Obamateurism of the Day -- from HotAir

[Eupher]

Barack Obama’s press conference on June 8th got a lot of bad reviews, mainly for his assertion that “the private sector is doing fine” and that what America needs is a lot more government workers.  Ed Rogers at the Washington Post has, uh, a few other, uh, issues with Obama’s, uh, performance:

The president says “uhhh” too much. When I was a cable television news extra during the ‘90s and early 2000s, you learn early to purge your presentation of “uhhh.” Saying “uhhh” suggests uncertainty and is distracting. (And in my case, when it was accompanied by a Southern accent, it was even worse.) I don’t know what the president had in mind, but his own meandering, stuttering performance could not have done him any good with any audience. What was he, uhhh, thinking?

Here’s, uh, an example of, uh, Obama’s delivery from that press conference:

[Video #1 of Barry at the link]

It’s not as if no one has ever pointed out the program before, either. Here’s a clip from Late Night with David Letterman that’s almost exactly 49 months old, from May 2008:

[Video #2 of Barry at the link]

And this comes from almost three years ago, from one single press conference:

[Video #3 of Barry at the link]

Maybe it’s time someone, uh, gave the World’s Greatest Orator some public-speaking tips, eh?

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/19/obamateurism-of-the-day-765/

As long as Barry is reading TOTUS, his "performance" is generally acceptable. At least Chrissy gets a tingle up his leg. When he goes off script, that's when he gets in trouble.

I'm no expert on public speaking, but uh...............if you can't speak well in public......

DON'T.

[obumazombie]

Hitlary Clinton. Probably the worst public speaker I have ever heard.

[Eupher]

Remember how George W. Bush’s cowboy demeanor was such an embarrassment to the American cognoscenti and media minders? How his rough manners and folksy drawl had the sophisticates on this side of the pond flushed with embarrassment?  Remember how glad they were that a witty, urbane, and cultured member of Academia would replace him as America’s principal representative abroad?

Er …

World leaders gathered in Los Cabos, Mexico for the seventh annual Group of 20 summit on Monday. As part of the festivities, all of the assembled heads of state posed for a cheerful family photo–except for one. According to the White House pool report from the photo shoot filed by the Wall Street Journal’s Carol Lee, photographers asked the leaders to wave for the cameras and Russia’s once and future strongman Vladimir Putin declined to pose for the picture.

“They all said to wave to the cameras, and most of them did. President Putin didn’t wave,” Ms. Lee wrote.

There were several other priceless details in Ms. Lee’s dispatch from the high powered photo shoot. Apparently, despite being surrounded by twenty other world leaders, President Barack Obama “was chewing gum the whole time.”

Instapundit’s post got this response:  “I assume he was sitting and not walking.”  “As for Obama,”Andrew Malcolm quipped, “he was into his cool casual mode at the formal photo session.” But no one answered the real burning question (NSFW):

[clip from Blazing Saddles at the link]

Did he bring enough for everyone?

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/20/obamateurism-of-the-day-766/

[thundley4]

“They all said to wave to the cameras, and most of them did. President Putin didn’t wave,” Ms. Lee wrote.

This was done to prevent Obama from embarrassing us once again by waving at an inappropriate time and blocking someone's face.   This time they all did.  I must admit, that the first time i saw the picture with everyone waving, I thought it was photoshopped to make fun of Obama. 

[obumazombie]

Chewing gum ? How urbane...owebuma is so low rent, low class.

[Eupher]

Yesterday morning, Barack Obama asserted that executive privilege allowed his administration to hide documents from Congress, related to an ATF operation that ended up providing the weapons that killed hundreds of people — including two American  law-enforcement officers, Border Patrol agent Brian Terry and ICE agent Jaime Zapata.  By noon, Obama went back to demanding transparency … of his critics:

 

Barack Obama
✔
@BarackObama
"Hell no." OFA.BO/sb9s3P
20 Jun 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite

The link takes readers to a blog post by Obama campaign manager Jim Messina griping about American Crossroads and demanding the disclosure of their donor lists.  It’s titled “Hell No,” which is coincidentally what Obama told Congressional investigators trying to find out why two Americans and hundreds of Mexicans got killed by weapons the ATF handed off to drug cartels.

Twitter user Shane Styles couldn’t believe the timing:

 

Barack Obama
✔
@BarackObama 20 Jun 12
"Hell no." OFA.BO/sb9s3P
 Shane Styles@shaner5000
.@BarackObama Are you seriously calling for the names of private donors on the same day you issued an EO over #fastandfurious documents???
20 Jun 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite

I guess this is the life of privilege, eh?  Transparency on thee while obfuscation for me.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/21/obamateurism-of-the-day-767/

[obumazombie]

There is no limits to his vanity, ego, or arrogance.

