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1) The Inauguration cost $170 M. I'm not complaining, but the pay freeze won't amount to 1.7M over the next eight years. It is a gesture, as sebster said.

2) Congress automatically gets a pay raise every year unless they vote AGAINST it. Which they will do this year, and they might have another time in the last few years as well. But let's just say their pay raise typically passes. With a few token votes against it. And it's usually tied into other measures.

Looking out for the country first is no clear indicator of a good president. As I've argued elsewhere, Bush honestly put the security of the country above everything else...he put the country first. But that didn't always work out.

The President has had a very promising start. Let's remember, he hasn't been pushed yet. By anything or anyone.

dienekes96 wrote:Looking out for the country first is no clear indicator of a good president. As I've argued elsewhere, Bush honestly put the security of the country above everything else...he put the country first.

I think that's *very* debatable. There were entirely too many blank checks to Halliburton, etc. And I would have rather seen some of the billions spent in Iraq spent in this country securing our ports and infrastructure.

dienekes96 wrote:
Looking out for the country first is no clear indicator of a good president. As I've argued elsewhere, Bush honestly put the security of the country above everything else...he put the country first. But that didn't always work out.

The President has had a very promising start. Let's remember, he hasn't been pushed yet. By anything or anyone.

QFT.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

We'll see how Obama does when the chips are down. Hopefully, he'll do the right things when necessary, regardless of the popularity of his decisions.

I think The President will do pretty well when pushed.

But it's not going to be this easy every day. Most of what the president does is NOT executive orders. It's discussion and compromise, and living with the consequences of such choices.

I loved his first day, too. But it was only the first day.

Yeah, Clinton's first day had some impressively liberal ideas, then he backed away from it al to appease congressional republicans about a week later.

What is this about Obama and his Blackberry then ?

Specifically

Neither George W Bush nor Bill Clinton used e-mail during their presidencies.

Really ? that seems odd, they're as easy to store as an actual paper trail I'd have thought.

Exactly.

When you're President, you don't have time for emails. You have people for that.

I guess...just seems odd.

Still I suppose the President can't waste time on forums all bloody day at least.

At least he must be busier than the NIgerian finance minister, I get 3 or 4 emails a week off of him.

It has to do with security. The White House is in the "tech dark ages", not because Fmr President Bush was a luddite, but because issues of national security pass through their daily, and physical security is far more mature than electronic/internet security.

That is the why. Supposedly, they are getting the President a super-secure Blackberry. I'd recommend an iPhone. The Blackberry has crap ergonomics and function.

But he is the President.

I wouldn't recommend anything. Again, he has people for that. I know quite a few C levels who don't have anything except a cell phone. They don't have to.

Well, Obama's press secretaty said he took the oath twice because the Justice Roberts mispronounced a word and they wanted to be sure it was done correctly.

The fact Bush is going to get paid for the rest of his life for doing eight years of work (badly I might add), is the main reason I wanted him impeached. The man lied to congress and the american people so he could start a war and didn't get impeached, yet Clinton diddles an intern (an ugly one I might add) and gets censured (almost impeached) by congress. WTF?

dienekes96 wrote:It has to do with security. The White House is in the "tech dark ages", not because Fmr President Bush was a luddite, but because issues of national security pass through their daily, and physical security is far more mature than electronic/internet security.

This is correct, and this holds true to even other branches of government, even the military: we've only just recently switched a lot of the gauges on our ships from analog to digital. The basic premise being that you don't need to break something that doesn't need fixing.

It's not so much the money I'm worried about in this case, either.

It's the simple fact that he insisted upon a pay freeze for everyone else, because again, 'washington needed to tighten it's belt', but didn't take one himself.

Even if it's just a gesture, this makes it look bad, in my opinion.

Ironhide wrote:Well, Obama's press secretaty said he took the oath twice because the Justice Roberts mispronounced a word and they wanted to be sure it was done correctly.

The fact Bush is going to get paid for the rest of his life for doing eight years of work (badly I might add), is the main reason I wanted him impeached. The man lied to congress and the american people so he could start a war and didn't get impeached, yet Clinton diddles an intern (an ugly one I might add) and gets censured (almost impeached) by congress. WTF?

Really? The pension is what bothers you? Not the trillion dollars and million lives squandered in Iraq, or the illegal wiretaps or the torture or illegal detentiont...

Does it bother you more or less when you think that he doesn't even need the pension, and likely no future president will ever rely on it, because the office is inaccessible to anyone that doesn't have the connections to make a pile of money by other means.

Chrysaor686 wrote:

It's the simple fact that he insisted upon a pay freeze for everyone else, because again, 'washington needed to tighten it's belt', but didn't take one himself.
.

he didn't ? I've no idea but from the way the article was phrased I thought it included him.

