Obama: That's not a whiner, that's my wife!

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about the loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, talking about American leaders who, in spite of rising exports and economic growth, "blame speculators and oil companies for high oil prices and yet have no proposal to produce more energy here at home."

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"He named the U.S., and I quote, 'a nation of whiners.' Whoa. A nation of whiners?"

Barack Obama, deliberately misconstruing Sen. Gramm's remarks in order to publicly ridicule and humiliate him, keeping his campaign promise to be a new kind of candidate.

Actually, Mr. Obama ought to know a whiner when he sees one. After all he sits across the breakfast table from one.

...we're a country that is "just downright mean"

...we are "guided by fear"

"We have become a nation of struggling folks who are barely making it every day"

"Folks are just jammed up, and it's gotten worse over my lifetime."

"You're looking at a young couple that's just a few years out of debt. See, because, we went to those good schools, and we didn't have trust funds. I'm still waiting for Barack's trust fund. Especially after I heard that Dick Cheney was s'posed to be a relative or something. Give us something here!"

"The life that I'm talking about that most people are living has gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl. . . ."

Michelle Obama, who earned over $300K in 2005, has a full-time house keeper and a personal trainer.