President Barack Obama - Term 1 and 2 Thread

[Behshad]

[RedWingFan]

:)

Oh thanks Behshad....5.5% still pretty much statistical full employment!

[Behshad]

:)

Oh thanks Behshad....5.5% still pretty much statistical full employment!

look at the pattern

[Saint John]

:)

Oh thanks Behshad....5.5% still pretty much statistical full employment!

look at the pattern

It was also 4.4 in March of 2007 (and 5.0 in March of 2008) ... but you left that out. Almost right back where it was when he took over 6-7 years prior. And you also left out that it has gone up every single month since Obama took over.

[Behshad]

:)

Oh thanks Behshad....5.5% still pretty much statistical full employment!

look at the pattern

It was also 4.4 in March of 2007 (and 5.0 in March of 2008) ... but you left that out. Almost right back where it was when he took over 6-7 years prior. And you also left out that it has gone up every single month since Obama took over.

I was just making the point that it wasnt 7 years into Bush's term that economy started to go to hell. it was within the 1st year of his 1st term.

[Saint John]

:)

Oh thanks Behshad....5.5% still pretty much statistical full employment!

look at the pattern

It was also 4.4 in March of 2007 (and 5.0 in March of 2008) ... but you left that out. Almost right back where it was when he took over 6-7 years prior. And you also left out that it has gone up every single month since Obama took over.

I was just making the point that it wasnt 7 years into Bush's term that economy started to go to hell. it was within the 1st year of his 1st term.

It was 4% when he took over in January of 2001 and 7 years later in February of 2008 it was 4.8. Your "economy going to hell" mantra is complete bullshit. Besides, you seem to be giving Obama a pass on the first year even though unemployment has increased almost 50% since he was sworn in. If you did the same with president Bush his first 7 years saw no change at all ... 4.8 versus 4.8.

[Behshad]

:)

Oh thanks Behshad....5.5% still pretty much statistical full employment!

look at the pattern

It was also 4.4 in March of 2007 (and 5.0 in March of 2008) ... but you left that out. Almost right back where it was when he took over 6-7 years prior. And you also left out that it has gone up every single month since Obama took over.

I was just making the point that it wasnt 7 years into Bush's term that economy started to go to hell. it was within the 1st year of his 1st term.

It was 4% when he took over in January of 2001 and 7 years later in February of 2008 it was 4.8. Your "economy going to hell" mantra is complete bullshit. Besides, you seem to be giving Obama a pass on the first year even though unemployment has increased almost 50% since he was sworn in. If you did the same with president Bush his first 7 years saw no change at all ... 4.8 versus 4.8.

Redwing stated that Bush had no economic issues at all till 7 year into his presidency . My point is CLEAR that taking over the office at 3.97 , and go to 5.99 before the re-election, is some kind of issue..... No one is giving Obama a free pass. I wasnt even comparing Obama to Bush. Just stating the fact that Bush's mess didnt start 7 years into office but much earlier,,,,

Besides, none of this should really bother you any,,,, you have said many times before that as long as you have a job and making the $$, you dont give a fuck what others do

[Saint John]

Redwing stated that Bush had no economic issues at all till 7 year into his presidency . My point is CLEAR that taking over the office at 3.97 , and go to 5.99 before the re-election, is some kind of issue..... No one is giving Obama a free pass. I wasnt even comparing Obama to Bush. Just stating the fact that Bush's mess didnt start 7 years into office but much earlier,,,,

Besides, none of this should really bother you any,,,, you have said many times before that as long as you have a job and making the $$, you dont give a fuck what others do

Going from 4 to 6 and then back down to 4.8 seven years in sounds pretty negligible. And I have never once complained about the economy. I think the fucker is still good ... for me at least.

[Behshad]

Redwing stated that Bush had no economic issues at all till 7 year into his presidency . My point is CLEAR that taking over the office at 3.97 , and go to 5.99 before the re-election, is some kind of issue..... No one is giving Obama a free pass. I wasnt even comparing Obama to Bush. Just stating the fact that Bush's mess didnt start 7 years into office but much earlier,,,,

Besides, none of this should really bother you any,,,, you have said many times before that as long as you have a job and making the $$, you dont give a fuck what others do

Going from 4 to 6 and then back down to 4.8 seven years in sounds pretty negligible. And I have never once complained about the economy. I think the fucker is still good ... for me at least.

you still get $$ from him !??

