You got that one right, Kemo Sabe! That sucking sound you hear all around you is the gas escaping from the Obama (peace, etc.,etc.) balloon as a public drunk on Hope and Change wake to find that the promised tax cuts, 3 million new jobs, and prosperity everywhere were nothing but starry-eyed campaign projections — or, to use the vernacular, lies.

The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman asks how “concerned citizens” (i.e., resposible folk like him)

“should be reacting to the disappointing economic news. Should we be patient and give the Obama plan time to work? Should we call for bigger, bolder actions? Or should we declare the plan a failure and demand that the administration call the whole thing off?”

Whaddya’ think, Frank? Let’s see if you can guess what The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman says. Everyone who thinks he says “declare the plan a failure and demand that the administration call the whole thing off” raise your hands. What, no takers?

You are clever, Dear Reader! You got it exactly right. The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, like the great Obama (peace &c.) know that there is still some money out there, and he wants to spend it all.

The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman also knows, since he is not a lunatic, that resistance to mortgaging even more of the country’s future is rising, that it is going to be a very hard sell. But Obama (p., &c.) must gird up his loins and talk to the American people “like adults.” (Don’t you love that? Agree with The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman and you’re an adult, otherwise . . .) We’ve already spent trillions. Quick! Before the bills come due, let’s spend a few trillion more and really get the socialist state going. Think it will be easy? Not if stories like this begin making the rounds: “Ninety Percent of Stimulus Funds Spent on Bailouts for State Governments.”

The study found that 90 percent of the stimulus funds spent so far have gone toward bailouts for fiscally irresponsible state governments. These states made commitments on health care and education spending commensurate to what they could afford during the boom years. When the economy crashed and tax revenues dried up, they had no way to pay for these commitments short of raising taxes, which none of them wanted to do. (Most states’ constitutions restrict their ability to run deficits.)

This is what the stimulus was really all about — not creating or “saving” jobs, but preventing states from suffering the consequences of their profligacy.

“The consequences of their profligacy.” Now there’s an interesting idea! What would the The New York Times columnist and Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman have to say about that?

Yes, that’s right, folks, just as New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg has banned smoking and transfats, and is even now waging war against the demon salt, so the United States government is getting into the business of telling schools what they can–and cannot–serve in their refectories. If our masters in Washington have their way, “The U.S. Agriculture Department would be given the power to regulate all food sold in schools — including vending machine snacks — when Congress renews child nutrition programs.” Oh, frabjous day! The instrument of choice for this latest intrusion of Big Nurse into a neighborhood near you is the Senate Agricultural Committee whose chairman is Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. Senator Harkin is a–can you guess? Yes! He’s a Democrat all right. The party of slavery in the 19th century. The party of segregation in the early 20th century. And now the proud party of neo-segregation (a.k.a. political correctness) and every more cumbersome virtucratic over-regulating nanny-state intrusiveness.

When, I wonder, will people rouse themselves from their somnolent habits of dependency, take charge of their own lives, and throw the bums out?

What could it mean? Governor Palin leaving office before the end of her term — handing over the reins of power to the Lieutenant Governor — giving us no indication of what she had planned? What Machiavellian strategies were concealed behind that coiffed and smiling countenance? She said that she was sick of the “political bloodsport” that targeted her family, but what did she really mean?

The pundits were full of knowing speculation, though the announcement drove some to syntactical breakdown. Poor John Batchelor at The Daily Beast began his effusion with this train wreck:

The early excuse for the Republican circular firing squad of the holiday weekend is that Weekly Standard editor and party brainiac Bill Kristol claims that pugnacious McCain campaign enforcer Steve Schmidt has been caught gossiping to Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum about Sarah Palin’s rambling and incoherent vice-presidential campaign last September and October. (Now that Palin has announced her resignation from Alaska’s governorship, the late excuse for the fisticuffs will certainly be that the boys smelled a special mom baking an apple pie in the kitchen of the GOP and they got in line early with a plate and appetite.)

Hello?

The Anchorage Daily News solemnly informed readers that

If Sarah Palin is stepping down as governor because she has national political ambitions — and she did not say she intends to run for president — her move did nothing to shake what GOP pollster Whit Ayers called “the ‘lightweight’ monkey on her back.”

Oh, Mr. Ayers: say it ain’t so!

