Here’s a link to Obama’s new budget, in all its PDF glory. Enjoy!

Who knew Adam Corolla could actually be cool?

A group of NYU students who call themselves Take Back NYU! (exclamation point theirs) has seized a food court at the Kimmel Center for University Life, which I guess seems like a good place to seize in case you get hungry or something.
The reasons for the takeover, listed in the press release after the jump, run the leftist gamut from scholarships for Palestinian students, to a disclosure of the university’s endowment holdings, to a contract guaranteeing fair labor practices for all employees. They’re mostly noble goals, but demand numero uno rattles the needle on my old entitled-middle-class-kids detector. The kids, first and foremost, insist on “Full legal and disciplinary amnesty for all parties involved in the occupation.” Hmm…
If you want to catch a glimpse of these lil’ revolutionaries, they’re holding a rally at noon today outside of Kimmel, located on the south side of Washington Square Park. Or if you’re feeling lazy and like watching activist kids do their homework, you can watch streaming video from inside the occupation here.

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Robert Lanham has a new article posted over on The Huffington Post:

“With all due respect to the president, he shouldn’t have his arms and feet blocking the aisle,” said Boehner, who sustained minor injuries. “Everyone knows he’s lanky.”
“If you ask me,” Boehner continued, “this liberal concept of reaching across the aisle is dangerous. We need to keep those aisles clear. What if there was a fire and people needed a clear passage to the exits? We need to refocus our energies on tax cuts, not liberal spending and aisle-reaching.” [...]
This wasn’t Obama’s first aisle-related mishap. Last week, his administration faced a major setback when New Hampshire Republican, Sen. Judd Gregg, announced that he would be withdrawing his nomination as Commerce secretary. Citing “irresolvable conflicts,” Gregg insisted that Obama needs to reach out further if post-partisanship is to be achieved.
There are simply no aisles in the Oval Office” explained Gregg on Meet the Press. “And, unfortunately, that’s where the president and I conducted most of our business. He did reach across his desk once or twice to shake my hand, but we were essentially standing right next to each other,” said Gregg. Like a growing number of GOP lawmakers, Gregg has criticized the president’s efforts at post-partisanship as inflated rhetoric.
“When he reached over to me across the desk, his arm was bent at the elbow,” said Gregg with obvious irritation. “If Obama really respected my point of view, his arm would have been fully extended, preferably across some type of passageway separating opposing rows of chairs.”

You can read it all here.

We love that we can speak of the Bush years in the past tense. Yahoo! Errol Morris has a great post over at the Times documenting interviews with wire service photographers discussing their favorite images from the Bush years. Here’s our favorite:

From NY Times “IRAQ, AL-ASAD AIR BASE : US President George W. Bush waits behind a camouflage curtain before being announced to speak to the troops at Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq’s western al-Anbar province 03 September 2007. Addressing cheering Marines at the base, Bush rejected intensifying pressure from the Democratic-led Congress to start pulling troops immediately out of the unpopular war in Iraq. ‚”Those decisions will be based on a calm assessment by our military commanders on the conditions on the ground, not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians to poll results in the media,” the president said.”Check out the rest here.

It’s motherfucking Friday! This should get you in the mood to celebrate the weekend in our new Bush-free era. The Easybeats’ “Sorry:”

Meanwhile, Bush’s cronies think Obama should be sorry for being so tough on the administration in his inaugural speech.

‚”There were a few sharp elbows that really rankled and I felt were not as magnanimous as the occasion called for,” Karen Hughes, a longtime Bush confidante, said in an interview. ‚”He really missed an opportunity to be as big as the occasion was and, frankly, as gracious as President Bush was as he left office.”
Dan Bartlett, another top adviser, used similar language. ‚”It was a missed opportunity to bring some of the president’s loyal supporters into the fold,” he said. Marc A. Thiessen, the chief White House speechwriter until this week, added: ‚”It was an ungracious inaugural. It was pretty clear he was taking shots.”

As far as we’re concerned, these two bile bags should be thankful Bush hasn’t received a public caning.

The original draft of what became the ubiquitous “Change” poster

There were tons of cross-brandings during the campaign, from storefronts in Soho to the new Pepsi logo, including these “Obama Force One” sneakers.
See the rest at our buddy Noah’s great blog, Nerdabout NY.

But we still recommend doing this. Gene Robinson: Gay Bishop Giving Obama Inauguration Prayer.

Well, give or take a day.

Meanwhile, Bush says this was his most stressful moment as president:

Asked by People magazine what moments from the last eight years he revisited most often, W. talked passionately about the pitch he threw out at the World Series in 2001: ‚”I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough.”

image from The Sinner’s Guide to the Evangelical Right
Robert Lanham’s got a new piece on Rick Warren over at Huffpost. Here’s a taste:

Rick Warren routinely claims to not be a part of the Evangelical Right when speaking to secular elitists at the New York Times, but he’s playing both sides of the fence. Warren has gone on record calming that he’s “firmly a cultural conservative.” He also believes opposing abortion, gay rights, stem cell research, human cloning, and euthanasia are “non-negotiable” and “not even debatable” for people of values. He called the Terry Schiavo debacle “an atrocity worthy of Nazism” and according to ABC news, compared gay intimacy to sex with a horse. Prior to the 2004 election, Warren set-up voter registration booths on Saddleback’s church patio. Most tellingly, he sent letters to 150,000 pastors insisting they encourage their congregations to vote for Bush.
In light of the passing of Proposition 8–an issue Obama has yet to show leadership on–choosing Warren for the invocation is a slap in the face to homosexuals and Obama’s liberal base. As PFAW points out, Warren has “compared marriage by loving and committed same-sex couples to incest and pedophilia.” Sorry Rick, giving donuts to Prop 8 protestors doesn’t make your positions any more palatable.

Read it all at the Huffington Post.