Using fear to pass the stimulus bill

President Barack Obama warned on Thursday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.

What???
That's what AP said. So I went to the source, Obama's editorial in the Washington Post. (For those of you who don't know, that's Barack's Pravda)

Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.

What???
To the point where we can't REVERSE it? You mean we'd be in a permanant recession? Something that could never be changed?
What the fuck?
That's a whole new level of rhetoric.

Imagine a George Bush or a John McCain trying to shovel that shit. It wouldn't happen.

Everyone should read this post by the Coyote blog. He takes this argument apart for the crap that it is. I hope this will get you interested in reading it:

By the way, speaking of bait and switch, these solutions Obama focuses on - health information, energy projects, school rebuilding, and highways - account for at most 6.5% of the total tax cuts and spending programmed by the stimulus bill for the first 2 years (34.1 of 525.5 billion, which is a bit outdated because it is based on a CBO report of last week, and has not kept up with the new pork added by Congress since then).

I've said this before, and I need to repeat it: this isn't a Stimulus bill that includes a little bit of pork. This is a Pork bill, that includes a little bit of stimulus.