How many times can one man say “How are you? Good to see you?” consecutively and still be considered articulate?
What mistakes have you made and what would you do differently?
“when I came into office, we were facing the biggest recession since the great depression” The depression was not a recession, it was a depression
“it was absolutely the right thing to do to cut taxes for the middle class so they would have enough money to get through the recession” Thanks for the extra $50/month
“[I would have explained] to the American people that it would take a while to get out of this” What you actually did was dress yourself up as a savior who would instantly calm the winds as at Galilee
“I think that a continuing decline in the housing market is something that hasn’t bottomed out as quickly as we expected. We’ve had to revamp our housing program several times” And it still isn’t working.
“are we investing in R&D in order to emphasize technology, and a lot of that has to come from government. That’s how the internet got formed, that’s how GPS got formed” –I thought Algore invented the net
“more students are getting more affordable student loans than ever before because of our programs” So, you’ve made it easier for them to get into debt? Brilliant!
“more people going to college will not have to pay more than 10% of their income on repayment” Oh, the answer to that is to not get a job, awesome.
“all of us need to find a way to make higher education accessible to everybody” but it isn’t FOR everybody. We have tons of students who are not committed to success or prioritizing school who are not performing
“community colleges is a huge underutilized resource. What we want is to set up a lifetime learning service…” Community colleges are very expensive because they are heavily subsidized by taxes, and they are rarely if ever tied to industry or commercial interests directly. It’s a nice idea, but it isn’t true currently
“typically the government’s always running a modest deficit” what is modest about $12 trillion?
“I want to promote alternative energy everywhere”
“we made the largest investment in clean energy anywhere in our recovery act” and now those companies are failing. “our greatest accomplishment is in advanced battery manufacture” even if true, batteries don’t create energy, they store it.
“collective bargaining is the reason why the majority of Americans enjoy the minimum wage, weekends, overtime. So many things we take for granted are because workers came together to bargain with employers…labor has to take management into account” If management goes bankrupt, then labor goes to the soup line.
“john needs to work on his typing skills” Notice how quick he is to criticize the Speaker when he hears the moderator misspeak that it WAS Boehner’s fault but not correct it when the moderator corrects himself and says it was not.
“over the past 15 months, we’ve seen 2 million jobs created in the private sector” Do the math, and if we’re adding 150,000 jobs per month, that does not add up to 2 million, even if they were all private sector, which they were not, not to mention that we need 1.5 million jobs over that time period just to keep up, not to make up for the unexpected loss
“zero capital gains taxes on startups” Startups don’t have capital gains.
“I’m just going to keep on trying and hope that eventually people will see the light” So, you’re right and we’re just not bright enough to figure out how brilliant you are? What about Republics don’t you understand? You hold your office to represent us, not to dominate us. Oligarchy…
“seeing if we can lower interest rates” So, you want to manipulate banks? Oh, the Ericksons would love you.
Most of his comments are vapid and betray a fundamental misconception of how things actually are
“we were able to get this payroll tax that put $1000 in the pockets of every American…and get unemployment insurance extended (to almost two years), and that was a much better deal than a lot of people expected” Ok, I did not get $1000, and even if I had, that’s a paltry $20 per week
Class warfare rhetoric about corporate jets, oil profits, corporate loopholes
“we need to reduce discretionary spending on programs that aren’t working” which programs are discretionary when they are all sacred cows to someone?
“make sure government is spending within its means” if you believe that, then do it, damn it
Kevin Klein tells us that now that Obama’s in the white house, nobody wishes he were president. He talks about revenue and refuses to cut spending, irrespective of all the waste in government and the new garbage built in as new baseline spending. Cuts in 12 years; revenue increases immediately. Taxes increase, but the benefits never happen. Statists never feel bound to keep their promises. Tell me when the bad guys have ever kept a deal they made. “I tell you Dave, I’ve been over this stuff a bunch of times, it just doesn’t add up. If I ran my business this way, I’d be out of business.” --Dave
“I have cut taxes for the middle class repeatedly”
“we actually now have the lowest tax rates since the 1950s. our taxes are lower than they were under Ronald Reagan”. Which ones? There are lots of things that have gone WAY up since then.
“people like me who have been extremely fortunate, mostly because lots of people bought my book, should be willing to pay a few percent to make sure seniors still have health care and kids still have books” He owes the American people a lot more than that as he luxuriates at our expense and doesn’t suffer like we do. It’s very class warfare rhetoric.
“that’s not an unreasonable position to take, and a vast majority of Americans agree” I guess I’m out of touch with a majority of Americans
“that doesn’t mean we can spend whatever we want. We’ll still have to make tough decisions, like about defense spending” why is it always defense that the Statists want to cut?
“no federal program will be able to solve the housing bubble” then why are you talking about that as your priority if it’s something you yourself admit cannot be done to effect?
“we made a decision” Well, sir, I did not. Perhaps these are decisions that should be remade by every successive generation instead of accepting the whims of another generation distal to us in space and time. After all, you routinely argue that the Founders were out of touch with modern times. What makes FDR prescient?
