Author Topic: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread  (Read 35264 times)

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #25 on: September 26, 2011, 06:49:05 PM »
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Obama, on US jobs tour, chides Europe on debt woes
ers.com ^ | 9-26-11 | Alister Bull
Posted on September 26, 2011 8:30:09 PM EDT by Justaham

Obama said the U.S. recovery suffered setbacks this year due to problems around the world, including the Arab Spring uprisings that drove up energy prices and worries about the financial health of European countries.

"They have not fully healed from the crisis back in 2007 and never fully dealt with all the challenges that their banking system faced. It is now being compounded with what is happening in Greece," Obama told an audience of about 400 in Mountain View in California's Silicon Valley.

"So they are going through a financial crisis that is scaring the world and they are trying to take responsible actions but those actions haven't been quite as quick as they need to be," Obama said.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...






LMFAO!!!!!!    Wwwaaaahhhhh!!!!!!!   Freaking baby. 

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #26 on: September 28, 2011, 06:17:37 AM »
Obama's Euro-Crisis Lecture Is 'Pitiful and Sad'
Spiegel.de ^ | 09/28/2011




US President Obama has given the Europeans a harsh lecture on the dangers of their ongoing debt crisis. Offended by the unsolicited advice, Europeans have suggested the US get its own house in order first. Obama's remarks were "arrogant" and "absurd" German commentators say on Wednesday.

Europeans are well aware of the seriousness of their ongoing debt crisis. But they don't, it seems, like to receive lectures from other countries -- especially the United States, which is struggling to deal with its own mountain of debt.

On Tuesday, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble curtly rejected recent American criticism of Europe's approach to solving its debt crisis. "I don't think Europe's problems are America's only problems," said Schäuble. "It's always easier to give other people advice."

At an event in California on Monday, Obama warned Europeans that their inaction was "scaring the world." The Europeans, he said, "have not fully healed from the crisis back in 2007 and never fully dealt with all the challenges that their banking system faced. It's now being compounded by what's happening in Greece." He continued: "They're going through a financial crisis that is scaring the world, and they're trying to take responsible actions, but those actions haven't been quite as quick as they need to be."

German observers have reacted angrily to the comments, saying that the US is in no position to criticize other countries, given its own $14-trillion pile of national debt and ongoing wrangling over the country's debt ceiling. Others claim that Obama is just trying to distract attention from the US's problems and point out that the US president was in California to raise funds and voter support ahead of his reelection campaign next year.


(Excerpt) Read more at spiegel.de ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #27 on: September 28, 2011, 06:21:15 AM »
The mass-circulation Bild writes:

"Obama's lecture on the euro crisis … is overbearing, arrogant and absurd. … In a nutshell, he is claiming that Europe is to blame for the current financial crisis, which is 'scaring the world.' Excuse me?"

"The American president seems to have forgotten a few details. The most important trigger of the financial and economic crisis was US banks and their insane real-estate dealings. The US is still piling up debt … The American congress is crippled by a battle between the right and the left. The banks are gambling just as recklessly as they did before the crisis. The president's scolding is a pathetic attempt to distract attention from his own failures. How embarrassing."








hhhmmmm  - seems that they grasp the entire obama presidency far better than do his idiotic supporters.   

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #28 on: September 28, 2011, 01:49:32 PM »
Obama evades ‘Fast and Furious’ questions from Latino media
By Matthew Boyle - The Daily Caller   4:14 PM 09/28/2011



During a White House roundtable with three Spanish-language media outlets on Wednesday, President Barack Obama skated around questions about Operation Fast and Furious.

“We’re working very hard to have a much more effective interdiction effort … we are checking southbound transit … to capture illegal guns, illegal cash transfers to cartels,” he said at the morning event with representatives from Yahoo!, MSN Latino, and AOL Latino/Huffington Post Latino Voices. “It is something we’ve been building … its not yet finished, and there’s more work to do,” he said.

Conservative Action Fund treasurer Shaun McCutcheon told The Daily Caller that Obama’s inability to answer basic questions about Operation Fast and Furious suggests the administration is covering up even more about the controversial program.

“The more that comes out about this Fast and Furious scandal, the more we realize that there are very real dangers in a government that is too big to monitor itself,” McCutcheon said in an email. “The Obama administration refuses to take responsibility for the deaths of Americans and Mexicans alike under their watch because of their program.”

Obama blamed budget problems, in part, for what some see as ATF’s incompetence. “Part of the problem is budgetary [and] … we are going to have to figure out ways to operate smarter and more efficiently in investigations without a huge expansion of resources  because those resources are aren’t there.”

No reporters at the roundtable pressed Obama further on the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives program. Operation Fast and Furious was an Obama administration program in which ATF agents facilitated the sale of firearms to Mexican drug cartels via “straw purchasers” who could legally purchases guns in the United States, but were doing so with the intention of trafficking them into Mexico.

