The bear is loose!

I see that Charles Blow has written what I've been thinking about for the last few days.

The president is growing hostile to being held hostage — both by the very insular nature of the presidency itself, and by the more stultifying intransigence of Congress.

During a walk a few weeks ago from the White House to the Interior Department, the president proclaimed, “The bear is loose.”

At a Minneapolis town hall last week, Obama said: “With Secret Service, I always tease them, I’m like a caged bear and sometimes I break loose.”

That, however, is the lighter side of things, the side in which the grizzly is merely grumpy because he’s feeling a bit stir-crazy. 

But there is the other, more frustrating, and ultimately more consequential side, in which the president is caught in the jaws of a legislative trap, unable to move the country forward because a fraction of it insists on holding him back.

Anyone else notice that President Obama is looking pretty feisty lately? Perhaps he's beginning to feel that the end of his term is nigh and is ready to go all YOLO on us ("carpe diem" for us older folks).

In addition to the examples Blow highlights, the President let loose on Republican obstruction last week after saying this:

I’m supposed to be politic about how I say things -- but I’m finding lately that I just want to say what’s on my mind.

Go ahead then...  :-)

In homage to "throw back Thursday," the President's team posted this on Facebook and twitter today:

Throwback to last week when a woman—not her boss—made her own decisions about her health care. #TBT pic.twitter.com/xmQ5e7DFmW
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) July 3, 2014

Not holding back one little bit, are they?

Of course none of this will change the dynamics of Republican obstruction. If anything, it will only up the volume of their ongoing freak-out. But at this point President Obama has nothing to lose. He spent years bending over backward trying to work with them and has gotten zero cooperation from them. So now is a good time to simply say what's on his mind.

I'm thinking these last two years could get REAL interesting.