Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Thoughts about the speech...

1. Did you notice how tepid the response was when Obama brought up Social Security during his speech? I find hope in that palpable sense of unease.

2. Despite the populist tone, the fact remains: Obama's bailout plan nationalizes the losses incurred by the banks but privatizes the winnings.

3. Not long ago, Camille Paglia damned Bill Clinton for rushing his health care proposal. My response: Just when was Bill supposed to try to put such a plan through, if not in the space between the elections of '92 and '94? Now, Obama is trying to achieve health care reform at an even faster clip. What will people like Paglia say...? (Incidentally, a single-payer plan -- politically impossible in the '90s -- is now possible. But Obama won't do it.)

4. "Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs." Won't happen -- not unless you define "save" broadly.

5. "I understand that when the last administration asked this Congress to provide assistance for struggling banks, Democrats and Republicans alike were infuriated by the mismanagement and results that followed. So were the American taxpayers. So was I." Then why did he support the bailout? Why didn't he oppose handing so much power to Paulson?

6. "It's not about helping banks - it's about helping people." No. If it were about helping people, he would nationalize the banks.

7. "The United States of America does not torture." But we'll still outsource torture.

8. It's easy to recite applause lines. Not so easy to cough up details. His talk of deficit reduction was, under present circumstances, silly.

That's all for now...

11 comments:

Mike J. said...

The "save or create 3.5 million jobs" line is absolutely perfect because that is an unfalsifiable statement. So what if the economy loses, say, 5 million jobs in the next 4 years? Obama will still be able to say that, in the absence of his stimulus, it would have lost 8.5 million jobs...

I'm only surprised Karl Rove did not come up with it first...

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad I watched Boston Legal on Ion. I can deal with Denny Crane better. Or,as a friend said about Denny, "Oh, someone more in touch with reality."

Anonymous said...

I think the man has a lot of nerve to give an inspirational speech when three days after his inauguration he demonstrated his contempt for international law and the US Constitution by launching a military attack on a nation that was no threat to us (Pakistan) and killing 14 civilians in violation the Nuremberg Principles, and thus Article 6 of the Constitution.

Anonymous said...

I was disgusted by the remark "The United States of America does not torture." To make the same claim as Condi and W without providing some commentary to distance himself from the earlier claims was despicable. He should have said something to show that we really mean it now.

Anonymous said...

I thought it was Obama's best speech ever.

But then again, I watched it with the sound off.

Anonymous said...

Sorry to say I didn't watch it (although I understand that Bobby Jindal's Republican response was a hoot and a half!), but I did get to watch the Bobbleheads on teevee swooning and drooling about it.

Fredster, isn't Boston Legal the greatest?! Granted, I could watch James Spader read the Denny's menu and be transfixed, but everyone on that show is fantabulous. I still don't get the point of ION Television, but I'm delighted that it shows mini-marathons of Boston Legal on a regular basis.

Anonymous said...

It was a roundabout "It's morning in America again," "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" way to say he's cutting Medicare and Social Security:

"To preserve our long-term fiscal health, we must also address the growing costs in Medicare and Social Security. Comprehensive health care reform is the best way to strengthen Medicare for years to come. 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."

Anonymous said...

I heard that it was going to be on, but we'd just driven in from a great family visit in CA, and I didn't want to harsh my mellow. I'll go read the transcript tonight.

Anonymous said...

Cutting Medicare:

The $634 billion Obama wants to set aside for health care would be almost evenly divided between spending reductions and tax increases.

Obama's plan would trim $316 billion over 10 years from Medicare. Some of the savings would come from scaling back payments to private insurance plans that serve older Americans, which many analysts believe to be inflated. Other proposals include charging upper-income beneficiaries a higher premium for Medicare's prescription drug coverage.

Anonymous said...

On point 2:

In late January on his blog Paul Krugman referred to this as "lemon socialism."

On points 4 and 8:

Slippery phrasing abounds. I second Mike J. on point 4 and on point 8 remark that when you're looking at a what? $2 trillion deficit for 2009, it's easy to talk vaguely about reducing it (er, I hope so, at least): you can simply run equal deficits for two more years, then cut a dollar off, and you've kept your promise.

On point 7:

What he said a few weeks ago is that we will abide by the guidelines in the Army Field Manual.
What he DIDN'T say was that Bush had stated the same thing...but only AFTER changing the AFM to include various of what anywhere else would be considered torture practices.

The progblogs pointed this fact out at the time it happened (a few years back); funny how they're not pointing it out now.


Sergei Rostov

Nick Stone said...

I'm starting to warm up to the idea of nationalizing those banks, oddly enough.