When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
And this guy is supposed to be a smooth talker?
President Obama, once again proving the adage that when the entire media establishment agrees on something, they're always always wrong, tries to weasel-word his way around a Solyndra conversation. From ABC.com:
The solar energy start-up Solyndra, which had been the poster child of Obama’s initiative, went bankrupt in 2011, putting 1,000 employees out of work. It had received more than $500 million in federal loan guarantees through a Recovery Act program. The loan process is now the subject of a congressional investigation.
“Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn’t gone bankrupt,” Obama said. “But understand: This was not our program per se.”
Nice. That "per se" makes it all so convincing.
This is not our exploding national debt per se. This is not our failed administration per se.
And then he goes on to prove another adage: when the tiny, silly minds in the establishment media agree that someone is "smart," they are almost always, well, not so much. Here, for instance, is our "smart" president making zero sense:
“Congress — Democrats and Republicans — put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it’s easy to raise money for start-ups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there’s a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help start up companies get to scale,” he said.
That's exactly wrong. The riskiest time to invest in anything -- Facebook, solar panels, the kids' lemonade stand -- is when it's a startup. Every day that an enterprise is open for business, the risk to the investor decreases. Which is why venture financing is so risky -- and so rewarding. And why a going concern that can't raise funds to take its business "to scale" in the private sector is a lousy, stupid -- and in the case of Solyndra, probably shady -- investment.
I wish our smart, articulate president wasn't so clueless and meretricious.
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Jul '10
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
CoC violation, but
Per se..
Apr '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
How long will a large chunk of the American public continue to buy this ridiculous song and dance?
The President is a liar.
There's no way to finesse that. It's no longer spin, or a sales pitch, or the ordinary doubletalk that politicians have practiced since politics began.
He simply lies.
Jul '10
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Well, was it off the cuff and therefore forgivable in the eyes of the media like corpse-man and these 57 states, or read from the Teleprompter with the sun in his eyes?
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
billy: How long will a large chunk of the American public continue to buy this ridiculous song and dance?
The President is a liar.
There's no way to finesse that. It's no longer spin, or a sales pitch, or the ordinary doubletalk that politicians have practiced since politics began.
He simply lies. · 7 minutes ago
He's not a liar per se.
Jun '10
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Didn't Michael Beschloss, presidential historian and Obama brown-noser, say that "Obama is, per se, the smartest president in history"? That may be slightly inaccurate but it's the way I remember it.
Jun '10
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Rob Long:
President Obama, once again proving the adage that when the entire media establishment agrees on something, they're always always wrong, tries to weasel-word his way around a Solyndra conversation. From ABC.com:
Nice. That "per se" makes it all so convincing.
Who's program was it, per se? I seem to remember Obama doing a big press event at Solyndra. And wasn't it the Obama Energy Department that gave them the money? But, then again, that may have only been on a per se basis.
Edited on March 23, 2012 at 3:28amApr '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
billy: How long will a large chunk of the American public continue to buy this ridiculous song and dance?
The President is a liar.
There's no way to finesse that. It's no longer spin, or a sales pitch, or the ordinary doubletalk that politicians have practiced since politics began.
He simply lies. · 27 minutes ago
It doesn't matter, really. Gallup has reported that unemployment went down again in March, and Obama is still hanging in there at just under 50% in polls. The American people are willing to buy what he's selling.
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Does this mean that Jimmy Carter is no longer the worst president in history, per se? Maybe one day, President Obama will be called to account for his many constitutional transgressions. My dream is that he goes from"per se" to "pro se." A guy can dream, right?
Feb '12
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
That's also known as the Washington blowback or in The One's case per se in the wind..
Sep '10
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
The President may mean something else when he says per se:
Dec '10
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Rob,
Well gee Rob, you're awfully persistent with this meaning thing aren't you? Did we ever find the answer to "Does is mean is?". Hey, that could be it. Per se is doesn't mean is but not per se is does mean is.
Gosh, isn't it great to have a President who has the epistemological vision of a mole.
Anyway, I always wanted to use the word epistemological in a sentence and I want to thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Per se,
Jim
Feb '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Searches without warrants, even if probable cause is present, “are per se unreasonable.” (Katz v. United States, 1967).
Edited on March 23, 2012 at 3:57amFeb '12
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
To parse per se is pushing parsimonious..
