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Addendum

…to McGehee’s post, below, behold!

Speaking in Iowa in 2006, Sen. Barack Obama said, “I’ve had enough of using terrorism as a wedge issue in our politics.” He said the war on terrorism “isn’t supposed to crop up between September and November of even-numbered years.”

But as president, Obama and his reelection campaign have consistently raised the issue — repeatedly referring to a 2007 comment by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to suggest that Romney would not have ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden as Obama did one year ago.

On Sept. 17, 2006, Obama spoke at Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry in Indianola, Iowa.

“And let me tell you something else I’ve had enough of: I’ve had enough of using terrorism as a wedge issue in our politics,” Obama told the crowd. “I’ve had enough of that. I’ve had enough of that. You know, I – I don’t know about you, but I think the war against terrorism isn’t supposed to crop up between September and November of even numbered years, and yet that seems to be the pattern. There is a sudden burst of activity, a sudden urgency about this whole thing three months before an election every other year.”

Obama’s re-election campaign has released a video questioning what Romney would have done about bin Laden, given a comment Romney made in an interview with the Associated Press that was published on April 26, 2007.

[…]

Romney, during a campaign stop in New Hampshire on Monday told a reporter that “of course,” he would have given the order to kill bin Laden. “Anybody would have made that call, even Jimmy Carter,” he said, referring to Obama’s order one year ago.

On Monday, during a White House news conference, Obama was asked about his thoughts on the first anniversary of bin Laden’s death in Pakistan. The reporter quoted Romney’s statement in the question.

“As far as my personal role and what other folks would do, I’d just recommend that everybody take a look at people’s previous statements in terms of whether they thought it was appropriate to go into Pakistan and take out bin Laden,” Obama replied. “I assume that people meant what they said when they said it. That’s been at least my practice. I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did.”

Yes, Obama. You did. How very brave of you. Putting your life on the line like that.

I don’t say this very often but Romney is right: there isn’t a single President who wouldn’t have given that order; it’s just that this one is so narcissistic that he literally wants us to believe he killed Bin Laden almost with his bare hands and a force of will heretofore unknown to the American people.

It wasn’t particularly brave. It wasn’t particularly gutsy. And that it’s framed that way — because, politically, it could have blown back on him had it not gone well — shows just how completely out of whack are the priorities of the leftists pretending to guide our ship of state.

78 Replies to “Addendum”

  1. leigh says:

    I said that I’d go after bin Laden if we had a clear shot at him, and I did.

    Let me be the first. Fuck you, BO.

  2. bh says:

    I’m starting to think this Obama fellow might be something of an asshole.

  3. leigh says:

    Jeff, can you disable the autoplay on the video, please?

  4. Jeff G. says:

    No. I’m not even seeing video on my end.

  5. Jeff G. says:

    I just took out the vid link altogether.

  6. leigh says:

    Thanks.

  7. palaeomerus says:

    Huh? Wait a second! Obama didn’t lower the oceans at all! On closer inspection he made the land a little higher by adding many deep layers of bullshit!

  8. JD says:

    The MFM will call him out on his duplicitous rhetoric any time now.

  9. sdferr says:

    In order to keep a nearly even humor — or call it a head above drowning waters — I like to imagine a volley of cream pies thrown by an enormous crowd of Americans, tens of thousands of them, all hitting Obama simultaneously. Whether he subsequently drowns as an unintended consequence of the volume of pie filling and cream through which he’d have to crawl to find clear air, I cannot say, as I’m simply laughing at the image too hard to notice.

  10. Pablo says:

    OT and BREAKING WTF: Junior Seau is reported dead by suicide.

  11. geoffb says:

    “I assume that people meant what they said when they said it.

    I’m assuming that Romney did mean what he said when he said it which was 5 years ago with a completely different situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I’ll also bet he can explain what differences have made for the differences in his position then and now.

    I’ll give Obama the same assumption if he will just explain what he sees as the differences between when he made his 2006 statement and now. Extra credit if he can do so without using a personal pronoun.

