Obama- No Speaking- "Off the Cuff"

              President Obama seems to provide gratuitous soundbites to Fox News and the terrible right -wing radio critics every time he  speaks "off the cuff" and without the aid of his precious teleprompter. Because of this, the WH Administration has kept our inexperienced president on a short leash when addressing the press. If it is not a scripted interview with a friendly news outlet, the administration washes their hands of the idea. Now we are starting to witness the arrogance and thin-skin which the WH is beginning to operate concerning the press, avoiding then, ignoring them, and bypassing them whenever they see fit- Now the press is beginning to get angry... If this continues, it wont be long before they decide to get even...

          Obama and his administration entered the White House coming off an intense primary against Hilary Clinton and prevailed in their election defeat of McCain by using a strict set of rules which they applied concerning how to control their message and image to the public through bypassing the national press. This strategy by Team Obama allowed their campaign to take their message directly to the masses by using the internet, in-house videos, and carefully orchestrated interviews which featured “softball” questions by friendly members of the main stream media.

            At the time, the MSM was already so enthralled with Obama and disgusted with Bush (and any Republican) that they were more than willing to comply with his campaigns demands and write only flattering articles. This is one reason why many people still really have no idea who Barack Obama is as a man and politician. The media loved his story. They loved his race and intelligence and so they neglected to dig any deeper because they were absolutely stuck in the moment and saw themselves as the authors of his magical and mystical tale.

However, he remains, still a relatively blank slate, no one ever questioned his hundreds of “present” votes while in the Illinois Senate, researched his “questionable” associates and business partners in Chicago, or questioned why he wouldn’t release his college transcripts after he pledged he would in a primary debate with Clinton (Mrs. Clinton did keep her promise and released her thesis paper and call logs from the Clinton presidency)

Upon entering the White House, Obama pledged to have “The most open and transparent presidency that any president has had” and did this by releasing the WH visitor logs and improving the WH web content. This is not open or transparent and the press is beginning to get irked.

In today’s Politico.com, the cover story (Why Reporters are down on Obama) goes into great detail and great length (7 pages) to describe the daily battle the White House Correspondence Association has dealing with the WH and this Administration to gain access,  obtain quotes, or to simply get a phone call returned.

It also provides instances of the Administration providing “scoops” to The New York Times and other newspapers which give them favorable coverage in their papers. The article also points out examples of how Press Sec. Robert Gibbs “favors” different news organizations during his daily press conferences by calling on the news organizations he trusts and ignoring ones who publish unflattering articles about the administration, such as The Wall Street Journal. This goes along with the administrations past efforts to marginalize Fox News as a “real” news organization because they question Obama’s Policy’s. 

The article goes on to say that- “During his first year in office, President Bill Clinton did 252 such Q&A sessions—an average of one every weekday. Bush did 147. Obama did 46, according to Towson University Professor Martha Kumar.”

These Q&A sessions are just informal times when a president has a break and allows the press to ask them some questions pertaining to the country’s current events of that time. Obama’s 46, lowest of the past two presidents, provides another example of Obama’s hesitation to speak unscripted to the press.

For an Administration which prided itself on transparency and promises that continually, Obama and his staff have been more private and secretive than even the Bush presidency.

Lest forget the time when Obama slipped the press to leave the WH to attend his girls soccer game, a big no-no and major breach of presidential protocol.

Another gripe from the press pool occurs when the WH releases their own behind-the scenes coverage of events closed to the press which always portray the president and their guests in such a glowing light- Now, not that they shouldn’t be portrayed “glowingly” however, these videos are created by people on the WH payroll and are totally bias. Then these videos are released to all the major news organizations which air them as actual “news”.

What would be the problem with having the pool reporters capture their own coverage of the events that they are supposed to attend?
            Yet, this is starting to be a real problem for the WH. The press is a notoriously fickle bunch, who thinks that they wield the power to make or break candidates and stories when they see fit.  Obama and his team have decided, for better or worse, to continue to bypass the press by trying to take their messages directly to the people by stonewalling the press pool.

In doing this, they will eventually have to face the wrath of a press corp. who is agitated and feeling disrespected by an Administration which many inside the press probably feels they contributed in helping him to win the presidency.

The press turns on politicians with the flip of a coin- and no president has been able to ever fully escape the scrutiny and wrath it brings when they do. As  such a thin-skinned administration,  using such arrogance when dealing with the people who are responsible for handing you the keys to the presidency-  may come back to haunt them.

