First Principles

I should have live-blogged this, so ripe it is with stupidity.  But here are some highlights as I sit a watch with increasing outrage and disbelief.

• Obama claimed that the “Stimulus” bill is stripped of earmarks.  Really?  Are you kidding?  Sure – only if you get really creative with the language.  You can rename all the hairs on your head, my friend – it still doesn’t make you bald.  Either he’s lying, or he believes this.  I don’t know what’s worse.
• “Creating or Saving 4 million Jobs.”  “Or saving“.  That’s the key.  By this standard, if the US only has 4 million total jobs left after His Hopefulness is done “fixing” the economy, he can claim success.  Once again, if you’re creative with the language, you can spin anything.
• This is NOT “the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.”  That would be the Stagflation of the Carter years.  It WILL be, however, if socialism prevails – just as FDR’s socialism extended the Great Depression.
• How exactly does fixing a school produce immediate economic stimulation?  How is that a federal responsibility?
• His talk about Elkhart, Indiana just about made my head explode.  He actually said that there were a bunch of RV customers out there ready to buy RVs, but they couldn’t get loans.  What?!?  Really?  Are you kidding me?  In this economy, people are just waiting around wanting to buy an RV, are credit worthy, but “can’t get a loan” so they can’t buy it?  That’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.  The people of Elkhart (“The RV Capital of America”) put every economic egg in one luxury item basket, and when economies struggle, luxury items are the first to go.  Simple as that.
• And speaking of RVs and Elkhart, what does Obama think is going to happen to that town when his global warming agenda kicks into gear?
• “Tax cuts alone can’t solve all our problems, especially when they’re targeted to the wealthy.”  God, I’m sick of this lie.  I got a bigger tax cut under Bush than the “rich” guys.  Under George Bush, the tax burden on the ultra-wealthy increased.  And in any event, it completely ignores all of Bush’s reckless spending, which got even worse under the Dems in the last two years.
• “90% of the jobs created by this plan will be in the private sector.”  Just because your paycheck is cut by a private contractor doesn’t make it a private sector job.  If the government is paying the general contractor who is using that money to pay you, that’s a government job.  And government jobs do NOT contribute to the GDP in anyway close to what an actual private sector job does.
• I wish he’d stop using the word “investing” to describe government programs.  There are instances where that is an accurate term – building a highway to connect a manufacturing center and the consumers and distributors of that product is one.  That’s a KNOWN technology and a KNOWN outcome.  But simply pouring “millions” into UNknown technologies is not an investment of the kind government should be making.  That’s the place where the private sector should be the most free to experiment.  In the civilian world, where dead-ends become obvious, funding is yanked.  In the world of government, more money is just thrown down the same black hole.
• Speaking of investments:  Real, well thought out, and (most importantly) profitable investments are long-term prospects.  A little extra time to stop and think about them is worth it.  The more urgent a stockbroker sounds to get me to buy something, the more likely I am to walk away – especially when I catch him lying about what the stock actually consists of (see “no earmarks”, above).
• 13 total questions, and he takes on on A-Rod’s steroid use?  Are you frickin’ kidding me?
• Ah yes.  Republicans want to “blow up” the public school system.  Riiiiight.  All because we want to give parents the same choice of where to send their kids to school that you and Michelle had?  If public schools are so great, why didn’t you send your kids there?  If the answer is, “I would in an ideal world, but they needed to be fixed first,” why didn’t you work to fix them?  And worst of all, why did you appoint the guy in charge of those failed schools to oversee the rest of the nation’s education system?  This lie offends me profoundly.
• “PAHK-ee-stahn” and “Tal-EE-bahn”.  Will you please stop?  I can just see them in their caves now.  “Gee, Mohammad – the Americans’ new President is making efforts to pronounce our names correctly.  Perhaps we should reconsider this e jihad thing!”  It’s such a college-know-it-all-hippy thing to say.
• In comparing Iraq and Afghanistan, I think he actually admitted success in Iraq.  I wonder if he’ll claim credit for that down the road…
• I happen to agree with him on Afghanistan, though.  I’m glad to see our presence increasing there.  I hope he’s smart enough to stay the hell out of the way.
• “Consultation” with Republicans does not equal “cooperation.”  All it means is that you listened to people who disagree with you and then ignored them.  That’s not bi-partisanship.  That’s fine, but can we please be honest?
• Especially when you then follow through with a dig about “Republican policies” which have gotten us here in the first place.  You’re right about that, Mr. President, but the policies you reference were wasteful spending and growing the size of the Federal Government.  And now you’re going to double down (or triple or quadruple) on that?!?  Gah.
• He clearly had a pre-prepared list of questioners.  Any bets on whether the questions were pre-approved, too?

Not that I had a lot of faith in Obama before, but after this, I have even less.  He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.  His economic theories are the worst kind of college dorm room, “BSing over a couple of bowls” tripe.

The only upside is that the scale of his ignorance is so profound, that his failure has the potential of also being swift and sure – preventing this kind of populist pap from irrevocably infesting our economy or national life.