Welcome to Fantasyland -- Michael Grunwald style

Writing in Time magazine, Michael Grunwald discusses the problem faced by president Obama in that Obama averted so many disasters but does not get credit for those actions. For those who have lived through the Obama administration without covering our eyes and ears, Grunwald's article is a chance for a hearty laugh. Here's a great example: "[Obama]'s been a paragon of fiscal responsibility compared with Bush, but he's still blamed for the megadeficits primarily created by Bush's tax cuts and the Great Recession." Amazing, isn't it. The Bush tax cuts passed in 2001 yet the deficit was not a major problem until Obama's first year in office; for, Obama's first two years, the federal deficit was far larger than the total deficit for all eight of Bush's years in office. Meanwhile, Obama pushed federal spending as a percentage of GDP to levels not seen since world War II, while Bush's spending --even with the War on Terror -- stayed at the normal historical level by that measure. Calling Obama a paragon of fiscal responsibility is like calling Charlie Sheen a paragon of restraint.

Here's another example of Grunwald's fanatsyland view of reality. He gives Obama's stimulus packge credit for preventing a Depression. But, as the saying goes, facts are stubborn things. The real danger of depression came in the fall of 2008 and it was avoided with TARP. Of course, at that time then candidate Obama took the politically expedient course and stayed out of the argument over the TARP bill. It was TARP that prevented the meltdown of the banking system that would have pushed the country and the world into a depression. There were still severe job losses that continued into Obama's term, but the rescue happened on Bush's watch, not Obama's. the recession then ended and the economy stabilized and started growing again by the summer of 2009. Grunwald credits the stimulus for that growth, but we all know that essentially none of the stimulus funds had been spent by the summer of 2009; the economy righted itself. In fact, the stimulus had little effect on the economy other than providing a one time push moving into 2010 at the cost of another trillion dollars in debt that will hamper economic growth for the foreseeable future.

The best indicator of Grunwald's inability to see reality, however, comes when he calls Obamacare a victory for those who want to rein in the cost of medical care. Huh? Tell me one way in which medical care costs are curbed by Obamacare. There are none. It is the most glaring omission of the whole system. Obamacare focuses on insurance coverage and does nothing with regard to cost. It is just more BS from a lefty toady for Obama.