rock over London. rock on, Chicago.

let’s us have some Q an’ A with President Obama, why don’t we. he addressed the nation earlier, and I’m watching the rerun, as he had his first primetime press conference on how the economy’s fucked and we need to back this stimulus plan. so sit back, and enjoy some gross generalizations while I hunt for the most sensational quotes.

AP’s Jennifer Loven (it’s nice to put a face to the name) says: Obama, talk about what you know that would lead you to say that our recession may be permanent. do you think you risk losing credibility by using such dire language?
Obamer: no. cites Japan in the nineties. they weren’t bold and swift enough, he says. “what I’m trying to underscore is what the people in Elkhart already understand.”
“some of the criticisms (of this bill) are with the basic idea that gov. should intervene in this crisis.” and wtf is up with that? also? he’s got some plans to loosen up the credit markets. get ready, Wall Street.
“what I won’t do is returned to the failed theories of the last eight years that got us here in the first palce. they’ve been tested, and they’ve failed.” word.

someone else axes: “what are your strategies for engaging Iran?” does Iran want to talk to us?
Oblammo: it’s got a hell of a history, the Persian empire, I’ll tell you what. but financing terrorist organizations, “bellicose language toward Israel,” nuclear weapon development, “are not only contrary to our interests, but contrary to the interest of international peace.” we should use diplomacy, because, what the hell, why not. the last dickhead didn’t bother to try that, for eight years, and he didn’t get anything done.
oh, he’ll whup ass if he has to, don’t worry. but “there’s the possibility, at least of a relationship of mutual respect and progress.”

Chip Reed: you’re all about bipartisanship, but you aren’t getting any votes from the Republicans. what went wrong?
Prez: “when I made a series of overtures to Republicans … all those were not designed simply to get some short-term votes, they were designed to build up trust over time. … hopefully that’ll be reciprocated.” but “I can’t afford to see Congress play the usual political games.” “my bottom line is, send me a bill that creates 3 million jobs.”
“when I hear that from folks who presided over a doubling of the national debt, I just want them to not engage in some revisionist history. I inherited the debt that we have right now.”
ha. so fuck you, Eric Cantor. fiscal conservatism, my ass.

Chuck Todd: you wanna increase consumer spending. but isn’t that how we got into this mess? don’t you want people holding on to those dolla dolla bills, y’all?
Obama: consumer spending didn’t get us into this mess. massive investment banks trading on ridiculous leverage without any fucking oversight got us into mess. you fucking moron. your goatee makes you look like an asshole. why don’t you sit the fuck down before I come over there and put my wingtip up your ass? next question.
I don’t know what it is about Chuck Todd that raises this kind of response in me.
wait, no, Obama also says, “this notion that I came in here ginned up to spend $800 billion dollars, that wasn’t how I envisioned my presidency beginning.”

question: won’t the government need more than $350 billion in TARP funds to fix the credit crisis?
Obama: because there was no oversight, “we didn’t get as much bang for the buck as we should have.” he spends all of about 90 seconds on this question.

ABC: How can we gauge if these recovery programs are working?
Obamama: if we create some jobs, then that’ll be pretty tits. then if the credit markets are working, that’d be pretty cool, too.

Ed Henry: let’s talk about Afghanistan. are we gonna stop sneaking soldiers’ dead bodies into Dover Air Force base under the cover of night? because that’s pretty faggy.
Obama: well, uh, we are in the process of reviewing those policies, in conversations with the Department of Defense. a nice, boring answer.
drops a laundry list of what’s fucked up about Afghanistan, the ol’ graveyard of empires. oh, and the border regions of Pakistan, we gotta fix that. shit that everyone knows, and everyone knows he knows. this is the kind of question you ask in hopes that he’ll fuck it up and you can get a good quote out of him.

Helene Cooper: are you gonna make banks use their credit to loosen up lending practices?
Obama: I’ll let my boy Geithner answer that question at his press conference, cause he’s the treasury secretary. edit: OH BOY DID GEITHNER HAVE A PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY OR WHAT

question: VP Biden said that even you make all the right calls, there’s a 30% chance you’ll get it wrong. what the hell was he talking about?
Obama: I, uh, don’t exactly recall what Joe was talking about (press corps laughs). repeats talking points.

Washington Post, oh, here it is, here it is: What is your reaction to news that Alex Rodriguez used performance-enhancing steroids?
Obama: I didn’t bother to listen to what he said. when I was on deadline tonight, trying to get the wire story on this press conference on A1, I almost lost my shit, because AP saw it fit to move 10 inches on the president’s take on the A-Rod bombshell before they moved anything else. because, oh jesus christ, who gives a flying fuck about steroids in baseball. 

Helen Thomas: do you believe that Pakistan is harboring these ‘so-called’ terrorists? do you know of anybody else in the Middle East that got nuclear weapons? ‘so-called’, she says.
Obama: yes. Pakistan needs to clamp down on that shit. but Thomas, in typically ancient curmudgeonly style, keeps trying to interrupt him.

