What the Pundits Will Be Talking About for the Next Three Days

Scott Shackford | 6.8.2012 12:01 PM

So President Barack Obama says this Friday after saying Congress needs to act to restore jobs for state and local public sector employees:

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CuriousGeorge 13 years ago

"The private sector's doing fine."

That's fucking laughable.
1. Killazontherun 13 years ago
  
  If he doesn't want the job, isn't he obligated to give another democrat a crack at it?
2. Brandybuck 13 years ago
  
  A friend and police officer once told me during a discussion on gub'ment pensions, "You guys in the private sector don't know what it's like. When a recession hits you keep getting raises."
  1. Randian 13 years ago
    
    bwa ha ha...someone actualyl said that to you?
  2. Neil B 13 years ago
    
    The funny thing is when they say they didn't get a raise they still get cost of living increases. We in the private sector get nothing.
3. sarcasmic 13 years ago
  
  I guess that's why my employer stopped giving out annual raises, and why my office has six less people in it than it did two years ago.
  1. Broseph of Invention 13 years ago
    
    It sounds like you were screwed by the greedy and Jewish 1%. It's amazing how they always strike worst when there's a recession. We're just lucky it isn't the 30's, when the rich were hoarding and firing people left and right and closing down banks so the 99% couldn't get their money and kicking up dust in Oklahoma to ruin crops and unleashing their pet bull weevils.
    1. sarcasmic 13 years ago
      
      It's boll weevil. Get a spell checker.
      1. Broseph of Invention 13 years ago
        
        True story: me and the roommates applied for the Red Bull Flugtag four years ago with our aircraft "Don't Stop Boll Weevin'", a Journey/Great Depression fusion boll weevil that looked a lot like the Journey scarab meets Copland's "The Promise of Living". We weren't selected.
Ben the Duck 13 years ago

For an encore, he repeats that line while George Soros is drinking a glass of water.
1. sage 13 years ago
  
  Lolz
2. Ken Shultz 13 years ago
  
  George Soros doesn't think the private sector is doing fine.
  1. sage 13 years ago
    
    Ventriloquists don't use their thoughts to perform.
  2. Ben the Duck 13 years ago
    
    Substitute "David Axelrod," then, Cap'n Buzzkill. 😉
Bee Tagger 13 years ago

This could be the fatal flaw in the plan to blame a do-nothing congress. It relies far too heavily on Obama being able to admit that things haven't gone and aren't going well. He may be able to do this in a prepared speech but never when asked a question. How many blunders, at this point, can be directly attributed to him needing to be the smartest person in the room with an answer for everything?
1. VG Zaytsev 13 years ago
  
  I caught part of the speech on tv but started laughing when he compared the republican's plans to Europe.
  
  Apparently he thinks Europe just isn't socialist enough.
2. wareagle 13 years ago
  
  interesting that he never blamed Congress when his party ran it. Guess the economy was in boom mode then. Once more, it's a diversionary tactic: shift the focus from me to someone else and hope people are too stupid to catch on.
  1. Peter L 13 years ago
    
    While his party was running congress he could still blame everything on Bush. He still tries to blame everything on Bush.
    
    I am not one to defend Bush, but at some point he left office, and there does not seem to be any improvement since.
    1. EDG reppin' LBC 13 years ago
      
      The talking heads on Bloomberg TV were saying the same yesterday. They essentially said that Obama's campaign was going to be "backward looking" and blame Bush for the economy. Romney's campaign will be well served to acknowledge the dismal state of the economy and to offer solutions.
      1. ?Ex Nihilo? 13 years ago
        
        ...blame Bush for the economy.
        
        I have already seen one of these. It makes one wonder how long they can get on the "it's Bush's fault." Really is sickening.
        
        It's the President, Stupid. 13 years ago
        
        "It makes one wonder how long they can get on the "it's Bush's fault.""
        
        Until he leaves office in January.
  2. It's the President, Stupid. 13 years ago
    
    EOM
Ken Shultz 13 years ago

It took people a while to figure out that the Bush Administration didn't know what it was doing either. Most of them didn't figure out that Bush was incompetent until after Katrina.

We didn't have one big obvious event with Obama--but it's slowly dawned on people...

Yeah, the Obama Administration is completely incompetent. The emperor has no clothes. He's already acting like a lame duck president.

