President Obama is addressing the nation tonight from the Oval Office at 5:00 pm PDT, 8:00 pm EDT.
We will be adding the live video to this post as soon as the address begins, you can watch it here and comment in real time below.
Pres. Obama’s speech is expected to address the BP oil spill and moving forward with a national energy policy.
Hope to see you then!
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall at this meeting and sometimes actions or events “off camera” speak louder than words, in this case, the President’s address yesterday. As I’ve said many times here before, criticism is fine, but constant criticism is self defeating. Let the man try to do the job he was elected to do and judge him by the results and not the way he choses to get there.
“BP to fund $20bn Gulf of Mexico oil spill payout”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10335114.stm
Hello, Kalima. Just recently they released the transcripts of the behind the scenes doings of what LBJ did to get medicare passed.
That bill didn’t just pass, he put a lot of effort in on that bill. and just this year are we finding out what all he said and did.
(recently,the made the start our rainy season, the monsoons,a hard date instead of waiting for the humidity and dew point to actually reflect it. So we are in our monsoons and the humidity is 10% and the dew point is only 26 degrees. Some monsoon! 😆 )
Afternoon bito. I’m sure that it was a President who would not leave the table until he got what he wanted.
Tokyo now.
Weather >Japan >Tokyo Prefecture >Tokyo F
Now that is a rainy season!!!
Humidity 77% and dewpoint @ 66 degrees!
The Portland area has had over 4.20 inches in June, but still not surpassed May’s 4.68 inches.
A record, even for the northwest.
However, thank goodness, it is 50’s-60’s and no humidity (which is exceedingly rare).
I think we’re getting all that rain a day later…
We need it! Every drop!
Maybe the MSM could just get more constructive with their criticism.
Would it kill them to at least try to be just a little more helpful and less hurtful?
I have no hope for that Fox crew but MSNBC?
Why aren’t we hearing more about Haliburton and Transocean from them?
How about pointing the finger at the auto companies that built bigger and bigger gas guzzlers and marketed the daylights out of driving the big, bad SUV.
How about the gullible Americans that bought that whole ‘I have to have the biggest SUV on my block’ mentality.
MSM isn’t that your job to point out where America is going wrong?
When Corporate America is wrong?
Oh I guess you can’t bite that hand that feeds you,
well maybe just a little nibble every now and then.
Just so things look like they are on the up and up.
So make Obama the bad guy, that’s easy.
Foreign company? – bad guy- bad bp bad bad bad -thats very easy.
Ask Americans to look in the mirror… guess that is the kiss of death for you MSM.
Geez, right after 9/11 Bush had just about everyone in the MSM fawning all over him
and if you even whispered criticism, you got booed.
Remember Michael Moore at the Oscars?
Now Obama gets bashed left, right and center.
I too want to see Obama step out as a stronger more progressive President.
I want to know, how can we help him do that?
Hi Patsy, well said. You would think that these things might occur to someone, anyone, wouldn’t you?
Kalima, when the left or center gives him criticism the right eats that up and turns it up to eleven.
That fox crowd gorges themselves and then vomits it all over the airways.
I just want the progressive crowd to be constructive with their comments.
A simultaneous Repug orgasm, how gross!
This is why the overreaching, sometimes downright selfish criticism from the left, so annoys me, they are beginning to sound just as rabid as the loony right.
Kalima, What an image!
Sorry I started that now I am going to have to go watch kitty and puppy vids so I can sleep tonight
😆 Sorry Patsy! I just made my own hair stand on end and have goosebumps.
I’ll go and have my lunch and buy something I don’t really need.
Ah yes retail therapy …
I much better than I was a few years ago, almost cured. 🙂
Honestly … I was expecting a little more.
same here, but I think it was media induced expectation
I fully respect and appreciate the POVs that the MSM is again being too critical of Obama over this speech.
At the same time, here is how Obama’s team (OFA) is characterizing it, I find it a bit overstated:
AdLib – I did not see the speech, but I’d have to agree. Yesterday an interview on NPR raised some serious concerns about how we’re approaching “green” energy, especially in CA with the massive solar fields. Off Cape Cod, the plans for the wind farm are meeting huge opposition. The NIMBY attitude is disheartening, but more to the point, these are NOT necessarily the best approaches since long-line transport of energy from distant sources is wasteful. They did begin discussing alternatives such as home-based generation, local siting of smaller facilities, but at the core, from the part I heard, no one challenged the involvement of for-profit utilities in this mess. If you take them out of the equation, and you think of alternative energy also being local rather than corporate, of living off the grid with your own wind and solar sources, it begins to change everything.