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post: Patrick Leahy (D-Hippie) wants to open a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ into the ‘misdeeds of the Bush administration’. will you rule out prosecution of Bush administration officials?
Obama: we don’t torture, no one’s above the law, and …
wait, I gotta cut in here. who gave the fucking Huffington Post White  House press credentials? I’m saying it here and now: anyone who gets their news from that internet rag is a fucking moron. someone should set this asshole on the curb.

question: if you can’t get any GOP votes on the stimulus bill, how the hell are you gonna handle shit in the future? health care reform, for instance.
Obama: “when it comes to how we approach the issue of fiscal responsibility …  it’s a little hard for me to take criticism from folks about this recovery package after they’ve presided over a doubling of the national debt.”
ZING.

transcript

how we gonna pay the rent
the water stopped running into my kitchen sink while I was halfway through the dishes.
that shit’s really weak, landlord. I pay way too much rent for this kind of bullshit to be happening. add this to: half of the wall sockets are dead, the fan doesn’t work, there’s no insulation in half of the apartment, and there’s a hole next to the water heater where the coons can come in from where they live, under the roof, directly above my head.

fuck him
Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroid use, or maybe he did. I got ESPN on, they’re weeping about it. it’s the worst day in the history of baseball!
to that I say: oh, jesus christ. let’s all get a grip. is anyone surprised? no, really?

I’m gonna get a boyfriend instead
guess what I’m doing tomorrow.
no. that’s wrong. you degenerate.
I’m going to a yoga class. I haven’t any idea if this is a good idea or not. meaning, it’s an hour long, and I can imagine thinking to myself after 15 minutes, “what the hell am I doing here?” I hope that’s not what happens.
like a jackass, I brought it up at work today, and was widely ridiculed for it. the only reason you go to yoga is to meet women, said the sports desk.
and well, shit, I didn’t have any answer for that, it was pretty funny, because he was only halfway kidding.

annnd, that’s it. let’s see what the Obamaniacs get done this week. this business in DC on the stimulus package, heh heh heh, is getting testy.

you hear the NY Times is considering charging for online content? I think they used to do that. fine. fuck it. it costs $1.50 to buy a copy of that paper, even in the city. that’s bullshit. fuck them.

but anyway:
It’s the economy, girlfriend

yes sir, there it is.

I’m exhausted. why the hell am I still up?
you know what it was, it was the spaghetti. I just ate some spaghetti, had some Texas Pete on it, but I didn’t get at it until later. and then I had to clean up. so here we are.
all of this is fascinating, I know.
but listen, I read the newspaper today like you knew I would. you knew it. and I got one for you from there.
this one’s good. and it’s not even about poor Tom Daschle, the saddes’  kid on the playground, the delicate flower. poor, poor Tom Daschle. he wanted to fix health care!

FTC Sues in ‘Pay-for-Delay’ Pact
The Federal Trade Commission has filed suit in federal court in an attempt to block a deal in which a manufacturer of a brand-name testosterone-replacement drug paid three competitors to delay rolling out cheaper generic versions.

so chew on that one for a while. I have to go to sleep.

‘Unforgiven’ is on. you ever seen ‘Unforgiven’? it’s pretty good. the rare, realistic western. Gene Hackman’s mean as shit.

I think I’m gonna try yoga. yes.
no, really, hear me out. I’m about as flexible as burnt toast. that’s gotta change. so I figure, what the hell, there’s about a dozen places in town that offer yoga — this is, after all, Charlottesville. and one of them has a class once a week for “stiff guys.” I’m a “stiff guys.” and I want to fix that.

so while Tom Daschle is exposing the lame, unsurprising underbelly of the democratic establishment, Eric Holder became the first black attorney general in the nation’s history. the big deal with him was while he was deputy AG, he was apparently indifferent to pardoning commodities trader Mark Rich at the end of the Clinton administration.
to be honest, I don’t really care. his ass should have been locked up, but then again, I’m of the opinion that presidents shouldn’t be allowed to pardon anyone. 
and then there’s the commerce secretary nominee. one Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. your boy.
he’s up for re-election in 2010, and his chances are apparently not very good. so what they’re doing by offering it to him is putting the republicans up shit creek. New Hampshire has a democratic governor, who may be predisposed to appointing another democrat. but Gregg’s playing it tall in the ol’ saddle, though, and says he would only accept a position if it is guaranteed that a republican is appointed in his place.
this leaves the White House and the governor with two options: tell Gregg to take it or leave it, and, if he leaves it, target his weak ass in the midtem elections; or acquiesce, kind of, by naming a caretaker type of republican, and take the pretty-good odds in a general election. the northeast is leaning left pretty hard these days.
and I’m interested in how that plays out. that and the stimulus package getting passed around. the European Union, I think it is, is pissed about the ‘buy American’ stuff in it, about violating free trade principles. and Canada wants to be exempted.
politics and international trade, oh my.
so I’m gonna get the newspaper tomorrow and read about all of that. and if you think print is dead, well … no. it’s not.

If Republicans take up the cudgel, Obama, who’s spent much of the week railing at Wall Street greed, would have to explain why he’s backing a rich political insider who didn’t pay taxes on his limousine.