CNN White House Correspondent Dan Lothian
The White House is firing back at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after he told the National Journal that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." With his usual sarcastic tone, spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters "maybe Senator McConnell is interested in running for President."
Gibbs said there will be time in two years for a presidential campaign, but that "members of the Senate are elected and hired by the people of the United States to get stuff done for the people of the United States, not posture and play political games, gum up the system."
What hypocrisy! The Senate isn’t even in session. There isn’t any business McConnell is supposed to be doing right now. We’re in the midst of a hot political campaign. And on top of all that, isn’t the President of the United States "elected and hired by the people of the United States to get stuff done for the people of the United States, not posture and play political games"? And isn’t his office in session every day of the year? Yet he gets to run around all over the country politicking as usual, lying about the opposition, and generally doing his best to gum up the system. Gibb's hypocrisy is stunning!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
26 comments:
For 2 years the leader of the Republican Party has made it clear there is to be no cooperation with Democrats and RINO's must go. Whenever a republican says there might be ways to compromise he is called on the carpet by the leader and usually winds up apologizing for his faux pas. Would anyone expect McConnell to say anything other than what he said. I doubt he wants to face the leaders wrath.
seems Obama is not the only one who lies.
http://www.9news.com/news/elections/article.aspx?storyid=159840&catid=140
http://www.minnpost.com/braublog/2010/10/26/22736/tv_stations_in_two_states_pull_norm_coleman_groups_ads
I would think you would be happy he is out campaigning. If he is doing that he can't be takeing yur guns away, or controlling banks, or doing all this other evil stuff. :)
If everyone expects Mitch McConnell to say what he said, then why is Robert Gibbs whining about it and openly broadcasting his hypocrisy. Frankly, I don't care if Obama is campaigning. Like you say, it's a better use of his time than sitting in the White House trying to recast our society into his socialist image. And are you saying that because these other men of poor character tell lies, it is okay for the President of the United States to lie? Is that what you're say, Tom?
what lies do you think Obama is telling? I dont pay attention to his campaigning so I am clueless to what he is saying?
As for Gibbs, he was asked. His job is to answer questions. Suggest you read a little more than what that blurb on CNN had.
Tom, you seem to always avoid the questions you would rather not have to confront. It doesn't really matter what lies Obama is telling, you have already acknowledged that he's not the only one who's lying. You seem to be saying that it's okay for him to lie because others are (i.e. two wrongs make a right). Is that what you're saying or have I misconstrued your point?
As for Gibbs, you seem to be justifying his hypocrisy by the fact that he is required to answer the questions he's asked. That's rather weak, Tom. Maybe he feels he needs to respond to every question, but why does that mean he has to be give a hypocritical answer? I don't see how point B follows point A.
David, You accused Obama of lying. What lies has he told? You make it sound like how dare the prez lie. Well David, how dare anyone lie, and how dare anyone accuse someone of lying and then not give some examples. Where are your examples?
As for Gibbs; the whole premise of the NJ interview was if McConnell is the majority leader in the next congress what are his goals. He reply was to make Obama a one term president. Give him an A for honesty in that it once again proves that the republican establishment is much more interested in power than in solving any problems. When you blog on a blurb from some CNN guys blog, not a news story, I take issue. When I watched the video i did not detect that much sarcasm, but I understand that is a subjective thing. His complete answer was much more than what was written in that blog. If your number goal in voting for Toomey is that he will help make Obama a one termer and that's what is most important for the next 2 years over a coherent budget, tax policy, wars, muslims, and everything else that might concern you then fine, i don't care.
Now once more.....what lies and what has Obama done to "gum up the system"? Give me some statements he has made during this campaign season that are lies. I can fill your inbox with conservative lies. One thing I am convinced of is, if the republicans get control of the house, we are in for 2 years of trying to impeach the guy.
Living in MD I am not privleged of being in a state with very close elections. However, in district 1 there is a close election. The democrat is putting out ads saying the republican wants a 23% federal sales tax. That is absolutely true, but what he leaves out is only if we do away with the income tax. I have issues with any candidate that misleads like that, but they all do it, conservative talk radio does it, MSNBC does it,so I take it upon myself to dig a little deeper. Unfortunately, I am probably in the minority on that.
I assume you're smart enough to know who I mean when I say the leader of the republican party. :)
Obama has been saying that Republicans want to go back to the failed policies that ruined the economy in the first place...drove the car into the ditch, to use his analogy. That is a lie, first of all, because not all Republicans want the same thing, but more significantly, because the truly conservative Republicans absolutely do not want to go back to such things as sub-prime mortgages, TARPs, simulus packages, auto bail outs, all of which Obama supported. Now perhaps you would argue that Obama does not think these things have been the problem but have actually been the solution, in which case I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he is deceived. But I don't think he's deceived at all. I think he knows eactly what he's doing.
