Your Double-Barreled Obama Pre-and-Post Game - Whoops, Speech - Countdown Live Blog For 2/24/09

So here's the dealio. I'll be doing two blogs on one night on one page. We'll start with the 8 PM EST edition as the "pre-game show" and follow that with a "post-game" after ther Republican response.

The Tie: Brown with gray and black stripes.

THE 8 PM US EST PRE-GAME - ERRRR, SPEECH EDITION

Number 5: Tonight President Obama speaks to Congress, but before hand, news of extending the pullout of the military from Iraq by three months leaving about 50,000 to train the Iraqi Army until 2011. Richard Wolffe sees if this is a trial balloon, and at a savings of $2 trillion from our defecit. And no, Iraq is not going to be a major talking point in this speech.

Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) wanted to give back some stimulai, but that according to Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) you can't pick and choose. Jindal's supposed to deluiver the GOP rebuttal to President Obama's talk with Congress. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), House Banking Committee chairman sent a letter asking that those such as AIG anmd Northern Trust from spending outlandish things as concerts at a Northern Trust-sponsored golf tourney won by Phil Michelson, and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) will introduce legislation to stop such shenanigans, blarney and mularkey. Frank joins us to do their 'splainin.

Number 4: The Aussie Cap'n Long John Silver, Pirate K. Rupert Murdoch wrote a formal apology about the cartoon in The New York Post of the monkey murder that was supposed to poke fun at the "poorly-worded [stimulai package]" and turned out to be racist. And I met with my editors arounf the mizzenmast, arrrrr...and if they disobey me again, they'll be walkin' the plank! Was this - as Denise Richardson and Johnny Mathis pointed out - "too much, too little, too late to ever try again"? Only Rev. Al Sharpton knows and he joins us.

Worst Person in the World, moved up because a cast of thousands - Rachael Maddow, Tweety, Eugene Robinson, Richard Wolffe, Howard Fineman and others - will preview this speech edition:

Bronze - Selena Roberts or A-R*d because of the 'roid use and PEDs. Well, who's going to be worse when the book comes out...

Silver - G. Gordon Liddy thinks Friday's third place winner from CNBC's Rich Santelli agrees on the tin-foil topped rant on mortages. Like we said, Santelli's better off on Fixed Going-Out-Of-Business Network.

Gold - Michael Steele, Good Oldboysandgirls Party chairman needs to appeal to do a better job 23 days ago, and work on civil unions calling someone crazy... Like Mr. Gallagher. Or Mr. Sheen.

Numbers 3, 2 and 1 (Merged because this is a major speech): The State of the Union in everything but name is less than a half an hour away as our leader is in transit from The White House to Capital Hill. Let's start with Howard Fineman, who tells us the options on the pullout and was it a leak from The Pentagon? Guess not. And yes, the president will be like W. Wilson Goode when he was the mayor of Philadelphia showing up a ribbon cuttings when he wasn't drpping entry devices. That's an old Joey Reynolds WFIL joke circa 1985. Rachael Maddow is now in the on-deck circle ready to swing away.

Let's talk about the Number 5 story again, as it will be announced tomorrow. Rachael talks about it, but this a speech about the economy, stupid! They'll minimize this as much as possible. And yes, the GOP are a bunch of lemmings on Adolph XLIII's withdrawl plans. Chris Matthews (HA!) awaits. And there is one of Philadelphia's Finest in attendance tonight as a guest of Vice President Biden.

The GOP may want to redefine how bipartisan policies in the Obama Administration, and on Question #44 of a CBS News/New York Times survey was that two-thirds of the people surveyed that it's all political with them, and Gov. Jindal is now the pointman for them. Right, Chris? It truly is "Party First" with the Good Oldboysandgirls Party.

See you after the Jindal reply which follows President Obama's speech.

THE 10:40 PM US EST POST-GAME - SORRY, SPEECH EDITION

And so, President Obama's first speech to the joint session of Congress is now one for the ages. The realtime response of those with devices among voters of both President Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) a year ago were extremely high when the President's speech but in Bobby Jindal's Republican response his weakest link was twice invoking Katrina as a model of how to run government, their response was lower than a Michael Weinersavage Nazi comment or a Glenn Beck communist reply. In six of those eight years when Adolph Bush XLIII was in his dictatorship, the Grand Oldboysandgirls Party ran Congress. Though not a State of the Union, it felt like it, and the reckless behavior, Wall Street and new energy, healthcare and education. On banks, they will have to lend more money to those who need it, the defecit was inherited (loudly responded with a partisan standing ovation), it must come down. One sentence on the timetable for Iraq within this week. White House Press Secratary Robert Gibbs joins Keith with a response to the Jindal response, linking corruption to the stimulai, and the so-called high speed rail from Disneyland to Vegas was brought up. Actaully, that money is for all transportation services.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) joins us and uses every sports analogy except "power play goal". She also heads to the usual sporting cliches of suiting up and possibly even putting his pants one leg at a time. Obviously, the GOP response was pre-written by someone before the President's address was written, and hell, even McCain rose on most everything based on Iraq.

Howard Fineman examines the headlines of tomorrow's newspapers. Economy was mentioned 31 times as a matter of fact, and that will be likely the top line, among 61 interruptions - partisan or otherwise - for this speech. He was impressed when President Obama used straight forward language without the fancy schmantzy backtalk, and delivered optimism before Jindal's buzzkilling speech. Praise FDR but Jindal has lost the front-runner position for 2012 in my opinion. The GOP is now taking their medicine and in large doses because of that.

Howard Dean (Yarrrrrh!) makes his points on the subject of the evening. Why did he like the speech? Well, the 44th President of the United States had the Congress and America eating out of the palm of his hand, especially the 99.7% of the people who live outside Washington, DC.

Michael Beschloss, the historian in resdence for NBC News, lays down his view on the speech. And it was at point my computer decided to misbehave yet again... in short, FDR, Reagan and even We Would Like To Thank You Once Again, Herbert Hoover and Alf Langdon were mentioned.

That's all for this historic evening. Join me tomorrow for what will be two big moments for this blog and myself. The 100^th post for this blog, and my 48^th birthday.