Obamateurism of the Day -- from HotAir

[Eupher]

Most of this stuff would be funny if it weren't true (all of the below is at the link). Maybe this thread belongs in Mind-Numbing Stupidity instead of here - mods, please do with it as you will:

Yesterday I noted that Barack Obama is bad at math, but he’s even worse at history. Tina hit this yesterday, but it’s worth adding to the OOTD canon — and I suspect the Sunday poll commenters would erupt in outrage if Obama’s assessment of his predecessor Rutherford Hayes wasn’t included:

There have always been folks like that.  There always have been folks who are the naysayers and don’t believe in the future, and don’t believe in trying to do things differently.  One of my predecessors, Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone, “It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?”  (Laughter.)  That’s why he’s not on Mt. Rushmore — (laughter and applause) — because he’s looking backwards.  He’s not looking forwards.  (Applause.)  He’s explaining why we can’t do something, instead of why we can do something.

Really?  I guess we didn’t have Hope and Change in 1877.  However, we did have media that actually reported events back then — those were the days! — and as New York Magazine reports, Obama not only got this wrong, he got it as wrong as he possibly could:

    We thought it was a bit unsporting of Obama to attack President Hayes, who is quite unable to respond. So we called up the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, where Nan Card, the curator of manuscripts, was plenty willing to correct Obama’s ignorance of White House history. Just as soon as she finished chuckling.

    “I’ve heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from,” Card said of Hayes’s alleged phone remark, “but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it’s out there.”

    Wait, so Hayes didn’t even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? “No, no,” Card confirmed.

    She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes’s delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, “a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, “looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, ‘That is wonderful.’”

In fact, Card noted, Hayes was not only the first president to have a telephone in the White House, but he was also the first to use the typewriter, and he had Thomas Edison come to the White House to demonstrate the phonograph. “So I think he was pretty much cutting edge,” Card insisted, “maybe just the opposite of what President Obama had to say there.”

The real reason that Hayes doesn’t find his visage on Mt. Rushmore is that he wasn’t a very good President, not because he was a Luddite.  That’s also why Obama won’t find his visage on Mt. Rushmore, either … nor on the History Channel, except as a cautionary tale.  But if they put faces on Mt. Rushmore for mindlessly repeating bad data and false assumptions, Obama would get a peak all to himself.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/03/16/obamateurism-of-the-day-706/

[Chris_]

His administration is determined to make him look like a fool... not that he needs their help.

Another bullshit story was his claim yesterday that we only have 2% of the world's oil.

[Chris_]

They don't make them like they used to.

[obumazombie]

For the record, there are 58 states. After visiting the 57th, owebuma said there was "one to go". 58, read them and weep.

[Eupher]

With video at the link:

If you think Barack Obama is an amateur at political leadership, just watch him as a sports commentator. CBS caught up with President Obama at halftime of the Western Kentucky-Mississippi State in the first round of the NCAA men’s basketball championships, and was asked to give his expert analysis:

    Well, I’ve got to say that both teams are shooting terribly. It may be nerves — these are not teams that end up coming to the tournament.

Really? That’s news to WKU alum and OOTD reader Craig S, who pointed me to WKU’s record in men’s basketball:

    3 NCAA Tournament wins since 2008
    2008 and 2009 Sun Belt Conference Champions
    Two NBA Draft picks in last four years (Courtney Lee, 1st round, 2008; Jeremy Evans, 2nd round, 2010)
    42 conference championships, third-most in NCAA history
    40 seasons with 20+ wins, sixth-most in NCAA history
    38 All-Americans
    34 national post-season appearances
    21 NCAA Tournament berths
    14th in NCAA history in all-time wins (1,643)
    8th in NCAA history in all-time winning percentage (.670)
    7 “Sweet 16″ appearances in NCAA tournament
    NCAA Final Four in 1971

HotAir

I don't follow any sort of sports at all, so most of this is lost on me, but whatever.

[obumazombie]

He's even incompetent in what he's allegedly an expert in.

