Obama's speech really sucked, huh?

[DarrinS]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/06/obama_disappoints_from_the_beg.html?hpid=opinionsb ox1




Less than a minute into President Obama’s Oval Office address, my heart sank. For the umpteenth time since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill began, an anxious nation was informed that Energy Secretary Steven Chu has a Nobel Prize. Obama’s speech pretty much went down hill from there.

For weeks, administration officials have been trumpeting Chu’s distinction at every opportunity. Earlier in the day, White House environmental guru Carol Browner cited the Nobel in a television interview. Presidential adviser David Axelrod talks about the Nobel all the time, as does Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. If there’s an official list of administration talking points about the response to the oil spill, “Chu’s Nobel” has to be at the top.

We can all applaud Chu’s accomplishment. But here’s the thing: Chu is a physicist, not an engineer or a biologist. His Nobel was awarded for the work he did in trapping individual atoms with lasers. He’s absurdly smart. But there’s nothing in his background to suggest he knows any more about capping an out-of-control deep-sea well, or containing a gargantuan oil spill, than, say, columnist Paul Krugman, who won the Nobel in economics. Or novelist Toni Morrison, who won the Nobel in literature.


In fact, Chu surely knows less about blowout preventers than the average oil-rig worker and less about delicate coastal marshes than the average shrimp-boat captain. His credentials, in this context, are meaningless. So do the president and his aides cite Chu’s beside-the-point Nobel to reassure Americans that the team handling the oil spill knows what it’s doing? Or are Obama, Browner, Axelrod, Gibbs and the others constantly trying to reassure themselves?

The president was cool, determined, forceful -- stylistically, all the things that the braying commentators said he had to be. But where was the substance? Specifically -- and urgently -- where was the new plan to contain the oil spill and protect the coastline? I wish I’d heard the president order the kind of all-out marshaling and deployment of resources that now seems imperative. But I didn’t.

Instead, I heard about a special commission to study the accident. I heard about new leadership at the agency that oversees offshore drilling. I heard about a new long-term restoration plan for the gulf region. All of this is great -- but what about the oil?

Obama’s real message was about the need to end America’s ruinous addition to oil. But he didn’t lay the proper foundation for that important part of the speech. First, he needed to enlist Americans in a holy crusade to halt the worst environmental disaster in our history. Instead, he told us about Dr. Chu’s Nobel prize.

[DarrinS]

Even gets panned by MSNBC wingnuts

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/06/15/msnbc_trashes_obamas_address_compared_to_carter_i_ dont_sense_executive_command.html





Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Howard Fineman react to President Obama's Oval Office Address on the oil spill. Here are the highlights of what the trio said:

Olbermann: "It was a great speech if you were on another planet for the last 57 days."

Matthews compared Obama to Carter.

Olbermann: "Nothing specific at all was said."

Matthews: "No direction."

Howard Fineman: "He wasn't specific enough."

Olbermann: "I don't think he aimed low, I don't think he aimed at all. It's startling."

Howard Fineman: Obama should be acting like a "commander-in-chief."

Matthews: Ludicrous that he keeps saying [Secretary of Energy] Chu has a Nobel prize. "I'll barf if he does it one more time."

Matthews: "A lot of meritocracy, a lot of blue ribbon talk."

Matthews: "I don't sense executive command."

[DarrinS]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/06/obama-speech-react.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+topoftheticket+%28Top+of+the+ Ticket%29




For all his reputation as the nation's Top Talker, Barack Obama took his sweet time giving a maiden Oval Office address to the country. And waiting another nearly 60 days to speak nationally about the oil spill that’s become the worst environmental disaster in the nation’s history.

Obama, the first modern president to pass his first full year in office without addressing the country from his historic desk, had the setting right. Just back from a day-and-a-half on the gulf coast listening, reassuring, talking tourism, eating seafood. He wore the proper suit, had the requisite flags and family photos in the background.

For 18 minutes he delivered the words crisply and forthrightly, though too often distracting anxious viewers with his fidgeting hands like the lecturing professor he once was. Or wait! Was Mr. Cool nervous? (See video below.)

Obama had the firmness down OK: Make no mistake etc. We will hold BP accountable etc. He....


...had the God references. The talk of real live shrimpers devastated. An American way of life threatened. And though he likened the spill more to an epidemic, he also brought in the requisite battle metaphors. And, in case anyone hasn't heard by now, Obama mentioned once again the Nobel Prize winner in his cabinet, Stephen Chu, who hasn't been able to stop the oil leak either.

