The Warm December Sun

Irwin M. Stelzer, a third-string wingnut welfare recipient at the Weekly Standard, wishes to inform you that everything’s A-OK in the USA.

House prices are falling, sure, but this means that losers like you will finally be able to afford that cinderblock hovel on the wrong side of the tracks. The dollar is plummeting, but that’s good news for our nation’s three-card monte dealers, who’ll have plenty of fresh blood in the form of gullible tourists from the EU.

The subprime mortgage market is imploding? Serves everybody right! The climate is warming? Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer -- those days of soda and pretzels and beer!

The consequences will be nowhere near as Gorey as some predict. There will be winners as well as losers. Shipping time between America's Atlantic and Pacific coasts will plummet as lanes open through the melting Arctic; alternative energy firms will prosper; agriculture in Russia and Canada will boom; and maple syrup is already flowing in upstate New York in January, according to the Economist. Think of a winter vacation on the beach at Ocean City, or Coney Island, or even cavorting in the warm December sun of Kennebunkport with a pair of former presidents.

Maple syrup in January? Bring it on! I’m sick of smearing my pancakes with mucilage from October to April.

In other news, the rich are getting richer. But that’s OK, because we don’t have a dangerous revolutionary class (I’m not exaggerating here).

Which is not to say that everything’s perfect:

The U.S. government is incompetent: It could not provide adequate relief to the victims of Katrina or the post-war chaos in Iraq; it cannot control the nation's borders, or develop a policy to reduce American dependence on foreign oil, or figure out how to save the middle class from the depredation of a tax structure containing a feature--the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)--originally aimed at millionaires, but now biting into the budgets of middle-class families. There's no silver lining to this dark cloud.

On this last point at least, Stelzer’s far too gloomy. Unlike America’s poor, America’s millionaires are quite prepared to defend their interests.