The pay freeze might include him, though I'm not sure. He's not lowering any salaries, just freezing them where they are at. His is at $400,000, and might be frozen there. No one's salary was lowered, nor was his.

As for the clean-up, he already signed a waiver for the Deputy Secretary of Defense. Meaning he has already found an exception to his lobbyist rule. I love the guy, but he'd been in office 3 days when he decided some waivers would be granted.

seb,
I know I haven't addressed your other question to me yet. But I don't think any lives have been "wasted" in Iraq yet. That determination can't be made until we've left and can determine the success or failure of the endeavor. At least, in my opinion.

I do believe I said he did 8 years of BAD work. The lie getting us over there is what led to the other things anyway. Yet he still going to get paid for all that.

sebster wrote:

Ironhide wrote:Well, Obama's press secretaty said he took the oath twice because the Justice Roberts mispronounced a word and they wanted to be sure it was done correctly.

The fact Bush is going to get paid for the rest of his life for doing eight years of work (badly I might add), is the main reason I wanted him impeached. The man lied to congress and the american people so he could start a war and didn't get impeached, yet Clinton diddles an intern (an ugly one I might add) and gets censured (almost impeached) by congress. WTF?

Really? The pension is what bothers you? Not the trillion dollars and million lives squandered in Iraq, or the illegal wiretaps or the torture or illegal detentiont...

Does it bother you more or less when you think that he doesn't even need the pension, and likely no future president will ever rely on it, because the office is inaccessible to anyone that doesn't have the connections to make a pile of money by other means.

Millions of lives Sebster? Are you not off by a couple powers of 10 there? I'm not saying any is good, I just believe that is a bit of an exaggeration.

I think he's conflating death, and casualty. There have been over a million casualties in Iraq, but not all casualties result in death.

Grignard wrote:Millions of lives Sebster? Are you not off by a couple powers of 10 there? I'm not saying any is good, I just believe that is a bit of an exaggeration.

I didn't say millions, I said a million. I said this because its probably pretty close to the total deaths as a result of the invasion. It's based on the 650,000 figure given by the Lancet by mid-2006. Follow up studies have produced similar numbers, many somewhat higher.

dogma wrote:I think he's conflating death, and casualty. There have been over a million casualties in Iraq, but not all casualties result in death.

No, there's about a million dead. Which a good thing to remember when talking about how it might be all worth it in the long term.

sebster wrote:

Grignard wrote:Millions of lives Sebster? Are you not off by a couple powers of 10 there? I'm not saying any is good, I just believe that is a bit of an exaggeration.

I didn't say millions, I said a million. I said this because its probably pretty close to the total deaths as a result of the invasion. It's based on the 650,000 figure given by the Lancet by mid-2006. Follow up studies have produced similar numbers, many somewhat higher.

dogma wrote:I think he's conflating death, and casualty. There have been over a million casualties in Iraq, but not all casualties result in death.

No, there's about a million dead. Which a good thing to remember when talking about how it might be all worth it in the long term.

We lost 50,000 something soldiers in Vietnam. I know it is no consolation to a family who has lost a soldier, but Vietnam was a damn sight worse than what we're going through now.

Grignard wrote:We lost 50,000 something soldiers in Vietnam. I know it is no consolation to a family who has lost a soldier, but Vietnam was a damn sight worse than what we're going through now.

Yeah, which wasn't as bad as WWII, with about 300,000 dead, which in turn wasn't anywhere near as bad as the Civil War, which had about about a million dead.

None of which has anything at all to do with the million odd dead in Iraq, or whether the eventual Iraqi state is worth what its cost.

It was the mis management of katrina that did it in for me. People with Ragged american flags on thier roof, and signs says "We're Americans, Help us!" makes me sick.

That wasn't the Fed's fault. That was the state's and Nagan's incompetence. The state government has been replaced. New Orleans voted to keep Nagan "its going to be a chocolate city" in office, so frankly they deserve what they get from this point forward.

As an aside a billions went to Katrina. Galveston and bexar county were obliterated with Ike, and they've received something like 1/1000 the amount of aid.

sebster wrote:

Grignard wrote:We lost 50,000 something soldiers in Vietnam. I know it is no consolation to a family who has lost a soldier, but Vietnam was a damn sight worse than what we're going through now.

Yeah, which wasn't as bad as WWII, with about 300,000 dead, which in turn wasn't anywhere near as bad as the Civil War, which had about about a million dead.

None of which has anything at all to do with the million odd dead in Iraq, or whether the eventual Iraqi state is worth what its cost.

But where are you getting the figure about one million deaths. What I'm saying is that Vietnam is regarded as a national trauma, and there was a fraction of the deaths that you're claiming that have occured in Iraq, at least as far as U.S. soldiers are concerned.

That's what I want to know. Not to be callous, but the Iraqi body count I
saw last was near 100k?

