And George showed SO MUCH experience and wisdom when he first took office, right?????....sm

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AM I crazy, or wasn�t the Obama presidency pronounced dead just days ago? Obama had �all but lost control of the agenda in Washington,� declared Newsweek on Feb. 4 as it wondered whether he might even get a stimulus package through Congress. �Obama Losing Stimulus Message War� was the headline at Politico a day later. At the mostly liberal MSNBC, the morning host, Joe Scarborough, started preparing the final rites. Obama couldn�t possibly eke out a victory because the stimulus package was �a steaming pile of garbage.�

Less than a month into Obama�s term, we don�t (and can�t) know how he�ll fare as president. The compromised stimulus package, while hardly garbage, may well be inadequate. Timothy Geithner�s uninspiring and opaque stab at a bank rescue is at best a place holder and at worst a rearrangement of the deck chairs on the TARP-Titanic, where he served as Hank Paulson�s first mate.

But we do know this much. Just as in the presidential campaign, Obama has once again outwitted the punditocracy and the opposition. The same crowd that said he was a wimpy hope-monger who could never beat Hillary or get white votes was played for fools again.

On Wednesday, as a stimulus deal became a certainty on Capitol Hill, I asked David Axelrod for his take on this Groundhog Day relationship between Obama and the political culture.
�It�s why our campaign was not based in Washington but in Chicago,� he said. �We were somewhat insulated from the echo chamber. In the summer of �07, the conventional wisdom was that Obama was a shooting star; his campaign was irretrievably lost; it was a ludicrous strategy to focus on Iowa; and we were falling further and further behind in the national polls.� But even after the Iowa victory, this same syndrome kept repeating itself. When Obama came out against the gas-tax holiday supported by both McCain and Clinton last spring, Axelrod recalled, �everyone in D.C. thought we were committing suicide.�

The stimulus battle was more of the same. �This town talks to itself and whips itself into a frenzy with its own theories that are completely at odds with what the rest of America is thinking,� he says. Once the frenzy got going, it didn�t matter that most polls showed support for Obama and his economic package: �If you watched cable TV, you�d see our support was plummeting, we were in trouble. It was almost like living in a parallel universe.�

For Axelrod, the moral is �not just that Washington is too insular but that the American people are a lot smarter than people in Washington think.�

Here�s a third moral: Overdosing on this culture can be fatal. Because Republicans are isolated in that parallel universe and believe all the noise in its echo chamber, they are now as out of touch with reality as the �inevitable� Clinton campaign was before it got clobbered in Iowa. The G.O.P. doesn�t recognize that it emerged from the stimulus battle even worse off than when it started. That obliviousness gives the president the opening to win more ambitious policy victories than last week�s. Having checked the box on attempted bipartisanship, Obama can now move in for the kill.

A useful template for the current political dynamic can be found in one of the McCain campaign�s more memorable pratfalls. Last fall, it was the Beltway mantra that Obama was doomed with all those working-class Rust Belt Democrats who�d flocked to Hillary in the primaries. The beefy, beer-drinking, deer-hunting white guys � incessantly interviewed in bars and diners � would never buy the skinny black intellectual. Nor would the �dead-ender� Hillary women. The McCain camp not only bought into this received wisdom, but bet the bank on it, pouring resources into states like Michigan and Wisconsin before abandoning them and doubling down on Pennsylvania in the stretch. The sucker-punched McCain lost all three states by percentages in the double digits.

The stimulus opponents, egged on by all the media murmurings about Obama �losing control,� also thought they had a sure thing. Their TV advantage added to their complacency. As the liberal blog ThinkProgress reported, G.O.P. members of Congress wildly outnumbered Democrats as guests on all cable news networks, not just Fox News, in the three days of intense debate about the House stimulus bill. They started pounding in their slogans relentlessly. The bill was not a stimulus package but an orgy of pork spending. The ensuing deficit would amount to �generational theft.� F.D.R.�s New Deal had been an abject failure.

