Yes, I understand that any statement from the president in support of the revolutionaries in Libya would be detrimental to their cause. Gaddafi would point to Obama's support as evidence that it is America and the west who are behind the trouble.

So leave the revolutionaries out of it. How about using some of that famous rhetorical skill to gut Gaddafi for his murderous actions?

Surely if you can decry violence in America, you can damn well muster the outrage to condemn in the strongest possible language this wrenching tragedy unfolding in Libya. Helicopters are gunning people down in the streets and the best you can do is send a State Department flak out to mutter nonsensical diplomatese? We might expect this kind of behavior from a Libyan ally, not the leader of the free world.

The Libyan ambassador to the US is begging for a stronger statement from Obama:

"I want the U.S. to tell the world and to work with the countries who love peace...they have to stop this," Ambassador Ali Ojli said, suggesting that he had resigned his post, in an interview with Al Jazeera English.

"I would never ask us to intervene physically in Libya," he said, but called on the Obama Administration to "take a strong position that what's happening in libya must be stopped now...and to avoid giving the impression to the Arab world that the West "has only a materialist mind -- they don't care about human rights...except when it comes to their own interest."

"You see them raising their voices about iran ... because they have some interest in in Iran.... When it comes to other countries they don't raise their voice," he said, adding that the Arab and Muslim world won't "trust america or the west if they behave that way."

President Obama urged restraint in a written statement Friday on Libya and two other countries, but he hasn't appeared on television to talk about the crisis.

Did Obama take the weekend off? The revolutionaries in Libya didn't. While they were getting slaughtered in the streets of Benghazi, the First Lady was skiing the slopes in Vail while the president was busy sending his minions to Wisconsin to support public employee unions in their quest to bankrupt the state.

Perhaps we should have a lesson in priorities here. While Obama was urging his purple shirts onward, women and children were jumping off of bridges in Benghazi to escape hired goons from Chad who fired indiscriminately into the crowds. Doesn't that rate a trip to the press room and a call for all nations to condemn in the strongest possible terms this brutal, inhumane crackdown on unarmed people?

Want to know what is really and truly wrong with this president? He is passionless. His "cool" demeanor masks a lack of engagement with the world around him. His professorial mind never appears to get a shot of adrenaline or any other brain chemical that would animate his words, stir his soul, or demonstrate any emotion at all. We have yet to see any outrage from this man except when someone criticizes him.

He bollixed up Egypt but good. Now he's fiddling while Libya burns. I tremble to think of this man as president beyond 2012. We'll be lucky to avoid a war or suffer some kind ignominious foreign policy disaster.