Second press conference…

The transcript is here,  if you care.

Some comments on the fly:

A repeat of  ” a tax cut to 95%of all working families”  —  sure, just as long as they don’t use any energy…

“… new plan that will partner government resources with private investment to buy up the assets that are preventing our banks from lending money.”   — well, actually it is the government’s policies and regulations  which are preventing lending.   And why should we believe His Oneness wants this partnership to work,  when he spent weeks as Basher-in-Chief of the financial industry?

“..health care system that controls costs and entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid”  —  Europe already has the socialized medicine system he wants us to have,  so why isn’t Europe immune from the fiscal mess?

“I’m as angry as anybody about the bonuses” — no you weren’t,  until the public got mad.

“To cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term…”   “This budget is inseparable from this recovery.”  —    Let’s see, even if you do halve your deficit, it will  still be about double any of the Bush-era deficits Republicans created.    And as the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore points out,  if we simply left the current budget in place, the deficit would go down by 75% all by itself, not the 50% Obama promises.

He made wanting the authority to takeover and restructure certain firms sound quite reasonable, especially since no one asked the obvious follow-up questions.

Liberals have called for “sacrifice” for years, but Obama won’t.   Of course,  he doesn’t consider higher taxes, increased energy costs and crushing debt for generations real sacrifice.

“Invest” is substituted for “spend”.

He still wants to reduce tax deductions for charitable donations and to reduce mortgage interest deductibility.   “There’s very little evidence that this has an impact on charitable giving.”     That fib makes the jaw drop.

His stem cell answer made it very clear he has spent far more time shooting baskets than wrestling with any moral issues.    He did not limit  funding to the so-called “leftover” IVF embryos,  nor did he rule out funding for research on cloned embryos created for that purpose.   Does the man actually not know that adult stem cells have already produced therapies, while embryonic ones have not?

The press asked rather more serious and critical questions than at the first one,  but I don’t think a single reporter from a business publication was called on.

He was flat, leaden, and had that professorial tone he gets, which irritates the hell out of me.