On Jan 28, 2010, at 2:37 PM, brad bauerly wrote:
> Was it just me or was O not channeling Reagan last night.
<http://ipaccuracy.wordpress.com/author/dhenwood/>
11:16:54 pm on January 27, 2010 | 0 | # | e
He’s going to end with the now-required “God bless you.” Ever since Reagan, every president has to end the SOTU that way. Carter, an actual born-again Christian, never did that. Nor did Roosevelt, Truman, or Eisenhower. When will we shed all these empty pieties and get serious?
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10:51:06 pm on January 27, 2010 | 2 | # | e
Finally a few sensible words about the source of the deficit—tax cuts, war, deep recession. What took so long?
But then he pivots, as the pundits like to say, toward deficit reduction. Ronnie’s spectre is quick to re-assert itself. I’ve done the math. Cut the military by a third—which would take it back to 2000 levels, relative to GDP—and sprinkle, not soak, the rich, and the deficit will go away. But we can’t say that, much less do it.
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10:21:59 pm on January 27, 2010 | 0 | # | e
Will anyone ever acknowledge in public that all the old verities, all the notions of our wondrous character and exceptionalism in the world, just aren’t up to the task anymore?
“We all hated the bank bailout.” Yeah, and without some sort of bailout we’d be wearing barrels today. But almost nothing has been demanded in return. The crackdown on prop trading—banks speculating on their own account rather than on behalf of their customers—comes fitted with loopholes that are already lawyer-ready.
Tax cuts, yay! Like I said the last time I did this for IPA, Ronald Reagan still controls the discourse. Until that discursive mastery is challenged, we’re stuck in the mud.