[Eupher]

What’s a great way to connect to an important audience, one that you desperately need to have any chance of success in an upcoming election? How about implying that they can’t be trusted around you with … forks? Despite Barack Obama’s appearing at literally dozens of fundraising dinners over the last several months, the attendees of NALEO — a Hispanic voter group — had to surrender their utensils before Obama would speak:

[video of a Latina mother telling the audience that eating utensils have to be turned in. And she's not joking, she says.]

Does a fork or dinner knife pose an unacceptable danger to President Barack Obama?

One wouldn’t think so, given the hundreds of lunches and dinners he’s attended ranging from state dinners to political fundraisers to run-of-the-mill stops on the rubber-chicken circuit.

However, at one such lunch Friday afternoon, guests heard an unusual announcement that they needed to hand over their silverware for security reasons.

“It’s very important that you use your utensils as soon as possible,” National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials board member Raquel Regalado told about 1000 delegates at the group’s annual conference.

Politico reports that the Secret Service made the request after finding out that Obama would address the group immediately after the meal was concluded. Supposedly this is just routine, but Josh Gerstein and Reid Epstein note that Obama appears frequently at dinners without having the Secret Service round up silverware — usually at fundraisers. Apparently, people who give money aren’t as suspicious as people who don’t.

Even assuming this is standard operating procedure, why not just ask NALEO to put a little more time between the meal and the President’s appearance, or to delay the meal until afterward? Didn’t Obama or his campaign staff consider how this would look to the Hispanic activists in the room?  And for that matter, the Secret Service is also providing protection to Mitt Romney, who spoke the day before at 1:20 in the afternoon, shortly after lunch.  Did Romney’s security detail demand that the attendees be stripped of their silverware too?

[Karin]

Actually, that looks like they're nervous that the Hispanics will steal the silverware.   

 

[Eupher]

Remember that scene in the Rose Garden earlier this month, when The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro interrupted Barack Obama to ask a question about his new immigration policy?  Obama upbraided Munro for his lack of manners, provided a non-responsive answer, finished his statement … and stomped off in a huff without taking questions from the press. Given that, can Obama really set himself up as the arbiter of press transparency?  Yes, he can!

President Barack Obama’s campaign issued an attack video Friday ripping Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney for evading the media’s immigration-related questions.

The video was released even though immigration activists are still seeking answers about the president’s June 15 proclamation in the White House’s Rose Garden, where the president pointedly declined to answer The Daily Caller’s questions about how the policy impacts American workers.

“On Friday, the president announced a change to U.S. immigration policy. Ever since, Mitt Romney has been dodging questions about repealing the order,” said the attack video, released by the “Obama Biden Truth Team.”

The video is titled “Mitt Romney on U.S. immigration policy; Why won’t he give a straight answer?”

The DC reminds everyone of the laughable hypocrisy:

Obama declined to take questions in the Rose Garden. Earlier that day, spokesman Jay Carney and Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano had also declined to answer questions.

Since then, the administration has said little about the policy, although Obama’s campaign has prominently posted an edited video of Obama’s Rose Garden speech on the Latino sections of the campaign website.

The administration’s silence was maintained even though GOP legislators said his policy violates the law, disadvantages immigrants waiting in the formal entry process, and also would boost unemployment.

On June 21, for example, Carney fended off questions at the daily White House press conference about Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s alternative immigration policy, but did not address the impact of Obama’s policy on unemployed Americans.

The. Most. Transparent. Administration. Evah.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/26/obamateurism-of-the-day-770/

[JohnnyReb]

The. Most. Transparent. Administration. Evah.

Yes, it is...and those of us here saw right through it before it even got elected.

[obumazombie]

Yes, it is...and those of us here saw right through it before it even got elected.

We saw through him before anyone else, including those who will never see through him.

[Eupher]

This one is kinda lame, guys:

Looks like we’re going to have to make this Sports Week at OOTD Central — and we have to start with the most breaking news. Barack Obama, whose basketball acumen has already come under close scrutiny, offered his congratulations to the winner of the NBA Finals … all of them, apparently:

Mark Knoller tweet:
Pres Obama congrats Miami "for having the world champion Miami Heats here in town." He said "Heats."
26 Jun 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite

It seems that the President touted by the media as a sports genius and basketball phenom doesn’t know the name of the most famous team in the NBA. After years of liberal fawning over the President’s supposed basketball expertise we now find out that he doesn’t even know the name of the Miami Heat? Seriously?

Who’s his favorite player? Kevin Durants?

