It’s safe to say Chris Matthews has lost that tingly feeling down his thigh. It took only seconds after President Obama concluded his Oval Office address for Matthews and co-host Keith Olbermann to rip into the President for what they perceived as a lack of leadership and direction, and, especially in Matthews’ case, and over-reliance on meritocracy. 
 
 Before President Barack Obama took to the airwaves to reassure Americans, most would have probably guessed that this kind of outrage was to be reserved for, well, the folks at Fox News. And, yes, Sarah Palin got to be the first to respond to his message over there. But her disagreement paled in comparison to the outrage over at MSNBC, where Matthews went issue by issue in the speech knocking the president’s broad propositions down. First bashing him for failing to explain what his executive powers can do in this situation, he later attacked his renewed interest in a cap and trade bill (which Matthews claims could have been passed if Obama himself had not changed the subject to immigration) and renewable energy (“that’s the hardest thing in the world to do!… that broke Jimmy Carter“). 
 
 Olbermann, meanwhile, was not impressed by the rhetoric, and especially confused by the World War II reference. “It’s nice,” he commented, “but again, how? Where was the how in this speech when Americans are crying out for how?” 
 
 Matthews also turned his ire towards Energy Secretary Steven Chu and his Nobel Prize in Physics. “This meritocracy has gone too far,” Matthews railed, angered that the President insisted on noting the Secretary’s achievements so often. This point sort of taints the validity of the rest of his argument. It’s unclear what, if not merit, Matthews would want to see used to assemble a team of scientists to put together a response to the biggest environmental disaster in American history, and it’s unclear why the fact that Dr. Chu has a Nobel Prize gives him so much pause. The only thing “bad” about the prize was that he received it for his work in the field of physics, doing light experiments that help little with cleaning up an oil spill. 
 
 It was a fairly shocking display of disapproval from two of Obama’s biggest supporters in the media in the past. If the speech had Chris Matthews enraged and demanding executive leadership, it’s not hard to imagine what Michael Steele and company are drafting in response. 
 
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 Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.com ||||| Science says lasting relationships come down to—you guessed it—kindness and generosity. 
 
 Every day in June, the most popular wedding month of the year, about 13,000 American couples will say “I do,” committing to a lifelong relationship that will be full of friendship, joy, and love that will carry them forward to their final days on this earth. 
 
 Except, of course, it doesn’t work out that way for most people. The majority of marriages fail, either ending in divorce and separation or devolving into bitterness and dysfunction. Of all the people who get married, only three in ten remain in healthy, happy marriages, as psychologist Ty Tashiro points out in his book The Science of Happily Ever After, which was published earlier this year. 
 
 Social scientists first started studying marriages by observing them in action in the 1970s in response to a crisis: Married couples were divorcing at unprecedented rates. Worried about the impact these divorces would have on the children of the broken marriages, psychologists decided to cast their scientific net on couples, bringing them into the lab to observe them and determine what the ingredients of a healthy, lasting relationship were. Was each unhappy family unhappy in its own way, as Tolstoy claimed, or did the miserable marriages all share something toxic in common?
– President Obama's Oval Office address last night drew tepid-to-furious reviews, especially on the push for clean energy: Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, MSNBC: The two onetime Obama fans ripped into the president almost immediately for "what they perceived as a lack of leadership and direction, and, especially in Matthews’ case, and over-reliance on meritocracy," writes Frances Martel at Mediaite. "Where was the how in this speech when Americans are crying out for how?” asked Olbermann. Marc Ambinder, Atlantic: "On the small-medium-big scale, Obama went medium. Leaving out an explicit call for cap-and-trade was a deliberate choice, obviously. But Obama wants action on climate change, and the only way to wean our dependence off fossil fuels is to put a price on carbon. He did not make that explicit. ... He did not call upon Congress to make the political sacrifices necessary, and it may be difficult to reconcile his words, laced with an urgent tone, with the actions he is willing to put his weight behind." Ezra Klein, Washington Post: "The optimistic take, at least for environmentalists, is that this is the language and approach Obama uses when he really means to legislate. The pessimistic take is that Obama shied away from clearly describing the problem, did not endorse specific legislation, did not set benchmarks, and chose poll-tested language rather than a sharper case that might persuade skeptics."