Say What? June 18, 2012 Edition [Reader Post]

Liberals:

Barack Obama: on the Wisconsin Recall: “One of the lessons learned is, it's better to try make them [decisions] with people as opposed to against people”  Like Obamacare, WZ suggests.

Van Jones of Elizabeth Warren: “There’s a reason that Wall Street wants to stop her.  I think when she gets there, she’s gonna be in the White House someday.  When you have a talent like she has, to communicate some of the most complicated ideas in politics, the most simple way, without losing any of the intellectual integrity, but just from the heart out of her own biography, that is a rare talent…and I think she’s got the greatest future in the Democratic party right now.”  Please, please, please, a Warren/Van Jones ticket in 2016 or 2020.

Personal testimony:

Vice President Joe Biden: “My dad never worked in a Food Fair. My dad never wore a blue collar, Barack makes me sound like I just climbed out of a mine in Scranton, Pennsylvania carrying a lunch bucket. No one in my family worked in a factory.”

Liberals on the economy:

President Obama: “This notion that somehow we caused the deficits is just wrong. It's just not true. Anybody who looks at the math will tell you it's not true. If they start trying to give you a bunch of facts and figures suggesting that it's true, what they're not telling you is they baked all this stuff into the cake with those tax cuts and a prescription drug plan that they didn't pay for and the wars.  So all of this stuff is baked in, with all the interest payments for it, it's like somebody goes to the restaurant, orders a big steak dinner, martini, all that stuff and then just as you're sitting down, they leave and accuse you of running up the tab. That's what they do.”

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi: “The President talked about it yesterday, it’s about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, the President has been a job creator since day one.”  When is some reporter going to ask her, “And how many jobs did the President create on day one?”

Senator Sherrod Brown: “Everybody knows that government creates jobs…Government creates jobs in highways.  We hire private contractors. That creates other jobs. It builds an economic foundation for job creation.”

President Obama: “In history, it has typically taken countries up to ten years to recover from financial crises of this magnitude.”

Vice President Joe Biden: “Look folks. The few things I've just laid out are not going to solve the greatest recession in the history of the American Republic.”

President Obama: “I love listening to these guys give us lectures about debt and deficits. I inherited a trillion dollar deficit!”

President Obama: “Since then, Congress has passed a few parts of that jobs bill — like a tax cut that's allowing working Americans to keep more of your paycheck every week — but on most of the ideas that would create jobs and grow our economy, Republicans in Congress have not lifted a finger. They'd rather wait until after the election in November.”  30 jobs bills have passed the House and Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid refuses to bring them up for a vote or to even debate them.

President Obama: “Those of us who have spent time in the real world understand that the problem is not that the American people aren't productive enough…[Romney says] his 25 years in the private sector gives him a special understanding of how the economy works, [so] my question is why are you running with the same bad ideas that brought our economy to the brink of disaster?”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “Republicans have made a decision that they would rather do anything they can to stop jobs from being created, hoping it will help them with the elections come November.”  Senator Reid has chosen not to present roughly 30 jobs bills which have already been passed in the House.  There are no comparable bills being looked at, no debate, and no vote; it is as if these bills did not exist.

Joe Biden: “Congress can't just sit on their hands. So my message to congress is, let's get to work. Let's get to work…there are a bunch of things that Congress can do right now…Obama talks about the state bailout. Says they'e lost lots of jobs — “cops, teachers, firefighters … all being laid off. Those folks provide vital services … Congress should pass a bill like I've asked them to do to help states like Nevada put Americans … put those folks back on the job right now. That's something we can do.”

Liberal economist Paul Krugman: “There were periods of official recovery during the Great Depression…It's not as bad [today] as the Great Depression – there's a winning slogan.  Not as bad as the Great Depression, but it's incredibly awful.  If you don't know multiple people who are suffering, then you must be living in a very rarefied environment.  You must be maybe a member of the Romney clan, or something…None of this has to be happening. We didn't have a plague of locusts, we were not hit by a tsunami, there wasn't some act of God that created this terrible situation. It was acts of man.”

Brian Verdin, a local college instructor and a member of the Wisconsin branch of the American Federation of Teachers: “The ideas of socialism are as American as apple pie.”

President Obama: “[Romney ads will say] I didn’t make a lot of money in the private sector and I don’t understand it.  I’m in over my head . . . that’s what the scary voice in the ads will say. That’s what Mr. Romney will say.”

Sandra Fluke, in an interview of why she is endorsing Obama: “Actually, I saw something recently on ABC that things are increasingly, that this is the best time for employment opportunities for young graduates since the recession started.”

National security:

President Obama regarding the recent national security leaks: “The notion that the White House would purposely release classified national security information is offensive, it's wrong, and people, I think, need to have a better sense of how I approach this office and how the people around me approach this office.”