Hopefully he gave a shout out to LeBronze Jame.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/27/obamateurism-of-the-day-771/

[Eupher]

I had to laugh when I saw the clip of Barack Obama get booed by a crowd at a campaign stop in Boston after teasing them about a trade between the Red Sox and the White Sox involving third baseman Kevin Youkilis. We got a lot of e-mails over this, including several nominations for this clip to be added to the OOTD list, but I didn’t think it merited inclusion — as it’s clearly an intentional and good-natured needling of the crowd:

[video of Dear Leader at the link]

That is, I didn’t consider it an OOTD until I saw the reaction at the White House.  Clearly, the President didn’t check in with his staff, as Jay Carney spent the next day trying to convince everyone that Obama didn’t get booed — the crowd was saying Yoooooook!  As Allahpundit noted on Tuesday, that’s a rather difficult argument to make, since Obama acknowledges the boos in this clip as they rain down on him, and enjoys the moment.

Didn’t Obama bother to explain that to his staff in order to prepare them for the inevitable questions that would arise the next day? Now the White House press corps has another data point for the utter destruction of Jay Carney’s credibility with them, all over a dumb joke that Obama probably should have skipped in the first place.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/06/28/obamateurism-of-the-day-772/

[Eupher]

When lecturing one’s opponent on acceptable economic policy, it helps to actually know the terminology. Barack Obama attacked Mitt Romney on a number of recent occasions for the “outsourcing” done by companies at Bain Capital — and then scoffed when corrected:

Last week it was reported Governor Romney’s old firm owned companies that, according to this article, were pioneers in the business of outsourcing American jobs to places like China and India.  And yesterday his advisors were asked about this, and they tried to clear it up by explaining that there’s actually a difference between outsourcing and offshoring. (Laughter.)  I’m not making that up.  You can’t make something like that up.  (Laughter.)

You can’t make up ignorance like this, either. There is actually a huge difference between the two.  Many companies choose to outsource payroll, for instance, which is why we have the ADP employment report each month.  ADP employes people to handle that service more effectively, due to economies of scale.  That helps keep costs down on indirect labor, which lowers prices, which means consumers can get more for their dollar.  None of that involves sending jobs overseas, which is what offshoring means.

And if you want an example of offshoring, Obama provides the perfect example:

The Obama campaign spent nearly $4,700 on telemarketing services from a Canadian telemarketing company called Pacific East between March and June, a Washington Free Beacon study of federal election filings shows.

Pacific East is not the only overseas telemarketing firm raking in cash from the president’s reelection campaign. Obama paid a call center in Manila, Ph
ilippines $78,314.10 for telemarketing services between the start of the campaign and March.

John Hinderaker channels his inner Obama (sorry, John!):

You really can’t make this stuff up. The Obama campaign is rapidly turning itself into a laughingstock.

Unfortunately, we don’t have to make this stuff up.  Obama provides us an almost never-ending stream of this material.

[obumazombie]

^Regardless of how hypocritical owebuma is, his supporters will never leave him.

[Eupher]

Here’s one definition of change: In 2008, the Obama campaign bragged about how badly they tromped John McCain in fundraising and campaign spending.  Eighteen months ago, they began boasting that Team O would raise a billion dollars for his re-election effort in 2012.  Today, however, they’re already griping that Mitt Romney and conservatives will outraise them this time around — and now the whining has reached all the way to the top.  On Friday, Barack Obama personally held a conference call with recalcitrant big-ticket donors from Air Force One as he flew back from Colorado, urging them to get off the sidelines and into the game.  Obama warned them that he would be the first President ever to be outspent in a re-election effort by his challenger:

“We are going to see more money spent on negative ads through these super PACs and anonymous outside groups than ever before. And if things continue as they have so far, I’ll be the first sitting president in modern history to be outspent in his reelection campaign.”

So far, though, the opposite is true, as Timothy Carney explains at the Washington Examiner:

First of all, Obama’s campaign has raised much more money than Romney’s, it has spent more money than Romney’s, and it has more cash on hand than Romney’s, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

But you can’t just count the campaigns. After all, when Obama hosts his $30,000-a-head fundraisers, he’s raising money for his campaign and the DNC — and the DNC is spending that money basically to re-elect Obama. On the national committees, Obama is beating Romney, too.

Of course, Obama is also counting outside groups with the reference to super-PACs.  But if that’s the case, then Obama won’t be the first to face a deficit.  Carney has a graph from 2004 that shows George W. Bush being outspent by nearly $200 million when outside groups get counted in the mix.  The difference this time is that unions don’t get the only exception to campaign-finance regulation, and so others can build the same kinds of political-action war chests that unions have used for decades.  Carney concludes:

So, either Obama’s including outside money, in which case he’s not the first to be outspent. Or he’s not including outside money, in which case he’s not being outspent.

You know what might have evened up the fight a little bit?  The public-funding limits for presidential campaigns.  Too bad for Obama that a previous presidential candidate became the first since Watergate to opt out so that he could massively outspend his rival, effectively killing the program altogether.  Who was that again?  Oh, yeah.  Hey, Mr. President, let me paraphrase one of your predecessors: if you can’t stand the Heats, stay out of the kitchen.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/02/obamateurism-of-the-day-774/

[thundley4]

I know it was mentioned in another thread, but wouldn't making fund raising calls from Air Farce One, be as illegal as making the calls from the Oval Office?

