En primer lugar tenemos la diferencia entre la religiosidad de Bush, que raya en el fundamentalismo cristiano, y la de Obama, quien tiene una mayor sensibilidad hacia las distintas creencias:Otra cosa que fue motivo de aplausos orejudos fue el supuesto punto final que Obama pondría a la "revolución (neo)conservadora" iniciada por Ronald Reagan. Ni Obama es tan innovador al respecto ni Reagan fue tan neo-con como muchos imaginan:That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people.
George W. BushFor we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus — and non-believers.
Barack H. Obama
What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control — and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden. The solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.Dos claras invocaciones a Dios además de las (Sagradas) Escrituras, más el "God bless" (God's grace upon us) al final.
(...)
What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship. This is the source of our confidence - the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.
To comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country.Bush mandó misivas personales a los deudos de los más de 4000 soldados caídos y sostuvo encuentros personales con muchos de ellos muy a pesar de los sentimientos que estos familiares pudieran tener contra él en ese momento o después como fue el caso de la furiosa activista anti-Bush, Cindy Sheehan.
On Monday, the president is set to make a more common public trip - with reporters in tow - to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, home to many of the wounded and a symbol of controversy earlier in his presidency over the quality of care the veterans were receiving.
But the size and scope of Mr. Bush's and Mr. Cheney's private endeavors to meet with wounded soliders and families of the fallen far exceed anything that has been witnessed publicly, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials familiar with the effort.
The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) releases a report explaining that "although investors perceive an implicit Federal guarantee of [GSE] obligations," "the government has provided no explicit legal backing for them." As a consequence, unexpected problems at a GSE could immediately spread into financial sectors beyond the housing market.Aunque estas y otras advertencias no fueron escuchadas. hasta el último instante el presidente Bush insistió con las reformas:
President Bush emphatically calls on Congress to pass a reform package for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying "first things first when it comes to those two institutions. Congress needs to get them reformed, get them streamlined, get them focused, and then I will consider other options." (President George W. Bush, Press Conference, The White House, 8/9/07)Los medios en su infinita sapiencia interpretaron esta última frase como una negativa a tomar cartas en el asunto, de tal forma que Bush quedó como un perverso e irresponsable fundamentalista de mercado para todo el mundo. ¿Cómo la ven?
The 2008 presidential election ended less than two weeks ago, but the mythmaking machine has already begun to churn. President-elect Barack Obama transformed the face of the electorate! The Republican Party will be a miserable minority in Congress for the next century! Cats and dogs are now living together! Below we explode the five biggest myths that have already sprung up around the election that was.Vía Barcepundit
The struggling auto industry was thrust into the middle of a political standoff between the White House and Democrats on Monday as President-elect Barack Obama urged President George W. Bush to support immediate emergency aid.Ahora, ¿cómo se divulgaron estos detalles? Bush no fue. Según Drudge Report:
Bush indicated at the meeting that he might support some aid and a broader economic stimulus package if Obama and congressional Democrats dropped their opposition to a free-trade agreement with Colombia, a measure for which Bush has long fought, people familiar with the discussion said.
"Senator Obama would be wise to keep close counsel," a top Bush source warned.Como que Obama no es muy adicto que digamos a las formas ni a ciertas reglas de conducta. Según Littlegreenfootballs no es la primera vez que el electo presidente incurre en gestos dudosos:
The two met at the White House in private, without staff.
(...)
Bush advisers view the leaks as an effort to undermine the president's remaining days in office.
"Senator Obama may not be familiar with a long-standing tradition of presidents holding their private conversations, private," a senior adviser explained to the Drudge Report.
Los norteamericanos que han votado a Obama han respaldado a varios obamas, incluso a muchos, porque cada grupo ha visto en él lo que quería ver, ayudados por una abrumadora cobertura mediática y económica, que lo ha presentado como una especie de Adán tirando a Jehová, con Eva entre paréntesis y la serpiente expulsada del Paraíso. A modo del Zelig de Woody Allen, Obama ha tenido el don de asumir los paisajes del deseo de sus votantes, lo cual es sin duda un malentendido, porque no se puede ser a la vez ídolo de los radicales y los moderados, del pacifismo y de los condenados a la pena de muerte. Pero, vamos, los norteamericanos están en su derecho de inventarse a su Obama preferido y Obama puede dar pábulo a todos sus sueños, ensueños o fabulaciones.El artículo completo no tiene pierde. Lo pueden leer completo aquí o acá (si son suscriptores).
The issue of abortion, I don’t think, has gone away. People think about it a lot, obviously you do and you feel impassioned. I think that the American people struggle with two principles: There’s the principle that a fetus is not just an appendage, it’s potential life. I think people recognize that there’s a moral element to that. They also believe that women should have some control over their bodies and themselves and there is a privacy element to making those decisions.
