The Thanksgiving holiday weekend is over.
That means that Barack Obama returned to that now extremely familiar stage loaded with American flags. He stood behind his podium with his exceedingly lame "OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT ELECT" sign and held a news conference to announce his national security team.
Here's a shocker: He named Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state. Had you heard about that? Did you know that was coming?
You'd have to be living under a rock to not know it.
This morning, Obama made it offical: He wants Hillary to answer the 3:00 AM call.
Video of Obama's latest news conference.
CHICAGO (AP) -- President-elect Barack Obama announced Monday that Robert Gates would remain as defense secretary, making President Bush's Pentagon chief his own as he seeks to wind down the U.S. role in Iraq. Obama picked former campaign rival Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state.
Yes, as it turns out, Obama wanted Hillary to be the one taking that 3:00 AM phone call after all. Hillary agreed to answer the call after they hammered out the details regarding how to handle Bill Clinton and his secrets.
At a news conference, Obama also introduced retired Marine Gen. James Jones as White House national security adviser, former Justice Department official Eric Holder as attorney general and Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as secretary of homeland security.
The announcements rounded out the top tier of the team that will advise the incoming chief executive on foreign and national security issues in an era marked by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and terrorism around the globe.
"The time has come for a new beginning, a new dawn of American leadership to overcome the challenges of the 21st century," Obama said as his Cabinet picks stood behind him on a flag-draped stage.
"We will strengthen our capacity to defeat our enemies and support our friends. We will renew old alliances and forge new and enduring partnerships."
Rather than just snippets of Obama's opening remarks cherry-picked by AP, read the unedited portion:
BARACK OBAMA: And so in this uncertain world, the time has come for a new beginning, a new dawn of American leadership to overcome the challenges of the 21st century, and to seize the opportunities embedded in those challenges.
We will strengthen our capacity to defeat our enemies and support our friends. We will renew old alliances and forge new and enduring partnerships. We will show the world once more that America is relentless in the defense of our people, steady in advancing our interests, and committed to the ideals that shine as a beacon to the world -- democracy and justice, opportunity and unyielding hope -- because American values are America's greatest export to the world.
I think Obama's remarks were lifted from a George W. Bush speech.
If I read those remarks and were asked to identify the speaker, I would say that those were the words of George W. Bush.
Obama is echoing what Bush has been saying throughout his presidency.
"American values are America's greatest export to the world"?
Now Obama wants to export democracy. How will the Left respond? Libs have criticized cowboy Bush for that sort of arrogance.
And what's this about "advancing our interests"?
That doesn't sound like a good Lefty citizen of the world.
Obama said his appointees "share my pragmatism about the use of power, and my sense of purpose about America's role as a leader in the world."
Gates' presence in Chicago made him a visible symbol of the transition in power from the Bush administration to one headed by Obama.
The president-elect, reprising a campaign vow, said he would give the military a new mission as soon as he takes office: "responsibly ending the war in Iraq through a successful transition to Iraqi control." He did not mention his oft-repeated pledge to withdraw most U.S. combat troops within 16 months.
Obama has morphed into President Bush when it comes to Iraq policy.
He wants to end the war responsibly through a "successful transition to Iraqi control."
Again, Obama is echoing Bush.
Although Obama opposed the surge that proved successful in Iraq, he wants Robert "Surge" Gates, Bush's choice, to remain as secretary of defense.
In terms of national security and the War on Terror, it does appear that Obama is moving to the middle and adopting at least some aspects of President Bush's policy.
That's a smart move.
That may not sit well with the extremists on the Left, but it's the right thing to do.
When Obama promised change, I had no idea that meant he would change from a radical Leftist into someone more in tune with Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush when it comes to national security.
3 comments:
Now that the anti-science, superstition-based initiative presidency ends, we need several public works science Manhattan projects to make us great again and boost us out of this Grotesque Depression. First we must provide free advertising-based wireless internet to everyone to end land line monopolies. Then we must criscross the land with high speed rail. Because bovine flatulence is the major source of greenhouse gases, we must develop home growable microbes to provide all of our protein. Then we must create microbes which turn our sewage and waste into fuel right at home. This will end energy monopoly by putting fuel in our hands. We must address that most illness starts from behavior, especially from parents. Since paranoid schizophrenia is the cause of racism, bigotry, homelessness, terrorism, ignorance, exploitation and criminality, we must provide put the appropriate medications, like lithium, in the water supply and require dangerous wingnuts who refuse free mental health care to be implanted with drug release devices. CHurches should be licensed to reduce supersition and all clergy dealing with small children should be psychiatrically monitored to prevent molesting. Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh were the ultimate superstition based initiatives. Widen navigation straits (Gibraltar, Suez, Malacca, Danube, Panama and Hellspont) with deep nukes to prevent war. In order to fund this we must nationalize the entire financial, electrical and transportation system and extinguish the silly feudal notion that each industry should be regulated by its peers. Technology mandates a transformation of tax subsidies from feudal forecloseable debt to risk sharing equity. Real estate and insurance, the engines of feudalism, must be brought under the Federal Reserve so we may replace all buildings with hazardous materials to provide public works. Insects, flooding and fire spread asbestos, lead and mold which prematurely disables the disadvantaged. Disposable manufactured housing assures children are not prematurely disabled and disadvantaged. Because feudalism is the threat to progress everywhere, we must abolish large land holdings by farmers, foresters or religions and instead make all such large landholding part of the forest service so our trees may diminish greenhouse gases. We must abolish executive pay and make sure all employees in a company are all paid equally. We must abolish this exploitative idea of trade and monopoly and make every manufactured disposable cottage self sufficient through the microbes we invent.
Valuable resource of Hillary Clinton news summaries: http://www.ng2000.com/blog/2008/11/10/hillary-clinton/
The transcript left out all of the ...uhs...
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