“it’s important that we get good bang for the buck in education” We are not getting that
“we need to pay for good teachers” Yes, and we need to get rid of the bad ones, which the NEA and other unions will not allow based on collective bargaining, which you so laud
“internets”… yeah, he’s tech-savvy
“reducing our dependence on oil is good for our economy, it’s good for our security, and it’s good for our planet”. They no longer say foreign oil, they hate oil period. The irony with this is that it’s predicated on the notion that one day we won’t need oil, but the economy and national security require oil right this minute and in large quantities.
“we’re going to need oil for some time, but…” That’s not what his policies reflect, and how will wind and solar power make things more efficient? There is no battery system of which I am aware with enough power to provide the torque necessary to run a wood lathe.
“increased fuel efficiency standards on cars” does not make things better except for reduce oil consumption. It does not make cars safer or cheaper or better. It forces people to buy cars they don’t want with loans they can ill afford to impress people and save a planet they may not like.
“as part of the deal to bail out the auto industry we told them to focus on cars of the future instead of gas guzzlers of the past” Ok, I get 39 mpg, but you can’t buy a car like mine today. To get better mileage than that, I’d have to buy a Prius which I can buy here locally for the low price of only $33,000 or about three times what my Saturn cost new, which is a poor way to save money as a consumer to buy a car that costs thrice the price to save on fuel costs, especially when insurance will negate fuel savings. The cars are so much more expensive to comply with these regulations that we might have been better off economically if they had never been imposed at all.
“I see a balanced approach…from the people who can most afford it” What about Obama’s ultimatum to leave certain things out of the discussion is balanced? He’s an Obamist. Also, if we take from people according to their ability and it costs thrice the price for a person who earns thrice the wage, the net wage effect is the same, and he’s only richer on paper, not on a net basis.
“let’s allow the private sector to get in {to space travel}” and this he says after saying if not for government we would never have been there in the first place
Cut defense contract, end war on drugs, end agribus and oil subsidies, and invest in campaign financing
“investing in prevention is the most cost effective thing we can do” then turn the CBP/DHS loose!
“there is no doubt that money affects what goes on in Washington and the more we can reduce that effect, the better things will be” agreed, says the poorer of we two to the richer
“people have an exaggerated expense that we spend a large percent on foreign aid, but it has a big impact” they why do you allow your fans to think nation-building is such a bad thing if it’s statistically insignificant as part of the budget?
We need to raise taxes
“if wealthy individuals are willing to simply go back to rates that existed in the 90s when rich people were doing very well, it’s not like they were poor, and by the way that’s when we say the highest job growth rates and greatest reduction in poverty and businesses were profitable” you’re assuming causality, that tax increases will make economic prosperity possible,
“you’re entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts” yes, remember that. Facts are sticky things and depend a lot on how you gather them. You cannot theorize without them, else you begin to fit the facts to suit your theories.
“a modest increase [in taxes] on the wealthiest of individuals has not shown to have a significant impact on job growth” I would really like to see the data on this
“all our troops are slated to be out by the end of this year” but wait, I heard him say that 10,000 were staying. Deceiver in chief
“we can’t simply lop off 25% of the defense budget overnight” but apparently that is his goal, since he added the time frame qualifier
“the nice thing about the defense budget is that it’s so big, it’s so huge that a 1% reduction is the equivalent of the education budget, I’m exaggerating” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
“it’s so big you can make relatively modest changes to defense that give you a lot of headroom to fund things like basic research and student loans” Ok, two problems. Defense is a legitimate function and duty of government, but research and student loans are NOT. Secondly, defense is about 20% of the budget, according to the CBO, and that’s while WE ARE AT WAR
“I’m a big supporter of biofuels…we need to accelerate our basic research in ethanol made from wood chips and algae” seriously? That is a Harry Reid program in NV.
“well he you know he he he he here here here here’s what I would say, I think we should acknowledge that some welfare programs in the past were not well designed and in some cases did encourage dependency” 1. How articulate…2. So, now they don’t? what magical change did away with that?
“today, um, welfare payments, ah, are not a big driver of our deficit or our debt. There are work obligations attached to welfare” really? Take a look at that CBO image above
“vast majority of folks getting welfare want to work but cant’ find jobs” then what about policies that will create jobs and get them off it?
“letting them know that we’re there to support you and encourage you as long as you’re showing the responsibility to be willing to work"
“those who say we can’t cut the military at all haven’t spent much time looking at military budgets” or are totally incognizant of how much it costs to wage multiple wars simultaneously
“those who say we can’t make changes to social programs or we’re being mean to people…programs that don’t work, we should be willing to eliminate them” what are the deliverables of welfare, and are they met? Nope
“you would not have twitter if…the DoD had not created the internet” but I thought Al Gore created the internet
What are they creating? Misery, stagnation, dependency, and poverty. It's either more taxes or more spending, and they say they have new ideas. We tried that for two years already, and it hasn't worked even though you promised while you campaigned that it would. Thank goodness the government keeps getting bigger, else we might not survive.
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