September 10, 2012

Obama — referring to Paul Ryan as "Jack Ryan" — says he didn't know Ryan was going to be there... but he did know he was there.

Obama was talking to Bob Woodward about the speech he gave last year in which he chastised Paul Ryan over the debt deal, when Ryan was sitting right there in the front row.

Ryan, who had thought the invitation was "an olive branch," said afterwards "I can't believe you poisoned the well like that," and, later: "What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief."

The interview, revealed today, took place on July 11th, before Ryan was chosen for VP:
"I'll go ahead and say it – I think that I was not aware when I gave that speech that Jack Ryan was going to be sitting right there"...


"And so I did feel, in retrospect, had I known – we literally didn't know he was going to be there until – or I didn't know, until I arrived. I might have modified some of it so that we would leave more negotiations open, because I do think that they felt like we were trying to embarrass him," Obama continued. "We made a mistake."
It's not clear whether "Jack Ryan" is in Obama's head, waiting to pop out inappropriately, because of the Tom Clancy character or because of the Illinois politician who was forced out of the U.S. Senate race with Obama after some divorce records were leaked. ("In those files, Jeri Ryan alleged that Jack Ryan had asked her to perform sexual acts with him in public in sex clubs in New York, New Orleans, and Paris. Jeri Ryan described one as 'a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling.'") Ryan was replaced by Alan Keyes, the man Obama beat to get the steppingstone from which he vaulted to the presidency. It isn't in Obama's present-day interest to send us back to the old Jack Ryan story:
Subsequent to his withdrawal from the U.S. Senate race in Illinois, Jack Ryan has characterized what happened to him as a "new low for politics in America." According to Ryan, it was unprecedented in American politics for a newspaper to sue for access to sealed custody documents. Ryan opposed unsealing the divorce records of Senator John Kerry during Kerry's race against George W. Bush in 2004, and Kerry's divorce records remained sealed. Ryan has made the following request: "let me be the only person this has happened to. Don’t ask for Ted Kennedy’s. Don’t ask for John McCain’s. Don’t ask for Joe Lieberman’s. Just stop. This is not a good precedent for American society if you really want the best and brightest to run."
Now, back to Paul Ryan and Obama's berating him as he sat there in the front row for a speech about how to resolve the debt crisis. Oh, by the way, remember Bill Clinton's his much-praised DNC speech: "What works in the real world is cooperation..."
Los Angeles is getting green and Chicago is getting an infrastructure bank because Republicans and Democrats are working together to get it. They didn't check their brains at the door. They didn't stop disagreeing, but their purpose was to get something done.

Now, why is this true? Why does cooperation work better than constant conflict?...

One of the main reasons we ought to re-elect President Obama is that he is still committed to constructive cooperation.
Clinton said "cooperation" 6 times. It was his biggest theme. (Some people think Clinton was mostly, really talking about himself — his own superiority to Obama.)

So there was Obama, in the midst of the debt crisis, making a major speech, and Ryan, the person he needed to cooperate with, was sitting in the front row, and Obama berated him, as if he were a Supreme Court Justice at a State of the Union speech. Now, if Obama were really the "constructive cooperation" guy Clinton made him out to be, he wouldn't have excoriated Ryan even if Ryan were not sitting there. But it's still interesting to try to figure out if Obama knew Ryan was there. Let's examine that quote. First:
"I'll go ahead and say it – I think that I was not aware when I gave that speech that Jack Ryan was going to be sitting right there"...
I think that I was not aware.... Why the "I think" preference? He's deliberately framing his statement in memory, which makes me suspect that he did know and he's being careful to make it easy to say he misremembered if later there's any leak that says he was told or even that he planned to get Ryan there in front of him so he could lord the power of the presidency over him. (That's the technique he used on the Supreme Court.)

Second:
"And so I did feel, in retrospect, had I known – we literally didn't know he was going to be there until – or I didn't know, until I arrived..."
So, then, he did see Ryan there. How can he deny that? Ryan sat in front. The plan was to have Ryan sitting with required passivity beneath the President. 
"I might have modified some of it so that we would leave more negotiations open...."
Obama speaks from a prepared text and is admitting or asserting that he has no capacity to adapt to a changed situation. (Unlike Clinton — I guess he is superior! — who freely ad-libbed half of his convention speech.)

