In Western movies, "in the longstanding tradition of many Native American tribes, "speaking with a forked tongue" has meant lying, and a person was no longer considered worthy of trust, once he had been shown to "speak with a forked tongue".

President Obama either has a forked tongue and/or is incompetently naive about and/or identifies closely with corporate cronies. 

The American people recently emerged from struggling under Bush, a president with no integrity who lied, was incompetent, and was a corporatist and a corporate shill.  The electorate thought that they voted to change that destructive regime only to be confronted with a corporatist DINO apparently following in many of Bush's footsteps.

Obama gave the sun, moon and stars to the health care industry and the result was so called health care "reform" that had no public option let alone single payer, but put billions more dollars into that industry's pockets, screwing regular Americans and leaving the US in the 21st century, no closer to the rest of the industrialized nations that have universal affordable health care for all their inhabitants.  Obama failed to even try emulate Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson attempts.

Obama, with an administration filled with Wall Streeters and their supporters, has also failed to really reform the financial industry (for starters not even insisting on the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall), continued to follow the Bushite path rewarding the perpetrators of the greatest financial catastrophe since the Great Depression, and leaving the door open for another financial industry caused disaster.

What can you expect from a president who claims that one of his favorite CEO's is the rabidly anti-union FedEx Frederick W. Smith,
and admires Goldman-Sachs Lloyd Blankfein and JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, such greedy, irresponsible crooks?

Now we have the latest example of Obama's absence of governing instincts but heavy on placating and ingratiating himself with the corporate plutocracy that runs this country.

As Bob Herbert writes at the NYTimes: “ 'Where I was wrong,' said President Obama at his press conference on Thursday, 'was in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios.' ”

"With all due respect to the president, who is a very smart man, how is it possible for anyone with any reasonable awareness of the nonstop carnage that has accompanied the entire history of giant corporations to believe that the oil companies, which are among the most rapacious players on the planet, somehow “had their act together” with regard to worst-case scenarios.

"These are not Little Lord Fauntleroys who can be trusted to abide by some fanciful honor system. These are greedy merchant armies drilling blindly at depths a mile and more beneath the seas while at the same time doing all they can to stifle the government oversight that is necessary to protect human lives and preserve the integrity of the environment.

"President Obama knows that. He knows — or should know — that the biggest, most powerful companies do not have the best interests of the American people in mind when they are closing in on the kinds of profits that ancient kingdoms could only envy. BP’s profits are counted in the billions annually. They are like stacks and stacks of gold glittering beneath a brilliant sun. You don’t want to know what people will do for that kind of money.

"There is nothing new to us about this. Haven’t we just seen how the giant financial firms almost destroyed the American economy? Wasn’t it just a few weeks before this hideous Deepwater Horizon disaster that a devastating mine explosion in West Virginia — at a mine run by a company with its own hideous safety record — killed 29 coal miners and ripped the heart out of yet another hard-working local community?

"The idea of relying on the assurances of these corporate predators that they are looking out for the safety of their workers and the health of surrounding communities and the environment is beyond absurd.....

"President Obama spoke critically a couple of weeks ago about the “cozy relationship” between the oil companies and the federal government. It’s not just a cozy relationship. It’s an unholy alliance. And that alliance includes not just the oil companies but the entire spectrum of giant corporations that have used vast wealth to turn democratically elected officials into handmaidens, thus undermining not just the day-to-day interests of the people but the very essence of democracy itself.

"President Obama said on Thursday that his administration was “moving quickly on steps to ensure that a catastrophe like this never happens again.” Well, he can’t ensure anything of the kind. And, in fact, his corporate-friendly policy of opening up new regions for offshore drilling (that policy is only temporarily halted) will all but guarantee future disastrous spills."

It appears that the American electorate went from one frying pan into another frying pan.