I question, though, whether anyone in this nation, right or left, if prepared to undertake the full court press needed to erode corporate utility dominance.
If Obama were to promote this as self sufficiency and not mention the utilities, perhaps this would have greater impact, but he’s going to take it in the neck no matter what he does.
Quite frankly I can’t see all the fuss about what your President didn’t say. How on earth are you supposed to give an address that will calm everyone, when the darned well is still spilling millions of gallons of crude like an unstoppable nose bleed. Maybe in movies or dramas the President can wave a magic wand to find a solution while we eat our snacks watching the telli, this is not the telli.
I’m glad that I don’t have to suffer the drivel that comes from your msm each day, there wouldn’t be a tv in the whole of Tokyo that wasn’t smashed. I hate armchair critics and never tune into CNN anymore for this very reason.
Whoops…I just moved from my armchair to the couch!
I do have criticism about this because presenting an address that isn’t an event, that basically just recaps what happened and what’s going on diminishes the power that such addresses have.
Again, in light of all that’s happened since Obama has tried to bring change to this country, I would like to see a bolder President Obama.
In any other time, the change that Obama is bringing would be astounding. With such extreme disasters and problems, I think the approach needs to be even more aggressive.
You do know that I was referring to your msm, right?
I could never see you as an armchair critic.
If it’s not part of his character or personality to be bold and more forceful does he have to go against his principles and “act” for the American people to be satisfied. Isn’t that being dishonest?
My dear friend, never worry!
I don’t think being bold would be against his principles, he was bold in the campaign.
He has many in his cabinet urging restraint, moderation and compromise. I think it has proven to be misguided.
Many of those who became president, change in the position. Some have become more monstrous, like Bush, others, like FDR, evolved to lead huge changes to the nation.
FDR was originally a moderate politician, he was changed by the times and became the president the times required.
I think that is Obama’s destiny and the sooner he embraces it, the better.
Yes, I see that it’s important to you and therefore to me too. However, being bolder won’t stop the leak or solve the vast clean up operations which are very hard to do when a well is still leaking.
I still have this feeling that many of the people who voted for him have this deluded image of him as a saviour, and when he displays any human reactions that are deemed to be alright for us, but not for a leader, then he is perceived as weak or uncaring.
Agreed!
I don’t have an armchair but I fell asleep on the couch during the president’s speech so I’m listening to it now as I type this post. What bothers me is that the way the right wing mainstream media is spewing their drivel like a blown out oil well, one would think Obama himself caused the well to blow up. Now, the hypocrit politicians are up in arms because of the deep water drilling moratorium.
A couch is fine dildenusa, a great place to nap.
It just infuriates me, these half baked know-it-alls and their so called opinions. Who the hell cares is what I always ask myself?
Besides how can the President go on tv and offer any grand plan for the future when no one has yet figured out how to stop the bloody leak, or how long it will take to clean up BP’S mess?
Are people so intellectually barren that they need some fuming nitwit on their tv sets telling them what to think, ok I know some are, they don’t count.
The right, the left, the center, people hanging onto the fence, the idiots upside down standing on their heads, all expect a miracle. I really don’t think that even if the President started to thump his desk in anger or contort his facial expressions, that any more than the odd group of people would be satisfied. Where were these people during the Bush years? Didn’t CNN pioneer the embedded journalists during the invasion of Iraq, showing every small detail, every exploding building, almost every corpse on the way into Baghdad, where were their comments then about Bush, where was the outrage?
These people who foul the tv screens with their useless, biased and hypocritical “opinions” make me feel physically sick. This is not just a differing opinion, this is all out war against the President of the United States. I need a few dozen barf bags to go.
Oh and while I am thinking of Chris Matthews….
I am really peeved at CM for bashing Obama mentioning Steven Chu and his Nobel Prize.
http://www.energy.gov/organization/dr_steven_chu.htm
What is wrong you CM? Did they pass you over that year?
I for one think it’s ok to honor education!
It’s the lack of it that got to where we are now!
Chris Mathews should know better…
Ohh but he is maybe just a bit to wrapped up in selling his T Party Documentary.
Don’t know if you saw last week, CM had corporate tool, DLC Chairman Harold Ford Jr. on so the both of them could attack unions for running Bill Halter, inferring that they are fools and wasted their members’ money by not just handing it over to Harold Ford.
