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No, he can't
I found this well worth the read. A wee taste...Barack Obama was always going to disappoint. When you promise almost everything to almost everybody--I'll stop the fighting in Iraq but I'll also keep going after al Qaeda there; I'll make the economy grow more but I'll spread the wealth around, and so on--you will inevitably let many people down. Human beings, even those who read fluently from teleprompters, simply cannot walk on water. A president with historic ambitions was never going to be content with tackling a mere recession. Thus in his televised address before both houses of congress in February he delivered a special history lesson: "Our economy did not fall into decline overnight. Nor did all our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank." The current recession and housing and financial problems have deeper causes, he said. What are these underlying maladies that so badly need the shaman's touch? The president named four: energy, healthcare, education and debt. The "day of reckoning" for ignoring these issues--and for exacerbating this failure with excessive borrowing--has arrived, he said. Americans who concentrated on the president's words rather than on their characteristically sonorous delivery found the diagnosis baffling. Education, energy and healthcare policy in the US, as almost anywhere, all need help. But are America's flaws in these areas really the causes of the housing bust and the paralysed banking system? What about the cyclical contractions that follow all economic booms? What about a decade and more of absurdly cheap money? How about all that Fannie and Freddie-fuelled lending to inappropriate borrowers? What happened to lax oversight? What about greed, that comforting straw man? No, according to Obama, we are losing our jobs and being kicked out of our excessively mortgaged houses because America lacks universal healthcare, federally sponsored nursery school, university for all, and a progressive emissions-oriented energy policy. Posted by: eltoroverde 2009-04-22 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=268143 |