We know what’s best for you:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently banned larger than 16 oz. sodas in New York City: “if government’s purpose isn’t to improve the health and longevity of its citizens, I don’t know what its purpose is.”  Classify this under, “I earned my nickname, Nanny Bloomberg.”

We’re all going to die:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse: “People say there are questions about the theory,” he said. “No, there are not.  The argument that the jury is still out on climate change is a false and bogus argument.  The jury is not out. In fact, the jury is in, the effects are obvious, they surround us every day, and we need to take action.”

Liberals going green:

New Yorker column by Ryan Lizza, quoting the president: “Obama has an ambitious second-term agenda, which, at least in broad ways, his campaign is beginning to highlight. The President has said that the most important policy he could address in his second term is climate change, one of the few issues that he thinks could fundamentally improve the world decades from now. He also is concerned with containing nuclear proliferation.”

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Reporter: “Mr. President, the last time you were visiting the Martinsville-Henry County area, one of the things that you told those folks is, if they voted you into office, you would think about them every day.  Unemployment is well over 15%; why should the reelect you?”

Barack Obama: “It’s been a huge challenge since we’ve been in that region.  We’ve gone through the worse financial crisis since the Great Depression.  And everybody has been impacted by the economic crisis that followed.  The good news is, that we’re starting so see progress; for example….the possibility of us really doubling-down clean energy, wind, solar; I think it’s a huge opportunity for rural communities and we have been able to almost double our investment in clean energy—that’s something we’re going to continue to push.”

Liberals going pink…

Barack Obama: “Americans may be still evolving when it comes to marriage equality – (laughter and applause) but as I've indicated personally, Michelle and I have made up our minds on this issue.”

Obama: “Now, each June since I took office, we have gathered to pay tribute to the generations of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans who devoted their lives to our most basic of ideals-equality not just for some, but for all.  Together we've marked major milestones like the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, when a group of brave citizens held their ground against brutal discrimination.”  The Stonewall riot was a 1969 anti-police riot that started in what the New York Times reports was an illegal Mafia-owned bar for transvestites.

Obama: “I've said before that I would never counsel patience; that it wasn't right to tell you to be patient any more than it was right for others to tell women to be patient a century ago, or African Americans to be patient a half century ago.  After decades of inaction and indifference, you have every reason and right to push, loudly and forcefully, for equality.”  Gay people have true equality.  And if they want to get married, they can find a church that will marry them.  Some family members will recognize their marriages and some will not; some friends will recognize their marriages, and some will not.  There are no marriage police out there shutting down gay marriages or gay marriage ceremonies.  What they want is a legal recognition, which will gives gays a legal  foothold to penetrate our schools with their agenda; and to sue individuals, businesses, churches and school districts that they do not like, which destroys the lives of many people.   This is occurring right now in Canada.

Liberals on the 2012 election:

Senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod on the president saying that the private sector was “doing fine”: “In the minds of most Americans there's no confusion about this.” The President has not outright denied this statement, he gave support for what he said when he said it, but later seemed to call this a gaff.  I have heard many explain that the president meant this exactly, but has a slightly different understanding of what the private sector is (he sees it as a bunch of rich 1 percenters); and I have seen others dismiss this as simply a gaff.  The problem with the latter explanation is, it is not really a gaff when you also give an explanation for why you made this particular statement, which Obama did.

James Carville in an email to the Obama campaign: “We will face an impossible headwind in November if we do not move to a new narrative, one that contextualizes the recovery but, more importantly, focuses on what we will do to make a better future for the middle class….It is elites who are creating a conventional wisdom that an incumbent president must run on his economic performance – and therefore must convince voters that things are moving in the right direction. They are wrong, and that will fail. The voters are very sophisticated about the character of the economy; they know who is mainly responsible for what went wrong and they are hungry to hear the President talk about the future…We are losing these voters on the economy. ”

President Obama, who seems to spend every waking moment blaming Bush for everything, complained about Romney: “You can pretty much put their campaign on a tweet and have some characters to spare.  The challenge is because folks are still hurting right now, the other side feels that its enough for them to just sit back and say, `Things aren't as good as they should be and it's Obama's fault.'”

President Obama: “The good news is, I think the American people agree with us.  They’re not following . . . the ups and downs, the ins and outs of this campaign. But they do have a sense of what’s true. They have pretty good instincts about what works and they’re not persuaded that an economy built on the notion that everybody here is on their own is somehow going to result in a stronger, more prosperous America. So our job is to just make sure that we get that message out.”  Because, somehow, over the past 3 years, Obama has apparently become an economic genius.

