Posted on 07/01/2010 6:59:46 PM PDT by Bodhi1
If you are not a fan of Thomas Sowell, you should be. A few years ago, I read his book, "Vision of the Anointed." There was one particular section of the book that stuck with me, and it is especially relevant considering the speech President Obama gave yesterday in Racine, Wisconsin.
Here is what the president said:
Now, every economist who has looked at it has said that the recovery did its job. It put a brake on the collapse of the economy. We avoided a Great Depression. We are now growing again. The problem is, number one, it's hard to argue sometimes, things would have been a lot worse. Right? So people kind of say, yeah, but unemployment is still at 9.6. Yes, but it's not 12 or 13, or 15. People say, well, the stock market didn't fully recover. Yeah, but it's recovered more than people expected last year.
So part of the challenge in delivering this message about all that the Recovery Act accomplished is that things are still tough, they just aren't as bad as they could have been. They could have been a catastrophe. In that sense, it worked.
First of all, that very first sentence is a lie.
It's that simple.
Now read the rest.
Things are bad, but they could have been worse.
Thomas Sowell wrote the following back in the mid 1990s:
Could he have summed up the Obama administration any better?
Really? Prove it.
As Sowell wrote, "No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had confidently predicted improvement."
Obama makes the claim, his myrmidons nod is sycophantic agreement and the cancerous cure of Keynesian economics continues.
Until November, that is.
The same Sowell points could refer as well to the health care “crisis.”
ping
Good post.
Thanks for the ping, bamahead!
Nicely done (though the thread title is unfortunately misleading.)
obama did not think or evendevise the “stimilus’ plan. In fact, obama does not have any thoughts or plans of his own. obams says what his owners tell him to say. obama does what his owners tell him to do.
obama does have an abiding hatered for the United States and wishes to see it destroyed. obama’s owners hate the United States and want to destroy it. In obama they found someone who will do their bidding. No questions asked.
ping
Did you notice(of course you did)
how the Dear Reader has moved the US flags behind him where the front camera view does not show the US flags?
Bizarro world here we are. What is up with that?
Treason,that is what is happening before our very on lying eyes.......
on = own...
I didn’t see a post on this, but I was blown away by Obama’s gross insensitivity to his Racine audience. He said that “...people kind of say, yeah, but unemployment is still at 9.6. Yes, but it’s not 12 or 13, or 15.”
He said this in a city with 14.2% unemployment! Does he realize how silly his message sounds in Racine? Even the planted union audience couldn’t get excited about that positive spin.
Oh, my, that’s amazing! Sowell is a Prophet!
And nobody wants to acknowledge it is happening.
Thanks for the ping jaz.
Excellent post.
bttt
Just like a good sock puppet do!!!
Some situation exists, whose negative aspects the anointed propose to eliminate. Such situation is routinely characterized as a "crisis," even though all human situations have negative aspects, and even though evidence is seldom asked or given to show how the situation at hand is either uniquely bad or threatening to get worse. Sometimes the situation described as a "crisis" has in fact already been getting better for years.
Those who attribute detrimental result Z to the policies instituted are dismissed as "simplistic" for ignoring the "complexities" involved, as "many factors" went into determining the outcome. The burden of proof is put on the critics to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause of the worsening that occurred. No burden of proof whatever is put on those who had so confidently predicted improvement. Indeed, it is often asserted that things would have been even worse, were it not for the wonderful programs that mitigated the inevitable damage from other factors.. . . which is just a specific example of the general proposition that "those who had so confidently predicted improvement" have, and relentlessly exploit, a propaganda advantage over those "critics" upon whom "The burden of proof is put . . . to demonstrate to a certainty that these policies alone were the only possible cause."
That advantage in propaganda power arises from the unity of purpose between "the anointed" and the (nominally free and independent, but actually associated) press. That unity of purpose inheres in the fact that the associated press is good at criticizing, and at evading responsibility - and equally good at rewarding people outside of the associated press who, for fun and profit, go along and get along with the associated press.To put it baldly, the economics of wire service journalism requires journalists to all become fellow travelers - and only principled opposition can motivate politicians to contend with the journalists and all their fellow travelers.
The Right to Know
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