Obama Blasts Critics and Uses the Fear Card

President Obama is getting a wee bit testy these days because everything isn't exactly going to his plan. His cabinet nominees have this nauseating tendency to avoid paying their tax obligations or reporting their income properly. His stimulus plan is receiving strong opposition because people see for the porkfest it is.

He claims that people are basing their opposition on phony and debunked economic theories.

"Don't come to the table with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis," the president said at the House Democrats' annual retreat in Williamsburg.

"We're not going to get relief by turning back to the very same policies that, for the last eight years, doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin," he said. "We can't embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face, that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil, or the soaring cost of health care, or failing schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees.

"I don't care whether you're driving a hybrid or an SUV -- if you're headed for a cliff, you've got to change direction."

The Democrats welcomed the president with frequent interruptions for applause as he took on criticisms of the bill.

Obama said he valued "the constructive criticism and healthy debate that's taking place around this package," but added that speedy passage of the bill was essential.

"We're not moving quickly because we're trying to jam something down people's throats," he said. "We're moving quickly because if we don't, the economy's going to keep getting worse."

Really? How about the theory he's resting his entire plan on - that massive government deficit spending will reduce the effect of the recession or keep it from getting worse. It seems that his theory has been debunked as well; folks who have studied FDR and the Great Depression note that FDR's spending plans and economic policy actually made the Depression last longer and more severe.

Obama's modeling his plans on FDR. He's throwing the money around in ways that drunken sailors could only dream.

Obama has an obligation to show us what his plan will do for America not only in the next nine months, but in the future when the bill comes due for his outrageous spending.

He is using fear to drive Congress to pass this legislation despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the spending isn't stimulus but pork and massive spending increases that wont take effect until well after the recession is over.

No critics are talking about just providing tax cuts; President Obama is making strawman arguments that obscure his real intentions.

Obama rejected calls for more tax cuts and significant slashing of the bill's more than $800 billion price tag, and said complaints the package was a spending bill rather than a stimulus bill were off base.

"What do you think a stimulus bill is?" he said. "That's the point."

No, a stimulus bill is one where the spending is to occur when and where it's needed; not to fund every pet project under the sun, which is precisely the case with this porkfest.

Obama warns that if the porkfest isn't passed, things will get much worse. Imagine if FRD said that the only thing we have is fear itself. That's Obama's case in a nutshell.

UPDATE:
Consider the Japanese example. Japan engaged in a massive spending program to lift the country out of a recession. Only problem - it didn't work.

Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery. Now, as the Obama administration embarks on a similar path, proposing to spend more than $820 billion to stimulate the sagging American economy, many economists are taking a fresh look at Japan’s troubled experience

Which failed economic theories are we talking about? Obama wants people to think that the GOP and his critics are pushing failed economic theories, when we can see with great abundance that Obama's spending plan has been tried before and has failed miserably.

And yet, Obama wants us to believe that the porkfest be passed now (actually on Monday because he and his fellow Democrats are whooping it up at a lavish retreat this weekend and can't be bothered with the day to day business of running the country - and yet they railed on at length over businesses that do the same (hold retreats and company gatherings).

Rich Lowry has it right, Obama is using faith based economics to demand passage simply because he won. More to the point, Don Surber notes that Obama is fast becoming Eric Cartman before our eyes - that we must respect his authoritay. If you don't like what Obama says, tough. That's his position, and he's sticking with it even as most Americans don't want to see the bill passed in its current form.

Slublog at Ace has more.

UPDATE:
Via joel comes this funny video: Stimulis: Because all economies have performance issues