As typos go, this one is a doozy. When the White House recently released President Barack Obama’s remarks from a June 20, 2011 fundraiser at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, there was one surprising line: after the President claimed to have created jobs, everyone one laughed. It turns out that the parenthetical reference to “Laughter” was wrong but it could not have been a more poignant moment for the Administration which has been forced to admit that the President’s “shovel ready” projects had not produced the sought after new jobs despite hundreds of billions of dollars.
On Monday night, reporters received the speech including the line: “Over the last 15 months we’ve created over 2.1 million private sector jobs. (Laughter.)”
Sites like Drudge had a field day and the White House finally corrected the typo the following day.
Source: Politico
Swarthmore Mom,
I agree with your comments about those of us who need SS and Medicare need to stay energized and keep progressive candidates feet to the fire to make sure they are looking out for Main Street.
Shovel ready was not as uh shovel ready as we expected
Jeffery Immelt ha ha ha ( APPLAUSE)
“The left made a huge mistake in believing Obama would be the savior who would make everything good again. With this belief, the left abandoned their own duties as citizens. The left must reclaim their citizenship and go to bat for justice, right now.” -Jill
If what I’m seeing on the streets is any indication, the left is making a huge mistake by not acting. In general, we’re a pretty passive lot… and it’ll be too late, if Dems do little or nothing. Voting isn’t enough. In general, the ruling Republicans (and their minions) are ruthless and many Dems can’t begin to imagine some of the things that are going on right now. Ron Wyden warned that “Americans would be very angry” (paraphrasing), if they knew what’s happening… Where’s the outrage? Why aren’t Americans demanding to know the truth? As Jill rightly says, we need to “concentrate on citizen action for justice.”
Swarthmore mom 1, June 22, 2011 at 9:37 am
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s health care law would let several million middle-class people get nearly free insurance meant for the poor, a twist government number crunchers say they discovered only after the complex bill was signed.
The change would affect early retirees: A married couple could have an annual income of about $64,000 and still get Medicaid, said officials who make long-range cost estimates for the Health and Human Services department.
After initially downplaying any concern, the Obama administration said late Tuesday it would look for a fix.
Up to 3 million more people could qualify for Medicaid in 2014 as a result of the anomaly. That’s because, in a major change from today, most of their Social Security benefits would no longer be counted as income for determining eligibility.
It might be compared to allowing middle-class people to qualify for food stamps.
‘Doesn’t make sense’
Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster said the situation was keeping him up at night.
“I don’t generally comment on the pros or cons of policy, but that just doesn’t make sense,” Foster said during a question-and-answer session at a recent professional society meeting.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43490650/ns/health-health_care/
Who said anything about staying home? I said voting for Obama is voting for a war and financial criminal who will also strip out SS and medicare. The better course of action is to quit worrying about the 2012 election and concentrate on the present.
Waiting for 2012 without taking immediate peaceful action to bring justice is just giving Obama more time to consolidate his dictatorial powers, kill more civilians, screw more poor people, commit more torture, order more surveillance of his “enemies”, allow more environmental crimes or engage in more kinetic actions. I argue that in many
ways, the election of 2012 is irrelevant. By that time the power of an executive dictatorship is consolidated and it passes to Obama or the declared Republican candidate in Bush’s 4th term.
Get cracking on immediate peaceful action. When it comes time to vote vote for the good, not evil. I gave a synopsis as to why you cannot just “believe” (and belief is all that it is) Obama is the lessor evil. The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Let the worries about who and who is not running pass from our minds and concentrate on citizen action for justice.
The left made a huge mistake in believing Obama would be the savior who would make everything good again. With this belief, the left abandoned their own duties as citizens. The left must reclaim their citizenship and go to bat for justice, right now.
Well said,M.S.Huiner
Swarthmore mom,
Yep. I hope that he runs again…
Staying home gives progressives disasters like 2010. Staying home in 2012 could easily mean more Alitos/Scalias on the Supreme Court. More decisions like Citizens United, and yesterday’s Walmart case. I love my country too much to stay home because Obama didn’t do everything I wanted. I am too patriotic to stay home because Obama did do stuff with which I disagree. I will keep working for better progressive candidates, but in the meantime I refuse to give ground to the conservatives.
anon nurse, If he runs, it will be in Wisconsin.
