Congratulations Obama and America

[Anonymous]

Not an insult to anyone or meant to be an insult - google my pet book and let me know what you find.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We need more than intelligence and unifying skills.

Let us see how Obama handles a terrorist strike that kills thousands of Americans on US soil. Oh yea, that probably will not happen since the previous administration has provided you the security for which you now so easily take for granted.

Please tell me why you think Bush handled 9/11 so well and how it was any different from the way any president would have handled it?

[Anonymous]

Apparently, the majority of the US think he handled it well as his approval rating was 90%. No one has ever had to face what he had. It is easy to sit back now and Monday Morning Quarterback. The following indicates how Obama may have handled things.

Obama's response to 9/11 as published in the September 19th 2001 edition of the Hyde Park Herald:
"Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we as a nation draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy. Certain immediate lessons are clear, and we must act upon those lessons decisively. We need to step up security at our airports. We must reexamine the effectiveness of our intelligence networks. And we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction.

We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity and suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent, is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion, or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, and may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out of a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Latin America, Eastern Europe and within our own shores."

As is typical with Obama nice word, great speech, short on how he would accomplish anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This is the book Bush was reading to schoolchildren when terrorist killed thousands of people and somehow this poster finds humor in it.

The joke was lost on me.

The problem wasn't that he was reading it. It was that he kept on reading it after he was informed about the first plane crash.

Some people associate a lack of leadership with his inability to withdraw himself from the situation. Certainly seems a bit incongruous for someone who calls himself the Decider!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: my pet goat:
The book George W. Bush was listining to little kids read when is was September 11 and the nation was under attack. He could have hepled out but his pet goat was more important

That was a moment where he held his calm and did not fall apart. No hysterics. My Pet Goat is not War and Peace nor even the Sunday coupon section of the paper. NCLB is good and it would be even better if all states had the same criterion referenced subject tests. After all who knows more than group on DCUM that algebra is the same whether in DC, Maryland, or Virginia? Same for reading, history, and anything else. Yet each entity has it's own testing program. Duplication of costs. Anyone read about the grading disparities where Montco doesn't match Fairfax? The same work and test scores could move and go from an A to a B in Fairfax .

Too silly.

[Anonymous]

11:03 again. The Bush family is personally familiar with how great public schools work. Their kids were in a small school district in Texas.

[Anonymous]

9/11 was not the first time QAl-Qaeda struck U.S. targets. They did so numereous times during the Clinton Administration -- first World Trade Center attack, U.S. embassy bombings, USS Cole. Clinton's usual response was to lob a few cruise missiles. Since 9/11 there have been no attacks on U.S. soil. Yes, there is war in Iraq and I can understand people's distaste with that. Bush took a much harder line than Gore would have taken. But because of his approach -- Homeland Security, TSA, bumped up intelligence, etc -- I feel pretty safe within the U.S. If you read the news, you will see news stories about an Al-Qaeda training camp in Algiers that recently shut its doors. It is believed that there were testing a chemical or biological weapon and it backfired on them. I am not comfortable that Obama or many democrats take this threat seriously enough. Ask yourself what another 9/11 like attach would do to the U.S. economy.

[Anonymous]

Bush's legacy will include 3 things..failure in Iraq leading to later destabilization in the middle east, the largest economic meltdown and failure of conservative political economic theory, and the destruction of the Republican party. I used to feel somewhat sorry for Clinton that he would be remembered for the sex scandal but Bush has it worse. Both brought this on through their actions.

I can't help thinking that my financial future and home would not be in jeopardy if a few confused Florida voters had read the instructions better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bush's legacy will include 3 things..failure in Iraq leading to later destabilization in the middle east, the largest economic meltdown and failure of conservative political economic theory, and the destruction of the Republican party. I used to feel somewhat sorry for Clinton that he would be remembered for the sex scandal but Bush has it worse. Both brought this on through their actions.

I can't help thinking that my financial future and home would not be in jeopardy if a few confused Florida voters had read the instructions better.

And somehow this is the Republicans fault, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Bush's legacy will include 3 things..failure in Iraq leading to later destabilization in the middle east, the largest economic meltdown and failure of conservative political economic theory, and the destruction of the Republican party. I used to feel somewhat sorry for Clinton that he would be remembered for the sex scandal but Bush has it worse. Both brought this on through their actions.

I can't help thinking that my financial future and home would not be in jeopardy if a few confused Florida voters had read the instructions better.

You are mistaken, the catalyst of the economic meltdown was the housing market. CLINTON was the one who kicked this one off. Clinton primed the pump for this whopper. Clinton loosened the regulation allowing for sub prime loans, making homeownership open to those who had no business qualifying, all in the name of equality.