[Lula]

WHAT economic issues????? We were blaming Clinton for the 4.7% unemployment under Bush? The out of control inflation? Deflation?....The fact is Kerry couldn't even bang a drum on the economy because everything was going so well during his re-election campaign. The problem didn't surface til the bottom fell out of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 7 years into his term. Way to just throw out another stupid example based on no fact Monker!
Yeah, they both inheritted messes, but the fact is Reagan did the right thing to get us out and Obama did the wrong thing.

for starters, how about the fact that under bush, we had the first decade since the 1930s with no net job growth. this story was so huge i was sure ff would post it. but he let me down

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01196.html

as for reagan, at this same period in his first term, unemployment was over 10% and the recession was getting worse. monker is right. i know i lived it. you guys would hate on obama even if his stimulus plan was made of 300 billion dollars worth of tax cuts. and come to think of it, it was.

[Behshad]

:)

Oh thanks Behshad....5.5% still pretty much statistical full employment!

look at the pattern

It was also 4.4 in March of 2007 (and 5.0 in March of 2008) ... but you left that out. Almost right back where it was when he took over 6-7 years prior. And you also left out that it has gone up every single month since Obama took over.

I was just making the point that it wasnt 7 years into Bush's term that economy started to go to hell. it was within the 1st year of his 1st term.

hmmmm...so was 9/11...but that don't count right?

OK, so lets just give Obama a break too, since Michael Jackson died during his first term, as did Farah Fawcett,,,,plus dont forget the Haiti quake....

[Ehwmatt]

Man, they are really reaching, now they're writing fake Letters to the Editor across the country to defend the poor buffoon

This is simply priceless

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf ... rse_r.html

[RedWingFan]

Man, they are really reaching, now they're writing fake Letters to the Editor across the country to defend the poor buffoon

This is simply priceless

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf ... rse_r.html

My first thought when I read that..................Suzie!

[7 Wishes]

Really, one person writing a bunch of letters to the editor whilst claiming different addresses is a non-issue. It's just like you GOPpers to try to light somebody else's flatullence.

Good God, give it a rest. Stop exempting the worst President since Hoover, one George W. Bush, from his atrocities and horrendous economic record, while lambasting a President who has had a year to attempt to deal with the worst American (and hence global) recession since the Great Depression.

Besides, it looks as though the Democratic-led Senate may "go nuclear" (as the Republicans threatened to do seven years ago unless the Democrats acquiesced on his inflated and defecit-ridden budgets as well as approving the war against Iraq) and change the filibuster rules so that the health care plan can go through without delay.

Do you people realize that, in 2009, the average family was paying TWICE as much for health care costs (in ADJUSTED dollars) than they did when Bush took office? Do you not understand that regulating the insurers and providing affordable care to the "uninsurable" will REDUCE health care costs, and therefore SAVE most people money? Good Lord!!! I know you have empathy and compassion fatigue, but your unrelenting voting-along-party-lines unprincipled principle-and-factoid line-toeing is leading this country to ruin!

[treetopovskaya]

what about the technology bubble bursting in the late 90's?

speaking about technology...

technology is great & all... but why hire people when you really don't have/need to? why go shopping when you can do all that on-line. i know for myself (since i really don't like shopping) i'd much rather shop on-line. less hassle. }:C) no more record stores... no more bookstores... etc... less jobs.

the usps is losing money because less people are using "snail mail". it's all about email/texting/fb/ms/twitter/chat/boards/etc these days.

can't underestimate the amount of jobs being lost to technology.

[RedWingFan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=662R2awSwPQ

[slucero]

The POTUS isn't responsible for unemployment or the economy.... Congress is... they make (and repeal) laws... We are where we are because in 1999 a Republican majority Congress PASSED and a then Democratic President (Bill Clinton) SIGNED the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act, and 8 years later the institutions that Act deregulated blew the fuck up.

