McBush

[Spider]

olbermann can come up with some good ones .........
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/MSNBC_...rino_0321.html

[L.A. BRONCOS FAN]

[Rigs11]

Not sure who is scarier,the dimwit that was naturally stupid or the old fart who is senior citizen stupid..

[Spider]

you know if this was a movie , I would love the hell out of Bush , reminds me of Leslie Nielson in the hotshots movies ....... bu this is real life and it isnt so damn funny

[Arkie]

Bush may have been the most inexperienced serious candidate to run for president until Obama.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by Arkie

Bush may have been the most inexperienced serious candidate to run for president until Obama.

Yeah, but Bush had a whole cadre of old timers pulling his strings. Chief among them, the man in charge of his VP vetting service; The Dark Lord himself, the face hunter extraordinaire, Dick "So?" Cheney. Not to mention old "They'll greet us with flowers" Rumsfeld and Colin "Biological warfare vehicles" Powell.

That's what scares me about Obama. There's just him. He thinks he's going to walk into the Oval Office and somehow his Illinois ward politics experience is going to transfer right over. A voice keeps whispering in my ear, "Ryan Leaf. Ryan Leaf."

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Yeah, but Bush had a whole cadre of old timers pulling his strings. Chief among them, the man in charge of his VP vetting service; The Dark Lord himself, the face hunter extraordinaire, Dick "So?" Cheney. Not to mention old "They'll greet us with flowers" Rumsfeld and Colin "Biological warfare vehicles" Powell.

That's what scares me about Obama. There's just him. He thinks he's going to walk into the Oval Office and somehow his Illinois ward politics experience is going to transfer right over. A voice keeps whispering in my ear, "Ryan Leaf. Ryan Leaf."

"Sigh"...Where do you get this nonsense from?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...101,full.story

Obama's policy team loaded with all-stars

Criticized by some as lean on experience, the Democrat has drawn a huge circle of advisers with expertise honed in the circles of power

By Mike Dorning | Washington Bureau

September 17, 2007
WASHINGTON

Barack Obama's presidential bid may have a well-cultivated insurgent feel, as the candidate both benefits and suffers politically from a relatively thin record of experience in Washington.

But the swelling team of policy advisers who have joined his campaign shows a politician grounded in his party's intellectual mainstream and well-connected within the capital's Democratic establishment.

As Obama rapidly transitioned from a senator with less than three years in office to a presidential candidate who has delivered detailed policy speeches, he has assembled a personal think tank that easily outsizes any of the established Washington policy institutes that provide intellectual fodder for the political war of ideas.

On foreign policy alone, some 200 experts are providing the Obama campaign with assistance of some sort, arranged into 20 subgroups. On the domestic front, more than 500 policy experts are contributing ideas, campaign aides said. Veterans of previous election campaigns say the scale of the policy operation resembles the full-blown effort candidates typically undertake for a general election campaign rather than the more stripped-down versions common for the primary season.

Obama's policy team

Senior advisers include heavy hitters from the administration of President Bill Clinton, husband of Obama's primary rival.

Anthony Lake, Clinton's original national security adviser, is helping coordinate foreign policy. So is Susan Rice, a Clinton assistant secretary of state and protege of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Eric Holder, a former deputy attorney general, is among those providing expertise on legal policy.

"These are not outsiders trying to tear down the temple," said Philip Zelikow, a former senior Bush administration foreign policy official and executive director of the Sept. 11 commission.

"If you guess that he's surrounded himself with people who are highly ideological, left-wing or dovish, you would guess wrong," added Zelikow, now a history professor at the University of Virginia. "These folks cannot easily be typecast by ideology."

Free-market economic team

Key economic advisers include a few Washington veterans such as Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive and former chief of staff to then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, the Cabinet member most closely identified with the Clinton administration's pro-free trade, business-friendly policies.

There are also several scholars from prestigious universities whose approaches are anchored in dominant market-oriented economic thought. One is Austan Goolsbee, a 38-year-old star University of Chicago Business School professor and New York Times columnist with centrist Democratic views who has argued for eliminating tax returns for many Americans with simple finances.

Alan Blinder, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, described Obama's top economic advisers as "mainstream with a dash of creativity."

"These are people who think new thoughts -- within the mainstream, new without a capital N," said Blinder, now a professor at Princeton University.

The campaign policy team gathered around Obama is hardly a shadow Cabinet. If he wins the nomination, other Democratic policy experts who now are neutral or allied with a different candidate will gravitate toward him. If he's elected, still more will join his circle.

