Bloodthirsty Liberal

Let me not run through the roster of dishonest statements (February’s a short month!).

Let me add just one more:

How Many Press Conferences Has Bush Held?
By Patrick on Nov 10, 2008 12:50 PM

An interesting exchange during today’s White House press briefing:

Q [C]ould you tell us the total number of press conferences held by President Bush?

MS. PERINO: I couldn’t tell you. …

Q The New York Times reported, “Mr. Obama has indicated he will hold a news conference once a month, but nothing has been set.” Does the President, as an upcoming private citizen, hope that his successor will try to emulate FDR in the number of his press conferences?

MS. PERINO: I don’t think the President will be providing any advice as to how many press conferences he has.

He might suggest that the new president keep his word:

Six months ago, network executives were complaining that the White House was costing them tens of millions of dollars by pressing them to carry presidential news conferences in prime time.

Problem solved: President Obama hasn’t held a full-scale news conference since July. Instead, he answered a dozen people’s questions last week on YouTube, most of them easily finessed and — extra bonus! — no annoying follow-ups of the kind posed by real, live journalists.

How about holding a press conference during All My Children or General Hospital? Why does the Messiah (heavenly chorus: ah-h-h-h!!) have to commandeer prime time for every utterance? I recall press conferences for previous presidents being held in daylight.

For comparison’s sake:

In the 21 months since his second inaugural, Bush has already held 15 solo press conferences. Last year, 2005, he held nine – more than double the number he averaged each of his first four years. In 2006, he’s already held six – including one in each of the last five months. At this rate his second term would not only easily surpass his first-term total but equal it in two years.

…

“Like most of his recent predecessors, President Bush does news conferences when it suits his purposes, not those of the press,” said Knoller. “It’s a myth to think that he’s in any way scared of the press or our questions. And he has shown increasingly that he enjoys the intellectual give and take - and needling reporters about their style, clothing or questioning.”

“To the extent there have been more regular press conferences in recent months, you can credit the calendar. The midterm elections loom large and he has much at stake.

So, maybe we’ll get more Barack Obama, after all.

Oy.

Anyway, here’s something of what we’ve been missing:

In practice, no single news organization can cover the ground of a 45-minute Q&A with newspapers, wire services, magazines, television, radio and bloggers, seen live on the air.

“What’s lost is the ability to get beyond talking points,” says Michael Shear, a White House reporter for The Post. “This is a president and White House that know how to be very scripted and very on message. . . . Frankly, we make our living studying and following details of these issues so we can zero our questions in on where the real tension lies in a particular issue.”

Obama has talked to correspondents at occasional press “avails” overseas. While he has taken as many as a half-dozen or more questions, that figure has been shrinking, and if a foreign leader is present, the American side may get just one or two chances.

Todd says that while he and other network correspondents have been granted short interviews abroad, there is no time for wide-ranging questions on, say, Iran or the Middle East. “All these pre-set interviews, they try to attach them to a specific topic,” he says.

Maybe they can put the press conferences on C-SPAN!

Come spring (i.e. June), this is what all fetching young Bloodthirstani men and women will be wearing:

Until then, they will have to content themselves with this:

Is he done?

Whew! That wasn’t a SoTU speech; it was an epic, a saga—I kept waiting for Achilles to emerge from his tent. (Like Hillary, he was a no-show.)

Posting may be light today, my little bloodsuckers, as I had nightmares about a three-headed monster who, no matter which way I turned, breathed fire and platitudes into my face. (The other heads either stared wide-eyed at me or nodded its hair-plugged noggin at me.)

I blame the drinking game I acted stupidly by playing. Every time the president said the word “I”, well, I took a shot of tequila. I was unconscious by 9:23 (I know this because I broke my wristwatch when I hit the floor.)

Thank goodness someone was paying attention!

President Barack Obama told Americans the bipartisan deficit commission he will appoint won’t just be “one of those Washington gimmicks.” Left unspoken in that assurance was the fact that the commission won’t have any teeth.

…

[S]ome of his ideas for moving ahead skirted the complex political circumstances standing in his way.

A look at some of Obama’s claims and how they compare with the facts:

Ooh, this is going to be good.