           

 Maybe Obama’s lack of “Off the Cuff” remarks stems from his dismal track record of speaking without a teleprompter. Some highlights from him speaking freely:

·         "No, no. I have been practicing...I bowled a 129. It's like -- it was like Special Olympics, or something." - during an appearance on "The Tonight Show", March 19, 2009 (Obama later called the head of the Special Olympics to apologize)

·         "The Cambridge police acted stupidly."

·         "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about doing any séances." -–after saying he had spoken with all the living presidents as he prepared to take office, Washington, D.C., Nov. 7, 2008 (Obama later called Nancy Reagan to apologize)

·         "UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? It's the Post Office that's always having problems." –attempting to make the case for government-run healthcare, while simultaneously undercutting his own argument, Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 11, 2009

·         I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." -- defending his tax plan to Joe the Plumber, who argued that Obama's policy hurts small-business owners like himself, Toledo, Ohio, Oct. 12, 2008

·         "It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." –speaking at a San Francisco fundraiser about his troubles winning over some small-town, working-class voters, April 11, 2008

·         "I've now been in 57 states — I think one left to go."

Liberals hate the Law

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was sick and tired of waiting for the Obama Administration to finally provide her the much needed help to deal with the avalanche of crime stemming from the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants crossing over the border from Mexico into her state. So as Arizona saw crime continue to rise and drugs continuing to pour across the border into her state, last week she signed into law a requirement that police can now ask the status of one’s citizenship.

 Since then the Liberal mouthpiece has been wailing words such as- Gestapo! Hitler! Racist!

Rev. Al Sharpton vows to plan a march!  

Obama said it was “misguided and over-reaching” “unfair”

San Francisco politicians have called to boycott the state!  

In other words- SUCCESS! - An Amazing SUCCESS!

It’s the only way, as a conservative, you can sum up the liberal response to such a competent bill. I mean...Hmmm…. your telling me the Gov. of AZ said she will enforce a law, WHICH is already a LAW!  Gosh, Liberals are geniuses!

 Mr. President should ask that drug dealer who just committed a Federal Crime if he too thinks that its “unfair” that he was arrested while breaking the law as well. When someone is in the country illegally they have committed a crime, this makes them a criminal. There is no other first- world country in the world that allows someone of another country’s citizenship to just come waltzing in and welcomes them with open arms.

Like America, there is a process which one needs to go through to establish citizenship in that particular country. Why is everyone up in arms about this law just enacted in Arizona?

            Why do we even go to the lengths to establish this process to allow people to become citizens if the Federal government will just decided to turn the other way when our FEDERAL LAW is being broken?

            There are two ways to approach this uproar in AZ.

The first is to just decide once and for all to have no borders and no immigration policy. Anyone and Everyone can come to America and work, live, commit crimes, and get on welfare, etc… all without having to pay personal, city, state and federal taxes. They can come over and milk us for everything as we decided to be the “all welcoming world state” Obama wants us to be.

Or we can follow and enforce the laws we have established long ago, which our grandparents and great-grandparents had to endure and make everyone who would like to become a citizen get in the back of the line and wait, like everyone else!  Then after you put in your time and show that you are ready to follow America’s laws and learn America’s language and support America’s tax infrastructure than we would be more than happy to present you with a citizenship card.

In fact, the slimy libs are all up in arms about the law because it requires people to show proof of their citizenship if asked, well once you obtain a green card, it is already (another) Federal Law that you must provide evidence of citizenship, should you be asked. This is for our own already legal citizens. So that negates the other liberal talking point about how it’s unfair for an American citizen to need to provide evidence of already being a citizen.

70% of Arizonians are FOR this bill, before all the high-minded, snooty NY liberals begins giving their 2 cents maybe they should go to AZ and check out the results of having years of unchecked illegal’s taking over their state.  

The deserts are trashed with litter from migrant’s crossing over and using the states landscape as their own personal garbage dump. The homicide rate is through-the –roof with cartel killings and drug-related slayings and innocent ranchers are now being slain while simply working their land because they live along a popular smuggling route.

Phoenix, Arizona is presently #2 (after Mexico City) in the WORLD for highest number of kidnappings yearly. And according to Forbes.com-  

Though nationwide crime was down 3.5% year over year in the first six months of 2008, the cities atop our list illustrate a disturbing trend: All 10 of the most dangerous cities were among those identified by the Department of Justice as transit points for Mexican drug cartels.