But the makeup of the group, and the way in which Obama deliberates with its members, offers a window onto how he might operate as president. Many of them surely would graduate to influential roles in an Obama administration. Their discussions of the broad range of issues a presidential candidate must address provide an early if imperfect drill for decision-making in the Oval Office.

The worldviews of the advisers candidate George W. Bush gathered around him turned out to predict his foreign policies better than his campaign rhetoric that America should be "humble" in the world and avoid commitments to nation-building.

Such architects of the Iraq war as Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice and Richard Perle all were influential policy advisers to Bush's presidential campaign. Colin Powell made important public appearances on behalf of candidate Bush but remained distant from the campaign's foreign policy deliberations, foreshadowing the role he would play in the run-up to the Iraq war.

Obama built relationships with high-powered policy experts even before he was elected to the Senate.
Goolsbee first met Obama, then a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, in the faculty social world. University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein and Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, two of the nation's leading liberal legal scholars, have relationships with Obama respectively dating back to the University of Chicago faculty lounges and Obama's days at Harvard Law School. Lake began giving Obama informal foreign policy advice even before Obama won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

Once elected to the U.S. Senate, Obama set up an ambitious policy operation for a newcomer. Froman, a former fellow editor of the Harvard Law Review, helped make connections in Washington's policy establishment. So did Cassandra Butts, another law school classmate and former senior policy adviser to then-House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt. She continues to assist with Obama's policy operation.

Big-picture operation

Unusual for freshman senators, who typically concentrate on the daily demands of legislative activity, Obama created a small operation devoted to broad themes under policy director Karen Kornbluh, another former Rubin aide. Kornbluh has written of the need to update government benefits such as Social Security and private employee benefits to take account of the country's shift toward two-income families. It is a theme Obama included in his book "The Audacity of Hope" and frequently sounds on the campaign trail.

His staff quickly began bringing in outside experts for wide-ranging discussions on policy: trade over Thai takeout in his Senate office, energy over dinner at a trendy Capitol Hill restaurant. Obama brings the Socratic style of a law professor to policy discussions and enjoys the give-and-take of opposing views, advisers said.

"It's very spirited," said one longtime aide. "He tests out ideas and challenges people. Nobody is allowed to be quiet."

Among the early additions to his circle was Samantha Power, a Harvard professor who wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning book criticizing U.S. historical failures to act against genocides. She took a leave from her faculty position to help the new senator with foreign policy and remains an influential adviser.

Other top campaign advisers on national security include Gregory Craig, a Clinton impeachment defense attorney and former director of policy planning in the Clinton State Department, and Clinton Navy Secretary Richard Danzig, who has written on the potential dangers of terrorist strikes using biological weapons.

Sarah Sewall, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and former Clinton Defense Department official who wrote the introduction to the University of Chicago edition of the new counterinsurgency manual Gen. David Petraeus revised for the military, is advising on counterinsurgency strategy.

Since Obama announced his presidential campaign, he has been deluged with offers from experts to assist with policy advice, said campaign aides and outside advisers. Though they attribute that to enthusiasm for Obama's candidacy, his campaign also provides greater opportunity for the ambitious, because front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) relies on an established circle of advisers.

The senior members of the national security team resemble their Clinton administration colleagues now gathered around the former first lady in favoring an active U.S. engagement in the world.

But they tend to be people who, like Obama, were early critics of the Iraq invasion. Many also share a conviction that the foreign policy mistakes of the Bush administration are so serious that the next president must give a clear signal of a new direction.

They are not necessarily foes of military action. Lake was an advocate within the Clinton administration of military intervention in Haiti and Bosnia.

Several advisers said they saw the tough-mindedness and freshness that attracted them to Obama during two incidents that the Clinton campaign tried to portray as gaffes showing foreign policy naivete.

Obama said during a candidate debate that he would be willing to meet with international pariahs such as North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il and Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Shortly afterward, he declared he would be willing to order a military strike if he had "actionable intelligence" on the location of top Al Qaeda leaders in northwestern Pakistan and authorities there refused to act.

Rather than back away, Obama embraced the conflict with Clinton.

"Some voters on the Democratic side have complained they don't know where the real differences are," Power said. "It added clarity to what his campaign is about, and it gave a coherence to a number of policies he is pursuing."

