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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (525113)	11/2/2009 7:04:42 AM
From: bentway	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580072

"It is nation-building in America. " Too bad we have this native AQ, the movement conservatives, opposing him at every turn.

To: Road Walker who wrote (525113)	11/2/2009 12:00:23 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1580072

I’ve always believed that Mr. Obama was elected because a majority of Americans fear that we’re becoming a declining great power. We ARE a declining great power and I am not sure even Obama can reverse that trend. We are hauling a huge drag......20-30% of the population who identify as wingers. I asked the Germans if there was a similar group in their country. They said that after unification, the East Germans were a problem. However, the young have turned the corner and as the older ones die off, there are less problems coming from that group. Unfortunately, in this country, wingerism is entrenched from generation to generation. Everything from our schools to our energy and transportation systems are falling apart and in need of reinvention and reinvigoration. And what people want most from Washington today is nation-building at home. Yes. Exactly. We deserve to have better than we have. I am convinced that this kind of nation-building at home is exactly what Mr. Obama is trying to deliver, and should be his unifying call: We need universal health care because it would strengthen our social fabric and enable our businesses to better compete globally. We need to upgrade our schools because no child in 21st-century America should be left behind and because we cannot compete for the best new jobs without doing so. We need a greener economy, not just to mitigate climate change, but because a world growing from 6.7 billion people to 9.2 billion by 2050 is going to demand more and more clean energy and water, and the country that develops the most clean technologies is going to have the most energy security, national security, economic security, innovative companies and global respect. Exactly. But to deliver this agenda requires a motivated public and a spirit of shared sacrifice. That’s where narrative becomes vital. People have to have a gut feel for why this nation-building project, with all its varied strands, is so important — why it’s worth the sacrifice. One of the reasons that independents and conservatives who voted for Mr. Obama have been so easily swayed against him by Fox News and people labeling him a “socialist” is because he has not given voice to the truly patriotic nation-building endeavor in which he is engaged. I don't buy this.......these people who are easily swayed are weak t*ts, fed the gruel of 'hating socialism' their entire lives and knowing no better. And they don't want to know better. “Obama’s election marked a shift — from a politics that celebrated privatized concerns to a politics that recognized the need for effective government and larger public purposes. Across the political spectrum, people understood that national renewal requires big ambition, and a better kind of politics,” said the Harvard political theorist Michael Sandel, author of the new best seller — “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” — that calls for elevating our public discourse. But to deliver on that promise, Sandel added, Obama needs to carry the civic idealism of his campaign into his presidency. He needs a narrative that will get the same voters who elected him to push through his ambitious agenda — against all the forces of inertia and private greed. “You can’t get nation-building without shared sacrifice,” said Sandel, “and you cannot inspire shared sacrifice without a narrative that appeals to the common good — a narrative that challenges us to be citizens engaged in a common endeavor, not just consumers seeking the best deal for ourselves. Obama needs to energize the prose of his presidency by recapturing the poetry of his campaign.” I guess. I don't know.........I am at a loss as to understand what is wrong with these people and why they can't see the bigger picture. I understand completely what Obama is doing. If they used their brains just a little, they would figure it out as well.

To: Road Walker who wrote (525113)	11/2/2009 12:09:02 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1580072

This is hilarious....trying to make H1N1 into Obama's Katrina moment? These idiots......and that would include G. Will on George S.'s show yesterday. They clearly don't understand how lucky we are to have any vaccine at all in the short time the administration has had to produce one. After all, we have never had a flu season start this early. They also don't understand what it takes to make a vaccine and how much time is required from when the components of the virus are identified to getting a finished vaccine on the shelves. And finally, they don't understand that the significant screwup lies with the private capitalists making the vaccine who overestimated what the yields for vaccine would be in production. Have you met a more desperate group of people than these Rs? THE H1N1 RESPONSE.... Obviously, the more H1N1 flu vaccines that are available to the public, the better. The slower-than-expected production of the vaccine has caused shortages, which can be frustrating for much of the public. But the effort to make this some kind of political controversy continues to be misguided. Some conservatives are now calling the mishap "Obama's Katrina." Today in an interview with Axelrod on CBS' Face the Nation, host Bob Schieffer advanced that view: "What do you do to correct this kind of thing? You're told one thing, you'd have so much and you didn't. These are the kinds of things we heard after Katrina during a previous administration." I realize that there's a political reflex in some circles -- all disappointments must be exploited politically to undermine the president at all times. But here's my question for conservatives: what, specifically, should the White House have done to respond to the public health emergency that it hasn't done? With Hurricane Katrina, there are plenty of actions that could have occurred -- emergency preparedness, evacuations, the efficiency of the federal response, etc. -- but didn't. But on H1N1, the Obama administration immediately recognized the seriousness of a public health issue, mobilized officials, launched a public information campaign, and ordered the creation and distribution of a vaccine. The White House sought out all the right advice, from all the right people, and acted quickly. That's what it's supposed to do. Now, if White House critics want to complain that the administration relied on misleading estimates from vaccine manufacturers, that's entirely legit. The private sector was overly optimistic about what they could produce, and HHS relied on estimates from manufacturers about the speed and supply of a vaccine that turned out to be wrong. If the knock on the administration is that it over-promised because manufacturers over-promised, that seems fair. But the Katrina comparisons don't. Until and unless conservatives have specific actions in mind that the White House should have taken but didn't, this talk is cheap and misleading. Even Fox News' Juan Williams gets it: "I must say that there's a huge difference between Hurricane Katrina in government failure and what we're seeing here in terms of delivery of the vaccine. This is a matter of private manufacturers not living up to promises in terms of the delivery system.... But I don't think most Americans are blaming the Obama administration for this as they blamed, as they said that President Bush's administration failed to properly understand or pay attention to what FEMA was not doing with regard to helping Americans with Katrina."