President Obama’s Prediction Refuted By Caterpiller CEO
Saying that Caterpillar CEO Jim Owens refuted President Obama’s overselling his stimulus package is understatement. Here’s what MSDNC first reported Wednesday:
President Barack Obama said Wednesday that heavy-equipment maker Caterpillar has informed him it will rehire some of the thousands of workers it has laid off in recent weeks if Congress passes an economic stimulus bill.
Here’s what President Obama first said:
“Yesterday, Jim, the head of Caterpillar, said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off,” Obama said today in Peoria.
That reporting didn’t last long:
But when asked today if the stimulus could do that, Owens said, “I think, realistically, no. The honest reality is we’re probably going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again.”
President Obama is working so hard to sell this pig of a bill that he’s making things up. That’s a surefire way of losing credibility. The bill will likely pass but it isn’t likely to stimulate the economy, though it appears to have stimulated Capitol Hill Republicans.
I can’t think of another time when an American president stated something as fact, then had it refuted later. There is precedent for this type of statement, though. Think Speaker Pelosi ‘delivering’ a message from the Israeli government to Syria that Israel was willing to return to the negotiating table.
When the Israeli government issued its statement, people ridiculed “Secretary of State Pelosi” for such an embarrassing misstatement. I suspect that this won’t be the embarrassment to President Obama because the Fawning Media won’t let it get that far.
The Right Blogosphere, though, will play this up as proof that President Obama isn’t immune from telling an occasional whopper to sell his agenda. The attitude the Right Blogosphere should take is that we’ll offer honest, objective criticism with the realization that it’ll take time to win the public over to our message.
Winning people will take time but it’s equally true that we’ve got to get started ASAP.
Technorati Tags: Jim Owens, Caterpillar, Layoffs, President Obama, Stimulus, Nancy Pelosi, Israel, Syria, Credibility
Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog
February 13th, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Well, GW said there were WMDs in Iraq, and that was later proven to be false (at least later it was. When he made the statement it very well could have been true)so there’s an instance when the prez was woefully wrong. But that’s a minor point. The big point is that GW made his statement based upon the best intel available, domestic and foreign, while the Chosen One made his knowing full well he was lying.
BTW, has everyone noticed His Hollowness is softening everyone up for an extended recession/depression? Said it again today through his mouthpiece. The Thief-in-Chief just can’t let us know often enough how bad it’s gonna be before his policies start dragging us out of this depression (sometime just before the end of his first term if he’s real lucky).
February 15th, 2009 at 12:11 pm
It’s great to see how Republicans are so united in wanting to see Obama fail. So tell me, if your wishes come true and Obama’s presidency is a disaster, what does that mean for America?
The thing with Bush is that even after the 2000 election, the general population gave him the benefit of the doubt. After 9/11, we supported him and believed he would do right. Instead, we get the clusterfuck that is the Iraq war, a failed control of Afghanistan, and a refusal to admit that America was heading towards a recession.
Bush failed us over time. Obama has been president for barely a month. Who’s patriotic now?
February 16th, 2009 at 8:04 am
I’m sure it’s the ones who never gave up chanting that GW stole the election(s), put the “He’s not MY president” stickers on their cars on Feb. 1, 2001, decided December 1, 2001 was long enough to pretend outrage over 9/11, and the ones who always believed 9/11 was an American (read: Bush/Cheney) conspiracy. Yes, Liem, those are the real patriots, obviously.
As long as he shoves donkey dung down our throats and 1)tells us it’s real food, 2)appoints sneaky tax thieves to cabinet and high-level posts in spite of his professed transparency an 3) tries to panic the public by making us fear our own shadows I (and many, many others) will respect the office he can’t seem to and your ilk hasn’t in the past 8 years but dis on the weak, prevaricating fearmonger.
February 17th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Oh, I get what you’re trying to tell me. It’s the liberals’ fault that Bush failed. Nice bait and switch there.
So, please tell me, Carlos from the future, tell me how Obama has already failed.
And while you’re at it, tell me more about your economic expertise. What part of 3.6 million jobs lost over 13 months is fear-mongering? What does a million foreclosures so far with 2 million more expected this year mean and which part is fear-mongering? What part of a plummeting stock market is fear-mongering?
February 17th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
“So, please tell me, Carlos from the future, tell me how Obama has already failed.”
“I will have the most transparent and ethical administration ever.” Yes, he certainly has shown that, what with Geithner, Daschle, lobbyists, etc.
I’d call that a failure, but of course all these people just made “honest mistakes”, and Geithner was the only one in the world qualified to lead the Treasury, and the multiple lobbyists he’s appointed are the only ethical ones in D.C., and…
The fearmongering is screaming at his people that the world as we know it will end if something isn’t done (by bigger guvmint, of course) by yesterday and any delays will surely send us wildly down the road to Perdition.
The foreclosures are real, the future ones may be real, too. All I can say is gosh, I wonder what part the donkeys had in forcing the lending institutions into a general pattern of making lousy loans (and creating innovative ways of getting people to part with what little they had) because they knew the donks’ favorite charities, Fannie and Freddie, would bail them out anyway. I also wonder why it’s guvmint’s responsibility to bail out either the institutions or the borrowers for the greedy (on both their parts) decisions they made that created the stupid morgages in the first place.
And the stock market? Took a 300 point dive AFTER Geithner made public his incredibly sketchy and incomplete “plan”, and another 300 point dive today when the Thief-in-Chief signed the pork bill into law. But they also know that the market in time will recover in spite of the push to socialism. If they didn’t believe that there would be no stock market.
Basically the only catastrophe I see coming is Obama’s policies foreign and domestic, but that’s not something that Congress has to stop in the next two hours or we’re doomed.
February 17th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
You’re so right. Absolutely everything is because of the Democrats. Impeach Obama before he ruins the country more. We need to put Republicans in charge again.
February 18th, 2009 at 4:41 pm
How ’bout we need to put a Republican in charge and put Republicans in charge of the Congress? Works for me, as long as they are fiscally not spendthrifts like the present party in power and most of the ones who said they were Republicans in the last ten years, they’re aware and respectful of existing social conventions instead of cramming every half-baked (and untested) social theory from the hallowed halls of academia down everyone else’ throats, and they’re aware that there really are bad people out there that want to destroy our country.
Bush made it, kinda, with the last one but failed miserably with the first two, but there were precious few Republicans who held those values in the last ten years, either. Instead, we have gotten people like Specter, Snowe, Collins and, yes, multiples of Boehner wannabees, all jackass wannabees and deserving of being thrown out on their kiesters, every one. Lax economic oversight and excessive spending got us to where we are now, and now the jackasses wanna spend even more and don’t give a rip about oversight because most of it is political payoff. They all make me puke.
February 19th, 2009 at 10:18 am
I dont give a hoot in hell who you want to blame. The government under Bush fucked up by not enforcing proper oversight of Securities and banks. The incompetents in Congress, Dodd, Frank and Watson, who had oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac just plain out didnt know what they were doing.
So now, along comes Obama, and says we have to pay to bail out corporations who in a sane world, should be filing for bancrupcy, pay to cover the asses of politicians and bureaucrats who in a sane should be in jail for dereliction of duty. Pay for the biggest redistribution of wealth in history.
And you, Liem want me to thank the democrats, for saving my ass?? Go to hell!
February 19th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
And that doesn’t even begin to start on the bogus congressionals who stuffed their own pockets with gravy from all the pork stuck in every conceivable bill summarily passed by both houses and signed by the prez, or the white collar bureaucratic beggars who couldn’t do with ever-increasing budgets, they had to have more stolen money to squander.