House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley have pursued a congressional investigation into the ATF operation over the past several months, and that has led to at least a few high-ranking Obama administration resignations. Their investigations have also revealed that White House officials were aware of Fast and Furious and the ATF tactics the program employed.

Conservative groups are unlikely to let this scandal die down without greater accountability.

“This Fast and Furious scandal reminds us that cronyism is murderous and its politics are dangerous,” Ali Akbar, a political consultant for the conservative Vice and Victory told TheDC. “I’m talking with other conservative groups and we’re not letting this go. We applaud Chairman Issa for pursuing this national tragedy that looks like it trickles all the way up to the top.”

TheDC’s Neil Munro contributed reporting for this story.

Follow Matthew on Twitter

Article printed from The Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #29 on: October 07, 2011, 07:11:06 PM »
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Obama’s excuses are wearing thin
Chicago Sun Times ^ | 10/7/11 | Steve Huntley
Posted on October 7, 2011 7:20:25 PM EDT by Evil Slayer

For years, the ritual response from the White House to the nation’s economic problems was to blame the Bush administration — President Barack Obama inherited this mess. With that excuse wearing thin after nearly three years of his administration and a persistently weak economic pulse, Obama has found a new reason for the country’s woes: Americans grew soft.

“This is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft, and we didn’t have the same competitive edge that we needed,” Obama told Orlando, Fla., TV station WESH this week. That’s, well, an interesting explanation for the housing collapse caused in large measure by government-promoted lax mortgage loan standards and low interest policies.

Obama’s comment was the latest manifestation of the administration’s proclivity to blame someone else — anyone else — for the failure of its policies to restore the economic vitality of the country.

Lately, Obama and other Democratic leaders have taken to complaining that Republicans are putting party ahead of country by opposing his economic legislation. In other words, the GOP is unpatriotic. That’s a dramatic turnaround for Democrats who angrily bristled whenever someone suggested a lack of patriotism in their criticism of the Bush administration policies.

We should never be surprised by hypocrisy in politics. Still, both parties would do the country and the cause of a more civil discourse a great favor if all insinuations of insufficient patriotism were banned from our politics.

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #30 on: October 12, 2011, 06:14:26 AM »
Obama: Victim or professional victim?
By Sam Youngman - 10/12/11 05:30 AM ET



   
“Ronald Reagan wouldn’t be sitting here.” — President Obama during the debt-ceiling debate

Those words from the July debt-ceiling standoff offers perhaps the best glimpse into how the unknowable Obama thinks Congress sees him.


All presidents are insecure about their standing and worry their power will be usurped by Congress. And detractors always have reasons for feeling a president is illegitimate.

But when it comes to Obama, whether because of his race, his name or his politics, the perception that he is being treated differently from his predecessors seems to be the largely unspoken belief in the White House and among the president’s fiercest supporters.

And it’s a perception the White House will likely continue to mention, with a wink and a nod, after Republicans stand united in blocking Obama’s jobs bill.

During the debt-ceiling debate, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) said she was “particularly sensitive” to the fact that “only this president” has received the kind of attacks Obama has dealt with.

“I do not understand what I think is the maligning and maliciousness [targeting] this president,” she said. “Why is he different? And in my community, that is the question that we raise. In the minority community, that is the question that is being raised. Why is this president being treated so disrespectfully?”

Obama has evidence in arguing he has been treated differently. Raising the debt ceiling had long been a routine practice, a fact not lost on the White House. Of course, as a senator, Obama voted against raising the debt ceiling.

Since Obama has gone on the offensive with his quixotic American Jobs Act tour, he has repeatedly spoken of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) stated top priority of defeating the president.

“I’m also dealing with a Republican … leader who said that his No. 1 goal was to beat me — not put Americans back to work, not grow the economy, not help small businesses expand, but to defeat me,” Obama said during last week’s press conference. “And he’s been saying that now for a couple of years.”

Inside the White House, senior administration officials refer to “the McConnell strategy,” which dictates that no matter what Obama proposes, Republicans will oppose it in hopes of making him a one-term president.

“You get the sense sometimes that if the president went out and said, ‘The sky is blue and the grass is green,’ they would find a way to object to that,” one top White House official said Tuesday.

For the moment, the suspicion that Obama has been treated differently is still below the surface. If it is mentioned at all, it is only in the heat of the moment by fellow Democrats or minorities.

If the president raises the subject, it is always in the context of portraying McConnell and his party as obstructionist.

But that will change. In the intense fire of next year’s campaign, every stone will be turned over, and the narrative that Obama has been treated differently by his political opponents could emerge as an issue.

The question then becomes: Is Obama a victim, or a professional victim? And what does it mean for Obama’s reelection hopes?

The answer is far from clear.

Washington has never tallied a scorecard for a black president, and the president’s reelection effort will in many ways be as unprecedented as his 2008 election.

It’s possible that those people inspired by hope and change in 2008 could come to his defense if they feel like Obama’s efforts, and by extension their own, were constantly undermined by a Congress that never viewed Obama as presidential or repeatedly undermined the economy in a grand effort to make Obama the next Jimmy Carter.

