You just know this pissed off the wingnuts:
Rep. Paul D. Ryan, architect of a Medicare overhaul aimed at slashing the cost of the popular entitlement program by reducing the government’s open-ended commitment to seniors, accused Obama of “mis-describing” his plan and implored the president to ease up on the “demagoguery.”
In reply, Obama said he was no stranger to cartoonish depictions, reeling off a list of conservatives’ favorite attack points: “I’m the death-panel-supporting, socialist, may-not-have-been-born-here president,” Obama said, according to people familiar with his remarks.
Absolutely nothing infuriates Republicans more than being held accountable for the things they’ve said and done, and this was a twofer. They’re being rejected by the public for trying to end Medicare, and now they had to have their own words about Obama thrown back in their faces. Accountability and reality really, really makes them mad, so I bet they were seething after this meeting.
MaximusNYC
“When the Republicans quit lying about us, we will quit telling the truth about them.” –Harry Truman
Linda Featheringill
From the article in the link above:
That’s my man!
And of course, he is absolutely correct.
From the article, I got the impression that neither Obama nor Geitner budged an inch. Makes me feel good.
Brachiator
@MaximusNYC:
Amen. Give ’em hell, Barry.
I just love how Obama is now deftly using the birther “may-not-have-been-born-here” BS against the GOP. Guess they should have disavowed this lie instead of tacitly endorsing it.
Hill Dweller
Right before this meeting, Ryan was on Fox News claiming “Obamacare” destroys medicare.
I think Ryan is a sociopath. Seriously.
Cat Lady
Why do the House Republicans keep agreeing to meet with him? He pWns them every.time. Stupidity – they haz it!
Steve
Of all the things Obama has ever said, I hope this is the quote that ends up on the monument.
Suffern ACE
Now now, those were things said by other republicans, not the elected congressmen, who have only ever shown the president the utmost respect. You Lie Mr. President.
danimal
The GOP whining about demagogery to Obama after all the terrible crap they’ve said was a slow-pitch softball over the middle of the plate.
We may never see that ball land.
James K. Polk, Esq.
Red meat for the base, from both sides.
Brinksmanship at its finest. The Republicans *will* blink first.
Your move, Mr. Ryan.
Just Some Fuckhead
We should enjoy the campaign-mode Obama while we have him.
4tehlulz
The fact that Obama didn’t reach over and snap anyone’s necks shows how limp-wristed he is.
Mike E
@Hill Dweller:
For reelz. So thinking these tools have any shame in them is wasted energy.
BGinCHI
Someone please ask Paul Ryan to define “demagoguery.”
I’ll kiss your ass if he gets it right.
/blood libel
Delia
Bbbbbut the goopers have only been following long-established tradition. IOKIYAR. It’s not fair to attack them now. (Maybe Boehner could cry a little at this point.)
kindness
Damn don’t you love Obama sometimes. Now if he would only take out a baseball bat and give those assholes some real Chicago love, I would love him even more.
Joseph Nobles
@Hill Dweller: Ryan’s not a sociopath. He’s a zealot.
Violet
Truth hurts. So sorry, Rep. Ryan.
BGinCHI
@Joseph Nobles: A demagogue, even.
Mike in NC
@Hill Dweller:
Not even worth debating. After all, this clown claims he was inspired to go into politics by his devotion to Ayn Rand.
I sincerely hope that whoever lands the GOP nomination next year picks Ryan as a running mate.
dollared
I realize that this was just one more step on the slow descent from a Classic Greek Demos-cracy to the gutter in which we now find ourselves, but mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm, that was satisfying.
Don’t worry, Paul, Bobo will kiss it and make it all better.
The Bearded Blogger
Obama isn’t that much of a fighter, he’s centrist by inclination.
But sometimes he can’t resist the opportunity for a burn
Trentrunner
Here’s a leaked quote from Obama’s roundtable yesterday with congressional Republicans:
And then Obama began to use the bat.
