It’s nine months until Election Day, but President Obama is already bringing out the big guns.
Specifically, he is shouldering the Extreme Marshmallow Cannon.
Obama walked into the State Dining Room at midday Tuesday and encountered 14-year-old Joey Hudy and the compressed-air cannon he invented to launch marshmallows as part of a science fair.
“The Secret Service is going to be mad at me about this,” the president said, but he didn’t care. He asked Hudy to hand over the gun, told onlookers to step aside, pumped up the compressor — and shot a confection across the room Thomas Jefferson used as his office. Under the watchful gaze of an Abraham Lincoln portrait, the projectile narrowly missed a window and smacked into a wall near the entrance to the Red Room.
Minutes later, the commander in chief went downstairs to the East Room to report on his marksmanship, telling the assembled TV cameras that he “shot a marshmallow through an air gun, which was very exciting.”
It was so exciting that White House press secretary Jay Carney led off Tuesday afternoon’s briefing with more talk of the Extreme Marshmallow Cannon, suggesting that he would like to arm himself with one on the podium.
“I hope you enjoyed the science fair,” he said. “The president sure did.” Carney then moved on to discuss “another moment of the president’s day that the president enjoyed” — chatting with the New York Giants head coach.
Obama suddenly seems to be enjoying himself quite a bit, and no wonder: He just might be the luckiest man alive.
At the last possible moment to save his re-election, the economy is beginning to hum, as evidenced by Friday’s jobs report. And Obama’s Republican opponents are shaping up to be as formidable as, well, marshmallows.
While Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum are making each other unelectable, the president is singing Al Green, congratulating Super Bowl winners, playing with science projects, raising obscene amounts of campaign cash and watching his poll numbers soar.
According to historical patterns, the high unemployment rate and slow economic growth should combine to doom Obama. But historical patterns do not take into account an opponent who says he enjoys firing people. This week’s Washington Post-ABC News poll showed Obama with a nine-point lead over Romney and a 15-point lead over Gingrich. And political handicapper Charlie Cook wrote Tuesday about a fundamental shift in Obama’s prospects, as the GOP position retreats from “cautiously optimistic” to “uncertainty.”
In politics, it’s better to be lucky than good, and Obama has come into an unexpectedly large quantity of luck. Five straight monthly drops in the unemployment rate have boosted consumer confidence and stock markets.
And, while Obama does nothing more than sit and watch, his opponents are alienating the electorate. Conservative blogger Erick Erickson summed up the disenchantment this week when he said that he would rather have the “sweet meteor of death than any of the candidates left in the race.” Santorum’s unexpected revival in Tuesday’s primaries — essentially a protest vote — indicates that Erickson has plenty of company.
While Romney embraces the birther billionaire Donald Trump, he has ceded to Obama the political center. The day after Romney indelicately announced that he was “not concerned about the very poor,” Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast about his affection for the Rev. Billy Graham and about “the biblical call to care for the least of these — for the poor; for those at the margins of our society.”
The run of luck has left Obama in buoyant spirits, which were on display in the White House on Tuesday. Leaving aside the crisis in Syria and a dispute with the Catholic bishops, he lingered at the science fair to talk to the teen inventors and try their toys, including a robot made from a trash can (“I’m trying to figure out how you got through the metal detectors,” Obama commented) and sugar packets made from dissolving packaging (“Tell me when I can buy stock,” the president said).
He turned to three girls from Texas who had built rockets, and recounted his own experiment of dropping eggs with Sasha from the Truman Balcony. “I’m hip to the whole egg thing,” he said, before agreeing to the girls’ request for a group hug.
For a man who has until recently been focused on his own survival, it’s a newfound luxury to spend quality time with robots and marshmallows. “I’ve got to say,” a grinning Obama said, “this is fun.”
Dana Milbank’s email address is danamilbank@washpost.com.
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The boy President is an embarrassment to all who believed in him. If you think he cares anything about people or America you are wrong. The loser has only made decisions based upon political expediency vs. what is good and right for America. A tremendously divisive loser who is devoid of any ideas beyond wealth distribution. Two months ago he is the Blamer in Chief explaining why there are no new jobs, today the loser is taking credit for nothing and I repeat nothing that he has done.
