Posted on 04/03/2012 7:41:05 PM PDT by Kaslin
Today we witnessed something truly remarkable. Barack Obama managed to out-do himself by uncorking what very well may have been the most dishonest, demagogic, and bitterly partisan speech of his presidency. I render that assessment as someone who has sat through and analyzed countless Obama lectures, some of which earned very high marks for deceit and ideological invective. Indeed, today's Occupy-inspired rant takes the cake. It was a depressing and enraging preview of the next seven months, over which this president will unleash a barrage of sophistic and pernicious arguments deliberately designed to sow discord and divide Americans. He will do so with no regard for the truth, history, or the Constitution he swore to uphold. I genuinely cannot see how anyone who considers him- or herself a "conservative" in any meaningful sense could watch this screed and not immediately redouble his resolve to help defeat the man who delivered it. Adequately addressing and debunking this speech is going to be a Herculean undertaking. Nearly every single paragraph is littered with distortions, scorched straw men, and flat untruths. But I'm going to take a stab at it.
Disclaimers: (1) This is going to be a very long post, even as I try to pare down my responses. If I dissected every misstatement and fib in the full remarks, this piece might achieve War and Peace proportions. (2) I'm working from C-SPAN's rush transcript. (3) I'll add video as it become available. And with those items securely in place, we're off ... President Obama begins by feigning fealty to the private sector and free markets. After ticking off a list of Republican presidents who supported some form of government expansion, he assails "trickle-down" economics, branding the conservative vision for America a failed "experiment:"
Show me a business leader who would not profit if more americans could afford to get the skills and education that today's jobs require. Ask any company where they would rather locate and hire workers, a country with crumbling roads and bridges or one committed to high-speed internet and high- speed railroad and high-tech research and development? It doesn't make us weaker when we guarantee basic security for the elderly, sick, or those who are actively looking for work. What makes us weaker is when fewer and fewer people can afford to buy the goods and services are businesses sell. When entrepreneurs don't have the financial securities to take a chance and starting a business. What drags down our entire economy is when there is an ever widening chasm between the ultra rich and everybody else...Yet, for much of the last century, we have been having the same argument with folks who keep paddling some version of trickle-down economics.
How is it possible that America remains plagued by "crumbling roads and bridges" after we've just spent $825 Billion of borrowed money on a stimulus program ostensibly fashioned to fund and execute precisely those types of "shovel ready projects"? Obama's solution is more spending, more borrowing, more failure. Next, income inequality exists, but this "ever-widening chasm" language is both exaggerated and unsupported by the facts. The presidential "education" goes on:
They keep telling us that if we convert more of our investment in education, research and health care into tax cuts, especially for the wealthy, our economy will grow stronger. They keep telling us if we strip away more regulations and let businesses pollute more and treat workers and consumers with impunity, somehow we will all be better off. We are told that when the wealthy become even wealthier and corporations are allowed to maximize profits by whatever means necessary, it's good for America and their success will translate into more jobs and prosperity for everyone else. That is the theory. The problem for advocates of this theory is that we have tried their approach on a massive scale. The results of their experiments are there for all to see. At the beginning of the last decade, the wealthiest americans received a huge tax cut in 2001 and another huge tax cut in 2003. We were promised that these tax cuts would lead to faster job growth. They did not. The wealthy got wealthier, we would expect that. the income of the top 1% has grown by more than 275% over the last few decades to an average of $1.3 million a year. But prosperity sure did not trickle down. Instead, during the last decade, we had the slowest job growth in half a century.
Here, our "post-partisan," self-stylized messiah accuses Republicans of supporting pollution and worker abuse. How insulting. I'll address this point when he revisits it with a vengeance later on. His unserious caricature of free market capitalism is hardly worth responding to. It's the equivalent of a petulant Republican president standing up and saying the Democrat vision for the country is to transform it into a North Korea-style police state. This brand of rhetoric is below the presidency, but has never been below this president. The 2001 and 2003 tax cuts helped pull America out of the recession that President Bush inherited. It led to more than 50 consecutive months of job growth and declining deficits (prior to the 2008 crisis) -- even as we spent heavily on two wars. President Obama is asking Americans to turn their backs on the "bad old days" of 5.3 percent unemployment (Bush's average) and annual deficits that look like foothills compared to today's Obama-institutionalized Himalayas of red ink. And does this president really want to gripe about previous "slow job growth"?
The typical American family actually saw their incomes fall by about 6% even as the economy was growing. there was a time when insurance companies and insurance -- and a financial lenders did not have to abide by strong enough wedges -- strong enough regulations and found ways around them. what was the result? Profits for these companies soared, but so did people's health insurance premiums, patients were repeatedly denied care, often when they needed it most, families were enticed and sometimes just plain tricked into buying homes they could not afford, huge, reckless bets were made with other people's money on the line and our entire financial system was nearly destroyed. We tried this theory out. you would think after the results of this experiment in trickle-down economics, after the results were made painfully clear, the proponents of this theory might show some humility. might moderate their views a bit. You would think they would say, you know what? Maybe some rules and regulations are necessary to protect the economy and prevent people from being taken advantage of by insurance companies or mortgage lenders. Maybe, just maybe, at a time of growing debt and widening inequality, we should hold off and giving the wealthiest americans another round of big tax cuts.