The Bearded Blogger
@Mike in NC: I’m an amateur face reader. Looking at Ryan’s face, my instinct tells me he’s got some scandal hidden already… mistress more likely than corruption…
Citizen_X
@Cat Lady:
UNPOSSIBLE! He can’t talk without a teleprompter! Bill Ayers writes all his stuff! He wasn’t qualified for Harvard Law! WE KEEP SAYING THIS STUFF, DON’T WE? THEN IT MUST BE TRUE!
Bokonon
Shorter GOP: “if you don’t repeat our partisan talking points, then YOU’RE A LIAR AND A DEMAGOGUE!!!”
Hey, that sort of whining works with the mainstream media. That way, the “nonpartisan” framing ends up being the GOP’s description of things.
And I just love the way Ryan calls his vouchers “premium support.” PREMIUM SUPPORT? Obama is supposed to repeat THAT kind of garbage? Ryan missed out on a brilliant career someplace deep in the HR department of a big corporation someplace, where they describe benefits cutbacks as “enhancements” and pay decreases as “opportunity sharing.”
Linda Featheringill
@BGinCHI:
Trish Roberts-Miller
MikeJ
@Citizen_X: Didn’t one frosh pubbie chicken out?
Chuck Butcher
If the GOPers were seething, what were (D)s doing? What outcome were they plotting? Sure, I love the poke in the eye – but what I care about is outcomes. I refuse to even begin to speculate what they’ll give on to save the hostage. (Wall Street and Assoc.s)
The Bearded Blogger
@Bokonon: The word “premium” in advertising is a tell-tale sign of a scam.
Linda Featheringill
@Joseph Nobles:
You may be right. He acts a lot like the original Zealots in the first century CE in Israel/Palestine/whatever-the-hell-it-was.
The ordinary people who went along with the Zealots would have been better off if they had just walked away. You could very well say the same thing about many Republicans today.
TaMara (BHF)
@Just Some Fuckhead: In his defense he has been a bit busy picking up the shattered pieces of our democracy and economy that Bush left behind.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Steve:
An anonymously sourced paraphrase from a meeting of party bosses with no press present? Why not, if that’s what our politics is all about nowadays.
The Bearded Blogger
@Citizen_X: Oh right, the telemprompter thing… that got old quick…
opal
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Who’s this “we”? I could have sworn you went to the other side of the island to sulk.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@Cat Lady:
Ain’t that the truth?
To paraphrase Monty Python: Don’t come back for another taunting.
Mike M
For better or worse, Obama’s brand is “I’m the reasonable man in the room.” I think he feels compelled to hold his tongue too often when a tart and pointed remark would serve him better.
Even so, I think the Democrats ought to have their own enforcer — to borrow a hockey term — to keep the Republicans in line. The president shouldn’t have to carry the whole team. If other members of the party pulled their weight in the House and Senate, the president could remain above the fray most of the time and focus on his message.
Violet
@The Bearded Blogger:
Oh, they’re still saying it. Heard Limbaugh say it just last week.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Cat Lady:
Maybe because their kids have begged and pleaded with them to get O’s autograph and have a photo snapped with him.
Discretely of course, and while the news media isn’t looking. After all, you wouldn’t want somebody sending a photo like that out on your Twitter account, with or without permission.
Emerald
@Hill Dweller:
He’s a True Believer. Same difference.
opie_jeanne
@The Bearded Blogger: For an Angels fan it has, until recently, induced either cringing or maniacal laughter. Jeff Mathis, our #1 catcher, is described as Premium by Mike Scioscia.
We think it means Jeffy has some interesting photographs in a safe deposit box.
Lev
@Mike M: I wholeheartedly agree, but I don’t think anyone wants the job. Then again, I’ve said a hundred times that if Democrats dumped half their wonk contingent and replaced them all with happy warrior types who live for partisan confrontation and debate, the country would be infinitely better off.
The Bearded Blogger
@Violet: That’s very Green of him, recycling worn out talking points. Gooper talking heads need to be thrifty these days…
BGinCHI
@Linda Featheringill: Precisely. So someone please tell me how Ryan’s use of this word is appropriate.
