A fired-up Barack Obama ditched his TelePrompter to rally House Democrats and rip Republican opponents of his recovery package Thursday night - at one point openly mocking the GOP for failing to follow through on promises of bipartisanship.
In what was the most pointedly partisan speech of his young presidency, Obama rejected Republican arguments that massive spending in the $819 billion stimulus bill that passed the House should be replaced by a new round of massive tax cuts.
"I welcome this debate, but we are not going to get relief by turning back to the same policies that for the last eight years doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin," said President Obama - sounding more like Candidate Obama than at any time since he took the oath of office less than a month ago.
Obama, speaking to about 200 House Democrats at their annual retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa, dismissed Republican attacks against the massive spending in the stimulus.
"What do you think a stimulus is?" Obama asked incredulously. "It's spending - that's the whole point! Seriously."(Source: Politico)
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Guys, I am so proud. Finally we've got the President fired-up against the Republican's "let's go back to the way things were and really kill this economy" ridiculous "tax cut problem solving tactics".
Last week [and I repeated it on Sunday], I urged you all to shut off your television and go over to "The BiPolar Ultra Mellow Lounge" or read a book, go to the movies, or if you couldn't tear yourself away from the "nutty tube", watch comedies. Hopefully you did so.
If you did follow my instructions, don't you feel at least 80% better?
Remember people, television (especially cable television -exception: The Rachel Maddow Show) is the last place to get reliable news.* According to media watchdog group "Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting" in consultation with the Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory at Virginia Commonwealth University, a study that was conducted, showed that a majority of journalists, although relatively liberal on social policies, were significantly to the right of the public on economic, labor, health care and foreign policy issues.[1]
Their study continues: “we learn much more about the political orientation of news content by looking at sourcing patterns rather than journalists' personal views. As this survey shows, it is government officials and business representatives to whom journalists "nearly always" turn when covering economic policy. Labor representatives and consumer advocates were at the bottom of the list. This is consistent with earlier research on sources. For example, analysts from the centrist Brookings Institution and conservative think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute are those most quoted in mainstream news accounts; liberal think tanks are often invisible. When it comes to sources, ‘liberal bias’ is nowhere to be found.”
I don't think media has caught on to certain realities ... for 8 years they sought out Republican officials ... yeah, Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc. for information. Horrors! But there's a new majority Party in town [the Party of the people]... and evidently, media hasn't gotten the message.
Don't get me wrong, the Republican's used to have some good ideas. That pretty much went the way of the dinosaur starting when the Southern Dixiecrats and racists ran "kicking and screaming" from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party after the 1965 Voting Rights Act.**
Reagan wasn't too bad, ... but he was a "union busting", "tax cut loving [followed by huge deficits]", "kick the disabled off of Social Security, and "kiss the feet" of Big Business and Large Corporations kind of guy.*** Ugh! We languished in the wilderness four years, before businesses started hiring again. Reagan did me no favors, I and my friends had a job before his entrance. Ten months later, I was unemployed and stayed unemployed [there was a job freeze] until mid or late 1985. Thankfully, I was able to go back to college. Those days, college was affordable [and we had Pell Grants].
Sources:
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Interesting Facts and Comments:
Michael Steele's remarks about Jobs
More of Michael Steele and the Republican Party (and this is hilarious)
Corporate Globalization Fact Sheet
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Republican Obtructionism continues - forces compromise - which short changes Americans
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