(Watch the video yourself below). Biden falling asleep during Obama's speech is getting quite the Net buzz from the right-wingers. But I can't blame Biden or criticize him today. Instead, I can empathize with him. I also listened to that long, rambling speech live on Wednesday, and while I didn't catch any actual ZZZ's, I was certainly clamoring for it just to end already. (I'd estimate the speech went on 35-40 minutes, but it seemed like a damn eternity). Hell, from the look of the above picture, Obama nearly put himself to sleep!
And what's with all this presupposition by the media that Obama suddenly now has a budget and/or debt reduction "plan"? Please correct me if I'm wrong, but as best as I can tell, this so-called "plan" Obama was talking about today isn't written down anywhere. Can I read it? Where? Link? Until I can, it's not a plan at all, but rather just a collection of rambling talking points and leftist rhetoric.
Given that I haven't seen any coherent "plan" that can even be discussed, I see little point in addressing the merits of Obama's Wednesday harangue in any great detail beyond a blog post of typical length. I will say that in addition to be highly bored, I was also left very unimpressed. Some general reactions are set out below.
Just more of the same: If you basically force a leftist 20 percenter to talk about cutting debt, then the leftist will always revert to the same tired old playbook that I've heard my whole life: Raise taxes; and cut military spending. Now I'm all for finding ways to cut defense spending, but I find it comical that no democrat party member can ever talk about budget cuts without defense spending being the first thing out of his or her mouth. As predictable as a Joe Biden gaffe.
And with one notable exception, the "let's just raise taxes" stuff was also just more of the same: Stick it to the damn rich. Let's engage in same nice class warfare, and never mind that our economy is still mired in the tank. Very Bright! Raising taxes in awful economic times. Yawn.
And then we had plenty of the typical leftist rhetoric about those damn rich people not paying their fair share of taxes. Kind of like your beloved GE paying no income taxes last year, Mr. President? Hypocrite.
As hinted at above, one aspect of Obama's tax talk would seem to be something that could potentially hit middle class Americans very hard. I'm referring to Obama's highly generalized talking points about eliminating or restricting itemized tax deductions. First, Obama didn't specify which deductions he was talking about, making the topic a bit hard to discuss (which I'm sure was Obama's very design).
But I'm inferring that whatever the hell that Obama is talking about, it would hit middle class Americans (such as me) who have the unmitigated gall of actually itemizing their tax returns. I say that since Obama went out of his way to point out that a "majority of middle class Americans do not itemize their tax returns." So as long as you're fine with throwing money away to the government by filing a simple tax return, then what Obama's talking about will have no impact on you.
Finally, Obama gave some lip service to looking for ways to cut debt by focusing on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – but that stuff was so generalized that I don't how it can be rationally debated, criticized or credited at this point. As Daily Show comedian Paul Mecurio said Wednesday night, you could see more detail in a scrambled cable porn channel than in Obama's speech.
So here's where we are: Until I see a written debt reduction plan from Obama or his minions, we've still only got one real plan on the table: republican Paul Ryan's. Until I can actually read the specifics of what Obama claims to be proposing, I'll continue to say it to the whiney democrats: $14.2 Trillion – What’s Your Plan?
And if it looks anything like what I heard today, don't even waste the ink to reduce it to writing. The democrat party can use that ink, after all, to print some more money.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/04/13/biden_falls_asleep_during_obama_budget_speech.html
[Postscript Note: Check out the Comments section, as I create a blog post within a blog post and reflect upon one thing Obama said today that was very accurate and got me thinking and reflecting upon the sad state of our current two-party political system.]
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