President Barack Obama sat down with Rolling Stone for an in-depth interview where he sounds off on everything from emergence of The Tea Party to ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’. The President held no punches during the interview evening throwing shots at right leaning media source,FOX NEWS, not to mention the Republican Party and all his critics.
President Obama’s Rolling Stone interview touches on everything you would expect the President to address, the war in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and even a musical interlude where the Pres expresses his joy of music and that he is a fan of Lil Wayne. A great interview which shows a Commander-in-chief who is in full control of the ship no matter how much it’s rocking. Take a look at some excerpts from the interview.
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Obama On Bipartisanship
The recovery package we shaped was put together on the theory that we shouldn’t exclude any ideas on the basis of ideological predispositions…But the delays, the cloture votes, the unprecedented obstruction that has taken place in the Senate took its toll.
Even if you eventually got something done, it would take so long and it would be so contentious, that it sent a message to the public that ‘Gosh, Obama said he was going to come in and change Washington, and it’s exactly the same, it’s more contentious than ever.’
Everything just seems to drag on — even what should be routine activities, like appointments, aren’t happening. So it created an atmosphere in which a public that is already very skeptical of government, but was maybe feeling hopeful right after my election, felt deflated and sort of felt, ‘We’re just seeing more of the same.’
Things do drag on when you try to work with people who aren’t ready to change the status quo, those who want to keep things the way they are, those who don’t want to achieve change.
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On the G.O.P.
Well, on the economic front, their only agenda seems to be tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. If you ask their leadership what their agenda will be going into next year to bring about growth and improve the job numbers out there, what they will say is, ‘We just want these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which will cost us $700 billion and which we’re not going to pay for.’
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On The Tea Party
I think the Tea Party is an amalgam, some aspects of the Tea Party that are a little darker, that have to do with anti-immigrant sentiment or are troubled by what I represent as the president. So I think it’s hard to characterize the Tea Party as a whole, and I think it’s still defining itself.
There’s no doubt that there is ge
