[T]he reason I use quotes from previous commentaries is to distinguish myself from all of the other pundits and commentators who will say anything to ‘look good’. What is particularly galling is that they have no qualms about saying something today that completely contradicts what they said just days ago. And they get away with it because most people these days have the intellectual memory of scatterbrained gnats.
(Making Up Quotes to Look Good? The iPINIONS Journal, October 5, 2011)
To listen to President Obama’s critics go on about his failure to reduce the price of gas, you’d think he was a closet Arab Sheik conspiring with OPEC to profit off America’s addition to foreign oil.
Here, though, is how Obama dismissed their patently absurd criticisms when questioned about high gas prices (at a national average today of $3.75) by FOX News’ Chief White House Correspondent Ed Henry on Tuesday:
Just from a political perspective, do you think the president of the United States going into re-election wants gas prices to go up higher? Is that … is there anybody here who thinks that makes a lot of sense?
Here’s the bottom line with respect to gas prices. I want gas prices lower because they hurt families … it’s a tax out of their pocketbooks, out of their paychecks. And a lot of folks are already operating on the margins right now.
(Washington Post, March 6, 2012)
Yet no critic has blamed Obama for high gas prices with more self-righteous indignation than Bill O’Reilly of FOX News. And here is how he brazenly denied the obvious flaw in this blame during an appearance on The View just yesterday – as reported by MEDIAite:
Joy Behar: Americans know that the prices have nothing to do with Obama it has to do with world affairs. Everybody knows that.
O’Reilly: I don’t know that… I don’t know that….
Except that here, courtesy of yesterday’s The Ed Show on MSNBC, is what O’Reilly said in 2008 when rising prices were hurting the presidency of George W. Bush and undermining the campaign of his putative Republican successor John McCain:
No president has the power to increase or lower gas prices. Those are market forces! It has nothing to do with the president. Yesterday oil hit a record high, and politicians can’t do a thing about it. The next time you hear a politician say he or she will bring down oil prices, understand it’s complete B.S. If Americans want lower gas prices, cut back. Sell those SUVs. Ride a bike when you can.
Obama could not have said it better himself. But, as I wrote in my opening quote, gasbags like O’Reilly get on television and flatulate boldfaced, hypocritical lies for purely partisan political reasons. And, yes, they fully expect to get away with it every time.
Let me hasten to clarify, however, that pro-Republican hacks are not the only ones who pollute the airways with noxious fumes. After all, the only reason O’Reilly gave that no-spin defense in 2008 is that pro-Democratic hacks were hurling the same patently absurd criticisms at Bush for failing to reduce the price of gas that Obama’s critics are hurling at him today.
A pox on both their houses….
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Making up quotes…