Actually, so-called fact-checking pieces can be just as subjective as the rest of AP’s so-called news. But let’s have a look:

OBAMA: “Starting in 2011, we are prepared to freeze government spending for three years. Spending related to our national security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be affected. But all other discretionary government programs will. Like any cash-strapped family, we will work within a budget to invest in what we need and sacrifice what we don’t.”

THE FACTS: The anticipated savings from this proposal would amount to less than 1 percent of the deficit — and that’s if the president can persuade Congress to go along.

Obama is a convert to the cause of broad spending freezes. In the presidential campaign, he criticized Republican opponent John McCain for suggesting one. “The problem with a spending freeze is you’re using a hatchet where you need a scalpel,” he said a month before the election. Now, Obama wants domestic spending held steady in most areas where the government can control year-to-year costs. The proposal is similar to McCain’s.

…

OBAMA: “Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed. … And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.”

THE FACTS: The success of the Obama-pushed economic stimulus that Congress approved early last year has been an ongoing point of contention. In December, the administration reported that recipients of direct assistance from the government created or saved about 650,000 jobs. The number was based on self-reporting by recipients and some of the calculations were shown to be in error.

The Congressional Budget Office has been much more guarded than Obama in characterizing the success of the stimulus plan. In November, it reported that the stimulus increased the number of people employed by between 600,000 and 1.6 million “compared with what those values would have been otherwise.” It said the ranges “reflect the uncertainty of such estimates.” And it added, “It is impossible to determine how many of the reported jobs would have existed in the absence of the stimulus package.”

Okay, I take that caveat back. That was good. Really good.

Diane Sawyer always cracks me up, too:

DIANE SAWYER: Health care — going forward, should all the conversations, all the meetings be on C-SPAN?

OBAMA: [Chuckle] You know, I think your question points out to a legitimate mistake that I made during the course of the year, and that is that we had to make so many decisions quickly in a very difficult set of circumstances that after awhile, we started worrying more about getting the policy right than getting the process right. But I had campaigned on process. Part of what I had campaigned on was changing how Washington works, opening up transparency and I think it is — I think the health care debate as it unfolded legitimately raised concerns not just among my opponents, but also amongst supporters that we just don’t know what’s going on. And it’s an ugly process and it looks like there are a bunch of back room deals.

Now I think it’s my responsibility and I’ll be speaking to this at the State of the Union, to own up to the fact that the process didn’t run the way I ideally would like it to and that we have to move forward in a way that recaptures that sense of opening things up more.

Is that a yes or a no?

Heh-heh. That’s a good one, Diane. Diane, let me be clear. For the past eight years, the problems we’ve inherited… Bush… Cheney…

Whatever-r-r-r

Do you expect to see C-SPAN cameras setting up inside the stale conference room where Nancy, Harry, and Barack have been writing health care legislation in their own image? No? Cynic. Do you think they’ve stopped? No? Doomsayer.

All I can say is, if they do, buy stock in Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, and any other manufacturers of gauze and petroleum jelly that will be needed to make that circus freak show look presentable.

And all we’re left with is “-cracy”, which is close enough for government work to “crazy”:

Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.

President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have agreed to the basic framework of the plan.

…

Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.

Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.

First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.

How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority who don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance, and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?

That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.

Behind closed doors, Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.

This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.

But you may ask what about the fact that, without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?

According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes,” the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.

Reid also has agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.

To pass the fixes, he won’t need one Republican; he won’t even need Joe Lieberman or wavering Democrats such as Jim Webb of Virginia.

His 52 pledged senators give him a simple majority to pass any changes they want, which will later be rubberstamped by Pelosi’s House and signed by Obama.

Now, I’ll say what you’re thinking: Dick Morris can’t be the sole source of a story if we are to give it complete credence.

Fine.

But tell me you have complete confidence that there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to this horror story of legislation run amok. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Maestro, a little music to pass the time?

There is a rub to all of this.

This secret plan being hatched by Pelosi and Reid requires not only a pledge by 52 Democratic senators to vote later for the House modifications. House liberals must actually believe these Senators will live up to their pledge and pass the fixes at some future date.

A Senate source cautions: “Senators more than House members and both more than ordinary people, lie.”

I’m feeling real good about the legislative process right now, how about you?