“If you’re a serious politician and you’re seriously interested in higher office, the best thing you can do is as good a job as possible in the current office,” Ayers said. “I suppose it frees her from the responsibility of a full-time job. It does nothing to enhance the image she has that she’s not material for the president of the United States.”

Hmm: “enhance the image she has that she’s not material for the president of the United States”? Well, never mind. The crucial thing is that the Democrats were full of glee at this new example of “bizarre behavior.”

Jonathan Martin at Politico thought Governor Palin’s announcement was positively “jaw-dropping” and told his readers that the announcement “has divided Republican ranks and the wider political community in a very familiar fashion.”

Many establishment GOP operatives and political commentators of various stripes were withering, both about the decision and the way she announced it — in a jittery, hyperkinetic news conference that rambled between self-congratulation and bitter accusations at the foes she says are eager to destroy her.

The performance, by these lights, adds credence to the claims of some associates that Palin — burned by the intense scrutiny on her and the crossfire that swirls around her — is so fed up that she’s ready to get out of elective politics.

Personally, I have a grudging admiration for the brass of Charles Pelton, the Post executive who came up with the idea. “Bring your organization’s CEO or executive director literally to the table,” one of his fliers advised.

“Interact with key Obama Administration and Congressional leaders . . . Spirited? Yes. Confrontational? No. The relaxed setting in the home of Katharine Weymouth assures it.”

The cost? $25,000 to “sponsor” one event (Maximum of two sponsors per “intimate and exclusive” event). Or get a bulk deal on all eleven: only $250,000 for the lot. The Washington Post, incidentally, lost $19.5 million last quarter.

The blogosphere naturally had a field day with the story. Every place from the Daily Kos to The Weekly Standard reacted with disgust (tempered, in many cases, with a dollop of humor: The Weekly Standard reports this “Twitter of the Day”: “i heard joe biden tried to pay the Post $25k to have access to the obama administration”).

My unofficial survey suggests that the word “pimp” has not made so many public appearances since the days of the Mayflower Madam. Once the egg had been thoroughly distributed across the collective countenance of The Washington Post, it was simply business as usual for Ms. Weymouth to step on to her oversized mare to express sorrow, disappointment, surprise (shock, shock, remember?) that such a thing could be going on at her newspaper. “Absolutely, I’m disappointed,” she said.

“This should never have happened. The fliers got out and weren’t vetted. They didn’t represent at all what we were attempting to do. We’re not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom.”

Marcus Brauchli, executive editor of the Post, got on to a horse of his to iterate this deep concern about journalistic integrity. Ms. Weymouth was “disappointed,” but Brauchli confessed himself positively “appalled” by the idea. “It suggests that access to Washington Post journalists was available for purchase,” he said, underlining the obvious.

So what do you think? What if the fliers hadn’t gone public: would the salons have proceeded as planned? How much of Ms. Weymouth’s disappointment and Mr. Brauchli’s feelings of being “appalled” are due to the squamous light of publicity, not to say ridicule?I don’t know the answer to that question. But here’s another: were you surprised when you read that the mighty Washington Post was offering lobbyists access to senior Obama administration officials in exchange for a hefty pile of shekels? Or did you react as I did, with a snort of contempt and the muttered exclamation: “it figures”?

Harvey wrote that more than a decade ago in an essay about the baneful influence of the Sixties on — well, on just about everything. I had thought that the nauseating odor of piety that suffused the Church of the Environment (Al Gore, B.S., Pastor) made it so ridiculous that its claim on the public’s attention (to say nothing of its claim on the public’s pocketbook) would soon fade.

How wrong I was. I knew in the abstract that being ridiculous is no bar to public prominence. Consider: Al Gore, former Vice-President and Nobel Laureate. Al Sharpton, king maker and presidential candidate. Al Franken, U.S. Senator. And that’s just people whose first name is “Al.”

But although it is clear that something can easily be both ridiculous and prominent, somehow I underestimated the staying power of environmentalism. I did so partly because I underestimated the mesmerizing power of this version of paganism on the collective consciousness of our secular elites: too sophisticated to subscribe openly to traditional religion but who nonetheless yearned for a token of spiritual uplift with which they could flatter themselves and impress others.

