I make no apologies for being reasonable

Yesterday, Barack Obama spoke at a “town hall meeting” in Iowa, because he heard about the foot-long corn dogs, I guess.

Speaking of foot-long corn dogs, here’s the new $1.1 million presidential bus.


Black? Seriously? Is it left over from the Cheney Administration?

The town hall was held in Decorah, Iowa, at the “Seed Savers Exchange,” which just sounds kinky.

HE’S ASSUMING THERE ARE NO IMMIGRANTS IN IOWA. PROBABLY RIGHT. “And so as tough as things are, all of us are incredibly blessed to have been born in the United States of America.”

WHAT THE PROBLEM WE HAVE ISN’T: “See, the problem we have is not with our country; the problem is that our politics is broken.” Gee, it sounds too me like having broken politics would actually be a problem with our country.


OBAMA CAN TOTALLY TALK TO THE YOUNG PEOPLE, YOU CAN TELL BY HIS USE OF YOOF SLANG LIKE “SHENANIGANS”: “I see a lot of young people in the audience here today, and they’re thinking about what are their prospects for the future -- graduating from college knowing they’ve got a lot of debt, needing to find a job. They don’t have patience for the kind of shenanigans we’ve been seeing on Capitol Hill.”

AND THAT’S WHY YOU’RE TOOLING AROUND IOWA IN A GIANT CAMPAIGN BUS: “Well, you know what, you guys didn’t send us there to be thinking about our jobs. You sent us there to be thinking about your jobs and your future.”

SOLVE THIS PROBLEM WE COULD: “If everybody is willing to make some modest sacrifices, this problem we could solve.”

Then he quotes Warren Buffet on how billionaires should be taxed more. Funnily enough, Warren Buffet is still the only billionaire he can find saying this.

WHEREIN HE IMPLIES THAT DEMOCRATS ARE BEING JUST AS UNREASONABLE AS REPUBLICANS, AND THAT THE ONLY PROGRAMS HE’S AGREED TO CUT ARE ONES THAT AREN’T WORKING: “Now, that doesn’t mean that we defend every single government program. Everybody has got to make sacrifices; there are programs that aren’t working well. And sometimes there are those in my party who will defend everything, even if it’s not working.”


On the Republican presidential candidates refusal at the last debate to accept a 10:1 ratio of cuts to taxes: “And what that tells me is, okay, you’ve gotten to the point where you’re just thinking about politics, you’re not thinking about common sense.” So you think we just got to that “point” last Thursday?

WHO CAST THEIR BALLOT FOR “DIVIDED GOVERNMENT”? “And so I understand that after this last midterm, you voted for divided government. But you didn’t vote for dysfunctional government. You didn’t vote for a broken government that can’t make any decisions, can’t move the country forward at all.” Well, government does tend to get broken when the attempt to divide it is made by a bunch of crazy people with chainsaws.

Then it’s question time, and Obama shows his common touch by suggesting that his first questioner’s little girl, who had a cookie, shouldn’t have a cookie before dinner. She (the mother, not the girl with the broken arm and the cookie) responded by accusing him of being a crap negotiator who compromised all his key principles.

He says, among other things, that the debt-ceiling situation was “unique,” because the stakes were so high. “I’ve got a whole bunch of responsibilities, which means I have to make choices sometimes that are unattractive and I know will be bad for me politically and I know will get supporters of mine disappointed.” Well, that’s less of a problem every day because there are fewer of those every day.

SUBMISSIVE = RESPECT: Later he says that “I basically let Michelle have 90 percent of what she wants. But at a certain point, I have to draw the line and say, give me my little 10 percent,” before hastily adding that she’s right 90% of the time. Sigh. Now he’s the muddle-headed dad in every stupid sitcom.

He says the increase in partisanship is partly because everyone used to watch Walter Cronkite but now “everybody is on their own little blog or their own separate news forum.” Okay, now he’s gone too fucking far. TOO FUCKING FAR!!!

BECAUSE THAT APPROACH HAS WORKED SO WELL SO FAR: “Now, in terms of how I deal with the current Congress, what I can do is to present my best ideas about how we move the country forward.”


HOW ABOUT FOR BEING A WIMP? “I make no apologies for being reasonable.”

A former high school social studies teacher asked about public sector unions and collective bargaining. He went on at some length about the importance of unions (although mostly in historical terms – giving us the weekend, that sort of thing), before suggesting that teachers have to make “sacrifices,” like their pensions, and that if people “don’t feel like the public sector employers [sic] are making any adjustments whatsoever to reflect the tough economic realities that are facing folks who are not protected, then there’s going to be a natural backlash.” And why don’t they “feel like” public-sector employees are making “adjustments”? Because they’re watching Fox News.

SUDDENLY? “we came in -- you’ve got a bunch of irresponsible actors, both in Washington and on Wall Street, that almost brought this economy to the ground, and suddenly everybody else is paying for it.” Everybody else has been paying for the acts of irresponsible actors in Washington and on Wall Street for as long as there’s been a Washington and a Wall Street.

And then he went out and stole an ice cream cone from a little girl.


The Secret Service are afraid the little girl is coming after them, but Obama is just enjoying the extra sweetness that comes from eating an ice cream cone stolen from a little girl.


Oh, I’m kidding, of course. It’s plain vanilla with no sprinkles or anything, just what Obama would order. Hoping for the equivalent of a Bachmann corn dog photo, the press photogs snapped many pictures of him while he that ice cream cone, but Obama can make even eating delicious stolen ice cream look like serious work.