A lot of us are righteously and rightfully pissed off at Senator Obama and most of the rest of the Democratic "leadership" over the FISA bill. There's also an awful lot of hand wringing and concern trolling and even people saying they won't vote for him just because of this. But even if he isn't as progressive as we've been pretending he is, he will be an infinitely better President than any Republican.
Any progressives who find themselves agreeing with my title should consider this: it's based on today's excretion by syndicated dipshit Victor Davis Hanson.
I was having a lot more fun abusing this column based on the title I saw in my morning dead tree, Obama may be big on hope, but he's small on real change. I am reminded, as many journalists here have pointed out, that editors rewrite titles. Now I'm having to rewrite this to only insult the things that Davis actually said.
Of course there's nothing hard about that. There are morons commenting on the Merc site who agree with him; they must also think that up is down and freedom is slavery.
On foreign policy, VDH is upset that Obama wants to bring our troops home from Iraq without having "victory".
would a President Obama really ... give up on Iraq when the American military may well gradually draw down in victory, not defeat?
How about that spin? "Give up", "victory", "defeat"? Wow, he got all the buzzwords into one sentence. Carefully avoiding as always how we win an occupation. "Gradually" is the Bush-McCain policy; 100 years is soon enough for them.
On energy VDH is upset that Obama likes conservation and alternatives more than "drill more now everywhere".
Gas prices are soaring. Americans are frustrated that we continue to beg the Saudis to pump another half-million barrels a day ... when we could pump much more than that in Alaska, off our coasts and on the continental shelf - and thus save hundreds of billions of dollars.
Yet Sen. Obama's change probably wouldn't include more drilling; more nuclear power plants; or fuel extraction from tar sands, shale or coal. Instead, his strategy emphasizes more conservation; mass transit; and wind, solar and alternative green energy. All that is certainly wise and could be a winning combination by 2030, but right now it won't fill our tanks.
At least VDH is smart enough to acknowledge that conservation and alternatives are "wise", but the rest is the pure Republican talking point we've been hearing for the last week or two (and also the subject of VDH's previous poorly reasoned column), that sacrificing Alaska and the coasts will bring gas prices down within days. Nuclear, tar sands and ANWR drilling aren't going to "fill our tanks" any sooner than wind and solar do.
On the economy, Obama's plan gets spun as "old fashioned soak-the-rich". I'd LOVE to see "old fashioned soak-the-rich"; higher taxes were invested in infrastructure during the years of real prosperity and growth in the '50s and '60s, and we've been living off these investments ever since. Obama will be lucky to get us back to the pre-Bush rates. Hanson:
current aggregate federal revenues were increased by past tax cuts that spurred economic growth.
Good old Reagonomics. Is he really talking about "growth"? Really? Oh please Sen. McCain, please talk all about the "growth" the Bush years have brought us.
Just a little more:
Obama's announced policies are sounding pretty much the same old, same old once promised by candidates like George McGovern, Mike Dukakis, Walter Mondale, Al Gore and John Kerry.
Is this all they've got? Tying Obama to McGovern and Dukakis? Dukakis, Gore and Kerry all lost despite better policies than their opponents, they just campaigned horribly.
How do you know a wanna-be pundit has definitely fallen off the A-list? When nobody even bothers to make fun of him. VDH wasn't cited in DemFromCT's Pundit Roundup this morning; when I searched to see if anyone had diaried about this column I found that no one on dKos had mentioned VDH since April 30. He must be thinking "how wrong do I have to be to get the attention that Brooks and Friedman do?" I'm confident that he will keep up the good fight; VDH can be as wrong as any of them and I'm sure he'll be rewarded for it eventually.