An attempt at live blogging the presidents second press conference.
Has been moved where it belongs...below the fold.
The speech.
Years to get into the hole....months to get out.
Much more confident speech This time around
Support markets for loans

Um....boom bust cycle is how a free society works.

Cut deficits in half EVEN BY MOST PESSIMISTIC ESTIMATES.  Ummm....no.

First time he's said something in defence of investors.

Question #1 is defending his most recent attempted power grab.

Question #2 He's pointing out the sacrifices people are making but not really answering the question which was about deadbeat borrowers.

Question#3 Very specific...will you veto budget if xy&z are not in it....answer is very nonspecific campaign speech.

heh...reporter reminds him of yes/no nature of question. He Dodges

Questrion#4 is about passing on debt to future.
He gives the same answers, but makes the argument that the "investments" are needed for growth. Blames predecessors
9fair cop but only to a point) and continues to use "Imperial I".

Question#5 Good job UniVision! She asks about the horrible Mexico situation. Obama repeats the guns from America canard, but is otherwise pretty coherent and reserved about the terrible mess. He dodged the basic question about troops to the boarder.

Question#6 Involves defense savings. He correctly points out that procurement is broken, but does not target "cost plus"...other wise glittering generalities.

Question#7 Something about health care....took a phone call. Back now...

Question #8 Asks about the Chinese currency proposal and our image abroad. Obama claims the dollar is extraordinarily strong. Comes out against global currency.

Question#9 Deduction question. He is for lowering the deductions for charitable contribution.

Question # 10 Ummm...tent cities springing up around country?
Huh?
POTUS doesn't break stride...goes into stump speech mode. He wants to focus on veterans as well.

Question#11 Race...does race come up much in WH?
He handles this as good as possible.

Question#12 Stem cells.
Nonspecific answer but he makes one point that is  very good. "If it was an easy issue it would not reach my desk"....a tacit acknowledgment of the concept of solving issues at the lowest level....
His answer to the follow up regarding ethics is pretty good.

Question#13 Oh noes Netanyahu is PM Aiieee!!! What will we do?
Obama gives a fairly diplomatic answer.

Oh nice. He points out that a certain determination and stubbornness is a virtue in a President. Golly! Bush must be happy to hear that!
Apology accepted Mr. President. 

All in all much better performance than the last one. Both the speech and the answers were more coherent and authoritative.
He did not dissuade me from the notion that we are screwed.
OTOH he does seem to be hitting a stride of sorts, which is good for the country.

Interestingly he did not use a teleprompter...instead reading off a big screen monitor in the back of the room. (lol)

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at 07:39 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
Post contains 481 words, total size 4 kb.

1 Re: tent cities:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,424881,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7297093.stm
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26776283/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/2991742/Tent-cities-of-homeless-on-the-rise-across-the-US.html

Seems mostly out West.
""What you're seeing is encampments that I haven't seen since the '80s," said Paul Boden, executive director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, an umbrella group of homeless groups in west coast cities."
Recession tent cities, not depression tent cities. Yet.

Compare and contrast reportage for extra credit

Posted by: pulpjunkie at Wed Mar 25 10:45:14 2009 (/V3DX)

2 Thanks Tim.

Not sure what I need to do to get extra credit.

The BBC story had the other linked stories scooped by 6 months.

The AP story is run in both the FOX and MSNBC links.

The MSNBC story focuses more on the casino closings and Reno in particular.

All are from last year. I haven't heard anything about this recently, though frankly given the situation I can't imagine things haven't gotten worse.

Thanks for the tip!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Mar 25 18:58:26 2009 (lmrlC)

3 Mere seconds after I commented it gets the flashing blue lights on Drudge.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aKqkjyYkFN8w&refer=worldwide

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Wed Mar 25 19:09:28 2009 (lmrlC)

4 I'd completely missed the dates on those stories. They were among the top Google hits for "tent cities in the USA", since my initial search for "tent cities" alone turned up a news item from Ontario, which I took to be in Canada, but turns out to be near LA. Huh.

The world is confusing.

Posted by: pulpjunkie at Wed Mar 25 21:19:41 2009 (/V3DX)

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