Republicans like John Boehner have sought to get some mileage out of critiquing the President's travel to make speeches on behalf of his student loan bill. This Saturday, they won't have to try so hard as President Obama makes his first official stop in Boehner's home state, on the campus of Ohio State University (where surely a few of the over 50,000 students on the Columbus campus have a student loan). In advance of that today, the Obama campaign released a new video touting his first-term successes and featuring their 2012 slogan, "Forward."

A campaign slogan never particularly lends itself to being taken seriously, but the media and the opposition took turns poking a little extra fun at President Obama on Monday. Posts and tweets cropped up speculating whether or not it was a rip-off of this network's slogan, "Lean Forward." One Republican in the House (and a former House Republican on our network) did the same. Speaking of the GOP, the Republican National Committee "successfully" responded on Twitter, hashtagging the new slogan and using it to criticize the President with lines like, "Under Obama's budget, Americans can look #FORWARD to a projected debt of $25.9 trillion by 2022." Oh, snap!

And you had to know that the Fox News Channel wouldn't miss a chance to get in on the hilarity. Fox Nation, home of headlines like "Obama's Hip-Hop BBQ Didn't Create Jobs", offered up this on Monday:

Fox Nation

The Washington Times went the same, other-izing route as Fox Nation today, consulting none other than Wikipedia to bolster their accusation:

"The name Forward carries a special meaning in socialist political terminology. It has been frequently used as a name for socialist, communist and other left-wing newspapers and publications," the online encyclopedia explains.

Frankly, this is a load of bollocks, and isn't worth entertaining. What is the Obama campaign likely trying to get at here? Byron Tau reported in Politico:

It's part of a shift in rhetoric by the campaign — selling Obama as the embodiment of progress while branding Mitt Romney and the rest of the Republican Party as regressive and out of touch.

We'll see if it works, or if the rest of the media will be too busy snickering and covering the Right's conspiracy theories to notice.

Other stories that are on our radar are posted after the jump.

• A guide to Occupy's big day on Tuesday. Is the May Day general strike a "test for its future"?
• One year after the killing of Osama bin Laden, the President is being asked to defend how he did it.
• Because Mitt Romney said so, apparently, while undermining his own argument on the issue.
• Oh, and because Republican Senator John McCain suddenly doesn't like politicizing things.
• (And you should see the expression on the President's face as he does defend it.
• The Washington Post's Greg Sargent asks why Romney attacking the President for the bin Laden killing isn't thought of as out of bounds.
• Could the solution to labor woes be found in the Civil Rights Act?
• Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has raised $13 million for his recall effort. Who might be challenging him?
• Slate's Will Saletan on the latest case of what our friends at "The Rachel Maddow Show" call IOKIYAR: exploiting military success for political gain.
• Another Romney gaffe: he actually said, "Take a shot, go for it, take a risk, get the education, borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business" to a bunch of college students.