Knowing is Only Half the Battle

G.I. Joe used to explain safety tips to us young and stupid kids back in the day. He always said, "Now you know; and knowing is half the battle!" Thanks, Joe. Now I know.

In an attempt to diffuse Republican criticism of the god-awfully unrealistic non-stimulating stimulus package crammed down our throats at every 15 minute news update, and most notably by His Excellency, Himself, Yahoo! Buzz saw it necessary to quell our fears regarding the volcano monitoring and high-speed railway to Disneyland. So you don't have to read it, I'll tell you... volcano monitoring is the monitoring of volcanoes and a high-speed railway is a railway that goes really fast. So now that you know, don't you feel better about spending money on it? "Gosh," you say, "that sounds worthy of my taxpayer dollars!" And now you know.

Uhhh... but wait. This might (or might not) be a great way to spend our precious few (billion) dollars, but what does it have to do with economic stimulus? Why is it in this package? Could it not have found its way into our regular budgeting sweepstakes? I thought "Stimulus Package" meant a package that has lots of economic stimuli - you know, things that stimulate, i.e., grow, boost, support growth, push to grow, make the economy expand, create sustainable wealth... in an economic growing sort of a way.

Now maybe I don't understand just what "economic stimulus" means, exactly. But I'm quite certain that no combination of those two words can in any way connote "liberal binge spending for projects that liberals don't want popping up in regular budget bills."

Thanks, Yahoo!, for the knowledge... but your point was...?