If black voters and other traditional supporters of the Democratic base hold that view, it could put an end to questions about whether Obama’s base will be there in 2012.

It’s also possible that if that view is embraced by the left, it could hurt Obama.

The left is viewed by swing-state independents as the same crowd as the Occupy Wall Street folks, and complaints Obama is being treated differently could lead voters in Peoria to see the president as a whiner trying to misdirect anger toward his ineffective policies by claiming to be a victim.

It’s not difficult to guess which view Republicans would endorse and push.

And it’s unlikely that the supremely cocksure president would ever publicly admit to feeling like he has been a victim of, well, a vast right-wing conspiracy.

But the grumblings are out there. They will grow in volume and frequency as Congress repeatedly clashes helmets in the coming months.

When a verdict on those questions is reached among voters, someone will be punished.

If Obama is punished for claiming victimhood, he loses.

But if Republicans are judged to have targeted Obama  instead of the economy, they will pay the price.

Either way, it’s probably fair to say, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t be sitting in that position.

Youngman is the White House correspondent for The Hill.


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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #31 on: October 15, 2011, 05:02:19 AM »
Obama seeks to put onus on Republicans over jobs (Unemployment Average Bush 5%, Obama 10%)
msnbc ^ | 10/15/2011 | Reuters
Posted on October 15, 2011 8:00:17 AM EDT by tobyhill

President Barack Obama urged Republicans on Saturday to stop picking "ideological fights" and focus instead on job creation efforts as he pressed Congress to begin voting next week piece by piece on his defeated jobs package.

With an eye to the 2012 election, Obama is working with fellow Democrats to break into parts his $447 billion jobs bill -- which Republicans blocked in the Senate on Tuesday -- and challenge their opponents to show where they stand.

He used his weekly radio speech to showcase his strategy to paint the Republicans as obstructionists impeding his drive to improve the economy and reduce stubbornly high unemployment, considered crucial to his re-election prospects.

Republicans have said Obama's original package was laden with what they see as wasteful spending and counterproductive tax hikes for wealthier Americans and that he now seems more interested in demonizing them than working to find common ground.

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #33 on: December 06, 2011, 12:20:01 PM »
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2011/12/06/obama_now_blames_the_internet_for_job_losses.html

Posted on December 6, 2011

Obama Now Blames The Internet For Job Losses




"Layoffs too often became permanent, not part of the business cycle. And these changes didn't just affect blue collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the internet," President Obama said at a campaign event in Kansas.


________________________ ______________________



Fucking fail!!!!!! 

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #34 on: January 02, 2012, 06:08:41 AM »
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 31, 2011
Obama to Turn Up Attacks on Congress in Campaign
By MARK LANDLER


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/us/politics/obama-to-focus-on-congress-and-economy-in-2012-campaign.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&pagewanted=print




HONOLULU — President Obama is heading into his re-election campaign with plans to step up his offensive against an unpopular Congress, concluding that he cannot pass any major legislation in 2012 because of Republican hostility toward his agenda.

Mr. Obama’s election-year strategy is an attempt to capitalize on his recent victory on a short-term extension of the payroll tax cut and on his rising poll numbers. As the stage is set for November, he intends to hammer the theme of economic justice for ordinary Americans rather than continue his legislative battles with Congressional Republicans, said Joshua R. Earnest, the president’s deputy press secretary, previewing the White House’s strategy.

“In terms of the president’s relationship with Congress in 2012,” Mr. Earnest said at a briefing, “the president is no longer tied to Washington, D.C.” Winning a full-year extension of the cut in payroll taxes is the last “must-do” piece of legislation for the White House, he said.

However the White House chooses to frame Mr. Obama’s strategy, it amounts to a wholesale makeover of the young senator who won the presidency in 2008 by promising to change the culture of Washington, rise above the partisan fray and seek compromises.

After three years in office, Mr. Obama is gambling on a go-it-alone approach. In the coming weeks, he will further showcase measures he is taking on his own to revive the economy, Mr. Earnest said, declining to give details.

Mr. Obama has used his executive authority in recent weeks to promote the hiring of returning veterans and help students pay back their college loans. Underscoring the jobs theme, Mr. Obama plans to return to the road, starting with a trip to Cleveland on Wednesday to speak about the economy.

The White House laid out the election-year strategy last week here in Hawaii, where Mr. Obama is vacationing, just as attention turns to the Republican caucuses in Iowa on Tuesday.

The White House has been refining the message since July, when Mr. Obama’s attempts to forge a “grand bargain” with the House Republicans on fiscal policy collapsed and he reverted to a populist, anti-Congress strategy. But it did not gain traction until the last few weeks, when polls began showing that nearly half of Americans approved of the job he was doing, up from percentages in the low 40s during most of the year. House Republicans inadvertently helped him just before they recessed for the holidays when they initially refused to extend the payroll tax cut.