Swarthmore mom,
How about all of us voting for Russ Feingold? 🙂 (One can still dream…)
S.M.,
If you are counting on SS and Medicare you should not vote for Obama. The people he put on the cat food commission wish to dismantle them both.
carol, Maybe, some people don’t need Social Security and Medicare but many of us are counting on it. They can afford to vote republican or for a libertarian.
carol,
It really isn’t possible for you to say things will be so much worse under a declared Republican candidate. Look what Obama’s done when he has to still pretend he gives a shit about people. Once he’s elected in 2012 don’t you wonder what he’ll do? What kind of brake will there be on his actions? He’s lying just enough, throwing enough bones and rolling out the propaganda to get votes now, but he won’t need his voters after the election.
Further, what does this argument of LOTE really mean? Vote for Ted Bundy, he’s not Charles Manson? Why would I vote for either? My time, my abilities will be put towards justice. That means I could never even contemplate voting for Obama or any other war and financial criminal. There is nothing progressive about that and there is no justice in voting for Obama.
It seems like many people don’t care about lives lost or people being harmed as long as it’s happening in some other country or to someone else. Does Obama only lose our vote when he directly screws us over? That’s a classic argument of the right wing–if it doesn’t effect me, I don’t really care.
The jobs program is an excellent case in point. The stimulus was never designed to create jobs. It was designed from the start as a wealth transfer mechanism and it has so far succeeded beyond the dreams of avarice, transferring about 23 trillion to the highly profitable financial industry, one of Obama’s major donors. In the meantime, more people than ever are in poverty, without jobs, healthcare, homes. We have a crumbling infrastructure and a reliance on fossil fuels that are poisoning our environment. I wouldn’t call any of that or the wars of empire the lesser of evils, it’s just evil.
In a very real way, liberating citizens from employer health care AND liberating employers from health care costs would have been an incredible boon to individual quality of life, to reduction of business costs, and to American productivity.
We are told that small businesses are the major employers in the US.
With a public health care option, citizens would not be stuck in terrible life draining jobs as their only means of obtaining adequate healthcare. And businesses would be on the same accounting ground level as their European counterparts.
Oops, perhaps this isn’t an Obama rant thread. Well, perhaps it is.
Not only was the stimulus too small it was mostly mis-spent on tax cuts. Tax cuts have an extremely poor record for job production despite the great PR they get from some quarters. This Presidents willingness to go along to get along is going to kill him – it has already prolonged the depression and worsened the results.
Bad PR…..
carol, if Obama had come out with a true public option for health care, all would have been forgiven from my camp….
As disappointed as I am with Obama I will vote for him again. Considering what the other party has to offer, there is no where else to go. But, if he does anything to screw up Social Security, I will stay home. Enough is enough with all the crap he’s done. Social Security is where I draw my line.
Obama very well could lose his job to venture capitalist, Romney. Bain Capital is very good at eliminating jobs. That is how they make billions. Agree that the stimulus was way too small.
” the Administration which has been forced to admit that the President’s “shovel ready” projects had not produced the sought after new jobs despite hundreds of billions of dollars.”
That there were no shovel ready jobs was an appalling, disgusting, incompetent failure on Obama’s part. This is Obama at his worse, and if he fails to get re-elected (a very unlikely scenario) I would hope this was a major reason why.
Obama could have ensured there were shovel ready jobs.
Before he was inaugurated he could have told cities, counties, states to get these jobs ready. He could have given them goals, and told them what he was looking for. He could have stated he would work with Congress and the EPA to expedite EIR review or all but eliminate it for certain classes of jobs.
He could have told Valerie Jarrett, Robert Reich and other feminists to stick a sock in it, and stop advocating for the hijacking of the stimulus to jobs for relatively unaffected women.
Obama has had some successes, a lot of failures, and totally screwed us in many ways along the lines of civil liberties, but he completely screwed the pooch wrt shovel ready jobs.
And for that, if he were to be shoved out of office, I’d say that was a reasonable response.
Check out Paul Krugman today as well, stating once again, that many people told Obama to his face that the stimulus was too small.
“there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” THAT WAS A LIE and the Incompetent in Chief should lose his job over it.