The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, (Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338, enacted November 12, 1999) is an act of the 106th United States Congress (1999-2001) which repealed part of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, opening up the market among banking companies, securities companies and insurance companies.

The Glass-Steagall Act prohibited any one institution from acting as any combination of an investment bank, a commercial bank, and/or an insurance company.

...sound familiar?


investment banks - Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, Citi, Merril Lynch..
insurance companies - AIG


as a result confidence in the markets dissipates.... companies contract and cut costs... i.e., people.

The causal relationship is obvious.

Vilifying bankers is warranted, but they were/are morally guilty of being greedy.... but that's it... because everything they did was LEGAL in the eyes of the current law (the one that Congress/POTUS enacted with the passage of Gramm-Leach-Billey) ... and would have been ILLEGAL had the original law (Glass-Steagall)been in effect..

But Congress (and the POTUS) should have know better because they had HISTORY (the Glass-Steagall act as a consequence of the Great Depression) right there in there faces to reference...

Congress = 535 people having to agree that this was a GOOD idea before they passed it and sent it to the President...

The blame for this lies squarely with Congress...

[RobbieG]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=662R2awSwPQ

Excellent Red Wing Fan!!!!! America is rising

[slucero]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=662R2awSwPQ

*applause*

[conversationpc]

Stop exempting the worst President since Hoover, one George W. Bush, from his atrocities and horrendous economic record...

I certainly don't exempt him from anything. He sucked...But I'll give the "worst President since Hoover" award to one Jimmy Carter.

while lambasting a President who has had a year to attempt to deal with the worst American (and hence global) recession since the Great Depression.

It certainly isn't good but I remember things being a bit worse in the 70s. Of course, I hadn't even reached double digits in years by that time, though.

Do you not understand that regulating the insurers and providing affordable care to the "uninsurable" will REDUCE health care costs, and therefore SAVE most people money?

I don't think regulating the insurance industry will reduce health care costs at all. Allowing employees to own their own policies instead of their employers, shop for policies across state lines, and allow individual citizens to form groups to get discounts are much better common sense things than regulations.

I know you have empathy and compassion fatigue, but your unrelenting voting-along-party-lines unprincipled principle-and-factoid line-toeing is leading this country to ruin!

Don't forget that we also want old people to die, women to have back-alley abortions, children to go without food, black people to remain in poverty, gays to get the crap beat out of them, etc., etc., etc. Come up with a new lie already, for crying out loud.

[artist4perry]

Stop exempting the worst President since Hoover, one George W. Bush, from his atrocities and horrendous economic record...

I certainly don't exempt him from anything. He sucked...But I'll give the "worst President since Hoover" award to one Jimmy Carter.

while lambasting a President who has had a year to attempt to deal with the worst American (and hence global) recession since the Great Depression.

It certainly isn't good but I remember things being a bit worse in the 70s. Of course, I hadn't even reached double digits in years by that time, though.

Do you not understand that regulating the insurers and providing affordable care to the "uninsurable" will REDUCE health care costs, and therefore SAVE most people money?

I don't think regulating the insurance industry will reduce health care costs at all. Allowing employees to own their own policies instead of their employers, shop for policies across state lines, and allow individual citizens to form groups to get discounts are much better common sense things than regulations.

I know you have empathy and compassion fatigue, but your unrelenting voting-along-party-lines unprincipled principle-and-factoid line-toeing is leading this country to ruin!

Don't forget that we also want old people to die, women to have back-alley abortions, children to go without food, black people to remain in poverty, gays to get the crap beat out of them, etc., etc., etc. Come up with a new lie already, for crying out loud.

That last bit cracked me up! Because extreem libs do think that! It is a sad tactic. Claim the other party is evil and out to hurt people because they like doing that. But I find extreem libs seldom give to charities at all.......why is that?

On the other hand, extreem right wingers are also weird. Stop the bomb throwing already . ( this was not aimed at conversation Pc just extreem libs)

[separate_wayz]

Really, one person writing a bunch of letters to the editor whilst claiming different addresses is a non-issue. It's just like you GOPpers to try to light somebody else's flatullence.

Psst...7...sounds like some Dem popaganda might be going on out there.

