Obama channels Kevin Bacon: 'All is well...really.'
The movie was "Animal House" and Bacon played the ROTC cadet from the Omega frat who tried to be the voice of reason at the Homecoming parade after the Deltas trashed it.
The juxtaposition of saying "All is well" while chaos reined on the street brings to mind President Obama's confident prediction yesterday that there will be no double dip recession.
Mason: Do you think we're in danger of another recession?
Obama: I don't think we're in danger of another recession but we are in danger of not having a recovery that's fast enough to deal with what is a genuine unemployment crisis for a whole lot of folks out there and that's why we need to be doing more.
Considering that some economists place our chances of dropping back into recession at 40%, the president sounds awful confident about the future.
But this next snippet from the interview is one for the books - truly bizarre:
Obama: Well what is absolutely true is that confidence matters. We should not have had any kind of brinksmanship around the debt ceiling. I wish the Speaker had taken me up on a grand bargain to deal with long term debt and deficit. We still have the opportunity to fix that, it's not too late. I will be putting forward a plan that will be very similar to the plan that I put forward to the Speaker.
We can fix these problems. Compared to a lot of countries around the world, the adjustments we have to make are so much more modest and I think that's part of the reason why the Americans are so frustrated. It'd be one thing if we had the kinds of problems like Greece did - where you potentially have to completely restructure your economy and your society.
That's not the situation here. Here we're talking about closing some loop holes in the tax code, making some modest adjustments in entitlements, paring back a little bit on programs that don't work. And if we do that - on the back of an envelope I could show you what it would take for us to do it - most folks wouldn't notice.
On what planet does this guy live? "Most folks wouldn't notice" that we're staring at $9 trillion (at least) in debt over the next decade and all we have to do is make a few minor adjustments? Is he kidding?
By 2018, we will be where Greece is right now - a debt to GDP ratio of 150%. If we reach that point without collapsing, it won't be because of anything this president has done. The cuts he has in mind are minuscule compared to the true size of the problem
It is irresponsible for Obama to state that no one will notice the cuts. Eventually, we'll have to make draconian cuts because this president refuses to face up to the problems that he is mostly responsible for.