A reminder from Obama’s February 2009 speech
By: Daniel Becker
In answer to the generic question regarding President Obama’s actions regarding the debt ceiling, I am re-posting this from 2/25/09. In comments of the original I stated that cutting the deficit by 1/2 seemed to “optimistic” for me.
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Ok, here are my basic issues with the substance of President Obama’s speech. First, may I remind everyone that as of 11/08 I declared my divorce successful. Has it become my mission accomplish moment?
I heard this:
“And we will expand our commitment to charter schools. but as a father when I say that responsibility for our children’s education must begin at home.”
And thought: 2 tier education system/vouchers, no thank you. Education begins at home when home means one parent has the time to spend at home oppose to both working.
I heard this:
“And we must also begin a conversation on how to do the same for Social Security, while creating tax-free universal savings accounts for all Americans.”
And thought: Are you freak’n kidding me! In this time of financial collapse we’re still going to talk about turning an insurance for the masses against the follies of finance into some form to include finance? The entire reason we want to create jobs is because we have suddenly realized that the vast, vast majority do not earn their money from money. Tax free? Has he not heard of 401K, IRA and all it’s versions, HSA, higher education accounts? Italy?
I heard this:
“Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office.”
And thought: Yeah, how’d that work for the last administration who made such a declaration? Did he have to say “in half”? Has his advisors not taught him about the blip during the FDR recovery? Only one way I can think of doing this: Raise taxes where the money is and whack the defense budget in half and I mean take a swipe at all moneys related to security. Are we really $1 trillion dollars worth of paranoid?
Liberals in 2008 “Hosanna. hosanna” (waving palm branches)
Liberals in 2011 “Crucify him, crucify him”
Huh.
str,
Forgot this line:
Liberals in Nov 2012: “Vote for Obama to save us!”
It is predictable. Any good links to what’s actually in the deal? I didn’t see much of anything from what I saw (the Balanced Budget Amendment has as much chance of passing of me getting to walk on Neptune in the next year)
Islam will change
“Liberals in 2008 “Hosanna. hosanna” (waving palm branches)
Liberals in 2011 “Crucify him, crucify him”
Huh.”
In 2008 it was jesus on the donkey
In 2011 it is Satan that we welcomed with Crucify Him!
That sneeky Satan guy is a shape changer.
Conservatives in 2001: “Hosanna, hosanna” (waving palm brances)
Conservatives in 2007: “Hosanna, Hosanna” (palm branches worn out and skeletal, but followers still waving them and shouting that they have never fallen apart)
This deal seems very fluid, I don;t think we know yet.
Not this conservative, by 2004 I had dropped my palm fronds and shot the donkey.
Could all of this be theater and nothing much will really be settled until the 2012 election?
Just wondering…..
When the commission meets the War profiteers’ Lamborginis will get shined a little less often.
dd,
There was a schism in early AD’s which questioned whether the snake was satan after all.
str,
Having watched C-SPAN on line for the HoR vote, it seems everyone held their noses and voted, the dems about evenly split and the reps 3 to 1 for it. I do not think all the tea partiers voted no, but I have not seen the roll call.
I expect the idea of cutting the perpetual mobilization charade to get the ‘budget balanced’ will kill the deal.
I am off line tonight writing my tea party rep about why in over 3 months he cannot get DoD to explain an obvious peice of fraud involving some of his constituents.
The tea party is all for war welfare when they get contributions form employees and employers.
They won’t want to lose their donations from the folk shining the Lamborgini.
How can the war machine be a Lamborgini when they want to shut old folks out of nursing homes?
str & buff
Does it surprise you that those who supported a self described progressive Democrat in 2008 are now sorely disappointed to find that they helped to elect a Democratic Leadership Council foil. The man has turned his back on his base. He has used his apparent identity to cover up the reality of his politics. So those progressive voters who had thought that they had elected a genuine leader of the progressive movement are now reacting to the Judas that he has turned out to be.
Why so many people hate the federal government:
http://wusa9.com/news/article/161065/158/Woodpecker-Saving-Daughter-Costs-Mom-500
So folks are suprised that Obama did what he said he was going to do? I guess it relates to the fake Obama they had made up in their heads, not the real one.
Lyle
I am afraid you may be right. I voted against O in the primaries because of what he said. I voted for him in the general because of what McCain said.