BTW, your assertion that "they all" tell lies and misinform betrays your cynicism. I believe that many do, consciously or otherwise, but I do not accept the premise that all politicians do.
You say, "Republicans absolutely do not want to go back to such things as sub-prime mortgages, TARPs, simulus packages, auto bail outs, all of which Obama supported."
TARP did not cause the recession. Auto bailouts did not cause the recession. Stimulus package did not cause the recession. Sub prime mortgages did in some part.
What he is talking about is repubs wanting more deregulation of banks, corporations, etc. He is talking about tax cuts not being paid for. Oh that's right, you don't have to cut spending when the CBO says tax cuts will cause less revenue. Let's just borrow. He's talking about republicans voting against pay as you go.
You know, earlier this year I challenged you via email to justify the Enron loophole, to justify repeal of Glass-Steagall, and justify how it's ok for there to basically be no corporate governance/watchdog to try to prevent corporations like Enron and World Com from being so corrupt that they not only wipe themselves out, but help wipe out pension funds, IRAs, 401k's, and etc.
Tell me why it is fair for me to pay 16% of my income in federal income tax, but for Warren Buffet to only pay 15%? And don't cop out and say I am overtaxed. If, as some like to say, lower cap gain taxes spur employment, it sure failed at the end of the last decade and even since the recession with no change in tax rates, I do not see where it is spurring much job growth. Nevermind, I forgot, the tax code incentivises outsourcing many jobs.
Haave you ever stopped to think how many people had to delay their retirement indefinetly because of this recession, Your brother being one. Apparently no one keeps track of how many people retire every year, but I bet since 2007 or 8 that number has really dropped. That to me is one reason for the slow job growth. And it's not just that 401k's took hits. It's companies that promised medical until medicare kicked in, took it all back. And don't say that's Obama care, because they did it before that. I know, I work for a company that did that and now they are getting ready to renege on insurnance back up to medicare for their retirees. Why? So they can make wall street expectations.
You're entitled to yoru beliefs, David, but not your own set of facts.
Unemployment was around 4.7% when 9/11 hit. By 2003 it was up to 6%. After the Bush tax cuts there were 52 straight months of job increases and unemployment fell steadily to around 4.6% in 2007. By the end of 2008 it was up to 5.8%. That's still not a ditch. Now it's 9.7%. The policy that drove this economy into the ditch was sub-prime mortgages, started by Carter and Clinton and not stopped by the Republican controlled government between 2001 and 2006. This was a monumental failure on the part of Bush and Congress. Then came TARP. Every Republican voted against the House version, so the Senate passed it's own version and enough Republicans were persuaded to vote for it that they got it through. Another horrible failure by Republicans. No true Conservative wants to return to those failed policies. All would like to return to the policy that actually works, which is stimulating growth by lowering taxes.
Since Bush left office we have had the stimulus slush fund, which has added nearly a trillion dollars to the deficit and which not one Republican member of the House voted for. We have also had the bail-outs and virtual takeover of GM, which would make the CEO of any large corporation a little nervous. These did not cause the recession, but they helped intensify it. 9.7% is a big deep ditch.
Certainly the economy was wobbling around the end of summer 2008. The up-surge in gas prices to $4.00 a gallon pushed a lot of people who were struggling to pay their mortgages into foreclosure. As the avalanche began to gain strength, it swept other industries in such as insurance. By September 2008 things look bad. But was the economy in the brink of total collapse? I don't believe it. If Bush as suspended payroll taxes for the fourth quarter of 2008 and started a process to immediately try to renegotiate the terms of some of the mortgages in default, neither TARP nor the stimulus would have been considered necessary, except by those determined to enlarge the grasp of the federal government.
There are certain hard lessons people need to learn. One is that if you act irresponsibly, you eventually pay a price. Bailing out failing companies on the Keynesian notion that some companies are too big to be allowed to fail only perpetuates further irresponsible behavior.
The way I look at this is TARP stopped the bleeding of my 401k and helped keep it going down from 300k to possibly zero. I will also submit we did not have a to big to fail company until Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999. A big mistake by our congress and president.
I am not sure who you think has the money other than the government to take over 65% of our assets had these banks failed.
