From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:
Obama Announces Gun Metaphors in Politics Are Now Totally Cool Again
“He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. They pull a knife, you pull a debt ceiling! That’s the Chicago way!”
Or something like that: “In some of his harshest language to date in the fight over the deficit, President Obama warned today that the debt ceiling should not be ‘used as a gun’ against Americans to extract tax breaks for the wealthy. Speaking at the Twitter Town Hall at the White House today, the president said Congress ‘shouldn’t be toying’ with the debt ceiling and cautioned against risking the financial health of the country in order to protect the interests of the super wealthy. ‘Never in our history has the United States defaulted on its debt. The debt ceiling should not be something that is used as a gun against the heads of the American people to extract tax breaks for corporate jet owners, for oil and gas companies that are making billions of dollars because the price of gasoline has gone up so high. I mean, I’m happy to have those debates. I think the American people are on my side on this,’ Obama said.”
A tone of stunned disbelief sets in at American Glob: “Is Obama losing his mind? Normally I would point to the hypocrisy of Obama’s party which often uses violent rhetoric while lecturing everyone else on civility but this is so over the top, so beneath the office of the president, I’m actually concerned about the man’s sanity.
“Do these words sound appropriate coming from the President of the United States? You think we’re on your side? Dude, you need meds. This is beyond crass. Beyond tasteless. Beyond everything.”
Bryan Preston, like me, can’t keep up with the about-faces and contradictions: “Why, it was just the other day that President Obama called for Republicans and Democrats to leave their rhetoric at the door, before he compared Republicans to murderous hostage-takers. And that was after Obama declined a Republican offer to meet on the debt, before deciding to call for a summit to meet with Republicans on the debt. The message in all this is, Obama plays by his own rules while trying to dictate the rules to the rest of us. Between that ‘guns to the heads’ line and suggesting that he doesn’t like the US military, I’d say President Obama had a boffo twitter event. And TOTUS’ job should be quite safe until 2012.”
Preston’s allusion to whether the president is fond of the military stems from Obama’s awkward declaration that “We will have to make tough decisions about Defense spending, or even on programs that I like.”*