The
Lynn Sweet Ringer?
Harvard Professor "Skip" Gates flapdoodle was created by POTUS taking a last question of the presser from Lynn Sweet, Chicago Sun-Times Washington blogger and long time Obama authority. Questions abound, and the diligent RBO provides a comprehensive curiosity. Sweet says she was called the day before by the White House and asked if she'd attend presser. She says she was told that she might get a question. This was her first ever question at any of the now five POTUS pressers at WH. Sweet says the WH did not cook the question or ask her about it. Sweet's paper Chicago Sun-Times ran an AP report on the story on July 21. Also a blog by a regular blogger who is called "African-American Political Pundit," who reprinted Gate's lawyer Ogletree's version, which is extremely negative on the police officers. Also, following reporting by colleague Aaron Klein, the woman who called in the police is named Whalen, who works at Harvard Magazine, which is three doors away. Gates has been featured in Harvard Magazine. It was daylight when she said she couldn't see or recognize Gates. Other questions remain, created by the discrepancy between the police report and the statements of Ogletree, and now POTUS. Potus is lawyer careful in this video clip of his repair statement at WH to say what he has "heard" about the incident, not read, not been told, not assumed, not read a summary of commission report. POTUS insists upon calling both the policeman and Gates to task for "overreacting." More of POTUS instinct to call for restraint from both sides. POTUS looks to know he is sloppy here, and that is how I read his attempts at humor with the "beer at the White House" schtick. "Coffee" would have done. And the little wit about getting the media off Crowley's lawn didn't go anywhere, since POTUS started the tempest with his "stupidly" wisecrack. Also, on Sunday 26, Craig Unger, Vanity Fair, once editor of Boston Magazine, will relate a droll and revealing "Skip" Gates tale. Gates has long been operatic.
The Polls.
Suspicion starts that the original question was about the polls. POTUS and his Politburo wanted to pump the POTUS numbers on healthcare snoozer presser by getting sympathy with the last question. The audience for the presser was down sharply, nearly fifty percent since the April presser. Politburo aimed to drive the numbers, then claim the good approvals meant the public approves Obamacare. Did it backfire? Rasmussen has POTUS at -8 for strongly disapprove to strongly approve. POTUS overall at 49% approval in tracking poll, first time under 50% ever. And this only includes one post presser night. Second and third nights will see negatives climb and approval sink. The presser was about healthcare. The Gates flapdoodle is a distraction, but an important distraction is that it backfired. POTUS now goes out on a Friday afternoon, when no one is paying attention, to say that he chatted on the phone with Cambridge police officer James Crowley (right). POTUS obfuscating. This guarantees that the Gates flapdoodle gets another day and much attention on the Saturday talkfests on TV and a mention on Sunday shows. The Gates distraction is all negative now, because the week was really about Obamacare. The Senate bailed out the day after the presser. Obamacare is inert of its own incoherence, palaver, coSts and most especially of its taxes. My professionals will have much to say on Obamacare the Frankenstein monster that couldn't get a lightning strike Sunday 26. For now, the POTUS dipping polls will become the story.
McCotter Readies House Resolution Calling for Presidential Apology to Cambridge Police Sergeant
Washington, D.C. – Unless President Obama apologizes for impugning the professional conduct of Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James M. Crowley, when Congress returns on Monday, U.S. Representative Thaddeus G. McCotter (R-MI) will introduce a House Resolution calling on President Obama to do so.
Note: Please find below the draft resolution.
DRAFT
House Resolution
Whereas on July 16, 2009, Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James M. Crowley responded to a 911 call from a neighbor of Harvard University Professor Henry Louis (“Skip”) Gates, Jr. about a suspected break-in in progress at his residence, which had been broken into on a prior occasion;
Whereas on July 22, 2009, in responding to a question during a White House press conference President Barack Obama stated: “Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here. I don’t know all of the facts involved in this local police response incident”;
Whereas President Obama proceeded to state Sergeant Crowley “acted stupidly” for arresting Professor Gates on charges of disorderly conduct;
Whereas, as a former Constitutional Law Professor, President Obama well understands that all Americans are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and their actions should not be prejudged prior to being fully and fairly judged by an appropriate and objective authority after due process;
Whereas, President Obama’s nationally televised remarks may likely detrimentally influence the full and fair judgment by an appropriate and objective authority after due process regarding this local police response incident and, thereby, impair Sergeant Crowley’s legal and professional standing in relation to said incident; and
Whereas, President Obama appeared at a daily White House Press briefing on July 24, 2009 to address his denouncement of Sergeant Crowley and stated: “I could have calibrated those words differently” but “I continue to believe, based on what I have heard, that there was an overreaction in pulling Professor Gates out of his home to the station.”