As Forbes discovered - Every city which a Mexican Drug Cartel uses as a transit point to deliver their drugs and weapons further down the distribution line, just happens to be one of the top ten most dangerous city’s in America. Can this be a coincidence? Or is it racist to suggest that the illegal aliens who scamper over the Mexican border into Arizona become drug mules for their cartels which bring violence to states not even remotely located near the border.

Unfortunately, the only way the Liberals won’t wail is when the violence begins affecting them. When a rich donor in Manhattan is robbed and killed by an illegal immigrant is when the drums will start to beat declaring what a travesty America has become and how peaceful places have now turned into the wild, wild, west.

And as the liberals whine and mope about, brainstorming “Self –Help” seminars for drug mules and cartel shot-callers, us independent citizens will not fear- because we aren’t slimy liberals waiting around for the tofu to appear, we are firm believers in the 2^nd amendment…something Obama hasn’t taken away yet!

Big Bertha :NUTS Run ACORN

 Embattled ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis just doesn’t know when to keep her mouth shut.

When damning tapes surfaced showing ACORN officials in 5 cities giving advice to a fake pimp about how to obtain Federal funding to set-up brothels, the Federal Government was finally embarrassed enough to yank their Federal funds to ACORN. They immediately voted to suspend all future funding and suddenly the prominent inner- city organization that our new president worked with- became an overnight disgrace.

           

Bertha Lewis and ACORN went into super-spin mode. Ms. Lewis appeared on all the network news shows by making outlandish statements defending her employees and ACORN by saying that everything was taken out of context and this was all a big misunderstanding, but the damage was already done and with ACORN facing Federal probes for voter fraud in many states, most Democrats were quick to distance themselves from the organization which a few months earlier was the gold-standard for Federally funded inner-city non-profits.

            Now, Ms. Lewis just cannot help but to insert foot into mouth as she brings more unwanted attention onto an eerie organization which provided the springboard to President Obama’s Presidential Campaign.   

In a recent speech to the Young Democratic Socialists, the youth branch of the Democratic Socialists and the U.S. branch of the Socialist International, Bertha made some amazing comments concerning the Tea Party Movement, the direction our nations heading in, and her love of socialism.

           

"Any group that says, 'I'm young, I'm Democratic, and I'm a socialist,' is all right with me. You know that's no light thing to do -- to actually say, I'm a socialist -- because you guys know right now we are living in a time which is going to dwarf the McCarthy era. It is going to dwarf the internment during World War II. We are right now in a time that is going to dwarf the era of Jim Crow and segregation," Lewis said.

Whoa! This is the best you can find to lead your company? She thinks that the time we live in now, a time when we have elected a biracial President and a Latino Women for the Supreme Court- all in the past 18 months- and in a time when everyone has equal recognized rights under FEDERAL LAW- will be worse than Jim Crow and the Segregation era?

Wow! She obviously has a lot of confidence in President Obama running the country!

Amazingly, she continued with these comments concerning the Tea Party Protestors:

"This is not rhetoric or hyperbole -- this is real," Lewis said. "This rise of this Tea Party so-called movement -- bowel movement in my estimation -- and this blatant uncovering and ripping off the mask of racism."

So after telling the crowd that our nation is heading into a period worse than the Jim Crow Era, she blasts Tea Partiers by calling them “bowel movements” and accusing them of racism, which is a baseless accusation while conforming perfectly to the whole ACORN “victim” mentality thing they got going on.

The most incredible aspect of her whole speech was that during it she admitted that ACORN is “on life-support” because of the recent ruling to uphold their suspension of Federal funding.  Bertha and ACORN needs to get a clue. How do you expect your organization to elicit sympathy to possibly regain funds or receive donations when your CEO – of all people- is suffering from verbal diarrhea? Especially in a time when the GOP has most Democratic Reps on the ropes coming into the 2010 election season?  No one will put their job on the line to support this nut. 

 The scariest element to her comments was regarding socialism and the facts that she thinks it takes courage to stand-up and proclaim that you’re a socialist. This is because the CEO of ACORN is proudly declaring her love of Socialism, which would lead one to assume, that she works with other people who have equivalent views with her own.

This leads us back to our new President who has worked at ACORN and during his short stint as President has already taken over our nation’s: Health Care, Banking, Student-Loan Program,  Car Company (GM) , and the Housing- Mortgage Industry.

            Some people have even accused him of being a “Socialist” by doing this? I wonder how they came to that conclusion?

WHERE ARE THE JOBS!!????????