Nov '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
It's not that Obama lacks the mental horsepower; it's that he never learned, never had to learn, how to use his own brain for thinking his own thoughts.
Instead, he was indoctrinated, first learning plausibly to repeat from a collection of stale ideas associated with certain stillborn pseudophilosophies (e.g., Critical Legal Studies; Postmodernism, Relativism), and then learning something that really set him apart: how verbally to arrange and rearrange those stale ideas in ways that, on the first few hearings, inspire in the impressionable a hope that the dogmas they love actually have life in them.
But the effect wears off as the novelty wears off, even for those who love those same stale ideas. Soon those who loved him realize they don't love him the way they used to. He doesn't tingle their legs anymore. They listen respectfully, but the droning is boring even to them. And that makes him angry . . . at everybody . . . and it shows.
It makes me almost feel sorry for the guy, because when you're over fifty, and POTUS, it's probably too late to set out on your very first honest intellectual journey.
Sad.
Edited on March 23, 2012 at 4:37amJul '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
I keep seeing this “failed administration” and “failed presidency” meme. I think this is inaccurate and we conservatives need to move away from it. Failure effectively means not achieving ones goals and objectives for a particular endeavor. Unfortunately this is not what he is doing. He has been quite effective in achieving his stated and unstated goals much too American’s dismay. Socialized medicine, failed wars, nationalized companies, subsidized industries, defanged military, shackled financial industry, crony capitalism, political patronage, stifling energy industry regulations, reducing religious liberty, funding unproven green technologies, NASA’s change of mission, increasing abortion access, the list goes on and on. The problem is not that he is a failure; the problem is that he is succeeding at the wrong things. This is the point that needs to be made and driven home.
As for Solyndra, this too was an Obama win. His goals were to promote Green energy, reward political allies and finance his next campaign. Once these goals were accomplished the company was shutdown. It is only us silly conservatives with our quaint belief in commerce as a noble pursuit that are appalled. The Left understands that all good things flow from the government.
Nov '10
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Good point. But I suppose it is valid, given the timeline of oil production from when a field is opened up (5-8 years), to point out that the current accelerated rate of oil production is not due to Obama's policies per se.
Apr '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
It doesn't mean he's not smart. Bobby Fischer probably couldn't spot his mistake.
It's just that it turns out that business is really complicated and takes a lot of time to learn about. He didn't have opportunity to learn it during either his laid back or his harder working phases as a student; being the editor of the HLR is genuinely stressful, from what I understand. He focused on civil rights. Community organizing, likewise, is an involving career, demanding on your time and attention, particularly if you're going to be good at it. He may have voted present a lot as state senator, but he also spent a lot of time networking and learning more about various interest groups passions.
Business tends to be less interested than most interest groups in "converting the heathen", more into "selling bibles"; they don't mind if their politicians understand why they need to vote a particular way, so long as they do. Food stamp activists care about the beliefs, too, so people in Obama's position learn a lot about academic thought on exclusion and poverty. 2 years steep learning curve in the senate, Presidential campaign, today.
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
Rob, you are so right. The president has it all backwards. Demand creation is the really gnarly, impossible challenge that only a talented few entrepreneurs and venture capitalists seem to get right. Figuring out what products people will be willing to spend their own money on is the tough challenge. Scale-up investment is a by-the-numbers exercise-- orders of magnitude more natural buyers are waiting to finance these sorts of projects.
Going to scale without any actual demand--call it the Obama Method--well, that's a wee bit problematic.
Apr '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
George Savage: Rob, you are so right. The president has it all backwards. Demand creation is the really gnarly, impossible challenge that only a talented few entrepreneurs and venture capitalists seem to get right. Figuring out what products people will be willing to spend their own money on is the tough challenge. Scale-up investment is a by-the-numbers exercise-- orders of magnitude more natural buyers are waiting to finance these sorts of projects.
Going to scale without any actual demand--call it the Obama Method--well, that's a wee bit problematic. · 12 minutes ago
For any normal President, sure. For one of the four greatest? The real disappointment is that the sunshine to power these panels isn't coming from the White House windows.
Apr '11
Re: When You Have to Say "Per Se," It Means You're Lying
"...clueless and meretricious." Perfect descriptors of this administration.