productive and are costing taxpayers a fortune.

When everything is provided to you at other’s cost, you have no appreciation for it.  Government wanted to show it cared by providing care for these children and their mothers.  It took much of the worry out of being a single mother by choice, and it took much of the guilt away from men who abandoned their children ("Hey, they’ll be taken care of by the nanny state."). 

Yes, the Bible tells us to take care of the widows and orphans, but personally.  When we abrogate that function to the impersonal government, don’t be surprise when people start to take it for granted and expect it.  And the results, it seems, are worse for those who give and those who receive.

From Michael Ramirez (click for a larger version):

Henceforth, should any Congressman tack on anything to any bill ever, he or she can just say, “Hey, it’s economic stimulus for my district!”  Obama and the Democrats have redefined the word “earmark” into oblivion.