His teleprompter didn't give him an answer

• Pirates - anon
  • O stated he doesn't want to talk about it - Backwards typist
    • His teleprompter didn't give him an answer - nm
      • What do you really expect him to say? - Trigger Happy
        • Keeping information quiet because we worry about the pirates?????? - MT and worn out
          • You mean like Geraldo...(sm) - Just the big bad
          • I don't like it when they give - Trigger Happy
  • Snipers should have taken them out when the captain escaped, but... sm - cw
    • Well, heavens.... - Scamp
    • Shoot... - MsMT
      • They can't shoot. - Trigger Happy
      • I hope they do something soon - Old part-timer
        • I think the risk to the hostage is too high...(sm) - Just the big bad
          • It makes you wonder though - Trigger Happy
            • Used to work for ocean company - ExMQMT
    • Oh, I don't know....a couple of shots over the bow.... - MT and worn out

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The price of gas is creeping up because companies have cut back the refining of oil.  Now....why are they allowed to do this?  It is merely for profit.  They are just doing this to jack up prices and that benefits no one especially during this economic crisis here.  So why are they allowed to do this? 

she just kept avoiding the question. I saw it this morning (they have re-runs at 5 a.m.).

I did think he was a little harsh on Helen Thomas even though she is a liberal.

Check out Letterman!        

Teleprompter versus no Teleprompter

by:  Alex Leo

Critics say Obama relies too heavily on his teleprompter. As Politico notes:

"Obama's reliance on the teleprompter is unusual -- not only because he is famous for his oratory, but because no other president has used one so consistently and at so many events, large and small."

They make an interesting point, why would a president want to be prepared and careful about what he says? The guy who had the job for the last eight years didn't need no stinkin' teleprompter!

Well, David Letterman addressed the outrage last night with his segment 'Teleprompter Vs. No Teleprompter.' It was enlightening to say the least.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/24/teleprompter-vs-no-telepr_n_178474.html

 The Billy Graham/Mother Teresa reference was made only to say what if one of them asked the question. If one of them did, a) we would not have character assassination for days on end so we could cut straight to the chase. What I am saying is that if a person pretty much all Americans admire were to ask the president, "why did _____ die in this war?" what would his answer be.

Are you going to Iraq to help nation-build?

A friend sent this to me.  Can't argue with it, can ya?

I'm writing J.Leno and D.Letterman ato why they have not aired this yet.  Are they prejudiced against GWB??  Nah!  Bush Derangement Syndrome had better go away once The Messiah gets in.  I'm not putting any bets on it, though.       
        

ttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyW9e5QdWxk  Obama - When There Is No Teleprompter

Circuits must be misfiring.

 

Incidentally, I'm looking forward to Glenn's new show!  What you see is what you get with him!

and he is running for pres.  Once again....the argument people try to use against Palin can usually be said about B.O. but that is okay because it is Barry Obama.  All hail uhhhbama. 

SAY NO TO B.O.!

his own personal reasons.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php

The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.

Conversations With Bush The Candidate

Herskowitz—a longtime Houston newspaper columnist—has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers—expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript—pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.

The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior—who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.

I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."

Debating The Timeline For War

But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush—personally—in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"—because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.

The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.

On September 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…"

I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."

"I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" …

"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.

Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.

Woodward: "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"

Wallace (voiceover): Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam—and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

Woodward: "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the necessary preparations in Kuwait specifically to make war possible."

Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.

Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.

I was frequently banned on the old forum format, at least once a week during the weeks I was actually posting (I would then get disgusted and stay away for up to a month at a time).  Have only been banned once since the new format so I would agree with your analysis. 

Otherwise as to other folks banned, I remember lots and lots of complaints/comments but can offer no specifics.  I also remember seeing a lot of interesting posts go poof!  Used to really really be bad on the old religion board.  But hopefully that's improved also.