Obama Watch

Ristol

New York's Ambassador
#42
It's great to see that the G-8 summit was a complete waste of everyone's time. If you can't get countries to commit to reducing greenhouse gases by 50% by 2050 (not NEARLY enough), how vast is this alleged international influence President Obama has, anyway?

Anyway, they all looked great.
 

masta247

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#45
yeah he is.
His other sons are okay but according to him pussies can't rule a country so he picked the most hardcore one.
 

Flipmo

VIP Member
Staff member
#46
West Point, New York (CNN) -- President Obama launched a new chapter in the Afghanistan war Tuesday, committing an additional 30,000 U.S. troops while setting a goal of starting to bring forces home by July 2011.

In a televised speech from the U.S. Military Academy, Obama outlined a strategy intended to eliminate al Qaeda in Afghanistan and help the Afghan government defeat the Taliban insurgency while bolstering Pakistan's anti-terrorism efforts.

"As commander in chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan," Obama declared in the 35-minute speech. "After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan."

The response from Kabul was positive.

"The troop increase is a bad idea, and more U.S. soldiers will die because of it," said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, who accused Obama of political pandering.

Facing opposition from many in his liberal base, Obama cited the security threat to the U.S. and its allies to explain the need to increase troops in Afghanistan to nearly 100,000.

He also said he would ask NATO allies to increase the 40,000 troops they have sent there.

At the same time, Obama included an early date to begin withdrawing forces to signal that the U.S. commitment would not be endless.

"Just as we have done in Iraq, we will execute this transition responsibly, taking into account conditions on the ground," Obama said. "We will continue to advise and assist Afghanistan's security forces to ensure that they can succeed over the long haul.

"But it will be clear to the Afghan government -- and, more importantly, to the Afghan people -- that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country."

The additional 30,000 troops would begin deploying early next year at "the fastest pace possible," said Obama, whom conservatives criticized for taking more than three months to decide on a request by Gen. Stanley McChrystal for up to 40,000 more troops.

Obama noted that all plans presented by military leaders called for deployment beginning in 2010, "so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war."

McChrystal praised the announcement, saying the president provided him with a clear mission and the necessary resources.

"The clarity, commitment and resolve outlined in the president's address are critical steps toward bringing security to Afghanistan and eliminating terrorist safe havens that threaten regional and global security," McChrystal said in a statement.

On Capitol Hill, the reaction was mixed. Republicans generally supported the deployment of more troops but worried that setting a timeline for troop withdrawals would signal a limited commitment to allies and enemies.

"Why would you condition this thing before you start?" asked Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. Noting the 18-month period between the start of deployment and the announced date to begin withdrawals, Graham said some U.S. troops likely "are going to meet each other coming and going."

Democrats were divided, with many opposing the new deployment and threatening to try to withhold funding, while some said they needed more time to study the issue or expressed support. However, it was too early to tell whether Congress would block spending for a troop increase estimated to cost as much as $30 billion a year.

"I disagree with the president's two key assumptions: that we can transfer responsibility to Afghanistan after 18 months and that our NATO allies will make a significant contribution," said Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pennsylvania. "It is unrealistic to expect the United States to be out in 18 months, so there is really no exit strategy. This venture is not worth so many American lives or the billions it will add to our deficit."

Obama said the additional U.S. forces bolstered by NATO troops "will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011."

David S. Sedney, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asian affairs, said the date to begin withdrawal was based on careful analysis of how soon Afghan forces can assume security responsibilities from foreign troops.

Three senior administration officials who outlined the strategy said it includes plans to build up the Afghan army to 134,000 troops in 2010 and increase the size of the police force so that the transfer of authority can begin in summer 2011.

Just one of 34 provinces is entirely under Afghan military and police control, according to CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen, who said three senior officials emphasized a handover to Afghan security services in 2011 likely would be possible in only some parts of the country.

Acknowledging the economic crisis at home, Obama said the deployment "cannot be open-ended, because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own."

It is the second increase of U.S. forces in the war-torn Islamic country that Obama has ordered, and his announcement comes nine days before he goes to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

A Pentagon official acknowledged Obama's six-month timeline for sending new troops is aggressive and will be challenging to fulfill but said the military will successfully carry out the order.

In requesting more troops, McChrystal wrote in August that a "failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term [next 12 months] -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

Critics of a new deployment said corruption and overall lack of governance make Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government an unreliable partner, dooming the mission.

Obama made clear that Karzai must carry out promised reforms to ensure continued U.S. support.

"The days of providing a blank check are over," Obama said, adding: "We will support Afghan ministries, governors and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people. We expect those who are ineffective or corrupt to be held accountable."