[Rebel]

With video at the link:

HotAir

I don't follow any sort of sports at all, so most of this is lost on me, but whatever.

He apparently doesn't know dick about Mississippi State's basketball program either.

NCAA Tournament Final Four
1996
NCAA Tournament Elite Eight
1996
NCAA Tournament Sweet Sixteen
1963, 1995, 1996
NCAA Tournament Round of 32
1963*, 1995, 1996, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2008
NCAA Tournament appearances
1963, 1991, 1995, 1996, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2008, 2009
Conference tournament champions
1923, 1996, 2002, 2009
Conference regular season champions
1912, 1913, 1914, 1916, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963 1991, 2004

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_State_Bulldogs_basketball

[Eupher]

I kinda lost track of this, but here is today's Obamateurism:

Remember Darin Wedel? Back in January, his wife Jennifer surprised President Obama during his Google hangout by criticizing the expansion of H-1B visas and Obama’s assertion that the US faced a shortage of high-tech engineers, since Darin — a semiconductor engineer — had been out of work for months.  Obama expressed his surprise, calling the Wedels’ situation “interesting” because Obama had been getting “the word” that there should be full employment.  He asked Jennifer to send Darin’s resume to the White House, which she promptly did.

Now, we all know how this story ends, right?  The President, having publicly intervened in the situation, gets his team to start paging through their Rolodexes and find donors in the industry who can get Darin a job.  That way, Obama has a feel-good story about employment, he looks caring and, er, interested, and everyone forgets about the incident.  Any politician worth his salt can make that happen, especially at this level.

Or … maybe not, as John (Doc Zero) Hayward discovered:

    More than two months after President Barack Obama asked for Darin Wedel’s résumé, the phone is quiet, e-mails are no longer flooding in and the long-sought-after job interviews — which had begun to be scheduled — have petered out.

    “Not even recruiting companies are calling anymore,” said Jennifer Wedel, the Fort Worth mother of two who chatted online this year with Obama about her out-of-work husband.

Needless to say, the Wedels are less than impressed:

    “I did feel we got our hopes up a little,” Jennifer Wedel said last week. “I mean, he’s the POTUS. But it seems not even the leader of our country can get [Darin] a job.”

    […] After Darin Wedel was laid off, Jennifer Wedel went to work at an insurance agency, hoping to help support the family while her husband looked for a job.

John calls the whole incident a disaster for Obama:

    The “optics” of this story are absolutely horrible for the White House, but it was actually horrible from the moment it began.  The idea that Americans should have to beg the royal court for indulgences – which the court then demonstrates it cannot provide! – is nauseating, and it’s not a new aspect of the Obama presidency.  In the very first weeks of his Administration, he was at a town hall meeting in Florida when a homeless woman asked him for a house, and lo! A house was soon offered, after the President hugged her. …

    It’s Obamanomics in a nutshell: if you’re lucky enough to find your way into his carefully controlled town hall meetings, or you’ve got the right political connections, you can do okay… until things get so bad that His Majesty can no longer wave his hand and cause bounty to be showered upon selected peasants.  Fortunately, Obama can count on the media to downplay this story, instead of treating it as a powerful symbolic moment in a failed presidency, as they would if he were a Republican.

Maybe they got the word.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/17/obamateurism-of-the-day-721/

[obumazombie]

If Wedel was owebuma's son, he'd look like him. This is the kind of work owebuma must apply himself to, not decreasing the unemployment numbers or increasing the real wages.

[Eupher]

By Ed Morrissey:

Apparently, the “fairness” argument by itself wasn’t selling the Buffett Rule for Barack Obama. With the election approaching and his approval numbers on the economy tanking, Obama decided to add another argument — that the Buffett Rule was a means to stimulate economic growth:

    â€œAs many Americans rush to file their taxes this weekend, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve got a tax system that doesn’t always uphold the principle of everyone doing their part,” Obama said in the address posted online Saturday.