  12. happyfeet says:

    Mr. Romney would have gone after bin laden even without a “clear shot” I think, and even that would have been a no-fucking-brainer.

  13. Lamontyoubigdummy says:

    “And let me tell you something else I’ve had enough of: I’ve had enough of using terrorism as a wedge issue in our politics,” Obama told the crowd. “I’ve had enough of that. I’ve had enough of that. You know, I – I don’t know about you, but I think the war against terrorism isn’t supposed to crop up between September and November of even numbered years, and yet that seems to be the pattern. There is a sudden burst of activity, a sudden urgency about this whole thing three months before an election every other year.”

    Jim Treacher, please call your office.

  14. palaeomerus says:

    Lileks and Tarranto might want some of that too.

  15. SDN says:

    The Last Word. One of these things is not like the others.

  16. Lamontyoubigdummy says:

    Hope everybody will palaeomerus.

    But there’s something about, “Who me? I’m just quoting here” passive aggressive mockery that explodes progressives’ heads.

    If this kicks off, “Kid, I’d like salt and lots of that greasy butter tasting stuff (don’t be stingy, you’re charging $7bucks for the small) on that popped corn you got behind you.”

  17. Matt says:

    Now they’re pro-military??? NOW they don’t want to use the War on Terror for political purposes ???? I’m constantly astounding at the heights their hypocrisy reaches.

  18. dicentra says:

    I’d just recommend that everybody take a look at people’s previous statements

    Oh, I think he really doesn’t want us do to that to his collection of 2007 statements.

  19. James Notcott says:

    One could screen How the West Was Won on my ample end.

  20. Lamontyoubigdummy says:

    SDN, I read it twice.

    (Possibly wrong) But I looked for “I” and “my” In GW’s speech and couldn’t find a damn one.

  21. leigh says:

    One of these things is not like the others.

    Yeesh. This Obama chap is a bit of a bounder.

  22. McGehee says:

    On Sept. 17, 2006, Obama spoke at Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry in Indianola, Iowa.

    Harkin? Tom Harkin? Would that be this Tom Harkin?

    Betcha it is.

  23. Matt says:

    I’m also “astounded”.

  24. StrangernFiction says:

    Blech. Obama give himself a “shout out” .

    At least he’s a metrosexual sociopath.

  25. McGehee says:

    Did he say “Holla!”?

  26. PatrickS says:

    I’m really not so sure that Jimmah Cartah would have done it.

  27. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Oh, I’m sure he’d have been okay with the SEALS shooting OBL in the leg.

  28. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It wasn’t particularly brave. It wasn’t particularly gutsy. And that it’s framed that way — because, politically, it could have blown back on him had it not gone well — shows just how completely out of whack are the priorities of the leftists pretending to guide our ship of state.

    I know when I’m psyching myself up to do something brave and gutsy it’s important that I hit the links first.

    For weeks on end.

    Before getting hauled off he golf course and told the decision’s been made.

  29. […] A gentle reminder: On Sept. 17, 2006, Obama spoke at Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin’s annual steak fry in Indianola, […]

  30. leigh says:

    Well, Ernst , I guess once you’ve decided or had it decided for you that you’re going to negotiate with the Tal-ee-bahn, you might need to hit the nineteeth hole.

  31. newrouter says:

    I’m really not so sure that Jimmah Cartah would have done it.

    jimmah tried to rescue the hostages so i’m thinking he do it.

  32. George Orwell says:

    http://bit.ly/IVfrig

    Just a reminder that everything about this mook in the White House stems from a fictional narrative. Everything.

  33. SDN says:

    Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate ‘em. …

    LYBD, there was one sentence.

  34. BurtTC says:

    I think it’s worth noting, for this guy, it really was a gutsy call. That’s how he sees it. He could have gone the other way, and if Val Jarrett had had her way, he would have done so. The process that got him off the fence (and off the links) involved some fancy footwork by the ol’ team, so when Barack finally gave the thumbs up, it had been touch and go.

    I’m sure it hurt his tummy quite a bit! Sort of like when you finally coax your 5 year old into stepping on that spider that’s crawling across the floor and freaking her out so much. You’re so brave, honey, you’re a big girl now.

  35. BurtTC says:

    As for the girlfriend compression thing, it reminds me of those characters you see in movies or on tv shows. Everybody knows the writers are gay, but they won’t have a hit show unless they make the relationships boy/girl and not boy/boy. So they composite the female lead. She’s mostly male, but they cast a female, they give her female things to say and do (like having a period, shopping for shoes, etc.), but in mannerisms, how she reacts emotionally to events, how she easily jumps in and out of bed with multiple partners, with nary an emotional scar to show for it, that’s because she’s actually a gay male. But you, the rubes in the audience, you wouldn’t go for that, so we had to give her boobs.

  36. leigh says:

    James Cameron said in an interview that he gave the female aliens in Avatar boobs specifically for ratings.

  37. BurtTC says:

    Well there is that, but I’m pretty sure Cameron is straight. Lots of these other guys though, they wouldn’t know how to write a male/female love story if their lives depended on it, because they’ve never actually witnessed such a thing. So they composite.

    I’m not suggesting Obama is gay, but then, I’m not suggesting he actually wrote that book either, so if the author had to composite, it’s probably due to the fact that he has no idea what kind of love life Obama had led.

  38. George Orwell says:

    Well there is that, but I’m pretty sure Cameron is straight.

    Yeah. On the other hand, Linda Hamilton. Just sayin’.

    Anyway, Cameron cares more about thinly disguised, lowbrow class warfare than boobs. It’s the entire ethos behind Titanique and Avatard.

  39. newrouter says:

    “dreams of bill ayers” by baracky hussein obfuscation

  40. newrouter says:

    ot too funny about pocahontas warren:

    But a look through history reveals that the city of Boston — just across the Charles River from Harvard’s Cambridge — hasn’t always been so kind to American-Indians. In fact, under a law that wasn’t repealed until 2005, Warren — a Native American — technically committed a crime every time she crossed that river.

    Even though authorities long refused to enforce the law, there was actually a law on the books dating back to the colonial era banning Native Americans from entering the city.

    The law was passed in 1675 out of a fear of a “barbarous crew” that would expose the city’s residents “to mischief.”

    In 2004, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino called for doing away with the antiquated law.

    “This law has no place in Boston,” Menino said then. “Fortunately this act is no longer enforced. But as long as it remains on the books, this law will tarnish our image. Hatred and discrimination have no place in Boston. Tolerance, equality and respect — these are the attributes of our city.”

    Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney signed a law repealing the ban on American-Indians in 2005.

    “It is our hope that signing this bill into law will provide some closure to a very painful and old chapter in Massachusetts history,” Romney said then. “This archaic law belongs in the history books, not the law books.”

    link

  41. George Orwell says:

    http://bit.ly/IzLkP8

    Don’t read this unless you have an iron stomach for the arch-pretensions of a solipsistic twentysomething liberal arts loser, addicted to literary name-dropping and pitch-perfect pastiches of English Lit professors. Who eventually managed to be elected President.

    No wonder Jeff called this asshole for who he is, long ago.

  42. Mike LaRoche says:

    pocahontas warren

    Pinnochio-hontas Warren is more like it.

  43. Mike LaRoche says:

    a solipsistic twentysomething liberal arts loser, addicted to literary name-dropping and pitch-perfect pastiches of English Lit professors

    SEK, call your office!

  44. motionview says:

    Lead the blind guy out into the street and then run away. Smart Diplomacy@

  45. jdw says:

    jimmah tried to rescue the hostages so i’m thinking he do it.

    No. After those ‘choppers crashed in that freak desert windstorm, Carter was a whipped dog. He’s been cowering ever since.