1/24/2010

Still More Astroturfing: Gloria Elle and Jan Chen Write the Same Anti-Republican, Pro-Obama Letter; UPDATED: Two More Pairings Found; UPDATED AGAIN: Four Pairings Total, and One Is a Triplet!

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:06 pm

Now that people are paying attention, the Astroturfers are coming out of the woodwork:

Jan Chen of Seattle writes to the Northwest Asian Weekly (a small Asian paper serving the Seattle area):

As one listens to the Republican anger over health care reform, one can imagine an anti-government protester cheerfully paying premiums on insurance policies that drop you after you make a claim, or happily sauntering out of an emergency room that denied them treatment because of a coverage problem. One can imagine a town hall sign-waver enthusiastically forking over most of their pay to bill collectors after suffering a catastrophic injury, thinking, “Wow, the free market system is great.”

Meanwhile, Gloria Elle writes to the Baltimore Chronicle — on the same page as Mark Spivey and Ellie Light:

As one listens to the Republican anger over health care reform, one can imagine an anti-government protester cheerfully paying premiums on insurance policies that cancel you for making a claim, or happily sauntering out of an emergency room that denied them treatment because of a coverage problem. One can imagine a town-hall sign-waver enthusiastically forking over most of their pay to bill collectors after suffering a catastrophic injury, thinking, “Wow, the free market system is great.”

Jan Chen and Gloria Elle certainly have a similar writing style, don’t they?

To the word. Thanks to liberrocky on Twitter for the find.

[UPDATE: Greg McCoy e-mails to note that Cherry Jimenez of Bloomington had this exact same verbiage -- and much more -- in an essay at the Indiana Daily Student.]

Freepers discovered another one: Janet Leigh. (Cute.) This one is explained here. [UPDATE: To make it clear and explicit, the link shows that the very same pro-Obama letter was written by Janet Leigh to NewburgGraphic.com, and by Earnest Gardner to the Memphis Flyer. She also finds Janet Leigh next to Mark Spivey in the Santa Barbara Independent.]

The story is exploding. There is Astroturf everywhere.

Go find some yourself. Just take phrases from suspicious-looking letters and put the phrases into Google and see what you find. Then report back here.

UPDATE: Liberrocky found another one: Jen Park and Lars Deerman writing the same letter to different publications. Lars Deerman writes to the Deccan Herald:

I hear the Obama Administration talk of getting a health bill passed by compromise.

Maybe the so-called public option can be used as a bargaining chip to bring the Republicans to the table.

So what do the Republicans say? That Obama is not a U.S. citizen, and has no right to be President, that his plans are Socialist and contain death panels.They hope the Obama Presidency fails.

I cannot think of a single nice thing that a Republican Congress member has ever said about Obama or his plans. Not one. Can you? Where does Obama get the idea that Republicans want to work with him? They clearly don’t want to.

Lars Deerman

And Jen Park writes at the Baltimore Chronicle:

I hear the Obama Administration talk of getting a health bill passed by compromise. Maybe the so-called public option can be used as a bargaining chip to bring The Republicans to the table. So what do the Republicans say? That Obama is not a U.S. citizen, and has no right to be President, that his plans are socialist and contain death panels, and that they hope the Obama Presidency fails. I cannot think of a single nice thing that a Republican congressmember has ever said about Obama or his plans. Not a one. Can you? Where does Obama get the idea that Republicans want to work with him? They clearly don’t want to.

This is the very same Baltimore Chronicle page with letters from Ellie Light and Mark Spivey.

Oh — and there’s also one from Lars Deerman.

Can we get a Big Media investigation yet? Anyone want to tell the Baltimore Chronicle that its “representative letters” page is filled with garbage from Astroturfers?

UPDATE x2: Another pairing: Jen Park and John F. Stott.

Jen Park writes in The Source Weekly:

So let’s get this straight. Obama’s predecessor took America to war under false pretense, citing “weapons of mass destruction” that everyone agrees did not exist, and today’s Republicans don’t want Obama addressing children because of “indoctrination?”

