Obama's Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose

In today's Rose Garden Reader's Digest version of last Thursday's address to Congress, Obama mentioned that he and Biden had noticed a newspaper item on their way over to the floral event.  This confused me because his following remarks betrayed no knowledge of the media, particularly how devastatingly his indoor version had been satirized by major, albeit right-wing, media. Is it possible that no member of his staff brought to his attention the rib-racking collage that was put together based on Obama's 18 references to "Pass the Bill" in the course of his latest browbeating of Congress?

The answer is yes it's possible, more than possible.  We're talking about a staff that hasn't prevented major presidential gaffes over the past two plus years, gaffes too humorous to mention.

So the PTB mantra was back in full flower among the roses. In addition to the mercifully shorter length, there were other differences between the address and the addressette. For one thing, the teleprompter was shamed out of existence, so instead of being treated to coinage-seeking alternating presidential profiles, we saw more often than previously the presidential pate as he dipped, like the thirsty toy stork, into his podium notes.

The body props were different, too.  Today, we had a collection of cops, firemen, teachers, and small business owners, all of which must have had a real hard time deciding if they would like to come to D.C., stand with the president, and tacitly approve the concept of augmented compensation. A real dilemma, that.

Obama actually hefted the leftist legislation. The image of him doing the same with the Obamacare bill provided another source of amusement.  The relative slimness of the Jobs Bill is, of course, attributable to the fact that the bill, like its primary advocate, is an empty suit awaiting the arrival of a corpulent corpus filled with stifling regulations and confiscatory taxation.

Yet Obama, in true Pelosiesque style, chants PTB, displaying all of the intellectual honesty and subtlety of demeanor of the most rabid of his union bosses.