Category Archives: GOP’s Obama Derangement Syndrome

January 26, 2013 · 11:12 AM

BIll Maher Obliterates the Republican Lie that Obama Hasn’t Created Any Jobs

PoliticusUSA

When Republican consultant David Avella tried to push the lie that Obama has not created any jobs, he was completely destroyed by Bill Maher and Howard Dean.

Here is the video:

David Avella of GOPAC tried to spread the Republican myth that Obama has not created any jobs, but Bill Maher called him out on it.

Maher said, “That’s not true. That’s just a lie. What are you talking about he hasn’t created any jobs?” Avella said that there are no net new jobs since he started his administration. Maher responded because he started from the hole, but Avella interrupted him and expressed the Republican point of view that it doesn’t matter how many jobs were lost before Obama took office. Maher said the Republican no net new jobs meme is categorically untrue.

Panelist Howard Dean jumped into the conversation and said, “This is like listening to Paul Ryan on the budget. It’s ridiculous. They were going like that. Finally, they leveled off. After what Bush did which was borrow us into oblivion. From the bottom of the recession, there’s about five or six million new jobs created under Barack Obama. Is it enough? No, we need to do more stuff. I think we ought to put the old campaign behind us and talk about the new one.” Maher built on Dean’s point, “Also this week, if Mitt Romney had been taking the oath this week, he would be taking credit now for the news we got this week. Housing starts are up. Stock market is way up. Unemployment claims are way down. He’s the worst socialist ever, this Obama.”

This idea that Obama hasn’t created any jobs is a favorite Republican lie. At the 2012 Democratic convention, former President Clinton took apart this falsehood, “The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95% of the American people. In the last 29 months the economy has produced about 4.5 million private sector jobs. But last year, the Republicans blocked the President’s jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here’s another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, Congressional Republicans zero.”

As of last fall, even if you count all of the job losses that continue to pile up before the president could implement his own policies, Obama still had a net job creation record of +325,000. Republicans try to claim that Obama has not created any jobs by including 2009 and saddling Obama with Bush job losses from the first day that he took office. The stimulus wasn’t passed and signed into law until February 2009, but it just so happens that the job losses in January 2009 were the worst in 34 years. Before Obama has even had two full weeks in office, the economy lost 540,000 jobs. Those job losses belong to George W. Bush, but Republicans put them on Obama in order to make their dubious jobs math work.

A more accurate assessment of Obama’s jobs record should begin 2010, when his policies were implemented. By that standard Obama has created over 5 million jobs. The truth is that no matter how you slice the numbers, Republicans are still clinging to a flat out lie that Obama hasn’t created any jobs.

Voters didn’t buy the Republican funny math during the 2012 election. They aren’t going to buy it in 2014 or 2016 either. Bill Maher and Howard Dean were right on the money to call this out.

Republicans still haven’t figured out that they are only fooling themselves with their bogus statistics. You can fool some of the people all of the time, especially if those people watch Fox News and vote Republican.

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June 20, 2012 · 2:02 PM

BREAKING: Obama Asserts Executive Privilege Over ‘Fast & Furious’ Documents

 

 

Here’s the thing…

The Right has had a major conniption over possible legislative attempts to expose their millionaire donors to the Romney campaign.

Yet Darrell Issa and company are just about ready to explode over the idea of President Obama claiming executive privilege over certain White House connected high level documents pertaining to the Department of Justice’s Fast and Furious campaign.

 

The hypocrisy and double standard is astounding but that’s not even the half of it…

 

Think Progress

 

President Obama is asserting executive privilege over documents Republicans are requesting from the Department of Justice in the Fast and Furious investigation.

 

“After you rejected the Department’s recent offers of additional accommodations, you stated that the Committee intends to proceed with its scheduled meeting to consider a resolution citing the Attorney General for contempt for failing to comply with the Committee’s subpoena of October 11, 2011,” James M. Cole, the Deputy Attorney General wrote in a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) Wednesday morning. “I write now to inform you that the President has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-February 4, 2011, documents.” The move is certainly not unprecedented: President George W. Bush asserted executive privilege six times during his eight years in office, while President Bill Clinton did so 14 times.

 

UPDATE 

 

Bush invoked the privilege repeatedly: to block a Congressional committee’s subpoenas for documents relating to the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to reject California’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, in the US attorneys scandal that brought down Alberto Gonzales, to prevent Josh Bolten from turning over documents, and to protect Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor and Karl Rove and Scott Jennings from testimony.

 

UPDATE 

Issa on March 20, 2012: “We very clearly want to respect the history of executive privilege.”