Did you know the NY times did a study and found many (sorry, dont remember the %) of the foreclosures were by millionaires that when the bubble burst, they just abandoned to cut their losses. Jimmy Carter? I assume you are talking about the Comm. Reinvestment Act. Read it, that has very little to do with anything. Yes, the governments push for home ownership went overboard and yes people borrowed money they could not afford to pay back and yes, lenders loaned knowing the owner would not be able to pay the mortgage. They didn't care because they knew it was going to be sold and they would get their money that way. They should both be ashamed.
I heard one guy in Florida demanded in court to see the paper from the bank that was trying to foreclose on him. They had no clue where the paper was. He finally found it in Japan, apparently bundled as an investment. Not sure about the various laws, but supposedly the holder of the paper is suppose to be the one foreclosing.
Thing is none of this stuff that went on is against the law. Greed is not against the law, loaning to those who you know cant afford it is not, nor is borrowing more than you can pay back. Being unethical is not against the law. The fed screwing up is not against the law. They are all just lessons learned. Have a good weekend.
by the way. Why did gas go to $4.00?
I would also suggest you look at interest rates during both the Reagan recovery and the Bush recovery, neither by the way that had a banking meltdown like we had this time.
bottom line is demand will eventually come back. We will also see who is right since a republican house will not appropriate anymore money during this downturn. As I said months ago...5% unemployment will not be considered full employment anymore. At least not in my lifetime.
I'm sure the reason the price of gas went over $4.00 a gallon in the summer of '08 is because Bush and Cheney set it higher so they could reap windfall profits before leaving office.
Naw. I'm not that partisan.
http://fpc.state.gov/documents/organization/107208.pdf
As I said earlier, this is a greed/ethics problem. The $4 gas was greed on mine and yours back. You cannot legislate greed out of the system, but you can regulate it. I am not talking executive pay when I say greed, that's for shareholders to resolve. Maybe the tea party folks can regulate the ethical and greed problems of our congress, but I kinda doubt it.
When United States senator can insert stuff into legislation at the last hour and it is stuff that will offer financial benefits to his wife, something is amiss.
If you read the link I provided, there was another article from some business journal I found a long time ago that basically said this Enron loophole allowed speculators to bid up the price of energy without having to put much money into it. So even if they lost that speculation, their risk was minimal. Now they have to put up more money if they are willing to risk, therefore we have somewhat returned to a supply and demand system for energy.
Trust the government or not, there is no one else to regulate that kind of activity.
This recession will end some day and then things will churn along nicely and will our government have learned anything from it. Doubt it. Seems we learned nothing from deregulating the S&L's in the 80's. Seems we didn't learn much from the depression of 80 years ago. And yes, Clinton and dems bear as much responsibility as anyone else since this all started in 1990's. All Bush really did was not push enforcement very hard of what regs there were.
I think it is important to differentiate between a legitimate profit motive and abuse of the system, and at times it will probably be difficult to draw the line in exactly the right place. The fact is, Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb so he could sell it and make money. Was he greedy? I don't know. I can't get inside his heart. My point is, the profit motive inspires a lot of really good stuff. It is a powerful motivator for innovation and excellence.
But some blur the lines between profit motive and this so-called greed, implying that all profit motive is evil and destructive. Are the terms "excessive profits" or "windfall profits" synonymous with greed? Maybe, maybe not. Should we be setting arbitrary legal limits on how much profit a business or individual can make? How much is too much? How much is unfair? Who determines how much is too much? It seems to me that the substance of this whole conversation needs to be changed.
Health insurance providers are not evil simply just because they want to make a profit. There is nothing inherently wrong with profiting on the misfortune of others. If my toilet breaks, Lowe's get's to profit when I buy the replacement parts. Since one man's profit motive might be another man's greed, and vice versa, perhaps it would be more useful to focus on ethics and fairness in the market place rather than greed.
You seem to think that I am opposed to all regulation of business. That is not true. I am only opposed to excessive regulation. I just say, let's keep it to a minimum. In some ways it was regulation, not the absense of it, that led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.
I'm sure that as long as we have a free country there will always be unscupulous men who game the system. If they break any laws, then they ought to pay the penalty (e.g. Bernie Madoff). Will some people suffer? Sure. I lost $7000.00 when GM went belly up (though I feel like I really just gave my $7000.00 to the UAW). But I would rather have a free system that's flawed than a perfect one that is tightly controlled.
Just heard another outright lie from the prez" "We’re funding global AIDS and the other side is not." The truth is, Bush is the big AIDS funder. Obama has not spent nearly as much as Bush did. And besides that, which Obama bill to increase funding for AIDS was opposed by "the other side" because it increased funding for AIDS. Obama just made this up to try to win points with a crowd of liberals who could care less about the facts.
