Monday, July 09, 2012

Mr. "Tries real hard" is back from vacation

And ready to work!  White House Dossier has today's schedule:
Let’s take a look at this schedule for a second. Obama is planning to spend about two hours being president.
Speeches, interviews with local reporters, then two fundraisers.  You're welcome, America.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

The indolent bum could at least make an appearance at the House today, where the hard-working, get-r-done Republican leadership is holding its 31st vote to "stop" Obamacare.

Eric at work said...

Obama? Stay in Washington?

Today's entire schedule: fly to Iowa, invade some family's home in Cedar Rapids, give a speech, fly back.

Anonymous said...

Repeal Citizens United and I'm sure you'd see more of your president. Maybe the House can squeeze in ten minutes of debate on finance reform and constitutionality in between its 83rd and 84th Obamacare votes.

If you're this annoyed now, just imagine how angry conservatives would be if No-Show Obama were to play a prop guitar at a fundraiser two days after New Orleans had been devastated. "Imagine" being the key word.

Eric said...

And yet the House managed to pass a budget as required by law. The Senate...not so much.

Remember how Obama refused public campaign funding in 2008? Now all the Os in O-ville are crying "boo hoo hoo."

Anonymous said...

Yes, I remember. How'd that work out for Obama?

Fundraising is just another phony post-2009 "boo them, yay us" thing that Republicans make a show of raging against, like vacations, teleprompters, negative attacks, and "spiking the football" on terror. Impeach Obama, but for copyright infringement!

Boo hoo hoo? The only ones crying are the urban planners: How shall O-ville ever get changed to R-town, when Obama refuses to roll over like a good little doggy?

Eric said...

Can't I point out the hypocrisy of a President who went cash-crazy in 2008 complaining about Romney "buying the election" today?

How about the guy who said "don't raise taxes during a recession" in 2010?

Or the guy who said increasing the national debt by $4 trillion in eight years was "unpatriotic"?

Boo Obama! Yay Obama!

$hhh! said...

American Crossroads, the "unaffiliated" superPAc, has already raised 50% more money than John McCain spent for his entire campaign.

In 1972, four out of 12 American League owners voted against adding the designated hitter. But once it became the new rule, it wasn't hypocrisy for those four owners to sign DHs.

Anonymous said...

There are enough legitimate examples of Barack Obama contradicting Barack Obama without resorting to "Hee haw, he declines to bring a knife to a gunfight, and thus his inauthenticity is revealed!"

Eric at work said...

Yes, and the unions are spending billions for their agenda, but only reporting a quarter of their political activities to the FEC. Oddly, the Obama administration seems uninterested in investigating *this* kind of election fraud.

http://www.npr.org/2012/07/11/156599124/weekly-standard-unions-political-spending-explodes

Also, via White House Dossier, here's Obama's entire schedule for today:

9:45 - Receives daily briefing.

I assume he'll hit up today's CIA officer for a campaign contribution.

Anonymous said...

The Wall Street Journal's report double-counts many union expenditures (e.g. the national AFLCIO gives money to a local union, which in turn spends it on a local campaign; both entities disclose that money to the Dept. of Labor, but it's the same money). Conversely, a ton of corporate money never gets disclosed or counted at all; e.g. any donation to the Chamber of Commerce's political arm.

The report also equates money used to promote union policy issues (e.g. advocating for workplace safety, paid sick leave, minimum wage hikes, health care, etc.) to November campaign spending. Unions providing food to striking workers is included as a political expenditure.

Lastly, there's no comparison between the spending that unions are required by law to disclose, and what businesses and lobbies are required to disclose, with superPACs being just the latest example. Even the WSJ briefly concedes this point in its article, before continuing along. Thus, using respective filings as the basis for direct, one-on-one comparison is like declaring a final football score using one team's first-half performance only.

With the assumption that union activities are uniformly anti-GOP, it might strike you as equally odd that the Bush administration seemed just as "uninterested in investigating *this* kind of election fraud," as did the previous Bush administration, as did the Reagan administration (which was renowned for its soft treatment of unions), and so on. Either we have to question the political and investigative ability of the Republican Party over the last 30 years, or we'd have to question the math in a WSJ article. And the WSJ article is so much more linkable!