 

UPDATE 

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on June 11, 2012: “The only constitutionally viable exception to the Department of Justice`s obligation under the subpoena would be executive privilege. The President hasnt asserted that privilege, presumably because the vast majority of the documents at issue aren’t related to communications with the White House. Because the documents don’t fit the category of executive privilege, the department is obligated to turn over the documents.”

 

UPDATE 

Responding to Obama’s use of executive privilege, Issa says “the untimely assertion by the Justice Department falls short of any reason to delay today’s proceedings.”

 

UPDATE 

Grassley has also issued a statement decrying Obama’s action: “The assertion of executive privilege raises monumental questions. How can the President assert executive privilege if there was no White House involvement? How can the President exert executive privilege over documents he’s supposedly never seen? Is something very big being hidden to go to this extreme? The contempt citation is an important procedural mechanism in our system of checks and balances. The questions from Congress go to determining what happened in a disastrous government program for accountability and so that it’s never repeated again.”

 

UPDATE 

The House Oversight Committee will consider this contempt resolution, which Democrats are opposing.  As Rep. Elijiah Cummings (D-MD) explained to Issa, “You accused him of a cover-up for protecting documents that he was prohibited by law from producing.”

 

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June 16, 2012 · 10:59 AM

From Day One

The Daily Beast‘s Michael Tomasky has written a critique about GOP behavior toward Obama and the country.  His premise is supported by Robert  Draper’s Do Not Ask What Good We Do, which focuses on just that, GOP behavior towards this president.

The Daily Beast

I’ve been reading Robert Draper’s Do No Ask What Good We Do, about the new GOP House, and it opens with a very interesting anecdote. On the night of Obama’s inauguration, Draper writes, about 15 GOP legislators from both houses–along with Newt Gingrich, journalist Fred Barnes, and pollster Frank Luntz, who arranged the evening–got together at a Washington restaurant.

They were not necessarily the party’s official leaders, but they were the emotional leaders of the new breed–Jim DeMint, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy–which is to say, the cohort to whom many others were looking for leadership; indeed, if you know anything about Mitch McConnell, to whom the leadership was looking for leadership. They talked for four hours about what their posture should be.

They agreed that night: oppose everything in completely unity. Show, Draper writes, “united and unyielding opposition to the president’s economic policies.”

So, before President Obama had proposed a single idea, the Republicans had already decided that they would oppose everything he did. Didn’t matter what it was. Look his plans over and see where we might be able to work together? Are you kidding?

Remember, this is the middle of a near-depression. The country lost around 800,000 jobs that very month. Every economic indicator was in the toilet and quickly rushing down into the sewer. The country was at the rock-bottom point of its worst economic crisis in the lifetimes of every one of the men in that room.

One might hope under such circumstances that the agenda-setting members of a minority party would, oh, convene a meeting in which someone said something like, “You know, we don’t like this president, and we’re not going to agree with him much, but let’s remember that almost a million Americans are losing their jobs this month, so we might want to find one or two areas of agreement.”

If anyone said such a thing, which seems doubtful, Draper doesn’t record it. Instead, the posture was–oppose, and stick him with the blame.

And no, Democrats don’t behave this way. I have shown before that Democrats in Congress voted at far higher rates for Bush’s signature legislative proposals than Republicans did for Obama’s, by 41 percent to 6 percent. It’s not chiefly because Democrats are better people, although it’s certainly true that Democrats aren’t as ideologically crazed as Republicans. it’s chiefly because many Democrats were in January 2001 from purple districts. But whatever the reason, Democrats didn’t and don’t do this.

It’s pretty amazing, and it’s worse that they get away with it because it’s precisely the behavior expected of them, so no one bats an eye any more. But this is not even the behavior of apes, who are far more socialized.

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April 19, 2012 · 12:30 AM

Quote of the Day: Modern Conservatism

Mario Piperni

No More Mister Nice Blog:

…the unreported story of our times is that birtherism isn’t an isolated example of paranoid lunacy taking hold of a disturbingly large segment of the population — in fact, modern conservatism is driven by multiple lunatic theories that are precisely as delusional as birtherism.

True…but the mulitple lunacies have been reported time and time again. The problem is that the people who should be paying attention aren’t listening to anyone whose first name isn’t Rush, Glenn or Sean.

The theories:

  • Birtherism
  • Obama is a Muslim
  • Obama is a Communist
  • Obama is the anti-Christ
  • Obama eats little white babies on Tuesdays (made that one up…but not by much)
  • Tax cuts for the rich creates jobs
  • Homosexuality is a perversion and can be cured with prayer
  • The Tea Party is a grassroots movement
  • Corporations are people
  • Bush, Palin and Bachmann have functioning brains
  • Abstinence education prevents teenage pregnancies
  • Climate change is a hoax
  • The GOP in its current state is a serious political party
  • FOX News is fair and balanced
  • The Affordable Care Act creates death panels
  • Creationism is science
  • Evolution is a flawed theory

And on it goes…the delusional theories of a self-destructing political party.