You'd almost guess he doesn't really care about what the voters think of him anymore.
1. Shirley Knott 13 years ago
  
  Given that he's a legend in his own mind, and that people don't agree with him, why would you expect him to care?
  People who disagree with him come 'pre-dismissed' as serious.
2. John 13 years ago
  
  And of course pretty much all of the coverage of Katrina was a lie.
3. Brett L 13 years ago
  
  Katrina? You mean when the governor of Louisiana didn't take the steps necessary to mobilize federal assistance until after everything was a fucked up mess?
  1. Ken Shultz 13 years ago
    
    Yeah, that's exactly the way everybody saw it...
    
    The armed forces. FEMA. The president himself!
    
    They're all supposed to sit around and wait for the governor of Louisiana to tell them what to do.
    
    That's the competence works. You wait for the governor of Louisiana to tell you what to do.
    
    Good job pointing that out.
4. Tulpa the White 13 years ago
  
  The Bush administration was nowhere near as incompetent as BO's.
  
  They had a shit-ton more stuff on their plate. 9/11, Katrina, two major invasions, and the housing bubble collapse. The invasions were stupid and had loads of problems afterward, of course, but actually went better than I thought they would. The Katrina mess was largely the fault of the state and local govts, which were run by Dems at the time and thus immune to criticism in the media.
  1. Pi Guy 13 years ago
    
    I love NOLA but, no, the Katrina mess was caused by building half the city two stories below sea level in Hurricane Zone.
    
    If you've ever been to the French Quarter and looked 20 feet up to see the river you understand immediately how that could happen. If you believe in gravity, which I do.
    1. fried wylie 13 years ago
      
      If you believe in gravity
      
      Pffft.
    2. Azathoth!! 13 years ago
      
      Except that the quarter is seven feet above sea level. Looing up to the top of thw levee isn't the same as looking up to the river. The quarter didn't flood.
    3. Ken Shultz 13 years ago
      
      People are talking about different aspects of Katrina.
      
      I'm talking about George W. Bush sitting around and doing nothing to evacuate people after the fact for days.
      
      I'm talking about gang members at the Superdome taking more responsibility for feeding people that George W. Bush did.
      
      I'm talking Sean freaking Penn seeing that the people of New Orleans needed help to survive--before the thought occurred to George W. Bush.
      
      Who's fault were the levees breaking?
      
      I'm not sure and I don't care.
      
      Who did absolutely nothing to help the people of New Orleans for days after the levee broke?
      
      Everybody blamed George W. Bush for doing that at the time--and they were right. That was woeful incompetence on George W. Bush's part, and claiming that it wasn't his responsibility until the governor of Louisiana told him what to do is one lame fucking excuse.
      
      I'd fire people for saying stupid shit like that. If you're not smart enough to think for yourself, then why the hell would I pay you to think for me?
      
      P.S. Katrina wasn't the only woefully incompetent thing Bush did. The bombing and invading Iraq thing? That was woefully incompetent. De-Baathification and disbanding the Iraqi military? That was woefully incompetent. Rewriting interrogation policy and letting them migrate from a place like Guantanamo, where they might have been a legal to a place like Abu Ghraib where they clearly weren't? That was woefully incompetent...
      1. Keith3D 13 years ago
        
        Every one of your points is a half-truth if not a flat out lie. I'd have to go with the superdome bit as the best. I though the press had thoroughly "reported" every ridiculous rumor and claim (most dealing with the mythical dystopia at the superdome, which fyi did have sufficient food), but I hadn't heard that one.
VG Zaytsev 13 years ago

This Jackass is amazingly clueless.

Let's not cut bloated public payrolls

Is a hell of a platform to run on.

At least he's being honest for once.
Spoonman. 13 years ago

It's like the candidates are making all of each others's campaign commercials.
Episiarch 13 years ago

I'm curious, as I cannot WTFV at work: what amazing stupidity does he say?
1. sage 13 years ago
  
  Read the very first comment.
2. wareagle 13 years ago
  
  that the private sector is "doing fine" and that "we" have created more than 4 million jobs under his watch.
  