Seriously.
The only way it works is that he’s accusing Dems of acting like the GOP. Or something.
beltane
@Mike M: I agree with you. Obama needs someone by his side who actually enjoys tormenting these assholes. For example, maybe the federal government can save money by shutting off their air conditioning.
Redshift
@Chuck Butcher: I’ve always been an optimist, but they seem to be plotting is this:
“No, you get nothing ‘in return’ for raising the debt limit, just like it’s always been done. You don’t get us to join you in a Medicare suicide pact to save you from yourselves. You don’t get another round of cuts where you don’t even have any idea of what programs you consider unnecessary, just an abstract number you’ve promised the teabaggers. You don’t have a winning hand. We can afford to wait until your Wall Street and lobbyist owners are screaming so loud even you idiots can’t ignore it. Come back when you actually want to work this out rather than demonstrating your own weakness with ever-escalating demands.”
BGinCHI
@beltane:
Fixed.
jl
@Mike M:
” Even so, I think the Democrats ought to have their own enforcer—to borrow a hockey term—to keep the Republicans in line. ”
Time to let crazy old Joe Biden out the attack and tell him to say some gaffes aimed at the GOP?
Edit: Oops. Forgot he is heading some kind of group pretending to negotiate. So I guess ol’ Joe Biden is playing grown up daddy right now.
OK, then, when the time is right, they should tell him to walk out of the talks and shoot off some BidenGaffes (patent pending) aimed at the GOPpers.
Lev
@jl: He sure put Giuliani in his place. Swear to God, I’ve never seen a politician get owned so thoroughly.
The Bearded Blogger
@jl: I think Obama plans to have a different VP for 2012. If that is the case, it would make sense to unleash mean Joe Biden right around now…
danimal
@Violet: As long as the GOP believes this crap about Obama being unable to think without a teleprompter, they’ll continually underestimate him.
Then when they get pwned, they cry to their mommies about how mean and partisan Obama is while wondering what happened to their milkshake.
Chuck Butcher
Hmmm, that might include the idea of not getting knifed by … oh say the White House or Blue Dogs or – ahahahaha – the ever shifting ‘middle.’ Then there is the little issue of being elected by a CD or a State rather than the Electoral College. You mean you can’t elect a Sen Jeff Merkley because, uh, you’re not OR? But then, hopefully, you’re not represented by a Rep Greg Walden (OR2-R)…
Turgidson
@MaximusNYC:
In-fucking-deed. And to think, the Republicans Truman dealt with were, generally, not a bunch of sociopathic twats living in an alternate plane of reality. Imagine how much truth Truman would tell about this crowd.
Obama could have spent 45 minutes recounting the lies, conspiracy theories and blantant fear-mongering that’s been thrown at him or associated with him.
And poor ol’ Paul Ryan’s panties are in a bunch because Democrats have the audacity to tell the fucking truth about his putrid stew of puke and bullshit. What a fucking jackass.
Will we EVER get to a “at long last, have you no shame?” kind of moment with these dickheads?
shortstop
Someone taught Ryan this word two weeks ago and now he’s all noun, verb, demagogue.
Villago Delenda Est
My heart bleeds for Randroid swine like Paul Ryan.
I invite the shitstain to go DIAF.
Tsulagi
Love that.
Yeah, that and a few other things for the wingnuttiest among them. Like not recognizing them as ‘serious’ people, making fun of them and/or their loonier positions, insinuating they’re pussies or gay, and a couple of other lesser things. That gets them going. Used all of those after my place of employment went full metal wingnut after 9/11 and the Iraq invasion. I was real popular for a while. Good times.
gex
@BGinCHI: That word is too big for the 27%ers. I mean, they’re not going to look that up. That would be elitist book lernin. So it’s an inaccurate charge that wouldn’t even work if Obama didn’t pwn him.