Then there was the immense political advantage of environmentalism. As the “cap-n’-tax” (also known as “Cap and Trade”) attack on the coal industry shows, environmentalism offers an essentially limitless opportunity for ambitious politicians. Indeed, its advantages are threefold. Since you can never be green enough, an environmental policy can always be made increasingly stringent in order 1) to increase taxes 2) to make government more intrusive and 3) to enhance the emotion of virtue among the environmentally elect.

A lot more could be said about all this, and perhaps when the U.S. Senate gets around to debating the bill there will be an opportunity to revisit the issue. For now, I wish merely to record my sorrowful realization that the aura of piety that surrounds environmentalism has effectively immunized it against ridicule. This may change someday, but for now I conclude that no amount of preposterous sentimentalized posturing is sufficient to condemn its proponents.

I came to this melancholy conclusion when I stumbled upon this advertisement for “green romance” at Instapundit. Entitled “Eco Ways To Romance Your Partner,” it is an emetic little digest of eco-friendly sex tips. Do you and your heartthrob like chocolate? Why not: the “Aztecs believed that chocolate had aphrodisiac qualities.” Oh, well then, if the Aztecs thought so, go for it, right? But be sure to procure “organic and sustainable brands.” (Didn’t the Aztecs also believe in ripping the beating hearts out of young virgins in order to propitiate the sun god? Well, never mind.)

There are 7 great tips for eco-nuts in the list, and the last is the best: Sustainable Lingerie. Think I am making it up? Read on:

If you simply want to stay in bed all day, then you might want to consider modeling some sustainable lingerie for an extra little piece of bedroom drama. It’s ultimately sexy and not even that expensive. Try Enamore’s sexy lingerie made from organic and sustainable materials like cotton, silk, and soy. Or, try the French eco-friendly brand g=9.8 which creates sexy, colorful undergarments made from cultivated pine trees!

Where is Juvenal, Jonathan Swift, Evelyn Waugh when you need ‘em? It would all be extremely funny if it weren’t in earnest.

I rather doubt that President Obama or any of his inner circle is a student of Hilaire Belloc. But they have demonstrated again and again their intuitive grasp of Belloc’s insight. If only, they reason, they can turn over enough of the productive capacity of the country to the government, then (so they think) they will be in a position to eradicate the age-old irrationalities and inequities that have beset our capitalist society from the beginning.

Belloc knew better, and a lot more could be said about the likely results of the Obama administration’s ambition to control the production of wealth. For the moment, however, I just want you to bear Belloc’s point in mind as you ponder an excellent piece about the Obama administration’s plans for health care by N. Gregory Mankiw. I hope you will put your prejudice to one side when you learn that 1) not only is Mankiw is a professor of economics but also he practices that discipline at Harvard and 2) his piece appeared in The New York Times. Notwithstanding Harvard, notwithstanding even The New York Times, “The Pitfalls of the Public Option” piece casts the cool light of sanity on what the Obama administration wishes to do to health care.

What is the public option option? It is one part rhetorical subterfuge combined with three parts government control. Professor Mankiw quotes from a letter President Obama sent to Senators Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Max Baucus of Montana: “I strongly believe,” Obama wrote, “that Americans should have the choice of a public health insurance option operating alongside private plans. This will give them a better range of choices, make the health care market more competitive, and keep insurance companies honest.”

OK. Let’s play “What’s wrong with this picture?” Let’s say we opt for the “public option.” What would it mean? If the government got more heavily involved in health care (beyond what it already does with the Veterans Administration, Medicare, and Medicaid), would that actually give Americans “a better range of choices,” where by “better” Obama might have meant “more choices,” “higher quality choices,” or both? What do you think? While you decide what is the best way of expressing the conclusion “no, absolutely not,” ask yourself whether an industry that had a “public option,” i.e., that was government controlled with the unlimited power of sanction that government control implies: ask yourself, I say, whether that would encourage or discourage competition? Imagine that the government got into the business of garbage removal. How would you feel about setting up shop with your own competing Acme Dispose-All Company? How would you fare against an entity that wrote all the rules and had at its disposal the resources of the public purse? As for the insurance companies, why should we think that the granddaddy of all insurance companies, i.e., the U.S. government, would be more honest when distributing scarce resources than the 1300 or so companies that now compete for your business are?

Professor Mankiw has this to say: “Even if one accepts the president’s broader goals of wider access to health care and cost containment” — and who doesn’t? — “his economic logic regarding the public option is hard to follow.” Professor Mankiw is a generous spirit. By “hard to follow,” he really means “completely bogus.” He goes on:

Consumer choice and honest competition are indeed the foundation of a successful market system, but they are usually achieved without a public provider. We don’t need government-run grocery stores or government-run gas stations to ensure that Americans can buy food and fuel at reasonable prices.

