Speaking in San Francisco this past Sunday, Barack Obama said:
Foreign policy is the area where I am probably most confident that I know more and understand the world better than Senator Clinton and Senator McCain.
Kind of makes you wonder where he thinks he could use some work. In any case, what makes Obama so confident that he can tackle global crises? A college trip to Pakistan, of course. Here’s the New York Times:
. . . Mr. Obama also spoke about having traveled to Pakistan in the early 1980′s. Because of that trip, which he did not mention in either of his autobiographical books, “I knew what Sunni and Shia was before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,” he said.
It must have been a rough trip! Pakistan, after all, is the only country Obama has specifically talked about bombing. Is he planning to cite a spring break trip to Daytona Beach as a source of authority on naval matters? A viewing of Ishtar as his point of entry into Mideast diplomacy?
Well, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and that criticism of the stimulus plan is good. What the feds probably ought to do is reinstitute things like Clionton’s subsidies for local police officers, and bail out a bunch of state budgets. That’d put money into the economy. It should be paid for by restoring the Clinton-era tax tables, and a surtax on top 1% incomes.
There should also be thorough, public, and painful investigations of all those who looted the economy over the past 15 years.
So the CBO and other economists are saying what some of us on this blog have been saying all along, that this “recession” has been vastly overstated. It’s not the Great Depression if it’ll run it’s natural course in two years.
It must have been the Bush-Paulson-Bernanke move to save the financial industry that did it.
“…its natural course…”
“Was this just a rookie error? We’ll soon find out.”
No, I doubt it was a rookie error on the part of BHO. He’s not dumb, so no need to ponder his intellect regarding political culture and procedure. To those of us paying attention, it should be more than obvious that this is just what the House does; load up bills with special projects designed to funnel money to home districts. This is how House members and Senators maintain power and votes in the booth from election to election. No surprise there. Obama has a huge problem to deal with when it comes to the political culture of the House of Representatives that JR just described. I consider myself a fiscal conservative, yet I support the principles of the stimulus. But if those principles can’t be realized, and we just end up fixing baseball fields and building aquariums, then forget it. Put me down for the opposition to that crap. If we’re talking about seriously moving money to all states & territories that need real infrastructure repairs, then I’m all for it. Though I’m not generally a fan of the GOP, I’m grateful for the opposition in this case. Hopefully, acceptable compromises can be achieved so that the principles of the stimulus can be realized and fiscal concerns are simultaneously addressed. Now is Obama’s opportunity to “walk the walk” in regards to respecting the opposition and formulating ideal resolutions.
Hartland managed to break the rule about a stopped clock. Though he is as smart as a broken clock but still he has not been right even once. Nothing can be more stupid than raising taxes during recession. Even Obama got that, not that it is difficult to be smarter than our john.
Means that Hartscheiss’s clock never stops. For the final “recommendation,” one might start w/Billy Jeff, Raines, the Capitol Hill Pimp-master, Dodd, etc.
Nothing can be more stupid than raising taxes during recession.
All depends on whose taxes.
Yes, we soon will find out what a rookie Obama is. What has he done officially as President so far? He went to the Oval Office because he thinks that’s what a President is supposed to do to look busy and Presidential. He showed up two to three and a half hours later than President Bush usually did, and used the opportunity to pose for a photo-op while his Chief of Staff gave him his instructions for the day. Apparently he thinks that made him look commanding and competent. Then he made a feckless feel-good call to Israel and its marauding enemies without actually doing anything to stop the terrorism inflicted on a US ally on a daily basis–or doing anything at all, for that matter. Then he went to a staged prayer session for another photo-op while his staff issued meaningless propaganda about cabinet ethics and transparency. Has he done anything to ameliorate the world economic crisis?
Why am I not surprised? He has absolutely no idea of what to do. It’s a quintessential case of a man being promoted to a position that’s beyond his capabilities. Far, FAR beyond his capabilities. His “aides” will continue to lead him around by the nose while he strives to appear Presidential to the masses. That seems to be the only policy plan he has. The world is waiting for a leader, but all it got was an empty suit.
“and bail out a bunch of state budgets. ”
dumber than a box of rocks
John Reichland,
yes, raising taxes on the wealthy and the middle class has worked so well in the past. If only Congress can take in more tax revenue it can solve all the nation’s problem’s, fiscal or otherwise. Its current “economic stimulus” scheme is a good example of that, right?
Stop goose stepping around the maypole and join the human race, nutjob.
yes, raising taxes on the wealthy and the middle class has worked so well in the past
I think taxes should be raised on the wealthy, not the middle class. It worked like a charm in the 1990s.
Reichland,
no, it didn’t. You’re spinning again. Get off your sister and go shoot some more beer cans off the fence behind your trailer.
I hate the unchallenged premise put forth by WaPo: “meaning most of the spending would come too late to lift the nation out of recession”
Spending, government or private, is not going to “lift the nation out of recession.” Come on — challenge the premise, else we’re going to lose this fight.
“Less than half the money…in a massive economic stimulus package unveiled by House Democrats is likely to be spent within the next two years, according to congressional budget analysts, meaning most of the spending would come too late to lift the nation out of recession.”
How delicious. The CBO openly states that within two years, the nation will be out of recession no matter what! All of the spending, the billions, trillions and quadzillions of dollars that our wise and compassionate Congressmen are chomping to spend… won’t really do anything at all.
Two years from now, this whole thing will be over no matter how much is spent. And the remaining billions, trillions and quadzillions of “relief” and “stimulus” dollars will be spent anyway…but alas “too late” to “lift the nation” out of a recession that will end even if Congress adjourns for two years without doing anything — let alone extracting more money from the wallets of American citizens.
How much of Congress’ compulsion to spend our money is fueled by media-soaked Americans’ need to watch “their” Congressman on TV “doing” “something” to “solve” the “crisis”?
In a world of always-something-new “news” media, nothing is worse than government-spent trillions that are spent “too late” for a politician, or The Government as a whole, to take credit for their noble effects. Given our politicians’ unwillingness to reject media-fueled public demands for them to “do something” new every hour, Americans who want their representatives to be adults can start by turning off their TV “news” channels for good. I have.
Beyond all the delayed action pie-in-the-sky realted to infrastructure, there are some practical things to do today. In Indiana, for example, they could replace all white lines on roads and highways with a paint that does not become invisible when it rains. Filling in the trillions of potholes in America with durable non-mafia asphalt is another worthy endeavor.
above, s/b “related”
Bob Miller – Who will spend the stimulus if not the people who decided to use that paint and asphalt? I see a lot of infrastructure that could be better. The problem is often not lack of money and the stimulus bill will not solve it.
Is that bill a way for the government to make better use of resources than the private sector (from whom the resources are taken, meaning: we will ultimately pay for all of this)? Remember that there is always the alternative of employing these resources immediately within the private sector through deregulation and tax cuts. When a couple of hundred lawmakers each have a couple of weeks to decide how to spend $ 1,500 million dollars on average, the answer is no. While there are always examples of useful or morally defendable spending the bulk will go to “nice to have” projects that never pay for themselves and that people would not vote to have if the cost wasn´t hidden. They are not “investments” but debt-financed pork which pays no return.