Chuck Butcher
@Redshift:
That would please me endlessly, I don’t have lunch money to afford on that bet, though. Something else, maybe but not that bet.
Villago Delenda Est
@danimal:
“One false move, and the ni*CLANG* is going to get it!”
DonBoy
NPR news just told me, as fact, that “lawmakers face an August 2nd deadline to reach a deal on spending cuts that would allow the government to raise the nation’s more-than-14-trillion-dollar debt ceiling.” Because, of course, if they don’t cut spending, they can’t POSSIBLY raise the debt ceiling. Christ.
Suffern ACE
@Violet: Didn’t the house reps put into the continuing resolution bill last month a specific item whereby no public money could be spent providing a teleprompter for the President? Yeah, those House Reps really haven’t been about throwing red meat.
Cat Lady
@Mike M:
My sister is a bellwether of the sort of person who’s reasonably well informed and sensible but busy and apolitical, but when she pays attention to politics she mentions that Obama seems to be the only adult in the room these days and that the GOP always takes sides against the middle class. That’s what got Obama elected, and will get him elected again against the backdrop of wall to wall lying crazy medicare killing fucktard goopers.
As to the hockey enforcer – wasn’t that Raaaahhmmmmm?! Didn’t he touch all of the manic progressives in a bad place?
gex
@Tsulagi: So let me get this straight. To get under a Republican’s skin, you call them “pussies or gay, and a couple of other lesser things?”
Nice. I know they find those things insulting. But YOU grouped women parts and gays with “other lesser things.” Blech.
Linda Featheringill
@Villago Delenda Est:
Do you mean that the Republicans keep wanting to meet with Obama because they are trying to trap him?
stickler
@Turgidson: Turgidson:
Oh, no, the Republicans Truman was dealing with from ’46-49 were, indeed, a bunch of sociopathic twats who actually wanted to undo the New Deal while 80% of the electorate had seen it save the USA from Depression and Fascism. The GOP actually rammed Taft-Hartley through over Truman’s veto, at a time when union mobilization in the workplace was approaching its postwar zenith. A big chunk of the Congressional GOP wanted to repeat our brilliant “let the world go fuck itself” foreign policy from 1920. If they hadn’t simultaneously been scared shitless by Godless Joe Stalin and the Bolsheviks, they might have managed to pull that one off.
Of course, back then, the GOP actually represented industrial interests instead of God-bothering Pentacostals, so that did impose a modicum of sanity on their craziest ideas.
shortstop
@shortstop: Or I could have read the thread first.
Amy
Take a look at the damn polls. Obama got a bounce from killing bin Laden, which of course following his taunting of Trump and the release of the birth certificate. It looked like his numbers were dropping a bit but they’ve gone back up.
Gallup has his disapproval way down at 39% today. Fox has his approval at 55%, CNN at 54%.
Despite the lousy economy, he’s cruising — and I think it’s exactly what someone said above: He’s the grownup in the room. The Republicans look at idjiots. Folks like Medicare and they aren’t fooled by nonsense about “premium support.” They get that these folks crowed foolery that Obama wasn’t a real American. And while Sarah Palin gets most of the news coverage, Romney’s saying the US is real close to losing its free enterprise system. Clowns and crappy policies make Obama look real good.
opie_jeanne
@Cat Lady: My sister, who has always voted the way her husband/her boss/or our dad told her to, is suddenly taking notice that the Republicans are ganging up on the middle class, and takes it personally. She no longer has a husband, she’s unemployed, and Dad is 92 and starting to show a bit of decline.
She’s also decided she can’t stand Palin. This is the most independence she’s shown in 40 years. She’s 59 now.
opie_jeanne
@gex: Low-quality troll?
Hill Dweller
Apparently Ryan is giving a foreign policy speech at the Alexander Hamilton Society in Washington tonight.
This sociopath thinks he can be President.