  46. newrouter says:

    No. After those ‘choppers crashed in that freak desert windstorm

    i find jimmah a loser but at least he gave the mission the go ahead. and that mission was alot more dangerous than offing 1 guy in pokistan.

  47. jdw says:

    heh. G00gle ad at the bottom of this page; via smartphone, “Mitt Romney for President” from mittromney dot com. I’ll cliicky on that…

  48. jdw says:

    …ouch. There lies a bottomless pit what needs more funds.

    Let’s wait to see who’s trotted out as VP firstly, shall we?

  49. jdw says:

    Cartier might’ve tried, but he could not stomach a follow-up mission, one this nation’s people craved.

    He should’ve asked for Israel’s help. They’ve better stomachs than any modern Democrat.

  50. leigh says:

    Carter ask Israel for help? Surely, you jest! This is the guy who said that when he got re-elected (ha!) he was going to “fuck the Jews”.

    Not very nice talk. I hope Miz Lillian didn’t hear about that.

  51. jdw says:

    Carter was the perfect proto-SCOAMF.

  52. jdw says:

    damn, I just discovered Instagram. This might be fun.

  53. leigh says:

    Who does this dude look like?

    Hint: look at the old pics of Jeff in the sidebar.

  54. Pablo says:

    Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin like balls of sound. My feet hum over the dry walks. A storm smoothes the sky, impounding the city lights, returning to us a dull yellow glow. Then I farted.

    I blame the humming feet.

  55. happyfeet says:

    is that a crack?

  56. leigh says:

    George Orwell, Obama’s is waxing , er, poetic, about The Waste Land? What a dork. He’s just name-dropping and trying to sound smart, not actually analyzing the poem. It’s probably a good thing, since it’s much too deep for a gabrone like him and he’d still be reading the footnotes and chasing down sources and historical references.

    And, likely still getting it wrong.

  57. newrouter says:

    What if second husband Lolo Soetoro had decided to insist, out of patriarchal amour propre, that Barry was his own biological son? Stranger things have happened in families. It would strike me that the difference in hair would be the main stumbling block to getting away with this. Say he then concocted a story to add plausibility to his claim to paternity that his family had some wooly-haired Papuan ancestors from West Irian in Indonesian New Guinea.

    Assume the story worked and that Barry Soetoro, along with everybody at Punahou, believed he was just some kind of a funny looking white-East Asian-Melanesian mixed race kid. Would he be president today?

    Of course not.

    The career of a Barry Soetoro who didn’t call himself black would probably have been a lot like that of his half-sister Maya, a semi-employed soft subject Ph.D.

    Putting my reductionist hat on, we can conclude from the spectacular career of Barack Obama that in 21st century America, being black is highly advantageous. Sadly, acting black continues to correlate with self-destructiveness.

    http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/05/obamas-three-white-girlfriends.html

  58. Ernst Schreiber says:

    From that Obama manifesto:

    Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats.
    However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance.

    Hey! I think we’ve finally found a catchphrase to describe that whole constitutional conservative/classical liberal/libertarian thing:

    bourgeois liberalism!

    Quick, somebody tell Jeff.

  59. happyfeet says:

    that’s so whit stillman

  60. happyfeet says:

    which, I just showed a wee stupid kid Metropolitan the other day

    he didn’t get that no we’re not gonna see anyone fuck

    he thought i was just kidding

  61. Lamontyoubigdummy says:

    As a “good night to all” gift, a buddy sent me this.

    Sleepy Outlaw out.

  62. Lamontyoubigdummy says:

    Sorry. Another try at the link.

    Think that did it.

  63. Ernst Schreiber says:

    No no no

    it’s redolent of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

    so it’s very Macks Fayber* and not at all Whit Stillman, or Slim Whitman for that matter!

    *spelled phonetically so we can all pronounce like Obama.

  64. geoffb says:

    Eliot? Okay. From his 1949 “Notes toward the Definition of Culture” this passage which seems fitting for our present day though written about our radical-progressive’s old mentor.

