It’s at 2:02.
The freaking President of the United States isn’t sure how much our nations debt is.
If Mitt Romney (or John Mccain or George W. Bush for that matter) had stated they didn’t know how much our national debt is, the media and 95% of the dopers here would have ripped them to shreds. Instead the silence is deafening!
“I don’t remember what the number was precisely.”
If he had said the number and it was off by a dollar you’d be all over his shit anyway.
He didn’t have the debt clock from the republican convention as app on his i-phone?
There’s no silence. I can hear you jabbering away quite effectively.
This is an example of how if you’re looking to scream in outrage you can find a reason, no matter how slight. This thread is weak tea.
This isn’t even tea. It’s lukewarm water that doesn’t even have lemon in it.
False. The national debt is increasing every second. Unless one has a debt clock right in front of them (Like Wisconsin U.S. Senator Ron Johnsons staff does) it’s impossible to know the exact amount at any given time.
But the POTUS should be able to give a decent ballpark figure at any given time.
Letterman gave a number 6 trillion off. Obama should have been able to at least give a figure better than that.
ALSO…!
You think he didn’t know what questions he was going to be asked? You think he got sandbagged by David fucking Letterman, of all people?
It’s embarrassing that Obama does not know the amount of the debt he helped create, and you have no honor for not admitting it.
No, this is tit for Tat. Had Bush done this it would have been all over the news and these boards.
Cite?
Conservatives *need *Obama to be as bad as Bush, but I got news for you. You folks elected a small and unimportant man to the job. And now, a good or even great man is still cleaning up his shit.
I’m sorry the promise you saw in Bush II was illusory. But that doesn’t make it right to scream at Obama for having the nerve to not be as incompetent.
Also, if you were thinking politically, you’d probably realize that he didn’t want to say the number. Because that’s not a great thing for him to trumpet.
Like Hentor said. This isn’t even tea.
Which would be helpful how?
Again, a ballpark would not have satisfied you, and the man is smart enough to know when he doesn’t know the answer.
Your outrage is just so sad, really.
Maybe he did but “metric shitload” got bleeped.
Only socialists use the metric system.
I guess we’ll have to put up with threads like this as the usual Romney apologists desperately try to distract attention from Romney’s remarks, which John Stewart characterized well as “what cartoon character rich people say about cartoon character poor people” (approximate quote).
As people have noted, this is critique of Obama is weak in a variety of ways:
(1) He says he doesn’t know EXACTLY what it is…and while its true that he doesn’t correct Letterman’s ballpark estimate of $10 trillion (versus the correct number of ~$16 trillion), there could be lots of reasons for this, perhaps the most important being that it was basically irrelevant for the discussion they were having. Letterman’s ballpark figure was fine for the purposes of the discussion. As a physicist, I am not going to correct someone who says that the gravitational acceleration is about 5 m/s^2 when they are just trying to make a rough comparison between that and the acceleration of an electron in an electric field of say 100 N/C (which would be many orders of magnitude greater). Why nitpick?
(2) What people like pkbites fail to understand is that when certain little things people say become emblematic of a general view about them, it is not because these things are particularly important but because they resonate with a larger picture. Hence, when George Bush senior walked into a supermarket and was amazed at the UPC scanners, that was not such a big event in itself. In fact, one could even argue that as Vice President, it is necessary that he be in somewhat of a bubble for security reasons…He can’t just go out the grocery store and pick something up like you and me. No, the reason why that little vignette got so much traction is it resonated with a picture of how George Bush seemed quite out of touch with the lives of everyday people. So, even if Obama slips up and forgets what the total federal debt is off the top of his head, if it doesn’t resonate with a larger picture of him being a certain way, it isn’t going to gain much traction…and for good reason; there has generally not been any sort of larger picture of this President being poorly informed on details of issues and policies; in fact, if anything, he tends to come off as a little wonkish sometimes.
Is it my imagination or are many of the conservatives on this messageboard basically becoming self-parodies as they desperately try to come up with things to salvage this election?
Our national debt is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to the size of our debt.
Wake me when Obama says he doesn’t care about 47% of the American people.
OMG, one of Obama’s shoelaces has an non-symetrical bow.
OMG, Obama ended a sentence with a preposition.
OMG, he’s not a good bowler.
Conservatives are so incredibly lame and grasping at straws.
How about “Really fuckin’ HUGE?” As fond as the commoniss English are of gratuitous uses of “fuck,” I believe “fuckin’” as a random adjective is All-American.
ETA: And Canadian, but they are copycats.
ETAA: And communists.
Well he clearly doesn’t care about 1%.
I’m kinda confused, here.
Fucking pick one.
You should check Breitbart more often. This was spewing out of the right-wing sound machine eight hours ago.
There is no such thing as a national debt clock.
There is a site that estimates the debt graphically and has a fake counter that operates 24/7.