Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The Obama speech on the deficit:Obama has chosen to use Fabian tactics against the Republicans. Using time as a weapon to diminish the (false) sense of urgency, get our military obligations scaled down, and most important of all, to allow the economy to recover. Many on the left will experience a "relief reaction", and warm up to Obama. But why did everyone have to be on pins and needles for months? The president is a good politician and has definitely manipulated his base - something which was evident today.
posted by Quiddity at 4/13/2011 06:26:00 PM
7 comments
But the sense of urgency isn't false. Gas and food prices are rising, and we're looking at serious inflation this year. Enough inflation that everyone who has been diligently saving money for their entire lives for a comfortable retirement is about to see all that evaporate in slow motion.
Plus, no one is hiring, probably because of speeches like tonight, which just throws into even sharper relief the reality that with Barack Obama, there is no connection between promises and commitment. He just submitted a budget, then gave a speech that threw it all out the window. Without even blinking. As if it was completely normal. With some people, you know that their word is their bond. There is NO SENSE of that with Barack Obama, and any benefits he gained from "manipulating his base" will be swamped by the political damage caused by the reality that's sharpening its teeth right now.
Take off your blinders. He's a terrible politician. He saved the Democratic Senate at the cost of incinerating local Democrats across the country -- how many state legislatures did the Democrats lose again? And he's poised to bring down the rest of the Democratic party with his billion-dollar reelection campaign that will simultaneously suck all of the funding out of local and state races, and hang himself around the necks of all Democrats like an albatross. Good politician? Holy crap. Show me a bad one.
In Europe we would dance in the streets if we had the fuel prices USians get apoplectic about. But admittedly our cars have engines far more fuel efficient and the cars themselves usually don't weigh as much as a light tank.
Just for the record, I commute daily to a work place 123 km away from home, so please don't tell me that the US is different just because of being larger.
HB
I'd love to get the new Fiat 500 with the two-cylinder engine that gets 57 miles per gallon. Unfortunately, Detroit has done such a good job of overselling horsepower that buyers think cars with less than a 100HP engine are inconceivable.
I don't think that word means what Detroit thinks it means.
jms blithered, Gas and food prices are rising, and we're looking at serious inflation this year.
Yawn. Another right-winger who knows nothing about economics.
Inflation is an increase in the general price level, which is more than just gas and food.
Furthermore, the money supply as defined broadly has been contracting post-Crash, so it's hard to see where inflation is going to come from in the near term.
jms asks:
"Good politician? Holy crap. Show me a bad one."
Answer: Paul Ryan
shag, depends on how you define 'good'. As a moral category few politicians fit that definition and a lot are outright evil. If you mean 'good at what they are doing', i.e. playing the game successfully, Ryan may turn out to be not that bad.
I am actually surprised how guys like him can be successful giving the typical attitude. Seeing and hearing many of the leading lights on the right I am repulsed by their mere appearance. Either extremly smug and condescending (the only thing missing being a nasal upper-class accent) or hysteric ('the end is nigh, the end is high, we are all gonna die!').
There are enough guys on the Left (or what counts for it in the current US) I loathe and consider as hypocrites but they rarely put me off the moment I see their faces or hear their first words (and before the loathsomeness of what they have to say has time to come out).
Anon (if I may get personal), the answer I provided was that of a "bad" politician, our own blast from the past: Eddie Munster aka Paul Ryan (or two-thirds of the Clint Eastwood movie "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly).
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