You can't make this stuff up.
Well, you could - but why bother? Real life is just as, if not more, entertaining.
This comes from our Vice President, Mr. Joe Biden. He's been on a mission to glorify the "success" of the various stimulus packages. With unemployment now at 9.7% and still climbing, the stimulus packages have already failed on at least one of the key claims - that unemployment would not surpass 8% - so I'm still not clear on exactly which points Mr. Biden marks the success.
You may recall from a couple of my earlier posts on the subject [A Not-So-Stimulating Post, That Makes One of Us, FDCO Volume Two, and My Share?] that I believe the stimulus money was not allocated to areas that would actually stimulate the economy. Much of the money was assigned to unemployment benefits, food stamps, and Medicare. Perhaps it is just semantics, but to me, "stimulus" implies some relatively small action that sparks a much larger, mostly self-sustaining reaction. Like providing the spark to ignite a fire.
This is from Brett J. Blackledge of the Associated Press.
Biden exercised some restraint in his praise for the stimulus' impact. He took a more cautious approach, for example, when asked if his declaration of stimulus success means Americans can now rethink the common view that government is wasteful and inefficient. [italics mine]"I think it's too early to make that decision, to be very blunt about it, " he said.
That's a classic. Biden: we saved all of humanity from economic implosion, but let's not get too carried away with the praise.
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