Mr. Earnest said the strategy had successfully planted “the image of a gridlocked, dysfunctional Congress and a president who is leaving no stone unturned to try to find solutions to the difficult financial challenges and economic challenges facing the country.”

Mr. Obama began emphasizing his new strategy in early December with a fiery speech in Osawatomie, Kan., where he said that “breathtaking greed” had contributed to the country’s economic troubles and that this was a “make-or-break moment for the middle class.”

In his weekly address on Saturday, Mr. Obama praised Congress for passing the two-month tax cut extension, but made it clear that the lawmakers had acted only under intense public pressure. He also repeated his vow to fight for middle-class Americans.

“As president, I promise to do everything I can to make America a place where hard work and responsibility are rewarded — one where everyone has a fair shot and everyone does their fair share,” he said.

Mr. Obama’s confrontational approach carries risks, since the imprimatur of Congress is still required for important national business. But the budget deal that resolved the standoff over raising the debt ceiling last summer removed a major weapon Republicans had to push the president.

On Friday, for example, Mr. Obama agreed to delay a request to Congress for $1.2 trillion in additional borrowing authority. That will allow lawmakers to come back to Washington to voice their opposition to more red ink. But even if they vote to block the measure, Mr. Obama can veto it, knowing that the Democratic-controlled Senate will not override him.

The president’s antagonism toward Congress evokes that of President Harry S. Truman, whose come-from-behind campaign in 1948 focused on a “do-nothing Congress.” But Republican analysts have pointed out that the national unemployment rate in November 1948 was 3.8 percent — not 8.6 percent, as it is now — and that the American economy was on the upswing.

“Americans expect their elected leaders to work together to boost job creation, even in an election year,” said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John A. Boehner. “Divided government can be challenging, but that’s no excuse for him to put his presidency on autopilot when so many Americans are looking for work.”

For Mr. Obama, a heavily partisan strategy carries the risk of alienating independent and moderate voters who are fed up with Washington’s gridlock. On the Republican presidential campaign trail, Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker, both point to their legislative successes working with Democrats.

Mr. Obama also risks antagonizing Congressional Democrats, who were angry when administration officials, including the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, criticized Congress without distinguishing between Democrats and Republicans.

Democratic leaders said they were satisfied that Mr. Obama was adequately making that distinction, and they said they understood why he would want to run against a Congress whose Republican leadership had blocked his legislation and declared that its primary goal was to defeat him in November.

“He has been emphatic in stating that he is running against obstructionist Republicans in the House,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “As long as the president includes the word Republican when he says he is running against Congress, more power to him.”

After a year in which the White House often seemed a hostage to the Tea Party contingent in the Republican-controlled House, the administration is savoring Mr. Obama’s victory in December in obtaining a two-month extension to keep most workers’ Social Security payroll tax at 4.2 percent, down from 6.2 percent.

“The significance of that fight,” Mr. Earnest said, “is that it gave the president the opportunity to establish his bona fides on an issue that, at least in recent history, Democrats haven’t fared very well with, which is the issue of taxes.” He pointed to polls that he said showed that Mr. Obama was now more trusted on taxes than Republicans were.

Winning a full-year extension of the payroll tax, Mr. Earnest said, will still be a top priority. He noted that House Republicans were now also arguing that it should be extended for a year, after some initially opposed extending it at all.

“There are certainly other things the president would like to do,” Mr. Earnest said, citing other provisions of the jobs bill. “But in terms of essential, must-do items, the payroll tax cut extension is the last one.”












LMFAO!!!!!    Who the fuck voted for this shit show?   

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #35 on: January 04, 2012, 08:26:51 AM »
Obama's 2012 Reelection Excuse: Don't Blame Me, Blame Congress
Townhall.com ^ | January 4, 2012 | Donald Lambro




WASHINGTON - President Obama and his top campaign officials have mapped out a new 2012 reelection strategy: run against an unpopular Congress.

Obama, whose job approval polls have been relentlessly stuck at around 43 percent for much of last year, thinks he can convince enough voters that Congress is the cause of all the economic ills that still plague our country.

That's right, the man Mitt Romney has been calling "the great complainer," "the great blamer," "the great excuse giver," will run on a campaign platform that his policies are blameless. Its all the fault of Congress who won't pass his latest economic stimulus plan to borrow and spend more money and raise taxes on investors, small businesses and corporations.

Forget about those lofty promises Obama made in his 2008 campaign speeches about stopping the bickering and changing the tone in Washington. White House aides told reporters last week that he is going to "double down" on what they call an "outside strategy" -- that he is fighting for the middle class against a do-nothing Congress that has become the paymaster of wealthy special interests.

It's going to get ugly, too, because when you attack the Congress, that includes everyone in it -- the Democrats who run the Senate and Republicans who control the House. What will Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi say about that?

But Obama and his aides think the best politics this year is to stay above the fray on Capitol Hill. He doesn't exactly say this, but the implied message to his fellow Democrats -- who will likely lose the Senate in November -- is, "You're on your own."

