memeorandum: Obama Approval on Afghanistan, at 35%, Trails Other Issues (Jeffrey M. Jones/Gallup)

9:55 AM ET, December 2, 2009

Top Items:

Obama's Afghan policy speech at West Point — Following is the transcript of President Obama's speech Tuesday at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. (The Post's report on the president's address is here.) — Thank you. Please be seated. — Good evening.

Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times:

This I Believe — Let me start with the bottom line and then tell you how I got there: I can't agree with President Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan. I'd prefer a minimalist approach, working with tribal leaders the way we did to overthrow the Taliban regime in the first place.

Discussion: Michael Calderone's Blog

Fred Barnes / Weekly Standard:

A Disappointing Speech in Support of the Right Policy — President Obama's speech on Afghanistan was disappointing. Yes, the policy is right: more troops, a counter-insurgency strategy, a stronger alliance with Pakistan. But the personal commitment of the president to pursue the war …

Discussion: Scared Monkeys, Commentary and American Power

New York Times:

Two Messages for Two Sides — WASHINGTON — President Obama went before the nation on Tuesday night to announce that he would escalate the war in Afghanistan. And Mr. Obama went before the nation to announce that he had a plan to end the war in Afghanistan.

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Firedoglake, Wall Street Journal, NY Daily News, The Huffington Post, Boston Globe, NPR Blogs, The Note and Prairie Weather

Paul / Power Line:

What I heard tonight — Earlier today I wondered whether President Obama's speech about Afghanistan would sound more like a description of a war plan or a structured settlement of a legal dispute. What I heard tonight tilted decidedly in the latter direction.

Discussion: Gateway Pundit, The Jawa Report, The Moderate Voice and Hot Air

Spencer Ackerman / The Washington Independent:
Obama Announces 30K More Troops for Afghanistan

Discussion: Firedoglake, Matthew Yglesias, The Huffington Post, ATTACKERMAN and Guardian

David Ignatius / Washington Post:
Surge in Afghanistan, then leave

Discussion: The Atlantic Politics Channel, New York Times, The Corner on National …, PostPartisan, The Fix, The Washington Independent, Washington Monthly and Newsweek Blogs

Marc Ambinder / The Atlantic Politics Channel:
Lunch With The President: The Politics Of Obama's War Plan

Discussion: The Note, The Daily Dish and Michael Calderone's Blog

William Kristol / PostPartisan:
A war president — In his Monday open letter/cri de coeur …

Discussion: The White House, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, Gateway Pundit, Weekly Standard, Don Surber and NO QUARTER

Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
Live-Blogging West Point

Discussion: AMERICAblog News, Taegan Goddard's …, The Politico, Politics Daily, Taylor Marsh and Opinionator

the Medium Lobster / Fafblog: Victory Science — Let us never forget just what's at stake …

New York Times:
Obama Adds Troops, but Maps Exit Plan

Discussion: The Caucus, Althouse, Democracy in America, The Huffington Post, Gawker, marbury, ABCNEWS, DownWithTyranny!, The Politico, Towleroad News #gay, CNN and Jason Chaffetz

Jeffrey M. Jones / Gallup:
Obama Approval on Afghanistan, at 35%, Trails Other Issues

Discussion: Top of the Ticket, Don Surber, The Hill, Politics Daily, Commentary and NPR Blogs

Jesse Lee / White House.gov Blog Feed:
The New Way Forward - The President's Address

Discussion: Matthew Yglesias, ChattahBox News Blog, Indecision Forever, Clive Crook, SWJ Blog, BLACKFIVE and Michelle Malkin

Michael Calderone / Michael Calderone's Blog:
Obama lunches with top political writers

Discussion: The Lonely Conservative

Kevin Drum / MoJo Blog Posts:
A Technocratic Speech — I didn't hear Obama's Afghanistan speech …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, American Prospect and Daniel W. Drezner

John Dickerson / Slate:
Obama's Afghanistan speech was confusing.

