The headline at RCP jumped out at me, not merely because of the refreshing general truth of it, but because I highlighted the very quote that CNBC’s Santelli is paraphrasing in my post last night about Socialist French President Francois Hollande’s long-overdue semi-acknowledgement that he needs to hit reverse on some of his fiscal- and business-related policies if France is going to have any chance of shaking off its stubbornly lingering economic lethargy. As Santelli notes, much of Europe has been struggling through “recoveries” even slower than ours has been, with much bigger unemployment rates and much smaller economic growth rates — and one does wonder why the Obama administration is so blindly insistent upon neglecting these European countries’ apt examples and instead following them into the economic abyss of ever-expanding government spending and intervention.

First of all, we understand it’s not only in America. There are a lot of hardworking people around the globe who would like to work who are having problems finding work. It seems to be a skill mismatch but maybe that’s oversimplified. But no matter how you slice it, the main issue is, after five years, it’s pretty hard to call these programs ’emergency spending programs’ and if we’re going to extend the amount of benefit you get with regard to unemployment insurance to be a new entitlement, we need to be more honest about it. I understand. But it really isn’t and shouldn’t be a stopgap measure, maybe it’s something we need to put in the budget as whole and change everything. Why? Because if what the president said is true, if just throwing money at this is good for the economy, then I challenge him to look at the extreme viewpoint in this regard from François Hollande, the president of France, a Socialist, who has tried everything the president is talking about and now is throwing up the red flag. The Journal story today, here’s what President François Hollande said: How can we run the country if entrepreneurs don’t hire? And how can we redistribute wealth if there is no wealth?