It is something – the difference between rhetoric and reality -  I don’t think Obama, for all the claims of his intelligence, understands.  Just because you claim something is true doesn’t make it so (I know, something most of us learned around age 6).

In a speech in Boston – at a fund raiser:

Obama says that America should not be about the “haves and the have-nots.”

Didn’t know that it is, but this is a comfortable and popular theme among the limo liberal crowd, so it isn’t surprising the old horse was trotted out one more time.  But let me set the scene for you:

President Obama addressed a group of 152 Democratic donors at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The walls were lined with enormous original oil portraits from the 16th century and guests are seated around about 24 round tables.

Lots of “have nots” in that room weren’t there? 

But that isn’t the major point here – just wanted you to understand the context of the next part.  To add to the surreal atmosphere he said this:

In welcoming Nancy Pelosi, Obama called her “someone who’s going to go down as one of the greatest Speakers in our history: Nancy Pelosi.”

“When the rubble had cleared, when the dust had settled. This country was going through as touch a time economically, as tough a time financially, as any period since the 1930s,” Obama said..

His administration “had to make a series of quick decisions, and often times unpopular decisions,” Obama said.

In those times, Obama said, there would have been a temptation to “resort to the expedient.”

“That’s why when I say, Nancy is going to go down as one of our finest speakers… I mean what I say,” Obama continued.

“Not only were we able to yank this economy out of the recession,” Obama said.

“Not only were we able to get this economy going again, that in the last 15 months we’ve seen the economy add jobs…but under Nancy’s leadership we were able to achieve historic health care legislation that over the last 15, 20 years will end up benefiting millions of families across the country… we were able to get “don’t ask, don’t’ tell” repealed,” he continued, adding that Congress expand our investments in clean energy, made the largest investments in infrastructure and the largest investments in education in years.

“We didn’t just rescue the economy we put it on the strongest footing for the future,” Obama said.

“And along the way we saved the auto industry and a few other things,” he quipped, to some laughter from the crowd.

Obama went over a kept promise to end combat in Iraq, and reduce the country’s military commitment in Afghanistan.

Where to start?!

Suffice it to say, anyone who could tout Nancy Pelosi as the “greatest Speakers in our history” either has the ideological blinders on so tight they’re cutting off blood flow to the brain or has a rather tenuous grasp on reality.  Nancy Pelosi, if anything positive could be said about her, was a compliant means to an end.  Someone from the short bus should have been able to push through just about anything they wanted in Nancy Pelosi’s House, given the huge majority Democrats had. 

And she was complicit in the biggest expansion of government, not to mention the largest expansion of the public debt, of any Speaker I know.

Great?  For America, she was a disaster.  And so is the person fawningly praising her.

As for his other claims, well that’s just what they are … claims.  He’d like you to believe them because doing so helps his case, but what you see here is a sort of test run of how he plans on spinning his record – something he’s never had to run on before.

Each and every point is either highly debatable or can be refuted outright.   I got a kick out of one of the commenters under this story addressing his Iraq claim about ending combat:

If you think Obama stopped combat here, you are stunningly gullible.

Our guys are out on patrol every day and night amid the IEDs and VBIEDs. Our specops forces are operating outside the wire every day and night. The mortars and rockets are hitting our FOBs on a very regular basis. Purple Hearts are still being issued, including two on my FOB in January when a 107mm rocket landed across the street in one of my buddy’s men’s huts.

You live in Fantasyland, but thanks for the laugh.

The last line pretty much sums up the 152 Democrats in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts last night and much of the left right now – sitting there listening to a litany of “accomplishments” that are straight out of Fantasyland. 

Doubling the debt, multi-year trillion dollar deficits, expanded government, expanded spending, 9% unemployment and a jobs record that won’t even maintain the status quo.  Clueless about foreign policy, no energy policy, Gitmo still open, still in Iraq and little to show but another huge entitlement we can’t afford.

That’s the record he’s compiled.  And Nancy helped.

That is the record you need to remember.

~McQ