^^
Regarding e-mail, it is supposedly a legal issue. The Office of the President being a seperate identity from one's personal life. All the more reason to limit it to 4 year terms.

Grignard wrote:But where are you getting the figure about one million deaths. What I'm saying is that Vietnam is regarded as a national trauma, and there was a fraction of the deaths that you're claiming that have occured in Iraq, at least as far as U.S. soldiers are concerned.

US deaths in Vietnam were around 50,000, but the total military and civilian deaths from all sides was around three million. I'm not sure why you'd want to compare total casualties in Iraq to US military dead in Vietnam.

malfred wrote:That's what I want to know. Not to be callous, but the Iraqi body count I
saw last was near 100k?

I already cited the source, the Lancet, who performed studies in 2004 and 2006 on this issue, with the latter reporting 650,000 deaths by early 2006. At that time Iraq Body Count was reporting around 50,000 deaths, and given their figure has increased by about 80% since then, it seems reasonable to say the Lancet figure would likely have increased to at least a million deaths.

There is a lot of debate between the numbers given by Iraq Body Count and the Lancet, largely because the discrepancy is so high. Thing is, Iraq Body Count hunts through newspaper reports for confirmed civilian deaths, and given the chaotic nature of the situation (chaotic like any war, really) its likely that a very large number of casualties aren't recorded in any formal way, and it is often unclear if a casualty was a civilian. Iraq Body Count also uses almost entirely Western media sources, and these have a very small view of the overall conflict (Western journalists don't often leave the safer, controlled areas of Iraq). As a result there was a lot of criticism of the Iraq Body Count method before another method was even attempted. In defence of Iraq Body Count, they accept their numbers are likely an under-reporting, as they aren't trying to estimate total deaths, just compile the figure of total reported deaths.

The Lancet performed door to door interviews, asking people about about deaths before invasion and after, and required death certificates. They were looking to total all deaths during the occupation and deduct the rate of death before occupation, to get a net casualties figure. This means they included both civilian and military casualties, and include non-violent deaths as a result of, say, disease, declining medical services, failing infrastructure. The Lancet method had been used in multiple conflicts around the world and was accepted as a means of capturing total casualties. At this point the criticism of the Lancet method seems limited to 'that seems like a really high number'.

sebster wrote:

Grignard wrote:But where are you getting the figure about one million deaths. What I'm saying is that Vietnam is regarded as a national trauma, and there was a fraction of the deaths that you're claiming that have occured in Iraq, at least as far as U.S. soldiers are concerned.

US deaths in Vietnam were around 50,000, but the total military and civilian deaths from all sides was around three million. I'm not sure why you'd want to compare total casualties in Iraq to US military dead in Vietnam.

malfred wrote:That's what I want to know. Not to be callous, but the Iraqi body count I
saw last was near 100k?

I already cited the source, the Lancet, who performed studies in 2004 and 2006 on this issue, with the latter reporting 650,000 deaths by early 2006. At that time Iraq Body Count was reporting around 50,000 deaths, and given their figure has increased by about 80% since then, it seems reasonable to say the Lancet figure would likely have increased to at least a million deaths.

There is a lot of debate between the numbers given by Iraq Body Count and the Lancet, largely because the discrepancy is so high. Thing is, Iraq Body Count hunts through newspaper reports for confirmed civilian deaths, and given the chaotic nature of the situation (chaotic like any war, really) its likely that a very large number of casualties aren't recorded in any formal way, and it is often unclear if a casualty was a civilian. Iraq Body Count also uses almost entirely Western media sources, and these have a very small view of the overall conflict (Western journalists don't often leave the safer, controlled areas of Iraq). As a result there was a lot of criticism of the Iraq Body Count method before another method was even attempted. In defence of Iraq Body Count, they accept their numbers are likely an under-reporting, as they aren't trying to estimate total deaths, just compile the figure of total reported deaths.

The Lancet performed door to door interviews, asking people about about deaths before invasion and after, and required death certificates. They were looking to total all deaths during the occupation and deduct the rate of death before occupation, to get a net casualties figure. This means they included both civilian and military casualties, and include non-violent deaths as a result of, say, disease, declining medical services, failing infrastructure. The Lancet method had been used in multiple conflicts around the world and was accepted as a means of capturing total casualties. At this point the criticism of the Lancet method seems limited to 'that seems like a really high number'.

Fair enough. The Lancet is certainly a medical journal of the first rate. My only question would be the rationale in including deaths from privation, crime, etc. in that figure, at least as far as criticizing the war goes. Not all of that is our fault, and I honestly believe both the United States and our allies try to minimize or alleviate this sort of thing. And as far as enemy combatant casualties are concerned....well, is that not part of the goal??

Incidenatlly I also did not realize you were refering to total casualties, at first, in Iraq, I thought you were talking about us.

Ah, thanks for that.