In politics, it’s better to be lucky than good, and Obama has come into an unexpectedly large quantity of luck. The loser is devoid of any leadership skills. As the most inexperienced loser in chief, where the hell would he have ever acquired leadership skill set?
Vote this loser back to Kenya
Cool it with the racism.
Like cooling the open hatred you espouse towards conservatives? Remember they are part of the country also, or is it a liberal bias double standard that you seem to be preaching and the same standards don’t apply to you? Even as a biracial individual I see nothing racist in the statement saying send someone back to Kenya. How about you go back to Europe?
(It seems you have a fan! Someone has gone to the trouble of manufacturing a new handle based on a bastrdization of yours so he can taunt you. I wonder who could it be.)
Yeah, loads of fun. This thing with users creating several different handles to comment with is getting pretty annoying.
“Marxist.” “Kenya.” You all are underlining the writer’s point.
It is possible to be a reasonable human being and disagree with our elected president’s policies. But anyone who describes Obama as a Marxist or a Kenyan exposes himself as a fool. It is this sort of rhetoric that’s responsible for the diviseness of which you speak.
Making the tough call to send in Seal Team 6 was bold and courageous. Working to bring about any compromise from the congress, in spite of their refusal to act, that was bold and courageous. Fighting for the payroll tax cut for working families was one of the few moments the American people have been represented by a president in over a decade. Maintaining strong defense while bringing our troops home from Iraq, that is leadership.
You can post your derogatory attacks right from Rush Limbaughs mouth all you want. None of that has any bearing on the actually successes of this presidency. I would like you to tell me five things republicans have done in the last twenty years to make life better for working Americans. Okay make that three things, five is a lot. I will even challenge you to name one single thing that republicans have done to move this country forward in twenty years. Job losses, rising deficits, excessive war spending, abuses of civil and human rights and tax breaks for those who do not need them is the actual take away from the republicans over the last entire generation.
In our nations history, exactly two presidents have entered office with the economy on the verge of complete collapse. Obama and FDR. Any other comparison falls short because the challenge was not as great. In factual terms, the US economy was tracking down at -9% GDP in late 2008. early 2009. The stimulus worked and turned that deficit into growth the very first year. Now, with the economy stable and job growth, albeit slow, finally realized; he has turned to reducing deficits and getting control over the policies that have placed us in jeopardy.
Say what you want about the president, you are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts. None of the candidates have suggested anything substantively different than what we got from Bush other than Ron Paul and the President. If you do not like what has happened in America over the last decade or two, electing Mitt or Newt or Santorum is just doubling down on what has been proven an abject failure of policy for nearly everyone in this country.
I supported republicans until the off-shoring and culture wars started. Neither of these are good for America, for liberty or for prosperity. Ron Paul offers real change, so he will get my consideration. The president has also earned my consideration. He has governed as a true moderate and spent money when it needed to be spent and is reining in spending now that we have some semblance of stability. Those are the only two major candidates that offer any new approaches to right the course and get America back on track.
Vote for the “more tax cuts for the rich” people and watch America continue its descent. With four years of Bush-like policies, there will be no saving us from the abyss. The middle class needs real governing or it will be eradicated from the American way of life.
Seal Team 6 is bold and courageous. Taking 18 hours to make the call was not. Leaking information to Hollywood about the raid was not. Fudging the actual times and actions of what actually happened in the compound was not. Allowing the left-wing media to give him the credit, and accepting the praise was not.
The Payroll Tax cut is nothing more than smoke and mirrors. The Payroll Tax is the primary funding for Social Security, a program that is in major trouble because Congress has been sucking everything from it for the past few decades, and the baby-boomers are flooding the system. The cut was just an easy way to create another campaign issue.
President Reagan entered the White House with a worse economy than either FDR or Obama. He inherited higher unemployment, massive inflation, and a recession. However, not once did Ronald Reagan blame his predecessor. Instead, he took the necessary actions to get the country back on track. His actions lead to the prosperity that Clinton claimed as his own. And now Obama wants to compare himself to Reagan. Why would he do that when everything he’s doing goes against the measures Reagan took? Instead, Obama is following the FDR plan which ended up extending the depression by what many economists calculated, at least 7 years. Obama is working on extending it much longer than that.
