Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:
Straight Talk
The reviews are in for President Obama's Saturday speech to the world's largest gay political group, the Human Rights campaign. One headline by John Cloud, a Time writer, reads: "Obama's Gay Outreach — All Talk, No Action." Zach Rosen, a gay rights advocate who traveled to Washington for the weekend's events, told Time: "Obama lost me. He took a lot of gay dollars and gay votes, and then it was like (former President Bill) Clinton — unkept promises."
Liberal blogger Andrew Sullivan writes on the Atlantic site: "Much worse than I expected." Sullivan says, "(The president) failed every test" — by offering no specifics on key issues — "This speech was highfalutin bull (expletive.)"
Just a Misunderstanding
And some on the left are finding even another reason to be upset with the White House after NBC quoted an anonymous adviser, saying: "Those bloggers need to take off their pajamas, get dressed and realize that governing a closely-divided country is complicated and difficult."
The Huffington Post reports the NBC correspondent, John Harwood, was forced to clarify that the quote wasn't about the gay community but instead, "referred more broadly to those grumbling on the left about an array of issues."
The administration was also forced into damage control, saying the sentiment does not reflect White House thinking.
The Heat Is On
The debate over global warming is heating up in some places. The climate correspondent for BBC News has a story titled, "What Happened to Global Warming?" — in which he notes that the 11 straight years without an increase in global temperatures has skeptics gloating.
New research has linked some of the prior warming and subsequent cooling to Pacific Ocean temperatures. And there is new information supporting the theory that solar activity could play a big part.
Al Gore apparently doesn't want to discuss that sort of thing. During a question-and-answer session following a lecture in Wisconsin, moderators cut off the microphone of an Irish filmmaker who had asked Gore to address errors in his film "An Inconvenient Truth."
Royal Pain
For those who get frustrated with technology, even Britain's royal family struggles with something as basic as a television. Eighty-eight-year-old Prince Philip complained about the complexity of TV remote controls in an interview with The Times (U.K.). He said his attempts to record programs often end up with him lying on the floor with a flashlight, a magnifying glass an instruction manual. And that "to work out how to operate a TV set you practically have to make love to the thing."
— FOX News Channel's Lanna Britt contributed to this report.
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