"As speaker and as Democratic leader, any call from the president would be treated with great formality and respect," Pelosi said. "There was absolutely no situation in which either President Bush or President Obama were cut off from speaking. I respect the office of the President and the office of the Speaker, including the historic nature of any communication between these two offices."Here's the ad, which gets its assertion of fact from Bob Woodward's book:
ADDED: A possible middle ground is: Pelosi had a button that kept the sound at her end from passing through to the President. His voice would still be heard, and he would never be cut off, but she would be free to talk over him and have conversations with whoever was with her. That would make her statement completely true and — ah! I just checked the book text — it would make Woodward's reporting precisely accurate:
Pelosi reached over and pressed the mute button on her phone. They could hear Obama, but now he couldn’t hear them. The president continued speaking, his disembodied voice filling the room, and the two leaders got back to the hard numbers.Woodward never said she muted the President, and Pelosi's starchy outrage does not include a denial that she muted herself.
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52 comments:
Can we put Pelosi on mute?
Yeah, when i saw the ad I found it hard to believe that Pelosi would have that kind of sense.
Who knows if it's true, but most people will have to admit that its highly conceivable.
Lots of people trust Bob Woodward for some reason.
Does anyone like Nancy Pelosi, besides Nancy Pelosi?
The funniest thing to me is that without clicking, I knew the link would be to politico. Always sure to carry the dem water.
When you are that predicable in your bias, is it even bias anymore? Or has it just gone to fully non-credible?
Every word Bob Woodward wrote about Bush is true, every word he wrote abut Obama is false.
Please save an electron: Cut-and-paste this comment
(Just saving the sycophants some time)
I wish Romney would run more ads showcasing the infamous Pelosi clip revealing her soft tyranny.
But we have to pass the bill so that... uh uh.. you can find out what is in it.
Does anyone like Nancy Pelosi, besides Nancy Pelosi?
Yeah, whoever had the liquor concession on her military jet. $1000/week
Hard hitting.
Because mute cuts off sound from YOUR end not their end. So it is a well crafted non-denial denial.
"There was absolutely no situation in which either President Bush or President Obama were cut off from speaking."
Nice non-denial denial...either she doesn't understand how a mute button works, or she hopes we don't. The whole point of the anecdote was that they let him keep speaking, they just didn't listen. And, they muted the phone so he wouldn't know they were continuing on while he droned.
Pelosi should be like Schumer. Don't put anyone on mute, just talk so much louder that no one else can be heard.
Remember when Obama joked about "shovel ready"?
Isn't it funny when our corrupt and inept government wastes trillions of tax payer dollars on faux stimulus? (money that went straight to Obama's bundlers and donors)
Again. Obama's policies are all based on Paul Krugman's radical Keynesian ideas.
Epic. Fail.
Did she try and debunk the claim when it first made the rounds, or only when Romney mentioned it?
Her beef should be with Woodward, not Romney.
Tom Spaulding said...
Yeah, whoever had the liquor concession on her military jet. $1000/week
That is a bold faced lie. It defames the intelligence of some young USAF SGT who is smart enough to buy at the Andrews AF Base Class VI store at cost plus 10%. They will take special orders for the super premium brands as well.
The cost was under $800 / week ;)
The biggest problem with Romney's campaign is how splintered it is. There's no tag line ... which should reinforce everything else you see/hear.
At least Obama has 'Forward' as his centering thought.
Romney's message seems to be too dynamic and elusive. He should hammer economy every damn time he opens his mouth and every ad should focus on it almost exclusively.
Leverage Clint's line AND the empty chair, and reinforce "You didn't build that ... " in the context of small business. Own it.
No one gives a shit about what Pelosi did or what is in Woodward's book.
They give a shit about 8+% unemployment and mountains of debt. They care about growth and job creation.
Nancy had to use the mute button because an alternative was unavailable to her.
Try to put yourself in her shoes.
You keep saying you've got something for me.
something you call love, but confess.
You've been messin' where you shouldn't have been a messin'
and now someone else is gettin' all your best.
These boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do
one of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.
source: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/
Here's the dumbest Obama ad I've seen (at the beginning of this video, I couldn't find the ad just by itself.)
Sorry....can't hear ya.
