Video: Obama Speech In KC – The Usual Mix of Bush-Blaming, Empty Promises, and Strawmen

DAVID EULITT | The Star

Obama visited the Smith Electric Vehicle Plant in Kansas City today, to give (yet another)speech.

As usual, lot’s not to like, here, including his listless delivery:

The obligatory Bush-bash:

Now, that’s not easy. This recession was the culmination of a decade of irresponsibility – a decade that fell like a sledgehammer on middle class families.

Actually, we did pretty well for a country burdened with  the 9/11 attack, two wars, and Katrina. The economy didn’t start looking bleak until the Dems took over Congress in 2006, and immediately went to work destroying it.

The insufferable self-aggrandizement:

It was in the middle of this crisis that my administration walked through the door. And we had to make some difficult decisions at a moment of maximum peril – a moment when the markets were in turmoil and we were losing millions of jobs. Some of those decisions were unpopular at the time – and, in fact, may still be unpopular today. But I made those decisions to stop a nosedive that threatened to drag us into a second Great Depression. And because we made those hard choices, our economy is in a different place today than it was just a year and half ago.

Never mind that Porkulous had nothing to do with the markets, and even Keynesian economists are now saying that not only did it do nothing to help, it increased the debt to dangerous and unsustainable levels. In other words, he’s taking us off the cliff…

Government doesn’t have all the answers. And it cannot generate the jobs or growth we need by itself. But government can lay the foundation for small businesses to expand and hire, for entrepreneurs to open up shop and test new products, for workers to get the training they need, and for families to achieve some measure of economic security. And that role is especially important in tough economic times.

Oddly enough, even with all that foundation building, small business are still going belly up in startling numbers.

The economy was bleeding jobs; it’s now adding private-sector jobs, and has been for six straight months.

Nope, it’s still bleeding jobs.

Private employers created a net total of only 83,000 jobs in June and 33,000 in May, the Labor Department said last week. That’s down from an average of 200,000 net new jobs in both March and April.

The economy needs to generate at least 100,000 new jobs each month to keep up with population growth, and at least twice that amount to quickly reduce the unemployment rate.

A ridiculous empty promise:

As I’ve said since the day I took office, it is going to take time to reverse the toll of the deepest recession in generations. And I won’t be satisfied as long as even one person who needs a job can’t find one.

Riiiiight, just like he wouldn’t rest until the hole was plugged – He won’t be satisfied until there’s  0% unemployment. O.M.G.

…And right on schedule,  out pop the strawmen!

There are those who argue that we ought to abandon our efforts – and others who have made the political calculation that it’s better to obstruct than lend a hand.

There are those who would like to obstruct the insane clown car he calls an administration, and their cohorts in Congress, before they take us over the cliff…

All in all, a complete waste of my time.

Text of the speech, here.

SEE ALSO:

The Hill: Obama tries to sell ‘recovery summer’ amid slow economy

As Obama travels Thursday to a Kansas City, Mo., truck manufacturer and delivers an address on the economy Friday in Las Vegas, economists and even administration officials say there is very little for him to brag about.
Unemployment will probably rise above 10 percent and stay there or higher for the next nine months, well after the November midterm elections, according to Heidi Shierholz, who tracks labor figures closely for the Economic Policy Institute.

“The main story in the labor market right now is that we are adding jobs, but at a devastatingly slow pace, not even fast enough to start bringing the unemployment rate down,” Shierholz said. The economy added 83,000 private-sector jobs in June, but that’s not nearly enough to make up for the 7 million jobs lost during the recession.

Unemployment is exacerbating the housing crisis: People without jobs can’t buy homes. New home sales dropped 33 percent in May as a federal tax credit expired.

UPDATE:

Sweet. Ed Morrissey has made Obama’s promise not to be satisfied until everyone has a job, his Obamateurism of the Day.

It was certainly one of the lowlights of the speech.

Linked by Doug Ross, thanks!