    The newest type of imperialism, that of Russia, is probably the most ingenious, and the best calculated to flourish according to the temper of the present age. The Russian Empire appears to be sedulous to avoid the weaknesses of the empires which have preceded it: it is at the same time more ruthless and more careful of the vanity of subject peoples.

    The official doctrine is one of complete racial equality-an appearance easier for Russia to preserve in Asia, because of the oriental cast of the Russian mind and because of the backwardness of Russian development according to western standards. Attempts appear to be made to preserve the similitude of local self-government and autonomy: the aim, I suspect, is to give the several local republics and satellite states the illusion of a kind of independence, while the real power is exercised from Moscow.

    The illusion must sometimes fade, when a local republic is suddenly and ignominiously reduced to the status of a kind of province or crown colony; but it is maintained-and this is what is most interesting from our point of view-by a careful fostering of local “culture,” culture in the reduced sense of the word, as everything that is picturesque, harmless and separable from politics, such as language and literature, local arts and customs.

    But as Soviet Russia must maintain the subordination of culture to political theory, the success of her imperialism seems likely to lead to a sense of superiority on the part of that one of her peoples in which her political theory has been formed; so that we might expect, so long as the Russian Empire holds together, to find the increasing assertion of one dominant Muscovite culture, with subordinate races surviving, not as peoples each with its own cultural pattern, but as inferior castes.

    However that may be, the Russians have been the first modern people to practice the political direction of culture consciously, and to attack at every point the culture of any people whom they wish to dominate. The more highly developed is any alien culture, the more thorough the attempts to extirpate it by elimination of those elements in the subject population in which that culture is most conscious.

  65. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Somebody go track down the video of Reagan celebrating the emmigration from the Soviet Union of those dissidents and refuseniks who’d been camped out in the U.S. Embassy for years on end.

    Let’s see how Reagan spiked the football.

    You know, just for comparison.

  66. George Orwell says:

    Spotted on a rare site: a conservative Briton with an interest in the retrofuture. Anyway,

    http://davidszondy.blogspot.com/2012/05/welcome-to-airstrip-one.html

    This should frighten everyone. Because it is coming here. The worst part? The BBC reports the “incident” without any, any link or reference to the alleged racist remarks. Was a personal threat levied? Was it merely bad language? Who knows? The Ministry of Truth is not obliged to inform the proles of its prerogatives. Freedom of speech is fully dead across the Atlantic, and is moribund here.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-17906911

  67. Lamontyoubigdummy says:

    Remember that thing I said on that one thread agreeing about how the the tanning booth tax is wrong? I take it back.

    Doesn’t matter if your an atheist, agnostic, a wiccan, or whatever. Find a Rosary, some garlic, silver bullets, and some cloth from Father Damien’s robe before you look at this.

    For the love of God, tax it!

  68. leigh says:

    If she wants to turn herself into human jerky, I say let her.

  69. Dale Price says:

    If she wants to turn herself into human jerky, I say let her.

    Sure. And her health insurer should be permitted to send her a rewritten policy excluding treatment for any and all forms of skin cancer, retroactive to yesterday.

    In addition, she should be excluded from any form of disability payments, public or private, stemming from her hobby.

    You want to kill yourself, fine, but do it on your own dime.

  70. Dale Price says:

    pocahontas warren

    Pinnochio-hontas Warren is more like it.

    I like that one, Mike. I’m also partial to “Fauxcahontas,” which is starting to make the rounds.

  71. McGehee says:

    Lamontyoubigdummy says May 3, 2012 at 5:01 am

    I’m betting she’ll be Mitzi’s running mate, since she’s obviously at least as black as Obama and a woman. Any takers?

  72. geoffb says:

    Warren to tanning bed mom. “Just check the box dear, nobody really looks into how you appear.”

  73. cranky-d says:

    As a man, I’m thankful that we generally have an inflated body image rather than a deflated one. That way I don’t have to worry about doing squirrely things like, say, tanning the frel out of my skin.

    I’ll keep my pasty-white glow.

Comments are closed.