Rapa Nui, a few generations ago: "Keep carving that basalt, citizens. Your intellectually superior rulers know that the only way to get out of this crisis is to spend the last of our strength and dimensionally significant forest resources in carving out and dragging these giant Tikis to the other side of the island where they will bring us salvation."
Bush/Obama's stimulus plan(s) are exactly equivalent, and may yet end up where the folks on Rapa Nui found themselves, g-d forbid: suffering and bloodshed. Some are predicting it, and I wish they'd shut up. This is getting too real, no need to imminentize the eschaton. The Rapa Nui lesson serves as well for the use of socialism and totalitarianism to save us from "global warming". We might as well put tikis on our beaches to keep the oceans from rising. Anything else we do would have the same effect. I thought we learned from this and so many other lessons. We do need to act, but act rationally, with steps known to improve people's economic possibilities, not those proven to suppress or destroy them as is being done now. Instead we cripple ourselves and spend what may be the last of our economic cred in the world on monitoring volcanoes and such. Got proof the monitoring we now have is inadequate to inform for public safety? Of course you don't. It isn't. That's why it's outrageous waste when there are so many more important things to deal with, and why it's such a crime to include it and then say that opposition to it is anti-science bla blaa. That claim may appear to stick as bounced around in the echo chambers of the left, but I think that the majority of Americans know better. It's just a shame that Jindal's excellent speech was delivered with such abysmal style. I believe in substance over style, but as a practical matter you can't get a message heard these days without lots of style. Obama has tons. Do any of you *really* think he'd be president if that were not the truth? - Rick
