Reply #9: Yeah "history is not a dirty word".. [View All]

[Cha]

Thank you for the refresher course, whosinpower.

By Eric Alterman | November 19, 2009

Last week, Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei at Politico reported that the White House planned on making deficit reduction a centerpiece of the next State of the Union address. Allen and Vandehei called the decision “practical” saying that “Obama has spent more money on new programs in nine months than Bill Clinton did in eight years, pushing the annual deficit to $1.4 trillion. This leaves little room for big spending initiatives.” This fact is taken completely out of the context of the recession. The title of the article refers to the White House's “spending binge.” The deficits, tax cuts, and spending of the previous administration are ignored entirely.

It’s not exactly news that most members of MSM are almost purposely amnesiac. There is no greater insult to a reporter than to call his story “history.” And yet once upon a time, it was only yesterday that was old news. Nowadays, with the new neverending cable/talk-radio/blogosphere-driven news cycle, we are all supposed to have forgotten the past fifteen minutes. (There is actually a headline on the Drudge Report as I write this that the Associated Press went to the trouble of looking at the record and seeing whether any of the outrageous claims made in Sarah Palin’s memoir are true. The idea appears to be if it says so in a book, it’s wrong of a journalist to actually check the record. The (surprise, surprise) Fox News story contains no link to the AP story, further making the point that the record is really irrelevant to the story.)

So back to Obama’s “spending binge.” Even if the Politico editors are not interested in what may have happened in the past eight years to cause some of the deficits with which the Obama administration is forced to deal, we are. And here are just a couple of examples we found:

snip//

"Afganistan: The legacy of Bush’s runaway military spending and his tax cuts is doing more than just destroying the fiscal health of our government—it is also endangering our security. Look at Afghanistan. According to a recent report in The New York Times, “Some administration estimates suggest it could also cost up to $50 billion over five years to more than double the size of the Afghan army and police force, to a total of 400,000. That includes recruiting, training and equipment.”

David Broder, dean of the national press corps, has actually written that Obama’s “urgent necessity is to make a decision—whether or not it is right.” That is how far we’ve come. Never mind that six years of a failed strategy by the Bush administration, to say nothing of rushing into a catastrophic war, and busting the budget with a giveaway to the rich tax cut, should be considered in the context of the decision. “Just do something” says Broder, regardless of whether it makes sense. Learn nothing from history. Repeat our mistakes over and over, regardless of the cost in blood and treasure to our country and our soldiers. Forget not only Iraq, but Vietnam as well.

It’s hard to believe, I know, but there it is in black and white….

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