"In terms of the president's relationship with Congress in 2012... the president is no longer tied to Washington," deputy press secretary Josh Earnest told the Washington Post over the holidays.

No longer tied to Washington? Does he really think he can just walk away from three years of impotent economic stimulus bills and the voters will forget what he proposed, or that it didn't work? Or that he will be able to campaign around the country and ignore the economic and fiscal issues Congress will be dealing with over the course of the coming year?

Obama's legislative war cry last year -- "we can't wait" -- apparently has been changed to "You're gonna have to wait until I'm reelected."

But if he thinks he'll be able to convince enough voters that Congress is to blame for what ails us and that he's kept his promises, Republicans have a lethal counter-offensive strategy ready and waiting to strike back.

For months now, an army of opposition researchers at the Republican National Committee have been digging up every exuberant, exaggerated claim Obama has made in behalf of his policies. Those words are going to be thrown back at him between now and November, reminding the voters that he made over-the-top promises that remain unfulfilled. Among them:

-- That his $800 billion spending stimulus bill would lift two million Americans out of poverty. In fact, the Census Bureau tells us that over six million Americans have fallen below the poverty income line during the past three years of his presidency.

-- That his home foreclosure assistance program would "help between 7 and 9 million families restructure or refinance their mortgages." Actually, his administration has spent a great deal less than it promised and helped only 2 million, at best.

-- In his 2008 nomination acceptance address to the Democratic national convention, Obama said his plan to invest $80 billlion in clean technologies would create five million new jobs. So far, the money spent on the projects has produced nowhere near that jobs figure and has come under investigation for bankrolling loans sought by wealthy donors to Obama's campaign.

Internal government documents obtained by a House oversight committee found that the program was heavily politicized, and included a fat loan to a solar panel business publicly promoted by Obama that later went bankrupt, costing taxpayers half a billion dollars. A Post investigation last month found that the program "was infused with politics at every level."

-- Appearing on the NBC Today Show in 2009, Obama said that if the economy did not recover within three years, "then there's going to be a one-term president."

These and other Obama remarks will be the source for a tidal wave of Republican videos on television and the Internet over the ensuing year. But none will be more ubiquitous than his claims that he's stablized and turned the economy around since its plunge into the Great Recession.

But official government data draws a starkly different picture: A nearly 9 percent national unemployment rate; a weak economic growth rate that's barely creeping along at a snail's pace 1.8 percent; and millions of discouraged workers giving up and leaving the labor force because they cannot find jobs.

That's the sober reality of the dismal Obama economy: weak capital investment, banks reluctant to lend, home values continuing to decline, college graduates unable to find jobs, and nearly a dozen states permanently stuck in double-digit unemployment.

A recent RNC ad uses Obama's own words to indict his performance as president. An Internet spot titled "It's Been Three Years" shows candidate Obama saying the "real question" is whether or not Americans will be better off in four years.

The ad flashes forwards to a one-on-one interview with ABC News analyst George Stephanopoulos last October in which Obama says "I don't think they're better off than they were four years ago."



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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #36 on: January 13, 2012, 10:03:31 AM »
Obama blames Nixon for NOAA
 Comments (59)  By BYRON TAU | 1/13/12 11:48 AM EST  AP Photos



We still have Dick Nixon to kick around, it seems.

President Obama, in announcing a restructuring proposal for the federal government, took a shot at a predecessor, President Richard Nixon — blaming him for the inefficient placement of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration within the Commerce Department.

"If you're wondering what the genesis of this was apparently, this had something to do with President Nixon being unhappy with his Interior Secretary for criticizing the Vietnam War. So he decided not to put NOAA in what would have been a more sensible place," Obama said in remarks today.

Part of his reorganization would move NOAA from Commerce to the Interior Department.


http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/obama-blames-nixon-on-noaa-110745.html



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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #38 on: January 19, 2012, 01:36:51 PM »
Obama blames press for his 'cold and aloof' image
Politio44 ^ | 1/19/12 | JENNIFER EPSTEIN





President Obama blames the press for creating the image that he's aloof and disconnected from the rest of Washington, insisting in a new interview that he's just more interested in spending time with his family than in exchanging pleasantries with strangers.

"My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties and, as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them, and they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof," Obama said in an interview with Time Magazine released Thursday.

"The fact is, I’ve got a 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughter. And so, no, Michelle and I don’t do the social scene, because as busy as we are, we have a limited amount of time, and we want to be good parents at a time that’s vitally important for our kids."


(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #39 on: January 26, 2012, 09:31:31 AM »
Obama's game plan: Do nothing
San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 1/26/12 | Debra J. Saunders




Toward the end of his State of the Union speech, President Obama observed that Washington politicians should learn from the example of the U.S. military: "When you're marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails."

Obama recalled the successful Navy SEAL mission, which under his watch took out Obama bin Laden, and observed, "the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other - because you can't charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there's someone behind you, watching your back."