Whereas, President Obama’s refusal to retract his initial public remarks and apologize to Sergeant Crowley and, instead, reiterate his accusation impugning Sergeant Crowley’s professional conduct in the performance of his duties;
Now therefore be it
Resolved, That the House of Representatives--
Calls upon President Obama to retract his initial public remarks and apologize to Cambridge, Massachusetts Police Sergeant James M. Crowley for having unfairly impugned and prejudged his professional conduct in this local police response incident.
###
RBO Update
http://therealbarackobama.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/not-so-sweet-after-all/
Not So Sweet After All
July 24, 2009 by Procrustes
In a follow up to RBO’s earlier post, Do you honestly believe Chicago columnist Lynn Sweet did not ask a planted question?, we dug a little deeper.
• First of all this was the first time in five Presidential Press Conferences that Lynn Sweet asked POTUS a question. Fortunately CSPAN provides not only a complete video record of each press conference but also a timeline connected to the video that links to when and who asks a question as well as to the when and what of POTUS’s answers.
June 23 – no questions from Sweet.
April 29 – no questions from Sweet.
March 24 – no questions from Sweet.
February 9 – no questions from Sweet.As John Batchelor points out, this was not only Sweet’s first Presidential Press Conference question but it was also delivered at a press conference focused primarily on health care — and selling ObamaCare.Sweet’s question was not only off topic but it was way off topic. Nothing that had preceded it in the media or in the presser itself was in any way remotely related. There had been zero media coverage anywhere that would indicate POTUS would be asked that particular question.
• Secondly, today Lynn Sweet explained the “story behind [her] Obama question” in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Obama’s answer also triggered a storm of questions to me — by other reporters, readers e-mailing me and commenting on my blog about how and why I came to ask about Gates.
No conspiracy, folks.
When President Obama called on me, he had no idea what I would be asking. I had not written or blogged about the Gates incident, so no one in the White House had any clue that I was particularly interested in Obama’s reaction.
I got a call from the White House press office about 6:30 p.m. confirming I was indeed going to show up at the 8 p.m. press conference. I was told I “may” get a question from the president. No one asked me — directly or indirectly — about what I may be asking. No one from the White House tried to plant any question.
By calling a prime time news conference, Obama got a chance to read a statement at the beginning pushing Congress to pass his health-care reform proposals.
But the White House did not set this up as a health-care-only press conference. There was no mandate on reporters who attended to ask questions about health care.
Ten journalists asked questions, including me; seven had health-care questions, three asked about other topics. The Sun-Times and Tribune Co. reporters both got questions — the pairing of the rivals was by White House design.
Obama gave me the last question. I had no control over the timing. There was no chance for a follow-up. If I was called on earlier in the press conference, I may have asked about health care. I thought it was appropriate at the end to bring up another matter in the news–the Gates arrest. I would have posed the same question to President Bush.
Some saw a plot because I read my question. I do write them down for a White House press conference. No plot. I want to be concise.
• Finally, and most importantly, Beethovenqueen has done some digging around of her own. In today’s White House Daily Press Briefing comes an exchange which clearly indicates that Lynn Sweet has been far less than truthful.
The following comes from today’s briefing (CSPAN video at the 11:59 minute mark). We cannot tell who asked Robert Gibbs the question; we will not know until CSPAN posts the video with a timeline, perhaps tomorrow.
Q: Prior to the president going out for that press conference, obviously you sit down, you go over the questions that are going to be asked for the evening and you rehearse answers or discuss how he will answer questions. did this come up as part of the preparations – the Gates matter – and if so, was his word choice of “stupidly”, was that ever thrown around in preparation…
GIBBS: I’m not going to get into the process of all this.
Q: What was discussed about that question? I mean..
