“Let me be clear. He was not calling the officer stupid, okay? He was denoting that, at a certain point the situation got far out of hand, and I think all sides understand that.”
President Obama, opining on the Henry Louis Gates situation, during last night’s presser:
The president said he doesn’t know all the facts about the arrest last week, and does not know what role race played, “but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be angry, and two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof they were in their own home,” Obama said.
“And number three, there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that’s just a fact.”
We’re going to need photoshops of Gibbs in Baghdad Bob outfits before much longer.
To our allegedly post-racial president, I would suggest the following guidelines: When a reporter asks you your opinion on some current event, and the first words out of your mouth are to the effect that you don’t know all the facts, the next words out of your mouth should be along lines of, “And so I’m going to withhold judgment until I have more information about what actually occurred. Adding, “because it would be shockingly inappropriate and not a little bit dumb for the President of the United States to sling around unfounded, slanderous accusations of stupidity and/or racism,” is optional, but recommended.
Otherwise people might get the idea you’re trying to have a frank national conversation about race.
Amateur Hour At The White House
Obama Administration 
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We’ve always been at war with Eastasia, notes White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (who is rapidly distinguishing himself as an even bigger doofus than Scott McClellan):
Turns out the $787 billion “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act” (AARA) was not designed for full economic recovery, but rather to “stabilize” the downturn. That’s the word from White House officials today, who held off-camera briefings with reporters on how the AARA is working so far.
“This legislation was designed to cushion the downturn,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. “That’s why we have always talked about this as one function of economic recovery.”
When pressed about the change in terminology, Gibbs said he was not trying to temper expectations after the fact. “I can probably find 15 or 20 occasions when I said this in the lead up,” Gibbs said, explaining that he had always defined the AARA as part of a “multi-legged stool.”
Evidently the Council of Economic Advisors didn’t get the memo regarding the goalpost-moving exercise. Meanwhile, national punchline Joe Biden assures us of the fierce moral urgency of killing the patient in order to save him:
“And folks look, AARP knows and the people with me here today know, the president knows, and I know, that the status quo is simply not acceptable,” Biden said at the event on Thursday in Alexandria, Va. “It’s totally unacceptable. And it’s completely unsustainable. Even if we wanted to keep it the way we have it now. It can’t do it financially.”
“We’re going to go bankrupt as a nation,” Biden said.
“Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that’s what I’m telling you.”
Er, no, not really, says the CBO: “No net federal cost savings,” which is bureaucratese for, “Oceans of red ink as far as the eye can see.” And savor the irony of the Vice President delivering this spiel to the AARP, which continues to support this dreck despite, as Dick Morris points out, seniors being most likely to take it in the shorts.
And of course, this is all to say nothing of the President’s pathological lies on the subject of his healthcare plan.
(Hat tip AllahPundit.)