Nancy Pelosi Says Republicans Harping on Scandals Because Obama is a Great President

Visionary

Reason 24/7

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has a unified theory for all the White House scandals that has to do with just how awesome President Obama is.

From CNS News:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that Republicans are using scandals coming out of the White House to undermine President Barack Obama out of "fear," because he is "such a great president."

"They make so much of these issues, because this president is such a great president," Pelosi said during a press conference on Capitol Hill, ending a week filled with new revelations about scandals involving the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) targeting conservative groups, and the Justice Department seizing phone records of reporters at the Associated Press.

"He's a visionary—you've heard me say this so many times," Pelosi said of Obama.

In other words, she can't hear you.

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Comments

[Pro Libertate]

Oh, he's a great precedent, all right. For the first dictator to seize power in the U.S.

[Aresen]

"Lucius Cornelius Obama"?

[Pro Libertate]

I don't think he has anywhere near the clout to pull that off, but one of his successors is another story.

[Aresen]

You'll think different when you are on the Proscription list.

[Pro Libertate]

Possibly. I'm storing survival supplies in a body cavity, just in case I get sent to re-education camp in the Year Zero.

[Dweebston]

Is this a euphemism for something terrifyingly Wartyesque?

[prolefeed]

It sounds like PL's saying in an amusing pseudo-rationalizating way, "I'm eating good food and getting chubby."

[Pro Libertate]

No, that's incorrect. I suggest you all find a spare body cavity and shove things in it, too. Just in case.

[Dweebston]

I'm waiting ten years for bionic prosthesis. My whole body will be cavities filled with nifty things.

[gaijin]

find a spare body cavity and shove things in it, too

I'm going to create a 3D printing company, Dildos Distributed, to fill the voids in the market.

[waffles]

Does it have to be my own body cavity?

[Pro Libertate]

If you want to use whatever you shove there, I suppose so.

[sarcasmic]

I always thought Lincoln was the first American dictator.

[Drake]

Until the above mentioned Sulla came along, Dictators were respected as national heroes. Men who took over when the shit had truly hit and got Rome out of some very bad situations - then resigned and went home. Then came Sulla who used all that power to stomp his political enemies and .

I'm not entirely comfortable with Lincoln, but he never turned the administrative power of the Federal Government on law-abiding citizens.

[Pro Libertate]

Cincinnatus, who is remembered pretty fondly by history, was a constitutional dictator.

[Aresen]

So was Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator.

OTOH, I don't remember Cincinnati at all favorably.

[Pro Libertate]

Don't call me a Cunct again.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

En plus, to add, Cicero was a conservative who tried to fight off the empire impulses of Rome that by that time had run over and trampled its Republican roots.

He lost.

[Pro Libertate]

An instructive moment from history for us is that the endless civil wars only ended when someone seized power and pretended to restore constitutional government. We'll probably be just as nominally under the Constitution and limited government as ever when it's totally disappeared in reality.

[LTC(ret) John]

He'll get on that...eventually.

[RickC]

Not completely accurate. This from a quick search, but I have other reading around here somewhere.

http://www.slate.com/articles/.....kdown.html

[Rights-Minimalist Autocrat]

But really, Obama is a great president.

For me to poop on!

[CE]

You know who else was a visionary?

[LTC(ret) John]

Jules Verne?

[Aresen]

Jules Verne thought of ships with fantastic powers to sail through outer space.

Barack Obama thinks of fantastic powers to sail into our space.

[Dweebston]

+10,000 leagues

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Robespierre?

[Drake]

L. Ron Hubbard?

[$park?]

Benito Daza de Valdes?

[Caleb Turberville]

George W. Bush must have been a SPECTACULAR president.

[Drake]

He's looking better every day.

[Brian D]

Surprised she didn't say the GOP is making so much of these issues because RACISM!!

[Dweebston]

It's all in the subtext.

[Marshall Gill]

She may not have, but Chris Matthews did.

[Aresen]

Reading Pelosi's comment makes me wonder how she is able to muster the brainpower to walk.

It is worthy of the Court at Versailles ca. 1685.

[Redmanfms]

It is worthy of the Court at Versailles ca. 1685.

???

Did you mean 1785?

[Aresen]

No, I mean at the height of the reign of Louis XIV.

Not even the most deluded thought Louis XVI was an able king.

[A Serious Man]

Le etat c'est moi.

--King Barack

[Dweebston]

Noblesse oblige, after all.