This barrage did shave a few points off the stimulus�s popularity in polls, but its approval rating still remained above 50 percent in all (Gallup, CNN, Pew, CBS) but one of them (Rasmussen, the sole poll the G.O.P. cites). Perhaps the stimulus held its own because the public, in defiance of Washington�s condescending assumption, was smart enough to figure out that the government can�t create jobs without spending and that Bush-era Republicans have no moral authority to lecture about deficits. Some Americans may even have ancestors saved from penury by the New Deal.

In any event, the final score was unambiguous. The stimulus package arrived with the price tag and on roughly the schedule Obama had set for it. The president�s job approval percentage now ranges from the mid 60s (Gallup, Pew) to mid 70s (CNN) � not bad for a guy who won the presidency with 52.9 percent of the vote. While 48 percent of Americans told CBS, Gallup and Pew that they approve of Congressional Democrats, only 31 (Gallup), 32 (CBS) and 34 (Pew) percent could say the same of their G.O.P. counterparts.

At least some media hands are chagrined. After the stimulus prevailed, Scarborough speculated on MSNBC that �perhaps we�ve overanalyzed it, we don�t know what we�re talking about.� But the Republicans are busy high-fiving themselves and celebrating �victory.� Even in defeat, they are still echoing the 24/7 cable mantra about the stimulus�s unpopularity. This self-congratulatory mood is summed up by a Wall Street Journal columnist who wrote that �the House Republicans� zero votes for the Obama presidency�s stimulus �package� is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the G.O.P.�s political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties.� There hasn�t been this much delusional giddiness in these ranks since Monica Lewinsky promised a surefire Republican sweep in the 1998 midterms.

Not all Republicans are so clueless, whether in Congress or beyond. Charlie Crist, the moderate Florida governor who appeared with the president in his Fort Myers, Fla., town-hall meeting last week, has Obama-like approval ratings in the 70s. Naturally, the party�s hard-liners in Washington loathe him. Their idea of a good public face for the G.O.P. is a sound-bite dispenser like the new chairman, Michael Steele, a former Maryland lieutenant governor. Steele�s argument against the stimulus package is that �in the history of mankind� no �federal, state or local� government has ever �created one job.� As it happens, among the millions of jobs created by the government are the federal investigators now pursuing Steele for alleged financial improprieties in his failed 2006 Senate campaign.

This G.O.P., a largely white Southern male party with talking points instead of ideas and talking heads instead of leaders, is not unlike those �zombie banks� that we�re being asked to bail out. It is in too much denial to acknowledge its own insolvency and toxic assets. Given the mess the country is in, it would be helpful to have an adult opposition that could pull its weight, but that�s not the hand America has been dealt.

As Judd Gregg flakes out and Lindsey Graham throws made-for-YouTube hissy fits on the Senate floor, Obama should stay focused on the big picture in governing as he did in campaigning. That�s the steady course he upheld when much of the political establishment was either second-guessing or ridiculing it, and there�s no reason to change it now. The stimulus victory showed that even as president Obama can ambush Washington�s conventional wisdom as if he were still an insurgent.

But, as he said in Fort Myers last week, he will ultimately be judged by his results. If the economy isn�t turned around, he told the crowd, then �you�ll have a new president.� The stimulus bill is only a first step on that arduous path. The biggest mistake he can make now is to be too timid. This country wants a New Deal, including on energy and health care, not a New Deal lite. Far from depleting Obama�s clout, the stimulus battle instead reaffirmed that he has the political capital to pursue the agenda of change he campaigned on.

Republicans will also be judged by the voters. If they want to obstruct and filibuster while the economy is in free fall, the president should call their bluff and let them go at it. In the first four years after F.D.R. took over from Hoover, the already decimated ranks of Republicans in Congress fell from 36 to 16 in the Senate and from 117 to 88 in the House. The G.O.P. is so insistent that the New Deal was a mirage it may well have convinced itself that its own sorry record back then didn�t happen either.

I personally like dandelion greens, wild onions, polk sallat and lots of other wild greens, nuts, berries, pawpaws, wild grapes, wild mushrooms, etc. etc. We'll be fine for awhile.

