Obama Speech at College Park

President Obama is in full court press mode on Health Care Reform, so it was fitting that he spoke in a basketball arena last week. My father and I went to the University of Maryland last Thursday to see his speech at the Comcast Center. Below are a few photos that I took and the CSPAN video of the speech. The speech was good, but unfortunately the sound system was lousy. They choose not to use the house PA and instead used a temporary set up of speakers hanging above and in front of the stage. The speakers were pointed straight ahead from the stage and did not provide very good sound to the sides of the arena. Luckily the scoreboard in the center had the closed captioning turned on and we were able to read the speech. The brief delay to get the text onto the screen made the applause lines a bit choppy though.

He was even heckled at one point, but the heckler was shouted down by those around him and quickly escorted out by police.

I'm not sure, but I think the heckler might have been related to Gallagher.

He ended with the full story of the "Fired up! Ready to go!" rally cry as he has been doing a lot lately.
Here is the CSPAN video of the speech -

Kanye strikes again!

Now he has taken over my blog..... click here

Thank You Kanye West

The ridiculous behavior of Kanye West has allowed President Obama to indirectly tell us what he thought of Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst last week.

Barack Obama, as the President, handled the outburst during his speech exactly as he should have. After his initial pause he continued his speech. The next day he was gracious and quickly accepted Rep. Wilson's apology. Nothing for him to gain by dignifying the bad behavior of a "back bench" congressman with escalation. No need to stoop to his level and allow the story to get any bigger than it naturally was/is.

But in a leaked "off the record" conversation that was probably similar to so many "water cooler conversations" Americans everywhere have been having about a pop culture event, we get to see what Barack Obama, the regular American, thinks about someone who speaks out of turn and (attempts to) upstage someone who deserved the floor.

Audio of the President talking about Kanye West.

The question to him is even framed as Kanye West giving Taylor Swift "the Joe Wilson treatment."

So, by simple induction --- If Barack Obama says that Kanye is a "jackass" for Joe Wilson-like behavior, then we can assume that Barack Obama must think that Joe Wilson is a "jackass."

You can see here that House Rules were broken by Rep. Joe Wilson.

Under clause 1(a)(1) of Rule XI, the rules of the House are the rules of its committees as far as applicable. Consequently, Members should comport themselves with the rules of decorum and debate in the House and in Committees specifically with regard to references to the President of the United States as stated in Sec. 370 of the House Rules and Manual.

As stated in Cannon’s Precedents, on January 27, 1909, the House adopted a report in response to improper references in debate to the President. That report read in part as follows:

"It is... the duty of the House to require its Members in speech or debate to preserve that proper restraint which will permit the House to conduct its business in an orderly manner and without unnecessarily and unduly exciting animosity among its Members or antagonism from those other branches of the Government with which the House is correlated."

Tonight the House voted to officially "disapprove" of his behavior. In other words, he was formally and politely called a jackass.

Here is a bizarre thought - perhaps Kanye is another one of those Sacha Baron Cohen characters. He is, after all the same "jackass" that gave us this treasure -
"George Bush does not care about black people."