Obama is not what you think he is.
If you think it is wise to make a high stakes call, risking many lives, in ten minutes, when most of your advisers think the risks are too high, I am not sure you are really cognizant of what leadership like this requires.
On Reagan inheriting a worse economy than Obama or FDR, you need a lesson in history. I was very aware of the circumstances at that time and the challenge was not even close to as great. Further, Reagan actually made a bigger mess of things with his tax cuts that he later rescinded and replaced with very large tax increases. Historical analysis of his culture wars commentary has shown those to have been completely overblown and in many cases factually bankrupt.
The tax cut may be smoke and mirrors to you, I cannot say. For the people I know, it is critically needed. Maybe it isn’t the one time buy-off that the Bush $800 checks were, but this is helping people pay their monthly bills.
Funny, I laid out a challenge to come up with even a single real accomplishment of republicans over twenty years and all you were able to do was bash this president. The reason is that there is nothing, at all, that you can point to and say the American peoples lives are better as a result of this one thing. The GOP has given all of its energy to a very small number of people and done absolutely nothing for the rest.
On a historical note, the thing FDR did that extended the depression was he caved in on austerity before the growth policies were cemented. That is exactly what the GOP promises to do as well. Your FDR claim was helpful to me to illuminate that point.
Still waiting for that big thing that the GOP can claim they did to make life better for middle class Americans……
The real choice, not the rhetoric, must explore what actual policy will result from these candidates, not the idle fear mongering and pandering. How are they going to turn the cost curve on health care? There is no way to have fiscal stability if this goes unaddressed. The ACA, despite its warts, actually addresses that issue. IT was good enough for the Heritage Foundation when they penned it in the 1990s and it was good enough for Mitt the governor. Now it is lost in the conversation. The modern GOP is in trouble because it only stands for one thing, increasing inequality as an end that justifies any imaginable means.
The GOP is not who you think they are.
First of all, your challenge was to flat_lander. I’ve listed Republican accomplishment on other occasions, and you lefties just laugh.
As for knowing history, your recollection of Reagan is skewed. But, if you want to remain ignorant of the facts, then go right ahead. If Obama followed the Reagan example, we would be much better off right now. Instead, he’s following FDR’s failed plan, because that’s what Progressives do in order to push their agenda.
And it’s the modern Democratic Party that promotes inequality through class-warfare and out-of-control entitlements.
Your buddy Romney loves to hand out pink slips. He would allowed GM and the auto industry collapse completely. Millions of Americans ( lefties and righties and them in between) were defrauded out of their homes with illegal mortage scams. Romney said to ignore the problem, let the banks buy up the homes and then re-sell them. He has no feelings – like you – for anyoe but himself and his billions.
Your other righty – Gingrich – is still planning a moon colony when he becomes president after presenting toilet brushes to poor Blacks to clean up the unemployment problem.
The rightys would have been so happy if the Kill Bin Laden plan had failed. Bush deferred, as he did on going to ‘Nam, about going after Bin Laden. “I have no interest in him.” In contrast President Obama publicly stated he was going to kill this terrorist, and did. He did while Trump, McConnell and other rightys squabbled about a birth certificate. Meanwhile he rescued GM and Chrysler. Unemployment is going down. The Stock Market is enjoying renewed vigor. The Bush Cheney 8-year expedition in Iraq is over and the other one in Afghanistan is about to end, too.
Bush handed this president two wars a deficit of more than two trillion to go with it and billions more. In less than a month of being in office your rights were wanting to know why we were still in a recession – the one courtesy of the free for all spend all enjoyed by Bush and his master of torture – Cheney.
Never claimed Romney as a buddy. As for GM, it seems strange that Ford didn’t take any bailout money and they’re number 1. Explain that.
The mortgage crisis was caused by a group of Congressional Democrats who used Fannie and Freddie to do their vote-buying work. Then they sent their government regulators out to the banks across America and forced them to make bad loans. Funny that Fannie, Freddie and Congress have been exempted from the ongoing investigation. Explain that.
Obama got Bin Laden based mostly on information passed down from the Bush administration and the efforts of foreign intelligence and the Navy Seals. All Obama did was approve the operation. The Seals killed Bin Laden.
