What Do The Poor Need? More Voodoo, Of Course

Sojourners, a group of leaders from various and sundry religions, asked President Obama and Mitt Romney, his principle challenger for office this year, what they planned on doing about poverty. Both candidates produced videos, but if you want to absorb all that smarmy nonsense in a tenth the time, you can read the transcripts I'm going to quote from.

On the basic question of the economy, here are the candidates' responses:

We can pay down our debt in a balanced and responsible way, but we cannot balance the budget on the backs of the most vulnerable.

Transcipt Of President Obama's Response (PDF)

and from the other guy:

A strong economy will reduce our budget deficits, and it will reduce poverty as well. But at this point, budget cuts are also going to be necessary and I intend to make them.

Transcipt Of Governor Romney's Response (PDF)

Translation: The voodoo (economics) will continue until the patient improves.

If I were a believer, I’d say praying was in order. Since I’m not, I’ll say it won’t do any less good than what these guys have in mind.

Of course, they spent a bit of time telling us how their faiths helped them reach this conclusion, etc. It's astonishing how homogeneous our presidential candidates are these days.