Dorothy and Alice Dance With Voldemort

We're living in a time when you're not supposed to believe what you see.  Mirage is in. Realism, out. Even the most casual observer discerns the surrealism spreading over the country, which in these times is dangerous. It's like Alice of Wonderland met Dorothy of Oz and took off toward Hogwarts, because they heard Voldemort was a swell dancer. 

We have a President who has an "all of the above" energy plan that's as easy to follow as a translucent Cheshire cat running down the yellow brick road. The "all of the above" plan includes all of the "above" except when "above" includes an oil pipeline, so it's really like an "all the above except for oil pipelines" plan, but that's not to quite right either. Pipelines are not in the "above" bucket per se, except for the portion of the pipeline that doesn't require his approval, then that's OK to toss into the "above" bucket. (Did ya follow that?) Drilling works like this, too. Drilling for oil is in the "above" bucket so long as it takes place on private lands or was already in place when he took office and can be conveniently used to parry arguments stating he's against drilling. So, it's all-the-above-including-oil-pipelines-and-oil-drilling-so-long-as-they-don't-require-Presidential-approval Presidential energy policy. Got it.

This wouldn't happen with Green Energy, the President's heart-and-soul. He's been clear on that. Green is his thing, man. His Emerald City. This, with healthcare, is why he wakes up every morning. He believes in this stuff. His administration championed enviro companies and channeled millions (billions?) of stimulus money to them because that's the future. He won't hide from this. No way. Remember him at Solyndra talking high-tech with helmeted, begoggled, white-suited techies in the futuristic manufacturing lab? He was interested. This was his baby.  His administration resurrected this company from the waste heap, pumped it with cash, primed its executives (oddly, one of them was a bundler for his campaign, bundler is Obama-speak for one who raises loads of cash for him), and he's going to stick by it.

Alas, it failed. It went under only 18 months after receiving the $535 million from the stimulus. Ironically, there was an extremely accurate prediction of this company's demise in administration memos, but hey, you win some and lose some, right? He'll take it on the chin and keep going. Everyone knows this is his thing, right? He then said of Solyndra,"This was not our program per se."  followed by "Pay no attention to that man behind the teleprompter?" (OK, he actually didn't say this last part, but I could definitely hear him say it...hmmm.)

Weird, but today's Wonderland-Oz-Hogwarts includes more than a shrinking Emerald White House. There is former House of Representative member Carol Shea-Porter, currently looking to remove "former" from that description, the "stimulus worked."  Why wouldn't she, really? You can't blame her. After all, in a world where the Mad Hatter roams free, "worked" is subjective. In such a case, however, the bar at which I would place "worked" would be much, much higher when that bar costs $787 billion. It's odd that she thinks it worked. Check out those little red dots in this chart indicating "Actual" unemployment, and note how far up they are from the projected no-cost "Without Recovery Plan" line, and even how much further they are up from the projected $787B "With Recovery Plan" line. $787B, for higher unemployment than would have been the case  without the recovery plan? I'm not sure we got our money's worth.

Christina Romer, then Chair of Council of Economic Advisors in the administration, stated that the stimulus will keep unemployment below 8 percent, and this argument was used to justify the legislation. To me, that sounds like a pretty good metric to use when evaluating the success of the stimulus that the administration pushed. But not here, where up is down.

Other recent nauseating examples of the country becoming insanely delusional aren't confined by political party affiliation either. We have two Republican candidates for President bringing the most astute, disciplined, well-honed arguments on the great issue facing our country – indeed the world – today: the Etch-a-Sketch. Yes, that's right. Iran is going nuclear, our country is spending/borrowing $2.5 million a minute, energy is out of control, the price of everything has been consistently rising, and that was before our gas prices began blazing beyond the atmosphere, taking with it everything which relies on it – which is pretty much everything – and there stand Speaker Tweedledee and Senator Tweedledum discussing the merits of an Etch-a-Sketch metaphor. Brilliant.

Flirting and dancing around with that which must not be named, increasing its size by $5T in just a few years, and pretending it's controllable is folly. The ever expanding national debt (currently at $16,000,000,000,000) will devour more than just government programs by mere math, and to continue to conjure faux issues, like those I just described, in lieu of serious discussion of this Voldemort of our times, is more than surreal, it's dangerous.