I am on monastic retreat until the weekend, and have scheduled two reposts each day of pieces that some may not have read before. Comments will be off until I return. You might like peeking into last year’s Online Retreat

Hey, $13 dollars is $13, I guess. In January that falls to $8.

Here is our 800 billion dollar stimulus mostly-spending bill we must see passed, and we must gratefully accept as the only possible solution to our “catastrophic” problems and our growing malaise. The ONLY solution.

This other one, over here, brought up by another Democrat? Ignored. Just ignored.

I just have one thing to ask:

What does Michelle Obama suggest we do – how we will stimulate the economy with our $13?

As I recall, when there was a $600.00 stimulus check rolling down the pike a while back, Mrs. Obama rather sneered at it:

“You’re getting $600. What can you do with that? Not to be ungrateful or anything. But maybe it pays down a bill, but it doesn’t pay down every bill every month..

Barack’s approach is that the short-term quick fix kinda stuff sounds good. And it may even feel good that first month when you get that check. And then you go out and you buy a pair of earrings.”

Hmmmm…forget earrings…I’m not sure I understand how $13.00 a week, reduced to $8.00 a week in January, will do much for “paying down every bill every month.” $54 per month (or $32), when offset by the increased taxes that will come from ending the infamous Bush Tax Cuts – which stimulated us out of a recession and brought 7 years of unimpeded growth before this time-suspect strangeness occurred and the additional tax increases that will accompany our ramped-up spending, plus the million little laws, fees and fines that will eat into our incomes…help me out, I’m not really seeing the stimulus, here.

And, you know, if Barney Frank gets his way and caps salaries at $500,000 per year, that will foment a huge loss of tax-revenue, (assuming that most fatcats – unlike say, our deer-in-headlines SecTreas – actually pay most of their taxes), which will have to be made up.

Except I don’t think people who are accustomed to making huge salaries are going to be playing fair on all this. I think they’ll find ways to continue their lavish life-styles at the expense of others, and duck taxes, anyway. This is how black markets start.

How will all those tax revenues be made up? Hmmm…let me think. You know, this is just an idea…but if you take about 400 Billion of spending out of that bill – just chuck it for now, and bring it up later, when we’re back on our feet – and then maybe spread 200 billion around to the taxpayers by way of payroll tax reductions, tax-holidays and temporary tax-relief programs, and spend some money on job-creation and vo-tech educational programs and ummm…oh, yeah, open ANWR and most of our coastal oil reserves up for drilling, reinstate the Bush executive order allowing drilling contracts in Utah and start investigating the feasibility of refining oil shale, you could actually create good-paying jobs, which will contribute to the tax-base.

And…you’d have the additional effect of eventually – in less than a decade – freeing this country from its dependency on foreign oil.

Because, you see, even this silly little electric golf cart that is an absurd part of this mostly-spending bill is going to require, ummm…energy. Electricity may be invisible, but it is not yet free or magically produced. Not yet.

This is really not as complicated or as difficult as you preening, posturing folks want to make it.

But, hey, thanks for the $13.00/$8.00 a week. Like Mrs. Obama, I don’t want to be ungrateful, but it’s not going to pay down a bill for one month, or two, so I’m going to donate it to a local food pantry, so they can stock up and be ready for a lot of hungry, scared folks. Maybe next month I’ll donate it here, and the month after that, here, and maybe Americans helping Americans, not with hand-outs but hands-outstretched – will re-awaken something that is being lost, in all of this: our sense of purpose and potentiality.

Maybe it will re-ignite the woefully American habit of dreaming glorious dreams, which seems strangely subdued, lately. Or perhaps not subdued, but smothered in pork and unable to breathe.

UPDATE I:
Psssssst – while Obama and Congress were working so hard to convince us that the stimulus was “desperately needed or there will be a catastrophe,” Lorie Byrd points out that retail sales rebounded in January. Well, New Jobless Claims dropped too. Now you understand the rush. If you’d realized that recessions can fix themselves, you might not have allowed Obama/Pelosi/Reid to go forward with that socialist’s wet dream of a bill.

The American Press may be willfully ignorant, but the rest of the world is catching on to this scam. The real cost of the “spendulus” is going to be over 3 Trillion, by some estimates. Trillion here, a trillion there, what’s a few trillion between comrades, eh? Hmmmm….

UPDATE II: Rather like a King, or a Dictator, Obama declares, “BUILDING SPRAWL STOPS NOW!”. So, aside from all the Federal Building projects in the Spending Bill – which will keep people in Maryland busy, anyway, the rest of the country’s construction industries (and the trickledowns) will go to hell. Now, pay attention to this article from 2005, which was trying to paint such a (nonexistant) disaster under Bush. I’m sorry. I’m beginning to think Obama is out to ruin us. The Pelosi says this vote is going to be “historic and transformational. For once she is telling the truth. This is going to transform our free nation into a socialist state. This insane bill has to be stopped. We seem to be powerless, here. Our elected officials are acting not like servants but like masters, and we have no power. I can’t believe what I’m watching. K-Street and the lobbyists are seeing this bill before the legislators get to. Astonishing. Yes, Just words.

UPDATE III:
Kim at Wizbang is writing on this and – ever an American entrepreneur – has already figured out what to do with her “tee-shirt stimulus”:

Yes, she is selling them – and even has a few priced for the January ‘10 drop! I love America! I love it!

UPDATE VI:
Bookie on Your Tax Dollars at Work
The Chicago Way
American Digest and Neo: Tag teaming.
Tom Maguire: Oh, we’re stimulated!
Hello?: What is Plan B?
Just in time for the elections: How the Democrats Derailed the Economy Last Summer H/T Instapundit
Byron York’s Question: Who will Investigate the Obama Administration. If you guess no one, and particularly not the press that carried him to the White House, you’re correct.
A good illustration of how Obama has been treated with kid gloves: It is freaking NEWS that late night comics are starting to make fun of him. Even godlings tumble.
Althouse: A one-woman squad of right reason and naked Emperor exposition

WELCOME Michelle Malkin and Ace readers. Please check out this Good Advice on what to do with your $13!