HoodaThunk?

RedState’s morning briefing for 2/10/2009 has a number of interesting items:

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

1. Specter, Snowe, and Collins Premise Their Stimulus Vote on a Lie

They said it was not as large as it turned out to be

2. Congressional Budget Office Says Recession Will End This Year Without Stimulus

With one, we’re going to see short-term gains at the expense of long-term growth.

3. The Verdict on President Obama’s First Prime Time Presser: Pain.

What we saw tonight in President Obama was a man who, flailing about for words and faiing to form cohesive sentences and responses, turned in a stumbling, meandering performance worthy of the most extreme caricature of George W. Bush.

4. Obama: Hope Gives Way To Fear

Leave aside the sardonic irony of this disingenuous young President, who campaigned for his job telling us exactly the opposite of what he says now.

5. The War On Limbaugh

Like his father, Max Blumenthal is neither a smart man nor honest.

6. Obama backs away from war on terror

In his uninspiring inauguration speech, President Obama told the world we would not waver in defense of our way of life, and he told the evil doers that “our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.”

7. About Those Rejected Ballots in Minnesota

The Franken camp wanted every vote counted until it pulled into the lead. Then all stop.

These are the headlines. The items themselves are in the RedState article so I urge you to follow the link and read more.

The 2 items I wanted to address on this list are numbers 2 and 6. I’ve pointed out here before that Obama’s contention that there’s wide agreement on the need for this massive pork-fest he’s calling a “stimulus” isn’t the “consensus” he’s pitching it as. I also mentioned that there was a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report showing that the bill’s spending wasn’t going to assist anything in 2009 because not even half (and, by now, not even a quarter) of the actual stimulus spending would happen this year. The item at RedState goes deeper into the CBO’s stance on things and finds that their analysis shows this recession will be over within this year and that’s without the “stimulus” package.

That’s without a “stimulus”: with one, we’re going to see short-term gains at the expense of long-term growth. You can argue that this might not be a bad thing, overall; but if we’re not actually going to need the Obama-Reid-Pelosi debt bill to get out of this recession then the biggest argument against passing it right now just went away. There is no consensus that urgent action is needed: as Rasmussen notes, while Democrats are following the President on this, Republicans are not… and independents are significantly in agreement with the GOP. A plurality of voters oppose this thing.

The biggest issue with the package, of course, being that there’s far more stuff in there that does nothing to stimulate the economy than does and all of that shouldn’t be in an emergency bill to begin with.

Item 6 talks about Obama’s attempts at “smart” diplomacy. Dan Spencer’s article there at RedState hits the nail squarely regarding Obama’s speeches and interviews since becoming President:

Obama’s “choice of words” response brings to mind the just words speech Obama stole from Massachusetts Democrat Deval Patrick. I agree that words matter, but when one’s actions speak so loudly the words can’t be heard, the words matter only to mock the speaker.

No one – not Russia, not Iran, not Europe – has been at all impressed with Obama’s America-blaming rhetoric. They don’t see it as humble, they see it as weak which is exactly what many of us on the Right said it would look like. Iran has outright called for America to apologize to Iran before they’ll even consider normalizing relations. So much for “meeting without preconditions”, eh, Mr. President?

The rest of the items are just as good so don’t miss it.