Dear President Obama

I just walked away from watching your press conference that I assumed would be about the U.S. response to the earthquake in Japan.  Your opening remarks lasted approximately 20 minutes, and then the press corps began asking questions, which for the first five minutes had nothing to do with the natural disaster that has rocked one of our closest allies and has put Americans in Japan in danger.

Here are a few comments I'd like to make:

1. You spent the first 3 to 5 minutes of your opening remarks expressing the condolences of the United States to the people of Japan, and offering any help we can provide.  I'm good with that.  You reported that the government is preparing to assist with any damage to our Pacific coastal population that occurs due to the tsunami.  Again, good.  I hope that the governors of Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California have more sense than the twit who was in charge of Louisiana when Katrina hit and actually ask for help if they need it.
2. You then spent 3 to 5 minutes talking about what you think should happen in Libya, and basically took sides in another countries internal conflict.  I'm not so good with that, but you're the president, and if that's the policy you want to follow, then all I can do is respectfully disagree and wait for the next election.  Personally, I don't think we have a dog in that fight.
3. The remaining 10 to 14 minutes of your remarks were spent either defending your energy policy.  Nice segue though.  It takes a master of rhetoric and sophistry to change from a discussion of a relatively irrelevant foreign issue into a defense of your domestic policies.  
4. This may seem a little picky, but your continual rhythm of "look right, look down, look left, look down, lather, rinse, repeat" throughout your prepared remarks was distracting.  You're supposed to be a great speaker.  Learn your bloody lines before you step up to the podium and quit reading your speech verbatim from 3x5 cards. Your daughters could have gotten up there and given the speech about as well as you did.

Mr. President, one of our allies just took a shot to the gut, and you gave them maybe 25% of your time.  Even if you felt the need to spend at least half of your speech talking about a domestic policy and political issue, you could at least have ignored the Libyan situation for a moment and devoted more time to discussing exactly what we are going to do to assist the Japanese.  Let me put this bluntly:  You could have spent 3 to 5 minutes talking about Charlie Sheen instead of Mohamar Qaddafi, and it would have been just as relevant to today's important topics. Assisting Japan as much as we can is going to have a much larger long term impact on the future of our country than who wins the civil war of a sand flea infested, 3rd world jerkwater dungheap. 

I'd like to say that I hope your performance improves at your next press conference, but to be honest, I will never know.  After your performance today, I have no interest in wasting my time hoping that you will speak about what is important when it is important.