Big Ben, Parliament

by Steve MacDonald

Rumor has it Mr. Obama gave a speech yesterday about something. I didn’t watch it and with good reason. Been there, done that. Two faced, self contradicting, tired, and repetitive. Put another way, Big Ben, Parliament.

Nothing (new) to see here, just move along. It’s like that family party you go to. You know the one. Same people, same food, same conversations. Uncle Joe always nods off. Aunt Nancy looks like she starched her face then took a box of happy pills. And Cousin Barry, well he just goes on and on but it’s just another skeleton without any substance, or maybe the parts to a skeleton, or better yet the directions to a store where you might find the parts, but no instructions on how to put it together. (After which we must then find something of substance to attach to that.) That was Obama’s speech. Like I said; Big Ben, Parliament.

But plenty of other people did take one for the team. They suffered through it, and they had plenty to say about it. So for your reading enjoyment and mine, I have curated content from around the internet, about the speech.

Moe Lane – Red State “I am *done* with President Obama”

Democrats: cut the President out of the loop. His presence in this discussion insults both parties at this point. Send him off to a permanent round of golf games and trips to various parts of the country:

Allahpundit – Hot Air

Speaking of being kneecapped, Robert Gates found out only yesterday that one of the big “ideas” in Obama’s framework of an outline of a plan was to squeeze defense for extra savings.

And also here:

Beyond the obligatory calls for wringing the fat from defense spending and taxing the inexhaustible rich, which even some big media sources openly acknowledge won’t solve anything, his central idea is to somehow control health-care spending, presumably by performing the Jedi mind trick on doctors coast to coast to get them to lower costs.

Victor Davis Hansen – The Corner

The president gave the sort of scare speech he not long ago warned against, and blasted the income-tax rates he not long ago agreed were necessary — in a context in which he has just presented a budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit of the sort he now says is unsustainable, and has warned about recklessly voting against raising the debt ceiling in a fashion that he himself had once done, in a larger landscape in which he had once damned attacking Middle East countries in optional wars, Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventative detention, intercepts, wiretaps, Predators, and leaving troops in Iraq, and then embraced or expanded all that and more (this list is infinite and includes everything from drilling to campaign financing to earmarks).

John – Powerline

If Obama wants to make a serious debt reduction proposal, it has to be presented in detail, in budgetary form, so that it can be analyzed properly and scored by the Congressional Budget Office. Obama hasn’t done that; instead, he purports to shave trillions off the national debt with breathtaking insouciance:

Bryan Preston – PJ Tattler

Spending reductions in the tax code…that’s what President Obama called the thing that we commonly call “tax cuts” in his speech today.

Clive Crook – The Atlantic

There was no sign of anything worth calling a plan to curb borrowing faster than in the budget. He offered no more than a list of headings under which $4 trillion of deficit reduction (including the $2 trillion already in his budget) might be found–domestic non-security spending, defense, health costs, and tax reform. Fine, sure. But what he said was devoid of detail. He spent more of his time stressing what he would not agree to than describing clear proposals of his own.

…

More words, more contradictions, same old tired rhetoric…and no plan. Someone else will figure that out. He’s just the idea guy. But after someone else figures it all out, he’ll be back to take the credit.

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