I was always expecting this… I kind of had an inside line watching my local Democrats ignore the Social Security issue… but I still managed to feel betrayed.
It’s watching the guy from day to day either lie through his teeth or just show that he doesn’t have a clue, or a backbone..
and then I remember that he burst on the scene with a speech about how all us red staters and blue staters was all god’s chillun and couldn’t we just get along.
Hadn’t quite realized he meant “can’t we just invite our neighborhood rapist in for tea and offer him our daughters… in the spirit of compromise.
str
An interesting and some what amusing insight into the limitations of human behavior. An unfortunate incident for the family cited in the story and an example of the inadequacy of an employee’s response to their job responsibilities. The story doesn’t describe the federal government at work. We were seeing that over the last several days as the media covered the “debt crisis” negotiations amongst elected officials. There we saw well coordinated inaction and interference. The story of the US Wildlife agent is one of an overly zealous response run amoke without appropriate mangerial intervention. We’ve all seen the same stupidity in both public and private organizations that have to rely upon the individual behavior of employees. I’ve worked both systems and I have witnessed repeatedly the exhibition of asinine behavior both at the direction of management and self determined. People make up complex oreganizations so why expect anything better than what you know to be average human behavior. Be happy US Wildlife agents don’t carry guns. Though, on the other hand, they too have to deal with truly stupid human behavior on the part of poachers. Then they may need guns.
jack
i agree with you whole heartedly, but without even reading the article i can guess “why so many people hate the federal government,” the state government, the city government, the power company, the insurance companies, lawyers,… pretty much we think in anecdotes and overgeneralize and ignore our own contradictions.
where it gets dangerous is when a well financed faction mines horror stories and repeats them and repeats them until they become THE mind of the masses. you know “gov’t bad, money good.”
“Education begins at home when home means one parent has the time to spend at home oppose to both working.”
See, this is one of those statements in which reason is cast aside in service of political puffery. Whatever choices a the adults in a family make or have imposed on them in the labor market, there is no excuse for neglecting children. I’m a single parent. I get home from a job, cook, oversee homework, talk to my kids, listen to them tell me about their day. It’s kinda nice.
And I have no patience at all for idiot politicization of family issues. You have a real plan for the labor market, for education, for child care services? Let ‘er rip. You want to claim that taking care of children is so hard, boo hoo, that only full-time parents can manage it? Indefensible crap.
Sorry you think such. I was not saying parenting is so hard as that only one staying at home can do such. No need to make this personal. Plus, you have been reading here long enough that I would have thought you would know exactly what I’m talking about.
Yes, I read your original comment at the original post too. Never mentioned it.
My comment was in regard to Obama’s comment that education begins at home. I was implying that the better solution is to have an economy that allows one parent to stay home while the other is capable of supplying all the financial needs of the family. And before we go off on what defines “needs”, lets keep to the basic of housing, transportation, medical, savings, food, clothing, education.
We lost a lot as culture moved from an agricultural society to an industrial one as it relates to what I believe is a better environment for raising children. We moved from 2 parent home to one to none.
We have commercialized the raising of children as we have moved the cost of living and the wages earned to where it takes two to produce an equalibrium.
Which gets me to: “Whatever choices a the adults in a family make or have imposed on them in the labor market,..”
Yeah, exactly. Now lets change what is “imposed” on them.
Plan: elect different people such that policy is implimented such that labor gets rewards of the increase productivity they partake in via increased income for labor (physical or mental) provided.
But, then since day one of blogging here that has been my position. And I know you know that.
kharris
i might or might not agree with you about parenting, but “reason is cast aside for political puffery” is … political puffery devoid of reason. whatever your opinions, it is not simply the case that those who disagree with you… or merely fail to express themselves to your satisfaction… are any worse at reasoning than you are.
“indefensible crap” is a nice emotional statement which, i am sorry to say, is indefensible crap. it just means, in this case, that you failed to understand what it was that Becker was trying to say.
Which I assume… on the basis of no more certain insight than yours… was less a defense of bad parenting, than an attack on the simplistic mental novacaine that Obama was offering. O’s excuse was that he is a politician and he has to say both “education good” and “parenting better” to try to satisfy as much of the great unthinking masses as he can.