But why is modification even a question? It was a major speech that related to Paul Ryan whether Ryan was there or not. Obviously, Ryan would hear about it, whether he heard it in real time or not. And even if he wouldn't hear, what kind of ethics are you displaying to say one thing to someone's face and another behind his back? 
".... because I do think that they felt like we were trying to embarrass him...."
The concern is for how others interpreted it (not for what he actually did), for how that affected his ability to achieve what he wanted to achieve through getting them to give in to him, and the relevant concept is embarrassment, a prissy little emotion, embarrassment for Ryan, rather than his own intent to humiliate.

82 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obviously, Obama confused Ryan with another Jack he knows - Jack Sh*t.

TosaGuy said...

I'm Barack Obama?

AF said...

So the argument here is that the Republicans' unreasonable intransigence in the debt talks was due to hurt feelings?

Shouting Thomas said...

What you are describing here is the arrogance of a black man who's accustomed to the deference demanded by the racial quota system.

I've been through this shit in the office several times in my career.

I suspect I'm not the only one.

The tactic of "forgetting" a rival's name is a common one in the music biz. It sends the message that that rival is "nobody."

Ignorance is Bliss said...

They didn't stop disagreeing, but their purpose was to get something done.

Better than nothing is a very high standard.

Raised.by.wolves said...

He didn't know Ryan would be "sitting right there." Barry though Ryan would be sitting a couple seats over from where he actually sat.

chickelit said...

This event occurred after Ryan's famous take-down of Obama over budget shenanigans?

Names are one thing, but I find it implausible Obama would forget Paul Ryan's face.

Shouting Thomas said...

This event occurred after Ryan's famous take-down of Obama over budget shenanigans?

Names are one thing, but I find it implausible Obama would forget Paul Ryan's face.


Obama gave Ryan the middle finger, somewhat surreptitiously, during that encounter.

Obama knew precisely who he was addressing, and it wasn't "Jack Ryan."

Matt Sablan said...

AF: Republicans offered a ridiculous amount to Democrats. Democrats were willing to accept it (and it would have been a coup for them; Republicans were really going to give away the store, so to speak). Then Obama screwed it up. It is why Reid tried to lock him out of the meetings. Hell, Obama is such a weak leader that random staffers feel comfortable calling him to task.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

So the argument here is that the Republicans' unreasonable intransigence in the debt talks was due to hurt feelings?

That might have been the argument, if there had been unreasonable intransigence on the Republican side. We now know that the Republicans and Democrats in Congress were able to negotiate a deal. It was the President that pushed the problem right up to the edge of the cliff by promising to veto that deal.

gk1 said...

Reading these woodward excerpts I was thinking the president and his handlers in the whitehouse might have benefited by having this info released after the budget debacle and they may have learned from it and grown. Instead its just a reminder of what an amateur we have in office and how dangerous it is and how we need to remove him before the next budget crisis in 2013

Matt Sablan said...

The other point I like to mention about this (which has been common knowledge for long before Woodward wrote it) is the rank cowardice. Obama would not have said these things to Ryan's face, is his claim.

Because he is a -coward.-

test said...

AF said...
So the argument here is that the Republicans' unreasonable intransigence in the debt talks was due to hurt feelings?


No, it means Obama's unreasonable intransigence was caused in part by the belief he could browbeat rather than cooperate.

Brian Brown said...

Of course Obama views himself as a character in a novel.

Thats much more exciting than your failed presidency, after all.

He also can't work an iPhone and shouted "Three Proud Words - Made in the USA"

And then there is this.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

The True History of Simpson-Bowles

Mr. Obama created the panel in February 2010, without a trace of irony, after he had raised federal spending to post-World War II highs. His political goal was to blunt attacks on his overspending, while also trying to lure Republicans into becoming tax collectors for his agenda in the name of a balanced budget. Mr. Simpson is the kind of Republican who had fallen for this in the past.

So it was a pleasant surprise when Messrs. Simpson and Bowles instead endorsed a more efficient and competitive tax code. Their draft swapped fewer brackets and lower rates for fewer loopholes and "tax expenditures." The appeal for Democrats is that tax revenue would grow with a faster-growing economy, and Republicans would have to accept a net tax increase reaching 21% of GDP. That's far higher than the historic average between 18% and 19% and above the modern high of 20.9% in 1944.

