It is President Obama’s 100th day in office, so, of course, he needs to hold yet another press conference.
Oh, look, the teleprompter…
The president opened by thanking Congress by acting quickly to smother the swine flu with money. $1.5 billion to track and deal with the swine flu. But we won’t close the border. Funny, but I don’t feel safer, I feel like Congress is going to have to start sending armed thugs door to door to scrape up the money to pay for all of their “look, we’re doing something!” boondoggles.
Going to end “no-bid contracts.” Oh oh. The husband is spun up now. Apparently, the command he works for (he’s a military contractor) is bidding out a 400 hour training thing. Which they could just give to him as tasking, seeing as how he’s the only one who can really do it… but they’re supposed to make sure everyone gets a chance to bid. On a $40k, at most, contract; only about ten weeks of full time work for one person. Having competition on this isn’t going to save money, it’s wasting money.
“We worked with our NATO allies… blah blah… new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan…” Yeah, Pakistan has developed a new strategy: make deals with the Taliban, so if/when the U.S. loses interest, they’ve got their butts covered. “The Pakistani military knows the danger of nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands…” And the profits, too, I suspect, of weapons falling into Taliban hands. Remember what happened in Russia? When the government can’t pay you, you will find ways to support your family. (Also applicable to the corruption in the woefully underpaid Mexican police system.)
We had two runs through the “wash your hands, don’t go to work or school if you’re sick, cover your mouth when you cough” extended routine. Sir, you are the President of the United States! This is beneath your dignity; people who work for you need to be presenting this. Oh, wait… you only just now found someone who’s paid their taxes to fill the Health and Human Services spot. Of course, Gov. Sebelius took a lot of money from Dr. George “Tiller the Killer” Tiller, a notorious late-term abortion “provider,” so she isn’t exactly squeaky-clean. And one of her last actions as governor of Kansas was to veto legislation that would have clarified and tightened legal prohibitions on late-term abortions. Guess that left her too busy to address a possible pandemic.
To his credit, President Obama acknowledged that President Bush’s work laid a good foundation for fighting the swine flu, resulting in the country having 50 million courses of flu treatment on hand. Umm… but there are about 300 million Americans. Suddenly, I’m reminded of the scene from Titanic (which was an ok movie, except for all of the parts about the love story… which left about ten or fifteen good minutes), where, during a tour of the ship with the designer, the main female character asks if she has counted and multiplied correctly that there aren’t enough seats on the lifeboats for everyone on the ship. 50 million courses, 300 million people… gee, I hope five out of six of us don’t get sick.
Iraq. “Part of the reason that I called for a gradual withdrawal instead of a precipitous one…” is that I finally got in touch with reality and realized that the Bush plan was a good one, that allowed time for the political power to develop instead of just leaving them in the lurch. But I already said something nice about Bush about the vaccine system, so don’t expect me to say anything else nice about him.
“Simply opposing our initiatives on every front is not a good political move.”
Of course, CNN had to ask whether or not Obama wanted Congress to hurry up and send him the FOCA. “The reason I’m pro-choice, is that I don’t think women take that position casually.” And that makes it ok!?!? As long as I “struggle” with the question, deciding to murder someone who is inconvenient to me is just fine? Obama further claimed that he had a commission working on the issue, in contact with both “people in the pro-choice camp and the pro-life camp.” Who? Doug Kmiec? Mr. I’m Pro-life But I Support The Most Pro-Abortion Candidate Ever? Are we counting him as the “pro-life” representative? Somehow, I suspect Fr. Pavone, Dr. Alveda King, or Randall Terry are not the people on this commission.
As usual, Obama tries to paint himself as thinking deeply over the question of abortion… but everything he says is exactly what Planned Parenthood tells him to say: it’s hard, women think a lot about it, it’s between a woman and her doctor, etc. There is no thought involved here, no depth. And no acknowledgement of the many women who say they were misinformed, of the undercover work that exposed Planned Parenthood clinics actively (and illegally) covering up statutory rape, of the evidence that the doctors have fought giving more information to women.
NY Times: “What has surprised, troubled, enchanted and humbled you the most?” In case there was any question left, journalism at the NY Times is dead.
“There’s still a measure of political posturing and bickering, even in the middle of a really big crisis.” That’s right, “I won” was supposed to be the last thing he had to say! No disagreement allowed!
Immigration. Why do we only put Hispanics on immigration commissions? Does nobody else know anything about immigration? Frankly, I’d rather have someone a little more removed from the situation. Like the guy my husband works with who immigrated from Holland as an infant, who thinks that yes, we should deport everyone who is here illegally. My grandparents came here legally. I paid the $700 fee twice for the stupid piece of paper saying we could bring an infant into the country for adoption. The system could use some work, but rewarding illegal behavior by declaring it legal is not going to help.
Minority communities (especially black) in the recession. “We put money in to support community health centers…” Yeah, but if you pass FOCA, you will probably force at least a third of the country’s hospitals out of business, and that’s just the Catholic ones. There are plenty of other religiously sponsored hospitals (especially Baptist ones in the South) that will cut services or close completely rather than perform abortions. Since these religious hospitals take on quite a few charity cases and often serve poor communities, it would take quite a few “community health centers” to make up that gap.
“What kind of shareholder will you be?” That was the Wall Street Journal reporter. At least we got a few non-adoring questions. Obama said we “had to step in,” “We need a functioning auto industry”, “my goal is to help these companies make some good decisions…” And this is the government’s job why? Financial advisors help companies make good decisions. The auto industry is functioning when it’s making good cars at a price people will pay… sort of like, oh, gee, maybe the Japanese auto makers, who are doing quite well in this country.
“I want to disabuse people of the notion that we like meddling in the private sector.” But, given a good crisis, who can really resist?
Surveys are out of the network coverage of President Obama. He has had more coverage and more positive coverage than President Bush and President Clinton combined. Dick Morris, on the O’Reilly Factor, just pointed out that this was Obama’s third prime time press conference in the first hundred days; Clinton did two in his entire first four years.
And everyone carefully avoided asking too much about the economy. Nothing asking about the obvious frustration in the country over the government takeover of the banks, firing executives, etc. No questions about the gross disregard for the Constitution, or the tea party participants’ anger over the derailing of our country into European socialism. Oh, no, everyone is confident, right?
Tea party, anyone?
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