Obama to get Earpiece or Monitors for Help W Press Conference Answers

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EXHIBIT #12345 of “Democrats Elected GWBptII”

Mind you, as the article notes, this isn’t merely a teleprompter. It is like an IFB (interruptible feedback) earpiece, but even more so. This will give Mr. Axelrod and his other handlers the ability to feed him answers to the reporters’ questions in real time. Can you imagine the grief President Bush would have gotten had a tried this? Mr. Bush was pilloried for wearing an earpiece during one of the debates – even when he wasn’t. But of course Mr. Obama will get a free pass from our free press. After all, they don’t mind playing charades as long as it is for a good cause.

btw, I don’t care if he gets monitors or an earpiece. I really don’t. Monitors showing breaking news, or spin, etc might actually help him make better, more informative responses. I just want the meatheads who whined and complained about Bush allegedly wearing an earpiece to step up and share the whining again; to disprove the idea that their rantings were just about partisanship. Their silence and inaction proves it was just partisan whining.

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Obama is the new chimpy, just not as bright as the last one.

That’s unreal but I am not surprised. I wondered how long it would be before the puppet had his answers spoon fed to him.

Will there be ANY moments when this guy is left unscripted to answer directly to the American people without someone pulling the strings?

Obama brings new meaning to …

The President’s Analyst: The Cerebrum Communicator

… also brings new meaning to “What’s the frequency Kevin ?”

Link to article please. Thanks.

Found it. Thanks.

Boy, they are taking no chances with The One! Never an opportunity to think or speak for himself… oh wait, I remember why that is! Every time he does that he reveals his Socialist agenda. Can’t have that!

this is beginning to look like preschool for an administration. so obama will once again get to not actually have his own answers but those of his people, what a douche. this is fantastic.

There’s a difference between wearing an earpiece during a debate (a CONTEST) and a press conference (intended not as some test of the President’s intelligence or command of the issues, but, much more importantly, to provide accurate information to the public).

Wearing an earpiece during a debate would obviously provide an unfair advantage in a debate. Wearing an earpiece during a press conference simply allows the President to communicate with his team and the Presidency is a team affair. The idea that Obama is some sort of puppet is absurd. His entire career, which was a self-made success, effectively repudiates that notion.

The comparison between a debate and a press conference is entirely odious.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

This is just a question out of curiosity and not an attempt to cast any additional aspersions on our newly-retired past-President.

What ever became of the “hidden earpiece” controversy?

When last I was aware, this was the state of affairs:

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO410A.html

Was this ever repudiated effectively? Can anyone provide a link?

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

The comparison between a debate and a press conference is entirely odious.

Larry,

That’s a worthy point; but it still begs the question: Had this been Bush doing it, what do you think the reaction would have been? Ridicule or a pass?

what it boils down to is either obama knows what the hell he is doing and has the info in his head, or he doesn’t know. if he doesn’t know, which we pretty much know he doesn’t know anything but palm greasing and and bringing race into the mix, then he shouldn’t be in the job. he campaign for a job he has no clue how to do and this should not be on the job training. in any other position in the world he would already be on probation, if not fired. and what does larry think would have been said to/about bush had he done the same thing? really makes obama and his friends look like total idiots.

Scott, I don’t at all disagree with your take regarding the 9/11 commission and it would have been just fine for President Bush to wear earpieces to communicate with his staff during that and during press conferences. But wearing one during a debate would clearly be cheating. I’m just curious to actually read a story which refutes the stories about the President pausing and apparently mumbling to someone during the debate and the photos of the bulges. Do you have a link? I tried to look for something on Google, but couldn’t find a link to a story refuting these charges.

– LW/HB

Here’s a related link albeit take it with a grain of salt. In this photoshop age, I assume all newsworthy photos photoshopped until proven otherwise.

talkleft.com/story/2004/10/29/139/84212

Larry could you share with us the top 3 things/accomplishments of Obama’s “self made-career” that have impressed you so much. It’s a serious question.

So, Bush was an idiot but he didn’t need an ear piece.
Obama is supposed to be smart, but needs an ear piece?
Holy double standard Batman!

Here’s an October 2008 HuffPo article which indicates to me that the 2004 wired for debate controversy was never effectively put to bed:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/keith-thomson/dear-the-long-list-of-peo_b_132361.html

To PDill, re Obama:

You don’t become president of the Harvard Law Review, no matter how political, or how liberal the place is, by virtue of affirmative action, or by virtue of not being at the very top of your class in terms of legal ability. Barack was at the very top of his class in terms of legal ability. He had a first-class legal mind and, in my view, was selected to be president of the Review entirely on his merits.

