Plumb crazy

If Albert Einstein was correct and the definition of insanity is indeed doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, what are we to make of the Obama administration and its legislative water boy, unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid?

On Thursday, the bad economic news continued. The Labor Department reported the number of people filing first-time unemployment claims rose by 12,000 last week when economists had expected a drop. Then on Friday, the Labor Department issued unemployment statistics for July, which were humdrum, to say the least. The nation's jobless rate remained at 9.5 percent, but unemployment jumped in 14 states and the private sector added a paltry 71,000 jobs.

"Nothing but awful," one economist told USA Today.

Nevada continued to lead the nation in joblessness, with its unemployment rate inching up to 14.3 percent. In response, Sen. Reid offered boilerplate drivel:

"Today's news is further proof of why we need to continue our work to create jobs and diversify Nevada's economy. By giving businesses tax breaks to hire unemployed workers and continuing our work on the small business jobs bill, we are cutting taxes and taking steps to make it easier for Nevada businesses to put more Nevadans to work.

"Recent progress on the clean energy transmission line from White Pine County to Clark County is promising because it will put thousands of Nevadans to work on an industry that will help diversify our state's economy. ... "

Blah, blah, blah

Sen. Reid, Democrats and the Obama White House have doubled down on the same recipe now for more than 18 months and it has failed miserably. Pouring billions of dollars into the public sector, spending the nation into oblivion, threatening successful entrepreneurs with massive tax hikes, seeking to impose huge new energy costs on all Americans in the name of creating "green" jobs, demonizing entire sectors of the private economy, and imposing a brand new Byzantine regulatory structure on employers called ObamaCare have yielded thoroughly predictable results.

To expect -- as does Sen. Reid -- that doing more of the same will eventually produce a strong economic recovery is ... well, nuts.