“We will just keep on going at it and hammering away until something gets done,” Obama said in the final flourish of the news conference. “And I would love nothing more than to see Congress act so aggressively that I can't campaign against them as a do-nothing Congress.”
-- blue dog trails --
Earlier, he suggested he had no choice but to be out in the country campaigning, trying to get the American people to exert pressure on Congress, because he hasn’t seen constructive action from the Republicans.
“I think it is very clear that if members of Congress come in and say, ‘All right, we want to build infrastructure; here's the way we think we can do it; we want to put construction workers back to work; we've got some ideas,’ ” Obama said, “I am ready, eager to work with them.”
[...] “If Congress does nothing, then it's not a matter of me running against them: I think the American people will run them out of town because they are frustrated, and they know we need to do something big and something bold,” Obama said.
When asked about the Occupy Wall Street protests, which have blocked streets in New York and spread to other cities, Obama offered his analysis: “It expresses the frustrations that the American people feel that we had the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression, huge collateral damage all throughout the country, all across Main Street, and yet you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us into this problem in the first place.”
When asked why his administration has not been very aggressive in prosecuting the people who brought about the financial and subprime lending crises, Obama said that a lot of the actions were not necessarily illegal – just immoral, inappropriate, or reckless.
And besides, they're Geithner's and Bernanke's cronies. Not mine, no sir, but - Friends of friends, are my friends ...