Wednesday, March 25, 2009

QOTD

Jonah Goldberg in the April 6th National Review on dead tree (page 6; subscription-only for now):
What the hell is Barack Obama talking about?

On almost any given day, Obama insists that his predecessor caught small children in a butterfly net and cooked them in hot oil. Oh, wait, sorry; that’s Bill Moyers. What Obama goes on and on about is how President Bush was a tightwad who refused to spend a dime on vital domestic priorities. Here’s Obama responding to the charge that he’s doing too much: "To kick these problems down the road for another four years or another eight years would be to continue the same irresponsibility that led us to this point."

In his address to Congress, Obama constructed a Potemkin army of straw men, and they were all Republicans and conservatives: "I reject the view that . . . says government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity." In another speech he boldly rejected "a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government — this constant rejection of any common endeavor — cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges."

Ah, yes, I believe it was Milton Friedman who said, "Bridges must never be rebuilt." Just for the record, I reject a philosophy that says we must spend trillions to stimulate the economy just because vests have no sleeves and cats bathe themselves with spit.

Anyway, Obama often goes on to lament the deficit he "inherited" from George W. Bush, suggesting that if only someone like Barack Obama had been at the helm these last eight years, things would be better.

So here’s what I don’t get . . .. Spending under George W. Bush went through the roof: education (up 58 percent), Social Security (17 percent), Medicare (51 percent), health research and regulation (55 percent), highways and mass transit (22 percent), and veterans’ benefits (59 percent). Spending grew twice as fast under Bush as it did under Clinton. But Obama thinks that amounts to laissez-faire.

To recap: Obama says Bush ignored necessary spending, which is why our new president needs to borrow $7 trillion just to spend enough money to catch up to where we should be. But he goes on to suggest that if he -- or some other responsible party/messiah/lightworker type -- had been running the show, we wouldn’t have this Republican-fueled deficit that he inherited, because Democrats would have spent two, three, or ten times as much money as Republicans. Something doesn’t compute there.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obama always likes to have it both ways. Because he also said that he "inherited" a huge deficit. As if that's a bad thing. And to fix it he quadruples it. The guy makes no sense because he is constantly contradicting himself. But maybe his teleprompter is on the fritz.

All I know is...he's turning out to be a real idiot along with all his cabinet appointments. And Congress just cheerleads for them. I think we just elected the 12 Stooges.

@nooil4pacifists said...

Agreed (mostly). I did not support Obama. Still, I wanted him to succeed, both because I want America to succeed and because I'm still shell-shocked from Jimmy Carter.

Obama isn't stupid. But, he is naive and inexperienced. And, after the stimulus package and the budget, any claim that the President is "post-liberal" or centrist is fully exploded--the Administration's policies are just "a compilation of Democrat wet dreams preserved in cold-storage at the Brookings Institute since the Reagan Administration."

OBloodyHell said...

> just because vests have no sleeves and cats bathe themselves with spit.

I am shocked! **SHOCKED**, I tell you, at such heartlessly cruel indiffernce to the plight of the vest wearing homeless!!

Are they not men, that they get cold in the winter?

Are they not men, that their arms get sunburnt in the summer?

And I believe it goes without saying, as men, the rule is clearly, No spill Blood!

As long as we remember these important things, all will be good on The Island of Doctor Obama...

OBloodyHell said...

> But maybe his teleprompter is on the fritz

Homophobe!!

:oP

OBloodyHell said...

> suggesting that if only someone like Barack Obama had been at the helm these last eight years, things would be better.

Well, clearly better for the holders of the national debt. Our children would be walking the debt Trench of the Marianas in lead-reinforced concrete underpants, but, hey, it would all be in a good cause.