- - -

Obama's policy team

Foreign policy/national security

Anthony Lake

(Bill Clinton national security adviser)

Susan Rice

(Clinton assistant secretary of state for African affairs)

Samantha Power

(Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor, Pulitzer Prize-winner author of book arguing for more vigorous U.S. action to counter genocidal campaigns)

Gregory Craig

(Clinton impeachment defense attorney and director of policy planning for Clinton State Department)

Richard Danzig

(Clinton Navy secretary, has written on potential dangers of terrorist biological weapons attacks)

Former Maj. Gen. Scott Gration

(Retired Air Force officer, former director of strategy for U.S. European Command, military officer assigned to accompany Obama on senator's Africa trip)

Former Gen. Merrill McPeak

(Retired former chief of staff of the Air Force)

Domestic policy

Austan Goolsbee

(University of Chicago Graduate School of Business professor, economist. Has argued that taxpayers with simple finances should be allowed to forgo tax returns and leave tax computation to IRS)

Michael Froman

(Citigroup executive, former chief of staff to then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin)

David Cutler

(Health economist, Harvard professor and member of Clinton White House Council of Economic Advisers. Advocate of tying health-care provider reimbursements to medical performance.)

David Blumenthal

(Director, Institute for Health Policy, Harvard Medical School)

Jeffrey Liebman

(Economist, Harvard professor and member of Clinton White House Council of Economic Advisers. Research has focused on role of earned income tax credit in moving people from welfare to work.)

Dan Tarullo

(International trade expert, Georgetown law professor and former Bill Clinton economic adviser)

Eric Holder

(Clinton deputy attorney general)

Cass Sunstein

(University of Chicago law professor)

Laurence Tribe

(Harvard law professor)

Cassandra Butts

(Senior policy adviser to House Democratic leader Richard Gephardt)

Staff

Mark Alexander, campaign policy director

(Seton Hall law professor, issues director for Bill Bradley's 2000 presidential campaign)

Heather Higginbottom, campaign senior policy strategist

(Deputy national policy director for John Kerry 2004 campaign, Senate legislative director for John Kerry)

Karen Kornbluh, Senate policy director

(Deputy chief of staff to then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, has written of need to update social insurance system to accommodate dual-income "juggler families")

----------

[Rohirrim]

Given how many of his "heavy hitters" are culled from the Clinton camp, wouldn't it be a lot easier to just elect Clinton? From what this little piece suggest, a vote for Obama is a vote for the Clinton government, without the Clintons? BTW, I think Samantha Powers is out. Also, you forgot Brzezinski, who is poised to be a large voice in Obama's circle, and who did such a great foreign policy job under Carter.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Given how many of his "heavy hitters" are culled from the Clinton camp, wouldn't it be a lot easier to just elect Clinton? From what this little piece suggest, a vote for Obama is a vote for the Clinton government, without the Clintons? BTW, I think Samantha Powers is out. Also, you forgot Brzezinski, who is poised to be a large voice in Obama's circle, and who did such a great foreign policy job under Carter.

I think your point was that "it's just him"...no? Clearly you were missinformed. As for Clintonians in his circle, I count about 10...perhaps some of the other 690 he's assembled also eminate from there but we don't know that do we? In any case, you might have considered this:

The senior members of the national security team resemble their Clinton administration colleagues now gathered around the former first lady in favoring an active U.S. engagement in the world.

But they tend to be people who, like Obama, were early critics of the Iraq invasion. Many also share a conviction that the foreign policy mistakes of the Bush administration are so serious that the next president must give a clear signal of a new direction.

So he's got 1) people with tons of prior experience in the white house, 2) people with fresh ideas, 3) people encouraged to voice their opinions, and 4) people who were early critics of the Iraq invasion

But you're right..."it's just him"...and his "Illinois ward politics experience"...

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by footstepsfrom#27

I think your point was that "it's just him"...no? Clearly you were missinformed. As for Clintonians in his circle, I count about 10...perhaps some of the other 690 he's assembled also eminate from there but we don't know that do we? In any case, you might have considered this:


So he's got 1) people with tons of prior experience in the white house, 2) people with fresh ideas, 3) people encouraged to voice their opinions, and 4) people who were early critics of the Iraq invasion

But you're right..."it's just him"...and his "Illinois ward politics experience"...

The article that you posted says that his "senior advisers" are some of Clinton's "heavy hitters." As far as their "fresh ideas" goes, the quote in the article you posted is, "These are not outsiders trying to tear down the temple."