Banks were forced into lending people money to "buy" homes they couldn't afford through federal edicts like the Community Reinvestment Act. As a young community organizer, Barack Obama trained Left-wingers to aggressively agitate in favor of coercing banks into issuing these risky, subprime mortgages. Directly contradicting the tale Obama is now spinning, Republicans repeatedly tried to increase regulation to prevent the meltdown that Barack Obama helped cause -- and that perversely helped sweep him into office. Democrats strenuously objected at the time. It takes a stunning degree of cognitive dissonance and cynicism to pawn off the consequences of your mess onto your political opponents after it nearly sinks the entire economy. And to echo a previous question, does this president really want to discuss "reckless bets made with other people's money"? Really? Next, Obama paints a cartoonish portrait of the dystopian hell-hole America will become if Paul Ryan's budget is enacted:
Instead of moderating their views even slightly, the Republicans running congress right now have double down. They have proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the Contract for America look like the new deal. In fact, that renowned liberal, Newt Gingrich, first called the original version of the budget radical. He said it would contribute to right- wing social engineering. This is coming from newt gingrich. This is not a budget supported by some small group in the republican party. This is now the party's governing platform. This is what they are running on. One of my potential opponents, Governor Romney, has said he hopes a similar version of this plan from last year would be introduced as a bill on day one of his presidency. He says he's very supportive of this new budget and he even called it marvelous -- which is a word you don't often hear when it comes to describing the budget. [laughter] It's a word you don't often hear generally. [Laughter].
Hilarious! Say, has Obama himself used "marvelous" in public remarks on multiple occasions? Of course he has! But that's a silly critique. In the passage above, Obama plays into the tired liberal trope that every single Republican politician or idea is either dumber or more evil than the previous one. He expects us to believe the Contract for America was spectacularly awesome compared to this wing-nut Ryan budget. (Also, thanks a lot, Newt). And since when did Republicans take over "Congress"? Last time I checked, Democrats -- who have intentionally avoided offering budget plans of their own to escape all accountability -- run the Senate. The president elides this pesky little nugget for some reason. It's almost as if he's actively trying to confuse people, or something. We continue...
Here is what this marvelous budget does...I want to go through what it would mean for our country if these cuts were to be spread out evenly. Bear with me, I want to go through this because I don't think people fully appreciate the nature of this budget. The year after next, nearly 10 million college students would see their financially cut by an average of more than $1,000 each. There would be 1600 fewer medical grants, research grants for things like alzheimer's, cancer and AIDS. There would be 4000 fewer scientific research grants, eliminating support for 48,000 researchers, students and teachers. Investments in clean energy technologies helping us reduce our dependence on foreign oil would be cut by nearly a fifth.
If this budget becomes law and cuts were applied evenly, starting in 2014, over 200,000 children would lose their chance to get an early education in the headstart program. 2 million mothers and young children would be cut from a program that gives them access to healthy food. There would be 4500 fewer federal grants at the department of justice and the FBI to combat by the crime, financial crime, and helped secure our borders. Hundreds of national parks would be forced to close for part or all of the year. We would not have the capacity to enforce the laws that protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat. Cut to the FAA would likely result in more flight cancellations, delays, and the complete elimination of air- traffic control services and parts of the country. Over time, our weather forecasts would become less accurate because we would not be able to afford to launch new satellites. That means governors and mayors would have to wait longer to order evacuations in the event of a hurricane. That's just a partial sampling of the consequences of this budget.
Dishonest, demogogic and bitterly partisan. Yep, that’s our Barky.
(Simpsons) Comic book guys agrees....”Worst speech ever!”
Time for Barry to make like a fat man’s pants and “split”.
........................I want to go through what it would mean for our country if these cuts were to be spread out evenly. ....................
Or even maybe it would mean, contrary to the proposed financial armeggedon effecting thousands of childrens and seniors, it could kinda impact 1,500,000 government workers with either layoffs or frozen wages!
But the children? What happens to the innocent children????
Oh my God, no food or shelter for the children!
Paul Ryan you are the devil personified!
One can only wash your clothes so many times on the rocks before they begin to fall apart.
Of all people, Axelrot should know that you have to own it after 4 years. I don't care if you followed Hoover -- you own it. And the nation will reject you if you don't.
deliberately designed to sow discord and divide Americans-————
Saul Alinsky is ingrained in Obama.
He claimed to be the uniter, but instead has divided this country unimaginable
The Community-Organizer-in-Chief.
That's all he is. That's all he'll ever be.
A well-deserved bookmark! THANKS!
FINALLY, the incompetence of Obama is showing up in his speeches.
As his failed programs become more obvious to his more radical supporters, the unraveling of the Obama nightmare will continue to accelerate.
It was inevitable. You can’t HIDE incompetency for very long.
isn't this a rehash of Pelosi's "passthebill-andthen-we'lltellyou-what's-init" speech?
“He claimed to be the uniter, but instead has divided this country unimaginable”
He has divided himself from many of the fools who voted for him in 2008; I believe he has lost many of them.
srbfl
BTTT.
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