The political myth is that Mr. Ryan was the spoiler because he's an anti-tax purist. His real objection at the time was that the Simpson-Bowles Democrats refused to offer an equal trade on spending. Their non-negotiable demand was that ObamaCare was off the table and there could be no structural reforms in Medicare and Medicaid.

madAsHell said...

I think I was not aware

Really?? I think I was not aware. What happens when you are aware?

Jack Ryan? I can't believe 0bama reads Tom Clancy.

Danielle Steele? Maybe.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

further...

"How is that a real compromise? Everyone agrees that Medicare and Medicaid are growing too fast for revenues to keep up. Mr. Obama himself told the 2010 House GOP retreat that "The major driver of our long-term liabilities, everybody here knows, is Medicare and Medicaid and our health-care spending. Nothing comes close." The fiscal reality is that if health care is off the table, then the only possible not-so-grand bargain is permanent tax increases that chase an explosion of federal spending.
The commission nonetheless divided into topical working groups, with Mr. Ryan joining Alice Rivlin of the Brookings Institution to propose a modified version of the premium-support Medicare reform he would later include in the House budget.

For political reasons, Messrs. Simpson and Bowles decided not to add this proposal to their final document. In December 2010, they were trying to get support from at least 14 of 18 members that Mr. Obama's executive order required for a formal consensus. Ultimately three Republicans including Mr. Ryan voted no, and four Democrats voted no, with 11 members in favor.

So in fact Democrats quashed the necessary supermajority even after they first vetoed any serious reform of Medicare. And Mr. Ryan is the "rigid" one? The beads-for-Manhattan logic seems to be that Mr. Ryan should still have gone along with this entitlement status quo and also tacitly endorse the Affordable Care Act to show he's a statesman. So he should have done Democrats a favor, become politically irrelevant and not solved the real fiscal problem in return for some nice mentions from NPR commentators. Thanks for the career counsel."

virgil xenophon said...

What Mary MaCarthy said of Lillian Hellman (every word she writes is a lie including "and" and "the") applies equally well to Obama.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

further more...

"By the way, the same pattern played out on the 2011 "super committee" that followed the debt-limit deal. Texas conservative Jeb Hensarling was willing to trade Medicare premium support for as much as half-trillion dollars in higher taxes. Democrats rebuffed this offer too.

In any case, even if the deficit commission had reached a consensus, all that would have happened is a fast-track vote in Congress. The bipartisan duo of Jim Cooper and Steve LaTourette later codified Simpson-Bowles, and it bombed on the House floor this April, 382 to 38.

The real reason the deficit is still so high is that Mr. Obama lacks Mr. Ryan's good-faith flexibility. It's hard to remember now, but Washington was optimistic about Simpson-Bowles early in 2011 as a blueprint for compromise. A White House aide even called Mr. Ryan to invite him to a Presidential speech at George Washington University in 2011, telling him he'd like what Mr. Obama had to say.

With Mr. Ryan in the front row, Mr. Obama instead trashed Mr. Ryan's House budget, claiming it would pit "children with autism or Down's syndrome" against "every millionaire and billionaire in our society," and that was one of the more restrained passages. Mr. Ryan's Tampa reference to Mr. Obama's dodging and demagoguery is accurate."

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

On Obama’s first trip to Louisiana after the disaster, the governor [Bobby Jindal] describes how the president took him aside on the tarmac after arriving to complain about a letter that Jindal had sent to the administration requesting authorization for food stamps for those who had lost their jobs because of the spill.

As Jindal describes it, the letter was entirely routine, yet Obama was angry and concerned about looking bad.

"Careful," he quotes the president as warning him, "this is going to get bad for everyone."

Nearby on the tarmac, Jindal recalls, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was chewing out his own chief of staff, Timmy Teepell.

“If you have a problem pick up the f——n’ phone,” Jindal quotes Emanuel telling Teepell.

The governor asserts that the White House had tipped off reporters to watch the exchange on the New Orleans tarmac that Sunday in May and deemed it a “press stunt” that symbolized what’s wrong with Washington.

“Political posturing becomes more important than reality,” he writes.

MayBee said...

Great analysis, Althouse.


When I was a young parent, my mother taught me the important art of finding a way where we both (my child and I) win, to keep battles from being prolonged and poisoned.

It is a skill Obama has not yet learned. Anything the GOP has helped him with has gone either unremarked, or he'll still campaign against them with it. Never any praise.

Compare Obama extending the Bush tax cuts (the GOP was holding the country hostage!) vs. how Bush treated Kennedy with NCLB.