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos, on why Allen West's election is likely to end up as one of the most expensive House races in the nation by Election Day: “He's one of our best villains. There's nothing that raises money like a good villain.  Tell 'em you're running against Darth Vader and the spigots open.”  Racist.

MoveOn.org email:  “Gov. Wallace was the face of the original Jim Crow. Now, Gov. Scott is the face of Jim Crow 2.0, as he refuses to halt his Latino-targeted voter purge, in defiance of federal law and a Department of Justice order.”

A memo from Priorities USA strategist Bill Burton: “While criticism of Romney's business record may not resonate with elites, it is clearly resonating with the actual voters who will decide this election.”

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Reporter Matt Smith: “I`d like to ask you about Wisconsin's recall election. There are a lot of Democrats that are upset you didn't campaign for Tom Barrett.”

President Obama: “The truth of the matter is that as President of The United States, I've got a lot of responsibilities.  I was supportive of Tom and have been supportive of Tom. Obviously, I would have loved to see a different result. But the broader principle is that we want an economy that is not focused on a few at the top but is a broad-based economy that invests in our future, that makes sure we've got a strong education system that is thinking about workers and their ability to pay their bills, is something in everything I do.”  And also, there were those 13 fundrasiers that Obama had to attend in the 14 days prior to the Walker/Barret election.

Former DNC head Howard Dean: “First of all, we look at Wisconsin as a win. We, which is not reported in the mainstream media, we picked up a senate seat, which denies Scott Walker a majority in the senate.”

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Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Stephanie Cutter: “We just need some willing partners across the aisle to help us getting done. instead of rooting for the failure of this economy, we should put country first.”  Not only is she repeating Democratic talking points, she is recycling McCain’s 2008 slogan.  That is truly green.

Michelle Obama using Father’s Day to ask for Obama cash: “From coaching basketball to knowing how many Jonas brothers there are, Barack is a pretty cool dad.   But more importantly, Barack is a wonderful father and partner. No matter what’s on his plate, he puts the kids first, and they know how much he loves them.”

The Liberal agenda:

President Obama: “Change is also doubling down on clean energy and enacting historic fuel efficiency standards, changing our entire trajectory after decades of inaction.  Change is the fact that for the first time in history you don't have to hide who you love to serve the country.”

EPA chief administrator Lisa Jackson was asked to craft a headline about her tenure there: “In accordance with the law, we moved forward with sensible, cost effective steps at the federal level on climate, using the Clean Air Act.” And I would have a second sentence – see, I can't write headlines! But it would be something like, “The progress at state and local levels, combined with the federal level, does not obviate the need” – you can't use obviate, it's above fifth-grade level! – “does not obviate the need for federal legislation to address this incredibly important challenge for this and future generations.”

Bill Maher (at first, reading): “‘Would it be better if the country just got over the idea of American Exceptionalism’ —oh, I think it would.”  Maher’s audience claps.

On Immigration:

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano of Obama’s decision to stop deportation of some illegal aliens: “A grant of deferred action is not immunity, it is not amnesty; it is an exercise of discretion.”

It’s all about racism…

Politico reporter Joe Williams, concerning the Daily Caller reporter who interrupted the President to ask a question: “It's very, very difficult to place race outside of this context. Mostly because a lot of the interruptions, a lot of the disrespect has been unprecedented.  We haven't seen anything like this before. A lot of people will suggest it's because the Republican party has moved so far to the right that they're willing to do things that were unthinkable. But certainly in my experience, it's hard to divorce that because this president doesn't look like the others. And not only do we have a lot of these sort of interruptions, a lot of disrespect towards the office, in more than my view, I mean, a lot of people in the tourist field and practicing journalists were agog, were aghast at what had happened.  But you also have the promotions of the Tea Party, where they're using racially-tinged imagery, and racially-tinged sort of statements to get their point across.”

Angela Rye, Executive Director of the Congressional Black Caucus, on racism against Obama: “I think that a lot of what the president has experienced is because he's black. You know, whether it's questioning his intellect or whether or not he's Ivy League. It's always either he's not educated enough or he's too educated; or he's too black or he's not black enough; he's too Christian or not Christian enough. There are all these things where he has to walk this very fine line to even be successful…There's an ad, talking about [how] the president is too cool, [asking] is he too cool? And there's this music that reminds me of, you know, some of the blaxploitation films from the 70s playing in the background, him with his sunglasses.  And to me it was just very racially-charged. They weren't asking if Bush was too cool, but, yet, people say that that's the number one person they'd love to have a beer with. So, if that's not cool I dont know what is. Even `cool,' the term `cool,' could in some ways be deemed racial [in this instance].”  Earth calling Angela Rye; the racism stuff isn’t working anymore.