I assumed that's what "muted the President" meant. Conference call mute buttons are a pretty standard thing to use when you want to talk over whoever's on the line.
Does Pelosi's Botox-induced empathy impairment cause her to be unable to grasp how a mute button works?
Does she look perpetually startled at the world because it is startling?
"My God, what is this button on my phone pad for? Is it for speaking to the deaf?"
Tosa has it right, not that Pelosi Galore isn't probably lying through her store bought pearly whites.
After all, Wes Pruden doesn't call him, "Mortuary Bob", for nothing.
Althouse, your middle ground isn't really a middle ground -- it's what the Romney add asserts.
The ad says Pelosi hit the mute button. There's only one function for a mute button on any phone -- it doesn't mute what you hear, it mutes your end from being heard.
She did this so that she could talk over the president with someone else, and not be heard by the president or other attendees of the meeting. So she was not listening to him. She ignored what he had to say -- she dismissed it out of hand.
Althouse's initial reaction doesn't seem to parse the difference between the mute button on a phone and the mute button on a TV. They are pretty much opposites, as anyone who has worked in a modern office setting would know.
Pelosi? Bat shit crazy! Also an expert on Catholic teachings.
Ah well Nancy, having used the mute button myself, I knew what Mitt was saying.
Legal conference calls are full of use of the "mute" button, where one side wants to have a private discussion while the conference keeps going. It has nothing to do with "disrespecting" the other side.
Now the appropriate response to Pelosi is to simply hang up the
phone--like I do on those annoying robocalls that want to sell me aluminum siding.
I assumed that's what "muted the President" meant. Conference call mute buttons are a pretty standard thing to use when you want to talk over whoever's on the line.
Ditto. I do this a lot. I'm not ignoring the other parties at all. Usually I'm in a room with at least one other person, and that person or I will use mute to do a quick offline discussion about clarifying what we just heard, or coming up with followup questions, or whatever. It's not a big deal and it's not a gross effrontery to professional etiquette, in my opinion. In fact, in situations regarding some state of negotiation, it's downright necessary.
Where Pelosi went wrong is just not admitting that's what she did. Now, is she lying or is Woodward, as I assume Woodward personally witnessed this episode? What is Woodward's motive? I think she realized that if she admits she did it, she can't just say it was to have a quick confab with Reid to verify or discuss something. Woodward's account of leaving mute on for a long time shows that she was dismissive of Obama's discussion, period. So, rather than try to finesse what she did, she's just denying it.
As America's Politico said, Woodward has been stripped of his title of Slayer of Nixon and is now persona non gratis around Democratic haunts. I must say the Demo press has done a masterful job keeping the Woodward book out of the news. I can only imagine the howls of outrage if something like this was written about a GOP administration.
Pelosi had a button that kept the sound at her end from passing through to the President. His voice would still be heard, and he would never be cut off, but she would be free to talk over him and have conversations with whoever was with her.
Isn't that how mute buttons typically work? The talker on the other end would only realize the mute button was on if he listened for a few seconds and realized he couldn't hear anything on the other end.
I'm sure even other Dems get tired of listening to Obama's narcissistic dronings.
Yep. The button is so you can get things done on your end, including checking the Althouse site and typing a comment, while the rest chatter on about very important things. In fact, my mute button has a little graphic of a microphone with a slash through it. I am muting my end. If I want to mute somebody else's end, I hang up. Accidentally of course.
The "mute" button on a speaker phone mutes your own microphone, so that you can carry on a side conversation, make retching sounds, type, sigh, eat potato chips, etc., while the other parties continue to bloviate, unaware that you've decided to ignore them. Of course you don't mute the other parties - how would you know when they're done?
Take it from someone who spends an ungodly amount of time on conference calls. There's nothing wrong with strategic use of the mute button to quickly confer with your colleagues during a telephonic negotiation, or for a call that is more like e briefing or speech, but Pelosi's use here indicates either that it was just a one-way monologue by the President, or if it was supposed to be an interactive conversation, Pelosi figured she'd have to wait some time for it to be her turn (if ever), so she went on mute.
Big deal!! I object to Pelosi.
I'm pretty sure that if I were on a conference call with the President of the United States, I wouldn't hit the mute button and speak over him to my colleague sitting next to me.