Ash Can
@Mike J #27: Jeff Landry blew off the meeting, saying that he had no intention of spending his morning being “lectured” by
that nigraPresident Obama. It sounded like something out of To Kill a Mockingbird.Wag
This country can find major savings for Medicare. It’s really very simple. Allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices with the drug companies. That is a cut to Medicare that I would LOVE to see Obama push for. If Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are going to hold the nation hostage over the dpbt ceiling, then make them begin the negotiaions by shafting Big Pharma.
BGinCHI
@Hill Dweller: He can be President.
Of the Alexander Hamilton Society.
Tsulagi
@gex:
The “other lesser things” I was thinking of have nothing to do with women parts or gays. Just different tactics. But to be PC, yeah, instead of “pussies” I should have used the gender neutral word “wusses” or something like that. Sorry.
tim serbo
@Hill Dweller: psychopath. check the definition in the latest DSM and you’ll find it describes, to the last detail, ryan and also too the rest of that nidus of feral nihilists known on better wanted posters as the republican party.
MikeJ
@Ash Can: Paul Ryan asked Obama to bust up a chiffarobe.
El Cid
Right wingers hate the fact that people can even remember the past, much less recall and/or show it in ways which inconvenience them.
They have more of a sort of quantum-disentanglerizablization model of time — it only exists in whatever way they want to observe.
Evolved Deep Southerner
@The Bearded Blogger: Hillary?
jl
@BGinCHI:
As Ryan speaks at the Alexander Hamilton Society, that weird high pitched sound you’ll hear is Alexander Hamilton spinning in his grave.
Hamilton supported early social insurance programs, and a lot of his economics was a form of advocacy for policies that produced a kind of social insurance (though in some ways he seems backward to us, with his kind words for child labor in factories).
Turgidson
@stickler:
Good points – I didn’t mean to say that they were the type of crowd I would have voted for, they were still a pretty putrid lot. They were as much a party of unapologetic plutocrats then as they are now. Still, all things considered, as a party they look utterly sane compared to what we’re dealing with today, which is just off the charts batshit in my view.
Cat Lady
@Amy: @opie_jeanne:
Reality bites. It’s only going to bite harder, and Obama needs to be just who he is – a calm, mature, truth telling pragmatist who isn’t perfect, but who isn’t fucking around on his wife, or with reality. The more he is who he is, the more the goopers need to sound unhinged. I like his chances.
stuckinred
@Cat Lady: From the Unforgiven:
Little Bill Daggett:
Look son, being a good shot, being quick with a pistol, that don’t do no harm, but it don’t mean much next to being cool-headed. A man who will keep his head and not get rattled under fire, like as not, he’ll kill ya. It ain’t so easy to shoot a man anyhow, especially if the son-of-a-bitch is shootin’ back at you.
elftx
With a real Chicago softball..the 16″ I grew up with there!!
Mike in NC
@Hill Dweller:
Hmm. Probably will involve dropping
bombspremium support vouchers on swarthy Third Worlders who don’t speak English or love the Baby Jesus.MCA
Totally agree on the comments that it’s a sad state of affairs when the President himself has to hit these rhetorical softballs being thrown all over the place. Someone(s) else should have been throwing these barbs the last 28 months. My hope is DWS is the attack dog, now that she’s been placed in a position where she can access the microphone more.
stuckinred
@Mike in NC: “The entire rebel resistance buried under six million hardbound copies of “The Naked Lunch.” — The Firesign Theater …
patrick II
@Lev:
You too young then for the “You’re no John Kennedy”?
TuiMel
@Joseph Nobles:
Being a sociopath makes his job as a zealot SO much easier and satisfying for him.
Thoughtful Black Co-Citizen
Cue up: THE [Blackity Black Black] PRESIDENT IS SO AGGRESSIVE!
FlipYrWhig
@The Bearded Blogger:
No way. Ryan doesn’t have a woman or a man on the side; he has himself on the side. He’s all ideology, except for the part that’s pure narcissism.
boss bitch
@The Bearded Blogger:
no, he’s not.