Obamacare:

Hungry for a word sandwich, Nancy Pelosi: “I think we’re ironclad on the Constitutionality of the bill”

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: “What all of this means [passing Obamacare and all of its benefits] is that Medicare is now going to be stronger than ever. Seniors will have better benefits, lower prescription costs and more affordable preventive care. And their children and grandchildren will have a stronger Medicare in the future.”

The Compliant Obama Press Corps:

CBS chief Les Moonves and his wife, Julie Chen, attended an Obama fundraiser: “ultimately journalism has changed…partisanship is very much a part of journalism now.”

NBC Anchor Brian Williams: “In Washington today, Attorney General Eric Holder took heavy fire from Republican critics in a Senate hearing and calls for his resignation are growing louder, but Democrats contend it's all about politics in an election season.”  This is the first mention in NBC’s nightly news of Operation Fast & Furious, news which broke 18 months ago.

TV host Thom Hartmann: “The question of the day, have the Republicans committed treason, sedition, or just conspiracy to destroy the lives of millions of working Americans so they can make Obama a one-term president?”

Bill Plante on CBS: “The race is in a statistical dead heat, and a new poll shows President Obama's support slipping in one key demographic that helped him win in 2008: white men.”  However, on planet earth, McCain led Obama by 16 percentage points in white men in 2008.

MSNBC host Martin Bashir: “Professor Dyson, isn't that the problem that you have here a vacuous candidate who doesn't have any principles, who is surrounded by cash from individuals who have an agenda?”

NY Times writer Timothy Egan, after complaining about having to watch Fox News, began spouting some true facts: “First, you have to go back to Dwight Eisenhower's administration, more than 50 years ago, to find a rate of federal spending growth lower than that of the Obama administration. This counterintuitive conclusion was reported last month by Rex Nutting in MarketWatch, a Web site affiliated with The Wall Street Journal. It's been labeled “mostly true” by the nonpartisan referee Politifact, though others have challenged the premise of the piece. Nutting took much of 2009 out of Obama's column because the spending was authorized in the last year of the Bush presidency.  But even when he's tagged with most of 2009's outlays — including the stimulus, which saved more than one million jobs — Obama is a relative miser on the growth chart. Still, Mitt Romney continues to say that under Obama, federal spending “has accelerated at a rate without precedent.” Of course, Obama would like to spend more, and if given a free hand, may rise to a level justifying Romney's claim.”

Erin Burnett, CNN host: “Outfront next, the president makes an MVP-like political move that leaves Republicans flat footed. But is it the best policy for our country?”

Tom Wills of WJXT in Jacksonville, Fla. Interviewing prezy: “I was just wondering if you would give any thought to being on 'American Idol' or 'America's Got Talent'?  You'd be a big hit Mr. President.”

Matt Negrin's from ABC.com: “[Holder's testimony has] shown that the White House may stand to be embarrassed simply by the GOP's victimization of President Obama's top law enforcer.”

Frank Schaeffer on MSNBC: “Look, what's the common denominator of all their faith and freedom politics? It's to take away the freedom of choice for women, to take away contraceptives from women who work for Roman Catholic institutions, to take away choice for women, to take away gay marriage from gay people, this is not freedom. This is another form, the American form of Sharia law being imposed because of religious fiat.”

MSNBC 's Donny Deutsch: “Yeah. I’m a supporter of Obama, but, um, wavering, candidly. Two weeks ago changed everything for me, when those [bad jobs] numbers came out.”  Oh no! How did this get on the air?  Don't they have censers out there at work??

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Discussion on PBS, after going one calendar year without mentioning Fast and Furious:

Judy Woodruff: “So, Carrie Johnson, to you first. Why were Republicans today again coming down so hard on the attorney general?”

Carrie Johnson: “Well, almost from Eric Holder's nomination and even before his confirmation in 2009, leading Senate Republicans had insisted that they were going to target Eric Holder as vulnerable to political attack. That pattern has continued up until today, although I would say today what had been a simmer turned into a boil in many regards.”  I am curious how they would treat a story like, “The NRA Gives Out 1700 Weapons to Mexican Drug Czars.”  Would she show sympathy to the NRA if the Democrats beat up on them?

Liberal Celebrities:

President Obama to his 50 celebrity friends who paid $40,000 each to break bread with the prez: “You're the tie-breaker.  You're the ultimate arbiter of which direction this country goes.”  That gives me this strange feeling of calm to know that he is speaking to Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick.

Cher tweet: “When mitt gives stump speech Look Behind Him! White People! Where R people of color & ethnicity? Gay men & women Theres no rm 4difference in gop.”

Jane Fonda, when asked her opinion of the occupy movement: “Right on! I say right on! It's an important, wonderful movement. It doesn't fit the mold…I think that's what allows it to be successful in its own way. Because it has no leader; it has no set of rules. But, the values are good and it makes a difference. And I say right on.”  Apparently, Miz Fonda woke up in the 1960's this morning, wearing her beads and sandals, a right-on uniform, for sure.

Michael Moore tweet, who apparently favors one-party rule: “I will not settle simply for Obama's re-election. I want to witness the complete and utter implosion of the Republican Party. Done and done.”

Liberals from the past:

President Obama, last week: “Overall, the private sector has been doing a good job creating jobs.  The big challenge we have in our economy right now is state and local government hiring has been going in the wrong direction.”  The President being all things to all people.

Remember when the Obama White House classified the Fort Hood Massacre as “Work Place Violence” ?

Candidate Obama to David Axelrod in 2008: “The weird thing is, I know I can do this job.  I like dealing with complicated issues. I'm happy to make decisions. . . . I think it's going to be an easier adjustment for me than the campaign. Much easier.”

President Obama, bragging: “The only time government employment has gone down during a recession was under me.  So, I make that point just so you don't buy into this whole bloated government argument that you hear.”

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From March 2011:
Mr. Ramos: Mr. President, my question will be as follows: With an executive order, could you be able to stop deportations of the students? And if that’s so, that links to another of the questions that we have received through univision.com. We have received hundreds, thousand, all related to immigration and the students. Kay Tomar (ph) through univision.com told us — I’m reading — “What if at least you grant temporary protective status, TPS, to undocumented students? If the answer is yes, when? And if no, why not?”

President Obama: “With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed — and I know that everybody here at Bell is studying hard so you know that we’ve got three branches of government. Congress passes the law. The executive branch’s job is to enforce and implement those laws. And then the judiciary has to interpret the laws.  There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as President.”

Liberal civility:

NetRoots panelist Elisabeth Fernandez-Kimmel: “[The Right] have crappy sex lives, or they have really forced, coerced, nasty, you know, children, animals, what-have-you, people that they won’t recognize legitimate citizen status for. You know, they have all these really weird, twisted sex lives and so they’re shoveling their sh*t on us by projecting on our sex lives.”  This was a part of her panel presentation.  I've linked to the video, because you can read this and wonder, someone actually said this as a part of a panel discussion?  Are you kissing me?

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Bristol Palin was given her own TV show, and can you imagine the tweets from those on the left?

Pearls and Peaches@PearlsnPeaches
Does anyone know who the idiot is who gave Bristol Palin her own reality show? Because I'd like to personally punch him in the face.

Caitlinn Leigh@_omgcaitlinn
eww now bristol palin is getting a show? you're mom is a conservative bitch and you're a ho. that's that.

@ZoeLenss
I wish I could go up to Bristol Palin & be like “your moms a dumb bitch. She needs to die.”—

The ones that were too filled with expletives to reproduce.

Muslims:

Dima Subeih an official at a State Department-sponsored school in Jordan: “So let me get this straight, while Israel continues to brutally kill innocent Palestinian children and mothers every single day and perform all acts of brutality forming Palestinian genocide. However, they still whine and play victims.  They are doing to Palestinian what has been done to them by Hitler.”

Palestine child from jihad-run kindergarten glass: “I’ll fight the Zionist enemy and fire missiles at it until I die as a shaheed [martyr] and join my father in heaven.  I want to blow myself up on Zionists and kill them on a bus in a suicide bombing.”

Liberals making sense:

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman of President Barack Obama saying that the private sector is “doing fine”: “That was an unfortunate line.  The president bungled the line.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder: “I want to make it very clear that I am offering – I myself – to sit down with the Speaker, the chairman, with you, whoever, to try and work our way through this in an attempt to avoid a constitutional crisis, and come up with ways, creative ways, in which to make this material available. But I've got to have a willing partner. I've extended my hand, and I'm waiting to hear back.”  Finally.  How long has this been going on, a year?

Politico, generally a left-leaning source of political information: “Conservatives were angry when Janet Napolitano announced the administration would stop deporting certain undocumented immigrants but they should have seen it coming. On issue after issue – gay rights, drug enforcement, Internet gambling, school achievement standards – the administration has chosen to achieve its goals by a method best described as passive-aggressive.  Rather than pushing new laws through a divided Congress to enact his agenda, Obama is relying on federal agencies to ignore, or at least not defend, laws that some of his important supporters – like Hispanic voters and the gay community – don't like.”

President O: “But more than anything else, this election presents a choice between two fundamentally different visions of how to create strong, sustained growth; how to pay down our long-term debt; and most of all, how to generate good, middle-class jobs so people can have confidence that if they work hard, they can get ahead.”

Washington Post columnist Dana Millbank on a recent Obama speech: “I had high hopes for President Obama's speech on the economy. But instead of going to Ohio on Thursday with a compelling plan for the future, the president gave Americans a falsehood wrapped in a fallacy.  The falsehood is that he has been serious about cutting government spending. The fallacy is that this election will be some sort of referendum that will break the logjam in Washington.”

Liberals being [mostly] honest:

Movie director Spike Lee of Obama: “I can't say to all the people that are unhappy with him that they're racist people.  People ain't got jobs, people are hurting. So I don't care what color you are, if people are out of work, it's tough. And then when you're the first African American president, that's not helping either.”

Moderates/Affiliation Unknown:

Newsman Mark Knoller, tweeting about the President’s celebrity dinner:  Pres Obama said he knows there are “still a lot of people hurting out there…we constantly remind ourselves how much more we have to do.”

Knoller tweet: Addressing an audience that included Meryl Streep, Pres Obama said he's running for a 2nd term “because our work is not yet done.”

Knoller tweet: At the 4-story brownstone that is the home of Sarah Jessica Parker & Matthew Broderick, Pres Obama addressed 50 ppl paying $40K per.

Mark Knoller tweet: “Pres. Obama using Father's Day for a round of golf here in Chicago. By my count, it's his 100th round of golf as president.”

Moderates from the past:

Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo, from song Capitalism: “There's nothing wrong with Capitalism / There's nothing wrong with free enterprise / […] You're just a middle class, socialist brat / From a suburban family and you never really had to work.”

Beatles, Taxman: “Should five percent appear too small / Be thankful I don't take it all / 'Cause I'm the Taxman / […] And you're working for no one but me.”

Crossfire:

CNBC host Larry Kudlow: “Howard Dean, what blows me away is the Clinton wing of the party is trying to tell this guy, A: nobody believes his argument that the economy is getting better, so B: you better change the message and C: from Clinton himself who was a terrific economic president, Clinton said, just extend the Bush tax cut.  Stop blaming Bush. Already Obama signed the extension once in 2010. Stop blaming the Republicans in the House. Just go ahead and sign it and get us out of this recession, Howard Dean. And Obama will not listen. He is, in my opinion far-left liberal – way too liberal to be re-elected.”

Howard Dean: “Well, I appreciate your opinion.  You're probably on the wrong network, aren't you? Don't you belong on Fox, the right-wing propaganda network?”

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Reporter: “My quick question on the economy — when the President said on Friday that the private sector is doing fine, and then Governor Romney and other Republicans jumped on that, as you know, the basic complaint we heard from the White House was that the sentence was taken out of context. And I'm wondering, since that's the standard, then, can you assure us that the White House and the people who speak for President Obama will not take some unflattering sentence from Governor Romney and use it out of context?”

Press Secretary Jay Carney: “That's a rather remarkable question. I can simply refer you, again, to what you heard the President talk about as he stood here before you and the context of his rather full discussion of the state of the economy, and the simple fact that in a recovery that has seen 4.3 million jobs in the private sector created, it has also seen a situation where because of massive layoffs of teachers and firefighters and police officers — a reduction in the public sector.  And by “public sector,” we're talking about state and local governments who have had to lay off teachers from classrooms, firefighters from the force and police officers from the force. That was the context in which he was speaking, which I think everyone in this room was aware of at the time.”

Reporter: “Right. I'm just asking — you're asking for fairness — isn't it fair that the standard go both ways?”

Carney: “Well, certainly we believe that you all ought to do your jobs and report on context — of course. And we think that's important generally. You're asking me to speculate about what someone might say in the future in the context of it, and I simply can't do that. But if you're asking me if we're for good reporting filled with context, the answer is yes.”
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CNN’s Candy Crowley: “We saw the same thing play out in Indiana with Dick Lugar—a man who was known, he had conservative principles, but he was willing to work with the other side.”

Rick Santorum: “Hold on, what does that mean? When you say, `willing to work with the other side.' This is the real key that I think Tea Party folks and conservatives generally have sort of had enough with.  Willing to work from the other side in this town means doing what the other side wants only doing it slower instead of doing what is necessary for this country which is scaling back government. Instead of growing government less fast, we want government to get smaller. Now, we're willing to compromise on how quickly we do that, but the idea that we need people who just slow down this eventual growth and that's the answer [which is] is wrong.”
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Former White House correspondent Sam Donaldson during the Reagan years, in an email: “…let's face it: Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices and political view but for who he is, an African American! These people and perhaps even certain news organizations (certainly the right wing talkers like Limbaugh) encourage disrespect for this president. That is both regrettable and adds, in this case.”

