I’m not sure I precisely agree on the body language. But for Obama’s imagine sentence alone, this was my favorite reader email from last night. From TPM reader PF …
I love how Obama gave him The Dadfinger. He squinted one eye and pointed at him like “Don’t make me pull this speech over, son.”
I’d love to see the whole spin from this speech and dealing with the Tea Party creeps circle around that moment- “OK, now it’s time for the grownups to clean up the mess.”
It really did seem like a real grownup was finally speaking on the issues.
Sen. Hatch (R-UT) says he doubts Snowe or Collins will sign on with Obama’s eventual bill.
I really appreciate the writer whose novel we’re living in writing the Michael Steele character.
Rep. Wilson (R-SC) tells local talk radio station about “outpouring of support” he’s receiving from colleagues in Congress about his outburst against the president.
Special Bonus Freak Out Update: On any other day it might have been a bigger story. But Rep. Wilson’s outburst has overshadowed Rep. Shimkus’s decision to walk out on Obama’s speech because Obama hadn’t sufficiently bent to the will of townhall tea-baggers.
I hadn’t caught this until now. But there was a funny moment last night when Sen. Lindsay Graham momentarily almost got out of line with his GOP masters and then caught himself. President Obama is making a pretty uncontroversial point about how private and public universities coexist. Graham starts to clap but then sees that none of his GOP colleagues are applauding and quickly plays it off as an impromptu hand rub. Watch It.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) is so sorry about his outburst at the president last night that he’s taken to Youtube to ask supporters to send him money for doing it.
I was looking at this slideshow photo of Sen. Al Franken yukking it up with Harry Reid before President Obama’s speech. And I was thinking: Hey, I’ve known Franken so long I remember sitting next to him when he got tossed (pretty much literally) out of one of the senate press galleries for stumping then-Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) with a half-serious, half-joking question that managed to make Gramm look like an idiot. Admittedly not rocket science, but still a pretty funny question. It was my first trip to DC as a working reporter, on assignment to cover Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.
Here’s the story.