President Obama Hosts First Ever Online Presidential Town Hall

Here are reactions to the President's Online Town Hall Meeting. Caleb Howe's comments will be in black type, and Tommy Christopher's in blue.

My biggest takeaway from this event was witnessing the awesome power of a fully armed and operational Jake Tapper Twitter feed. It was only a minute after Tapper tweeted about vote totals that Obama suddenly decided to address the question with the most votes: Should we legalize it? Disloyal cretin! Don't you know anyone else with an awesome Twitter feed? By the way, Obama's answer was basically no, legalizing won't help the economy, and yes, the fact that that was the top question makes him wonder about the WhiteHouse.gov user base. ... And how the Ron Paul crowd gamed it.

I do have to wonder, though, if the town hall was really worth it if that episode was the biggest takeaway. Actually, the biggest takeaway was that Americans have a compulsion to blurt out their entire MySpace profile before they can ask a question. MySpace? Did I miss the part where this town hall took place 2 years ago? Fine, Facebook. I'm on Ning, Grandpa Simpson.
Transcript at Daily Dose:

I mean, we just didn't have any competition when - back then, Japan was in rubble, Europe was in rubble - we were the only players around. And that's not going to be true. This is going to be a competitive global market. We have to make those adjustments.

Shorter Barack Obama: America only succeeded because other countries were too busy sucking. But don't get used to that. That's not really much shorter. How's this? Make better cars!

Much like Tommy Christopher, Obama digs nurses. But I have to ask, who says "Obie-gynie?" Jake Tapper wondered if it's a common midwesternism, but heartlander Vodka Pundit didn't think so. Obi-gynie is well known to be a baby doctor who uses a Jedi light-speculum.

I thought one of the great quotes in this town hall was this example of what Robert Gibbs talked about yesterday Tapper also noted that the President stopped short of some product placement):

Now, somebody could make the same argument to you that folks are making to us with respect to the budget, which is, you can't afford to be sending your kids to college right now. That's fiscally irresponsible. You're taking out debt for your kids to get an education. It's better for you to just put them to work right now at a fast-food place, and they'll be bringing in a little bit of income. And maybe later they can go to college.

Well, most of us don't make that decision, because we understand that making the investment now will lead to greater opportunity, greater economic advancement later. Well, the same thing is true in our economy. We can't shortchange the investments that will allow us to grow in the future.

The Democrats in Congress, and the Republicans, seem to favor extensive stints at the deep fryer. Hell, McDonalds does have it's own college. What an amateurishly inapt analogy Obama chose to use here. Insultingly so. Student loan? Get real. What he has done doesn't equate with getting a couple hundred thousand dollar student loan to go to college, it's more like getting 13 such loans, in your kids name, and using the money to hire a babysitter while you get some me time in Acapulco.

Finally, we learned that Old Man Howes hates girls. I gotta give them props, though, because they coaxed about a 16 paragraph answer from the President. I wouldn't have used the word coaxed there, but anyway ... if being annoyed by 3 pie-eyed teenage girls giggling at Obama on a youtube video makes me wrong I don't want to be right. But I will admit, they did a better job than the in-studio guy who snagged the last question. I don't want to accuse him of anything, but suffice it to say I'd wager he was thought Obama's legalize it answer was a real bummer, man.

Overall, I think this was a big success for the President. I might suggest a plainer setting next time, though. I'm also a little bit tired of the disproportionate griping and attendant ass-kissing of small businesses, who seem to think that the fate of our economy should rest on their 4% marginal tax increase above the quarter-mil mark. Everybody else is being asked to suck it up, they can suck it up a little, too. If by big success you mean a spectacular waste of time then you are dead on. And you don't understand the first thing about small businesses, Tommy, nor did you listen to the question the guy asked apparently. You don't seem to understand he isn't really "making" that money you dems are so envious of. But hey, what do you guys care about small businesses anyway. They haven't got anything whatsoever to do with socialism or surrendering to terrorists or any of your favorite things.

The President did a good job of responding to the questions, and permeated his answers with the theme that the health of our economy rests on interdependencies that his agenda addresses. Nope. Verdict: LAME.

Find us on Twitter: Caleb Howe and Tommy Christopher