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Washington Post:
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.
Discussion:
Ross Douthat, Hot Air, Stop The ACLU, Outside The Beltway, MoJo Blog Posts, msnbc.com, The Atlanticist, Ben Smith's Blog, The Huffington Post, Washington Times, Another Black Conservative, The Hill, Associated Press, Time, American Power, Taylor Marsh, GlobalPost, SWJ Blog, PostPartisan, unbossed.com, EconLog, Tom Watson, The Reaction and The Democratic Daily
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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
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.
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.
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 …
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
Live-Blogging West Point — 8.35 pm. “Not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes.” — I confess I do not feel those highest hopes. I do not share his confidence in American military and civilian power to turn the roiling region of Afghanistan and Pakistan into something less threatening.
Discussion:
AMERICAblog News, Taegan Goddard's …, The Politico, Politics Daily, Taylor Marsh and Opinionator
David Ignatius / Washington Post:
Surge in Afghanistan, then leave — President Obama has been deliberating for months over his Afghanistan strategy. But when it came time to explain that decision Tuesday, he was cool and analytical — and seemed almost serene about a policy that he knows will be attacked from both sides of the aisle.
Marc Ambinder / The Atlantic Politics Channel:Lunch With The President: The Politics Of Obama's War Plan
William Kristol / PostPartisan:A war president — In his Monday open letter/cri de coeur …
Discussion:
The White House, blogs.telegraph.co.uk, Weekly Standard, Gateway Pundit, Don Surber and SWJ Blog
New York Times:Obama Adds Troops, but Maps Exit Plan
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The Caucus, Althouse, Democracy in America, The Huffington Post, Gawker, marbury, DownWithTyranny!, The Politico, Towleroad News #gay, CNN and Jason Chaffetz
Michael Calderone / Michael Calderone's Blog:Obama lunches with top political writers
Discussion:
The Lonely Conservative
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, Daniel W. Drezner and Michelle Malkin
CNN:Just In: Key Obama speech excerpts released
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Hot Air, Wellsy's World, Confederate Yankee, The Political Carnival, The Lonely Conservative and The Foundry
John Dickerson / Slate:Obama's Afghanistan speech was confusing.
Discussion:
The Politico, Commentary, Lynn Sweet, New York Times, Bloomberg, Guardian and Politics Daily
Laura Rozen / Laura Rozen's Blog:Obama at West Point: I do not make this decision lightly
Discussion:
The Note
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 …
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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.
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:
Associated Press, Scared Monkeys, The Greenroom, The Fix, Swing State Project, MyDD and RedState
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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:
Stop The ACLU, DaTechguy's Blog, Scared Monkeys, JammieWearingFool, Erick's blog and Another Black Conservative
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.
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.
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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.
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The Page
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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.
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