Our previous president preached war against Iraq to anyone who would listen, children, adults, young and old, making us partners in his blunder, and the Republicans dare talk of keeping their children safe from Obama’s ideas? What are Obama’s ideas? That the government can be an active partner in change, rather than a nuisance? And this notion is suppose to be bad?

The Republican Party seems determined to be “against” everything Democratic.

[UPDATE: A couple of readers expressed concern that the "Source Weekly" link is setting off anti-virus programs. If you want to go to the link, be warned that it may have malware. Here it is.]

And at our favorite Baltimore Chronicle letters page, John F. Stott writes:

So let’s get this straight. Obama’s predecessor took America to war under false pretense, citing “weapons of mass destruction” that everyone agrees did not exist, and today’s Republicans don’t want Obama addressing children because of “indoctrination?” Our previous president preached war against Iraq to anyone who would listen, children, adults, young and old, making us partners in his blunder, and the Republicans dare talk of keeping their children safe from Obama’s ideas? What are Obama’s ideas? That the government can be an active partner in change, rather than a nuisance. And this notion is suppose to be bad? The Republican Party seems determined to be “against” everything Democratic.

Thanks to Mitchell B

Busted!

The Audacity of Bullshit.

[treetopovskaya]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ewZcj1pvrA

tehehee.

[hoagiepete]

There is an article today with a picture of Obama using his teleprompters to speak to a group of 6th graders. This teleprompter thing is starting to bug me.

Is he not capable of speaking without reading his script?

If not, why? I'm sure he's a bright guy so you would think he is capable. Is he too lazy to learn his speech? Having given 100s of speeches in my career, being prepared for some more than others, he reminds me of how I felt when I wasn't prepared.

He's not even very good at reading the teleprompter, with weird pauses and emphasis on words when he shouldn't. He comes across as reading the speech for the first time.

Add this to the lack of effort in vetting appointees and his staff blowing protocol on several occasions, likely because they just didn't research it, I get the sense that he and his staff are still having fun being the president and not doing the things needed to be done as president. Sure he has a laundry list of things he is trying to do, but how well is he doing any of them?

I'm not comparing him to any other president, only Obama on his merits. Is he putting in the time and energy into this he should? Don't know. Just posing the question.

[Ehwmatt]

There is an article today with a picture of Obama using his teleprompters to speak to a group of 6th graders. This teleprompter thing is starting to bug me.

Is he not capable of speaking without reading his script?

If not, why? I'm sure he's a bright guy so you would think he is capable. Is he too lazy to learn his speech? Having given 100s of speeches in my career, being prepared for some more than others, he reminds me of how I felt when I wasn't prepared.

He's not even very good at reading the teleprompter, with weird pauses and emphasis on words when he shouldn't. He comes across as reading the speech for the first time.

Add this to the lack of effort in vetting appointees and his staff blowing protocol on several occasions, likely because they just didn't research it, I get the sense that he and his staff are still having fun being the president and not doing the things needed to be done as president. Sure he has a laundry list of things he is trying to do, but how well is he doing any of them?

I'm not comparing him to any other president, only Obama on his merits. Is he putting in the time and energy into this he should? Don't know. Just posing the question.

I'm not sure it reflects on his commitment level as much as it reflects on the fact that the man is just in totally over his head. That's simply all there is to it. He may or may not be shirking his duties as well, but even if he weren't, the guy just lacks any know-how for his job. It'd be like putting a college pre-med student with two years of chemistry under his belt in the operating room as head heart surgeon.

[separate_wayz]

From the We-Could've-Predicted-This-Coming File .....

Time
To Obama's Pile of Woes, Add a Failing Iran Policy
By Massimo Calabresi / Washington Monday, Jan. 25, 2010


As if President Barack Obama didn't have his hands full at home with his party's loss of Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts, the collapse of health care reform and a disorganized war against the banks, he now faces a major foreign policy setback. Since the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama has promised to curtail Iran's nuclear program by simultaneously offering talks and threatening sanctions. After a year of trying, both approaches appear on the verge of failure.

The President has given Iran two deadlines to demonstrate good faith. Last spring, his Administration told reporters that if Iran didn't show willingness to engage in talks by September, sanctions would follow. Then, in September, when Iran hinted that it might possibly talk, Obama delivered another deadline, this time the end of 2009.

