Stephen Karlson, who must have eaten some bad clams or something, points to a bit of infrastructure frothing-at-the-mouth from greater Wingnuttia. Dan Riehl found Obama saying this at a campaign appearance:
"Their ports, their train systems, their airports are vastly superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business you’re starting to think, “Beijing looks like a pretty good option. Why aren't we doing the same thing?”Riehl asks:
Did Obama Just Lose The Election?No.
He writes:
Obama is either incredibly naive, terribly misinformed, a communist, just flat out dumb or all of the above to be caught on tape making a statement like that.Contrast George W. Bush, caught on a government website saying:
My view of China is, is that it's a great nation that's growing like mad.So IOKIYAR. Bonus from the same (April 2005) appearance:
I will tell you with $55 oil we don't need incentives to oil and gas companies to explore. There are plenty of incentives. What we need is to put a strategy in place that will help this country over time become less dependent.At that point, Bush had only about 18 months of single-party rule to put a strategy in place. "Drill here and drill now" Republicans are clearly just covering up for their own lack of action when it was obvious more than three years ago that action was needed!
Meanwhile, Possession of "listening comprehension" makes it obvious that the antecedent of Obama's "same thing" is "investing massively in infrastructure." Now, lots of China's infrastructure actually is not so advanced, as Karlson tells the rail-minded and some of Riehl's commenters state more plainly. However, China is still developing, is poor on average, and dirt poor where it's poor. The U.S. is advanced, rich on average (by global standards), and extremely rich where it's rich. So if we're going to use China as a yardstick for our accomplishments, it should be China at its most advanced, not its least. There, but for our own fecklessness and lack of thrift, we should be able to go.
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