Gibbs: I’m not going to get into it, how we…
Q: Were you shocked when the president used those words?”
GIBBS: My opinion on that doesn’t matter
Beethovenqueen writes:
Gibbs affirms that questions and POTUS’s answers are discussed prior to the President going out for the press conference. Hear his affirmative “um hmm” during the question and NOTE HIS LACK OF DENIAL ABOUT THE PROCESS!!
As a post script, we have the comments of William A. Jacobson, who commented yesterday in Et Tu, Lynn Sweet?, at his Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion blog:
But Sweet knew what she was doing. After 45 minutes of Obama’s droll droning on about health insurance reform, during which time the reporters barely could stay awake, Sweet waved a red flag in front of a clearly frustrated Obama.
Posted in Barack Obama | Tagged Barack Obama, Beethovenqueen, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Lynn Sweet, politics, RBO, Real Barack Obama, Robert Gibbs, The Real Barack Obama, White House Press Briefing, White House Press Conference | No Comments Yet
Comments RSS
So much for our post-racial president. It was the one solid excuse we had for putting this man into office: to repair race relations. Obama flunked big time.
And, at the same time, another of Obama's radical friends comes to light. In the coming weeks, there will be reporters digging into Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s life. What is likely to emerge will not be pretty. The public will wonder how a man like that could be paid by a once esteemed institution like Harvard to teach our kids.
Most of us have not yet reached the point where we link academe with our current problems. The Gates affair will go a long way toward illuminating that particular link and expose academe's role in what some see as unsustainable public policy in any number of areas.
Even here in India, I cannot escape the corrosive reach of modern American academe. My wife works as an editor for a huge firm here in Chennai that receives mostly outsourced materials from American universities. Many of the topics are banal and often shocking to the highly disciplined and educated; well brought up; reasonable; responsible young people (cybercoolies, as they jokingly refer to themselves) who must endure this line of work. One of the papers recently described in numbing detail a man breaking wind and defecating on his nuptial bed before engaging in sex with his wife on their wedding night. This came from the Department of Gender Studies at the University of Virginia.
I also ask myself how, with unemployment in America unacceptably high and rising, is it not possible to find Americans to do this kind of work? The company my wife works for has recently built no less than three modern campuses in the city and is hiring like crazy – all, in an effort to accommodate the ever increasing volume of untreated sewage that continues to flow from America’s ivory towers. I no longer believe it’s a matter of money alone.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
Now, we all know that modern academe in America spews raw sewage from ivory towers.
What's new?
Yeh, nothing good comes from America, does it?
ersatz
Today I got around to reading the full text of Obama's press conference. His incoherence and lack of believability on health care (cover more people, get better care, no sacrifice for anyone, more choices -- except the bureaucrats will tell you what's on the menu you can choose, and no increase in cost) was stunning. But another answer about regulation of our financial system sort of hit me between the eyes:
"We were on the verge of a complete financial meltdown. And the reason was because Wall Street took extraordinary risks with other people's money. They were peddling loans that they knew could never be paid back.
"They were flipping those loans and leveraging those loans and higher and higher mountains of debt were being built on loans that were fundamentally unsound. And all of us now are paying the price. "
What the President is describing here is fraud. Peddling loans they *knew* could never be paid back, then flipping and leveraging higher based on these no-good pieces of paper. When you peddle something to someone else you know is going to fail and become worthless, that's fraud, plain and simple.
Why isn't anyone talking about this besides William Black? If the President essentially admits that fraud was a big part of the crisis, then why the hell isn't anyone being prosecuted?
Go back to the May 6 Bill Moyers Journal if you need convincing. Mr. Batchelor, maybe you could interview Black as well?
Spence - Now I know you can do better than that. I never said, "nothing good comes from America..." That's Obama's line.
Duke University was quick to find racism where none existed. Dr. Gates is a product of the Elite Ivy fishing bowl, where whites and blue collar are evil, and only the Martha's Vineyard crowd is good.
POTUS Obama needs this to disappear quickly. White House, Harvard, and Gates quid-pro-quo in the coming months.
Oh yeh, you say it every chance you have.
And actually, Obama speaks about the greatness and exceptional American experience all of the time!!!
Some people just can't hear it because of the yelping of the dogs.
