Three days into President Barack Obama’s second term, and it’s clear he’s not the man he was in his first term. Just ask the fly.
A pesky Musca domestica (per pooler Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo) landed on the president’s face during a press conference to announce his picks to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Obama swatted at the fly a couple of times, and the official White House transcript records, “This guy is bothering me here—(swatting at a fly.)” The insect eventually left the commander in chief alone.
But the Obama of just a few years ago—of June 2009, to be precise—might not be impressed. That’s because that Obama successfully killed a fly during an interview with CNBC, boasting “I got the sucker.”
Now that House Republicans have taken the debt limit out of the realm of legislative horse trading, we have a clearer sense of how negotiations over the remaining fiscal issues dividing the parties will play out.
Fox’s ‘The Five’ has a smart take on Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi testimony. (via TPM)
Fox News Can’t Decide If It’s OK To Call Someone Hitler
If you have been watching Fox News in recent weeks, you will have heard a lot of discussion about Hitler. Guests have been lining up to equate the gun legislation proposed by President Obama with Hitler, Nazis and 1930s Germany in general.
Then stepped up Bob Schieffer.
Speaking on a special Jan. 16 edition of CBS News, the host said this of the obstacles to passing legislation: “Surely passing civil rights legislation, as Lyndon Johnson was able to do, and before that, surely defeating the Nazis was a much more formidable task than taking on the gun lobby.”
Heads on Fox started to fizz.
“Think of if conservatives had used that language to describe liberals,” said The Five host Dana Perino, apparently unaware of her employer’s programming the last few weeks. “There would be collective outrage on the front page of the papers and demands for people to resign and apologize.”
via TPM
“I want to take a look one more time,” Obama said, lingering for a few short moments to savor the view as the crowd shuffled past him. “I’ll never see this again.”
Departing the West Front of the U.S. Capitol after delivering his second inaugural address on Monday, President Obama wanted to take one last glance of the hundreds of thousands of Americans gathered to celebrate his second term. After all, it would be his last.
(Source: livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com)
Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law – for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.
—President Obama called for the equal treatment of gay Americans in his second inaugural address Monday.
(Source: livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com)
