More evidence that Obama’s mind shuts off when he is staring at the almighty teleprompter:

All terrific press for Orion, except that Obama kept pronouncing the company’s name wrong, calling it OAR-ee-on.

After finishing his remarks and talking with a few people, the president returned to the microphone and said his prepared remarks led him to pronounce the firm’s name wrong.

“I suspect this is Or-EYE-on as opposed to OAR-ee-on. Just wanted to make sure that when I’m giving you a plug, that we’ve got the right plug. It’s Or-EYE-on.”

What’s fascinating here is that once he’s off the teleprompter, he gets the pronunciation right. So what happens to Obama’s grey matter when he’s reading the teleprompter?

Good question.

By the way, I’ll make a deal with all the pro-Obama, anti-Bush lefties out there… I won’t joke about Obama mispronouncing “Orion” if you’ll admit that it was in bad taste to make fun of Bush’s poor pronunciation of “nuclear.”

I anticipate an echoing silence.