The days of providing a blank check are over.


In a message to Afghanistan, Obama said: "We have no interest in occupying your country."

"We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens," Obama said. "And we will seek a partnership with Afghanistan grounded in mutual respect -- to isolate those who destroy, to strengthen those who build, to hasten the day when our troops will leave and to forge a lasting friendship in which America is your partner and never your patron."

The strategy also focuses on helping Pakistan, with Obama saying, "There is no doubt that the United States and Pakistan share a common enemy."

"We will strengthen Pakistan's capacity to target those groups that threaten our countries, and have made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear," Obama said, referring to Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders thought to be in Pakistani tribal areas near the Afghan border.

"And going forward, the Pakistani people must know: America will remain a strong supporter of Pakistan's security and prosperity long after the guns have fallen silent, so that the great potential of its people can be unleashed," the president said.

Obama rejected comparisons with the Vietnam War.

"Unlike Vietnam, we are joined by a broad coalition of 43 nations that recognizes the legitimacy of our action," Obama said. "Unlike Vietnam, we are not facing a broad-based popular insurgency. And most importantly, unlike Vietnam, the American people were viciously attacked from Afghanistan and remain a target for those same extremists, who are plotting along its border."

U.S.-led troops invaded Afghanistan after al Qaeda's September 11, 2001, attacks. The invasion overthrew the ruling Taliban, which had allowed al Qaeda to operate from Afghanistan, but most of the top al Qaeda and Taliban leadership escaped the onslaught.

Taliban fighters have regrouped in the mountainous region along the Afghan border with Pakistan, battling U.S. and Afghan forces on one side and Pakistani troops on the other.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 900 Americans and nearly 600 allied troops.
Discuss.
 

Jokerman

Well-Known Member
#48
The response from Kabul was positive.

"The troop increase is a bad idea, and more U.S. soldiers will die because of it," said Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid, who accused Obama of political pandering.

(Boy, I'd hate to see one of Kabul's negative responses.)
 

Casey

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#50
So we're coming to the end of the first year of Obama's presidency.

I think he's done great so far.
 

S. Fourteen

Well-Known Member
#51
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – Wed Apr 14, 4:06 pm ET
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Call it NASA: The Next Generation. The president is pointing America toward a new direction in space, and some heroes from NASA's long-ago glory days don't like it.
New rockets to the moon have been canceled. And the space shuttles are about to be mothballed. Instead, the Obama administration wants to rely more on private companies to fly into space over the next few years, while also working to develop a big, new government rocket ship.
But the plan lacks details, and neither a specific initial destination nor a spacecraft has been settled on.
The old space hands aren't buying it. From Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, to the last astronaut to leave his footprints there, many Apollo-era space veterans are upset. They especially don't like President Barack Obama's cancellation of President George W. Bush's return-to-the-moon mission. They accuse Obama of abandoning American leadership in space to the Chinese and Russians.
But others in a younger generation — including Internet pioneers of the 1990s — are excited about the president's vision. NASA will spend $6 billion to encourage private companies to build their own spaceships to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. They see the Obama plan as the only way to eventually get astronauts to Mars.
"This is a generational shift in the space program," said MIT astronautics professor Ed Crawley, who served on a White House-appointed panel last year to re-evaluate the space program.
In a visit to Cape Canaveral on Thursday, the president will try to sell a skeptical space community on his concept. He is bringing some new adjustments to the plan to demonstrate his commitment to exploring space, building spacecraft and keeping local jobs, administration officials said.
The Obama plan extends the space station's life by five years and puts billions into research to develop the big new rocket ship capable of reaching a nearby asteroid, the moon or other points in space. Those stops would be stepping stones on an eventual mission to Mars. But the specifics have not been worked out.