Carter handed Reagan a much worse economy. But Ronald Reagan didn’t blame Carter. He fixed the problem in his first term. Obama has only made the situation worse.
Reading your posts is like listening to Limbaugh, Hannity and Rove, with a dash of Cheney.
Wasn’t your dear pal Gingrich involved with Frannie Mae? Understand too, he was a lobbyist. Gingrich – the man who will free all poor Black schoolchildren by giving them a toilet brush to clean toilets.
Your analysis of the assassination of Osama Bin Laden bespeaks of total teapublican brainwashing. You cannot allow the president to have any credit for pushing his goal to kill Bin Laden. Your pal Bush swore off the chase. He said not long after 9/11 he wasn’t one bit interested in Bin Laden. And contrary to your pompous assertion the president did nothing – he was the man who said “Go.” Seal Teams are a part of the U.S. Navy. s such they operate under Navy and government jurisdiction. Not even the Department of the Navy could approve a raid into Pakistan or any other country. It was a presidential decision based on months of planning. This wasn’t something the team organized while slopping down a few beers. They have to have presidential approval. President Obama approved the raid, not PO Charlie Brown, or Cmdr. White.
Heed your own advice and check your sources more thoroughly.
FDR’s plan that spurred thirty years of unparalleled growth and progress. In the 60’s and 70’s, middle class people had a respectable lifestyle. That was destroyed by the conservative agenda to hold down or reduce wages. Consumption was funded by debt, which has left us unable to spend our way out of trouble.
The conservative plan: drive down wages, drive up debt, weaken safety nets, off-shore jobs, share none of the productivity gains and then give the banks the people’s cash when the house of cards crashes.
You will soon learn, as will much of the planet, that abandoning the principles of pursuing equality results in total system failure. The rich cannot and will not spend the way wage earners do. Evidence of what grows an economy has been tossed aside to engineer a gilded class that leaves over a billion people in poverty, and then declares victory. This is a game to them where they win when the rest lose. It is not sound policy. It is not sustainable. It is not American. It is not humane. It is unbridled greed. It will be met with a world of uprisings, which we are bearing witness to already. It will begin in Greece, spread to the UK by years end (yes, it will tarnish the Olympics) and ultimately land on our shores. There is no way to keep the masses down when inequality reaches the tipping point. We are there and the policies you advocate for are the very reason. If you are doing okay in the new economy, don’t count on it lasting. The richest will be coming for what you have gained in due time.
Want to see a glimpse of what the billionaires are up to, read this:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/06/wall-streets-secret-spy-center-run-for-the-1-by-nypd/
If this doesn’t tell you they are preparing for all out war on the suffering masses….. Where we are heading offers little for any of us.
What else can you say that is not hate?
You’re confusing hate with truth. I hate no one.
You hate the president. Every post is a put down of a man who has faced almost insurmountable tasks and total hostility.
Pretty sickening to see so much racism and hate for a man who just happens to be of a different color.
Oh No!! Someone played the race card!!! Put it back in the deck. There is no racism in his statement.
You must still be hoping that the Birther issue is kept alive.
He should be cracking more jokes about how there was no
such thing as shovel ready jobs. This marxist has to go.
Your choice a marxist or a selection of right wingnuts leading us to facism.
Many posts remind me of how close we are to that. Gingrich’s conception of instilling drive and respect into poor Black students is to hand them a toilet brush to clean school toilets. Paul wants to divide Blacks and Whites again at lunch counters and Rest Rooms.
Romney ecstatically declared that he loved passing out Pink Slips and that he would have allowed the American auto industry to collapse. He feels the same about the foreclosed homes of millions of Americans. Let it bottom out, he says, as the president launches a plan to assist those robbed of their homes by Frannie Mae and other big banks. New York is now launching a criminal investigation into those banks who believe they are out of the mess with a few billion.None of the candidates, including the also-ran, embody conservatism. They are radical right wing disciples of oppressive rule. There are no Moderate republicans. Sen. Mitch McConnell, Senate minority leader, is taking more than $200,000 annually and publicly declaring his only reason for being in Washington is to make sure the president only serves one term. He and John Boehner, House Majority Leader, lead a block of republican tea party people to stop unemployment benefits, kill Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid.