At first blush, it seemed like a stirring call to action. But when you look at the speech as a whole, and in context, it was a sad admission. Obama constantly carps about his lack of support from the Republican-led House. I think the president has decided that he cannot succeed in the face of political opposition. So he is not charging up those stairs.

Unless Washington walks in lockstep behind Obama, he's not going to try to get anything done.

Consider the White House decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. Last week the administration announced that the president denied the project because of "a rushed and arbitrary deadline" of Feb. 21 embedded in a two-month extension of the 2011 payroll-tax holiday. "I'm disappointed that Republicans in Congress forced this decision," the president lamented.

Obama also lauded the military toward the beginning of his address. "They focus on the mission at hand. They work together," he noted. " Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example."

I can imagine it, but what I see is a president who nixed a shovel-ready job-rich pipeline project that had been under review since 2008, and had passed State Department vetting twice...


(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...


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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #40 on: January 26, 2012, 07:13:27 PM »
Good old barack wrote the book on excuses...


It is what he does best.

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #41 on: February 06, 2012, 12:14:12 PM »
Obama: I'm getting 'better as time goes on'

http://thehill.com/video/administration/208775-obama-im-getting-better-as-time-goes-on-at-being-president



By Justin Sink - 02/06/12 07:52 AM ET

During an interview that aired Monday on NBC's "Today" show, President Obama said that he gets "better as time goes on" at his job and that he believes the grassroots movement that propelled him to victory in 2008 will help him win a second term.

"What's frustrated people is that I've not been able to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. Well, it turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes. But what we have been able to do is move in the right direction," Obama said.


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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #42 on: February 07, 2012, 04:42:50 AM »
Pres. Obama: “Our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes.”

Uh, that’s because the Founders were trying to prevent exactly what you are trying to do, Mr. President. They did not want the Federal Government to dominate the life of every citizen from cradle to grave. They wanted people to be free – to earn their own keep and keep what they earn. What a concept.

(Excerpt) Read more at nation.foxnews.com ...

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #43 on: February 14, 2012, 07:58:53 PM »

OBAMA: I COULDN’T CUT THE DEFICIT IN HALF BECAUSE THE RECESSION WAS DEEPER THAN I THOUGHT
The Blaze ^ | 2/14/2012 | Tiffany Gabbay
Posted on February 14, 2012 10:00:26 PM EST by antidemoncrat

During an interview with WAGA, President Obama attempted to make excuses for his failed promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term in office.

(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #44 on: February 15, 2012, 05:57:37 AM »
In an interview with Atlanta's local Fox affiliate WAGA-TV Preisdent Obama explains why he was unable to cut the deficit in half in his first term, a promise he made as a candidate.

Obama was lobbed the question by a sympathetic reporter who said he is getting "pelted in the media" for making a campaign promise he did not keep.

"Well we're not there because this recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of else realized," Obama said about his inability to cut the deficit in half.

"Everybody who is out there back in 2009, if you look back what their estimates were in terms of how many jobs had been lost, how bad the economy had contracted when I took office everybody had underestimated it. People thought that the economy contracted 3%, it turns it was close to 9%. We lost 8 million jobs just in a year's span, about half a year before I took office and about a half a year after I took office," Obama said.

"So, the die had been cast and a lot of us didn't understand how bad it was going to get. That increases the deficit because less tax revenues come in and it means more people are getting unemployment insurance, we're helping states more so they don't teachers, etc. The key though is that we're setting ourselves on a path so that we can get our debt under control."




via RCP

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #45 on: February 15, 2012, 06:05:01 AM »
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/02/15/obama_gas_prices_on_the_rise_means_the_economy_is_strengthening.html


So now obama is going to blame $5 gasoline on the booimng economy? 

That is really funny since I dont remember gasoliner spiking in the 90's or for most of the 2000's until helicopter ben came along and started devaluing the currency. 


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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #46 on: February 16, 2012, 07:31:30 PM »
Skip to comments.

Obama Budgets Show Weak Recovery Behind Big Deficits
IBD Editorials ^ | February 16, 2012 | JOHN MERLINE
Posted on February 16, 2012 10:17:44 PM EST by Kaslin

President Obama told an Atlanta TV station this week that the reason he's unable to live up to his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half is "because this recession turned out to be a lot deeper than any of us realized."

"Everybody who is out there back in 2009," he went on, "everybody underestimated it," adding that "the die had been cast, but a lot of us didn't understand at that point how bad it was going to get."

It's a convenient excuse, and one that, if true, would help him escape blame for a deficit that will exceed $1 trillion for the fourth year in a row this year, and will still be a sky-high $901 billion next year.

But Obama's own budget documents show that this excuse doesn't hold up very well. Among the revelations:

Not everyone was surprised by the depth of the recession.