But there was something wrong. The first two-thirds of the president's remarks read just fine (Full text over here on The Ticket as usual). By golly, we’ll get the money, we’ll clean it up, no matter how long it takes.


But watching the president and hearing him was a little creepy; that early portion of the address was robotic, lacked real energy, enthusiasm. And worst of all specifics. He was virtually detail-less.

After almost two months of waiting through continuously contradictory reports, an anxious American public wanted to know, HOW are you going to accomplish all this?

Even Obama's cheerleaders over at MSNBC were complaining. "Where was the How in this speech?" demanded Keith Olbermann. Seriously.

Everyone's assumed that fixing the leak was a given since Day Four, which was still five days before the Democrat got his big plane and presidential entourage down there.

Local gulf coast officials are tearing out their hair trying to comprehend and comply with seventeen (as in seven more than 10) federal agencies falling all over themselves to do The Boss’ bidding and help and impose and superimpose their visions and regulations on what is a war zone with hundreds of ships and some 30,000 people involved, many of them frightened. And all of them inexperienced on a disaster of this scale.

Trust me, the president said, tomorrow I'm going to give those BP execs what-for. As CBS' Mark Knoller noted on his Twitter account, the president has allotted exactly 20 whole minutes this morning -- 1,200 fleeting seconds -- to his first-ever conversation with the corporation responsible for the disaster.

Then, he's got an important lunch with Joe "I Witnessed the World Cup's First Tie" Biden.

Well, just-believe-in-my-change-to-believe-in may have been good enough to win Obama's party primaries and the general election in 2008 and drag along into office enormous congressional majorities of fellow party travelers.

But after yelling "JOBS!" for a year and getting a protracted Democratic intra-party fight over Obama's beloved healthcare instead, Americans wanted some Oval Office specifics Tuesday evening on stopping the uncontrolled undersea oil escape.

Instead, Obama was like a Harvard-trained nurse talking vacation to a new patient bleeding all over the ER floor. Hello, could we please stop the blood flow here before we discuss the long-term recovery?

Obama’s delivery did not really come alive until the end when the ex-community organizer got into his favorite Big Picture stuff. Memo to American Homeowners: Do not call Obama over to fix your leaking roof – or pipe. Have him design a new house, no, better yet an entire neighborhood or city from scratch.

Following the advice of his chief of staff, Rahm "I Got a Rent-Free Apartment from a BP Adviser" Emanuel, Obama is determined to leave no crisis unused. When he got into the decades-long fossil fuel addiction rehab stuff, his eyes shone. His delivery punched up.

Now, that is an issue that requires greatness. Another galactic reform out of Hyde Park. It sounds swell unless mega-trillion-dollar federal deficits are on your mind, which voter polls now show ranks with terrorism as Americans' top fears.

Obama’s historic presidential campaign was not only big in terms of an unprecedented three-quarters of a billion dollars to win. It was about Big Promises. He was going to change America, radically reform the entire education system, healthcare, comb the entire federal budget line-by-line, oh, and change the 200-year-old partisan ways of the capitol. About the only big change the White Sox fan didn't promise was getting the Cubs a World Series ring.

It was all impractical, of course. But the country wanted to believe........in his change to believe in. And it did, handing complete control of the federal government over to Obama and his Democratic party. And today, after 17 months of lop-sided Democratic majorities now nervously confronting midterm elections Nov. 2, about 60% of Americans would like the new healthcare bill repealed. And they're hinting they'd probably like some more Republicans in Congress too.

President Obama has said he doesn’t sense an appetite to address something as large as the illegal immigrant issue this year. But suddenly – watch the left hand over here because he wants you to not focus on how long it’s taken him to take charge of the spill – he thinks there’s a compelling need to spend a motorcade full of moola that the federal government doesn’t have in order to change the country’s energy habits.

And we've gotta start that right now because of an underwater leaking pipe 40 miles off Louisiana that we haven't plugged and don't really understand how it broke in the first place. So let's do the electric car thing and build more windmills now.

And if, by chance, the nation’s politicians end up fighting over an energy plan during the next five months until the voting, maybe the politically damaging healthcare regrets and hidden costs will drown in all the words like so many thousands of seabirds in all the gulf’s still-surging oil.