Iran's response to these deadlines has been repeated delays and obfuscation. First, in the spring it delivered a lengthy manifesto about global peace irrelevant to the issues at hand. The summer months were taken up with Iran's election turmoil, but following talks with the U.S. and its international partners in the fall, Iran hinted that it might be willing to accept a deal under which it would export most of its enriched-uranium stockpile to be converted into reactor fuel — and then quickly backpedaled as the proposed deal came under a hail of criticism from across Iran's political spectrum. In recent weeks, Iran has made a counteroffer to export its uranium in small parcels over a longer time period that State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley described as "clearly an inadequate response."

The idea behind Obama's engagement effort, though, was that if Iran kept stalling, countries previously opposed to sanctions, such as Russia, China and Germany, could be persuaded to support new punitive measures aimed at forcing Iran to cooperate. "We actually believe that by following the diplomatic path we are on, we gain credibility and influence with a number of nations who would have to participate in order to make the sanctions regime as tight and as crippling as we would want it to be," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the House Foreign Affairs Committee in last April.

So, how's that working? Not very well, by all indications.

True, with Iran stalling, the Germans seem to be playing along, although earlier in the year they said they'd only support sanctions if approved by the U.N. And while senior American officials and European diplomats say Russia has come around to supporting sanctions, nothing that has happened publicly has confirmed that claim — and the signals from Moscow remain mixed.

But where Russia had previously taken the lead in blocking sanctions efforts, that role has now fallen to China, which has a rapidly growing stake in Iran's energy sector. Beijing believes that while Iran must be brought into compliance with the international nonproliferation regime, its nuclear program does not represent an imminent danger of producing nuclear weapons and diplomacy should therefore be given a lot more time.

Beijing has bluntly opposed any effort to introduce new punitive measures against Iran, and last weekend China's Deputy Foreign Minister snubbed his counterparts from the U.S., Britain, France, Russia and Germany and sent only a low-level official to a meeting called to discuss new efforts to pressure Tehran. "The meeting we had last weekend was not great," says a European diplomat. "The Chinese sent someone along who said, 'I can't make any decisions.' " Worse, the Chinese have become allergic to the very mention of sanctions. After last weekend's meeting, a senior European diplomat speaking on background with reporters declined even to utter the word sanctions for fear of upsetting Beijing.

Without China, which holds a Security Council veto, there is no prospect of meaningful sanctions at the U.N. That in turn means difficulty getting tough sanctions from all the European countries, some of whom can't act without U.N. approval.

Now Obama faces the unpleasant reality that neither the engagement track nor the sanctions track appear to be going anywhere. His defenders at home and abroad say it was the right way to proceed, but skeptics of Obama's policy are emerging, even in his own party. "What exactly did your year of engagement get you?" asks a Hill Democrat.

So what options does Obama have left? Some European and American diplomats hold out hope that they will be able to bring China around. But privately they say the U.S. and its allies may need to move ahead on their own, without China. "No one wants to go there," says the European diplomat, but "what we're saying to the Chinese now explicitly is there's no point in going forward together" if the current approach isn't changing Iran's behavior.

Splitting the international community has been Iran's goal from the start, and unilateral sanctions could be fatally undermined if a bloc of countries that trade with Iran, such as China, Russia, Turkey and India, don't comply. The very fact that the U.S. and its allies are even thinking of going it alone is a sign of just how much trouble Obama's policy is in.

Now Time magazine -- quoting Democrats -- sees problems in B. Obama's Iran initiative.

[hoagiepete]

There is an article today with a picture of Obama using his teleprompters to speak to a group of 6th graders. This teleprompter thing is starting to bug me.

Is he not capable of speaking without reading his script?

If not, why? I'm sure he's a bright guy so you would think he is capable. Is he too lazy to learn his speech? Having given 100s of speeches in my career, being prepared for some more than others, he reminds me of how I felt when I wasn't prepared.

He's not even very good at reading the teleprompter, with weird pauses and emphasis on words when he shouldn't. He comes across as reading the speech for the first time.