    â€œThis is not just about fairness, this is also about growth,” he added.  â€œIt’s about being able to make the investments we need to strengthen our economy and create jobs.  And it’s about whether we as a country are willing to pay for those investments.["]

First, in order to believe that, you have to buy the notion that economic growth in the private sector occurs when government seizes capital from the private sector. Obama’s stimulus plan should have killed that notion dead, and all that did was seize future capital through massive borrowing.  Seizure of capital only retards economic growth by taking capital out of the marketplace, or at best reducing it significantly through bureaucratic overhead and transferring it to inefficient uses.  After all, no one has a problem investing in efficient and productive organizations, so government intervention isn’t necessary.

But the truly laughable part of this argument is the scale.  Estimates of the annual revenue from the Buffett Rule range between $3.1 billion and $4.7 billion.  The American economy is around $15 trillion dollars.  Even taking the best case and assuming $4.7 billion in revenue that would have not been put to any productive use in the hands of those from whom it was taken, it would amount to a whopping 0.0313% of the American economy. (For that matter, it’s only 0.5% of Obama’s proposed FY2013 deficit, and 0.12% of his overall budget.)   Even under the theoretical 100% improvement in the use of that capital, the impact wouldn’t be big enough to change the reported annual GDP growth rate at the first decimal point.  It’s also worth remembering that Obama spent $3 billion in three weeks on Cash for Clunkers in 2009, and it had no impact at all on auto sales; it just moved demand up by a month.

This is Obamanomics in a nutshell; hyperventilating over 0.0313% of the problem while ignoring the other 99.9687% of it.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/19/obamateurism-of-the-day-723/

[obumazombie]

By Ed Morrissey:

Apparently, the “fairness” argument by itself wasn’t selling the Buffett Rule for Barack Obama. With the election approaching and his approval numbers on the economy tanking, Obama decided to add another argument — that the Buffett Rule was a means to stimulate economic growth:

    â€œAs many Americans rush to file their taxes this weekend, it’s worth pointing out that we’ve got a tax system that doesn’t always uphold the principle of everyone doing their part,” Obama said in the address posted online Saturday.

    â€œThis is not just about fairness, this is also about growth,” he added.  â€œIt’s about being able to make the investments we need to strengthen our economy and create jobs.  And it’s about whether we as a country are willing to pay for those investments.["]

First, in order to believe that, you have to buy the notion that economic growth in the private sector occurs when government seizes capital from the private sector. Obama’s stimulus plan should have killed that notion dead, and all that did was seize future capital through massive borrowing.  Seizure of capital only retards economic growth by taking capital out of the marketplace, or at best reducing it significantly through bureaucratic overhead and transferring it to inefficient uses.  After all, no one has a problem investing in efficient and productive organizations, so government intervention isn’t necessary.

But the truly laughable part of this argument is the scale.  Estimates of the annual revenue from the Buffett Rule range between $3.1 billion and $4.7 billion.  The American economy is around $15 trillion dollars.  Even taking the best case and assuming $4.7 billion in revenue that would have not been put to any productive use in the hands of those from whom it was taken, it would amount to a whopping 0.0313% of the American economy. (For that matter, it’s only 0.5% of Obama’s proposed FY2013 deficit, and 0.12% of his overall budget.)   Even under the theoretical 100% improvement in the use of that capital, the impact wouldn’t be big enough to change the reported annual GDP growth rate at the first decimal point.  It’s also worth remembering that Obama spent $3 billion in three weeks on Cash for Clunkers in 2009, and it had no impact at all on auto sales; it just moved demand up by a month.

This is Obamanomics in a nutshell; hyperventilating over 0.0313% of the problem while ignoring the other 99.9687% of it.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/19/obamateurism-of-the-day-723/

So, if I understand what you are saying, he is the anti Ivory soap, 99 and 44/100ths% impure.

Edited to change 110 to 100, and add %

[Eupher]

I wouldn't sully Ivory soap by putting Barry's name in the same sentence as it.

Nope, it boils down to trying to politicize and associate the paying of taxes with the same tired liberal meme that the rich don't pay their fair share.

As far as I can tell (my tax bracket is 28% BTW), the only ****sticks who aren't paying their fair share are the welfare-wielding, Xbox-playing, cellphone-texting turd burglars who are still waiting for their skittle-shitting ponies.