A table in a little-read section of Obama's first budget — released in May 2009 — shows that the Congressional Budget Office was predicting at the time that the economy would contract by 3% in 2009. That's not far from the actual 3.5% decline. And the CBO was spot on in its 2010 forecast for a 2.9% gain in real GDP. The actual figure was 3%.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #47 on: February 17, 2012, 05:54:18 AM »
Obama's Cynicism For Me, Not For Thee
Townhall.com ^ | February 17, 2012 | Jonah Goldberg




"My rival in this race," President Obama announced early in 2007, "is not other candidates. It's cynicism."

It's now clear that what he meant by this was other people's cynicism -- not his own.

As you may recall, Obama came into office a very inexperienced politician, spouting a lot of hopeful and idealistic rhetoric. He had made a name for himself by refusing to demonize conservatives and Republicans.

For instance, during a Nevada Democratic debate, then-Sen. Obama told the late Tim Russert that, "My greatest strength, I think, is the ability to bring people together from different perspectives to get them to recognize what they have in common and to move people in a different direction."

Whether that was a lie at the time or simply unwarranted self-confidence is unknowable. What is plainly knowable is that it was untrue.

Among modern presidents going back to Eisenhower, Obama has proven uniquely incapable of working with his political opponents. Even Jimmy Carter got his signature airline deregulation bill passed with whopping bipartisan majorities. Bill Clinton got NAFTA, welfare reform and some balanced budgets with Republican help. George W. Bush got Democrats on board for No Child Left Behind and the Iraq war. (Obama's vice president and his secretary of state both voted for it as senators.)

There have been some bipartisan victories on Obama's watch, but he's often been the partisan loser in such fights. For instance, Congress extended the Bush-era tax cuts, much to Obama's dismay. And even on more clear-cut bipartisan victories -- say, the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, or the trade deals Obama delayed unnecessarily -- there's little evidence that Obama brought any opponents around to his position. The man just isn't very persuasive.

Now Obama's defenders, starting with the man himself, insist this isn't his fault. He's actually super persuasive and bipartisan, he just suffers from the fact that the Republicans are the most unreasonable politicians ever, so he can't be blamed for utterly failing to work with them. It's like the guy who insists that he's a real ladies' man but can't get a phone number because all of the hot women in the bar just happen to be gay.

Actually, it's worse than that. Everywhere the president goes, he explains that he's failed to get anything done either because the system is broken or because his opponents lack the honor and decency to work with him. Such arguments define cynicism.

But for Obama, cynicism is a vice for other people.

For instance, just this month, after five Democratic senators and several members of his own inner circle (including Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and former Chief of Staff William Daley), not to mention the unified leadership of the Catholic Church, expressed profound dismay over Obama's decision to force religious institutions to pay for contraceptive and "preventative" services in violation of their faith, Obama insisted that opponents of the move were "cynical."

Also this month, the president proposed a budget that assumes everyone in this country is too stupid to understand what he's up to. It simply pretends there's no debt or deficit problem. It assumes that entitlement spending is nothing to worry about. It "saves" money by cutting spending no one ever planned to spend. And it proposes huge tax hikes nobody believes that even Obama wants.

Why? Because Obama expects Republicans to vote against the budget -- as any responsible legislator of either party would -- so he can then further demonize the "do-nothing Congress" while pretending to be serious about fixing our problems.

By the way, the only part of Congress worthy of that sobriquet is the Democrat-controlled Senate, which hasn't proposed a budget in over 1,000 days (longer than the entire run of the Kennedy administration). Why hasn't it? To make it easier for the Democratic president to demonize his opponents.

Instead of fulfilling his promise to deliver a "new kind of politics" and a new era of idealism, he's made politics more cynical than ever. The case for Obama has become the case against everyone and everything inconvenient to his success. Don't agree with Obama's policies? Well, you can't possibly have a good reason to do that. So you must be racist, greedy, dumb or corrupt.

Meanwhile, Obama casts himself as the humble servant of the 99 percent, even as he forklifts cash from Wall Street into his campaign coffers and exploits the very sort of super PACs he not long ago claimed were a "threat to democracy."

But to point that out is just cynicism.



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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #48 on: February 22, 2012, 12:51:33 PM »
Obama doesn't accept responsibility for gas prices

by Joel Gehrke Commentary Staff Writer



http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/obama-doesnt-accept-responsibility-gas-prices/388946






President Obama does not "accept responsibility" for high gas prices, his spokesman indicated today, arguing that Obama has done everything he could to bring down the price of oil and blaming the high gas prices on oil price increases caused by global factors.

"The president accepts the responsibility that he identified the next president should accept, which is the need for comprehensive energy policy," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today when asked if Obama "accept responsibility" for the high price of oil and gas. "If you're suggesting that there is responsibility for a rise in the price of oil, it's certainly not because of anything he hasn't done to expand oil production," Carney added.

 
Asked if he believes it is fair for Americans to blame the president, Carney noted that gas price hikes are "a recurrent problem." He added that domestic oil production is at a record high right now and that Obama has opened "millions of acres in the Gulf of Mexico" to drilling.
 
The conversation today stemmed from yesterday, when Carney was asked about the Keystone XL pipeline. He said that "the president did not turn down the Keystone pipeline," arguing that Republicans prevented a full environmental review from taking place.

