This, all the way from 2010, is probably the best expression of why Obama was and is such a huge disappointment. Say what you want by how “limited” he was by Congress (which is mostly a lie anyway), he had the greatest opportunity of any president since FDR to make substantive changes that would have helped average Americans and he simply chose not to do so.

I think he had that opportunity, to carry the new way his campaign lifted him up and use the same energy to lift up everything. At least then, if it failed, it wouldn’t have been his failure, it would have been ours. But he didn’t even try. Not even a bit.

I can point you to the exact moment of my disappointment. I was suckered by Obama’s pitch. “The fierce urgency of now.” I thought that when the new whitehouse.gov went live it would be about us, the people of the United States, but of course it wasn’t — it was about them — those who took the standard places in the White House to do what they always do. Maybe slightly different. But nothing like the change we were promised, and some of us expected.

If Obama wants to know why he’s being treated like a disappointment, the answer is simple, we are disappointed.

Such potential squandered, but the truth is that Obama wasn’t interested in doing what was right. He was interested in getting absurdly rich after office and actually fighting against the banksters and their allies would’ve prevented that.

So we got we got. And Obama got absurdly rich.

I’m mystified by how often companies — usually media companies — harm themselves egregiously and never seem to correct their mistakes.

Ironically, by winning when it comes to ebook pricing, publishing seems to have hurt its ability to convince readers that print books are worth spending money on.

I don’t buy ebooks because they are far too expensive and are locked in by useless DRM. The publishers made a huge mistake and only harmed themselves by not embracing ebooks. And, by the way, they are lying about printing/binding costs being small. I am/have been acquaintances with a few people in the industry and they tell me that these costs account for more like 30-40% of the price of a hardcover, not $2. Of course, this depends on the publisher and the book. (If you disbelieve this, ask why paperbacks are generally half the price of hardcover or less. Then one should become enlightened.)

We have a monopoly disease in this country is the true diagnosis, and the pricing of ebooks is just one symptom. And publishers are the worst, because in general they are both evil and stupid — a terrible combination.