Salesman in Chief

With the stimulus bill stalled in the senate, the economy swirling down the drain, and possibly only days out from a national "blame the black guy for it" movement, President Obama has taken his case to the ink stained wretches in the print media to speak to the American people. Obama wrote an op-ed. There's his first problem, no one reads papers anymore. He should have ponied up the cash and had Perez Hilton scribble out the basic outlines of the proposal over a picture of Lindsay Lohan looking drugged out. That's all America reads anymore. But still, here's some of his op-ed.

In recent days, there have been misguided criticisms of this plan that echo the failed theories that helped lead us into this crisis -- the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems; that we can meet our enormous tests with half-steps and piecemeal measures; that we can ignore fundamental challenges such as energy independence and the high cost of health care and still expect our economy and our country to thrive.
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I reject these theories, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.
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So we have a choice to make. We can once again let Washington's bad habits stand in the way of progress. Or we can pull together and say that in America, our destiny isn't written for us but by us. We can place good ideas ahead of old ideological battles, and a sense of purpose above the same narrow partisanship. We can act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity and, together, write the next great chapter in our history and meet the test of our time.

Ideology? You actually ascribe an ideology behind the opposition? I'm with Dean Baker, there's nothing coherent about the opposition to keeping out country from turning into an agrarian barter economy, it's all politics. Maybe point that out, Barry. Or the fact that the Republican congress and the Republican President enacting Republican policies helped us into this mess, so we should listen to them.....why?

But it's still nice to know that even in times of crisis our political betters will rise to the occasion, stand up and say "Fuck this country, what's it all mean for the 2010 midterms? If we stall this stimulus the country will be so destitute and awful that they'll have no choice but to put us back in power."