TRANSLATION REQUIRED - AT 7:13 A.M. ET:  During the election campaign, many of us complained that we could never figure out exactly where Barack Obama stood.  The problem persists.  It may require speech therapy, something like that.  I never thought of it as a medical issue, but maybe we should look to medical science for some kind of miracle cure.

After weeks of scaring the daylights out of the nation, and using fear to slam through both a hugely expensive "stimulus" package and a budget so loaded with pork that the Muslim community considers it religiously offensive, the president now says that, well, maybe things really aren't that bad.  I am not kidding.  Consider:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Confronting misgivings, even in his own party, President Barack Obama mounted a stout defense of his blueprint to overhaul the economy Thursday, declaring the national crisis is "not as bad as we think" and his plans will speed recovery.

Challenged to provide encouragement as the nation's "confidence builder in chief," Obama said Americans shouldn't be whipsawed by bursts of either bad or good news and he was "highly optimistic" about the long term.

The president's proposals for major health care, energy and education changes in the midst of economic hard times faced skepticism from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, as senators questioned his budget outlook and the deficits it envisions in the middle of the next decade.

More economic analysis from the president, as noted by reader Greg Koster:

"A smidgen of good news and suddenly everything is doing great. A little bit of bad news and ooohh , we're down on the dumps," Obama said. "And I am obviously an object of this constantly varying assessment. I am the object in chief of this varying assessment."

You are?  Really?  Well, I guess messiahs always get too much credit and too much blame.  Messiah is a tough job, but someone's got to do it.

"I don't think things are ever as good as they say, or ever as bad as they say," Obama added. "Things two years ago were not as good as we thought because there were a lot of underlying weaknesses in the economy. They're not as bad as we think they are now."

Profound.  Profound.

We are raising a generous reward to assign to anyone who can figure out what's in the president's mind.  If things aren't that bad, why are we doing the panic spending? 

Does the term "con job" resonate with you?  How about "Chicago politics"?  What about "Obamzi scheme"?

March 13, 2009