Bradford Berenson Harvard Law, class of ’91; associate (Bush) White House counsel, 2001-’03; Republican

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/obama/harvard.html

Second, he went from being the child of a mother on food stamps and a father who deserted him at age two, with no Bush-style family dynasty to support him, and got an education from Occidental College and Columbia University, then went to the South Side of Chicago and, from scratch, built himself a political career which culminated first in election to the Illinois state legislature, and secondly to the US Senate and thirdly to the Presidency of the USA, running a near flawless campaign. Obama made himself President; George Soros didn’t make him President and he is not now nor never has been anyone’s “puppet.”

I think Obama is one of the smartest people in modern politics. I think that he has a sense of discipline, a sense of vision, a sense of clarity of communication that makes him extraordinarily formidable. We now also know he has great courage and a willingness to roll the dice in a very long-shot situation. He’s, I think, one of the most formidable personalities in modern American life.

Newt Gingrich Former House speaker, 1995-’99 (R-Ga.)

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/choice2008/obama/skills.html

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Larry,

He’s a puppet. He got places because of affirmative action. His grades @ Columbia are under lock and key. How do we know he had a first class legal mind? What legal cases has he argued? None? He didn’t have a Bush-style family to support him? So what? Either did Larry Ellison. If I took a walk through south Chicago, where he community organized for what 10 years? … I should expect Utopia? I mean he had 10 freaking years to improve that area with all kinds of funds that my local school district doesn’t get, and it’s a shit hole. Sorry, I don’t get it.

Tom in CA

Well, Tom. You have one opinion. People who actually know him have another opinion. I surprised that he’s pulled the wool so tightly over the eyes of Newt Gingrich, among others.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Newt wasn’t and still isn’t exactly a political genius. If anything, obama
personifies the Peter Priciple.

Larry,

As far as I can tell, you’re impressed with Obama because he’s good at raising money and winning elections.

If that is your only criteria for political “success”, then it’s no wonder you are awed by him.

I wonder how Larry will feel when his wallet is empty and the economy is still in ruins.

I wonder how Larry will feel when his wallet is empty and the economy is still in ruins.

What’s actually great about this is that it’s not a theoretical argument we are having. Something like global warming, where we’ll be arguing it for two decades. We’ll actually get the chance to see what goes down. In only a very few years.

I like it that Obama has come right out and taken ownership of the economy, by saying “if this doesn’t work, then we’ll be having a new President.”

He’s not hiding out. He’s not taking cover. Boom. Stimulus bill. Dems say it will work. GOP says it won’t. If things go in the toilet, the GOP wins. If the economy has a solid recovery, Obama wins. Next things are the housing “fix,” and the auto plan — more money or let them go bankrupt? And all the foreign policy stuff. And the unknown variable of terrorism.

So, how will I feel if the economy totally tanks? Well, I’ll feel bad about it. I’d have preferred for Bush not to have given his massive tax cuts. I’d have preferred he not have invaded Iraq. I’d prefer that Wall Street hadn’t been bailed out. I’d have preferred that Detroit not have been bailed out. I’d have preferred that there be no “stimulus” package (containing yet more unwise tax cuts) and I’d have preferred for each of the “investment” and welfare proposals to have been debated and voted upon individually.

I’m a true economic conservative. Tax rates should be high enough to generate the income to match government spending. If you want to reduce government spending, you don’t do it by lowering taxes, a la Reagan and Bush. You reduce spending by raising taxes to pay for all the spending you do. When people have to pay for things that the government does (e.g. waging war, paying for prescription drugs under Medicare, enlarging the welfare state), then they become a lot less cavalier in just allowing the government to do whatever it wishes.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Larry are you aware that Obama’s mother was on food stamps while she was a GRADUTE STUDENT in, I believe, anthropology? Gee, imagine if all PhD privileged college students found no shame in accepting government food stamps. Are you also aware that his “poor” grandmother was VP of a bank?

I agree that Obama’s or anyone’s father leaving sucks. However, we all could write volumes on the success of men without role model fathers, starting with Bill Clinton. I’m convinced that in many cases, the troubled “pains of childhood” are often what prepare and transform us for future greatness, the genesis of most “worldly skill sets.”

