Tag: Pres. Obama
Maddow: Beltway Media Deliberately Misreported Obama’s Speech to the Congressional Black Caucus
At about 02:00 in the video above from the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC last night, Maddow runs the last few minutes of Pres. Obama’s speech to the Congressional Black Caucus last weekend — the section in which, as the Associated Press, the Beltway media and right-wing propagandists reported it, he exhorted the African-American congressional leaders to take off their bedroom slippers, put on their boots, stop grumbling and start marching.
A transcript follows of the excerpt from the speech (and a complete transcript of the president’s remarks at the bottom of this page), but first, here is what Maddow said about the way the media reported on the speech:
Another Tired Tea Party Teleprompter Joke Delivered Via Teleprompter
Florida Gov. Rick Scott (Tea/GOP) misplaced his sense of irony at a recent appearance, according to TPM. Speaking to those gathered in Orlando for Presidency 5 (I don’t know why it’s called that but those at the event — who selected Herman Cain as their straw poll winner — inexplicably think the meeting important), Scott gazed deeply into his teleprompters so he wouldn’t flub the punch line on this joke about the president. Obama, like all presidents and other major public speakers since Herbert Hoover, often uses a teleprompter.
Good afternoon, and welcome to Presidency 5!
“I have to admit, I was a little nervous when I looked out here. I saw all the TV cameras and a teleprompter. I figured President Obama must be here – giving another speech about raising taxes!“[emphasis in the original]
Seriously, though, it’s great to see you all today.
Is that funny or what? Man, he had me at Pres. Obama being there, but then to go on to mention raising taxes – whooey, that is good stuff! I’m just glad he used the teleprompter so he could deliver it verbatim, word for word, just as the mad jokester who wrote it intended, and not lose a single shred of the funny.
It could have been worse, I guess. At least the governor didn’t read off any jokes about Obama’s birth certificate or the first lady’s fight against childhood obesity or any of the other hot button issues surrounding the Obamas of concern to tea partiers today.
Saving America From Itself
A lot of hypotheticals made the rounds after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. “What would you do if” questions were a way to process all the horror, as were scenarios of how to go forward.
My boss back then was a young Jewish woman, raised by her Orthodox rabbi grandfather. She had spent time in Israel, where she said the kind of invasive security procedures that eventually became codified as the Patriot Act were necessary to protect the country. “But if it isn’t America after you’re done protecting it,” I asked, “what’s the point?”
At its core, our country changed. The Tea Party of the Flies and its, “There’s not enough for everyone so I’m gonna get mine” scarcity mind-set with racist, homophobic, fundamentalist undertones took hold.
Ten years later, I still wonder about the answer to that question. When Bush suggested that average Americans could best defeat terrorism by going shopping, we responded. We flooded sport utility vehicle show rooms, and gawked as Hummers and Lincoln Navigators attempted to squeeze into parking spots like paunchy football coaches trying to wear their high school uniforms. We distracted ourselves with the antics of second-rate celebrities as they bounced from sex tapes to drug binges to rehab and back. We went along with invasions, with shock and awe, with rigged videos of statues falling and blond female service members being rescued. We were at war but we were never quite sure with whom: Insurgents? Dead-enders? Enemy combatants?
Hoffa: ‘Take Republicans Out – Of Office’
Did Hoffa advocate “second amendment solutions?”
Response on Facebook to someone repeating the FOX News inspired meme that James P. Hoffa called for violence against Republicans and that Democrats should condemn him for it. FOX is showing an edited clip of Hoffa’s speech introducing the president before a union-friendly crowd in Detroit on Labor Day in which Hoffa calls for “taking them out.” Left out, however, was that Hoffa was referring to taking Republicans in Congress out of office. Expect FOX’s distortions to accelerate ahead of Pres. Obama’s jobs speech.
Beginning to Wonder If Republicans Are Right About the Economy?
We’re taking the name of this post at Truth-Out.org, “Three Charts to Email to Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law,” as encouragement to share. And since these graphs appeal to our love of accuracy, we will do just that.
For starters, we have the amount that federal spending has increased under Pres. Obama (a barely cost-of-living equivalent 7.2 percent) compared to how much it increased under the two off-the-books wars and one unfunded prescription drug mandate man, Pres. Bush (a whopping 88 percent). Truth-Out noted that the figures do not include recent budget cuts.
But wait, there’s more reality-based number crunching ahead.
Big Government? Let’s Talk Reagan
35,000
Number less of non-military federal employees under Pres. Obama, compared to Pres. Reagan. Obama, like every Democratic president starting with Jimmy Carter, has cut federal employees, while every Republican, starting with Reagan, has increased them. When Reagan employed 2,875,000 non-military employees in 1980, the American population was 226.5 million. Obama employs 2,840,000 serving a national population of 330 million.
Tea Party ‘Terrorists’ Hate Name-Calling, Except When They Do It
As he shook hands on a rope line during his tour of the upper Midwest, Pres. Obama was accosted by a pair of tea partyists, who berated him because they did not like being called “economic terrorists” during the debt ceiling debacle that their representatives in Congress engineered last month.
Rather than confronting them — “We’ll stop calling you economic terrorists when you stop taking the U.S. economy hostage,” he might have said — the president was much more polite, of course. Via David Weigel, here’s a transcript of the exchange:
TEA BAGGER 1: When you’re talking about civility, how is your vice president calling us terrorists…
OBAMA: Sir, sir…
TEA BAGGER 1: I would like to understand that!
OBAMA: Okay, I will explain right now. He did not call you guys terrorists.
TEA BAGGER 1: He said we were acting like terrorists. Hostage-takers.
OBAMA: No. What he said was that for us to be willing to take the economy to the brink was irresponsible. And it was.
This first tea bagger was referring to an exchange between Vice Pres. Joe Biden and Democratic Rep. Mike Doyle of Pennsylvania, while the debt-ceiling negotiations were taking place:
Rick Perry, Who Put Texas Secession on the Table in April, Now Suggests President Does Not Love America
Do neo-Confederates who advocate secession of the South from the United States (again) “love” America? Logic suggests that they do not. Back in April, Rick Perry famously suggested that the secession of Texas was at least a possibility:
REPORTER: Some have associated you with the idea of secession or sovereignty for your state…
PERRY: Oh, I think there’s a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came in the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that. You know, my hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We’ve got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that? So. But Texas is a very unique place and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.
(Perry is, of course, lying. Texas was not given an option to opt out when it was annexed into the union in 1845.)
But now we have Perry, four months after he was caught palling around with neo-Confederates, suggesting that it is the president of the United States who does not “love” America:
