16 thoughts on “Quoting Obama”

1. obviously you didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, since it was covered on Fox News and Andrew Sullivan posted a full transcript a day after the speech.

   If you actually read the speech, it sounds like something Bill Cosby would say. There’s zingers like:

   “Look at what happened in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast when Katrina hit. People ask me whether I thought race was the reason the response was so slow. I said, “No. This Administration was colorblind in its incompetence.”

   “This is not to excuse the violence of bashing in a man’s head or destroying someone’s store and their life’s work. That kind of violence is inexcusable and self-defeating.”

   “And when we try to have an honest debate about the crises we face, whether it’s from the pulpit or the campaign trail, the pundits don’t want us to find common ground, they want us to find someone to blame. They want to divide us into Red States and Blue States, and tell us to always point the finger at somebody else – the other party, or gay people, or people of faith, or immigrants.”

   “We can diminish poverty if we approach it in two ways: by taking mutual responsibility for each other as a society, and also by asking for some more individual responsibility to strengthen our families.”

   1. Bill Cosby

      Racist.

   2. It was a mish mash of what Bill Cosby would say, and what Kanye West and Al Sharpton would say. It was not the Barack Obama that the media sold us.

      1. It was not the Barack Obama that the media sold us.

         The real Barack Obama was cleverly hidden in front of network TV cameras.

         1. This from the guy who believes Obama Administration inflation numbers.

            1. Yeah, believing those conspirators at the Bureau of Labor Statistics — what could be wackier?

            2. The BLS doesn’t handle inflation estimates. They track labor statistics.

            3. The BLS also computes the CPI. The FAQ is informative (if you’re crazy enough to believe those evil BLS economists).

   3. That wasn’t a transcript. There are significant differences in the speech given and the prepared remarks handed out by the Obama campaign. You should be watching the actual speech not reading what wasn’t spoken.

      Obama specifically said race was to blame for the response to Katrina along with many other things.

      But ya, it really isn’t shocking that Obama views people he doesn’t know through racial stereotypes and falsely accuses people and organizations as racist for his political gain. It is not like he stopped doing this when he became president or when the campaign started.

   4. Chris, what do you have to say to this?

      “Down in New Orleans, where they still have not rebuilt 20 months later,” Obama says, “there’s a law, federal law — when you get reconstruction money from the federal government — called the Stafford Act. And basically it says, when you get federal money, you’ve got to give a 10 percent match. The local government’s got to come up with 10 percent. Every 10 dollars the federal government comes up with, local government’s got to give a dollar.

      “Now here’s the thing, when 9/11 happened in New York City, they waived the Stafford Act — said, ‘This is too serious a problem. We can’t expect New York City to rebuild on its own. Forget that dollar you got to put in. Well, here’s 10 dollars.’ And that was the right thing to do. When Hurricane Andrew struck in Florida, people said, ‘Look at this devastation. We don’t expect you to come up with y’own money, here. Here’s the money to rebuild. We’re not going to wait for you to scratch it together — because you’re part of the American family.’ … What’s happening down in New Orleans? Where’s your dollar? Where’s your Stafford Act money? Makes no sense. Tells me that somehow, the people down in New Orleans they don’t care about as much.”

      Apparently, this was said after the Stafford Act condition had been waived for Katrina (several times apparently over the months following the disaster) and allegedly Obama had voted against some Katrina funds with waiver on one occasion weeks before the speech (it was apparently tied to increased war spending). Even if one grants the wisdom of doing so, it does indicate that he wasn’t ignorant of what Congress was doing at the time.

      1. The last paragraph above refers to rickl’s link below about Obama’s vote against a spending bill that happened to waive the 1:10 matched spending requirement for Katrina.

      2. Obama did in fact vote for waiving Stafford Act requirements for New Orleans. This was after multiple hearings, including several in which Bush administration people defended the Stafford Act in hearings. One hearing included Obama pressing the administration on the issue.

         Apparently Obama’s gripe is “why did we have to fight for the waiver when New York got it automatically?”

         1. And then why was Obama one of 14 other liberals Dem’s who voted against a bill that had a stafford act waiver in it? Oh, because he’s an idiot or a liar, take your pick.

2. “We can diminish poverty if we approach it in two ways: by taking mutual responsibility for each other as a society, and also by asking for some more individual responsibility to strengthen our families.”

   He forgot to add “Or we could increase poverty to post-war records by electing me!”

3. You’re also racist for not using “Gerrib’s Razor:” in interpretatiing what Obama says (especially arcane and abstruse things like, “Wealth is better when it’s spread around”–which clearly needs expert exegesis) of what Dear Leader says, the interpretation that most clearly benefits Dear Leader, however convoluted, contorted, or just plain off-thewall, is always the interpretation to choose.

4. Regarding the Katrina relief, get a load of this.

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