Barack Obama
A triple A president
As is his wont, Emperor Obama kept the masses waiting today for his momentous announcement. Must be something about being fashionably late. Originally scheduled for 1 pm, EST, the minutes dragged on past 1:30 on to 2 pm. Obama and his staffers must have been trying to decide which speech to give as the stock market kept plunging. Poor Wolf Blitzer of CNN was trying to fill the vacuum by interviewing Donald Trump. Actually, it appeared that Trump was interviewing the hapless Blitzer for a job. Poor old Wolf kept trying to get a question in as Trump kept talking over him.
Finally, His Nibs appeared and told us all was well. Forget about that agency that downgraded us. It was all due to the gridlock in Congress.
"We have always been and always will be a AAA country."
That's what the Greeks, the Romans, the Spaniards, the French and the British once thought.
No, Mr President; it was because of your insane spending programs that have sent us deeper and deeper in debt with no escape plan. Obamacare, bailouts, stimulous package, money sent to nowhere, that's what has gotton us into this mess. Where was the "Balanced Approach" then?
Instead, Obama wants to use this mess as another excuse to raise taxes, as if it was we who pissed it all away. Then all will be well, and we will spend happily ever after-until that imaginary money runs out.
Thanks for pointing out where the problem originated. Granted that there was a bad economic situation at the end of Bush's term but Obama has turned it into a catastrophe. It is like putting out a kerosine fire with gasoline.
ReplyDeleteThe Dems are quick to blame Right Wing Fanatics or Extremists for the congressional impasse while overlooking their own insistence on tax increases. One party believes that government must be pared down and the other thinks it should continue to spend money, no matter what.
It is just like an increase on a debt limit on a family credit card. You can increase it without caring about how high the debt goes; you can insists that the spending continue and income for it come from somewhere to cover it; or you can say that this is too much debt, too much spending, and those who have to pay for the spending just won't do it anymore.
There is no question about who has the saner policy and the Democrats are just going to have to cut back on all the entitlements they have burdened us with... starting with ObamaCare.
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Look at charts on the rate of job loss and job creation over the last few years.
ReplyDeleteThe line plunges into negative in 2008, begins coming back up in 2009, and went at least a bit positive in 2010. Fast enough to make us all happy? No. But a lot better than it was, or could have been.
I will agree that the DNC putting out loop tape propaganda about Right Wing Extremists is getting very tired and trite. If they throw away what could be a resounding victory in 2012, it will be because they couldn't wean themselves off that trite rhetoric, which is definitely NOT what voters are looking for.
Deficit spending during recession or near depression is sound economic policy. The problem is, we had run the debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion during prosperous times, then had to add another $4 to $5 trillion when the economy tanked.
It IS the fault of congress that we aren't pursuing a program that could get us out of debt. It is ignorant, fanatical, stupidity to insist on "no tax increases" when we are $14 trillion in debt, and, to talk broadly about "deep cuts" without specifying WHAT we are going to do without.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteA hundred years from now that will be called the Geithnerian econoimc theory.
Re Siarlys's "Deficit spending during recession or near depression is sound economic policy."
ReplyDeleteHow is the following for a reliable source?
‘We’re Spending More Than Ever and It Doesn’t Work"
“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”
Sound like, oh, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio or some other exasperated Republican stalwart lamenting proposals to spend our way out of the recession?
Listen again:
“I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises.”
Sound more like a liberal Democrat pushing job creation — say, Harlem’s Rep. Charlie Rangel?
What about this:
“I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started. … And an enormous debt to boot!”
Surely this must be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi or another leading Democrat denouncing President Bush’s economic policies.
Wrong. Wrong. And wrong again.
The words are those of none other than Henry Morgenthau Jr. — close friend, lunch companion, loyal secretary of the Treasury to President Franklin D. Roosevelt — and key architect of FDR’s New Deal.
The date: May 9, 1939. The setting: Morgenthau’s appearance in Washington before less influential Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee.
Morgenthau made this “startling confession,” as historian Burton W. Folsom Jr. calls it, during the seventh year of FDR’s New Deal programs to combat the rampant unemployment of the Great Depression.
“In these words, Morgenthau summarized a decade of disaster, especially during the years Roosevelt was in power. Indeed average unemployment for the whole year in 1939 would be higher than that in 1931, the year before Roosevelt captured the presidency from Herbert Hoover,” Folsom writes in his new book, “New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.”
Indeed, with those words, Morgenthau confessed what so many keepers of FDR’s flame won’t admit today: The New Deal was failed public policy. Massive spending on public works programs didn’t erase historic unemployment. It didn’t produce a recovery.
And neither will a “new” New Deal.
Some of the most desperate defenders of New Deal doctrine are getting a little shrill about this hard truth. It’s an important truth, nevertheless, especially because the same characters insist that Barack Obama must push through a “bold” economic stimulus that depends on hundreds of billions in new government spending to create or “save” jobs.
... The New Deal was a failed government policy that emphasized “creating jobs” by spending unjustifiable amounts of taxpayer dollars on infrastructure projects. ... Listen to Henry Morgenthau. Secretary of the Treasury to FDR!
“We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work.”
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Funny you should pick Morgenthau's speech from 1939 Miggie. As you may recall, the economy tanked in 1938, precisely because Roosevelt was anxious to cut spending too early. It cost him considerable shrinkage in his congressional majority too. Roosevelt listened to people like Morgenthau, just as Obama listened to people like Summers and Geithner, with disastrous results both times.
ReplyDeleteSiarlys, thanks for another demonstration of the persistence of cognitive dissonance. I send you proof from the single person in the world best able to assess the government economy, spoken at the time and before a congressional committee and you STILL refuse to accept the proof and would rather explain it away with some personal cockamamie theory.
ReplyDeleteIt is a vision that is engrained and you see the world through that lens regardless of the evidence.
It is like a researcher who wants a certain result and refuses to accept the lab results... or worse, fudges them.
One would think that intellectual honesty alone would dictate an acknowledgement of the evidence, not only of the testimony but of the record during that period in the US, as well as what happened in Japan, the Soviet Union, and all other planned economies that redistributed the wealth. But then you are neither intellectual or honest.
Look (just reflect, no need to respond or excuse away) what that sense of entitlement and fury at the "rich" for not supporting them even more is leading to in London and in Greece... and in Wisconsin.
They are saying, in effect, "WE WANT MORE AND YOU MEANIES AREN'T GIVING IT TO US VOLUNTARILY ... SO WE WILL HAVE TO TAKE IT OR BURN IT DOWN."
Want that for America too?