Big Frick Dot Com

Wanna hear a story?

Bob was walking down the street one dark night when he sees a man under the street light hunched over and desperately searching the ground for something. Bob walks over and says “Are you looking for something?” The man replies “Yea, I lost my keys.” So Bob, being the kind hearted Good Samaritan he is, begins helping the poor chap search the area for the lost keys. After about a half an hour of looking Bob says “I’m sorry pal, but I’ll be damned if I can find them. Are you sure this is where you lost them?” To which the man replies “No, actually I lost them over on the other side of the street, but the light is so much better over here.”

The moral of the story is pretty obvious. If you’re looking for something, your only chance of actually finding it is to look where it is, not where it’s most convenient. But with the news coming out of Washington DC there seems to be a lot of folks that would just continue looking under the street light and a lot more would continue helping them.

The new president has taken his leave from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and hit the road in hopes of drumming up support for his ill-conceived spending bill that he is portraying as a stimulus package. Obama’s chief political hack, Chicago’s own veteran political hit man David Axelrod, was quick to sight a recent Gallop poll which he said showed 67% of Americans supporting the Obama economic plan. But perhaps Mr. Axelrod may want to look a little closer at the data.

What the poll said is that Obama received a 67% approval rating for his handling thus far of the government passing some sort of economic stimulus plan. That number drops to 51% of those who feel that approving the plan he is currently proposing is critically important to improving the nation’s economy. But even that number is questionable in that at no time did the Gallop folks actually ask if those responding had any idea of what the plan was.

Obama has several things working in his favor right now. First, his approval rating is still sky high coming off a campaign that promised everybody everything. Second, Americans are stricken with fear of an economy that has depleted their savings and ravaged their 401k’s. They are rightfully worried about their jobs and are cutting back on expenses. They don’t know what will work but they do feel that something, anything, needs to be done. With these two factors alone Obama could institute the sacrificing of virgins on the Capital steps if he told folks it would help the economy, and if he could find a virgin in the greater Washington DC area. Although admittedly the odds of finding at least one have improved greatly over the past 8 years since Monica’s boyfriend moved his humidor to Harlem.

The third factor is that most Americans are too young to remember the Great Depression. They read about it in school, but other than the stories they have heard from parents or grandparents most really know very little about it. The only thing they know is that it ended. They are extremely unlikely to research history to learn the causes for it or what eventually brought about its end. Most Americans are completely unaware that we did not spend our way out of the depression. In fact most of the so called stimulus spending was completely ineffective at altering the economy. But they hear that this recession and the collapse of the credit markets could spur another one and that’s all they need to know.

Then there is the fourth and probably most important factor. This spending bill totals just shy of a trillion dollars. I doubt there is anybody short of Donald Trump’s bankruptcy attorney that can actually comprehend that level of spending.

Even though it appears that the necessary votes for its approval are in the Senate, if Republicans want to gain any support amongst the general population they will need to explain in the simplest possible terms what a trillion dollars worth of spending equates to for each working family and their descendents. Only after they have done that can they can begin taking issue with exactly where the money is going and when.

Once Americans begin to get some personal ownership of this massive boondoggle they will be a little more likely to question if this new administration is looking where the answer is or just under the same streetlight Democrats have always found most convenient.

Americans voted for change.

I wonder of the Democrats are up to providing it.