[obumazombie]

I wouldn't sully Ivory soap by putting Barry's name in the same sentence as it.

Nope, it boils down to trying to politicize and associate the paying of taxes with the same tired liberal meme that the rich don't pay their fair share.

As far as I can tell (my tax bracket is 28% BTW), the only ****sticks who aren't paying their fair share are the welfare-wielding, Xbox-playing, cellphone-texting turd burglars who are still waiting for their skittle-shitting ponies.

Be careful, those guys are beginning to unionize. They have already organized the hershey highwaymen, and the poo packers.

[Eupher]

The first rule of Vacation Club is … you don’t talk about Vacation Club.  And the second rule of Vacation Club at the White House is that you don’t ask about it, either.  Barack Obama got a little annoyed with KMOV reporter Larry Conners when he challenged Obama on how many vacations the First Family has taken, in an economy that 76% of American voters is still a recession:

KMOV-STL’s Larry Conners: “The economy is a big issue and concern for folks. I mean, the unemployment, trying to make ends meet, gas prices, food prices going up. Some of our viewers are complaining, they get frustrated, even angered, when they see the first family jetting around, different vacations and so forth. Sometimes maybe they think under color of state business and that you’re out of touch, that you don’t really know what they’re experiencing right now.”

President Barack Obama: “Well, I don’t know how many viewers you’re talking about that say that.”

Conners: “We do hear from some.”

Obama:  “I hear from all kinds of viewers about everything.”

Conners: “I’m sure you do.”

Obama: “But the fact of the matter is, I think if you look at my track record, I’m raising a family here. When we travel, we got to travel through Secret Service, and Air Force One, that’s not my choice. I think most folks understand how hard I work and how hard this administration is working on behalf of the American people.”

Conners: “Well, of course, with all due respect, the President side stepped that question. No one is questioning his need to travel on Air Force One or have security. The questions being raised are the first family taking so many vacations, when and where, at taxpayer expense.”

As Conners notes at the end of the interview, Obama never actually answered the question, and made it clear that he thinks it’s an illegitimate point to raise.  No one quibbles with a President’s need to take some time away from the White House, but the frequency in which Obama and his family does so — and the public costs of all that vacation — is certainly a legitimate point to raise, especially while Obama keeps tweaking the supposedly indolent wealthy for not working hard enough for the rest of us.

HotAir video

[Eupher]

The White House puts out a weekly video report called “West Wing Week,” which provides all the highlights of Barack Obama’s events and accomplishments. Two weeks ago, the video included a shot of Obama sinking a three-pointer at the Easter Egg roll (1:50):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=0_olLOuzSNs

Zeke Miller of BuzzFeed notes that the White House managed to scrub what really happened:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H4kLULqexHU&feature=player_embedded

At Easter Egg Roll event, the ball-player-in-chief missed four of five 3-pointers, but you’ll only see the one basket Obama made in the White House’s video recap of the week.

Must have been a slow week of accomplishments to highlight a 20% success rate on the basketball court. Then again, that might be their best winning percentage all term.

It's pretty bad when Barry can't even tell the truth about basketball.

[Eupher]

So what’s on your personal “life list”?  What kind of items might be on yours?  I’ve been fortunate to already check off most of the items I wanted to do before kicking the bucket — visiting Ireland, visiting Rome and the Vatican, getting married, being a father and grandfather, making a living as a writer — but still have a few more.  Other people want to climb Mount Everest, sail around the world, make their first million dollars.

How many people would have these two bucket items on their “life list“?

[go to the link to see the Twitter Tweetie thingie]

I might believe that meeting George Clooney could be on someone’s bucket list, but Obama and his team aren’t exactly promising that.  They just promise to have a lucky winner of their $3 lottery attend a party hosted by Clooney.  You get to meet Barack Obama, and meeting a President is a pretty cool thing, but a life list item?  Really?  Of course, Barack Obama himself is telling you that it’s a life list item for you, so it must be true.

