Cactus sends a note

by cactus

I had some more or less random thoughts:

1. If Obama wins the election, in five or six years expect the folks on the right to blame the state of the economy in 2008 on him. They’ve had more than enough practice – how many times have you heard about how the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began on FDR’s watch, or that he produced dismal growth? More recently, we’ve started hearing about the Great Recession of the Year 2000, so why would Obama be any different?

2. If Obama wins the election and raises taxes, expect the economy to do better from 2009 to 2017 than it did from 2001 to 2009. (And I note – I don’t see the signs that Obama will make a good president though of course I hope he proves me wrong, its merely that I don’t expect him to be this dismal.) Expect the folks on the right to first predict the opposite, and then, after 2017, to deny the economy improved. Expect much Sowellizing and possibly new, improved forms of misleading with data.

3. Speaking of folks on the right, what happened to not changing horses in midstream, the constant rallying cry of 2004? Iraq still hasn’t been resolved to anyone’s satisfaction – heck, even our puppet wants some sort of timetable to guarantee we’re going to get out – the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, and the economy has tanked. So… if “keep doing what we’re doing” was promoted as the solution to a relatively small problem (Iraq in 2004), why don’t they simply announce that the conservative position is to keep doing what we’re doing on everything now?