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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Jan 17, 2009 - 08:21pm PT
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Lois - Did you edit that last post?
I saw the post but needed to get Teddy his walk, but don't recall reading this part: "By spending initiatives I am referring to the various programs which Obama cited during his campaigning wherein people were promised a variety of goodies e.g. $5000 for college or some such thing. He can't give funds which simply are not there and pulling out the troops may be more difficult then he originally imagined"
Before I had left, I was thinking your comment about "spending initiatives" was....pretty unspecific.
At any rate - we will see, won't we? $5K for college is, what? About one fifth a year at an average school? I mean. I got a $2K grant way back in 1984.
As for his promise to pull troops, here's a quote from a news source(people won't like it; it's from China) yesterday:
"U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's campaign promise to withdraw all U.S. combat troops from Iraq within 16 months after he takes office, is now an option for Pentagon to arrange the withdrawal, the Pentagon said Thursday.
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told reporters that the U.S. military is "prepared to give him (Obama) a range of options as soon as he is ready," including the 16-month proposal."
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/16/content_10666082.htm
So.....the Pentagon doesn't seem to think it is impossible.
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happiegrrrl
Trad climber
New York, NY
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Jan 17, 2009 - 09:01pm PT
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I have a feeling you are going to be in for a pretty big surprise, at the level of "getting-it-doneness" Obama is going to pull off. I saw a new article earlier(didn't save the url) that says he has a meeting with head of the Dept. of Defense on Wednesday.
AND that it's possible he may be signing executive orders on Tuesday, in the time between his being sworn in and the inaugural ceremonies.
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Jan 17, 2009 - 09:04pm PT
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Charles is okay, still trying to get power to his new extra house, not quite close enough to be convenient, from a power company sense, to Devil's tower, to enable his grandson to run around in there @ room temperature.
Barrybro is still as eccentric as the rest of us, esp in his art. Expecting daughter #2 in May, as you know. It's too bad that his being being born the day Kennedy was inaugurated, has put, sometimes, an uncomfortable moment of silence, between the two of you at family, holiday, dinners.
Sorry for going so, OT, folks, sometimes it's hard for families to keep in touch...
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Jan 17, 2009 - 09:07pm PT
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Sometimes, you have to be, Open, to surprise, no matter what comes to upset your per-existing paradigm. Don't count on it....
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Jaybro
Social climber
wuz real!
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Jan 17, 2009 - 09:39pm PT
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Yeah, we all get along in the important ways, but we could all be in better touch with each other. I'm the worst, I know. But You, could, finally, follow Mr Morrison's missive, and come west, and be with the rest of us. Not that I haven't said that before...
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jstan
climber
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Jan 18, 2009 - 11:56am PT
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This is actually on topic.
Some time ago Blue's thread asked how conservative thought might evolve following the Bush experience. Below is today's report from the Washington Post regarding Bush's plans for his post-presidency. It seems his intent is to stay center stage and continue to focus debate on the approaches attempted while he was in office.
This is very good. If he stays on the nation's radar we will remain much more unified than we otherwise might. It won't be possible to forget how it is we got where we are. As regards Blue's thread, if this leads to continued obstruction in Congress by conservative members, the republican party will ultimately pass from the scene under this leader.
Oh, and Lois you asked just what has Obama accomplished. I said, "What do you mean? Even before being elected he has solved the age old election finance problem." That same idea has appeared many times in the press since. It is also regularly reported that Obama is attempting to use the structure he created to help support future policy formation; also something that we called out. I have received a solicitation to just this effect and I intend to respond. When the going gets much worse I will know I have done at least this much.
Anyway, enjoy!
Bush's Post-Presidency to Include More Than a Library
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 18, 2009; A08
Many former presidents rise to a second act. Jimmy Carter founded a human rights center and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Bill Clinton established a charity and traveled the world making speeches. Even the disgraced Richard Nixon opened a foreign-policy think tank shortly before his death.
Now it's George W. Bush's turn.
After handing over the White House to President-elect Barack Obama on Tuesday, Bush, 62, will return to Texas to begin his own post-presidency, including plans to build a library, museum and public-policy center in Dallas, that is far more ambitious than those of most other former commanders in chief.
In addition to the cost -- $300 million for the building and as much as $200 million for an endowment -- Bush's plans stand out as an effort to defend his tumultuous White House years and to continue the debate over his most controversial domestic and foreign policies. The George W. Bush Presidential Center will include a "Freedom Institute" focused on a broad portfolio of topics, including the expansion of democracy abroad and education reforms of the kind Bush implemented during his presidency, according to organizers.
"The president's vision is for it to become an incubator of ideas, discussion and debate about the issues that were front and center during his presidency, including the controversy," said Dan Bartlett, a former counselor to Bush who is acting as a spokesman for the project. "The idea here is to have a place where that debate can continue."