You cannot be a successful leader if you always want to punish those with whom you must negotiate. Sometimes, you have to let them take their victory lap with you.

The Godfather said...

Clinton's myth of Obama as a president who seeks "cooperation" with the Republicans won't pass the smell test with anyone who has been following politics for the last 3 1/2 years. But the election isn't going to be decided by people who have been following politics for the last 3 1/2 years.

If you don't know it's BS, it sounds good. We want cooperation. And Obama and his supporters can probably sell to the ignorant the idea that it was the Republicans who refused to cooperate, not Obama. After all, don't the Republicans control Congress and haven't they done so for years, if not decades?

furious_a said...

The President mis-remembers, even though the President's own staff invited Jack-Paul Ryan to the GWU speech in apparent good faith.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Seems to me the entire sorted events listed above just confirm that Obama is a petty asshole.

exhelodrvr1 said...

Anyone who had bothered to do the tiniest amount of research into Obama's history would expect this, and would not have voted for him as a "unifier."

rehajm said...

Meh. We know this of Obama already. He relishes the opportunity to berate his opponents (and to him they are opponents) to their face. If you're a Republican or a woman in his cabinet you already know this about him.

Mary Beth said...

Jack Ryan, the Clancy one, was VP and then was elected president.

I"m not sure why it's supposed to be better to insult someone who isn't there rather than to their face. Doing it when they don't have the opportunity to respond at the time of the insult is just craven.

edutcher said...

Never forget the magnitude of Choom's vanity. If this took place after Ryan handed Zero his lunch, you can bet Little Zero would have seethed until he had gotten his "revenge".

Hey, it's the Chicago way.

As for Jack Ryan, no, he doesn't read Clancy. Maybe there's just a smidge of a guilty conscien...

Naw, never happen.

Ipso Fatso said...

Jack Ryan was the guy Obama ran against in Illinois for the US Senate until the Tribune (the "Conservative" Paper in Chicago) did Obama & Axelrod's bidding and exposed his divorce proceedings (which were sealed) clearing the way for Obama's Senate seat. Remember Axlerod was a former Tribune reporter. Coincidence, I think not.

James said...

Of course he has Jack Ryan on his mind; after he and Alexrod destroyed him by miraculously convincing a court in California to release sealed divorce and custody records.

MayBee said...

The link actually has Obama saying he couldn't see Ryan in the front row because there were spotlights in his eyes.

Yeah.
That's the ticket.

Cedarford said...

AA - "So, then, he did see Ryan there. How can he deny that? Ryan sat in front. The plan was to have Ryan sitting with required passivity beneath the President."
==============

Perceptive post by Althouse.

Get opponents in a venue Obama controls to berate and humiliate them - and then have people on his side ready to yell "shock! and outrage!" when the person(s) being attacked are "disrespectful" by defending themselves.

Wonder if this originiated when The One was a law lecturer. And part of his schtick was finding students who disagreed with his views to single out in class to berate. Then reprimanding them (or having Obama's latest con law teachers pets reprimand them) - for disrupting the classroom - if they in turn spoke up and defended themselves for disrespect and disrupting The One's lecture time.


It does seem to be a pattern.

furious_a said...

So from the story it appears that the President needs (in addition to straw-men to appear reasonable and a teleprompter to appear articulate) a raised podium so he'll appear imposing.

What angers the President is that both men know that Mr. Ryan understands the ACA better than its namesake does.

Larry J said...

Bob Ellison said...
He might just be stupid.

He appears, in fact, to be stupid.


What was your first clue?
57 states?
Austrian language
Hawaii as part of Asia?
His complete economic policy?
His foreign policy of pissing off friends and sucking up to enemies?

Obama might be "book smart" so long as the books are those like "The Communist Manifesto." However, intelligence requires the ability to learn from mistakes and failures. Obama is unable to learn from the failures of socialist economic policies. It stands to reason that he isn't very intelligent. He most certainly isn't wise.

Cedarford said...

Why Maybee would be a better President than Obama....

She says this:

You cannot be a successful leader if you always want to punish those with whom you must negotiate. Sometimes, you have to let them take their victory lap with you.

Pithy, Maybee, pithy!

Reagan went out of his way to credit Tip O'Neill. Clinton thanked Bob Dole on numerous occasions after 1994 for working with Clinton on major matters and help stop some of Gingrich's more destructive initiatives.
Romney was careful when Mass passed Romneycare to spread the credit around, same with the Olympics...

To get similar "leaders" to Obama...look at what historians said about Nixon after his 1972 Election had given him a landslide mandate. Nixon took it as his personal glory, gave little credit to others, and thought he was so mighty "The President" no longer needed to work with others since the American People were behind him.
When he got in trouble and needed more allies...they were not there.

Original Mike said...

"So there was Obama, in the midst of the debt crisis, making a major speech, and Ryan, the person he needed to cooperate with, was sitting in the front row, and Obama berated him, as if he were a Supreme Court Justice at a State of the Union speech."

Remember, this was the guy who said he was going to calm the partisian waters.

I've decided that Obama is the most disingenuos politician I have ever seen. And that's saying a lot.

Cedarford said...

AA - "So, then, he did see Ryan there. How can he deny that? Ryan sat in front. The plan was to have Ryan sitting with required passivity beneath the President."
==============

Perceptive post by Althouse.

Get opponents in a venue Obama controls to berate and humiliate them - and then have people on his side ready to yell "shock! and outrage!" when the person(s) being attacked are "disrespectful" by defending themselves.

Wonder if this originiated when The One was a law lecturer. And part of his schtick was finding students who disagreed with his views to single out in class to berate. Then reprimanding them (or having Obama's latest con law teachers pets reprimand them) - for disrupting the classroom - if they in turn spoke up and defended themselves for disrespect and disrupting The One's lecture time.


It does seem to be a pattern.

Roger J. said...

Mr Obama is a small, petty human being. And perhaps "human being" is too nice a description.

ricpic said...

I think I didn't know Jon Corzine was my chief bundler when I told EriC-C-C-C not to go there.

Carnifex said...

Wow AprilApple! That was a lot of good work! To bad it was wasted on an O-bot. I gave up trying to reason with them during his first election. Anyone who thinks the president is gonna' fill their gas tank, while he lowers the temperature of the Earth, and actually faints at his words is beyond reason. Just ask Tingles.

Better to just meet them with the scorn they deserve. Maybe that will shut them the you-know-what up for the rest of the day, which is all I really care about getting from them.

Jane the Actuary said...

So has anyone catalogued the instances of O. giving the middle finger to someone surreptitiously? That alone is an indicator that he's not a team player.

Roger J. said...

Jane--flipping someone off is an idication that he is a total asshole.

MadisonMan said...

I think I was not aware

Really?? I think I was not aware. What happens when you are aware?

That phrase jumped at me too. You're either aware or you're not. There's no need to say I think.

Lawyerly equivocation at best.

Anonymous said...

The Liar-in-Chief was not lying, Jack Ryan wasn't there, Paul Ryan was. Clintonesque what "is" is.

Matt Sablan said...

I don't think the "I think I was not aware" is lawyerly evasion. I think it just is how people speak sometimes, especially when they're nervous or in a less than happy situation. People stumble over words fairly naturally, and "I think" is a tick that I have too. Someone might ask me how old I am, and I start my sentence "I think," it's just a space filler like like or uhm.

Cincinnatus said...

More evidence that Obama really was and remains unfit for the office. Regardless of ideology, he just has no clue how to use the office to accomplish things.

Eric said...

As for ad-libbing, Obama spoke without a teleprompter in Roanoke. Look at how well that worked out.

Frankly, I think it worked out well, because it showed us something about what is really in his head. My perspective may differ from Mr. Obama's, however.

Eric said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MaggotAtBroad&Wall said...
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CWJ said...

Althouse pretty much covers the bases in her post. Bottom line - Obama is the sort of bully that punches someone whose arms are being held.

Now that I think of it; of all the vile characterizations hurled at W, I don't think "bully" was ever one of them. Says volumes about the two men.

Matt Sablan said...

On the Made in the USA thing -- in Obama's speech at the convention, he said "Made in USA," which is three words, so I think that's what he meant to say in his three words.

Paul said...

"The concern is for how others interpreted it (not for what he actually did)"

The narcissist is only concerned with his standing in the eyes of the onlooker.

Electing one as a leader is the height of folly.

Left Bank of the Charles said...

Ah, it was TOTUS not POTUS. The dangers of a prepared speech and a teleprompter.

jungatheart said...

Barry liked being in charge. Every day before class, kids lined up outside the classroom. In first grade, his first year at the school, Barry commanded the front of the line, calling out baris ("make a line")—the kids would line up; siap grak ("get ready")—the kids would straighten the line; tegap ("stand straight"), and then, once he was convinced the lines were straight, he would let them into the classroom. His third-grade teacher had to encourage him to take turns. "He always wants to be No. 1, to be at the front. Psychologically, he wants to be in charge," she says. "Sometimes I had to tell him to let other kids do it." He ceded his place willingly, she says. (Still, he acknowledges a bossy streak. As a young man, he recalled, he was tough on his sister and mother: "I scolded Maya for spending one evening watching TV instead of reading the novels I'd bought for her," Obama wrote. "I instructed my mother on the various ways that foreign donors and international development organizations like the one she was working for bred dependence in the Third World.") In the Jakarta years, Obama also often tried to be the schoolyard peacemaker. "Barry, if his friends were having arguments, he'd become a mediator," says Harmon Askiar, a neighborhood playmate. "He would grab one friend's hand and grab the other friend's hand and force them to shake each other's hands and be friends again."

http://www.thedailybeast
.com/newsweek/2008/08
/22/on-his-own.html

Nathan Alexander said...

"I'll go ahead and say it – I think that I was not aware when I gave that speech that Jack Ryan was going to be sitting right there"...

I eagerly await all those liberal/progressives who parsed Paul Ryan's marathon statement into a lie that disqualifies him from office applying that same standard to Obama.

After all, claiming to not remember events that occurred less than 2 years ago is a clear and obvious lie.

Nathan Alexander said...

...unless, of course, garage, shiloh, et al, are hypocrites, more interested in partisan gain than honesty or fairness.

prairie wind said...

Obama reminds me of Pol Pot.

Comanche Voter said...

Well there's Jack Ryan, and then there's Jack Ass. Both were present at the speech, but only one was at the podium.

Colonel Angus said...

So the argument here is that the Republicans' unreasonable intransigence in the debt talks was due to hurt feelings?

I can't understand why she won't go out with me again. I only said she doesn't sweat much for a fat chick.

Balfegor said...

re: gk1:

Reading these woodward excerpts I was thinking the president and his handlers in the whitehouse might have benefited by having this info released after the budget debacle and they may have learned from it and grown.

Why would you think that? The President and his staff knew perfectly well that Congressional leaders from both parties had to ask him to leave the roome so the adults could get a deal done. And publicising the fact wouldn't prevent them from lying to themselves about how the President screwed up. All it does it lock them into their spin.

Michael K said...

I blame Jerri Ryan in large part for that fiasco that gave us Obama. It was a child custody dispute and women frequently lie in those hearings to influence the judge. Judges know this, or should, and discount much of the exaggeration. Newspaper reporters don't or don't want to. An LA City Councilman was briefly imprisoned 30 years ago in such a setting. The judge figured out the truth and he was acquitted. The ex-wife had alleged he molested their daughter.

Strelnikov said...

Well, he is a clear and present danger. To Obama.

Shanna said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Synova said...

Wow.

Any player of MMORPGs has heard of a "miss-tell."

Any Christian who has spent time studying scripture has heard warnings that what is done in secret will be shouted from rooftops.

Any resident of the 21st Century knows that anything you say *will* be recorded and the person you are insulting *will* hear it and no hope on the planet will send it permanently down the memory hole.

Don't post drunk pictures on facebook and don't sext.

And don't whine that you weren't trying to be insulting and bombastic and *manly* by insulting your rival in front of his peers.

Paul said...

Jack Ryan?

Does Obama mean Harrison Ford, who played Jack Ryan on TV?

Well I just have THREE words.. "Made in the USA", while I use my IPOD... sort of while touring all 57 states.

Dang.. and I thought Slow Joe Biden was a goofup.

rp said...

I'm glad to see that others remember who Jack Ryan is -- the guy who Barack Obama destroyed through crude sexual innuendo so that he, Barack Obama, would have a clear path to becoming a US Senator, even though he, Barack Obama, had done NOTHNG in his then current job as an Illinois state senator. Let us hope that Barack Obama's slip of tongue means he has some capacity to feel guilt about his past acts of very dirty politics. Let us not be too surprised, though, if he tries to "Jack Ryan" his new opponent, Paul Ryan.

BarryD said...

Freudian slip, indicating that Obama fears that Ryan is some kind of strategic genius superhero who will win, no matter what?

