Stimulus Medicine

Dorian De Wind at The Moderate Voice wrote a clever and entertaining post called, "The GOP’s Pharmaceutical View of the Stimulus Plan." It's worth reading even if you disagree with the premise. De Wind describes watching the stimulus bill

like the seriously ill patient who has just been prescribed a medicine that has a good chance of bringing him back to good health.

He compares the GOP to the pharmaceutical industry's long list of side-effect warnings on drugs. In this particular case, the list is so long that the GOP recommends a zero dosage. It focuses so much on the possible side-effects, that it ignores the fact that the patient is sick and needs the medicine.

That's one way of looking at it. Here's another. Instead of being a doctor prescribing medicine, Obama and the Democrats are unlicensed quacks who have panicked, and are trying to give the patient a large dose of an untested drug. The drug has as much chance of making the patient worse, as it does of making him better. No one really knows. Studies on previous uses of this drug are inconclusive and controversial. Unlike the quacks, real doctors are sharply divided about the drug. The GOP is like a couple of concerned family members. One thinks the drug is too dangerous, and that it would be better to do nothing than risk using it. The other feels that the drug should be tried, but at a lower dosage.