An article in The New York Times on September 30, 1999, laid it all out in what now looks like crystal detail. Hindsight is 20/20, but NOOOO let's blame Bush and an EVIL free markets.

"In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders," the article, by Steven Holmes, began.

"The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets, including the New York metropolitan region, will encourage those banks to exchange home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

"Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits."

[Anonymous]

Here is a post to the full Times article published on Sept of 1999. The content is a crystal ball. It is all very simple how we got to this point, it is too bad many Americans have their heads up their asses. Bush inherited Clinton's ill conceived economic policy. Let's hope that Obama's actions are as clever as the words that come out of his mouth.

Because of Clinton's policy in the fight against discrimination and the good fight for "fairness" many of us purchased homes during the bubble that are now 10s and 100s of thousands of dollars underwater, with no bottom and certainly no way out of the hold anywhere in sight.

The biggest mistake Bush did was to NOT reverse this particular Clinton legacy, but then you all would have been whining like little babies that he had destroyed the housing maket and was ruining all the fun. However we would have had to suffer through your whining, but at least we would be sitting on homes that were appreciating at a healthy rate or at worse leveling out.

If you care about facts, read the article yourself.


http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0DE7DB153EF933A0575AC0A96F958260

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh puhlease -- I don't have time to recite the whole list but right at the top are:
1)invading a country claiming it has WMDs when it doesn't and convincing the American people that Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11.
2) poorly organized response to Hurricane Katrina.

But what's the point -- we've already said these things. You're just looking for attention and I should stop giving it to you.

Sorry folks -- I took the bait again and I shouldn't have!

Response from a different poster here --

1) It was poor intelligence that led our government to believe that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. The same intelligence that other countries also received and believed. Why did we have lousy intelligence? Mostly, because the Clinton administration did nothing for eight years with regard to a growing threat from the M.E.

2) You can also thank the former governor of Louisiana, Blanco, a DEMOCRAT, for the primary failure of the response to Katrina. She didn't authorize the Red Cross to enter LA immediately, she didn't claim a state of emergency in a timely manner and she did not have the national guard troops that she needed in place. The federal government definitely made some mistakes but Blanco's response to the disaster was a complete joke. Same with Nagin.

You liberals need some new talking points. You sound like a bunch of parrots repeating the same tired lines.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:
1) It was poor intelligence that led our government to believe that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. The same intelligence that other countries also received and believed. Why did we have lousy intelligence? Mostly, because the Clinton administration did nothing for eight years with regard to a growing threat from the M.E.

Talk about about needing new talking points. This one is so old it belongs in the Smithsonian. First of all, the intelligence was poor because it was manufactured. As the Director of the UK's MI6 put it after being briefed by US officials, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy". See: http://downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html

Others countries went along because they were fed false intelligence or relied on US and UK assessments.

As for the Clinton administration, I agree its foreign policy was inept. But, when it came to al-Qaida they were on the ball. It was a Clinton holdover, Richard Clark who repeatedly asked for meetings with Rice and Bush to brief them on the al-Qaida threat (only to be rebuffed). It was Bush, not Clinton, who was given a report titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" and chose to remain on vacation and ignore the report.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/august6.memo/

BTW, Bush's reply to the CIA briefer who gave him the report was "All right, you’ve covered your ass, now".

It's always amazing to see how quick Republicans -- the alleged proponents of personal responsibility -- are to pass blame on other for their own failures.
The Bush administration was nothing but one disaster after another and buck passing was probably the only competency to be found among administration officials.

[Anonymous]

PP, if the Clinton administration was so competent regarding terrorist threats, why did Sandy Berger have the need to shove classified documents down his pants regarding the Clinton administration's handling of NY eve 2000 terrorist threats?

Oh, and those air strikes against Afghanistan that Clinton ordered? They were all for show. I have a friend who was on board the ship that actually fired them.

Clinton had multiple opportunities to capture Osama and he didn't. How do you explain that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

2) You can also thank the former governor of Louisiana, Blanco, a DEMOCRAT, for the primary failure of the response to Katrina. She didn't authorize the Red Cross to enter LA immediately, she didn't claim a state of emergency in a timely manner and she did not have the national guard troops that she needed in place. The federal government definitely made some mistakes but Blanco's response to the disaster was a complete joke. Same with Nagin.

Yeah, so Blanco and Nagin sucked. Big deal. Does that make Michael "Heck of a job, Brownie" Brown any more competent? Especially coming off of his distinguished career in the International Arabian Horse Association?

Your problem is that you think we're all taking one side and not criticizing our own. Go ahead. Dump on Blanco and Nagin all you want. It doesn't change the fact that Bush hired his cronies for some important positions that should have been reserved for people who knew what they were doing (Another example: hiring inexperienced young Republican party activists to run the occupation in Iraq). I would expect that a president would be more likely to understand this than a governor or a mayor.