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Re: Obama blames . . . . . . . . . . . . The Official Obama Excuse Thread
« Reply #49 on: February 23, 2012, 07:24:32 AM »
..Obama goes on offense over high gasoline prices

By Jeff Mason | Reuters – 23 minutes ago





....WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As Republican presidential candidates toss barbs at Barack Obama over expensive gasoline, the U.S. president and his team are going on the offensive with a strategy to divert blame and prepare voters for higher costs.

In subtle and not so subtle ways, Obama, a Democrat, is raising the issue of high prices to promote his own policy priorities and blunt criticism from the men vying to unseat him in the November 6 election.

His strategy is both politically- and policy-oriented. The president wants to advance his plans to increase renewable energy sources and reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.

But he also needs to win the war of words to gain an upper hand over Republicans in Western battleground states such as Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, where people drive a lot and feel the sting of rising prices acutely.

Republicans see many weaknesses to exploit. They blame Obama for not doing enough to increase domestic production of fossil fuels and cite his decision to block a new oil pipeline from Canada as evidence that he is beholden to environmentalists.

Rising gasoline costs have brought the issue to the forefront of the presidential campaign. So Obama has started to pepper his speeches with references to prices at the pump.

On Tuesday he cited the extension of the payroll tax cut as a welcome buffer for workers coping with the cost of gas. On Wednesday he proposed -- not for the first time -- getting rid of tax loopholes that benefit oil and gas companies.

On Thursday he'll go a step further, using a speech in Florida to outline his own accomplishments in the energy arena along with a long-term strategy to keep fuel prices down.

"This is a recurrent problem and it's a problem that reinforces the need that (Obama) identified back when he was a candidate for a comprehensive energy strategy," White House spokesman Jay Carney said. Obama advisers have pointed to growing demand in China and unrest in the Middle East as factors out of their control that are affecting the price of oil.

Average gasoline prices have climbed to their highest February levels on record, hitting $3.53 per gallon last week, according to MasterCard SpendingPulse data.

Gasoline prices have tracked crude oil prices, which have been bolstered by the threat of supply disruptions from the West's standoff with Iran over Tehran's nuclear program.

Some analysts say U.S. prices could hit $4 a gallon or more ahead of the summer when driving demand peaks.

POLITICAL BATTLE

Those prices hurt Obama politically as much as they hurt the country economically, and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum seized on them criticize the president for his environmental record.

"Folks are just starting to be able to breathe a little as the economy starts to come back a little bit, unemployment starts to go down," Santorum said at a campaign event last week.

"All of a sudden they are going to be hit with the same force of wind that hit us in 2008 in the summer that caused us to go into a recession. All because of the radical environmentalist policies of this president," Santorum said.

Carney dismissed Santorum's comments as "random statements by politicians seeking office." Obama is the first president to preside over growth in domestic oil production since President Jimmy Carter, also a Democrat.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House of Representatives, promised at a debate with rivals on Wednesday night that the country would enjoy gasoline prices at $2.50 a gallon if he won the White House.

Analysts and strategists said Obama has few options to bring down gasoline prices in the short term and said his energy policies had evolved from focusing on renewable fuels to promoting nuclear energy and natural gas.

"Basically he's come a long way from the campaign of '08. I think that reflects pragmatism on his part," said Guy Caruso, a senior adviser on energy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Progress or not, Obama has vulnerabilities when it comes to energy. Earlier this year he nixed TransCanada Corp's Keystone XL pipeline under severe pressure from environmentalists.

The president blamed Republicans for forcing him to take a decision under a tighter timeframe than the State Department said it needed to study the project.

Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts and off-and-on frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, said that decision was a sign that Obama wanted to please his political base more than he wanted to improve the economy.

VULNERABILITIES, FEW OPTIONS

Analysts say even if Keystone were approved, the increase in oil supplies would not affect gasoline prices for years, but the decision is nevertheless a key flashpoint in the election.

"The juxtaposition of the high gas prices and Keystone has (the White House) understandably nervous, and even though those two ... have almost nothing to do with each other substantively, they create a political narrative that Republicans could be successful in using to paint Obama as anti-energy and pro-high gas prices," a Democratic strategist said.

Politically, Obama's vulnerability over gasoline prices could be especially deadly in Western states that he needs to win to remain in the White House.

Charles Ebinger, director of the Energy Security Initiative at the Brookings Institution, said Republican candidates could gain traction with voters in that region by emphasizing fuel costs, though they -- like Obama -- had few options to suggest to bring prices down in the short term.

"Out there (a candidate) can get some resonance against the president by talking about high gasoline prices," he said.

"If someone comes back at him and says, 'What's your policy Mr. Santorum, Mr. Gingrich, or whomever, to lower gasoline prices today,' I don't think they'll have a good answer."

(Additional reporting by Matthew Robinson and Samuel Jacobs; Editing by Russell Blinch and