Rush Limbaugh, by email: “Sam's premise, sadly, is ignorant, simplistic, clichéd, predictable and wrong. The President's ideas are what I oppose, not his skin color, which I couldn't care less about. He's the President of the United States and his race does not inoculate or immunize him from substantive critique.”

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Joe Scarborough: “What do you think, Mika? Do you think, do you think it’ll work: blaming George Bush?”

Mika Brzezinski: “A-h-h-h, well, I’m hopin’. But I think it’s a tough sell. And I still don’t know what the freakin’ metaphor is —“

Scarborough [bursting into laughter]: “At least she’s honest about it!”

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Mediaite: He was making fun of the President for wanting to hire more policemen and firemen and teachers saying, you know, “Didn’t he get the message of Wisconsin that we want less government?”

Joy Behar: Oh, less government? That is an idiotic statement. Can I just say that?

Mediaite: Yes.

Behar: I mean, I’d like to see his house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down. It would be kind of cool — the Mormon fire patrol.

Mediaite: Is that a thing?

Behar: You know what I mean? Come on. What am I supposed to do if my apartment gets caught on fire? Am I gonna call Mitt Romney to come and put it out? See what I mean?
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Man calling 9-1-1 over a deli order complaint: “I specifically asked for little turkey, and little ham, a lot of cheese and a lot of mayonnaise and they are giving me a hard time,  I wonder if you can stop by and just—”

The 9-1-1 operator: “You're calling 911 because you don't like the way that they're making your sandwich?”

Complainer: “Exactly.”
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MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinkski: “My father taught me to look at failure as a good thing, even if you don't realize it at the time, because it opens the door to other opportunities.”

Tim Graham’s snarky remark: “That certainly sounds right when your dad was in charge of “national security” under Jimmy Carter and had that great record of accomplishments like losing Afghanistan to the Soviets and the Iranian hostage mess.”
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Gordon Peterson, Host: “One of my favorite columnists writes this week that Barack Obama's opponent ‘is a stolid, gaffe-prone challenger for whom conservatism is a second language.” And you write, Charles, that “the less we see of these two gentlemen, the better each of them fares.’ ”

Charles Krauthammer: “That's a clown question, bro.”

Conservatives:

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney: “[Obama] isn't giving entrepreneurs and job creators a fair shot when he picks winners and losers, rewarding campaign donors with tax dollars in scandals like Solyndra.  Barack Obama isn't giving a fair shot to our children and grandchildren when he saddles them with trillions of dollars of debts.  If there has ever been a president who has failed to give the middle class of America a fair shot, it is Barack Obama.”

Mitt Romney: “The American people are having such a hard time. That's why the idea of selecting as a campaign slogan `Forward' is so absurd.  The president needs to go out and talk to people. Not just do fundraisers, go out and talk to the people if the country and find out what's happening.”

Ann Coulter: “And as for your point that they are not actually — and Van [Jones]'s point, they are not limiting it to someone who is about to attack. They're known terrorists and there are civilians being killed. And I don't necessarily disagree with you that we're at war with al Qaeda and they ought to be killed.  But I — where were you people when Bush was just detaining them? Oh no, you're all hysterical about that. Obama is ordering them dead. And, well, we're at war.”

Mitt Romney: “[Obama has made] a number of very revealing comments that show just how far out of touch he is with what's happening in the country. Yesterday, he said among other things, that he didn't realize that Obamacare is having any impact on small business.”

Michelle Malkin, after being disparaged as being merely a blogger by Juan Williams: “That's right. If I could just say something, the American people are sick of the kind of snotty condescension from liberal elite journalists like Juan Williams who tell us that the rest of us are not doing our jobs. When the point is, that on February 2nd, 2009, when Eric Holder was shamefully approved and nominated and approved to be Attorney General, he had already had a long record of bastardizing National Security and the rule of law. People like — yes, exactly! And people like Joseph Connor whose father was murdered by an FALN terrorists and said at the time, and I quote, ‘Before this nomination, warning Republicans, that Eric holder did not have the judgment, value or characters to hold that office.’ ”

Mitt Romney when asked about how his foreign policy regarding Israel and Iran would compare to Obama’s: “I think, by and large, you can just look at the things the president has done and do the opposite.”

RNC ad: “Sorry President Obama, Presidents don’t get mulligan.”

Sarah Palin on the press not vetting Obama: “Why did they not at least read his biography?”

Sarah Palin on the Obama diet: “The cocktail circuit gave me a hard time for eating elk and moose, but, come on, anybody here have a pet moose?  There’s a difference.”

Rush Limbaugh:

Rush: “I have a name for this new Obama immigration policy.  What this is, is `Catch, Release, Vote.'”

