"I ran for President because I believed in an America where ordinary folks could get ahead; where if you worked hard, you could have a better life. That’s been my focus since I came into office, and that has to be our focus now. It’s one of the reasons why we’re working to reduce our nation’s deficit. Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can’t afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs.
The good news is, Democrats and Republicans agree on the need to solve the problem".
-- Barack Obama, Weekly Radio Address, 7/2/11.
I despair. The man is openly embracing all the mendacious conservative talking points of Reaganomics: 1) If you haven't achieved the American Dream, you just haven't worked hard enough; 2) The false equivalence between family budgets and government budgets; 3) The economy will grow if we starve it; and 4)The Confidence Fairy created through such starvation will transform profit-hoarding corporations into wondrous Tinker Belles who will tinkle their golden drops of beneficence on all the rest of us. Yeah, that last part so totally worked out in the Bush Regime and its corporate welfare program, didn't it?
Of course, the radio address comes just one day after Obama apparently met his June fund-raising goals. According to the latest email from Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) chairman Jim Messina, a grand total of 475,000 rubes sent in their meager dollars and entered for a chance to win dinner with the president (and Biden). So pay no attention to that pedagogic press con the other day, in which Obama pretended to chide his fellow Republicans. The compulsive repetitive talking points of cutting out tax deductions for corporate jets and allowing a few subsidies to expire as planned are just crumbs to placate the pesky base.
The good news, according to the One, is not the fact that he is fighting back, but that Democrats and Republicans are agreeing on the same fake problem. They are embracing the same fantasy, so all is right in Austeriana. Watch the video of his address if you have a strong stomach. He actually emphasizes the "TR" in the trillions he wants to cut. Too bad he hasn't channelled the other TR -- the original progressive bull moose, who invented the Bully Pulpit, now gathering much dust.
The president appeared to have mounted it briefly this week, but he has jumped down in a hurry and is once again wallowing in the same bipartisan bullshit.
| Slashing the Safety Net in Order to Save It |
No comments:
Post a Comment