Thursday, April 02, 2009

Counterintuitive, or Just Wrong?

Penn Jillete has an editorial on CNN's website, in which he discusses the things he's learned in life that are counterintuitive. Things like turning into a skid or eating fire. He then applies it to Obama's spend-our-way-out-of-debt policies:
Obama tells us that we can spend our way out of debt. He tells us that even though the government had control over the banks and did nothing to stop the bad that's going on, if we give them more control over more other bank-like things, then they can make sure bad stuff doesn't happen ever again. He says we can get out of all those big wars President Bush caused by sending more troops into Afghanistan. And I don't know. I really don't know.
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But there are some things that are just intuitive. Did you know, that if you're going 100 mph, directly at a very, very thick, reinforced concrete wall, and you speed up, so you're accelerating right when you hit the wall that the accident you have is going to be much worse than if you'd jammed on the brakes as soon as you saw the wall at the end of the street? Did you know that? It's exactly what everything you know and feel would tell you, and it's exactly true. Most times when you're driving, or playing with fire, or handling money, the thing that makes sense to you is also true.

I way hope we're turning into a skid and not accelerating into a concrete wall.

It's nice to see a celebrity admit that he simply has misgivings about something and doesn't know for a fact that we're all in deep doo-doo. I could probably learn something from that.

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