Sorta, maybe, kinda like, yeah:
President Barack Obama told campaign donors in Chicago and Minnesota that Europe’s sovereign debt crisis is largely to blame for the slowest month of U.S. employment growth in a year, seeking to counter an issue weighing on his re-election bid.“We’re not where we need to be; we’re not there yet; you saw that in today’s jobs report,” the president said at a Chicago fundraiser, the fourth of six yesterday in the Midwest. “A lot of that’s attributable to Europe and the cloud that’s coming over from the Atlantic. The whole world economy has been weakened by it, and it’s having an impact on us.”
Fair enough---now. But that was not the case in 2009 and 2010, when a more ambitious signature jobs and infrastructure program could have been floated before an all-Democratic Congress and pitched to the American people; and when all available evidence suggested at the time that the Recovery Act was (a) too small, (b) too diffuse, and (c) larded with useless tax cuts to curry the favor of people in Washington who were already intent on destroying the Presidency. Also too in 2009 and 2010, attempts to hold the institutions responsible for causing the recession in the first place were never made in good faith, and the guilty parties still continue to loot the economy to this day. This looting could be stopped at any time via extant legal remedies, but instead the looters have been given a free pass to continue their looting for a nominal broker's fee. This is not the fault of Europe, or the Republicans, or anyone else but an administration that believes that its "little ball" solutions can be sold to the public as a grand-slam home run by its persuasive and charismatic pitchman.
But a word of warning: When it comes to persuasive pitchmen, Billy Mays is dead. And so will this administration next November, too, if it doesn't start prescribing some more effective solutions than a simple re-branding campaign.
---Vitelius