Obama '08?

Excellent statement! You covered all bases.

I am not interested because I am not interested in liberal drivel that is mostly his imagination. Why anyone would take Seymour Hersh as a credible source for anything is a shock, engineer.

Thank goodness! I was beginning to think you were crazier than I already thought. I think you would be more reasonable to try to compare Obama to Carter.

engineer, Look who's talking about "drivel and imagination?" The king of imagination who can't support his opinions with facts or evidence.

engineer, Very well stated; I agree with most of what you said. Beginning with trying to rate a president during their first year in office is about as ignorant as one can get (okie). These "are" extraordinary times when the whole world economy got pushed into the great recession that was exacerbated by Bush's two terms in office; tax cuts for the wealthy and over-spending will destroy any economy. The biggest problems created by Bush is his Texas, shoot em from the hip, mentality that essentially lost our credibility in the world that has shrunk ten-fold. That you blame much of our problems as our own is spot on! Americans lost all sense of fiscal responsibility, and quit saving and spending on credit - borrowing from their home equity to sustain the dubious 3% GDP growth. It finally ended up biting us in the arse, and many Americans are now feeling the pain.

As for Afghanistan, it has been my personal opinion that it's an unwinnable war, because the government there is corrupt and unstable. The biggest problem I see with the war in Afghanistan is that the US is taking on more responsibility than is necessary; it should be a shared international concern and contribution. Trying to stabilize Afghanistan will be almost impossible with the minor contributions being made by our allies. The bigger problem with Afghanistan is that if and when Afghanistan falls, so will Pakistan with their nuclear weapons. That's a danger the world at-large cannot tolerate.

As for the Obama stimulus plan, I believe they were sloppy in how they spent and distributed that money without the property safeguards for the taxpayers. They should never have bailed out failed auto companies; that action flies in the face of capitalism. Poor management of commercial enterprise is a natural death warrant whether promulgated by management or its workers. Better run companies will grow and new ones will sprout from better quality and price. That's what competition is all about.

On healthcare reform, both democratic and republican presidents tried to establish some form of universal health care, but failed. Those who charge Obama as a socialist/Marxist just doesn't understand that many developed countries have universal health care, and they are still capitalistic economies. The second and third economically richest countries have universal health care, and even some poor countries have it without negatively impacting their economy. If Obama gets his universal health care in his first year, that'll be an accomplishment that supersedes past social programs.

Finally, I agree with you that if Obama accomplishes just some of what he sets out to do, that would be simply "amazing" considering that the "No Party" cuts him off at every turn.

It's already been said that quantity isn't the best measure of success, but the article does address the "what has he done?" bullshit that started as early as this summer.

Let's also note that Obama didn't wait 9 months for a terrorist attack of mindblowing proportions to set an agenda for him.

Ah, the bar is so low.

The only thing superior about all that Obama will have accomplished by January 20, 2010, is the quantity of what he will have accomplished. What is inferior about all that Obama will have accomplished by January 20, 2010, is the magnitude of the damage all of it has done and will do to America and the American people.

The Obama Administration continues to repeat and expand the mistakes of the Bush Administration causing a continuation of decreases in total employment by increasing quantity of:
(1) government expenditures;
(2) budget deficits;
(3) giveaways of government revenues;
(4) housing loans to people who are unable to pay monthly costs of loans.
(5) usurpations of powers not granted the federal government by the Constitution.

Someone should point out that the Slate article is concerned mostly with the quantity of Obama's accomplishments.

Anyone?

Quality usually depends on one's political leaningss.

A black Portugese Water Dog with white feet called Bo is pretty good.

At least they have a dog.

If you are going to use data ican, the least you could do is not misrepresent it.

The yearly data is NOT the data from December of that year.
December 2006 145,926,000
December 2007 146,211,000
December 2008 143,338,000

Any comments on President Obama's speech at West Point?

It was well thought out and expressed; he didn't make a snap decision on such an important issue - like some past president we all know. He even has an exit strategy, and got our allies to at least contribute some manpower, and gave the Afghan government time-lines in which they must accomplish goals.

Well done!

I am looking at my notes, Tak, which made sense when I jotted them down, but are now a bit foggy.
President Obama, it seemed to me, spent a fair amount of his speech talking to the leadership of Afghanistan and Pakistan about what is expected of them in the next couple of years from the U.S. and its allies. I am skeptical that the former in particular and the latter in general are competent enough to listen.
He spoke of Iraq, where we still had 160K troops when Mr Obama came to office. He mentioned his opposition to that effort and how we should exit there within 15 months or so.
About half way through, he addressed the concerns of the American public. He claimed he had not waffled in deciding how many more troops to commit to Afghan. I think that he got that point across. It would have been foolhardy to throw American bodies into combat without a thorough review.
He talked about how Afghan is not equatable to Vietnam. That, to me as a VN vet, was a bit of a stretch.
He talked about the $1Trillion cost to Americans in a time of domestic economic difficulty. I am not sure that is going to fly with many folks.

My take is that Mr Obama did the best he could in what is essentially a lose-lose situation: a costly war in blood and dollars in a country with a corrupt government and a culture many of us in the U.S. neither understand nor respect.

No passion, no real leadership and no willingness to fight.
He was actually quite boring...

I did not watch, but based upon Fox News copy of text, it doesn't seem very impressive. First of all, providing a timeline into 2011 for withdrawal is great news for the Taliban and Al Qaeda, that helps them devise their strategies. Also, the piddly numbers of troops he is hoping for allies to provide is directly in contradiction with his own arguments he used against Bush in Iraq. He has constantly argued that it had to be some wonderful joint effort by the world, not mostly by America, so he seems to me to be contradicting his own arguments during the campaign before the presidency and continuing until now. Also, he seems to be doing the similar things that he said was bad policy in Iraq.

Perhaps most importantly, his little talk does not give me the impression that he is committed to the effort at all, but instead he is throwing a little token effort to try to appease all sides of the issue, not to win the war but to make himself look as good as possible to as many people as possible. I do not get the impression that he believes in any underlying principle or commitment in regard to Afghanistan, which is surely a recipe for failure when it is all said and done. If he truly believes Afghanistan should sink or swim sooner or later, why not sooner, why not now?

In other words, the transcript indicates H2O Man summed it up very well in fewer words. I have never thought Obama gave good speeches, so I skipped it and read the text, and it seems I didn't miss anything.

Plus the whole idea of doing it at Westpoint was a tipoff that he considered it nothing but a photo-op anyway, a hope to boost his ratings, rather than a serious policy decision, so I didn't want to watch it in the first place. We will have to wait and see what he does, not what he says anyway.

okie, All presidential speeches are considered photo ops; they use a venue which they think best fits the occasion. Obama did it in spades, but you wouldn't understand anything about that!

When a president speaks, most people listen whether the president is a republican or democrat, because he's "our" president. Another thing you have no clue about.

Your brain has already been completely washed by FOX, so what you assume is the report on the president's speech is off by about 180 degrees.

The best way to learn something is to depend on the original source, not from some blood thirsty news org like FOX.

But that would be news to you too!

You must recall, Okie, that President Bush spoke at West Point on 6/1/2002 and said " Our war on terror is only begun, but in Afghanistan it was begun well."
He also first raised the notion of preemptive strikes into other countries during that speech.
Photo ops for Mr Bush or Mr Obama, or serious policy decisions?