Beware, This Press Conference Protected By Lapdogs!

"You moved the cemetery, but you left the bodies, didn't you? ..."

Well, we took a bite out of the Obama Prime Time Presser last evening, but it is such a juicy apple, we're coming back for seconds today.

This is supposed to be the era of "Change" and "Change you can believe in", yet, in the White House Press Room, it looked to be the same-old, same-old.

This is not to say, that the remarkable, breathtaking manner in which our national media gave The Bush Grindhouse a free pass, that they should push the pendulum all the way over to the other side, and bust the Obama Administration's balls.

And, it didn't help very much, that President Obama, at some point before entering the East Room, adjusted, and turned the dial, to "Long-winded Answers", allowing for just 13 questions in the span of just under an hour.

Man, you could have painted a house in the given time of his answers.

(Walter Shapiro points out, "What Obama was decidedly not Monday night was Kennedy-esque. When JFK unveiled the live presidential prime-time press conference 48 years ago, he answered 37 questions in the space of 40 minutes; Obama only half-responded to 13 questions in the space of an hour.")

After all, the Obama Team put this first Obama press conference up on a pedestal, marking it for Prime Time, having a message to deliver, which the President did, repeatedly, and often;

The Commander Guy, and the slobbering rubber stamp Republicans created this pile of shit and I am the one that has to clean it up ..."

Make no mistake about it, along with selling the Stimulus Package, Team Obama wanted to make sure everybody knew it was "them" that got us into this mess, and it will be "us" who will get us out of it.

But, for most of the conference, it was 'The King and His Court', a proverbially softball tournament, with the national media, happily, lobbing those softballs at the President.

There were the perfunctory queries about the Stimulus Package, and Obama Bipartisan quest, even a "hot" one, about A-Rod and his steroids.

Nothing for Obama to break a sweat over, nothing he couldn't handle by inhaling, and then yakking away for a few minutes on.

And you think, being in the same pot together, someone would have given Chuck Todd, of NBC, a nudge, to wake him up from his power nap, at least a few seconds before Obama called on him.

Jesus, what the hell was Todd thinking?

Our financial meltdown was the result of consumer overspending?

Here's Juan Cole, noting the same about Todd's clueless question;

Uh, I don't remember about Todd receiving that Nobel Prize in economics. But here is what Paul Krugman said about the cause of the crisis:

' What lies behind the credit squeeze is the combination of reduced trust in and decimated capital at financial institutions. People and institutions, including the financial institutions, don't want to deal with anyone unless they have substantial capital to back up their promises, yet the crisis has depleted capital across the board.'

Does that sound to you like "too much consumer spending" was the problem?

C'mon there, Chuck, get a glove, get in the game!

The most pressing question came from someone that didn't get the "Lapdog" memo.

Sam Stein, of Huffington Post, pressed the Prez on whether or not he was going to prosecute the Bush Grindhouse cretins for their War Crimes, to which Obama (inhaling), gave his standard stock answer about if there were crimes, and we want to look forward not backward.

We can only hope that he is throwing a head fake, keeping his cards close to his chest, as, if he did answer affirmatively, that would set off a conflagration, and epic battle, with the Right Wing Freak Show running to unlock the weapons locker.

Helen Thomas, perhaps another slap at his predecessor, got the final question, to ask an uncomfortable one, about who had nuclear weapons in the Middle East, to which the new President answered (after inhaling) without really answering it, and survived the presser without having to answer "Israel".

Perhaps, that explains Thomas getting the final question, and the dial being tuned to "Long-Winded Answers".

If the media wants to take umbrage about continuing to be lapdogs, why then, did no one ask the President why his Secretary of the Treasury's tax problem was okay, and Tom Daschle;s wasn't?

And they blew the MONEY QUESTION.

No one, not one single lapdog there last evening asked President Obama about what was going on with the new puppy that is to be forthcoming, for his daughters.

How could they blow that, in the first Press Conference, on Prime Time television?

Did Obama's staff not go around and drop a few hints?

Are they jealousy of the pending new puppy, knowing that in the canine world, they will become second bananas to the new First Puppy?

Man, that is just unbelievable.

What are the tabloids, and cable news programs, going to talk about for days to come?


Bonus Obama Presser Links

CNN - Transcript: Obama takes questions on economy

No More Mister Nice Blog: GOSH, AND WE WERE ALL SO PERKY AND UPBEAT BEFORE NOW

Mike Madden: "I won't return to the failed theories of the last eight years" ...In his first press conference, the president dismisses his opponents on the stimulus package as out of touch

Robert Stein: Obama's Offhand Ultimatum

Joe Sudbay: Report from the Press Conference