Bush's post-White House life begins Tuesday with a welcome-home rally in his home town of Midland, Tex., followed by a return to the family's Prairie Chapel Ranch in Crawford, Tex.
By next month, the Bushes are expected to move into a newly purchased $2.1 million house in the exclusive Preston Hollow neighborhood of Dallas, a short drive from the planned library complex on the campus of Southern Methodist University. The General Services Administration, which provides office space for former presidents, has also leased 8,000 square feet of space for Bush in a nearby high-rise.
Bush, who has said he will likely pen a memoir and eventually hit the lecture circuit, has talked glowingly about his hopes for the policy center, and insists that his vision for it extends far beyond his own presidency. "This is not going to be a 'George Bush Is a Wonderful Person Center,' or 'The Center for Republican Party Campaign Tactics,' " Bush said during one of his last media interviews as president. "It's going to be a place of debate, thought, writing, lecturing."
But the project has prompted skepticism among many academics, who argue that Bush appears set on using the center to rewrite his legacy as a president who led the nation into an unpopular war and an economic crisis. Many SMU faculty members and students also oppose the project, arguing that it would not conduct the kind of unbiased research a university should encourage.
Bruce Buchanan, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin, said the center must welcome dissent and criticism of the Bush presidency if it is to be taken seriously. But Buchanan and others also said they expect that part of the aim of the project is to shore up Bush's reputation.
"I think he is stung by the reaction to him," Buchanan said, referring to Bush's deep unpopularity in his second term. "Nobody else is going to make the case for him right now, so he wants to make it."
According to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, Bush is wrapping up his tenure with a 66 percent disapproval rating, matching Nixon's when he resigned in August 1974. Bush's job approval rating finishes at 33 percent, with 68 percent of Republicans, 34 percent of independents and 6 percent of Democrats giving him good marks. More than half of all Americans blame Bush "a great deal" or "a good amount" for the country's economic problems, and nearly six in 10 estimate that he will go down in history as a below-average president -- nearly five times as many as said so of his father, George H.W. Bush, when he left the White House in 1993.
Bush's father, the 41st president, has a library and museum at Texas A&M University, as well as a graduate school named in his honor there. But the closest historical analogy to Bush's post-presidential plans may be unfortunate, given the current economic climate: Herbert Hoover founded a war library at Stanford University before he became president that eventually became the Hoover Institution, a major center for conservative and libertarian thinking.
David Greenberg, a presidential historian at Rutgers University, says a better comparison may be Nixon, who spent many of his post-White House years attempting to rehabilitate his image and reputation as a statesman after the shame of the Watergate scandal. He also founded the Nixon Center think tank several months before his death in 1994.
Bush's plans for his own think tank, Greenberg said, "seems to be in keeping with the spirit of the Bush administration, which has always felt itself embattled by ideological critics."
Supporters dismiss such assessments as guesswork, and say that Bush has no intention of building a shrine to himself. Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation, said the policy institute will be built around several key themes, including "freedom, compassion, opportunity and individual responsibility."
"It's really a place where you're trying to advance effective policy solutions above a partisan level," Langdale said. "He's made clear that history will be a judge of his legacy. The purpose of the institute is to be more forward-looking."
Margaret Spellings, Bush's education secretary and longtime friend, said in an interview last week that she expects the policy center to focus on "game-changing" initiatives such as the schools testing program called No Child Left Behind. "There will be a dimension of trying to keep these policies current and in context with whatever is happening at the time," she said.
The presidential center building is being designed by Robert A.M. Stern, dean of the Yale School of Architecture, and is not likely to be completed until 2012, according to Langdale and others. The National Archives will take control of Bush's papers and the operation of the library once construction is completed, while Bush's foundation will run the policy institute.
In the meantime, the foundation plans to begin holding seminars and other events as soon as possible to begin making a name for itself, organizers said. Bartlett said fundraising has been purposely modest so far, but will pick up dramatically with Bush's departure from Washington.
Bush has already invited many of his closest foreign friends to participate once the center is up and running, including former British prime minister Tony Blair, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. First lady Laura Bush, who has already inked a deal with publishing house Scribner to write a memoir, will also play a pivotal role in the center, focusing on women's rights, literacy and other issues that occupied her attention in the White House, she and others have said.
"This is a place of debate and discussion, a place to herald freedom, a place to continue some of the initiatives that we've started," George W. Bush said recently, adding: "The policy center and the museum are going to take a lot of time."
Polling director Jon Cohen contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company
Edit:
Blue:
You asked about FDIC rules, a question that promises once again, to become the center of our attention. Here is an excellent link:
http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/Deposits/insured/index.html
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