Here it goes:
(The credit goes to Alex Leo at the Huffington Post)
The post comes with the following disclaimer:
"The Huffington Post in no way encourages binge drinking. This is the comedy section. If you actually drank as much as we suggested you would die, so do not do that."
Oh, Pooh!
Hilarious!
ReplyDeleteI have a feeling I'd better make a run to the brown bag store before this shindig starts...
ReplyDeletePost mortem
ReplyDeleteAt times Obama comes across as if he's trying to prove how non PC he is. How independent he is. Which is fine, since everyone believes in intellectual independence. But there reasons for opposing drilling offshore, new nuclear reactor construction and so-called "clean" coal technology. Which are not simply PC cliches and shibboleths among the "looney left."
I think this may have been the most conservative speech I've ever heard a Democratic president give. Does Obama have so much disdain for what he may consider lockstep thinking that he ignores the evidence?
Cynics may simply say he has been bought and sold. Which, yes, may be too glib, too easy. Or it may be true. Look at his economic team: and when the total for the bailout is considered they (and the press) leave out all the sources that fed into it. Unless Nomi Prins' figure of 14 trillion is wrong.
But I don't know.
Here are Naomi Klein and Paul Krugman on Obama's plan~~~
ReplyDeleteWe knew the spending freeze was going to come, but to me, it’s really striking. I think what this moment represents is the decision, which we all feared would come, to pass the bill on from saving Wall Street, from saving the elites of this country from their own mess, a bill worth trillions of dollars, to regular people in need in this country. I mean, that’s what a spending freeze really means.
And we have to look at it in the context of the debt crisis that is occurring at the state level. There’s deficit—huge deficits being run up. California is the most dramatic example, but you’re already seeing how students are facing things like 30 percent tuition increases. Women’s shelters are being closed. So, you know, when the President says freeze spending, that’s saying to the states, “We’re not going to help you. We’re not going to bail you out.”
So this is really—this, to me, all comes back to the top-down bailout that should never have taken place in the first place, the decision that was made to throw the taxpayer dollars at the banks, at the elites, no strings attached, not to help the people losing their jobs, losing their homes. And now the bill is being passed on, because the debt crisis, the private-sector debt crisis, which started this, the banks racking up these huge debts, was never solved. It was just moved. It was just moved to the public coffers.
And now Obama is—this is a Hoover move. This is a Herbert Hoover move. And I think we have to say very clearly, he is not FDR. And, you know, in the spirit of Howard Zinn, who passed yesterday, I keep thinking, you know, what would he say about the State of the Union? And I think he would tell us to refuse to pay this bill, that we need a debtors’ revolt.
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/1/28/noam_chomsky_and_naomi_klein_respond
Last week, the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, published an acerbic essay about the difference between true deficit hawks and showy “deficit peacocks.” You can identify deficit peacocks, readers were told, by the way they pretend that our budget problems can be solved with gimmicks like a temporary freeze in nondefense discretionary spending.
ReplyDeleteOne week later, in the State of the Union address, President Obama proposed a temporary freeze in nondefense discretionary spending.
Wait, it gets worse. To justify the freeze, Mr. Obama used language that was almost identical to widely ridiculed remarks early last year by John Boehner, the House minority leader. Boehner then: “American families are tightening their belt, but they don’t see government tightening its belt.” Obama now: “Families across the country are tightening their belts and making tough decisions. The federal government should do the same.”
What’s going on here? The answer, presumably, is that Mr. Obama’s advisers believed he could score some political points by doing the deficit-peacock strut. I think they were wrong, that he did himself more harm than good. Either way, however, the fact that anyone thought such a dumb policy idea was politically smart is bad news because it’s an indication of the extent to which we’re failing to come to grips with our economic and fiscal problems.
The nature of America’s troubles is easy to state. We’re in the aftermath of a severe financial crisis, which has led to mass job destruction. The only thing that’s keeping us from sliding into a second Great Depression is deficit spending. And right now we need more of that deficit spending because millions of American lives are being blighted by high unemployment, and the government should be doing everything it can to bring unemployment down...
So we’re paralyzed in the face of mass unemployment and out-of-control health care costs. Don’t blame Mr. Obama. There’s only so much one man can do, even if he sits in the White House. Blame our political culture instead, a culture that rewards hypocrisy and irresponsibility rather than serious efforts to solve America’s problems. And blame the filibuster, under which 41 senators can make the country ungovernable, if they choose — and they have so chosen.
I’m sorry to say this, but the state of the union — not the speech, but the thing itself — isn’t looking very good.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/opinion/29krugman.html?th&emc=th
This makes sense.....
ReplyDeletehttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/31/obama-administration-push_n_443586.html
Which may explain why he threw in so many Republican talking points into his State of the Union message.
Though one has to wonder if he believes the Republicans are sane enough to be shamed by logic, good will, reason, or simple decency, into bipartisanship?
In the Senate recently the Republicans fought mightily against some simple, decent legislation until a cloture vote ended their filibuster. And then on final passage of the bill itself the vast majority voted for it.