As for Harvard Law, what gives? Why didn’t he ever publish? One would think with a “scholarly brain” such as Obama’s, he would have at least been able to vote beyond “present” or answer 8th grade level debate questions with more than “above my pay grade.”

As for Newt, I do respect his opinion, and in fairness to you, I was a bit shocked to hear some of Newt’s glowing comments on Obama. That said, lately it appears Newt is coming back to sobriety, as many other intellectuals and Kool-aid drinking conservatives appear to be.

Obama got the Chicago Senator seat with a lot of ‘luck’. Had it not been for the leaked divorce papers, (gee, I wonder how that happened in Chicago), this country wouldn’t even know who BO was.

And all of those years as a “Community Organizer”, what’s to show for that other than some thug friends, corruption with Catholic Bishops and Acorn monies (recently reported by the Catholic Church; parishioners were “duped” into donating to Acorn (Saul Alinsky connection), thinking it was the “Bishops’ funds). Again, how could THAT happen in “Chicago?”

Larry you fail to show one ACCOMPLISHMENT of any significance outside of academics. I grant you he has a gift for eloquence, (providing he has a teleprompter of course). And that is what fools so many, being it’s human nature to equate good diction and rhetoric (even if empty) with “success and accomplishment.”

All the more reason, IMO, Obama was “plucked and groomed.” He’s the “closer” Larry.
As for the objective test in 2 years; not so fast. Chances that our enemies, who are more than ever convinced of our weakness, don’t flatten us, or at least give it a good run for the money, in the next two years is well, a bet I suspect few Americans, including Joe Biden, would bet against. I can already hear it, “Obama the great war president, how dare we question the economy considering what this country has been through.”

And if we are not attacked, and the country tanks, rest assured, it will be just more “fear mongering” or some newly created loophole to “deter elections considering the situation.” In the meantime, the majority of the country will be so dependent on “government support”, and worst case scenario under martial law, that it will be too late to “save the children from their parents.”

Our solution, at least in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is SMALL government, a balanced budget, and most of all, leaders of courage and character.

Some hacker will have fun with this device!

Larry: There’s a difference between wearing an earpiece during a debate (a CONTEST) and a press conference (intended not as some test of the President’s intelligence or command of the issues, but, much more importantly, to provide accurate information to the public).

I think you are wrong on this, Larry. If the American people wanted to listen to Obama’s staff, they would ask the questions of them. If a press conference with President Obama is really only going to be a carefully contrived press release, then what’s the use? And is this going to carry over to rope lines and town hall meetings? Should the first question every citizen or reporter asks him be, “Are you going to answer this question, sir, or are we talking to your staff right now?”

If President Obama can’t answer a single question without a think tank answering it for him, he should just say, “sorry, I don’t know the answer to that right now, I’ll get back to you.” That would be honesty. If he can’t answer the questions himself, he should leave the press conferences to Gibbs.

What this is, is an attempt to keep another Joe the Plumber from ever making him look bad again. It is also an attempt to set him apart from his inability to talk on the cuff without sticking his foot in his mouth. It is dishonest, elitist, and condescending.

PDill: Obama is a self-made man. That’s what I said. Read what his classmate Berenson, the conservative Republican who served with him on the Harvard Law Review said. This guy later was a Bush White House lawyer. You guys want to paint him as an intellectual lightweight; you do so at your own peril. You say he was “lucky.” You say he needs a teleprompter. Now we are talking about an earpiece.

No, he doesn’t need a teleprompter. Nor an earpiece. I’ve listened to a great many interviews, including those on youtube going back into the 90s. He is just as smart as Newt Gingrich says he is and just as smart as Bradford Berenson said he is.

That’s the point. He leaves nothing at all to “luck.” So he uses a teleprompter when he can, to make sure that he covers everything he wants to cover. If he wears an earpiece, it’s because he wants to make no mistakes. What he’s trying to accomplish is darn difficult, but he’s already left behind him a long trail of vanquished opponents, dating back to his beating out 17 other candidates for the Law review editorship. Illinois legislature. US Senate. Through to Hillary Clinton. On to John McCain.

If he’s lucky, it’s the same way that people who win a Nobel Prize in science are lucky; chance favors the prepared mind.

You asked me to name three Obama “accomplishments.” Turnabout is fair play. You name three George W Bush “accomplishments,” before he was elected President.

Let’s not you and I get into debating “foreign countries considering our weakness” (your words to that effect). You think that starting unnecessary wars constitutes “strength.” You think that tough talk and bluster constitutes “strength.” I think that what you would consider to be “strength” is just so much self-injurious foolishness. Bring ’em on.

