Mull This

Rich Galen's Mullings website is always a good bet and his post on Obama's press conference last night is well worth a read.

Here's a sample...

- CNN's Ed Henry asked why the Attorney General of New York, Andrew Cuomo seems to be getting more done on the A.I.G. bonus issue than the Administration and why "you didn't go public immediately with that outrage?" But then, because he couldn't stop himself, Ed went on to ask the President if he thought he was going to be leaving a huge deficit for his daughters.

- The President chose to answer question 1B and slid off the A.I.G. question. When Henry circled back and asked him again why his outrage took so long to germinate, Obama said:

Well, it took us a couple of days because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak. All right?

- The transcript said (Laughter), but it sounded more like (Nervous tittering) to me.

- The predicate to Henry's answer was a question by CBS' Chip Reid about the $2.3 trillion difference in the size of the debt between the Administration's estimates and the Congressional Budget Office. "Some Republicans," he said, "called your budget … the most irresponsible budget in American history."

- Obama may be sitting in the Oval Office and he might have promised to open the post-partisan era, but his answer was:

First of all, I suspect that some of those Republican critics have a short memory, because as I recall, I'm inheriting a $1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit, from them.

- Return with me now to January 3, 2007 when John Boehner, Republican of Ohio was elected Speaker of the House following the 2006 mid-term elections.

- Whoa! What? Nancy Pelosi became Speaker? And the Democrats controlled the House? And the Senate? And they have controlled the budget committees for the past two years? So the "$1.3 trillion deficit, annual deficit" was adopted by the Democrat-controlled Congress?

- Well, then, which Congressional Republicans could President Obama have been talking about? Must have been those Republican Chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees, U.S. Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND).

- The A.I.G. contracts were put in place while Republicans Barney Frank (D-MA) and Chris Dodd (D-CT) were in control of the House and Senate Banking Committees. Those same two Guardians of the Working Man were supposed to be overseeing the S.E.C. while Bernie Madoff was playing Bernie Ripoff.

OUCH!

And

Go Rich Go!