[Calvin Coolidge]

"I don't think he has anywhere near the clout to pull that off, but one of his successors is another story"

Apr?s moi, le d?luge

[Silly ol' Bear]

I doubt seriously if he can speak French.

[some guy]

Has anyone ever seen her walking and talking at the same time? Not saying she can't do, just saying we have no evidence.

[Hugh Akston]

So what reality is she reporting from? Is the Obama of Earth-616 actually a good president? Maybe Earth-2? Ultimate Obama?

[Pro Libertate]

She must have said something else that sounds like president. Like "celibate" or "epithet." Because it's impossible to say he's a great president. That makes no sense.

[Aresen]

That makes no sense

This is Pelosi we are talking about. Things that make no sense are the norm.

[prolefeed]

It is possible to open one's piehole and utter the words Pelosi said. For them to make sense unironically, other than as a shameful pander to her ultra-lefty constituency, is unpossible.

[db]

He certainly has been a great politician. Most people have different opinions of politicians than other politicians do.

[Pro Libertate]

Not even that. A great politician doesn't lose a whole house or become Captain Irrelevant.

[db]

I don't know. Obama seems to be trying to prove that a great politician need only be a good stage hypnotist.

[Pro Libertate]

Getting elected and re-elected alone doesn't prove anything. Bush was elected twice, and he wasn't impressive as a candidate or as a president.

It's fascinating to see a general acceptance of this idea of the perpetual campaign. Nothing screams louder at me that this president is simply the front of a political machine, solely concerned about further entrenching the party and handing out rewards. Everyone does that to some extent but not with the maniacal focus of this president.

[db]

But it's not just the election and re-election. There is an outsized group of people who willingly blind themselves to all his transgressions and incompetencies to continue to praise and support him. You didn't have to go much further into Dubya's second term to see some significant real issues of his.own partisans abandoning him. I hope for, but do not really expect, the same sort of disintegration of Obama's popularity and mandate.

[Pro Libertate]

I don't think that's so much political success as people hunting for a cult to join. Statists want a God-substitute or something, I guess.

[Aresen]

I think there is much to this.

Barack Obama's cult did not begin to rise until Teddy Kennedy, the last torchbearer for the Kennedy cult, went off his last bridge.

[Pro Libertate]

What's weird is how unimpressive their gods are. You'd think they'd hold out for someone truly awesome, like William Shatner.

[Aresen]

All gods are unimpressive when you look to close.

[Suthenboy]

"So what reality is she reporting from? "

She is smart in a super-weasely way, smart enough to see what he is. She doesnt believe one word that has come out of her mouth in decades. She is saying that for the benefit of the dem (dim?) voters who actually do believe that shit.

I would say she is jaded and cynical as hell to believe that her target audience will buy that shit, but unfortunately she is right.

[Caleb Turberville]

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_n.....mence?lite

Is Steve Benen the biggest Democratic bootlicker hired by a major American news provider?

[A Serious Man]

Reading some of the comments it's clear that anyone who so much as gives an iota of credibility to the GOP complaints about the IRS is guilty of thoughtcrime.

They're throwing NPR under the bus for taking the issue seriously for crying out loud!

[Bardas Phocas]

It appears that the he's see the best "hope" for his god-emperor is that the Republicans will fuck up. I'm sure they'll fuck up, but will that save The Obama?

[Dweebston]

Hovering the url told me everything I need to know about the link.

Let the wearisome game of tug-of-war commence as both sides dig in their heels and these stories go nowhere.

[Tman]

It's easy to imagine the Democratic base rallying in response to a perceived effort to tear down President Obama, without cause, thanks to dubious scandals embraced by the GOP and the Beltway media. It is, after all, what happened in 1998, so there's recent precedent to be aware of.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!

Could these people be any more delusional? It truly is remarkable.

[Dweebston]

What's delusional in any of this? If they roll over and concede anything, they give the game away. If they hold out and head off any serious introspection, they've weathered the scandals and preserved the narrative of a blameless Barack. I have zero confidence in any sea-change among progressives, let alone a compliant media backpeddling their fawning.

[db]

This. The preferred narrative is that Barack started off his security nd term under a crushing weight of opposition and manufactured scandal. Bit by bit, he climbed that mountain and forded that stream until, weary but unbowed, he surmounted the partisan hackery and stood shining atop the fray like a beacon of Progressivism. Afte overcoming this onslaught he will rise to even greater heights to claim his position as the Greatest of Presidents.

You can almost hear the wheels turning.