  No one will ask how it is possible for all these 'new' jobs to appear even while the unemployment rate, under King O the First, has risen.
  1. Ben the Duck 13 years ago
    
    One does not question The Messiah. One simply kneels, and accepts, gratefully.
  2. Episiarch 13 years ago
    
    So he's lying through his teeth. Awesome.
    1. CampingInYourPark 13 years ago
      
      No. The first thing he says is "to tell you the truth". It has been spoken. It is so.
  3. Tulpa the White 13 years ago
    
    No one will ask how it is possible for all these 'new' jobs to appear even while the unemployment rate, under King O the First, has risen.
    
    Immigrants and kids entering the workforce faster than people are retiring. The numerator has in fact gotten bigger but the denominator has gotten bigger faster.
    1. R C Dean 13 years ago
      
      The numerator has in fact gotten bigger but the denominator has gotten bigger faster.
      
      Actually, the numerator hasn't gotten bigger. As of November, 1.6mm private sector jobs had vaporized since Obama took office. Feel free to update this number, but there's no way 1.6mm private sector jobs have come on line since then.
      
      http://www.usatoday.com/money/.....51065798/1
      1. Tulpa the White 13 years ago
        
        That's the total jobs lost, not the net job change. There are more private sector jobs now than there were when BO took office. (obviously not enough to keep up with pop growth)
        
        R C Dean 13 years ago
        
        There are more private sector jobs now than there were when BO took office.
        
        I had a hell of a time trying to find any stats on that but I see where I went wrong on that number. Somebody did go to the trouble of trying to calculate net private sector jobs under Obama, as of January at least:
        
        In contrast, under President Obama's administration, the private sector has still lost a net 549,000 private sector jobs (874,000 if one attributes the remaining 11 days of job losses in January 2009 to Obama, and 1.39 million if one attributes all of January 2009?s losses to him).
        
        It looks like, by now, he's somewhere between breakeven, or south of breakeven.
        
        Anybody who has a better source for the net change in private sector jobs under Obama, please chime in. It amazes me that this kind of information is so frickin' hard to get to.
        
        R C Dean 13 years ago
        
        Forgot the linky:
        
        http://reflectionsofarationalr.....jobs-data/
        
        Rational Republican 13 years ago
        
        The most recent number is +55,000 private sector jobs, which is a far cry from 4.3 million.
        
        http://reflectionsofarationalr.....jobs-data/
  4. Tulpa the White 13 years ago
    
    Oh, and the fact that the public sector (state, local, federal combined) has in fact lost jobs.
    1. wareagle 13 years ago
      
      so if he takes credit for "creating" all those new private sector jobs, how come he avoids same for killing public sector work?
      1. Tulpa the White 13 years ago
        
        Acting!
    2. Brett L 13 years ago
      
      What? I thought he said "we", meaning the public sector, "have created 800k jobs".
Tulpa the White 13 years ago

What does he say after "the private sector's doing fine"? It was clearly the first clause of a sentence which the video poster cut right in the middle of.
1. VG Zaytsev 13 years ago
  
  He said that we have to protect state and local government workers from cut backs. Cops, teachers, garbage men and most of all bureaucrats.
  
  He also said that the republican's plan to cut spending is exactly what Europe did that caused all their problems.
  1. Tulpa the White 13 years ago
    
    OK. Then the context doesn't help him.
    1. Randian 13 years ago
      
      Full quote for reference:
      
      The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing problems is with state and local government, often with cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help they're accustomed to from the federal government.
MP 13 years ago

"We created"

You didn't do shit.

More accurately, it is not the job of the WH or Congress or any of those fucktards in Washington to create jobs. It's the stupidity of the American people, who expect this to be the case, which leads to this type of stupidity from the mouth of POTUS.

I think if I ever ready Healy's Cult of the Presidency book I would shoot myself.

STOP LOOKING TO THE DAMN PRESIDENT FOR YOUR FUCKING LOLLIPOPS!
1. Enjoy Every Sandwich 13 years ago
  
  I've read it...yes you would.
John 13 years ago

It is funny as hell to watch Clinton keep having these "gaffes" that are killing Obama like saying Romney had a sterling business record. It is like watching a bad cop movie where the cop goes up to the bad guy and knees him in the groin and says "oh I am sorry I guess I ran into to" and then slams his head into the wall and tells his partner "hey it looks like Pyle here accidentally ran into the wall". It is so obvious that Clinton wants Obama to lose so Hillary can run in 2016. But Bubba is such a shameless liar I almost feel sorry for Obama.
1. Dovahkiin 13 years ago
  
  Granted this was only from the text of his line, but when Clinton said something to the effect of "Oh, I thought we should actually do something before the election" during his 'apology,' I sensed a massive amount of snark.
2. Ben the Duck 13 years ago
  
  Watching Obama trying to out-slick Bill Clinton is like watching Robin the Boy Wonder attempting to "take" Batman in a slap-fighting contest.
  