Indeed. And here is the $64,000 — I mean, the $1.85 trillion — question:

An important question about any public provider of health insurance is whether it would have access to taxpayer funds. If not, the public plan would have to stand on its own financially, as private plans do, covering all expenses with premiums from those who signed up for it.

But if such a plan were desirable and feasible, nothing would stop someone from setting it up right now. In essence, a public plan without taxpayer support would be yet another nonprofit company offering health insurance. The fundamental viability of the enterprise does not depend on whether the employees are called “nonprofit administrators” or “civil servants.”

Reacting to the Democratic victory (but one, please note, that would not have been possible had not 8 Republicans voted for it: they are listed in italics in the roll call), Rep. Markey of Massachusetts described the “American Clean Energy and Security Act” as “the most important energy and environmental legislation in the history of our country.” This is true. Plenty of unpleasant things are important. Rep Markey is also correct that the legislation “sets a new course for our country.” Indeed, I’d say it was all part and parcel of Obama’s observation, made last October, that he and his henchmen were  only a few days away from “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Where Rep. Markey errs is in his conclusion: that this “important” “new course” “steers us away from foreign oil and towards a path of clean American energy.”

In fact, Ed, it will do almost nothing to emancipate us from foreign oil even as it steers us towards a path of less American energy. The architect Mies van der Rohe famously said “less is more,” to which Robert Venturi equally famously quipped “less is a bore.” This is not the moment to intervene in that discussion about the place ornamentation and authenticity in architecture. Applied to the world of economics, however, we can observe with confidence that less is less.

The Wall Street Journal explains some of what this new legislation would mean:

By putting a price on emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, the bill would affect the way electricity is generated, how homes and offices are designed, how foreign trade is conducted and how much Americans pay to drive cars or to heat their homes.

So, thanks Ed! And thanks Harry! And thanks to the other 217 Congressmen and women who just voted to make America poorer and less competitive on the world stage. I hope that the electorate will remember your actions when the next election comes around.

To help them remember, let’s pause further to consider the meaning of this bill. Kimberley Strassel, writing in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, noted that while the green church of Al Gore thrives among the power elite of Washington, elsewhere in the world it is facing serious challenges from scientists as well as politicians. “Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress,” she observes “is because the global warming tide is again shifting.”

It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

As with the 1000-page non-stimulating stimulus bill that Obama shoved down your throat mere days after he assumed office, this bill will go largely unread by the people you elected to (among other things) oversee the country’s finances responsibly. Let me mention that bill’s sponsors, Henry A. Waxman and Edward J. Markey, are up for re-election in 2010, something the readers in California and Massachusetts will want to think about when they wake up to what the bill would mean to them. (Note to readers: don’t forget about ThrowTheBumsOut.Org.) As Hinderaker points out, if enacted, the Waxman-Markey climate confusion bill would “create a convoluted federal bureaucracy that would control key sectors of the economy and of our lives.”

Hinderaker posts this informative graphic created by Minority Leader John Boehner, showing in schematic format some of the mischief that would follow in the wake of this piece of expensive legislative folly.

I said “expensive legislative folly.” The Wall Street Journal has something to say about both the folly and the expense. The folly:

The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

Really, this bill should be called the decapitate and strangle bill, because what it would do is systematically hobble the U.S. economy by starving it of affordable energy. Why? Because of a misplaced faith in the virtue of using less energy. It’s a version of spiritual smugness like that emitted by eastern yogi, health nuts, and other graminivorous bipeds who believe that the extent of their asceticism is a reliable index of their enlightenment.

Waxman cites a misleading number from a preliminary analysis conducted by the Congressional Budget Office estimating that the bill would cost the average household a mere $175 a year. Cheap to save the planet and give yourself a daily pat on the back, what? But as the Journal points out the real cost is likely to be $1,870 a year for a family of 4 in 2010, a figure that rises to $6,800 by 2035 as various restrictions take effect.

I believe that every right implies a responsibility; every opportunity, an obligation; every possession, a duty.

I believe that the law was made for man and not man for the law; that government is the servant of the people and not their master.