Besides, Obama wasn’t always so enthusiastic about lotteries:

Appearing on the public TV program “Chicago Tonight,” then-StateSen. Obama argued that the lottery is not a good way to spend money, especially for the poor.

“One of the concerns that I have, obviously, is that a disproportionate number of people who consistently buy lottery tickets tend to be lower-income and working-class people who can least afford it,” he said. “Even if they’re not compulsive gamblers, they are probably spending money that they don’t necessarily have.”

Obama also suggested that state lotteries’ marketing practices made them complicit in fleecing the low-income crowd.

“Now, we might say that this is their entertainment dollar the same way that somebody else has entertainment dollar and spends it on a movie,” he said. “But I think the fact that the state systematically targets what we know to be lower income persons as a way of raising revenue is troublesome.["]

Hey, at least when you buy $3 worth of lottery tickets, you have a (very small) chance of getting some money back.  In this lottery, the winner only gets an opportunity to get fleeced at a fundraising dinner.  That’s not exactly a bucket list item for anyone.

HotAir

[obumazombie]

Lotteries are a de facto tax on the poor. The poor in this country are poor because they want to be almost without exception.

[Eupher]

Joni Mitchell once sang:

Don’t it always seem to go

You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

Apparently, the Obamas sing this regularly, but they mean that we don’t know what we’ve got in them, according to Jodi Kantor’s new book, The Obamas, as Jim Geraghty reports.  When they went to Oslo to collect the Nobel Peace Prize, the Obamas began complaining to their friends that Americans just didn’t appreciate their genius, or something:

But amid the bad news and pressures of late 2009, the trip unexpectedly passed like a brief, happy fantasy for the president, a Nordic alternate reality where citizens were learned and pensive, discussions were thoughtful, and everyone was a fan. “It wasn’t hero worship,” said one adviser who accompanied them. “Okay, it was.”

For one day, the Obamas lived in the dream version of his presidency instead of the depressing reality. At meals and receptions, they mingled with the members of the Royal Academy – government officials, academics…

The trip spurred a thought the Obamas and their friends would voice to each other again and again as the president’s popularity continued to decline: the American public just did not appreciate their exceptional leader. The president “could get 70 or 80 percent of the vote anywhere but the U.S.” [President Obama's old friend] Marty Nesbitt told [another old friend of Obama] Eric Whitaker indignantly.”

Er, okay. And this disenchantment with American voters took place less than nine months into his term.  What exactly had Obama accomplished to warrant “hero worship”?  Or for that matter, the Nobel Peace Prize?

I’ve got an idea.  Maybe the Obamas should leave the US in January and live in Norway a few years.  When we miss him enough, he can come back — but, Mr. President, don’t call us … we’ll call you.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/25/obamateurism-of-the-day-727/

[obumazombie]

^Pave paradise, put up a parking lot...

[Eupher]

This White House has never been expert at researching claims in presidential speeches, but one would think that Barack Obama would know something about a key political ally before making claims about it. Earlier this month in a forum on “women and the economy,” Obama may have cost women a little extra cash – or at least some lost time — by referring them to Planned Parenthood for mammograms:

[go to the link to see the video]

When people say we should get rid of Planned Parenthood, they’re not just talking about restricting a woman’s ability to make her own health decision; they’re talking about denying, as a practical matter, the preventive care, like mammograms, that millions of women rely on.

First, no one is saying that “we should get rid of Planned Parenthood,” as Obama claims.  People oppose giving federal dollars to Planned Parenthood because their core business is abortions.  It’s their profit-driving activity, not handing out contraception, and certainly not performing mammograms, to which I’ll return in a moment.  Planned Parenthood should be able to operate on their own, just like any other business, and taxpayers shouldn’t have to subsidize it to keep it alive.  Obama’s claim is a strawman argument that amounts to a statement that a lack of federal funding equates to criminalization, which is ludicrous as well as demagogic.

