This morning, the President decided to make some comments during the first half hour of trading on Wall Street, well before the close of trading in Europe. Let’s look at what he said:
I want to thank members of my economic team for coming in the Oval Office this morning to bring some good news here for America’s families and America’s working people. The — last month our economy added 110,000 new jobs. And that’s good news for people here in our country. It’s an indicator that this economy is a vibrant and strong economy.
The folks briefed me on the fact that they are — numbers for July and August were revised — job numbers, job creation numbers. And this economy added 118,000 new jobs in July and August, as well. This means — with these revisions, it means that we’ve had 49 consecutive months of job creation. And that’s the longest uninterrupted job growth on record for our country.
I could go on about this, but the BondDad did such a nice job. We need about 150,000 to absorb new people into the workforce; we failed for the last 3 months. What about the other 46 months of “job creation”? Where are those people who just never got jobs? How interesting that some business schools are specifically designing programs for people who have been out of the workforce for several years.
You know, I am really pleased with the economic news, but I don’t take good news for granted. I understand people are worried about their mortgage payments, or concerned about sending their child to college. I know that people are concerned whether or not they’re going to have enough money to meet their needs. And so my call to the United States Congress is, keep taxes low. If you want this economy continue to grow, and if you want to reinforce the fact that we’ve got — entrepreneurship is strong and people are working, don’t raise taxes.
Entrepreneurship is “strong” because there are not traditional jobs. A few bucks here and there writing code or mowing lawns or selling the multi-level-marketing crap of the month is “entrepreneurship,” but it isn’t necessarily making a living. Oh, and the tax cuts didn’t have much to do with it.
And I’m looking forward to working with the Congress to set priorities on how we spend the people’s money, but I also am going to make it very clear to people in Congress that we’re not going to raise their taxes on the working people.
And so I’m real pleased. I thank you all for coming in to bring this good news to me. It’s — this good news is a real tribute to the hardworking Americans, the people out there working hard to put food on the table. And it’s a tribute to the entrepreneurial spirit of the country.
What, he picks now to pretend to be fiscally responsible? Spending hundreds of billions with a b every year for the next who-knows-how-long on war and crony contractors, yet willing to veto a mere tens of billions over 5 years on health care for those very same hardworking Americans that are working hard to put food on the table? Sheesh. And the Republican presidential candidates are following him right off the edge.
I want to say something else. There’s been a lot of talk in the newspapers and on TV about a program that I put in motion to detain and question terrorists and extremists. I have put this program in place for a reason, and that is to better protect the American people. And when we find somebody who may have information regarding an — a potential attack on America, you bet we’re going to detain them, and you bet we’re going to question them — because the American people expect us to find out information — actionable intelligence so we can help protect them. That’s our job.
No problem. Take a couple days. Charge them or release them when you are done.
Secondly, this government does not torture people. You know, we stick to U.S. law and our international obligations.
That’s not what he said in 2004.
Thirdly, there are highly trained professionals questioning these extremists and terrorists. In other words, we got professionals who are trained in this kind of work to get information that will protect the American people. And by the way, we have gotten information from these high-value detainees that have helped protect you.
Highly trained professionals like Lynndie England. Using methods like this and this and this. Warning: Explicit photos, NSFW, not for those who are easily disgusted!
And finally, the techniques that we use have been fully disclosed to appropriate members of the United States Congress. The American people expect their government to take action to protect them from further attack. And that’s exactly what this government is doing, and that’s exactly what we’ll continue to do.
Appropriate members? Who would those be? Sen. Vitter? Sen. Craig?
I really ought to stop listening when he does these market-open speeches.
In closing: famous pictures of Tokyo before they started calling it Tokyo; everyone loves the zoo, here’s about 150 years of pictures to prove it; the best health plan proposed by a presidential candidate is the one by Mr. Kucinich; duck-billed dinosaur; yoink! way to turn 2600 soldiers into rabid veteran’s rights advocates (I guess nobody remembers that these guys have been trained to use weapons); why is it that incarceration rates have risen about 600% since the 1970s?; Korea talks “exceed low expectations“; the death of a housewife in TSA custody still makes no sense; and last, Burma-filter — Monks fleeing, military leader may agree to meet with the actual elected and imprisoned leader, but only if she drops her “attitude”, and “Who is left to challenge the junta?“