[LTC(ret) John]

"Comeback Kid" story is already in the can and waiting for use.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

God, can't you guys back off? Don't you know how hard it is to be a left-handed President?

Sheesh. Some compassion please.

[Silly ol' Bear]

Left-handed presidents represent a significant group, way above the ave. 10%. Being left-handed, I know such mysteries.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

without cause, thanks to dubious scandals embraced by the GOP and the Beltway media.

My brain locked up just reading that. My officemate had to inject 300mg of caffeine directly into my temple to reset it. The level of cognitive dissonance these people are able to suppress is astounding.

[paranoid android]

The weird thing is this whole line about "the GOP's just ginning up illusory scandals again, just like 1998!", which seems to imply that the doublethink runs so deep that they can no longer acknowledge that Clinton, you know, really did commit perjury...

[db]

Imagine if the press had tried so hard to excuse Reagan of Iran-Contra. We'd have had President Oliver North in 1996.

[PapayaSF]

Not only that, but he did it to cover up a clear case of sexual harassment, which for years had been trumpeted as a firing offense... until a Democrat got caught at it. (Remember: having even consensual sex with a subordinate is sexual harassment, because of the power imbalance.)

[A Serious Man]

I'd say she's just trolling, but no, no, she really is that stupid and tone death.

[Aresen]

"Tone death", even if a malapropism, is a felicitous turn of phrase.

[Hugh Akston]

We have a law to cover that sort of thing don't we?

[LTC(ret) John]

I thought Tone Death was a Latvian Black Metal group?

[alan_s]

What's sad is that to her constituents, this passes the test for sound logic.

[Fist of Etiquette]

This is like that Free Dzhokhar movement that the teen girls are so into. Obama is being framed by ugly Republicans because he's so cute. #FreeBarry

[db]

I don't unxerstand the whole Free Dzhokhar thing. These chicks should wait hntil he's in prison and then just show up for conjugal visits. Like he'd turn that down.

[Calvin Coolidge]

Wait, convicted terrorists serving multiple concurrent life sentences get conjugal visits?

Hell, I'm a free man and I ain't had a conjugal visit in six months!

[LTC(ret) John]

Actually, I think he is in federal "pound me in the ass" prison.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

He is a very very bad man.

[Fist of Etiquette]

He needs to watch out for his cornhole.

[AlexInCT]

SQUEEL LIKE A PIG!

[G-dub]

Yep, I think he gets "conjugally visited" in the shower several times a week."

[Suthenboy]

Calvin.... Dude....you have been dead since 1933. I think it has been a lot longer than six months since your last conjugal visit.

I guess time gets kinda blurry after you pass on, even if they do bury you with a computer. Or maybe it is H&R that has warped your sense of time.

[Clich? Bandit]

Ok so one of the poor gumshoes working Reason24/7 can be creative enough to alt-text the same damn image differently each time WHY CAN'T THE SENIOR STAFF DO THE SAME?!?!?

p.s. I am in no way claiming ed is not a senior/accomplished journalist/editor/etc. merely that the 24/7 is kind of the "back page" of the publication.

[Dweebston]

Some people want to see the world burn, CB. Sacrilege for the sake of sacrilege.

[Marc F Cheney]

Is she serious?

[NoVAHockey]

I'll have to read the transcript of her remarks to find out what's in it to be sure.

[Drake]

She's trying to wink but too much surgery.

[Gilbert Martin]

"He's a visionary?you've heard me say this so many times," Pelosi said of Obama."

At this point, is there anyone alive on the planet who takes Pelosi seriously?

Other than herself that is.

[Sevo]

"He's a visionary?you've heard me say this so many times,"
You're a moron - you've heard me say this so many times.

[?J?? de ?guila]

My Barack, right or wrong.

Caught fucking a sheep. Ok.
Caught fucking an intern. Ok.
Caught asshole fucking Nancy Pelosi with a broomstick. Ok.
Caught fucking over the taxpayers. Ok.
Caught committing war crimes. Over and over. Ok.
Caught slaughtering children with predator drones. Ok.
Caught shipping military weapons to the drug cartels in Mexico. Ok.
Caught bombing dozens of countries we are not at war with. Ok.
Caught spying on every living person in the USA. Ok.
Caught contracting out torture of innocent "terrorists". Ok.
Caught overturning the Miranda Ruling. Ok.
Caught overturning Habeas Corpus. Ok.
Caught initiating SWAT raids on pot heads. Wow, man. OK.
Caught implementing a fascist health plan that benefits political contributors. Ok.
Caught bailing out billionaire bankers foreign and domestic. Ok.
Caught emulating Richard Nixon and LBJ. Check. Ok.
Caught with an enemies list. Ok.
Caught using the CIA, FBI and IRS to intimidate his political enemies. Check. Ok.
Caught punishing whistleblowers. Ok.

