ON THE BRIGHT SIDE...:

Wishy-washy Obama missed an opportunity: Americans can feel robber barons making off with the country, but the president failed to tell it like it is (Robert Reich, 6/15/10, Salon)

The man who electrified the nation with his speech at the Democratic National Convention of 2004 put it to sleep tonight. President Obama's address to the nation from the Oval Office was, to be frank, vapid. If you watched with the sound off you might have thought he was giving a lecture on the history of the Interstate Highway System. He didn't have to be angry but he had at least to show passion and conviction. It is, after all, the worst environmental crisis in the history of the nation.

With the sound on, his words hung in the air with all the force of a fundraiser for your local public access TV station. Everything seemed to be in the passive tense. He had authorized deepwater drilling because he "was assured" it was safe. But who assured him? How does he feel about being so brazenly misled? He said he wanted to "understand" why that was mistaken. Understand? He's the president of the United States and it was a major decision. Isn't he determined to find out how his advisors could have been so terribly wrong?

...it's not like anyone is listening to him anymore anyway.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 16, 2010 6:10 AM