If you're a "bible kook" count me right there with you. If one needs any more proof, just read the book. Written 2000 years ago, if it isn't true, how could it so accurately predict exactly what is happening? Like the time will come when a person will work all day long just for food for a single day. I don't see that being very far in the future. IMHO wise people are turning to the Bible for instructions. THAT is the only hope we really have.

How do you handle this then? Terrorists who want us dead and will do anything to accomplish that. How do you deal with them? What is the source? Do we all convert to their religion? What? I'm curious as to what your solution is for this mess.

I still would like to see Obama go after the CEOs of these big corporations and banks the pocketed loads of money and walked away from a failing business. Why aren't they being investigated and tried for what they have done? Instead of we going after the past administration even though dems knew what was going on.

As for your information about Mohammed giving info until the harsh interrogations.....there are two sides to this story and until everything is released and looked into, all you go by is what MSNBC says and the rest of us go by facts.

Nancy Pelosi and other dems were brief on these interrogations and they did NOTHING. The government has only allowed part of the information to be unclassified. There is still other information out there that they have not brought to light and seem to be not wanting to bring to light. Wonder why....hmmmm.

The reason behind terrorist attacks is because they are Muslim extremists who believe their religion has called them to rid the world of people who aren't Muslim. No tea and cookies and friendly talks is EVER going to change that.

And I, too, have been having trouble sleeping because of this election as well. I think they call it election burnout. I guess the whole Rev. Wright thing is somewhat concerning, but I find that the positive things about Barack Obama far outweigh that one thing. I watched a brilliant interview with him last night by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC. He addressed so many things: Foreign policy, Afghanistan, that fact that we desperately need to update our infrastructure in this country, roads, bridges, and especially the power grid, as it is one of our major weaknesses for terrorist attack. He has a very definite plan for all of these things that I have never heard anyone else address, and I was very impressed. He made a statement about how the trillion dollar deficit that Bush ran up would not have been so bad had there been something to show for it, if that money had been spent on building up our infrastructure and how China is so far ahead of us on that issue. That interview was definiately the best one I have seen, and it really gave an excellent glimpse into this man and what he hopes to achieve, and just confirmed for me how right he is for this country.

I am putting this election into God's hands. What is meant to be will be. But I am very concerned about the whole election process. There have already been instances of problems with the machines. In West Virginia, the machines were flipping votes from Obama to McCain, and I do anticipate lots more problems like that. It's going to be close either way.

Hang in there, gourdpainter. Hopefully, we'll both be able to get some sleep when this is all over.

who waited outside for 5-6 hours in freezing temps just to save maybe $50. Lord have mercy. I guess I'm thankful I don't need or want anything enough to do that!!

You're right about the me-me-me and it makes me sick. People will kill each other for a dollar!!

The way I read it is as nothing more than a badly worded symbolic gesture of no real significance other than to *express the sense of Congress.*

I choose to agree with the vast majority who are *expressing* that they support our troops, particularly Ford and Tanner, whose comments are below.

Ford, a U.S. Senate candidate, called the Republican resolution a gimmick that fails to recognize that 'stay the course' is not working and that amnesty for terrorists is unforgivable.

I watched "The Situation" on MSNBC last night, and I got a pretty good laugh regarding the Bush Administration taking a quote from Bono (of all people), completely twisting what it said to mean something completely different, and running with it.

I believe I'm starting to understand the disconnect between some of the Conservatives on this board and the rest of humanity. They've obviously adopted the George W. Bush way of communicating. I'm not sure if Bush is their hero because of his communication style or whether they personally adopted his technique after the fact. Someone should really enlighten them that just because Bush does it, doesn't make it right, and that that is the very crux of many people's frustrations with Bush: That he lies, and nobody can believe what he says.

CARLSON: Next situation, the Bush administration between the rock and a hard place and it�s all because of rock star Bono. A State Department press release quotes the U2 front man praising President Bush. But apparently, Bono was not so much quoted as misquoted.

