You might recall President Obama throwing around the phrase "let me be clear" a few zillion times over the last year. In fact, he used the phrase so much, ABC News wrote a story about it last month.
You might recall President Obama throwing around the phrase “let me be clear” a few zillion times over the last year. In fact, he used the phrase so much, ABC News wrote a story about it last month.
“Make no mistake. Change isn’t easy. It won’t happen overnight. There will be setbacks and false starts.”
“Those who routinely listen to the president have come to expect some of those expressions to pop up in almost every speech. (That includes you, cynics and naysayers, the ones Obama mentions all the time without identifying who is saying nay.)”
“Yet in the portfolio of presidential phrases, none is more pervasive than Obama’s four-word favorite: Let me be clear.”
“It is his emphatic windup for, well, everything.”
But thats yesterday’s news according to a new report from Politico. The new word of the day is “unprecedented” and the Obama Administration just can’t use it enough.
“The Obama White House is addicted to the “unprecedented.”
“Perhaps it was a sign when President Barack Obama sat down in January to record his first weekly address and announced: “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action.”
“What has followed is declaration after declaration of “unprecedented” milestones. Some of them are legitimate firsts, like the president’s online town hall at the White House in May.”
“But others the president wins merely on a technicality, and several clearly already have precedents.”
“The White House’s announcement of its unprecedented — “a first by an American president visiting China” — town hall meeting with students in Beijing, for instance, drew a collective eye roll in certain circles back home, namely among former aides to President George W. Bush, who had already been grumbling about Obama’s carefree application of “unprecedented.”
I wonder if anyone in the Obama White House will acknowledge the “unprecedented” spending they’ve engaged in since taking office 11 months ago?
“President Obama has shattered the budget record for first-year presidents — spending nearly double what his predecessor did when he came into office and far exceeding the first-year tabs for any other U.S. president in history.”
“In fiscal 2009 the federal government spent $3.52 trillion — $2.8 trillion in 2000 dollars, which sets a benchmark for comparison. That fiscal year covered the last three-and-a-half months of George W. Bush’s term and the first eight-and-a-half months of Obama’s.”
“That price tag came with a $1.4 trillion deficit, nearly $1 trillion more than last year. The overall budget was about a half-trillion more than Bush’s for 2008, his final full fiscal year in office.”
