California Yankee:
On Tuesday, President Obama held the 16th “full” White House press conference of his presidency. That’s right Obama goes golfing more than six times for every press conference he gives.
This was the first scheduled, solo news conference for Obama since March. The last time Obama saw fit to allow the White House press corps an opportunity to formally ask him questions on U.S. soil was his “hastily-announced” appearance in the White House briefing room on June 8, 2012, during which he infamously said “the private sector is doing fine.”
During today’s press conference Obama was asked about climate change, Gen. David Petraeus, the fiscal cliff, immigration reform, Iran, A mandate, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Gov. Mitt Romney and Syria.
Ambassador Rice
Obama was the most obstreperous responding to a question from Jonathan Karl, Senior Political Correspondent for ABC News, about whether statements from senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham that they would do everything in their power to block Ambassador Rice from becoming Secretary of State.
As I am sure you will recall, on this year’s anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on America, we suffered a terrorist assault which resulted in the murder of four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens. For days we saw riotous Muslim mobs, first in Egypt, then Tunisia, Yemen and Sudan attack U.S. embassies espousing hate for American values and belief. The hateful Muslim mobs multiplied throughout the Muslim world, even in countries not considered Muslim, such as Britain and Australia.
It got worse as al Qaeda went on the offensive. Al Qaeda attacked the American-lead multinational peacekeeping force in the Sinai. They also attacked a U.S. Marine base in Southern Afghanistan in an effort to kill Britain’s Prince Harry and inflicting the worse loss of air power on the Marine Corps since Vietnam.
Against this backdrop, which was clear to the foreign press, CNN and even a member in good standing of the biased so-called fact-checking wing of the Democrats’ party, Ambassador Rice went on news show after news show and misled the American people. Rice claimed the vicious attack in Benghazi was unplanned and provoked only by a silly anti-Islam video.
Nevertheless, Obama strongly defended Rice’s so-called honor:
“But let me say specifically about Susan Rice, she has done exemplary work. She has represented the United States and our interests in the United Nations with skill, and professionalism, and toughness, and grace. As I’ve said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her.
If Senator McCain and Senator Graham, and others want to go after somebody? They should go after me. And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi? And was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received? And to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.”
I wish folks would go after Obama on this as well as Rice. There is plenty of blame to go around, even enough for Hillary. But Obama won’t address what actually happened in Benghazi, he is stonewalling — saying his regime is still “investigating” what happened there two months ago.
Fiscal Cliff
On the fiscal cliff, CNN chief White House correspondent Jessia Yellin reminded Obama that two years ago, he said he wouldn’t extend the Bush-era tax cuts, but at the end of the day, he did. Yellin asked why people and the Republicans should believe that Obama won’t cave again this time.
In response, Obama said two years ago was different, his cave two years ago was a one-time proposition. We’ll see. Obama claimed that if he gets his tax on those individuals who earn $200,000 and couples who earn $250,000 we would be half way to solving the fiscal cliff. I don’t see how that computes and he didn’t explain it.
Obama also managed to work in two of his campaign catch phrases which infuriate me — balanced and fair share. “Balanced” is Obamacrat code for higher taxes. And Obama’s so-called balanced approached is skewed.
James Pethokoukis, at the AEI Enterprise blog, writes that Obama’s new ‘balanced’ debt plan is 73% tax hikes: