First paragraph: fair enough. It was never intended as a reference to “closet racism”; for that matter, I don’t think Reid is a closet racist either. He simply said something stupid and completely aside from the point at hand…which was sort of my point. That Obama is a gifted orator has as little to do with the Peace Prize as does his choice in socks.
You will get no argument from me on rendition and the rest. This, however, does not render every political statement ever made by the man “empty rhetoric.” You act as though he’s operating in a political vacuum. With what budget money is he going to close Guantanamo? In what federal facility is he going to house these prisoners? With what court system is he going to try them? All of these issues have been brought to you by GOP fear-mongering and Obama’s unwillingness to use political capital to fight them.
Second paragraph: of course expenditures have risen dramatically. One time stimulus, TARP money, auto bailouts, and automatic stabilizers. It’s a recession. Spending goes up. It comes back down again too. This is the core reason “do nothing” will work at all; the spending is largely one time or automatic stabilizers and is or soon will be over. Then the Bush tax cuts automatically expire and you find yourself most of the way back to balance.
Using the “up” side of that equation as a bludgeon against the social safety net is simply political misdirection in aid of a long term goal (the elimination of the New Deal and its policy descendents). Cantor has publicly said as much.
The Bush tax cuts were and are the primary deficit driver in the past decade. Obama signed their extension, and for that he does indeed share some of the blame, but this doesn’t make him a big government socialist. By the by, Bush promised the complete repayment of the debt at the hand of these tax cuts within 10 years.
Lemkin 