Somebody over at Reuters has a sense of humor because they just put out a short piece entitled, Obama shrugs off attacks on his national security record, which immediately made me think of the title of one of Ayn Rand's books, Atlas Shrugged. The piece just quotes a portion of an interview President Obama gave to The Virginian-Pilot newspaper. The only reason I mention the smaller article is because I believe in giving credit where it is due, and the Reuters post was the inspiration for the title of this diary.
First, a commercial break to bring back a popular clip of President Obama from the 2008 Presidential campaign.
And now, on to the news. President Obama granted an interview in the Oval Office to The Virginian-Pilot. It is part of an outreach to regional press. In other words, what the Republicans were complaining about last week when they noticed that President Obama had granted interviews to entertainment news and other organizations, and that President Obama wasn't making himself available for Press Conferences at the White House (translated he hadn't granted access to members of the usual suspects press corps in a while).
President Obama's campaign defended against the criticism by pointing out that other news organizations were important too. Evidently, it's okay for Mitt Romney to leave the press "holding in a van" in parking lots or treating the press like a "petting zoo ... trapped in a bus." After all, Romney "answered only three questions" during his European trip.
Do you see the difference? While traveling with Mitt Romney, the press gets to sit in vans and buses and not have their questions answered by Mitt Romney, but instead get told "Kiss My Ass" by a Romney spokesman. On the other hand, Romney's opponent makes them sit in the air conditioned White House Briefing Room and not get their questions answered by President Obama. They have their questions answered by Press Secretary Jay Carney. I guess this means that the press isn't happy unless they are being used, abused and rejected by a candidate.
Of course, this is all about the Republicans looking for everything and anything to complain about when it comes to President Obama. The implication in this instance is that the President is avoiding the press out of some imagined fear he has of saying something that the Republicans will twist into another gaffe. If you ask me, it's Mitt Romney who is secretive and afraid to tell anybody anything for fear it could be used against him. As Gomer Pyle would say, Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! Today the President showed up in the Briefing Room and answered direct questions from members of the press. You've probably already read several diaries here at DailyKos or saw on the news exactly what the President said during the briefing.
Did you notice anything missing from all the reports? You didn't? Well, I did. I noticed that the Republicans didn't find anything that the President said to twist into a gaffe. Well, to be fair, they would have, but they were too busy putting out a three-alarm fire started by Congressman and Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin. Naturally, Akin doesn't understand what he did wrong. All he did was say out loud what a lot of Republicans already think. What a day! Akin even had to cancel an appearance on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight this evening because he was too busy "editing a new ad" to show up for an interview.
I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah, what was President Obama's response to the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund attempt to swiftboat him?
He said he isn’t bothered by charges from a political action committee called the Special Operations OPSEC Education Fund, founded by Scott Taylor, a former SEAL from Virginia Beach, that accuse him of taking too much credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden last year.
“I don’t take these folks too seriously,” Obama said. “One of their members is a birther who denies I was born here, despite evidence to the contrary. You’ve got another who was a tea party candidate in a recent election. This kind of stuff springs up before election time.”
He described the bin Laden raid, carried out by Virginia Beach-based Navy SEALs, as “an example of the United States government working as it should to protect the American people.”
Obama calls for compromise to avoid military cuts
Hence the reason for bringing back that video from 2008. That wasn't even the main subject of the article, which went into detail about President Obama's views on the pending military spending cuts if Congress doesn't get its act together.
Wow! For such a small quote, it sure did take me a while to get there. Talking about quotes, and while I still have your attention, I wanted to tell you about one of the best quotes I've read during this entire campaign. If you're drinking something, please put the glass or bottle down. I don't want you to have to clean off your computer screen. Ready? It comes at the end of the diary I wrote this morning: Uplifting Axelrod Interview with Fantastic Quotes.
Then Axelrod quoted Tom Perriello, a former Democratic congressman from Virginia: “Mitt Romney is the only person in America who looked at the way this Congress is behaving and said, I want the brains behind THAT operation. ”