Journey's Over
The 20th Century is done.
Passchendaele is finally finished.
Harry Patch is dead.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6954937.stm
There's one thing that's been troubling me. Spencer actually stuck his sweaty finger into the wound. During the campaign I stated publicly that should Obama be elected, I would accept him as my president - quite unlike the Dems who insisted to the first and last man standing that Bush was 'selected, not elected, effectively painting him as illegitimate. It paved the way for them to summarily oppose his every effort. Seeing the need for Americans to come together, I thought that I would give Obama (or whoever was elected) a chance and judge him only by what can be reasonably projected as being the result of his various policy decisions, and not by my own petty prejudices.
Having re-read some of my blogs, I see I have been consistent and uncompromisingly negative about Obama's presidency. This, for some, translates into a dull-witted, knee-jerk response similar to that which was practiced by the Dems (and the press) during the Bush years. I have examined my conscience and can honestly say that nothing I have seen since Obama’s inauguration is cause for optimism. Logic itself defies any reason for optimism.
Still, Obama, for better or worse, is our president, the leader of our country. Has it now become our duty to follow him into the abyss? Or may we speak out in the hope that someone will yet hear as we crash and burn? Perhaps we are fated to fade away. But let it be said that at least some of us did not go along quietly with the euphorically inflamed mob shouting “Give us Barabbas!”
Did Lou Dobbs really ask recently for the PotUS to produce his birth certificate? I guess if Lou had doubts, then that is all anyone needs to know.
Arrggh- See what I mean!?
Do dull witted, knee jerk responses have protection under the Constitution?
My question is: Who from the White House (or Executive Office Building) called Cambridge - mayor, prosecutor, police chief, etc - BEFORE the press conference and sought to have the charges against Professor Gates dropped? And did Gates' attorney, good friend of Barack Obama, Charles Ogletree talk to the president about the arrest before the press conference? I don't think Sweet's question was the only thing orchestrated.
Dear Jim;
Nice footnote;Harry Patch...we need more "regular folks" like him in today's world.
My mother,(90 yrs old) remembers what her dad told her as a little girl.
Essentially it was that this country, TheUSA, would someday be socialist...perhaps communist.
Interesting considering the fact that he left Lithuania to start a new life here.
He settled in Cambridge,Mass. (yes, THAT Cambridge) then onto Yonkers,NY.
Interesting considering the sacrifices and hardships that many have endured are now cast aside, relics of a dying age and people?
Interesting in light of the direction this country has been headed.
So....for Harry...for Gramps...and all those "regular guys (and gals):
"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.....
"Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light......."
God help us.
Danton - Nice post. Just goes to show, we've been here before.
"took extraordinary risks with other people's money...higher and higher mountains of debt were being built...And all of us now are paying the price. "
For a minute I thought he was speaking of his own administration
Yeh, I remember hearing about the communist plot to get everyone on dope and having sex, sex, sex, all the time with rock music blaring from the festivals of love while the pinkos slither in (the vipers) after everyone has become weakened to the point of not being able to fight back...
Edith!! Bring me a beer!!! yyyyes, R Che
Instead of "Meathead" Now it's "Brains full of mush"
Edith!! Get one for my friends here, too. We're going to have a little talk!!! yyyyes, R CHE
'Oh, the way that Hendrix played
Songs not made for top fort-ay
Album rock and FM fades
Those were the days
We all did what we wanted
Men were girls and girls were men
That was what they said about US when
We were living back then
Didn't need no healthcare state,
Weren't so many overweight.
Gee our old VW ran great (sometimes)
Those were the days...'
Revised by Spence
I'm not going to beat around the bush, anymore. I'm just going to say it... Yes, the "B" word
Borsch... there I did it.
I think there are some underlying prejudices that are manifesting themselves in the speech of some who profess to be so smart that they can tell the group what their values should be and how to represent those values to non members of the group. Also, they try and claim, in their way, to know the future.
Someone recently added to the vernacular the very scary phrase "creeping euthanasia."
Creepy?
How about the "R" word? Reprehensible
A thoughtful insight and ideas I will use on my blog. You've obviously spent some time on this. Well done!
It is a pity, that now I can not express - it is very occupied. I will be released - I will necessarily express the opinion on this question.