I think there should be a new rule for Presidential Addresses: Please hold your applause until the end, and remain seated for the entire performance.
The Jobs Speech could have been finished up in 20 minutes if everyone would not have kept prairie dogging up to cheer every paragraph.
Maybe if they just limited responses to doing The Wave. But you have to give the White House Staff credit for making lemonade out of lemons. They managed to sandbag the GOP into releasing a written response instead of a televised one, which it apparently did so as not to crowd the Packers-Saints game.
Well played.
The President had his stentorian professor face on during the speech, although he did almost crack a smile during one of his standing ovations. Clearly this was Obama in his most effective posture: that of a campaigner.
He is always at his best when he plays the part of the Democratic David facing off against the obstructionist GOP Goliath.
If nothing else, we got a sneak preview of his 2012 campaign platform. He knows the House Republicans will find enough holes in this plan to strain spaghetti.
This speech will come back to haunt the GOP next year when the President reminds the country that before the campaign even began, he proposed a new jobs plan, which the Party Of No rejected.
The president returned to some of the same themes he has trotted out time and again: we need to rebuild the roads, create high speed rail, and rehab schools, airports etc.
And he apparently sees small business as a key to player in that effort. Which sounds good on spec. But as Lurita Doan pointed out in her column on Townhall.com on September 5th, Executive Order 13495 stipulates that any company involved that has a Federal Contract must hire employees identified by the Federal Government which basically makes the Administration a not-so-silent partner in any business who might be considering getting in on a piece of the Infrastructure Action.
And who the Federal Government will stipulate for hiring and promoting? Do you really need me to tell you that will be?
In the same speech in which the President extolled the need to promote small business, he once again drew a pentagram on the figurative floor and summoned the Demon of Big Oil.
Had I the opportunity I would remind the President that it was his Department of the Interior that came to my town and started the oil and gas beat down, and has continued to find new and innovative ways to stifle the industry.
What the administration fails to understand, or perhaps chooses to ignore is the fact that the majority of companies in the oil and gas industry are small businesses that create good jobs and make equipment purchases.
The large energy companies can mitigate losses much better than those small businesses. The President’s Department of the Interior killed jobs in my town.
But when you have green jobs backers and environmentalists to satisfy…well I guess some lobbyists are more equal than others.
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