When Your Spin Fails

Tuesday, April 21, 2009



If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been focused on government spending lately and it seems as though President Obama also felt the need to look at government spending as well. USNews.com reports that Obama plans to make several changes and cuts to executive spending that will create a savings of $100 million. The problem? Everyone saw through the spin.

In truth the cuts, although welcome by me and every other tax payer, were really a PR stunt to diminish the continuing criticism from Tea Parties and others on government spending. The idea is to create and increase the total number of media stories depicting Obama’s administration as being fiscally responsible to offset the total number of media stories about the administration’s spending.

This strategy was done once already. Immediately following the signing of Obama’s stimulus plan into law, Obama sought to offset all the spending press coverage with fiscal responsibility coverage by holding a Fiscal Responsibility Summit. The media took the bait and began reporting how Obama was going to bring back Clinton’s “spend as you go” fiscal policy.

The summit was obviously a ploy evidenced by the administration’s lack of adherence to the policy in the passage of the Omnibus Bill and Obama’s proposed budget. Today, Obama was looking to offset the continuing focus on the Tea Parties with a half-hearted attempt at fiscal responsibility.

No one’s buying Obama’s spin on this one and the result was Robert Gibbs wiggling from the media sharks in the water. You can see Robert Gibbs Squirm in the accompanying video as he tries to explain why $100 million in cuts is a huge amount, but $8 billion in spending is not.

7 comments

Devrim said...
This comment has been removed by the author. April 21, 2009 at 10:53 PM
Devrim said...

It's just like the banks' 1:40 lending ratio. Now that we saved $100 mil here, we can spend $4 bil there on my pet project.

If a measly bank can do it, why not the One ? Hey, how about ME ??? Can I spend 40 X my pay and print some paper to make up the difference, of course I'll omit "In God We Trust" to make it look more legitimate ?

P.S. I like the new format but can we please get rid of the word verification thingie? It is really annoying

April 21, 2009 at 11:03 PM

Devrim,

Word verification? I'm not sure what that is, but I can try to turn it off.

April 22, 2009 at 2:23 AM

In all cases, of Waterboarding interrogation methods, that were used.
They ALL gave up valuable information within seconds of being waterboarded.
And saved American lives!!

YOU liberals better wake up to the facts of life in the real world, and understand that there are people out there who hate and want to kill Americans, no matter how much the current president apologizes and tries to appease them, no matter how many Kings he bows to, no matter how many tin horn south American dictators he jokes with and plays second fiddle to.

April 22, 2009 at 7:23 AM
Devrim said...

CG ;

It is when you try to make a comment after you hit Post, a picture with random letters come up, and you need to type those to make the post

April 22, 2009 at 10:33 AM

Hello General,

I like the new look very clean. I tried turning my word verification off and for my efforts I got spammed with ads instead of real
comments. Your choice.

As you know I don't always follow the left's talking points. You have been on my blog long enough to reach that conclusion.

I don't disagree with the stunt as you mention. All true.

But both parties are using the state of the union purely for politics, they don't care about people making less than 250 grand period.

It is a disgrace that we are in the year 2009 and still an energy dependent Nation.

We need to stop the war in Iraq, and we need to rebuild our own country.

We need to take care of our veterans from far back as the Korean War to the present day.

People need reasonable health care and so do small and large businesses.

I think that is what Obama is aiming for, but we are in to deep right now. We need to go one step at a time in my opinion and not cram the
whole deal down our throats all at once in watered down versions thatwill do nothing for anybody, except waste money.

Just a note your pull down verification method doesn't work for mac users. I have to use my laptop pc to post on blogs that use this
method instead of the original one. No big deal but mac users are growing.

Regards,

Joseph

April 23, 2009 at 12:36 AM

Joseph,

I can't see anything in your post to disagree with! :( lol! I'm glad you like the new look! Thank you for your continued comments!

April 23, 2009 at 2:53 AM

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