In the speech he mentioned again the issues for which he was elected: but he has not closed Guantanamo, his team does not represent a model of transparent government, Iraq is not over and I fully expect the withdrawal will be drawn out, we are being spied on more and more, we are militarizing our police forces to gird against domestic unrest, brought on by hungry people disenchanted with our global corporate emphasis. The president has been rather luke warm in his advocacy for health care reform, and the current health care reform is said to be a corporate give away. The issue of whether or not Obama is courageous will be decided not on one issue but all the issues, and likely not today, though we get to peek ahead, but historically. And of coarse he will give himself high marks.

I wanted to say that the extremes you speak of criticizing Obama come from both the right and the left, attempting to pull him in those directions. The difference for me is that we live in an era that has shifted the entire political spectrum to the right……..so that the norm is center-right or even Neocon or radical right, which many would say describes the Bush years. That's why Obama is attacked for being a “socialist” while for example, Scandinavian countries laugh their asses of at us, for they are partly socialist, proudly so, and find any such mention of the USA/Obama being socialist to be ludicrous. Obama is about as socialist as Exxon.