At press dinner, Obama takes aim at GOP

President Obama took several good-natured shots at his Republican opponents during his speech at Saturday’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. [READ OBAMA’S REMARKS.]

{mosads}Few prominent Republicans got off scot-free at the hands of the president. In reference to the George Washington Bridge scandal that has affected New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Obama said that “gridlock” in Washington has become so bad that he had to wonder, “What did we do to piss off Chris Christie so bad?”

In reference to the same lack of action in Washington, and to Republican opposition to extending emergency unemployment insurance, Obama also said that perhaps “if you want to get paid for not working you [should] have to run for Congress like everyone else.”

And, in an extended riff about what kind of ObamaCare benefits would persuade Republicans to abandon efforts to try to repeal it, he suggested “What if it gave Mitch McConnell a pulse?”.

Obama’s speech closed in more self-deprecating fashion, however. Obama presented a video which had an apparent technical hitch. Answering his call for help, former Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who presided over the gaffe-ridden launch of the ObamaCare health insurance exchanges, made a surprise appearance to fix the problem.