On Monday in Milwaukee, President Obama marked Labor Day by announcing the Democrats’ latest weapon to fend off a Republican resurgence in the House this November: a [$50 billion initiative](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/us/politics/07obama.html) that would at once shore up the country’s infrastructure and provide desperately needed new jobs. But while he was at it, he also shot back at Republicans: > "Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time. And they’re not always happy with me. They talk about me like a dog," he said, to cheers. "That’s not in my prepared remarks, but it’s true." [Earl Ofari Hutchinson writes at the Huffington Post](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/about-time-mr-president-y_b_707416.html) that Obama’s GOP bite is long overdue: > The GOP has shown that it can play the race card, whip up a populist revolt to a fever pitch, and hog the airwaves with some of the most outrageous slurs, lies and slanders against Obama’s political agenda and him. The attacks have worked and for much of the time they’ve forced Obama to walk a tight tightrope on health care, and financial reform, and follow the war hawks screech to dump billions more on what’s fast shaping up to be another hopeless no win quagmire in Afghanistan, and wage a slander campaign against by a hack talk show host and a blogger that panicked the White House into canning political appointee Van Jones, and nearly canning Shirley Sherrod.