H.R. 1, Taxpayers 0

House Resolution No. 1: "Making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science, assistance to the unemployed, and State and local fiscal stabilization, for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009, and for other purposes."

Yeah, well... it's clearly the "other purposes" that people are finally starting to wake up to, which is why popular support for this farce is dropping faster than Monica Lewinski's face on Slick Willie's cock. This whole "Stimulus" package heist nonsense has me so angry I can't think straight enough to comment without expletives and wild hand gestures. Thankfully, we have the pure, undiluted wisdom and exemplary wordcraft of Velociman:

Let us gaze upon our immediate future: the stimulus package is not an $800 billion jolt meant to defibrillate the heart of the American economy; it is a greasy mafiosi-style payoff to the bequeathers' collective patrons, from community outreach organizers to eco-terrorists to pork barrel profiteers to failure-sodden speculators to public works defalcators. T'would be better in my estimation to give every man, woman, and child (and, yes, morphodite) in the country a check for $2500, and see how quickly the economy was stimulated. Even when a large percentage of the population frittered the money on extravagances like paying off credit card debt, or purchasing mail-order Ukranian brides, the economy would reply like one does after a sweet soft kiss in the ear.

It is a given that printing large bundles of cash by any government will only create massive debt and devalue the currency. We call this the Mugabe Rule. Even the window lickers get that. The truly risible part of the cornholing is the conveyance of this largesse into the hands of the fucking knaves responsible for our misfortune in the first place. There is a term for giving good money after bad: enabling. So, as the fast-buck artists of Wall Street failed and fucked their clientele, so shall we reward them. No issue of remorse or correcting the model. The only issue thus far is the half a million cap on executive salaries, and the wail of the banshee on this point is disgusting. The only thing more putrid than the greed of the boomer elitists is their lack of history. They act as if they are the first people in history to strike a Mephistophilian bargain, only to be impaled by the conditions. The Devil always exacts his due, you fucking twats. And as one devil to another you should consider it professional courtesy betwixt the damned.

Emphasis mine. This is what truly rankles mine ire -- giving money and power to government, a philosopher-gentleman once said, is like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenage boys... yet we do it time and time again. Government spends its way into economic ruin, so the obvious solution is to spend even more. So now we find ourselves pinning our "Hope" on having Congress fleece the citizens out of yet another $1,000,000,000,000, a sizable percentage of which to be parsed out to the special interests that put the current ruling party in power.

"The time for talk is over," our dauntless leader tells us.

Mr Obama says while his plan deserves scrutiny, the worsening economic situation demands a swift vote by the Senate.

That's right, make haste. Don't dawdle, don't even read the 600+ pages of legislation; just pass the damn thing already. Obama's sense of urgency isn't surprising since the more we talk, the more clear the scheme becomes. Thankfully, someone is reading the fine print; from NRO:

Then there are the usual welfare-expansion programs that sound nice but repeatedly fail cost-benefit analyses. The bill provides $380 million to set up a rainy-day fund for a nutrition program that serves low-income women and children, and $300 million for grants to combat violence against women. Laudable goals, perhaps, but where’s the economic stimulus? And the bill would double the amount spent on federal child-care subsidies. Brian Riedl, a budget expert with the Heritage Foundation, quips, “Maybe it’s to help future Obama cabinet secretaries, so that they don’t have to pay taxes on their nannies.”

Perhaps spending $6 billion on university building projects will put some unemployed construction workers to work, but how does a $15 billion expansion of the Pell Grant program meet the standard of “temporary, timely, and targeted”? Another provision would allocate an extra $1.2 billion to a “youth” summer-jobs program—and increase the age-eligibility limit from 21 to 24. Federal job-training programs—despite a long track record of failure—come in for $4 billion total in additional funding through the stimulus.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a liberal wish list if it didn’t include something for ACORN, and sure enough, there is $5.2 billion for community-development block grants and “neighborhood stabilization activities,” which ACORN is eligible to apply for. Finally, the bill allocates $650 million for activities related to the switch from analog to digital TV, including $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations” that they need to go out and get their converter boxes or lose their TV signals. Obviously, this is stimulative stuff: Any economist will tell you that you can’t get higher productivity and economic growth without access to reruns of Family Feud.

Summary:

• $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts
• $380 million in the Senate bill for the Women, Infants and Children program
• $300 million for grants to combat violence against women
• $2 billion for federal child-care block grants
• $6 billion for university building projects
• $15 billion for boosting Pell Grant college scholarships
• $4 billion for job-training programs, including $1.2 billion for “youths” up to the age of 24
• $1 billion for community-development block grants
• $4.2 billion for “neighborhood stabilization activities”
• $650 million for digital-TV coupons; $90 million to educate “vulnerable populations”

Are you stimulated yet? It gets better; read the rest.

(And by the way... $200,000,000 for global warming research? Why? I thought the science was settled and the debate was over.)

Y'know what? In the sprirt of "bipartisianship" I say: Go ahead, pass the fucking bill. Just get it over with; this country is already headed down the road to ruination, why not move it into the fast lane?

Two short weeks in office. That's all it took for this to happen. During the campaign, whenever people tried to warn us they were called alarmists and red-baiters. And here we are. But cheer up, there are only 204 weeks to go until 2012. By then I'm sure the Republicans will find another mummified career politician to nominate.