Press Conference

The AP’s Ron Fournier is at it again, and with the help of the main headline on Drudge. In a piece entitled “Analysis: Teleprompter telegraphs Obama caution”, Fournier makes it sound like Obama relied totally on a teleprompter during last night’s presser:

What kind of politician brings a teleprompter to a news conference?

A careful one.

President Barack Obama took no chances in his second prime-time news conference, reading a prepared statement in which he took both sides of the AIG bonus brouhaha and asked an anxious nation for its patience.

So Fournier leaves you with this feeling that the entire thing was staged, maybe even the actual Q&A section. He does clarify a little bit more later on:

The teleprompter was no help during the question-and-answer session (reporters don't signal their intentions), but Obama was no less careful during that give and take.

Obama’s opening remarks were really short, only taking about 10 minutes out of the hour long event. So Ron Fournier decides to focus only on that first ten minutes, and leave the quick skimming readers with the impression that’s how the whole thing went.

And since Obama had the teleprompter and played it safe, it left the wingnuts with nothing. Here’s how Drudge is pushing this story:

I would much rather have a President play it safe with a teleprompter and be boring, than a dangerous idiot who goes out there and says things like “bring ‘em on” when talking about the Iraq war, and those people listening and doing just that – at the cost of a lot of lives.

Obama got some good reviews from the media last night.

(h/t AmericaBLOG)

Trying out the embed from HULU. Hopefully it works.

TPM has posted this video and it goes with what I was saying earlier:

The part that really gets me wondering is this:

I can say with certainty that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. And I'd like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government. But my point is what's worse -- them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening? And so we will continue to protect our troops.

Which is the exact thing that can be said about Abu Gharib and Haditha. Take this little exchange from last May:

Bush Won't comment on the Libby trial. Nothing on implications, pardons, etc. It is no longer "I won't comment about an ongoing investigation". He just now says "I won't comment". There is a level of guilt in silence.

Bush and Ed Henry from CNN just had an interesting exchange regarding the roadside bombs. Henry was simply looking for more concrete evidence to the claim Iran is supplying the bombs in Iraq. Bush responds with:

It is preposterous to think that we would be manufacturing intelligence!

Isn't that what got us into Iraq in the first place? What is preposterous is to think that Bush would present actual intelligence.

Something else sticks out regarding this entire "Iran bomb" fiasco. The proof the administration is using is that the bombs are coming from the Qud army, which is part of the Iranian government. Well do we have proof these are coming from the Qud army, or is it coming from some rogue people in the army?