TooManyJens
@The Bearded Blogger:
People keep saying this, and I have no idea why.
fasteddie9318
@The Bearded Blogger:
He could’ve had any woman in the world, but none could match the beauty of his own hand…and that became his one true love.
fasteddie9318
We all realize, I hope, that the “Republicans want to end Medicare as we know it” campaign theme only works if the terrified bunny rabbits, hippie-punchers, and conservative Republican wanna-bes in the Democratic Party don’t agree to end Medicare as we know it just so that the Republicans will stop giving them swirlies for a week or so. Who really has faith that they’re going to toe a hard line on this?
TooManyJens
@Ash Can:
Psst… Representative Landry … it’s not 2008 anymore.
AxelFoley
@Cat Lady:
And the bad thing (for them) is it doesn’t matter where they meet him–their turf or the White House–he takes them to the woodshed each time.
AxelFoley
@Mike M:
The Democrats would still control the House and would have even more control of the Senate.
El Cid
@TooManyJens: Who’s to say Joe wants it again, anyway?
The right choice is, of course, Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright.
Svensker
@MikeJ:
Yeah, but with which arm?
OzoneR
@Mike M:
That’s why the party has a chairwoman, that’s supposed to be her job.
Roy G
What continues to grate, besides the obvious skullfuckingduggery, is how the R’s manage to continue ‘working the refs’ – saying that Ryan is the ‘architect’ of this screwjob is like saying I was the ‘architect’ of that nasty dump I took this morning.
Janeane The Acerbic Goblin
This is all a nice change from 2 years ago, when Obama was sending the GOP roses and diamonds every day hoping they would be bipartisany and help him with his agenda.
We all know how well that turned out.
Has he finally realised the GOP hate his guts and think he’s an idiot, or did someone remind him that it’s an election year and the slogan “I helped the GOP kill Medicare” isn’t polling well?
Janeane The Acerbic Goblin
@Hill Dweller:
He does. Ryan has sycophants/yes men surrounding him all the time. The MSM adores him, too, so he probably thinks he has a good shot.
Reality has other thoughts on the subject.
Fred
Wow….John Galt Cole has gotten through an entire blog post somewhat related to Obama without ONCE critisizing Obama. That’s a first! I need a camera to commemorate this moment. I’ll just take off my pants and take a take a picture of my underwear and tweet it to one of my 21yo college girl admirers.
Elie
@Trentrunner:
Egads! Great quote…. absolutely the key to O.
gex
@Tsulagi: The phrase “and other” is grouping women parts and gays with “lesser things”. Also, nice how you recant on the woman parts only. So gays ARE unquestionably lesser I guess.
The phrase “or lesser things” would manage to NOT include women parts and gays in the set of lesser things. Not that it is really that big of a deal to you, because it is not demeaning to you.
Ugh. I get so tired of the CONSTANT messaging that I am lesser. I’m so fucking sick of it. Again, not your fucking problem.
patroclus
I’m all for toning down the rhetoric as soon as the pathetic despicable Republicans stop with their genocidal Ryan Plan that would perpetrate a Holocaust on America’s seniors.
Arclite
What really surprises me is that Obama is pretty moderate, and if the Repubs played their cards differently, they could really get a lot more conservative legislation passed. I’m just glad they are frickn’ idiots.
Calouste
@TooManyJens:
Succession. Biden will be 74 in 2016, a bit old for a candidate. Otoh, Obama doesn’t seem like the type to me who wants to handpick his own successor. And even if he would, the question would be, who?
Nethead Jay
@patrick II: That is, indeed, the standard. I remember thinking, wow it’s almost like that physically knocked the air out of him.
goblue72
@Calouste: Gov. Christine Gregoire (D-WA) or Gov. Beverly Perdue (D-NC). Possibly Kathleen Sebelius.
Sasha
@Hill Dweller:
They have a test for that …
Marc McKenzie
@Trentrunner:
Trentrunner, thanks for making me laugh out loud…been a while since I’ve heard this whole quote.
And Bobby D delivered it perfectly.