My argument is that Bush was much more experienced than Obama, but it's questionable whether he was the one calling the shots. Obama, from all appearances, will be calling all the shots. So, a bunch of old Clinton people have signed on. Has Obama got any executive experience? Has he ever run a large pool of advisors? A cabinet? How do we know these people will be allowed to "voice their opinions?" How do we know what kind of manager Obama will be? Will he listen? Will he dictate to his cabinet like LBJ? Or will he micromanage like Carter? It's all guesswork. We don't know. Obama has zero executive experience.

If we were to honestly, and I stress that word "honestly," step back and look at who the most experienced person in this entire race is, from both sides, there is only one answer: Bill Clinton. What this article proposes is that Obama would be a good choice because he's taking a team that Bill Clinton put together, but without Bill Clinton.

So he's got that working for him.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

The article that you posted says that his "senior advisers" are some of Clinton's "heavy hitters." As far as their "fresh ideas" goes, the quote in the article you posted is, "These are not outsiders trying to tear down the temple."

My argument is that Bush was much more experienced than Obama, but it's questionable whether he was the one calling the shots.

Actually your argument was, "it's just him".

But since you bring it up, Bush had ZERO political experience when he was elected governor in 1994, so he went to the White House with 6 years experience at the state level, while Obama has 12...a 2:1 advantage for Obama. Bush coat-tailed his daddy's rep and his friend's money into a position as the managing GM of the Texas Rangers, and used that to springboard a trip to the White House. He accomplished NOTHING of note prior to this, and precious little here in Texas unless you count fouling the air land and sea with outrageous dilution of the EPA's authority, screwing up Texas schools and presiding over a state that spends less per capita on chldhood health care than anybody but Mississippi...while by comparison Obama spent years working in Harlem and inner city Chicago organizing both friends and foes alike to get things done. Along the way he found time to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, write two best selling books and launch his political career on his own initiative instead of his family name.

Advantage Obama.

[peacepipe]

Originally Posted by Arkie

Bush may have been the most inexperienced serious candidate to run for president until Obama.

Experience only means that they have been in washington long enough to be part of the problem we're faceing today in our government.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by peacepipe

Experience only means they they have been in washington long enough to be part of the problem we're faceing today in our government.

QFT

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by footstepsfrom#27

Actually your argument was, "it's just him".

But since you bring it up, Bush had ZERO political experience when he was elected governor in 1994, so he went to the White House with 6 years experience at the state level, while Obama has 12...a 2:1 advantage for Obama. Bush coat-tailed his daddy's rep and his friend's money into a position as the managing GM of the Texas Rangers, and used that to springboard a trip to the White House. He accomplished NOTHING of note prior to this, and precious little here in Texas unless you count fouling the air land and sea with outrageous dilution of the EPA's authority, screwing up Texas schools and presiding over a state that spends less per capita on chldhood health care than anybody but Mississippi...while by comparison Obama spent years working in Harlem and inner city Chicago organizing both friends and foes alike to get things done. Along the way he found time to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, write two best selling books and launch his political career on his own initiative instead of his family name.

Advantage Obama.

You'll never find me sticking up for George Bush, believe me. I consider him a waste of space. Like I've said before, Dubya's entire life can be summed up in one word: Strings. You can characterize Obama's experiences any way you want. As a passionate advocate of the man, obviously you are going to paint them as rosy as possible. It doesn't negate the fact that he has zero executive experience.

Yes, Bush was a horrible governor, but he was a governor. Yes, the only reason he was involved with the Rangers or with Arbusto (great name for an oil company ) was family connections, but it still constitutes executive experience. God knows how he got an MBA out of Harvard, but he got one. I imagine the "strings" argument would work there as well. Frankly, I really don't believe Bush has ever been wholly in control of policy in any of his "placements."

Obama, I believe, will be the man in charge, if elected. Will Obama's experience in ward politics translate to the Oval Office? Will his experience as a law professor or a state legislator translate? Or his short-lived experience as a Senator (some say less than one year because he immediately began his campaign)?

I don't blame him for glomming on to a bunch of the Clintonites. He'll need lots of help.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

It doesn't negate the fact that he has zero executive experience.

Senators at both the state and US level utilize executive decision making power with their staffs on a daily basis, so your statement is false...just as false as your original characterization of his political strategy as "it's just him".

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Yes, Bush was a horrible governor, but he was a governor....God knows how he got an MBA out of Harvard, but he got one.