PayPal founder Elon Musk said his company SpaceX hopes to fly astronauts to the space station by the end of 2013. He figures he will charge NASA about $20 million an astronaut. That's a bargain compared with the more than $300 million a head it was going to cost NASA under the Bush plan, and the $56 million NASA will pay Russia for trips on Soyuz rockets in the short term.
Musk's Falcon 9 unmanned rocket is sitting on a Cape Canaveral pad with its initial launch a month away. Several companies are competing with Musk, including one run by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Musk said what's happening is "the new generation of space."
But Armstrong, Eugene Cernan, who was the last man to walk on the moon, and Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell spent much of March together, touring the Persian Gulf. They talked about how much they dislike the change in space priorities, Cernan said.
"We have just given up manned spaceflight," Cernan said. "It is the demise of American people in space except in someone else's vehicle. This is a catastrophe."
Lovell said the concept of putting more money into technology is fine, but the plan lacks vision.
"The whole idea of any program is you have to set a goal," Lovell said. "You don't just build technology and figure out what to do with it. ... The whole thing is flawed."
And Armstrong, a famously private person, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press that he had "substantial reservations" about the Obama plan.
The split is not entirely along generational lines: Armstrong's Apollo 11 moonwalking partner back in 1969, Buzz Aldrin, has publicly supported the president's plan, while some younger shuttle astronauts oppose it.
On Monday, 27 former astronauts and senior NASA officials — including Bush's NASA chief, Michael Griffin — wrote an open letter to the president, contending that canceling the moon program would cede American leadership in space technology.
"One of the greatest fears of any generation is not leaving things better for the young people of the next," the letter said. "In the area of human spaceflight, we're about to realize that fear; your NASA budget proposal raises more questions about our future than it answers."
Musk, who was born two years after Armstrong's "one giant leap for mankind," said there is a lot of anger about the president's plan.
"This is a pretty revolutionary move and revolutions generate anger," Musk told the AP. "But if we don't do it, there's no future in space."
Add to all that angst a shrinking work force because the 29-year-old space shuttle fleet will be retired after three more flights.
Many critics of the president's space plan, such as Chris Kraft, the legendary engineer who ran Mission Control from Mercury through Apollo, say the end of the shuttle is a major mistake. They say it will force America to rely on the Russians for increasingly expensive rides into orbit until new ships are built.
The decision to retire the shuttle fleet was actually made in 2004 to fund Bush's moon mission plan. Obama killed the moon mission in February. But the White House argues that astronauts will actually be spending twice as much time in space under the new plan as under the Bush plan because Obama extended the life of the space station.
In response to the criticism and in an effort to relieve Florida job fears, Obama administration officials said Tuesday that the president will announce two changes:
_Reviving the Orion crew capsule designed under the Bush moon plan.
_Speeding up development of the massive new rocket. It could be ready around the end of the decade, a few years earlier than previously planned.
Overall, the Obama program would mean 2,500 more Florida jobs than the old Bush program, administration officials say.
The Orion capsule wouldn't be used for its original purpose — landing on the moon. It would be sent unmanned to the space station to be used as an escape vehicle. That would mean U.S. astronauts wouldn't have to rely on the Russian Soyuz for an emergency flight home.
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called the president's plan "pretty dynamic and pretty bold. The thing that makes it different from any other vision is that it's funded."
The Bush plan had some serious drawbacks: It had already cost NASA $9.1 billion. Because of earlier budget cuts, the new moon rocket was way behind schedule, and there was no money to build a lunar lander, White House and NASA officials said.
One problem with the Obama plan is that the White House botched the job of explaining the concept, said space scholar John Logsdon of George Washington University.
"It's absolutely crucial that Obama articulate a clear sense of what we're up to," he said. "It's hard because it's a relatively sophisticated strategy."
Houston, we have a problem
 

S. Fourteen

Well-Known Member
#52

April 15, 2010
President Obama took one small step backward Thursday afternoon, announcing subtle changes to his new space strategy while also defending his approach during a speech at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The revised proposal would revive one scaled-down component of the space agency's six-year-old Constellation program, a successor to the space shuttle that the president originally proposed scrapping in February.

But the strategy shift is far from an abort scenario. Many workers at the U.S. space port on Florida's Cape Canaveral would still lose their jobs after the shuttle's long-planned retirement later this year. And key elements of the NASA strategy the White House first outlined in February remain in place.

Here's what the new course the president laid out would mean for some NASA programs and constituencies:

The Shuttle: This week marks the 29th anniversary of shuttle flights. And when Discovery returns from its current mission, there are only three more flights scheduled: an Atlantis mission in May, an Endeavour flight in July, and then one last trip to orbit for Discovery in September.

The plan to retire the shuttle fleet was put in motion by President George W. Bush in 2004 to help pay for an ambitious proposal to build a new spacecraft and return U.S. astronauts to the moon. After years of scaling back, it's not clear whether the contractors NASA depends on to maintain its shuttles could scramble to keep the fleet flying at this point.

The Obama administration has proposed a little extra money for the next fiscal year to give NASA some wiggle room, in case weather or technical delays affect the current schedule. And if all goes as planned, some shuttle advocates hope that money could be used instead for an extra mission. Beyond that, NASA's search is on for new homes where its surviving three orbiters can begin their new careers as museum pieces. (Discovery is already promised to the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia.)

