Didn’t we have an election for “Change you can believe in”?
Obama’s first imperial press conference showed nothing is changing except the new prez is a smoother talker, not hard to do after 8 years of Bush’s tied tongue.
Obama sayeth:
What I won’t do is return to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us into this fix in the first place, because those theories have been tested and they have failed. And that’s part of what the election in November was all about. Okay?
Okay, okay, okay. We get it.
But what happened the last eight years? Bush blew $5 trillion on the Iraq War (not to mention all the dead Americans and Iraqis) and paid for it with inflation, deficits, and debt. To pacify upset voters, he went on the biggest domestic spending binge since LBJ.
What’s Obama doing? Continuing the Iraq War, escalating the Afghan War, conducting even more attacks on Pakistan, and spending even more wildly than Bush. And Obama isn’t ending the Bush inflation.
This post is so intellectually dishonest and completely imbecilic that one would think Mr. Seiler ( a former journalist? ) would be embarrassed.
anonster:
I am embarrassed.
But what, exactly, did you disagree with? Specifics, please? Reasoning, pretty please?
Where to begin, first the simian John Seiler says “Obama’s imperial press conference” , the word “imperial” is just as cheap a shot as my using “simian” to describe Mr. Seiler ( I really don’t know if Mr. Seiler resembles a monkey, but I suspect intellectual parity).
Secondly, Mr. Seiler accuses Obama of “continuing the Iraq War” and “escalating the Afghan War”, but the NYT reported on Jan. 22nd that “Mr. Obama summoned senior civilian and uniformed officials to the White House to begin his campaign promise to pull combat forces out of Iraq in 16 months” Obama is further quoted ” I asked the military leadership to engage in additional planning necessary to execute a responsible military drawdown from Iraq,” he added that he planned to “undertake a full review of the situation in Afghanistan in order to develop a comprehensive policy for the entire region.”. Now let’s remember that Obama has been in office all of 21 days, what realistically does Mr. Seiler expect Obama to have accomplished in that time frame? Does it really sound as if Obama is planning to continue on Bush’s track?
Thirdly Mr. Seiler equates Bush’s stimulus packages with Obama’s. Bush’s first stimulus was in the form of rebates and his second was a no-strings attached bailout to the banks. Obama’s stimulus includes; money for the states to extend food stamp and unemployment benefits, money for infrastructure projects and green energy programs, health care and education funding and home buyer tax credits. Some 42% of the stimulus is in the form of tax cuts and 58% in new government spending.It seems to me that this is targeted spending and we will at least GET something for our money, unlike the Iraq War where it all went down a rat hole. And by the by, where did you get the 5 trillion dollar figure? The highest estimate I’ve read is 3 trillion, but hey, what’s a couple trillion more or less, when you’re pulling the facts out of your big red simian butt.
Anonster:
1. Actually, America IS an empire. What would you call a country with troops in 130 countries; that currently is conducting wars in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; and that tells everybody else what to do — or else?
2. I’ll believe Obama wants to end the Iraq War when he actually takes out all the troops.
3. On the “stimuli”: money is fungible. Whether the money goes to the crooked banks or to food stamps, it’s all money the government stole from the taxpayers to give to the tax eaters. And it’s all going to make the Depression worse, not better.
4. The $5 trillion number. Google “Stiglitz” and “$5 trillion.” That’s George Stiglitz, Nobel economics laureate and mentor to some of Obama’s top economic advisers:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16111.html
5. As to my simian roots, see “Three Missing Links” starring the Three Stooges. Coitainly!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Missing_Links
Mr. Seiler
1. Referring to Obama as “Imperial” is still a cheap shot. I wonder if Bob Barr or some other Libertarian had been elected (and inherited our military, along with all our other problems) if you would take the same tone, somehow I doubt it. I suspect your snarkiness is reserved for Democrats.
2. While I can understand your scepticism when it comes to our military adventures, I believe your impatience is childish. I’m sorry to break this to you, but we won’t be removing 140,000 troops out of Iraq by magic.
3. I didn’t realize you were a fool and I know better than to try and reason with one.
4. It’s Joseph E Stiglitz and the name of his book; The Three Trillion Dollar War (coauthor Linda J Bilmes). Again, you were a journalist?
5. My apologies to simians everywhere.
See? Obama lovers are so blindly in love with
him to see one singular fact straight. It’s
amazing to say the least. Oh, right.
I keep forgetting… trashing anyone who happens
to be white males or white females for that
matter is fair game, non-racist/sexist, or a
cheap shot in any sense but make one honest
comment about your Precious Black Insane King
Obama and it is racist and a cheap shot right?
This is a sick part of Obama adorers’ delusion.
This will probably only stop when most of
Obama lovers become much more poor and more
disillusioned than they are now. And it will
come… it will happen… Obama voters’ revolt
is already well on its way. Only the utterly
insane on equal footing as Obama himself
will continue to live and drown in delusions
of grandeur. Notice that all of these Obama
lovers never criticize Obama’s insanity, inane
knowledge of facts, his inaccurate spewing
of history, or his misuse of words, or any
other blunder he spews on a daily basis… but
instead go out of their way to defend his
insanity and now clearly evident stupidity.
And I just learned that because Obama became
president, now blacks can ride in front of
the bus and can now achieve anything they
want to. Wow… who knew??? All because
Obama became president? Unbelievable.
As someone who voted for Obama, thinking he was smart and earnest in his promise to take us in a new direction, I can back the sentiments of this article.
When Bush gave us a stimulus bill in ’08, I cashed my check like everyone else, but I still disagreed with the principles of it. Where did all this magical money come from? Well, the magical future of course, a future that’s only going to get worse by the time it finally arrives.
Bushes stimulus bill was 150 billion dollars we didn’t have. Obama’s bill more than doubles that, clocking in at 400 billion.
Within the span of two years, we’ve magically made 550 billion dollars appear out of thin air. How are we ever going to begin paying it back? The economy’s going to keep getting worse, and we’re going to refuse to address the core issue of overspending, digging ourselves deeper into a pit of debt that’s going to be impossible to climb out of.
Not all of Obama’s voters are blindly in love with him, and as one, I’m disappointed that his first major act has been to do exactly what the previous administration was doing, only worse, in terms of the economy. Still, it’s a new presidency, it may start out in the same place and end up somewhere completely different, I don’t think that’s beyond our possibilities.
PS: “Lee” is retarded.
I believe if everyone really wants Obama to succeed they will get smart and vote out Reid, Pelosi, Chris Dodd, and Barney Franks to name a few. They need to find out who voted for that pork laden bill that no one read and when their election comes up vote them out. The news media will not expose “who” is wagging the dog but it is obvious that someone is. Anyone who finds fault with Obama or merely calls into question something Obama does it feels like the Gestapo flags that person to call them racist, a Republican, etc. no matter how much you loved the guy and wanted to see him in office. So many of us voted straight ticket and now the crazied pork spenders think they have a mandate. I believe in green but I wanted to believe in my pension plan.
If I lose my job I guess I can get a temp job building a bridge somewhere so they can say the employment rate didn’t go down for the next six months while I get out my hammer and nails. Straight ticket votes should be outlawed. That is how we got into this mess. Put someone in Congress that will oppose all this crazy spending of money my kids will have to repay. I will probably get a couple of hundred dollars and get unemployment for a while so I cannot help repay this debt. Hope you guys fair better than me.