People should have to work, these supporters of the radical right chant. They cannot have the government pay pensions and health care. Welfare for the poor, the mentally and physically handicapped, the unemployed, and many others. It should be stopped they all chant in rote. Blindly, millions support this, even though millions more have paid, and still pay into both government-assisted plans, as well taxes.
The radical right insists that work is the answer. It is the commonly accepted right wing political answer to all of a nation’s problems. It’s been around for decades.
“Work shall set you free.”
The economy is getting better and our President is pushing a positive agenda and message. Fringe conservatives on the other hand are selling doom and gloom and seem to have very little faith in the country. They seem to think that running campaigns on bashing gays, racism, banning contraceptives, etc. are going to work this time around. It’s pretty laughable.
Well stated.
Obama isn’t lucky he is simply right.
The American people know it was the Republicans with their gross mismanagement of the markets that caused the recession and Americans know it was Wall st crooks like Mitt Romney who made billions by shipping American jobs to China.
Intelligent Americans know differently. It’s the sheeple that have been fooled into believing you’re line.
You forget that it takes two to tango. No one party is exempt from blame.
It is a basic tenant of the Republican party that we should just let the bankers and insurance companies do what ever they want with only a minimum of regulation.
It is now known that the lack of regulation and the lack of enforcement during the Bush years caused the economic melt down President Obama is trying to fix.
Negative. It was over-regulation and Congressional mandates to the investment companies and banks that contributed primarily to the economic meltdown. Fannie, Freddie and Congress are to blame, but they are all exempt from any investigations.
The Bush Administration warned Congress 8 times about the problems with the system, but the likes of Frank, Dodd, Watters and their group blew the warning off.
“When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes… Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain. ”
— Napoleon Bonaparte, 1815
Romney loves to pass out Pink Slips and has no use for the poor. He allowed companies to go bankrupt and made millions. He created as Health Plan for Massachusetts which inspired Obama Care. Now it’s first target to be killed, if elected.
Bush and Cheney and Rove created the Iraq War based on lies. Newt Gingrich believes a toilet brush in the hands of poor Blacks will erase the unemployment problem. Bush walked into the White House with a huge surplus and quickly squandered it on unnecessary wars and created a huge defict which he handed to President Obama.
Now the country is turning around and the only mud the GOPers can sling is a birth control plan that they claim undermines the First Amendment. About time for the Birthers to re-surface.
Romneycare – 70 pages. Obamacare – 2700+ pages. Sure they’re exactly the same.
Romney’s business dealings saved far more companies and jobs than it lost. But, since he’s a Republican, I guess that’s not allowed.
Bush took the intelligence information passed to him from Clinton and ran with it. Clinton, Kerry, Reid, Pelosi, and many more Democrats swore that the information was correct. But because Bush acted on it, suddenly it wasn’t correct. If he’d have been a Democrat, he would have been right, and the intelligence agencies would have been wrong.
Bush had a PROJECTED surplus. And then 9-11 happened. You do remember 9-11, don’t you? Or are you one of those that think it was an inside job?
The huge deficit resulted from a combination of Bush allowing too much government spending and expansion, and the out-of-control Democratically controlled Congress the last two years of his administration. Obama, in his short tenure as a Senator, helped with the overspending and expansion, thus contributing to his inheritance.
As for the country turning around, how can the rapidly rising national debt, continued blockage of legislation in the Senate, denial of job producing endeavors throughout the nation, and the viscous attack on the wealthy constitute any form of a turn-around.
Sorry, Briney, but you are sorely misinformed. You need to expand your sources of information.
I’m so happy to see that the BDN is still engaged in responsible and balanced political discourse. This forum disgusts me and the people posting here are simply a combination of rudeness, intolerance, and
hate – no wonder we can’t have an intelligent discourse on politics in this country any more – shame on you all. This is my last post as I will no longer lower myself to reading this nonsense or attempting to engage in discourse with simple minded morons – this means both conservatives and liberals. Goodbye!
But, aren’t you a new poster here? I don’t recognize your handle.
Stand up for what you believe. Let your voice be heard. Don’t quit.