-- Andrew Malcolm

[SnakeBoy]

Even gets panned by MSNBC wingnuts


I watched Morning Joe this morning. It was hilarious. Mika is having a meltdown over people criticizing The One.

In other news, Bush > Obama...


Poll: On Disaster Clean-Ups, Louisiana Voters Give Poorer Marks to Obama Than Bush

Published June 16, 2010

Louisiana voters think President George W. Bush did a better job handling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina than President Obama has done in the wake of the BP oil spill, according to a new poll.

The Public Policy Polling survey showed 50 percent of state voters rated Bush's performance in 2005 as better than Obama's. Just 35 percent picked Obama.

The survey by PPP, a Democratic-owned firm, comes as the president tries to inspire confidence in his administration's response to the BP oil spill. He just returned from his fourth trip to the region to survey the damage and meet with officials, and on Tuesday night delivered an address to the nation from the Oval Office. He was meeting with BP executives on Wednesday in Washington to press them to compensate Gulf residents suffering from economic damages due to the spill.

Louisiana voters by no means are happy with the way the Bush administration handled the flooding in 2005. But while the PPP poll showed just a third of voters approved of the way Bush handled Katrina, the numbers were generally worse for Obama. Sixty-two percent said they disapproved of Obama's handling of the crisis, compared with 58 percent for Bush.

The poll of 492 Louisiana voters was taken June 12-13. It had a margin of error of 4.4 percentage points.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen Reports released a new poll Wednesday showing Obama's approval rating hitting a new low -- 42 percent. The daily tracking poll puts a 20-point spread between Obama's strong approval and disapproval, 24 and 44 percent respectively.

I'm sure all those black people in Louisiana are just giving higher marks to Bush because they are racist.

[JudynTX]

Everytime he's on TV, I turn the channel.

[Trainwreck2100]

Seriously when he started talkin about renewable energy i was like "fix the damn leak and then build fucking windmills" Also I'd love to be on that energy watchdog commitee force recon he wants to start up to monitor offshore drilling . The kickbacks would be insane

[da_suns_fan]

I find it amusing they keep bringing up Chu's Nobel.

Doesnt Obama have a Nobel? Does he know how to plug the hole?

[DarrinS]

Evidently, Nobel-prize winner Al Gore LOVED his speech. How predictable.

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/7342/algore5zr6og2vo3.png

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/al-gore/the-presidents-oval-offic_b_614011.html?ir=Yahoo




I applaud President Obama's call for a comprehensive legislative solution to the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil gusher is just the latest and most tragic reminder of the environmental, economic and human consequences of our addiction to oil and other dirty sources of energy.

The president is right to focus on stopping the spill and working to limit, to the degree possible, its impact on the Gulf ecosystem. But ultimately the only way to prevent this type of tragedy from happening again is to fundamentally change how we power our economy. Placing a limit on global warming pollution and accelerating the deployment of clean energy technologies is the only truly effective long-term solution to this crisis.

Now it is time for the Senate to (knee jerk re-)act. In the midst of the greatest environmental disaster in our country's history, there is no excuse to do otherwise.

[Wild Cobra]

http://img130.imageshack.us/img130/7342/algore5zr6og2vo3.png

Well, since there is so much opposition in trading carbon credits, maybe Gore can start trading in fat credits?

[Ignignokt]

this thread has produced a LIBERAL DOUCHE BLACKOUT BLACKOUT BLACKOUT BLABLABLACKOUT *sirens*

[Nbadan]

In case you missed it, here is the speech

Gh76oepKFc8

[Winehole23]

The supposed topic, finally.

[Winehole23]

Doubt I'll watch it tho. Reviews been brutal.

[Winehole23]

Seventeen minutes, really?

[Winehole23]

I bet Darrin didn't even watch it.

[Nbadan]

What the speech could have, should have, been..


GWawFfUCMtY

[DarrinS]

I bet Darrin didn't even watch it.


No, I read it.

[Wild Cobra]

Seventeen minutes, really?
Yes, amazing. I didn't know he could blow that long.

[Winehole23]

No, I read it.So unlike you.

[jack sommerset]

His speeches always suck.

[boutons_deux]

Some language asshole from Austin is saying Magic Negro spoke at 10th grade level, way too high for most Americans to understand.

[Jacob1983]

Does Obama have stock in BP? And is Noah Wyle mad at Obama because gay marriage is still illegal in most states?