No, not just in the election—though obviously that, too (Intrade has her down to Scott Brown, 44-55).

But it’s a good thing she’s Attorney General for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, because she’s going to need all the legal help she can get:

I am disgusted and I thought they couldn’t top the World Trade Center gaffe. Into this Pres. Obama will walk tomorrow….Now, I love a good political fight, all things fair and all, but someone should tell Democrats that you draw the line on using rape victims in a mailer.

…

And now The Washington Post has a story about Brown filing a defamation claim under a Massachusetts law prohibiting false statements about a political candidate, based on the clearly false mailing (h/t Gateway Pundit):

A section of the Massachusetts General Laws prohibits false statements against political candidates that are designed or tend “to aid or to injure or defeat such candidate,” with a penalty of to $1,000 fine and up to six months in prison.

An orange jumpsuit would really bring out Martha’s eyes, I think.

But that’s just one lawsuit. You have to take a number to sue Martha Coakley:

Shipping giant UPS isn’t amused by a Democratic Party campaign pamphlet attacking Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown that plays off the company’s slogan “What can Brown do for you?”

Atlanta-based United Parcel Service, known for its ubiquitous brown trucks, demanded yesterday that the Massachusetts Democratic Party, which is listed as paying for the pamphlet, stop distributing it.

The mailer asks “What can Brown do to you?” It shows Scott Brown dressed up as a UPS driver and says, “He can reward corporations that ship your job overseas just like George W. Bush.”

My mailbox is full of these wretched flyers, but this one is so cheap and amateurish, it might be the worst:

Who photoshopped this, Dan Rather?

We are essentially a one-party state, and this is the party we are burdened with. I tell other oppressed people (in Burma, in Iran) to throw off the shackles of tyranny and seize their countries and their futures.

I dearly pray we are about to lead by example.

Thug doesn’t dispute report of attack

A remorseful Michael P. Meehan called today to apologize (see here for background).

He said: “I just want to say to you that I’m sorry. And I’d just like to apologize. I appreciate your calling me back. I don’t want to make a big federal case out of it.”

He continued: “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were a reporter because you didn’t have any credentials, so I apologize for not knowing you were a reporter.”

I asked Meehan if he disputed anything that I wrote. “No,” he said.

I thanked Meehan for his apology.

What do we know about this? We know that Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley denied any knowledge of the attack, although there is a photograph of her observing it. We know that the Boston Globe and the AP wrote that the Weekly Standard reporter had “stumbled” and been helped up by the thug, Michael Meehan, although Mr. Meehan himself has admitted that he attacked the reporter. So we know 2 things: Coakley is a liar and the MSM is in the bag for her.

How do we know that they won’t destroy Scott Brown ballets? How do we trust in our government at all, given that the attorney general for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (no final “e”) watched one of her employees attack a reporter and then lied about it to the public and the media?

- Aggie

Reason enough to vote for him.

- Aggie

A doozy

WASHINGTON – Americans would see only a modest rise in health care costs under the Senate’s plan to extend coverage to 34 million people who currently go without health insurance, government economic experts say in a new report.

The study found that health spending, which accounts for about one-sixth of the economy, would increase by less than 1 percent than it otherwise would over the coming decade even with so many more people receiving coverage.

Over time, cost-cutting measures could start to reduce the annual increases in health care spending, offering the possibility of substantial savings in the long run. At the same time, however, some of the Senate’s Medicare savings could be unrealistic and cause lawmakers to roll them back, according to Medicare’s top number crunchers.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the report released Saturday shows the Senate bill would slow the rate of health care costs, strengthen Medicare and provide millions more people with insurance coverage.

Where to begin? Do you think that Mayo Clinic, which is experimentally dropping all medicare coverage from it’s large branch in Phoenix, will be more adding coverage after the O’bot administration cuts fees? After all, what does the medicare budget cover? Largely fees to physicians and hospitals. So, as we gut it, we are reducing their fees.

It is also true that we begin paying for this monstrosity immediately, but it doesn’t kick in for roughly 4-5 years, depending on who you ask. So the cost savings are smoke and mirrors. We pay for this nonsense in advance.

Oh well. We voted for this and we’ll figure out a way to live with it.

- Aggie

- Aggie