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November 17, 2011 · 8:16 AM

Lauren Pierce, President Of College Republicans At Texas University: Obama Assassination ‘Tempting’

This is scary and absurd, all at once…

The Huffington Post

Lauren Pierce, the president of the College Republicans at UT Austin, said on Twitter Wednesday that the idea of assassinating President Barack Obama was “tempting.”

At approximately 2:30 p.m., Pierce posted, “Y’all as tempting as it may be, don’t shoot Obama. We need him to go down in history as the WORST president we’ve EVER had! #2012.”

The tweet came hours after police arrested a man for firing shots at the White House, leaving two bullets in the executive mansion.

Pierce joked that “it must be a slow news day” after ABC News posted a story on her comment:

Pierce told ABC News that the comment was a “joke” and that the “whole [shooting incident] was stupid.” Giggling, she said that an attempted assassination would “only make the situation worse.”"Insofar as she’s a representative [of the College Republicans], maybe it shouldn’t be said, but she’s made a positive statement in a way,” said Cassie Wright, the group’s vice president.

“I don’t really see anything wrong with it,” Wright added. “It’s just a personal comment, not representative of any group. Just freedom of speech, you know?”

Amid growing attention, Pierce removed the post and apologized on Twitter for her actions.

“It’s never funny to joke about such a serious matter,” she said. “I have learned a very valuable lesson.”

Lauren Pierce@laurenepierce 

Lauren Pierce
I apologize for my previous tweet. It was in poor taste and and should never have been written.
 
 
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October 20, 2011 · 5:30 PM

Thanks For Nothing Obama! GOPers Ignore President’s Role In Libya

It has got to really irk the GOPers that President Obama has had a fairly successful record with his foreign policy…

TPM2012

Top Republicans are starting to weigh in on Muammar Qaddafi’s death and one consistent theme is quickly emerging: Barack who?

Mitt Romney, appearing on a radio program in Iowa, said it couldn’t come soon enough.

“I have seen those reports and if accurate I think the response is it’s about time,” he said. “This was a tyrant who has been killing his own people and of course is responsible for the lives of American citizens lost in the Lockerbie attack….I think people across the world recognize that the world is a better place without Muammar Qaddafi.”

Romney’s analysis of the Libya conflict has been nuanced. Back before the Arab Spring, Romney cited comments from Qaddafi praising Obama as evidence the president was weak on dictators. After operations against Qaddafi’s forces began in March, he announced his support for the intervention but later warned of “mission creep” and criticized President Obama for demanding the dictator’s ouster. “Now the president is saying we have to remove Qaddafi,” hesaid in New Hampshire in July. “Who’s going to own Libya if we get rid of the government there?”

In an e-mail to Politico’s Ben Smith, Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom clarified Romney’s position and made absolutely clear that Obama did not deserve credit for Thursday’s news.

“Mitt Romney has responded to the situation in Libya as it has developed,” he said. “It is the president who has been completely unclear regarding what his intention was with respect to our military’s involvement in Libya.”

He added: “Mitt Romney supported the initial humanitarian mission-as articulated by President Obama-to enforce a no-fly zone. As the mission went on, however, it became clear that President Obama had no idea about his intentions in Libya and that’s when Mitt warned against mission muddle and mission creep. The fall from power and subsequent death of Qaddafi brings to end a brutal chapter in Libya’s history-but that does not validate the president’s approach to Libya. The credit goes to the people of Libya.”

Rick Perry hailed Qaddafi’s death, but also left out any mention of the president’s decision to attack the dictator’s forces from his comments.

“The death of Muammar el-Qaddafi is good news for the people of Libya,” he said in a statement. “It should bring the end of conflict there, and help them move closer to elections and a real democracy. The United States should work closely with Libya to ensure the transition is successful, and that a stable, peaceful nation emerges. The U.S. must also take an active role in ensuring the security of any remaining stockpiles of Qaddafi’s weapons. These weapons pose a real danger to the United States and our allies, and we cannot help secure them through simple observation.”

One prominent Republican went out of the way to give Europe credit instead. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) told FOX News “Today’s not a day to point fingers” when asked about America’s role in Qaddafi’s death, before saying France and England were really the ones responsible for deposing the dictator. He later issued a statement thanking “American and NATO forces” for the victory.

Update: Ben Smith notes that a surprising number of Republicans aren’t even thanking US troops for the outcome.

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