"I Don't Get It:" Obama Baffled As His "Green" Investments Produce No Jobs

As Pethokoukis says, it's an anecdote that defines the presidency.

Energy was a particular obsession of the president-elect’s, and therefore a particular source of frustration. Week after week, [White House economic adviser Christina] Romer would march in with an estimate of the jobs all the investments in clean energy would produce; week after week, Obama would send her back to check the numbers. “I don’t get it,” he’d say. “We make these large-scale investments in infrastructure. What do you mean, there are no jobs?” But the numbers rarely budged.

There are four possible main types of educated people:

Good student, good thinker

Good student, bad thinker

Bad student, good thinker

Bad student, bad thinker

I don't actually think Obama was a good student -- I mean, where are the grades, yo? -- but I would call him a "good student" in the sense that he believed whatever his professors told him.

A pliable mind, let's call it.

Some people are bad as students because they reject the crap their professors tell them. Some of these people are just idiots; some are pretty smart, and go on to do big things.

On the other hand, some "good students" are complete idiots themselves, and what makes them good students -- pliability, willingness to believe -- is exactly what makes them bad thinkers.

Obama's that type, obviously.

He has no rebelliousness of mind. No defiance of thought.

He believes everything his leftist professors and leftist heroes and leftist patrons (like Bill Ayers) told him.

He's got a soft mind. A soft man, who's lived a soft life, with soft hands, and a soft mind.

Meanwhile, this parvenu (where are the grades, yo?) sends out his flack to call Paul Ryan "aggressively and deliberately ignorant" on this very issue.

"You have to be aggressively and deliberately ignorant of the world economy not to know and understand that clean energy technologies are going to play a huge role in the 21st century," Carney said after decrying the clean energy spending cuts in Ryan's plan. "You have to have severely diminished capacity to understand what drives economic growth in industrialized countries in this century if you do not understand that education is the key that unlocks the door to prosperity," he added.

You know what I understand, morons? I understand the world moved swiftly from a wood & coal based energy base to oil in like 30 years without government doing anything to foster that.

One technology was superior. It quickly dominated and displaced previous inferior technologies.

A lot of technology is going to play a big role in the 21st century.

Funny thing about superior technologies though-- they tend to be self-sufficient and self-evangelizing.

posted by Ace at 04:17 PM

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