An address from the maximum leader claims that “crisis could turn into catastrophe” if his plan is not passed by Congress ASAP — and he sounded a little petulant (to our ears) in doing so:

these numbers that we’re seeing are sending an unmistakable message — and so are the American people. The time for talk is over. The time for action is now, because we know that if we do not act, a bad situation will become dramatically worse. Crisis could turn into catastrophe…

We can’t delay and we can’t go back to the same worn-out ideas that led us here in the first place. In the last few days, we’ve seen proposals arise from some in Congress that you may not have read but you’d be very familiar with because you’ve been hearing them for the last 10 years, maybe longer. They’re rooted in the idea that tax cuts alone can solve all our problems; that government doesn’t have a role to play; that half-measures and tinkering are somehow enough; that we can afford to ignore our most fundamental economic challenges — the crushing cost of health care, the inadequate state of so many of our schools, our dangerous dependence on foreign oil.

So let me be clear: Those ideas have been tested, and they have failed. They’ve taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they’ve brought our economy to a halt. And that’s precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.

“Crisis could turn into catastrophe…The American people have rendered their judgment. And now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.” Hogwash. There’s no hurry to pass a bad bill. There’s no crisis that could turn into catastrophe, unless the administration decides to repeat the debacle of Lehman Brothers and nationalizes some of the big banks next week, or some other banking problem of great severity comes to pass.

Extreme rhetoric alert: we’ve just gone from crisis and catastrophe to “devastating” job losses. What’s going on? Does Obama really believe what he is saying, or is it just back to politics as usual, or is Obama seeing himself as in over his head and hence overreacting? (Read the middle paragraph above again; doesn’t it sound somewhat incoherent?)

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under business, Democrats, General, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.