What we are doing is having a fight over respective predictions of what sort of a President Obama will be. Unless you are planning on rounding up the troops for another impeachment, he’ll have the chance to do what the people who voted for him elected him to do. And we’ll all see precisely how that comes out.

Democrats survived 8 years with George W. Bush. I rather think that Republicans can make it through the next 4 years of Obama, and then we’ll all just see what there is to see.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Larry: You asked me to name three Obama “accomplishments.” Turnabout is fair play. You name three George W Bush “accomplishments,” before he was elected President.

Wasn’t my question to answer, but I’ll take a stab at it anyway. George W. Bush:

-Received a Bachelors Degree in History from Yale (Where he admits he was just an average student)
-Served in the Texas Air National Guard, as a Lieutenant, flying Convair F-102’s out of Ellington Air Force Base. (unfounded controversy aside, still more service than Obama has given)
-Was an entrepreneur who started a series of oil exploration companies, serving as owner, director, and board member. (Obama has never done any work in the private sector that created a single non-government job)
-Purchased a share of the Texas Rangers baseball team for $800k, served as the managing general partner for five years, and later sold his shares for $15 million. (Obama’s crowning achievement in the “private sector” was a three year stint as director of the Developing Communities Project, which had between a $70,000 and $400,000 budget)
-Was Governor of Texas for 8 years (Obama had served as a U.S. Senator for only two years before he started campaigning for president)

The reality is that President Bush has considerable leadership experience, and was very successful in both the private and public sectors before becoming president.

Bush may have not been a great speaker, but at least we always knew that it was him talking to us.

Larry,

Unless you’ve lived in or near Chicago in the past decade, you really don’t know how much of Obama is self-made. I’ve lived in the Chicago area 42 of my 49 years, with a break in the late ’70s and early ’80s spent in Texas. I also have numerous family members living in the Chicago city limits. Many of us interact with local, city, and state government on a very regular basis.

Obama’s success in politics no doubt has been the result of hard work, but only in respect to working the Democratic power machine put in place by Mayor Daley’s well-connected father. The machine has very long hooks, spreading all over the state, well past government agencies, and pervading business, churches, and cultural centers. Much of Obama’s so-called success has been bought and paid for by the corrupt machine, which is very happy to keep the divisions between rich and poor as wide as possible. Obama rarely speaks for himself, and can be counted on to mirror the sentiment of Daley and the machine whenever it is advantageous for the Democratic Party. At other times, Barry has either voted “present” or has abstained from voting at all. He has always maintained the status quo in Chicago politics by carefully crafting his publc rhetoric to make it look like he has acted in a grandiose fashion, while allowing the fine print absolve him of any wrongdoing. I haven’t seen anything to suggest that he will act any differently in the national arena.

He is a smart, likeable person outside of his politics, and he seems in all other respects to be well-intended. Inside of politics, he consistently acts as if he is fulfilling his half of a Faustian deal. Unfortunately, his actions affect so many others, including truly social-minded individuals, and his handlers (the puppeteers) have his undivided attention.

Jeff V

Larry, here is an accomplishmetn of the democrats and another one for Obama; The dems passed the new minimum wage law in spite of being assured that it would cause massive job loss. In the month after it passed 700,000 lost thier jobs. I the three months following the laws passage almost three million people lost jobs. Duh! Predictable. Dems were warned about it and now you pretend there was no warning. But liberals have no memory when it serves their purposes. And I promised to give an Obama accomplishment. He passed the porkulus bill wihich is essentially payback to his political supporters. The moment he passed it the stock market fell almost a thousand points. Good work democrats. Way to destry the economy.

@ruaqtpi2:

You have to live it to know it, but not everyone is going to pay much attention to personal experience.

About the Harvard Law Review.

Just read through an interesting discussion over at Volkh. Appears that there are a few of Obama’s peers that were not at all impressed with the way he performed.

http://volokh.com/posts/1202117776.shtml

If you don’t want to peruse the comment section, Vdare has a summary of their discussion:

http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2008/02/12/how-good-was-obama-at-running-the-harvard-law-review/

Larry, I agree with you that Obama’s a very accomplished politician; he’s good at being a politician. He’s speakers gooder dan most, is intelligent, etc. However, I don’t see him rolling through fire for the flag (ala McCain). I don’t see him having the courage to do anything that offends a majority demographic. Sometimes, leading means doing what’s not popular, and I think he lacks that KIND/type of ability. We shall see.