But he is Nancy's Jesus.

[PS]

Look on the bright side, Nancy. If he does, by some outside chance, get deservedly impeached, he can learn from the first black president to get impeached how to soldier on.

[Pro Libertate]

Obama's great,
He gave us the chocolate cake!

[itsnotmeitsyou]

+1 Shiggy doo a Shoopa Doopa

[Pro Libertate]

For any parents here who haven't seen Bill Cosby: Himself, you need to.

[LTC(ret) John]

+1 shoe thrown by Mom

[MP]

+coz

[Joe M]

He four years old.

[wwhorton]

Yeah, and the police keep giving me these speeding tickets because they're jealous that I have a fast car.

Good ol' Nancy. She's like the TV yule log for people who don't have their own senile old aunt.

[LTC(ret) John]

"Good ol' Nancy. She's like the TV yule log for people who don't have their own senile old aunt."

Thanks for that - I can't stop laughing now.

[db]

Yeah, that's a keeper.

[waffles]

Well Nancy Pelosi is a fucking mendacious cunt.

[itsnotmeitsyou]

Waffles, that's an insult to mendacious cunts everywhere. Now say you're sorry.

[Tonio]

It takes time to move from denial to acceptance. It takes additional time to construct a cover story to justify your actions. During the Nixon administration there was almost a year between the arrest of Liddy, et als, and the convening of the US Senate hearings.

But we have an interesting year ahead, and decades of "I told you so" to look forward to.

[Pro Libertate]

Is there any doubt whatsoever that if Obama has a catastrophic fall that Pelosi will talk about how she knew he was a bad guy? But was forced to say these things?

[itsnotmeitsyou]

I think she'll take more of the "I had no idea he was doing all these things. I didn't have anything to do with them, of course. Who could have known that he was doing illegal things. It's a total shock!"

[Pro Libertate]

But he was so dreamy!

[?J?? de ?guila]

He's Hay-soos!

[Aresen]

Even if Obama was caught in bed with a six-year-old, Pelosi would still praise him as a visionary and rail at his critics for failing to see the "big picture."

[Pro Libertate]

They'll play this defend anything game right up to the point that the public stops buying it, and it becomes politically dangerous to their careers to do so.

[Aresen]

No matter what he did - up to and including having people tortured to death in the WH basement - I think there would be a larger number of people who would see BHO as a "victim of persecution" than there ever were for the Nixon diehards. (I realize that there are still people who think that RMN was a Great President. There are also people who believe in Hanky.)

[Pro Libertate]

Yes, I agree. There seems to be an asymmetry between left statists and right statists in this regard--the latter will only go so far with their hero-worship.

There's also the race card.

[G-dub]

We all saw the laser sight on her temple while she was making those statements.

[Mike M.]

The left will NEVER turn on their Alinskyite soul brother in any signifcant numbers. He can literally do absolutely anything, and they will continue to rationalize and make excuses for him until their dying days.

[Rich]

"He's a visionary?you've heard me say this so many times," Pelosi said of Obama.

And given that "a visionary" is a person who is given to insolent, highly speculative, impractical ideas or schemes, why have you said this so many times like it's a *good* thing?

[Rufus J. Firefly]

God, can't you guys back off? Don't you know how hard it is to be a left-handed President?

Sheesh. Compassion please.

[Rufus J. Firefly]

Sorry for the double post.

[KPres]

Probably not an endorsement Obama wants, given that Pelosi is rightfully the least-liked person in congress....

http://www.gallup.com/poll/162.....aders.aspx

[OldMexican]

"They make so much of these issues, because this president is such a great president," Pelosi said during a press conference on Capitol Hill

Stop the presses! Here's the new headline: "Pelosi is a moron with a penchant for shallow non-sequiturs!"

[OldMexican]

"He's a visionary ? you've heard me say this so many times," Pelosi said of Obama.

"I've seen the future, and it works!"
"Thank you, comrade!"

[Stormy Dragon]

Are we sure Pelosi wasn't being sarcastic, and we just can't tell because botox has robbed her of the ability to make subtle facial expressions?