Rush: “Do you remember when Joe Wilson who shouted, 'You lie!' to Obama during a State of the Union show? It was because Obama said that Obamacare would never cover illegal aliens. And Joe Wilson said, 'You lie!' And they took him to the woodshed. And now what? You think these 800,000 aren't gonna have health care? Ha! Think again.”

Rush: “Democrats need a permanent underclass. They must have it. They need a permanent underclass to keep the social safety net alive and kicking.”

Rush: “Renewable energy is one of these terms the left throws around that sounds like magic. We're on the verge of discovering it.”

Rush: “If people aren't following current events that affect their lives, why were so many people who were once obsessed with Obama now so disinterested? Why has he lost 20% of the black vote in the polls in North Carolina if people aren't paying attention?”

Rush: “'Obama recently attended his 150th fundraiser. That's more than the number attended by the last four presidents put together.' His fundraisers dwarf other presidents' just as does his debt creation.”  Don’t forget his 100 rounds of golf, another milestone from this past week.

Rush: “If we reelect Obama, won't it just be four more years of disaster caused by Bush? Obama's admitting he can't fix what Bush did. Why reelect him?”

Rush: “Barack Oblame-o has been in office nearly six months longer than John Kennedy was president. Can you imagine how absurd it would be to have heard Kennedy still blaming Eisenhower for the state of the economy by this point in his presidency?”

Rush: “In effect, all the stimulus was, was an insurance policy to make sure that in the recession union workers didn't lose their jobs because Democrats needed their dues to be collected so that the money would end up back with their party or with Obama. That's all it was. It was a scam.”

Rush: “The US economy is suffering its longest sustained bout of 8% unemployment or higher since the Great Depression, and they tell us Obama is having a bad week.”

Rush: “Obama here has created…a jobless recovery and a wageless recovery. And yet they tell us, it's a recovery.”

Rush: “The minimum wage is an arbitrary number that's not related to anything. The minimum wage has no relationship to economic activity whatsoever. All the minimum wage does is lose jobs. All the minimum wage does is guarantee that young people are gonna have restricted entry-level job opportunities. That's all it does.”

Rush: “Every week is a bad week for America, with Barack Hussein Kardashian in the White House.

Rush: “If you want to tell us that large sugary drinks are dangerous, let us make the decision. If you want to tell us that big vats of popcorn you think are unhealthy, fine, let us make the decision. Put a label on it if you want to. You know, put a picture of a clogged artery on the popcorn bowl. We don't care. Just let us buy it if we want it.”

Rush: “The number of articles detailing the disaster that's known as Obama's campaign is astounding. There are at least two of them a day. And I'm telling you: If liberals are jittery now, can you imagine what's gonna happen if the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare in whole or in part?”

Conservative snark:

Radio host Laura Ingraham: “Do you think [Attorney General Eric] Holder is smart?”

Senator John Cornyn (who called for Holder to resign): “I have not been impressed with his intelligence.”
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Jodi Miller: “A new poll shows that two-thirds of Americans oppose Obamacare and want it repealed.  Two-thirds of Americans.  Or, as the liberal media calls them, a fringe, racist hate group.”

Jodi Miller: “Singer Jon Bon Jovi got a ride on Air Force One last week.  Just think, for a slightly bigger donation, he could have gotten his own solar energy company.”

Jodi Miller: “NBC medical correspondent Nancy Snyderman said it is pro-science to abort babies with genetic defects.  Or, is that what the Nazis said in 1941?  I don’t know.”

Snarky comments from Weasel Zippers:

Obama's Top “Climate Change” Diplomat Tells UN Summit White House Has Made Combating Global Warming “One of The Three Pillars of Our Foreign Policy And National Security”.
In related news, we have a “climate change diplomat.”

Netroots Nation “Progressives” Give Standing Ovation To Women For Having Abortions.
While Elizabeth Warren was on the stage. Nice.

Video: Obama Super PAC Chief Tongue Tied Over President's “Doing Fine” Comment.
Pay close attention at the 22 second mark, you can see a faint puff of smoke come from Burton's ears as his brain completely jams up.

New Obama Ad Attacks Romney For Accumulating $2.6 Billion In Debt Over 4 Years As Governor, Obama Racks Up Almost 50 Times As Much During May Alone, $124.6 Billion.
How's that glass house treating you, Barack?

Conservatives not making any sense:

Joe Scarborough: “You know, you can go online and act like a jackass and say what you want to say and now everybody is calling Jeb Bush a RINO (Republican in name only). Just shut the hell up. You can stay in your mother's basement, you can eat your Cheetos, you can type on your dingy laptop. That's all you got, but you are not the future of the Republican Party. So just keep screaming at your walls downstairs, your day is done.”

From the Conservative Review #231 (HTML)  (PDF)