I love the union’s response, “We’re not a financing arm of the Dem Party.”
If Halter had won, all these opinions would be upside-down so one or two percentage points this way or that way mean you’re a fool or genius?
CM’s intellectual reach often exceeds his grasp.
Well that was quaint… I guess we will just have to see how all this plays out over the next few months…
I see this as a speech to the ‘American’ People emphasis on the ‘American’.
You can’t give them too much info they will glaze over and tune out.
He only touched on the meaty bits
I would have loved to hear him go into detail, but this is still an unfolding situation.
How many concrete facts can he give when the house is still on fire?
We are still in the midst of this.
I feel Keith Olbermen and Chris Matthews are going too far with their criticism.
I guess this did not meet the tingle going up the leg test for CM.
Will our President ever get a break?
Give them a break… The whole “Addressing The Nation From The Oval Office” mystique increases peoples expectations that something major is going to occur…
Well, that is a good point BT – The media really built that up.
but it’s like the hurricane is still blowing
the earthquake is still shaking
and how can anyone get a end to the story,
It’s not finished yet…. that thing is still gushing!
I know people are terribly frustrated but how else can this realistically be handled?
Remember how they were all screaming for boom to be every where?
and now it’s being proved that only works if the water is calm and the oil can get under it anyway.
I just get bothered by the expectations that they have for
Obama over at MSNBC right now, maybe I should not expect anything at all from the KO’s and CM’s of the world.
Obama does not need a worship party but he could use just a little support.
Looks as though CM has lost that tingly sensation running up his leg… 😀
It must be those meds for restless leg syndrome!
I’m probably more on the critical side on this speech.
For an address like this, it is an incredible platform to present a specific proposal for action. I do wish he had done so, at least pressed the public to call their representatives to urge them to pass energy/environmental legislation.
The Bush Admin abused this, using every urgent event (except Katrina) to push initiatives ahead and tell the people what had to be done. Granted, much of it was destructive but my point is just that these situations do empower a president to set agendas.
I wanted more detail but I just we are just getting this to start with.
It is a start
Just so you know, I was here and could see it but not hear it. Never mind, I subscribe to the site and will more than likely get it in my next youtibe email. It must be the interference of our “rainy season.” ❓
according to the talking heads on MSNBC he did not do anything right. Fux must be really tearing it apart. Hello Kalima, missed you yesterday -again- I keep falling asleep too early.
Why don’t we just rename them the “talking mouths” they hardly ever use what parts of the brain they have left anyway.
Sleep is a great healer bito, listen to your body, it is usually right.
I don’t think he did anything wrong but I’m not sure I understand the purpose of this address.
He has an opportunity now to leverage this disaster into big change and yet his approach seems to be positive but in a modest way.
I do agree with some of the MSNBC talk about wanting Obama to be bolder in his leadership style and proposals.
We need subtitles! That’s odd, the audio stream comes with the video stream…weird!
I tried to increase the sound and then it disappeared. Weird is my middle name, you know that. I can hear Gibbs alright.
GOP: too short-too long-cost too much will hurt small business, cap & trade-boo………….
GOP: “No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no-no. No!”
Er…I don’t understand this address. What was the point?
all the talking heads will explain it to us. Of course they will develop conflicts in the speech that is the business of “news” to develop conflicts, call it news and sell the ads.
So true bito,
my husband once walked in the room when the ‘News’ was on and asked,
“Why don’t they just put puppets on the air and let them do the news?”
Of course I had to say….
They already do!
Hmm…puppets as talking heads? Entertaining for grown ups and kids!
“Someday” is not the word I was looking for. “Seize the moment”, yes, Obama, that is what we need to be thinking.
What we really need is a “Race to the Moon” type urgent program to implement renewable and alternate fuels ASAP.
Increase tax credits for solar panels, windmills, Bloom boxes and plug in electric cars.
Create a vision for people owning their own energy and powering their own homes and cars, get rid of the grid and gas powered cars.
He heard you!
Heh! I guess that tweet paid off!
Hey did he say Bloom Box?
Hey Patsy, I didn’t hear him mention them.
what is with a third party on the escrow account? Who is the third party?
That’s a good question. Don’t know the details on that but it better be a consumer protection type.
I like the independent handling of paying claims, it shouldn’t be up to BP.
see my comment on escrow in OT.