I'm guessing a conference call with POTUS isn't the same thing as having a conference call with your stainless steel supplier about nonconformances in material diameter.
She decided: I don't need to hear this shit, and neither does this guy sitting next to me. It's more important that I say something to him right now, rather than waiting til the president is finished speaking, or after the meeting, than it is that we hear what he's saying.
This demonstrates two things: Pelosi is an arrogant shit; and Obama can't even garner the basic respect of a shift-leader at Walmart, even among his own party.
That's what I always understood Woodward to have described her doing. When you put someone on "mute," you don't mute his voice, you mute the sound in your room, so you can talk over him without his realizing it. That's what "mute" buttons are for. You do it when someone's droning on and you have no interest in or respect for his message, and you know he's so mesmerized by his own voice that he won't notice that no one is answering or interacting.
Since nearly everyone with a brain knows what a mute button is for, her explanation was directed to people who don't what a mute button is for and who not coincidentally are inclined to think she has something important to say.
If you have level of intellect and awareness above the Kardashian threshold, she's like Charlie Brown's teacher.
"she muted herself"
She did not mute herself since she was still talking to her companion.
She tuned out. As a mother, Pelosi knows how to tune out a kid's incessant whinings.
SteveR, I'm guessing there's a large overlap b/w the idiots you describe and the 23% who believe the Benghazi murders were a spontaneous uprising.
Obama has the moron vote locked up.
There's a rallying cry for shiloh: "We are the 23 percent!"
I have a few friends who are at best long winded. They mean well, but Jee-sus, they drone on and on and on...much like a phone call from Zero. I like that she muted the dumb ass. It show's that even SHE knows what a waste of time this loser is. I just lay the phone down, and walk away myself. that way the background noise covers for me, apparently Zero is so enraptured by his own voice he never noticed the total silence coming from the other end. And I for one, am not surprised by this show of egoism.
Ps
come back ever 2 minutes, and say "Uh-Huh", "No way!", or "Yeah", randomly, and walk away again.
@ChipS yeah I can easily see that 23% are that dim but I have some concern that there are another 25% or more that have some motivation to vote for Obama in 2012.
This incident is much more of an indictment of Obama and his penchant for diarrhea of the mouth than it is in any way of Pelosi. I can't stand her, but when I first read about it, I thought, "Well, good for her."
But talking over the President, even if he can't hear you talking over him, doesn't reflect all that "respect" Pelosi claims to have for the office of the President and "the historic nature of any communication between these two offices." She looks like a hypocrite now. Or again/still.
When I was enlisted, one of my earliest NCO bosses told me to never take an ass-chewing over the phone. Phones accidentally disconnect all the time. They still do. If it disconnects in the middle of one of your own sentences, your less likely to be accused of hanging up.
Nancy Pelosi thinks you're too stupid to understand what a mute button on a phone does.
That's all you need to know about this story.
but I have some concern that there are another 25% or more that have some motivation to vote for Obama in 2012.
Oh, sure--public employees, for example. Add 'em all up and you get to about 47%.
The election turns on the extent to which membership the two groups overlaps.
Very common to push the mute button. The mute button keeps the party on the other end of the line from hearing anything on your end. Muting the speaker would be called "hanging up".
I suspect Obama was droning on and on and Pelosi had legitimate things to do. She doesn't want to say out loud that Obama is a bore.
Re: Comanche Voter:
Legal conference calls are full of use of the "mute" button, where one side wants to have a private discussion while the conference keeps going. It has nothing to do with "disrespecting" the other side.
The disrespect -- to the extent there is any -- is why she hit the mute button. As excerpted in the post, it was evidently so lawmakers could get on with their business while the President bloviated. Pelosi denied the initial report too, probably because she had enough common sense to know how bad it made Obama look even without it getting pulled into an ad.
Both Pelosi and Obama come off as arrogant. It's pretty easy to do when you are, in fact, arrogant.
Mittens is a serial fibber.
But that's not news, is it?
Yeah, parse the words.
However, pressing the mute button allows Obama to assume he's being paid attention to when instead they're all chatting together and ignoring him.
Makes sense to me. He was just noise in the background.
Mitt is fibbing when he quotes Bob Woodward's book?
Pelosi is objectionable.
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