The White House spin cycle has been working overtime, with all their heavy hitters, on all the major channels still trying to pressure people into thinking that Health Care Reform (HCR) is the most pressing (and only) issue that American’s are currently worried about?  We are witnessing this administration slowly lose America.

            After the epic drumming Obama and the Democrats have taken in the recent polls, while having a supermajority in both the House and Senate, you would need to think they would at least try to refocus their agenda to creating jobs.

            Instead, much to the dismay of the suffering middle-class they continue to ram this HCR agenda down our throats. This is neither what the public is asking for right now, nor what the public needs right now.

            We need JOBS!  How can a “supposed” unmatched intellectual such as are current president be so blind to this fact?

             The $787 BILLION dollar stimulus which the President pushed through sloppily last February was done so on the premise and promise of putting American’s back to work by creating shovel ready projects, building roads, and bridges, and stopping the sky-rocketing unemployment our country is facing.

            Instead, unemployment figures continue to grow, as fewer jobs are being created and even more are being lost, month after month. A stagnant 10.6% unemployment remains.

             Meanwhile, the president continues to downplay his poll numbers as they continue their downward spiral, yet all politicians focus on their approval numbers and one as egotistical as Obama is surely scrutinizing them daily.

            He has focused on Nukes, Green Energy Initiatives, Healthcare, and Cap and Trade, yet refuses to focus on job- creation. The only answer as to why he hasn’t shifted focus is because he doesn’t know how to solve the problem or what the country needs to escape this current unemployment rut.

            Exactly the problem which occurs when electing a person for president who has never been in the job creation business or even worked in the private sector!

            President Obama continues to let our country down. While more and more people realize how awful and expensive his landmark HCR is, more and more people begin to hate it and the government intrusion, taxes, and job LOSS, it will bring to normal Americans daily lives. This will be a huge problem for the Dems in 2010 and an even bigger problem for Obama in 2012.

            Also as facts begin to emerge about Obama’s dealings with Wall Street and the donations he received from them, it will make matters for him worse.

            People have a general mistrust of Politicians to begin with, but when one comes in promising the lofty “Change” which Obama did, they will take their general anger out at the polls and will not forget all his broken promises easily or quickly.

            Obama passed the stimulus package by boldly declaring that it will create over 2.5 million “shovel ready” jobs which will immediately put Americans back to work.

            Now, everyone has their shovels, but are still waiting for their jobs…

A Solution to America's Energy, Welfare, and Obesity Crisis?

Maricopa County, Arizona’s famous Sheriff Joe Arapaio, or “Sheriff Joe” is known for his unorthodox treatment of prisoners. He has saved the county millions by setting up a “tent city” which houses prisoners in outdoor military tents, provides inmates with three tiny meals equaling 2,400 calories total, and makes male prisoners wear cheap pink underwear- all to remind them that they broke the law and to think twice before doing it again in his jurisdiction. n           

            Well, Sheriff Joe just debuted another brilliant idea which consists of making inmates who want to watch TV pedal  stationary bikes hooked up to generators in order to power their televisions. One hour of pedaling generates one hour of TV! Incredible, saves tax payer money, gets prisoners in shape and the ole Sheriff is going green, all at the same time.

            This sparked an idea within me. After all the recent chatter coming from politicians about going green and using alternative sources of energy such as wind and solar as well as solving the unemployment crisis which is rampant in our country.

            If we followed the good sheriff’s idea, we may just be able to do both at once and even take it a step further by helping America’s obesity problem.

            Imagine if we hooked up stationary bicycles in major cities that are all powered into the same type of energy grid which Sheriff Joe uses, one that can harness the energy of the people cycling. Then instead of doling out the massive amounts of taxpayer funded welfare checks, we make the recipients peddle, every day, for a certain number of hours.

            This ingenious method would help power cities cleanly, whip people into shape, and make them earn their welfare check- all at once!

            There are almost no downsides to this solution. Everyone knows how long and expensive the process is to construct, assemble, and put-up the solar panels and wind-turbines in America. Not to mention figuring out the ways of correctly harnessing the energy they absorb.

            This solution would solve all those problems and give electricity to buildings instantly!

             Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions and assume everyone on welfare wants to be on it, because that’s certainly not the case, but I’m sure after a few days of pedaling for six hours  people may become more motivated to start looking for other jobs and get off the government dole. 

            Unfortunately, this ingenious idea created by Sheriff Joe and expanded on by me, will never see the light of day, because the current Politicians we have in office lack something that both Sheriff Joe and I have- COMMON SENSE!