Obama's Press Conference: What's That Smell?

President Obama took some time out today to grace us with a short press conference on the the deficit and the debt ceiling. Anyone wishing to read it in full can find the entire proceeding here, complete with the sycophantic softball questions doled out by an obviously sympathetic press.

But I can save you the trouble of wading through it by summarizing; President Obama takes no responsibility for anything that's happened in the two and a half years he's been president. He blames the failure to come to an agreement on the debt ceiling and the budget solely on the Republicans protecting fat cats like corporate jet owners, greedy oil companies and the 'rich ' benefitting from the Bush tax cuts, the same ones a Democrat-dominated Congress extended and the president signed.

Like most of the rest of his party, he considers Americans undertaxed and is calling for massive tax increases in exchange for any spending cuts, which he wants to concentrate on Medicare and especially on defense. And he urged the Republicans to bend to his will, saying it's time for us to 'eat our peas.'

Even by DC-Land standards, this was an amazing performance.

This is the same president who wasted a trillion dollars of America's wealth on a 'stimulus' that rewarded his political allies, created the corporate jet tax break he keeps mewling about and created absolutely nothing in the way of jobs or revenue. The same president and the same party who quadrupled the deficit and couldn't create a budget during a period whenthey had a supermajority in both Houses of Congress. The same president who debased our currency through Quantitative Easing while raising the price of commodities by prohibiting the drilling of American oil, saddling business with onerous EPA regulations Congress never voted for and wasting even more money pursuing so-called 'green jobs'. The same president who shoved through ObamaCare, and literally stole $500 billion in funding from Medicare to pay for it. The same president who made a clandestine deal with Big Pharma to save them millions at the expense of the taxpayers and Medicare recipients in exchange for $150 million in advertising for ObamaCare and campaign contributions.

And this is the president who now has the unmitigated gall to try to make political capital by trying to shift the blame for his failed policies elsewhere. And he's actually shameless enough to think he can get away with it.

He wasn't even willing to take a Republican offer to reduce tax rates sharply in return for fewer special tax deductions, loopholes and subsidies. Had Obama agreed with his own debt commission and the Republicans, a deal was more than possible. Or he could have proposed real reforms to entitlements. But he declined ..all because it might effect his ability to beat the class warfare drum and pander to his base.

The Republicans were entirely right to back away and avoid being complicit, and they need to hold the line on wrecking our economy further with higher taxes on the private sector, the one engine that can pull us out of the morass President Obama and the Democrats have put us in. The Republicans are the ones holding the cards this time, and they need to insist on massive spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, plain and simple.

President Obama wants us to eat something, all right, but it isn't peas. No, it's something brown and lumpy with a rather bad smell to it, and the Republicans ought to label it as exactly what it is and insist that this time, it's the president's turn to feed on it.

-selah-

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