The White House is evaluating whether to take a breather on health care or try to push for passing legislation, but is not convinced Massachusetts voters were trying to block health insurance reform by voting last week to send Republican Scott Brown to the U.S. Senate, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday.
Seriously? With Democrats outnumbering Republicans in Massachusetts by a margin of 3:1, and with a candidate who clearly campaigned as the 41st vote against Obamacare, they still aren't convinced?
Gibbs said that Brown may have campaigned on stopping the health care bill but that's not why voters elected him over Democrat Martha Coakley.
"More people voted to express their support for Barack Obama than to oppose him," Gibbs said.
Argh! The good news is that the administration has finally gotten on the same page and conceded that we don't need to send Gitmo Yemenis back to their home country just now because of the danger of them returning to jihad.
The bad news is they will likely be coming to Thomson, Illinois!
Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall at the ignorance of an administration that continues to treat terrorists like common criminals and put national security on the back burner, ignoring the lessons of the past.
The U.S. will not transfer any detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Yemen right now, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday.
Ninety detainees in Gitmo are from Yemen, which is combating a resurgent Al Qaeda. A delayed return could mean they will end up in a federal prison in Thomson, Illinois, Gibbs said.
How 'bout this Skippy? Leave Gitmo open to do the job it was designed to do and has been doing quite well for a number of years now? What guarantees do you have that al-Qaeda isn't going to use Thomson as a "recruiting tool" as you say Gitmo has been?
Incredibly, just as on July 4, the White House is claiming to know nothing about today's March On Washington: "White House officials on Friday professed to know nothing of the planned demonstrations. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs queried reporters about the planners and their issues. 'I don't know who the group is,' he said with a shrug."
Is this administration that out of touch with the pulse of America? If so, it's a black mark for them. Or are they just being coy, trying to downplay the magnitude of the protest. A sort of, "We're not scared!" tactic? If that's the plan, it's also a poor choice.
To disregard these protesters, to blow them off and discount their voices shows poor leadership, indeed.
I suspect that by the end of the day, Gibbs and Company will know "who the group" is. It's a whole lot of American citizens who have something to say. Open the windows and listen, Obama!
This is simply incredible video. Via Pundette, this is Robert Gibbs trying to deflect questions regarding the staged town hall meeting yesterday on health care. Chip Reid starts it up when he asks Gibbs who is selecting the questions that come in via Twitter, Facebook, etc., for this meeting.
Helen Thomas is exactly correct when she calls Gibbs out on this. She says (h/t Hot Air) :
“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.
“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”
Gibbs is clearly uncomfortable and trying to move on, change the subject, laughing nervously.
Now we have the revelation (see No Sheeples Here) that the poor woman with cancer was a plant, a pre-screened participant who received her ticket from The White House.
So much for transparency and openness. This is interesting on one level because we're seeing in this briefing that the press is turning on the administration. Once fawning lapdogs are now starting to see the truth. Chip Reid makes the correct point when he says just open the town hall up and let regular people ask the questions. That is, by definition, what a town hall meeting is. Otherwise it's just a campaign stop.
And why, exactly doesn't the administration do just that? Why don't they have a real town hall meeting - even a series of them across the country - with real people, not plants and no pre-screened questions? With Obama you must always ask "why?" Why doesn't he do this?
Because he wants to control the situation. He wants to control the questions and the answers and he wants to control what you hear. He wants to control what you believe about the issue, whatever the issue happens to be. There's no openness here. No transparency. That promise expired a long time ago when we figured out that bills and legislation would not really be posted online for five days before signing.
It didn't take too long for the press to figure it out. My next question is how long before people like Nico Pitney get sick of being used by Obama?
Is the White House going to spend the next 3.5 years blaming everything on George W. Bush? Here's Gibbs at yesterday's briefing responding to a question about Bush's comments the night before:
The bottom line, Gibbs concluded, is "I think we've had a debate about individual policies. We had that debate in particular -- we kept score last November and we won."
"President Obama inherited an economic catastrophe: massive unemployment, a huge deficit, insolvent banks, car companies that were being handed billions of dollars," Gibbs said.
"President Obama believes that the free market is what governs our economic principles and looks forward to getting out of the business of being involved in banks or in auto companies," he said.
We won! Good grief.
"President Obama inherited...." For crying out loud, every administration inherits problems. It's not a perfect world Put on your big boy pants and quit whining. Quit nationalizing banks, health care and car companies. If Obama really believes "the free market is what governs our economic principles" then get out of it! Let the market do what the market DOES.
Enough with the whining already. Enough with the blame. It's childish. It's not leadership.
Via Memeorandum, FOS Gibbs says the President isn't convinced that the election of Scott Brown was a referendum on Obamacare:
.jpg)
