Obama holds a presser: Press faints, truth runs

-by Geoff Caldwell-

Image: http://www.freerepublic.com

President Obama held his first press conference in 8 months yesterday but if the transcript is any indication it was just “de ja vu all over again”.

The White House press corps (sans Ed Henry and Jonathan Karl) is nothing but an insider fan club without the cheesy “enter now to win a dinner with…”  oh wait.

There was this wonderful little exchange between the Chicago Tribune chapter President Christ Parsons and the campaigner in Chief:

THE PRESIDENT:  Christi Parson.  Hey.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President, and congratulations, by the way.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thanks.

Q    One quick follow up –

THE PRESIDENT:  Christi was there when I was running for state Senate.

Q    That’s right, I was.

THE PRESIDENT:  So Christi and I go back a ways.

Q    I’ve never seen you lose.  I wasn’t looking that one time.  (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT:  There you go.

(If you watch the video you’ll see what it must have looked like when Paula Broadwell was interviewing General Patraeus.)

And though it’s been months since Obama gave the press corps the time of day he’s just as skilled as ever at taking what used to be a place for the representatives of the press to get answers for the American people and turn it into just another campaign speech.  (Don’t think for a minute that just because he won re-election the next four years will suddenly be about “governing” and “jobs” and the “economy”.  All Obama has ever been is a demagogueing community organizer and it’s not going to change now.)

The entire presser is peppered with the “top 2 percent”, “97 and 98 percent”, still claiming consecutive job growth and millions of jobs created without counting the jobs lost, and on and on.  (If you just landed from another planet you’d have no clue there had been an election and Obama actually won.)

But the best of the best is the diametrically opposed statements below.  It’s not just that he had the gall to speak from both sides of his mouth during the same press conference, it’s that that same press corps let him get away with it.

First, Dear Leader has this to say on the need for more revenue to tackle the looming fiscal crisis:

“….As I’ve said before, I’m open to compromise and I’m open to new ideas, and I’ve been encouraged over the past week to hear Republican after Republican agree on the need for more revenue from the wealthiest Americans as part of our arithmetic if we’re going to be serious about reducing the deficit….”

Yet with barely two beats of a heart passed there is this exchange:

QUESTION: You’ve said that the wealthiest must pay more. Would closing loopholes instead of raising rates for them satisfy you?

OBAMA: I think that there are loopholes that can be closed, and we should look at how we can make the process of deductions, the filing process easier, simpler. But when it comes to the top 2 percent, what I’m not going to do is to extend further a tax cut for folks who don’t need it, which would cost close to a trillion dollars.

One minute he says he’s open to compromise and the very next he’s refusing to even budge on rates.  Throw in the God knows how many times he used the $250,000 marker throughout his sermon and the true Obama once again shined through.  (“true” Obama not to be confused with Obama actually “telling” the truth.  The former is a true statement the latter will never happen.)

During the previous “grand bargain” negotiations with Boehner the target was $800 billion in new revenue, yet now 2^nd term Obama has already arbitrarily moved the starting point to $1.6 TRILLION and he’s throwing down the gauntlet that unless he doesn’t get to raise rates on those evil rich a holes making more than $250k a year he’s taking his ball and going home and he’s going to blame the Republicans for “holding hostage” the middle class.

The ONLY way this country is EVER going to emerge from the economic malaise Obama has created is to simplify the tax code, broaden the base and bring common sense back to the regulation nation of bureaucrats.

Those three things alone would bring in the “revenue” Obama “says” he wants but since it won’t allow him to punish the “rich” with a higher tax “rate” he won’t go along with it?  I remember more adult behavior from my kindergarten classmates than I see from this insufferable ideologue.

If he won’t acknowledge even the most basic, common sense approaches to the revenue side, the idea of any sort of meaningful entitlement and spending reform just flew out the window right behind the truth that left as soon as Obama opened his mouth.

And you lurking libs call me “radical” for refusing to “respect” your so-called “President”.  Such behavior is anything BUT Presidential.

In a normal world, Obama would be absolutely eviscerated for being so shallow and hypocritical.  But his ain’t your daddy’s world anymore.  Not in any way shape or form.

The old media of Cronkite, Reasoner and Brinkley may have been center left personally but they sure as hell weren’t openly hostile to free enterprise and they most certainly would never have been willing participants in the destruction of the America that they themselves grew up in.

So for all you Obamabots who gave your boy four more years, I can only hope you’re some of the first to have to deal with the consequences of your ignorance.

And no I don’t use the term “boy” as a racist term.  I use it in describing a petulant little boy who if he doesn’t get his way throws a temper tantrum for all the world to see.

Only problem right now is that a petulant little boy only hurts himself while this arrogant a-hole has the very real power to destroy us all.

BUT, believe it or not, there IS a bright side.

When all those entitlements come crashing down upon themselves, as the laws of economics dictate they most assuredly will, it will disproportionately hit the Obama crowd the hardest.  Then and only then will they finally understand what Merriam-Webster online means when it defines “Pyrrhic Victory” as:

a victory won at excessive cost <would be a Pyrrhic victory sentencing the human race to ignorance, stagnation, and decadence — K.B.Clark>

We have at last discovered the Holy Trinity of the Obama administration:  ignorance, stagnation, and decadence.

No wonder the country’s in the shape it is.

Publisher’s note:  Next chapter in the American Tipping Point series is “How’d we get here?” and will be out in the coming days.  For you on the conservative aisle it will most certainly be but a “DUH, we already KNEW that Caldwell”  for you dwainbwains out there, let’s just say you’re going to need fresh pair of jimmies.

Geoff Caldwell