Patient Obama

[Geee]

Pajamas Media:

Last week the president gave a speech on the deficit, rightly trying to convince Americans that it is now beyond unsustainable. Yet his theme was that the Republicans’ attempts to reduce it were cold-hearted, endangering the most vulnerable among us, such as those with Down’s Syndrome, while protecting the proverbial “rich” from commensurate sacrifice. Let us, then, look at Obama, and the context of his speech, as a doctor might a patient.

Symptoms of the Illness

a) Obama just introduced a $3.5 trillion dollar budget with a $1.6 annual deficit — both record numbers. (If worried about debt, why then run up more record debt, if not by design to ensure higher taxes and larger deficit-run government?)
Obama ignored so far all the recommendations of his own blue-chip debt committee. (Why appoint an honorific committee that is to be humiliated?)
c) Obama demonized his opponents in precisely the manner that he had earlier warned against, both in his calls for a new civility following the Giffords shooting, and in promising not to demagogue cuts to entitlements in cheap partisan fashion. (Does his entire audience suffer from amnesia?)
d) Obama wants now to raise taxes on the “rich,” though right after the elections he had agreed that these hikes were a bad idea in such uncertain times. (An unwise idea in December is a needed one in April?)
e) Obama warns against shutting down the government in protest of unsustainable debt, though that is precisely what he voted for as a senator in 2006, when the deficit was about 1/5 of what it is now. (A Senator Obama would have been a President Obama’s worst nightmare?)
f) Obama said that neither he nor Warren Buffett needed another tax cut, although Buffett is the second richest man in America, who pays less a percentage of his income than most of those who make above the dreaded $250,000 — and Barack Obama is the country’s most privileged American who pays for virtually none of his own expenses. (The average optometrist really earns like Buffett and has no expenses like Obama?)
g) Obama still talks about ObamaCare, but has given 1,000 exemptions from it, often to those interests who were most for it. (If he exempted the entire state of Maine, could he just do the same for the other 49 and call it a victory?)