I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but that it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well ordered living and that economy is a prime requisite of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

Today, of course, we like to think that we have a right to everything and a responsibility only to be sure that our rights are observed. The Obama administration has also illustrated the extent to which the rule of law has been redacted into the rule of political expediency, edged with virtuous-sounding rhetoric to sweeten the pill. “Secured bond holders“? They’re just “speculators” according to the President, folks whose rights can be traduced with impunity when a “higher principle,” e.g., doing favors for a big labor union or “spreading the wealth around,” is at stake.

With a rapidity that is awful to behold, the government in this country is becoming the bloated master of us all. Governor Mitch Daniels referred to this as “shock and awe statism.” An apt phrase. If the administration’s efforts to usurp health care are successful, I believe there will be no turning back. The process of emasculation will, in essentials, be complete. Mopping up operations–ridding the land of “hate speech” and dissent, for example–can be undertaken later. One big happy flock–I mean family–presided over by a semi-elected nomenklatura. Thank God ACORN is thinking about changing its name: voter fraud is one thing, but it won’t do to be so obvious about it. (On second thought, maybe they can be as obvious as they want to be: the department of justice–why does that name seem increasingly ironic?–doens’t seem to mind.)

The return and expansion of the welfare state underscores the extent to which our political masters wish to inculcate the belief that government owes everyone a living–on its own terms, of course. As for “opportunity,” that is fast being enrolled in the index of forbidden words. Those who speak of “opportunity” have shown themselves to be the same people who are critical of policies that demand equal outcomes, and of course equal outcomes are precisely what a culture of rights, not duties, is all about. As for thrift, that is a virtue other people should practice. When it comes to the United States government, a deficit of nearly $2 trillion is a down payment on Hope and Change.

Two trillion dollars: that’s $2,000,000,000,000.

How much is that? Well, there have been roughly 740,000 days since the birth of Christ. You could spend more than $2 million every day since January 1, 1 and still fall nearly $500 billion short of $2 trillion.

Responsibility. The rule of law. Self-reliance. Thrift. They seemed like good ideas at the time. So did a vigorous national defense and service in time of war: that, after all, was the context in which Mr. Rockefeller articulated his credo. I’m glad he set it down in brass for all to see. We can go and visit the plaque in New York as we would go to a museum of antiquities. How quaint it was that people used stand up for themselves and look after their families and people in their own community. We’re beyond that now. Where exactly we are is a question that is as as unedifying to contemplate as it is easy to answer. George Orwell, please call your office.

I wish I could impose something similar, if less polite, on the emetic mendacities regularly published by our former Paper of Record, The New York Times. Consider yesterday’s story proclaiming that “In Poll, Wide Support for Government-Run Health.”

Really? Read on:

“The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.”

Amazing, what? The story also spoke of a “growing confidence in the government’s ability to manage health care.”

Gosh.

But wait. Who conducted this poll that returned such extraordinary results? Why CBS in conjunction with The New York Times. Pollsters employed by these two dispassionate entities called up 895 people and, lo! 72 percent said they would favor government administered health care similar to Medicare.

Do you believe that? Not the bit about 72 percent of the 895 carefully chosen people CBS & The New York Times contacted responding in a way that this unofficial division of the Obama Press Office favors. I mean, do you believe that 72 percent of the American people are really in favor of handing over the machinery of health care to the government? Of course you don’t. And the reason is suggested by another story that appeared in The New York Times yesterday: the story about how a Veterans Administration hospital–i.e., a government-run institution–”botched 92 of 116 cancer treatments over a span of more than six years.” (Thanks to Instapundit for highlighting this delicious conjunction.)

There are currently some 1300 insurance carriers providing health care coverage in the U.S. The Obama administration wants to reduce that to one: the government. Would it cut costs? Possibly. We really don’t know. What we do know is that it would sharply erode the quality of health care in the United States. Indeed, if it ObamaCare becomes a reality, I am planning on investing in the biggest manufacturer of hospital gurneys: that’s about the only piece of hospital equipment that there will be more of as, like Canada and the UK, patients line up for weeks or months or even years for treatment as the number of specialists dwindle and a state-run system of health-care rationing is phased in.

The New York Times can devise polls and surveys till the end of time. You can be sure that they will always demonstrate exactly what The New York Times wants. Extraordinary, isn’t it? And I, as Dorothy Parker put it in another context, am Marie of Roumania.