The Constellation Program: NASA's original idea for replacing the shuttle was a new family of rockets and spacecraft designed not only to carry astronauts back and forth to Earth orbit, but to eventually transport human explorers to the moon and beyond.

An advisory panel that looked into the future of human spaceflight found that the Constellation program had long been underfunded and behind schedule to meet any of its goals. Based on those findings, the administration proposed a budget that would pull the plug on the program, after more than $9 billion of development.

With Thursday's announcement, Obama ordered NASA to revive one component: the four-person Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, reinvented as an on-call rescue vehicle for orbiting space crews. While far from the glamorous missions for which Orion was conceived, Obama said the scaled-down rescue vehicle could still establish a "technological foundation" for future spacecraft that will be needed for future space missions.

The Space Station: The Obama administration would extend the life of the International Space Station by at least five years to 2020. The long-delayed facility has only been able to accommodate a full-size, full-time crew of six for less than a year. Keeping the orbiting outpost open would provide a laboratory for preparing for long-duration missions further from home.

As of October, the station will have been continuously occupied by at least two people for a decade. The challenge in the station's second decade of operations will be getting crews to and from it. After the shuttle, NASA and its international partners will be dependent on the small three-person Russian Soyuz spacecraft -- with a round-trip ticket costing passengers more than $50 million a pop.

Private Space Taxis: Having canceled Constellation, the Obama administration's primary focus is to help start a new industry -- corporate spacecraft builders that would sell transportation services instead of vehicles to NASA and its partners.

The administration says relying on the private sector will give the country a shuttle replacement a year or two sooner than the Constellation program would have been ready to fly and offer redundancy.

One likely private sector contender is Space Exploration Technologies. Under a contract from NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, SpaceX already is developing a launcher and a reusable spacecraft designed to help resupply the space station starting next year. Adapting its cargo hauler, called Dragon, to carry as many as a half-dozen astronauts is next on the company's agenda.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk -- the billionaire online entrepreneur behind the PayPal e-commerce system -- is understandably enthusiastic about the president's focus on new, commercially developed spacecraft. "The new plan is to harness our nation's unparalleled system of free enterprise (as we have done in all other modes of transport), to create far more reliable and affordable rockets," he said in a statement Thursday.

Musk also said turning over routine orbital missions to the private sector would "free up the NASA resources necessary to develop interplanetary transport technologies."

Heavy-Lift Launcher: Interplanetary missions and other forms of deep-space exploration would require rockets that could provide a much bigger boost than the family of Falcon rockets Musk's company is developing. So Obama proposed Thursday to invest $3.1 billion in designing a new heavy-lift launch vehicle by 2015.

The president's previous plan was far murkier on the timing for development of such a rocket, which would replace Constellation's Ares V lifter. The administration says Obama's promise to select a design for a heavy-lift launch vehicle in five years means major work on the rocket would begin as much as two years sooner than if Constellation wasn't canceled.

Return To The Moon: Obama was dismissive of the Constellation program's emphasis on getting astronauts back to the moon by the end of this decade. "We've been there before," he said.

Instead, he called for NASA to focus on exploring more far-flung destinations, where no one has gone before. Near-Earth asteroids are one possible destination. Another are the "Lagrange points" -- areas of space balanced between the Earth and the moon that could serve as gravitational islands for long-term research and even potential fueling depots.

Obama did not commit to specific deadlines, but said he thought some of those missions could be mounted by the mid-2020s, with a Mars landing at some point later. "And I expect to be around to see it," the 48-year-old president added.

The Budget: Back on Planet Earth, all of this will need the approval of NASA's check writers in Congress. And much of Thursday's announcement was geared to winning over Capitol Hill skeptics, especially those whose constituents have ties to NASA and its national network of contractors.

In many ways the revisions are designed to serve as a political deflector shield for the White House space strategy. The original plan has been under fire from NASA workers, space program advocates and even some high-profile former Apollo astronauts. The critics described the original plan as a mission to nowhere that would effectively dismantle the U.S. manned space capability, leaving U.S. astronauts without their own ride for the first time since the gap between the final Apollo flight in 1975 and the first space shuttle flight in 1981.

Obama emphasized that his plan would increase NASA's budget by $6 billion over five years, even while he was proposing to hold down other discretionary spending programs in the federal budget. He described major investments in the Kennedy Space Center and forecasted adding 2,500 jobs to Florida's "Space Coast" by 2012.

The administration estimates that cultivating private-sector space launchers will create 10,000 new jobs across the country over the next five years, while building an Orion-based rescue ship will preserve critical jobs for federal contractors in Colorado, Texas and Florida.