I don't think any of his 2011 budget has passed congress yet. Maybe the GOP budget they released back in the spring did not have aids funding. I have no idea what agency is in charge of global aids funding. I would thing either State Dept. or HHS, but I dunno. Did his 2010 budget have the funding?
Jina Moore (4/30/2010) writing on Humanright.change.org...
It turns out it's expensive to give lifesaving drugs to those 2.4 million people around the world who now rely on the American government to provide them. So, according to the Boston Globe, the Obama administration is thinking maybe we don't need to do so much giving out of AIDS medicine any more.
An article this month reports that the budget for PEPFAR, as the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief is generally known, has swollen from $2.3 billion — when President Bush kicked it off in 2004 — to about $7 billion this year.
Obviously, that's a lot of money. But Obama knew it would be. According to the article, he pledged $1 billion in funding for the program during his campaign — but only asked Congress for $366 million, apparently because of the recession. That pushed patients onto the waiting list. The crude truth now seems to be that until already enrolled patients die, no one's moving off that waiting list.
Streetinsider.com...
Obama Defends Anemic AIDS Funding, While Activists Demand More, Says AHF
September 23, 2010 7:59 PM EDT
AHF Supports AIDS Activists’ Heckling of President Obama at NYC Fundraiser Last Night, Calling the Obama Administration’s Record on AIDS “Dismal”
More Than 3,400 People Are on AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) Waiting Lists Across the US, While White House Continues to Give Short Shrift to AIDS and Retreat from Its Commitment to Fight the Disease Globally
LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) today issued a call for action after AIDS activists heckled President Barack Obama during a New York City fundraiser last night. The protestors descried the Obama administration’s dismal record on AIDS, holding up signs that read "Obama, broken promises KILL." The Obama administration continues to give short shrift to AIDS in the U.S. and abroad. More than 3,400 Americans are on waiting lists to receive lifesaving HIV/AIDS medications through the nation’s AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAPs) and hundreds more are being cut off from receiving medications through the state due to other cost-containment measures. The President has offered a mere $30 million in additional funding to close a gaping $126 million hole in funding for ADAPs—not nearly enough. Additionally, the Obama administration has retreated from its global commitments on AIDS, flat-funding and underfunding its worldwide programs.
From what I have read, Obama campaigend in 2008 to jack up funding by $1 billion for the global initiative. Being the responsible fellow that he is, since tax revenues are downa nd we are in quite a economic situation these days he has opted not to add $1 billion.
According to his 2011 budget to congress in 2009 which was Bush's last budget we actually spent in millions $7,289. In 2010 he asked for $7,829. No idea if that is what he got or not. In 2011 he is asking for $8,513. I found this in the state dept. budget. How much of that that goes directly to aids, no idea. Congress decides that anyway thru appropriations.
IN his HHS 2011budget there is this bullet: Invests more than $3 billion for HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment activities to expand
access to affordable health care and prevention services.
Since then he has asked for an additional $30 million. Is this being held up by the GOP? I have no idea, so if you want to call him a liar on that, feel free.
Amazing you find a social program and a response to hecklers to find your lie.
None of this matters as impeachment hearings will start next year and with Boehner wanting to go back to 2008 budgets, then the AHF will cry bloody murder.
If this is the only lie you can find, Obama must being doing pretty darn good.
All I said was that Obama is out campaigning and telling lies. This was not the only one, just the latest one (this past Saturday). You're the one who said that all politicians lie. I'm simply agreeing with you that at the very least, this politician lies. But at this point I have no interest in combing through everything he has said in the past three weeks looking for other lies. When I hear him lie, I take note of it, but I admit that a week later I have a hard time recalling the specifics. Apparently the AIDs activists don't think Obama is being up front, since they tried to shout him down.
and I would imagine to an aids activist, aids is the most important matter of all. Jobs, homeland security all are secondary. Not to me and I doubt not to you. Have you not heard, the left is very upset with Obama.
More specifically it's the anti-war left and the gay rights left that is upset with Obama. The rest of the left is relatively satisfied with him.
nooooo....healthcare left is not happy with that monstrosity of a bill. Heck, I am not even healthcare left and I think the bill sucks. Jon Stewart even gave him a hard time on it during his interview the other day on the Daily Show.
The anti war left will never be happy. Obama is doing exactly what he campaigned on, so if they expected something different, they're idiots.
I am more than willing to amend my "all lie" to "a large percentage lie."
Post a Comment