George Will in the WaPo summarizes a lot that’s going on right now in Baghdad on the Potomac….and, with apology to the late Warren Zevon, “It Ain’t That Pretty at All”!
With the braying of 328 yahoos — members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group — still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.
After listing a number of weirdly reversed situations (like China lecturing us on maintaining a stable capitalistic system!), Will concludes with:
This is but a partial list of recent lawlessness, situational constitutionalism and institutional derangement. Such political malfeasance is pertinent to the financial meltdown as the administration, desperately seeking confidence, tries to stabilize the economy by vastly enlarging government’s role in it. [Emphasis added.]
As noted above, it ain’t that pretty at all.