[Eupher]

I know it was mentioned in another thread, but wouldn't making fund raising calls from Air Farce One, be as illegal as making the calls from the Oval Office?

Billy Jeff got into some trouble for that back in 1997:

http://www.nytimes.com/1997/09/22/news/22iht-clinton.t_0.html

[dixierose]

I read somewhere that is was a phone payed for by the Obama campaign...which makes it OK (I guess).

[docstew]

I read somewhere that is was a phone payed for by the Obama campaign...which makes it OK (I guess).

O's campaign shelled out the bucks to install a new satellite linked phone on AF1? Otherwise, it's still being made with govt property, i.e. military equipment.

Still stinks...

[obumazombie]

O's campaign shelled out the bucks to install a new satellite linked phone on AF1? Otherwise, it's still being made with govt property, i.e. military equipment.

Still stinks...

Another good description of a lib, they stink but think they smell like the sweetest perfume.

[Eupher]

What greater honor can a President have than to attend a naturalization ceremony, especially on the Fourth of July?  The ceremony marks the end of a years-long process for people who came to the United States legally and then worked and studied to become Americans.  Yesterday, Barack Obama got to speak at one such event where the new citizens went the extra mile and served in the US military, too.  What would a President say to these fine young men and women on the occasion of their official transformation into American citizens?

Er … how about a plea to Congress to let those who came illegally get the same honor:

But Obama did more than just welcome members of the military to American citizenship.  The naturalization ceremony took a political turn when the president defended his controversial decision to unilaterally enact some provisions of the DREAM Act — which would put illegal immigrants who came to this country at a young age on a path to citizenship, but which has failed to win passage in Congress — and also to renew his call for comprehensive immigration reform.

“We’re still perfecting our union, still extending the promise of America,” Obama told the group.  “That’s why, as another step forward, we’re lifting the shadow of deportation from serving — from deserving young people who were brought to this country as children.  It’s why we still need a DREAM Act — to keep talented young people who want to contribute to our society and serve our country.  It’s why we need — why America’s success demands — comprehensive immigration reform.”

Did the President understand that the people at this event actually went through all the trouble, time, and expense of coming into the country legally, and then served our nation in the military?  It’s not that comprehensive immigration reform isn’t a valid issue for an election — it certainly is — but making this pitch at a naturalization ceremony, especially this one, makes one wonder if Obama can tell the difference between legal and illegal immigration.  We know one thing for sure: his audience certainly did.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/05/obamateurism-of-the-day-776/

[Eupher]

Barack Obama hit the road on a campaign bus tour with yet another theme for his re-election effort — “Betting on America.” Obama intends to hammer Mitt Romney as an outsourcer and offshorer, but Drudge noticed a big problem with that plan, via Instapundit:

[video of the Outsourcer In Chief at the link]

I wrote about this same thing last August, when Obama campaigned on a “Buy American” theme using the Canadian-made bus. One might have thought Obama would take his own advice, but instead, we have yet another Do As I Say Not As I Do summer tour kicking off.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/06/obamateurism-of-the-day-777/

[Eupher]

Most of us recall the 2008 election, when Barack Obama busted the limits of fundraising and spending — and became the first presidential candidate since Watergate to opt out of the public system. He raised over $770 million and swamped out Republican nominee John McCain, hitting a record for fundraising in a single month in September 2008 with $150 million.

Well, most of us remember that pretty well.  Obama, on the other hand, whined about being outspent in both the 2004 Senate race and the 2008 presidential contest:

“I got outspent when I ran [the] first time for Senate,” he claimed as he was ending his heated campaign-trail speech in Maumee, Ohio.

Obama was misleading.

The Federal Election Committee’s website shows that Obama’s campaign claimed $14,807,432 in donations by December 2004.

In contrast, his opponent, Alan Keyes, had only $2,545,325, according to the FEC.

That’s a six-fold advantage for Obama, not a deficit.

And the Daily Caller also corrected Obama’s claim about 2008:

In a second speech June 5, Obama compounded his misleading claim by declaring that he was outspent in the 2008 presidential race.

“The thing that I want everybody here to understand – each of you personally — is that back in 2008, everybody said we couldn’t do it because we were outspent,” he said during a 4.12 p.m. speech in Sandusky, Ohio.

Obama did not correct the claim, although he immediately revised it, by adding that “we weren’t favored.”

During the 2008 race, Obama raised $779 million. His GOP rival, Sen. John McCain, raised less than half as much, or $347 million.

In the Democratic primary, Obama raised $237 million, while his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, raised $229 million.

At some point, most of us think that a man who raised that much cash has done enough whining.

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/07/09/obamateurism-of-the-day-778/