Obama said the country's investments in space exploration over the past five decades have paid off big "for pennies on the dollar." If Congress agrees, the lawmakers' mission will be to discover the dollars to pay for the president's vision.
NASA's Flight Plan Gets Small Course Corrections : NPR
 
#53
Interesting read....

Obama begins reversing Bush climate policies - Yahoo! News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama began reversing the climate policies of the Bush administration on Monday, clearing the way for new rules to force auto makers to produce more fuel-efficient and less polluting cars.
Considering both sides of the arguement can not really be proven, it still seems Obama is doing what to the average joe would seem good, every bum and his dog knows Bush was a complete falure, so anything to go against him or his policies must seem good.

It seems the general public were already on the bandwagon of not buying into those huge ass trucks anymore due to petrol prices, so for me he's just jumping on a bandwagon that was already rolling to look good, or try to anyway.


My immediate concern was with the rumored cost of the campaign and inaugaration ceremonies together. Was it so necessary to spend nearly $150 million on the event? To have Beyonce there, really? Why does everything have to be such a circus with these people? I can't imagine any other country doing the same, there is no tact to this, no consideration to the state of the economy.

And the private donors who for the most part contributed that money, is there no better cause they could think of to give the money to?

All that there just rubbed me the wrong way from the start.
You are not the only one :)

^I think you got it spot on, but what I DO like is that he has started to do what he said he was going to do right away. Not much Presidents even do half the shit they say they will do.
You mean like withdraw troops, right ?

Obama bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia. They're playing it off as he just bent down to shake his hand, but he clearly bowed. I understand that he did it to show respect and follow the custom in that country, but I think it was wrong. It's not like this guy is a respectable person, even among other Muslim countries. Fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from our “staunch ally," Saudi Arabia. No US President has ever bowed to a king and Obama shouldn't have done it.

[youtube]9WlqW6UCeaY[/youtube]
LOL !

Obama & Co. will do what they do with every problem: print more money and give N. Korea a bailout package.
LOL again :)

So we're coming to the end of the first year of Obama's presidency.

I think he's done great so far.
Oh Mr Rain, you will never cease to amaze me, how the heck have you been anyway? :)
 

Casey

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#54
i'm great, and Obama is proving himself to be a forward-thinking, progressive great president so far.

Obama makes hospitals allow gay visitation rights | Reuters

Things like that, and this:

President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would "send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody."
are awesome. Go Prez Obama! :D
 

Casey

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#56
fuck that bring back the troops
You cannot be serious. Yeah, let's destroy the fuck out of a country and then leave before we finish rebuilding it!

Rebuilding a war-torn country takes longer than destroying it in the first place. Case in point - I'm sure you've seen a high-rise building being constructed, and I'm sure you've seen a high-rise building being demolished. Which took longer?

The troops must stay there until the country is stable again. Unfortunately, that's the price you pay for going there and wrecking the place in the first place.
 

Jokerman

Well-Known Member
#57
Most of the NASA speech was nonsense and Obama knows it. There's no plans for any of it and no leadership at NASA to get it done.
 

yak pac fatal

Well-Known Member
#58
You cannot be serious. Yeah, let's destroy the fuck out of a country and then leave before we finish rebuilding it!

Rebuilding a war-torn country takes longer than destroying it in the first place. Case in point - I'm sure you've seen a high-rise building being constructed, and I'm sure you've seen a high-rise building being demolished. Which took longer?

The troops must stay there until the country is stable again. Unfortunately, that's the price you pay for going there and wrecking the place in the first place.
how can you expect stability when innocent people are dying, little kids getting shot up, homes getting shot up and bombed on? then you got american troops dying. this war has dragged out to the point not even our government knows why were there.

hussain murked. tim osman aka bin laden is dead. i dont think they put any effort in putting the iraqi people on they two feet so they can become self reliant.

this shit is gonna be a never ending war especially in that region where there is a lot of tension.

america shouldve never got into this pointless war.
 

Casey

Well-Known Member
Staff member
#59
how can you expect stability when innocent people are dying, little kids getting shot up, homes getting shot up and bombed on? then you got american troops dying. this war has dragged out to the point not even our government knows why were there.

hussain murked. tim osman aka bin laden is dead. i dont think they put any effort in putting the iraqi people on they two feet so they can become self reliant.

this shit is gonna be a never ending war especially in that region where there is a lot of tension.

america shouldve never got into this pointless war.
Agreed with the last comment.

But my point still stands, they have a responsibility to at least get the country back to a certain amount of civility since they destroyed it in the first place. And that will take longer than the actual war itself.
 

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