President Obama To NY Times: Some Think I Usurp My Authority By Having Gall To Win Presidency

[Tx4obama]

President Obama To NY Times: Some Think I Usurp My Authority By Having Gall To Win Presidency

Over the weekend, The New York Times published an extensive interview with President Obama, conducted right after his speech at Galesburg, Illinois’ Knox College last week. Interviewers Jackie Calmes and Michael Shear managed to elicit lengthy responses that mainly resembled footnotes to the speech they’d just heard, but the President did manage to dispose of a few mainstream media talking points, pushing back against the notion that his legacy should be defined by Republican obstruction, and calling out the deranged drumbeat of that opposition.

The interview hewed closely to the content of that lengthy economic address, and curiously contained nary a mention of the President’s days-earlier remarks on the killing of Trayvon Martin, and its implications for black Americans. While a good deal of the President’s responses were repetitions or expansions of things he said during that speech, here are a few choice cuts.

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Then, asked about Republican concerns that he had overstepped his authority by delaying implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, the President President Obama called out the years-long Republican drumbeat that he doesn’t know his place:

But there’s not an action that I take that you don’t have some folks in Congress who say that I’m usurping my authority. Some of those folks think I usurp my authority by having the gall to win the presidency. And I don’t think that’s a secret. But ultimately, I’m not concerned about their opinions — very few of them, by the way, are lawyers, much less constitutional lawyers.

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Full article here: http://www.mediaite.com/print/president-obama-to-ny-times-some-think-i-usurp-my-authority-by-having-gall-to-win-presidency/

[Skittles]

1. a great percentage of the GOP thinks Obama is UPPITY

love seeing him call them out and wish he would do it more often

[Cha]

2. Those same "some people" whine because that's what baggers

do

Good on the President calling them out.

Mahalo Tx

[Cal33]

3. It's high time that he is doing so. He should have started 4+ years ago.

[Cha]

4. PBO is doing it the way he wants and that's fine with me.

[steve2470]

5. "One of the challenges...is that there’s almost a kneejerk habit right now if I’m for it, then

they’ve got to be against it. And I think there are a lot of Republicans who are frustrated by that, because they want to be for something, not just against something. But they’ve got to work through that pattern that’s developed over the last couple of years.

- President Obama. That was a great point he made.