According to the State Department, Bono said Bush, quote, �has already doubled and tripled aid to Africa.� But actually, Bono told �Time� magazine, quote, �Bush feels he�s already doubled and tripled aid to Africa, which he started from too low a place.�

This is such an interesting story on so many levels. Here is the most interesting level, as far as I�m concerned. The Bush administration feels compelled to twist Bono�s words. Why do they care what Bono thinks? Bush actually has dramatically elevated aid to Africa to a much higher level than Clinton ever even thought about bringing it.

The United States is the largest donor to Africa far and away. We have no moral obligation to give anything to Africa. We do it because we�re decent. Isn�t that enough? The front man from U2 has to approve? Why are they lying about this? It�s bizarre.

SEVERIN: This is very sad. By the way, Bono has an �r� missing from the end of his name. I just wanted to report that on this program.

Secondly, you know, how can I know what to think about world affairs until Bono and the Edge weigh in? What about the Backstreet Boys? What do they think today? I mean, this is really sad that we care about what �Bonor� thinks about anything.

MADDOW: Well, fine, you can be upset that they quoted Bono. But the fact is, they misquoted Bono.

MADDOW: ... get out there and say that Bono, who they respect for whatever reason, he�s actually made himself into a voice on debt issues...

SEVERIN: I knew we�d get you to say something nice about Wolfowitz before the year was up.

MADDOW: Exactly. But the fact is, the State Department, like they�re doing�like the Bush administration is doing on way too many things, just overreach. They not only had to quote Bono, they had to lie about what Bono said. It�s embarrassing.

CARLSON: But why not just tell the truth about their own record? It�s compelling enough. It�s amazing. Here�s this purportedly mean, right-wing administration sending huge amounts of aid to Africa.

MADDOW: Well, yes, they�ve promised�they asked for $4 billion for the Millennium Challenge. They�ve actually spent $4 million. So we�ve got a difference of opinion on that.

CARLSON: The fact is, in money spent already, they�ve elevated 56 percent over the final year of the Clinton administration. It�s a lot of money.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733757_1735529,00.html

George W. Bush

There was a genuine atmosphere of trust and goodwill that summer of 2001, when a new era seemed to be upon us, with the Berlin Wall gone and the divisions of the past overcome. I was sharing this thought with President Bush (both of us recently elected to lead our countries) at the closing dinner of the G-8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. Bush led the conversation, talking amiably with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Japanese Premier Junichiro Koizumi, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, the tragedies of the Second World War and cold war seemed far away indeed. Bush observed how much the world had changed, and how we could pass on a lasting peace to our children. I remember feeling true happiness inside me. Just two months later the unthinkable happened, and the Sept. 11 attacks would again forever change the world. The battle against terrorism would become the principal preoccupation of the American President and our common international priority.

In the months that followed that immense tragedy, we nonetheless tried to stay focused, aware that justice, freedom and democracy can flourish only if there is security. President Bush knows this well, that a secure world is bound to be a united world, where everyone�and particularly those more fortunate�can and must do their part.

George W. Bush, 61, will be remembered as Commander in Chief, but not only for that. He was above all a President who felt the moral obligation that the leading nation of the free world must carry. My thoughts return again to that G-8 summit, where Italy had brought to the top of the agenda the fate of the world's poorest nations. And Bush was an early and enthusiastic supporter of our initiative to establish a fund for combating endemic illnesses.

One time, Bush told me that it is reasonable to have doubts, but not to have so many doubts that you cannot make a decision. It's up to historians to judge his presidency, but whatever fate history holds for him, I am sure that George W. Bush will be remembered as a leader of ideals, courage and sincerity. Personally, I will always remember him as a friend, a true man who loves his family, understands the meaning of friendship and is grateful toward America's allies around the world.

Berlusconi was elected Prime Minister of Italy for a third time last month

icon, declares McCain temprament unfit for presidency. You don't get any more conservative than George Will. Meanwhile, Sara P has pictures taken with foreign leaders but absolutely no questions allowed. Photo op.