I think it’s entirely appropriate for the dummy (Obama) to wear an earpiece to more efficiently mouth the words of the marionettes pulling the strings (Pelosi/Reid/Summers/Geithner).

What this speaks to is his lack of a comfortable grasp on the issues… something which he spent beaucoup bucks of contributors’ money for two years telling us he had down pat in his mental arsenal.

INRE the Quebec based nonprofit, Global Research, and their theory of a Bush earpiece based on photos with a “bulge” on the back of Bush under his jacket. Having worked with wireless microphones and audio gear in the past, I find it bizarre they would tape a transmitter unit in that location on his body, as it’s far more common to wear it lower around the waist. And, in fact, to that end, how do they ascertain that it was not a wireless mic used for the debate itself. For these events, there are usually back up mics in place, in the event the wireless fails (which would then switch to the podium mounted microphone). Did anyone check Kerry for the possibility that he was also wearing a wireless mic set up?

And if this is such a big stink for Bush, why is Global Research now not condemning Obama for this same practice? From an earlier article from their site about the same subject:

“Sure, Bush uses an earpiece sometimes,” a top Washington editor for Reuters said to me last spring. “State of the Union — he had an earpiece for that. Everybody knows it,” he said, or assumes it. But everybody doesn’t know it, I said. Why hadn’t Reuters investigated? The editor shrugged and said it wasn’t so different from using a teleprompter.

Except that a teleprompter isn’t a secret. And Americans have the right to know if the president can’t or won’t speak in public without covert assistance.

Guess that outrage is only reserved for those with BDS, eh?

But all said, I don’t think earpieces are entirely unappropriate. A POTUS should be well informed when he is speaking publicly, and sometimes holding all the details in one’s head isn’t easily done. They are creatures of briefings and advisors, afterall. And in the very inexperienced Obama’s case, he most certainly needs those advisors and briefings.

Larry W ( responses to your questions):

Re: Bush’s accomplishments before he took office, thanks to Wisdom for saving me the time. I would only add that I also consider it a noteworthy accomplishment when anyone overcomes an addiction, and most of all, changes for the better as a result . Clearly Bush was an accomplished business success (also has a Harvard MBA). No doubt his family name gave him advantages along the way but regardless, he still had to take risks and make his own decisions.

Scott nailed it on the Patriotism. I hope too we are both wrong on that, but there is nothing, NOTHING, in Obama that gives me any encouragement that he would indeed, roll with the flag. That said, I pray for him, knowing that with high offices often come special graces. It’s been known to happen that leaders often grow into their offices, but I know of no case where it happens without humility. It would most likely take a “real crisis” in America to wipe out the infested arrogance of this present administration.

As for being a self made man, Ok, you win. Obama is indeed self made, but not without a lot of help from his thug- type friends.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=76170

Where you and I totally part ways, I think, is that you see the “education” as the end all. I’m a great fan of education myself, but I would take a self educated person like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh over many (not all) Ivy elites any day of the week. IMO, the only thing worse than a lack of education is an ERRONOUS education; the kind that throws character out the window for self interest and revisionist and agenda driven history. We all have to get shaped in character somewhere, and if we don’t get it by college years, we probably aren’t going to get it.

I don’t disagree with you that Obama is smart. Of course he is smart. Smart isn’t his problem Larry, or will it be his salvation. Obama’s problem is his character and his arrogance, shaped of course, by a very unusual life and a lot of bad “friends.”

As for the “strength of the US” debate, let me make it simple. It’s about CHARACTER! I don’t want to debate the war for at least 30-50 more years. Who could dare to have a clear perspective at this early stage? Less than 200 years ago, the majority of this country thought Abe Lincoln was CRAZY to even think about freeing the slaves. We also had a supreme court that upheld men like Obama as chattel and “non persons”, just as Obama does today with the unborn (imagine that).

Chance may favor a prepared mind, but greatness is made from character, the kind Lincoln knew all too well rested in the Declaration of Independence; the DOI Obama had the audacity to “revise” in his inauguration speech.

So Larry, I’ll continue to hope for the best, stay in America, and pray for my president for the next 4 years. Together, in this country that I love with all my heart and soul, we will all see, for better or for worse, “what there is to see.” And my God have mercy on us all!

Obama: the Milli Vanilli President. What a fraud. He belongs in the Big House, not the White House.