Obama's stimulus tactics echo Bush's war on terror...

[posty 2,844]

Thinking back on the events in 2001, he does have a point on how similar these events are...

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/14...ullum13.article

 

I flashed back to the fall of 2001 upon reading the subhead over a New York Times story about Monday's presidential press conference: "He Says That Failing to Act Could Lead to Catastrophe." To rush a complex, ill-considered piece of legislation through Congress, George W. Bush invoked the specter of another terrorist attack. Barack Obama, bringing the change he promised, invoked the specter of economic collapse.

 

Just as the Patriot Act was a grab bag of legal changes that law enforcement and intelligence agencies had been seeking for years, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is a grab bag of expenditures that leftish Democrats have long wanted, repackaged for the crisis du jour. In both cases, instilling fear was the key to suspending skepticism and cutting off debate.

 

In a Washington Post op-ed piece last week, President Obama warned that if Congress did not immediately pass the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, "our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse." While Bush gave us the concept of the never-ending war on terror, Obama has introduced the idea of the never-ending recession, a phenomenon that has never been seen before but that can be averted only by uncritically approving his spending priorities.

 

"We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary," Obama declared in his weekly radio address on Saturday. "The time for action is now." During an appearance in Elkhart, Ind., on Monday, he said, "the situation we face could not be more serious" and insisted, "we can't afford to wait." At his press conference that evening he said, "a failure to act will only deepen this crisis" and "could turn a crisis into a catastrophe."

 

Obama insisted there was no time for debate. "We can't posture and bicker," he said in Elkhart. "Endless delay or paralysis in Washington in the face of this crisis will only bring deepening disaster." At the same time, he claimed there had been plenty of debate already: "many weeks of debate and discussion," as he put it at the press conference.

 

The stimulus bill was introduced in the House on Jan. 26 and passed two days later. The Senate began debating its version last week and approved the bill this week. No hearings were held in either house. If that's Obama's idea of "many weeks of debate and discussion," verging on "endless delay or paralysis," maybe we should not worry so much about his prediction of an endless recession.

 

The false sense of urgency created by the president was designed to override two kinds of doubts: about Keynesian stimulus spending generally and about this package in particular. "Doing nothing is not an option," he said in Elkhart. It should be, especially when the something the president wants to do could be worse than nothing, adding $1 trillion to the national debt and diverting resources from more productive uses without delivering on the promise to "jolt our economy back to life."

 

And that probably won't be the end of the story. At Monday's press conference, Obama said the Japanese government "did not act boldly or swiftly enough" in the 1990s, when it spent trillions of dollars on construction projects in a vain attempt to revive the country's economy. From his study of Japan, the Times reports, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner concluded that "spending must come in quick, massive doses, and be continued until recovery takes firm root."

 

As with the Patriot Act, the success of Obama's Recovery and Reinvestment Plan will be hard to assess. If the Bush administration can take credit for the absence of terrorist attacks without any firm evidence that its policies were decisive in preventing them, the Obama administration can take credit for an economic recovery that would have occurred anyway. I hope that's what happens, because otherwise we can expect further expensive sacrifices to the god of economic stimulus.

[NewbieJr 541]

Pumpkin Flan

Ah, flan. What could be sweeter? Pumpkin flan!

 

Ingredients:

1¼ cups unsweetened canned or fresh pumpkin puree

2 cups heavy cream

 

½ cup sugar

6 large eggs

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon grated nutmeg

 

 

 

TOPPINGS:

Blackberry preserves

 

Pure Maple Syrup (the thicker, the better)

 

What to do:

STEP 1: Preheat oven to 350° F.

 

STEP 2 (fresh pumpkin only): Quarter pumpkin, scoop out seeds and strings, and place in a baking dish along with 1 inch of water (skin side down). Bake for 1 hour, or until flesh is tender and cooked through. Allow to cool slightly, then scoop flesh from the skin and puree in a food processor. A 1lb pumpkin should yield about 1½ cups of fresh puree.

 

STEP 3: Combine pumpkin, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg in a large bowl and set aside. In a medium saucepan, combine the cream and sugar. Bring barely to a simmer over medium-low heat.

 

STEP 4: While waiting for the cream to heat, place about 2 tbsp of topping into each of 8 small ramekins. Be sure to make it an even layer. Place the ramekins into a large baking dish or roasting pan and set aside.

 

STEP 5: Separate 3 yolks from the eggs and combine with remaining whole eggs in a mixing bowl. Whip until slightly thickened and lightened in color. While whisking, drizzle in about a quarter of the hot cream (this will help slowly introduce the eggs to the heat). Now, remove saucepan from heat and whisk the egg mixture into remaining cream.

 

STEP 6: Strain the custard mixture into the pumpkin mixture and whisk to combine.

 

STEP 7: Evenly distribute the custard into the ramekins. Place the pan on the middle rack of the oven and pour boiling water into the pan about half way up the sides of the ramekins.

 

STEP 8: Cook for about 40 minutes, or until the flan wobbles slightly when jostled (begin checking at 30 minutes). If you’re unsure, stick a paring knife midway between the edge and the center of one of the ramekins. If it comes out clean, your flan is done.

 

STEP 9: Carefully remove the ramekins to a towel-lined cookie sheet. Allow to cool, and then chill in the fridge. To serve, carefully loosen the edges with a thin knife, and then place a medium sized plate upside down on the ramekin and flip. Enjoy!

[edjr 7,004]

Thank you Newbie. For real.

 

I'm going to start doing this.

 

WHAT THE FOCK ALREADY!

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[Voltaire 5,506]

Whereas it was easy to tell the War on Terror was mostly all bullsh*t, lies, and smoke and mirrors; this economic crisis looks to be the real deal. I know Phil Gramm refered to it as a "mental recession" and people talking about it as "whiners." Do you guys feel that way?

 

Where I work is growing, expanding. As the only foreign teacher, I'm a critical component of the school. I'm in the safest of safe jobs and feel completly insulated from any economic problems going on.

 

I haven't been back in the US since long before the recession started. So I don't really have my pulse on the situation. I can only go by what I read online, but from my understanding the recession does look very real, very deep and very serious. You guys though, you don't think it's so serious? You think they're blowing it all out of proportion to sell the Dem economic plans? Because that's EXACTLY how I felt about the WOT.