BarryD said...

"Any Christian who has spent time studying scripture has heard warnings that what is done in secret will be shouted from rooftops."

If they never got around to those verses, just what WERE they talking about in Obama's church, where his pastor was his personal spiritual mentor for 20 years, anyway?

Oh, yeah...

Anonymous said...

the guy who Barack Obama destroyed through crude sexual innuendo

He was losing before the divorce records were released. The Tribune was the entity that requested the unsealing of the records.

Colonel Angus said...

Jane--flipping someone off is an idication that he is a total asshole.

For me it was his trademark tilted head, look down his nose pose that told me the type of person he was.

AlanKH said...

Hawaii as part of Asia?

(insert birth certificate joke here)

Colonel Angus said...

The Tribune was the entity that requested the unsealing of the records.

I'm not a lawyer but are divorce decrees typically public documents? I know notices are but are actual divorce decrees and/or settlements?

Seems wrong if they are.

Joe Schmoe said...

More intransigence from the party of "We've got the votes. Fuck 'em." And that wasn't the Republican party, folks.

Matt Sablan said...

"He was losing before the divorce records were released. The Tribune was the entity that requested the unsealing of the records."

-- It was dirty politics; if any one thinks that Obama's campaign didn't have a hand in it, they're kind of silly. Especially if they really were winning. Look, Obama can sometimes play hardball politics real well. Maybe he'll find out that Romney once drank a beer when no one was looking. You never know. Keep Hope alive!

pm317 said...

They say he is a nice guy. Right!
He flipped a bird at Hillary in 2008. His campaign played "I have 99 problems and bitch is not one of them". He lies through his teeth like he is doing now as indicated in the post. He has lied all along through primary 2008 and beyond. But now all the Righties are ready to talk about it and post it on blogs. When we screamed foul in 2008, no one listened and some even voted for him.

dreams said...

"Obviously, Obama confused Ryan with another Jack he knows - Jack Sh*t."

I won't say Obama doesn't know Jack because he apparently knows Jack Shit but that Jack-off of a president currently infesting the white house won't get reelected despite the current polls because of this...

"Additionally, Obama polls more strongly personally than he does professionally. I believe that this is evidence of the same chasm we see in polls versus votes on gay marriage. Americans don’t want to tell pollsters that they dislike the president, out of fear that they will come off as racist. The fact is, the president’s race helped him win four years ago but will not help him win re-election. His record will matter no matter how many distractions he and his campaign toss up. The same voters who tend to say that they like Obama personally still rate him poorly on his job performance. Many of those voters turned out to buy chicken sandwiches last month to defend free speech. They will turn out in November."

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/09/10/seriously-dont-panic-about-the-latest-polls/

Sprezzatura said...

Even if the Rs are actually hurt by this situation, it'd help their cause if they could pretend otherwise.

Maybe it's impossible to hide insecurities that are this intrinsic.



Wimps.

el polacko said...

"three little words: i didn't know that jack ryan, the austrian-speaking corpse-man, was gonna be anywhere in these 57 states."

guess we don't really need to see those college transcipts anymore, do we?

yashu said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
DEEBEE said...

Does Obama live in hte Platonic world of shadows?

Anthony said...

I lived in Illinois in those days. That was the dumbest sex scandal in American political history. A husband asks his wife for sex, creepy sex to be sure. She says no. He says OK.

Incredible.

SoulStraw3 said...

You racists really love playing holier than thou!

I expect that you go for guys that lie, are rich and think simpletons are going to vote Ryan Rommney into the White House. Oh I forgot you do believe everthing that tea baggers say (It’s not a party, it’s Carl Rowe and Fix News’ view of a far right agenda.) Barack Obama is not a Communist, a fascist, a Muslim, a Marxist, a Progressive or even a socialist. Hard to believe the only jewish man with a thinking brain is the guy who created the Power Rangers!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rabbi-shmuley-boteach/haim-saban-obama-israel_b_1874008.html

Pretty much the only people who think President Obama is a failure are the guys who think George W. Bush was a success.

I can’t imagine right wingers have enough brains to know what a “narcissist” is.

He may have recently apologized for it, but the gaffe was about a year and a half ago. He wasn’t insultingly “forgetting” the Republican VP candidate’s name. He was confusing the name of one of the 441 members of the U.S. House of Representatives with the name of the guy he ran against 7 years previously.