Friday, April 17, 2009

An "O"bservation

I made this observation out at RCP in response to part of the inestimable Charles Krauthamer's article today:
Obama's all about semantics. Saying impressive sounding things that really don't mean anything, saying things that sound like they mean one thing but they actually mean another, and saying things that mean one thing today and another thing tomorrow.
Which I'd like to leave out there by itself for people to remember how he operates, in a nutshell. (Hmmm... nuts "operate" in nutshells as well ;-) )

But here's the original context:

He further boasted of his frugality by saying that his budget would reduce domestic discretionary spending as share of GDP to the lowest level ever recorded.
Hey, Charles, it'll be easy. See, Obama's all about semantics. Saying impressive sounding things that really don't mean anything, saying things that sound like they mean one thing but they actually mean another, and saying things that mean one thing today and another thing tomorrow.

Here's how you do it. You make a bunch of what is discretionary spending today, and make it mandatory spending, or non-discretionary spending tomorrow. You just change what column you put the spending in, and budda-bing! Goal accomplished!

Of course, it doesn't do anything at all for the deficit.

Unless you find a way to re-define that as well. And you know Barack. "Yes he can!"

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