Add this to the lack of effort in vetting appointees and his staff blowing protocol on several occasions, likely because they just didn't research it, I get the sense that he and his staff are still having fun being the president and not doing the things needed to be done as president. Sure he has a laundry list of things he is trying to do, but how well is he doing any of them?

I'm not comparing him to any other president, only Obama on his merits. Is he putting in the time and energy into this he should? Don't know. Just posing the question.

I'm not sure it reflects on his commitment level as much as it reflects on the fact that the man is just in totally over his head. That's simply all there is to it. He may or may not be shirking his duties as well, but even if he weren't, the guy just lacks any know-how for his job. It'd be like putting a college pre-med student with two years of chemistry under his belt in the operating room as head heart surgeon.

Very good analogy. Agreed. That is more likely the case..

[Saint John]

I wonder what would have happened if a Conservative said this. Good old Billy:

Bill Clinton helped sink his wife's chances for an endorsement from Ted Kennedy by belittling Barack Obama as nothing but a race-based candidate.

"A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee," the former president told the liberal lion from Massachusetts, according to the gossipy new campaign book, "Game Change."

The book says Kennedy was deeply offended and recounted the conversation to friends with fury.

After Kennedy sided with Obama, Clinton reportedly griped, "the only reason you are endorsing him is because he's black. Let's just be clear."

The revelations in "Game Change" are guaranteed to reopen the 2008 Clinton racial wounds that had been scabbing over amid his post-election public silence and his wife's high marks as Secretary of State.

Laden with potent pass-the-torch symbolism, the January 2008 endorsement of Obama by Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg was a pivotal campaign moment that allowed the Democratic establishment to abandon the Clintons.

Bill Clinton wasn't the only one to bungle handling the Kennedys - the book says Hillary Clinton managed to alienate Caroline by fobbing off a key request on staff instead of calling personally.

When a group of prominent New Yorkers headed to Iowa to campaign for Hillary Clinton, Caroline "dreaded" getting a call to join them because she "would have found it impossible to refuse," the book says.

When Hillary Clinton's staffer called, someone "who sounded awfully like" Caroline said she wasn't home.

Bill Clinton, whose stock with black voters was so high he used to be referred to as "America's First Black President," severely damaged his rep in his overheated drive to help elect his wife.

[Lula]

the teleprompters weren't used for speaking to the kids. this has already been debunked.

http://hotairpundit.blogspot.com/2010/0 ... h-jwf.html

besides, what difference does it make if a politician makes a speech using cue cards or a teleprompter anyways? If you mean to suggest that most politicians give a speech from memory, you're flat wrong.

[Lula]

I wonder what would have happened if a Conservative said this. Good old Billy:

Bill Clinton helped sink his wife's chances for an endorsement from Ted Kennedy by belittling Barack Obama as nothing but a race-based candidate.

"A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee," the former president told the liberal lion from Massachusetts, according to the gossipy new campaign book, "Game Change."

The book says Kennedy was deeply offended and recounted the conversation to friends with fury.

After Kennedy sided with Obama, Clinton reportedly griped, "the only reason you are endorsing him is because he's black. Let's just be clear."

The revelations in "Game Change" are guaranteed to reopen the 2008 Clinton racial wounds that had been scabbing over amid his post-election public silence and his wife's high marks as Secretary of State.

Laden with potent pass-the-torch symbolism, the January 2008 endorsement of Obama by Kennedy and his niece, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg was a pivotal campaign moment that allowed the Democratic establishment to abandon the Clintons.

Bill Clinton wasn't the only one to bungle handling the Kennedys - the book says Hillary Clinton managed to alienate Caroline by fobbing off a key request on staff instead of calling personally.

When a group of prominent New Yorkers headed to Iowa to campaign for Hillary Clinton, Caroline "dreaded" getting a call to join them because she "would have found it impossible to refuse," the book says.

When Hillary Clinton's staffer called, someone "who sounded awfully like" Caroline said she wasn't home.

Bill Clinton, whose stock with black voters was so high he used to be referred to as "America's First Black President," severely damaged his rep in his overheated drive to help elect his wife.

are you serious? clinton has been raked over the coals for weeks now about this.