Why aren’t mammograms a profit center for PP?  They don’t provide mammograms, that’s why.  They refer all requests to other caregivers, which means that if Planned Parenthood disappeared tomorrow, it wouldn’t eliminate a single mammogram in this country.  That’s one reason why the breast-cancer awareness organization Susan G. Komen Foundation cut off Planned Parenthood, and they admitted that PP didn’t do mammograms a year ago:

In new emails Susan G. Komen for the Cure is sending to people complaining about their grants to the Planned Parenthood abortion business, officials claim the grants are given to help women obtain breast cancer screenings. Yet, Komen also admits Planned Parenthood doesn’t do mammograms. …

However, a late March expose’ from Live Action revealed no Planned Parenthood centers nationally provide mammograms.

Live Action released videotaped footage of calls to 30 Planned Parenthood centers nationwide in 27 different states where abortion facility staff were asked whether or not mammograms could be performed on site. Every one of the Planned Parenthood centers admitted they could not do mammograms. Every Planned Parenthood, without exception, tells the women calling that they will have to go elsewhere for a mammogram, and many clinics admit that no Planned Parenthood clinics provide this breast cancer screening procedure.

“We don’t provide those services whatsoever,” admits a staffer at Planned Parenthood of Arizona while a staffer at Planned Parenthood’s Comprehensive Health Center clinic in Overland Park, Kansas tells a caller, “We actually don’t have a, um, mammogram machine, at our clinics.”

In its email to people concerned about the Komen-Planned Parenthood connection, a Komen official admits Planned Parenthood doesn’t provide mammograms for women with its grant money. Komen makes it clear the money is merely funneled through the abortion business to legitimate medical centers that actually perform mammograms.

So no one is arguing to ban Planned Parenthood, and even if they closed their doors tomorrow, it wouldn’t reduce the availability for mammograms by even one single scan.  Other than that, Obama had his facts straight, which is to say, not at all.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/04/27/obamateurism-of-the-day-729/

[Eupher]

Some days, the President just makes it too easy. Doubling down on his attack on Mitt Romney and the supposed question of whether the Republican would have whacked Osama bin Laden if given a chance, Barack Obama insisted that he just assumed that Romney meant that when he said that the war on terror wasn’t just about OBL.  In comments at a joint news conference with Japan’s Prime Minister, who must have wondered what the hell Obama was talking about, Obama offered this explanation of the attack on Romney:

“I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. That’s been at least my practice.”

Come on, now … you know what’s coming next, don’t you?  Peter Kirsanow makes the obvious comparisons to Obama’s own record:

“No family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.”

“As president, I will close Guantanamo.”

“But what I can guarantee is that we will have in the first year an immigration bill that I strongly support.”

“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”

“My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in government.”

“I will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American people an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website.”

“No political appointee in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years.”

“I’ll give an annual State of the World address to the American people where I lay out national security policy.”

I’m pretty sure that you’ll see Obama’s quip paired up with any number of statements from Obama like these that Obama obviously didn’t mean when he said them — in Romney ads this summer and fall.  If Team Romney and the RNC want, they could make this a weekly series of ads all the way through Election Day.  We could even call them the “Expiration Date Series.”

[obumazombie]

It's a shameless game libs like owebuma play, he indicts himself with his own accusations, and acts as innocent as the blowing snow. To pull that off so seamlessly you have to have complete domination of your conscience. Or none at all.

[Eupher]

It's a shameless game libs like owebuma play, he indicts himself with his own accusations, and acts as innocent as the blowing snow. To pull that off so seamlessly you have to have complete domination of your conscience. Or none at all.

I think the latter description is most apt.

[JohnnyReb]

It's a shameless game libs like owebuma play, he indicts himself with his own accusations, and acts as innocent as the blowing snow. To pull that off so seamlessly you have to have complete domination of your conscience. Or none at all.

Kingfish on the Amos and Andy TV show once said, "I made my conscience a promise. I wouldn't bother it if it wouldn't bother me." I think Obama has the same deal going.

[obumazombie]

Kingfish on the Amos and Andy TV show once said, "I made my conscience a promise. I wouldn't bother it if it wouldn't bother me." I think Obama has the same deal going.

A wise man.