Discussion: The Politico, Commentary, New York Times, Bloomberg, Lynn Sweet, Guardian and Politics Daily

Spencer Ackerman / The Washington Independent:
McChrystal Praises Obama, Strategy Review

Discussion: Jules Crittenden, The Strata-Sphere, TPMDC, ATTACKERMAN and Ben Smith's Blog

Jeff Zeleny / The Caucus:
Analyzing Obama's Afghan Speech

Discussion: TalkLeft, Connecting.the.Dots and Washington Post

Mary Katharine Ham / Weekly Standard:
McCain Press Release: ‘Success is the Real Exit Strategy.’

Discussion: Hot Air and Commentary

Ronald Bailey / Reason:

The Scientific Tragedy of Climategate — Can climate change science recover from the damage done by leaked emails? — Climategate. What a hot mess. Researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and their colleagues around the globe may have fiddled …

Discussion: CBS News, Washington Post, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, Maggie's Farm and Pajamas Media

Megan McArdle:

Climategate III: The Mystery of the Missing Data — Over the weekend, I came in for some probably deserved criticism from Clive Crook over my initial, somewhat airy, reaction to Climategate. In my defense, he quotes my first post on the topic, not the follow up.

Discussion: pipeline.corante.com and Dean's World

BBC:
Climate data row man steps down

Discussion: Biased BBC

Jeff Poor / NewsBusters.org:

Matthews Calls West Point, Site of Obama Speech ‘The Enemy Camp,’ ‘Strange Venue’ — Either MSNBC “Hardball” host Chris Matthews let one slip tonight, or it was an extremely poor choice of words. — Following President Barack Obama's Dec. 1 speech, which he announced his intentions …

Discussion: Outside The Beltway, The Foundry, Scared Monkeys, Stop The ACLU, DaTechguy's Blog, JammieWearingFool, Erick's blog and Another Black Conservative

BBC:

Google to limit free news access — Newspaper publishers will now be able to set a limit on the number of free news articles people can read through Google, the company has announced. — The concession follows claims from some media companies that the search engine is profiting from online news pages.

Josh Cohen / Google News Blog:

Google and paid content — As newspapers consider charging for access to their online content, some publishers have asked: Should we put up pay walls or keep our articles in Google News and Google Search? In fact, they can do both - the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Discussion: Post Tech, Bits, Mediaite, TechCrunch, Mashable! and Riehl World View

Hotline On Call:

Tanner To Retire — Rep. John Tanner (D-TN), a leading Blue Dog Dem, will retire at the end of his current term, Dem sources tell Hotline OnCall. — [UPDATE: Tanner released a statement late tonight confirming the news. “Betty Ann and I had considered retiring in 2007 at the end of the 110th Congress …

Discussion: Scared Monkeys, The Greenroom, The Fix, Swing State Project, MyDD and RedState

The Politico:
Blue Dog Tanner to retire from House

Discussion: Think Progress, The Hill, Scorecard's Blog and The Moderate Voice

Victoria McGrane / The Politico:

Bernanke hearing brings Fed critics — There probably couldn't be a worse time for a Federal Reserve chairman to come up for renomination. — Public trust in the once-revered central bank is so low, it now ranks below the Internal Revenue Service in opinion polls.

Discussion: The Page

Jon Hilsenrath / Wall Street Journal:
Fed Debates New Role: Bubble Fighter

Discussion: Beat the Press and The Big Picture

Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Atlanta mayor: Reed says police chief top priority — The morning after being elected mayor of Atlanta by a margin so narrow that opponent Mary Norwood has not yet conceded defeat, Kasim Reed said his first priority will be finding a new police chief well-versed in combating gangs.

Discussion: msnbc.com, Taegan Goddard's … and Hotline On Call

Christopher Soghoian / slight paranoia:

8 Million Reasons for Real Surveillance Oversight — Disclaimer: The information presented here has been gathered and analyzed in my capacity as a graduate student at Indiana University. This data was gathered and analyzed on my own time, without using federal government resources.