Tick, tick, tick: 67 minutes with Obama. WTF

First of all, what you’ve all been waiting to hear: Yes! It’s true. We’re going back to the Vineyard for our annual August payday vacay! (because we never stop working our steel trap mind, even when were resting and recreating.)

Our steel trap mind, locked in a brain bucket

And now, on to Big Guy’s much anticipated presser: the first one in  months. No time for pressers when you’ve been so busy trying to get the ball car out of the sand trap ditch.

OK then, I’ll just take a mulligan on this one!

And don’t try to read anything into Big Guy’s comments about the R-words having to "take on their sacred cows."  He meant big oil and all the other fat cats who fly around in corporate jets. It has nothing to do with us.

Sacred, butt NOT a cow (despite the designer heifer duds)

Other important take-aways from Big Guy’s lecture  Press Conference:

On gay marriage:

“I'm not going to make news on that today. Good try, though.”

 

On the constitutionality of the War Powers Act: Libyan KSA:

"I’m not a Supreme Court justice, so I'm not going to put my constitutional law professor hat on here." Besides, the mission doesn't meet the terms of the War Powers Act, so “I don't have to get to the question,"

Pressed, he says: "I’m just saying I don’t have to reach it. That’s a good legal answer."

In response to TIME’s question re. whether the Constitution still matters: in a word NO. Not to this administration.

On the job situation:

"We can focus on jobs as we're focusing on debt and deficit reduction,"

Great. We’re going to punt.

 

On the Afghanistan withdrawal:

"We are being successful in those missions, even before the bin Laden operation we had decimated the middle ranks and some of the upper ranks of al Qaeda.”

Butt On the Intercontinental attack the day before:

“Well, keep in mind the drawdown hasn’t begun.  So we understood that Afghanistan is a dangerous place, that the Taliban is still active, and that there are still going to be events like this on occasion.”

Then I guess we’ve taken care of everything we came to do. This is what victory looks like now:

Afghanistan: Victory is not an option

Back to Libya:

Big Guy corrects a previous response, clarifying that when he said the Libyan KMA would take days, not weeks, he meant the "initial phase where the Americans were in the lead would take days." (not weeks, months, or possibly even years) "So, promise made, promise kept."

Asked and answered, OK? Now stop asking.

Again, on gay marriage:

"I'll keep on giving you the same answer until I give you a different one. And that won't be today.”

On the “Gunwalker” case:

“I’ve made very clear my views that that would not be an appropriate step by the ATF, and we got to find out how that happened.”

When we’re agitated, even the smartest man on the planet sometimes forgets his grammar.

On illegal immigrants:

“… (we must make) sure that we also have a pathway for legal status for those who are living in the shadows right now.”

Oh, I think we’ve already established a path

Debris left behind by illegals as they shed gear upon entering the US via Arizona.

It looks like we could stand to “clean up the mess”  they left behind on the path to “legal status.”Grab a broom in 2012!

On the debt crisis deadline:

They’re not really deadlines, just "markers for us getting into trouble."Then we get another one of Big Guy’s famous car metaphors: “The yellow light is flashing.  Now, it hasn’t been a red light yet.  So what Tim Geithner has said is, technically speaking, we’re in a position now where we’re having to do a whole bunch of things to make sure that our bills are paid.”

I wonder if one of those “whole bunch of things” includes slamming on the brakes? 

Then he prattled on about how important it was to raise the debt ceiling in order to protect US jobs, or something, and some smart ass asks if August 2 is a red light or a yellow light:

“This is a matter of Congress going ahead and biting the bullet and making some tough decisions…We've identified what loopholes in the tax code can be closed that would also raise revenue.”

Since that doesn’t sound like a hard brake, I’m going to say, yellow.

Then, again, he tells us:

        “Now is the time to go ahead and make the tough choices.”

Hawaii… or the Vineyard? That’s a tough choice.

We chose Martha’s. This time.

I sure hope Congress heeds Big Guy’s warnings and cancels their summer vacation in order to work on The Way Forward by increasing the debt ceiling AND taxes so we can WTF for the balance of the year.

“They're in one week, they're out one week.  And then they're saying, Obama has got to step in.  You need to be here.  I’ve been here.  I’ve been doing Afghanistan and bin Laden and the Greek crisis.  You stay here.  Let’s get it done.”

And that, my friend, is what leadership under Big Guy’s leadership looks like. Look Ma, no hands!

 

All of Big Guy’s quotes from our Big White Big Web. All Big Guy, all the time. All you need.

Linked By: Barbara Curtis @ Mommy Life, Thanks!