  You just have to feel sorry for the poor li'l feller, really: he doesn't have the weight, and he doesn't have the reach.
  1. fried wylie 13 years ago
    
    Clinton:Obama !:: Batman:Robin
    
    Clinton:Obama :: Batman:Shaft or Batman:Dolomite
    1. Ben the Duck 13 years ago
      
      Batman:Emmanuel Lewis
      1. It's the President, Stupid. 13 years ago
        
        Batman:Urcle
        
        http://crazy-frankenstein.com/.....lpaper.jpg
        
        http://images3.wikia.nocookie......l-jail.jpg
    2. Ska 13 years ago
      
      Are you trying to tell me Dolomite couldn't take out Batman? Even with his army of kung fu hookers?
      
      Clinton:Obama as Dolomite:Black Belt Jones
3. R C Dean 13 years ago
  
  It is so obvious that Clinton wants Obama to lose so Hillary can run in 2016.
  
  Hillary can run in 2016 regardless of whether Obama wins. In fact, if he loses, she will have to run against an incumbent Republican, which is always harder to do than running for an open seat.
  
  I'm not sure why Bill is doing this, but I'm pretty sure its not to help Hillary in 2016.
  1. Emmerson Biggins 13 years ago
    
    Maybe it's because he realizes Obama sucks ass? And he his hurting the whole TEAM BLUE brand?
    
    You can say a lot of bad things about Clinton, but I think, especially after his first two years, his Prime Directive was "Don't fuck things up". If he could smuggle some left wing crap in there that I disagreed with on top of that, then he would do so. But he made an honest, intelligent effort to not fuck everything up. Barry seems to have forgotten that part.
4. Emmerson Biggins 13 years ago
  
  excellent mental image there John.
John 13 years ago

Peggy Noonan pretty much pegs Obama this morning.

And where is the president in all this? On his way to Anna Wintour's house. He's busy. He's running for president.

But why? He could be president now if he wanted to be. ...

But maybe Bubba's looking at the president and seeing what far more than half of Washington sees: a man who is limited, who thinks himself clever, and who doesn't know that clever right now won't cut it.

Because Bill Clinton loves politics, he hates losers. Maybe he just can't resist sticking it to them a little, when he gets a chance.
1. Tulpa the White 13 years ago
  
  Bill Clinton is a bully!
2. It's the President, Stupid. 13 years ago
  
  "But why? He could be president now if he wanted to be. ..."
  
  ouch
3. BakedPenguin 13 years ago
  
  Peggy Noonan ...pegs Obama this morning.
  
  Oh, if only.
Mike M. 13 years ago

This is so jacked up that I'm actually starting to wonder if it's possible that Shrieking Idiot could be Obama himself.
John 13 years ago

More "help" for Obama from Bill Clinton.

Those rates -- the problem with that and why I think they should be extended for the bottom 98% is that median income, after inflation, is lower than it was the day I left office," former President Bill Clinton said on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Thursday afternoon.

"So those people who would be affected by that, many, many of them have had no income increases in a decade while their costs have gone up. So you really would have a contractionary economic impact. It would be very bad for the economy if those folks in the bottom 98% had to shoulder a tax increase," Clinton told CNN host Wolf Blitzer

http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....ffice.html

Thanks a lot Bill. I am sure the big BO appreciates you pointing out the fact that median income is so low.
1. gaijin 13 years ago
  
  Those rates -- the problem with that and why I think they should be extended for the bottom 98%
  
  Wait, you mean the Bush-Obama tax cuts the President signed in 2010 weren't just for the wealthiest 2% of Americans?
Enjoy Every Sandwich 13 years ago

In Barry's world, gubmint jobs are more important: after all, they have Teh Multiplier! Those stupid private sector jobs can't say that!
NAL 13 years ago

Is he trying to set up for bailouts of Detroit, MI; Stockton, CA; etc.?

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