Lots of other people know too.

[Rohirrim]

Originally Posted by footstepsfrom#27

Senators at both the state and US level utilize executive decision making power with their staffs on a daily basis, so your statement is false...just as false as your original characterization of his political strategy as "it's just him".

Legislator is not an executive position. I have conceded the point that it's not (in your narrow interpretation) "just him." He has hired on a whole bunch of Clintonites. So many, in fact, that it is odd that he is running against Clinton.

[Bronco Jamus]

He's not even being a legislator.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Rohirrim

Legislator is not an executive position. I have conceded the point that it's not (in your narrow interpretation) "just him." He has hired on a whole bunch of Clintonites. So many, in fact, that it is odd that he is running against Clinton.

My "narrow interpretation"? ...are you serious? Did you even read the article? He established working relationships with high level political thinkers even before he was in the Illinois senate. He established the largest, most experienced group of advisors of any freshman senator while in Washington. His staff and advisory group are at general election levels rather than primary levels like most candidates have. He rubs shoulders with nobel prize winners and university intellectuals on a wide range of domestic and foreign policy initiatives. In short...he's surrounded himself with a ton of well respected political experience. How you interpret this as "my narrow interpretation" is a mystery. The fact that a decent portion of this experience comes from the old Clinton administration should tell you two things; 1) the available talent pool for democratic political strategists is recognized by both he and Bill Clinton as viable according to some common themes, and 2) there's probably a good reason those people are not supporting Hillary Clinton. You've not proven that Obama is merely regurgitating Clintonian political views merely because he's hired on some of his former team. You've only proven that he recognizes who the people are who have experience in national politics. You say he has no executive experience...which is false. Senators make decisions with staff just like governors do. They might not carry the same authority but the leadership process at both levels is the same. Also, one of the primary duties of an executive is to surround themselves with people who know more than you do about a given area of subject matter. Obviously he's done that. Clinton was a career politician who never held a job in the private sector and Bush got everything he got from his daddy calling in favors. Neither of those dubious things applies to this guy.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Bronco Jamus

He's not even being a legislator.

He still holds a seat in the US Senate, so yes, he is.

[Bronco Jamus]

Originally Posted by footstepsfrom#27

He still holds a seat in the US Senate, so yes, he is.

He has proposed zero federal legislation as a US Senator. He's missed 40 percent of votes on the floor. He's not doing his job.

[footstepsfrom#27]

Originally Posted by Bronco Jamus

He has proposed zero federal legislation as a US Senator. He's missed 40 percent of votes on the floor. He's not doing his job.

First of all, you're wrong...his job is not to "propose legislation", but he has done so. He's already co-sponsored the "Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act" with McCain, and he added 3 ammendments to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act. He also worked with Republican Senators Richard Lugar and Tom Coburn to introduce "Lugar-Obama", legislation involving threat reduction in shoulder fired stinger missiles and anti-personell mines to help limit access to these weapons by terrorists. He was the primary sponsor of the "Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act", which Bush signed into law. He co-sponsored the "Coburn-Obama Transparency Act", forming the creation of an internet based accountability for all organizations receiving federal dollars and forcing a breakdown of their budget expenses and grants received. He worked with Democratic Congressman Russ Feingold on the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act" which Bush signed last year to force disclosure of bundled campaign contributions and travel gifts by lobbyists to Congressmen. He worked with Democratic Senator Chuck Shumer on Senate Bill 453, designed to criminalize federal election irregularities and deceptive practices in voting procedures. He worked on "the Iraq War De-Escalation Act" last year and he worked with Republican Kit Bond on ammendments to the "2008 Defense Authorization Act. He sponsored the "Iran Sanctions Enabling Act", enabling disinvestment from states pension funds in Irans oil and gas industry. He also worked with Republican Chuck Hagel on a bill to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism in "Obama-Hagel", passed by the house last year, introduced an ammendment to the "State Children's Health Insurance Program" to provide a year's job protection for families caring for soldiers injured in the Iraq war, a bill that passed both houses of Congress only to be vetoed by Bush.

Second, he sits on six Senate committees: Foreign Relations; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Veterans' Affairs, and he's the Chairman of the Senate Subcommite on European Affairs.

[Dukes]

Good lord footsteps, your love for Obama is getting a little sick.

[orinjkrush]

he certainly seems "green". lotsa recycling goin on

[Bronco Jamus]

He has developed zero legislation.