I don’t think people take the issue lightly. A lot of people have arrived in the view that I’ve arrived at, which is that there is a moral implication to these issues, but that the women involved are in the best position to make that determination. And I don’t think they make it lightly. I don’t think they make it callously, so I reject a comparison between a woman struggling with these issues and Michael Vick fighting dogs for sport. I don’t think that’s sort of how people perceive it.
Now, this is one of those areas – again, I think it’s important to be honest – where I don’t think you’re ever going to get a complete agreement on this issue. If you believe that life begins at conception, then I can’t change your mind. I think there is a large agreement, for example, that late-term abortions are really problematic and there should be a regulation. And it should only happen in terms of the mother’s life or severe health consequences, so I think there is broad agreement on these issues.
Existe una teoría denominada "el efecto Bradley-Wilder" según la cual mucha gente dice a los encuestadores que respalda al candidato negro, en este caso Obama, para no parecer racista. Esta teoría se remonta a las elecciones para gobernador de California de 1982. El entonces alcalde de Los Angeles, el demócrata Tom Bradley, un negro, perdió ante un rival blanco pese a que todos los sondeos lo daban vencedor. En 1989, el afroamericano Doug Wilder logró ser electo como gobernador de Virginia por un escaso margen, cuando las encuestas le daban una ventaja de diez puntos sobre su más próximo competidor, que era caucásico.
Aunque hay estudios dan por descontado que el factor racial por sí solo no va a ser determinante en estas elecciones, habría que reconsiderarlo dentro del conjunto de posibles efectos sobre la opinión pública suscitados por el claro sesgo mediático a favor del candidato demócrata, y debido al cual se estarían imponiendo criterios de elección. Algunos medios no tienen problemas en reconocerlo... y proclamarlo:OK, let’s just get this over with: Yes, in the closing weeks of this election, John McCain and Sarah Palin are getting hosed in the press, and at Politico.
And, yes, based on a combined 35 years in the news business we’d take an educated guess — nothing so scientific as a Pew study — that Obama will win the votes of probably 80 percent or more of journalists covering the 2008 election. Most political journalists we know are centrists — instinctually skeptical of ideological zealotry — but with at least a mild liberal tilt to their thinking, particularly on social issues.
So what?
Joseph Stalin is said to have screened the 1940 movie "The Grapes of Wrath" in the Soviet Union to showcase the depredations of life under capitalism. Russian audiences watched the final scenes of the Okies' westward trek aboard overladen, broken-down jalopies -- and marveled that in the United States, even poor people had cars. "Dallas" functioned similarly.
"I think we were directly or indirectly responsible for the fall of the [Soviet] empire," Hagman told the Associated Press a decade ago. "They would see the wealthy Ewings and say, 'Hey, we don't have all this stuff.' I think it was good old-fashioned greed that got them to question their authority."
In Romania, "Dallas" was the last Western show allowed during the nightmare 1980s because President Nicolae Ceausescu was persuaded that it was sufficiently anti-capitalistic. By the time he changed his mind, it was already too late -- he had paid for the full run in precious hard currency. Meanwhile, the show provided a luxuriant alternative to a communism that was forcing people to wait more than a decade to buy the most rattletrap Romanian car.
After the dictator and his wife were shot on Christmas Eve 1989, the pilot episode of "Dallas" -- with a previously censored sex scene edited back in -- was one of the first foreign shows broadcast on the liberated Romanian TV. Over the next few years, Hagman became a ubiquitous pitchman in the country for firms such as the Russian petroleum company Lukoil ("The Choice of a True Texan").
While Pope Benedict XVI's historic visit to Washington received wall to wall coverage, Sen. Barbara Boxer briefly held up a Senate resolution welcoming the pontiff because she objected to language about how the pope values "each and every human life."
The measure later cleared the Senate Thursday afternoon after the sponsor of the resolution, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), dropped the reference to "human life" because some Democrats saw it as a reference to abortion. According to Republican aides, Brownback, a devout Catholic, did not want a high profile fight over the resolution, which was adopted on a voice vote. In fact, Brownback blackberried his staff from the Pope's mass at Nationals Park to direct them to drop the references to human life.
Whereas Pope Benedict XVI has spoken out for the weak and vulnerable, witnessing to the value of each and every human life;
Whereas Pope Benedict XVI has spoken approvingly of the vibrance of religious faith in the United States, a faith nourished by a constitutional commitment to religious liberty that neither attempts to strip our public spaces of religious expression nor denies the ultimate source of our rights and liberties;
[La democracia en América] es el producto (y este punto de partida debemos sin cesar tenerlo presente en nuestro pensamiento) de dos elementos completamente distintos que en otras partes a menudo se hacen la guerra, pero que en América han venido a incorporarse, en cierto modo, el uno al otro y a combinarse maravillosamente. Me refiero al espíritu de la religión y al espíritu de la libertad. (...) La religión ve en la libertad un noble ejercicio de las facultades del hombre y en el mundo político un campo cedido por el Creador a los esfuerzos de su inteligencia. Libre y poderosa en su esfera, satisfecha del lugar que le esta reservado, sabe que su imperio está tanto mejor establecido cuanto que no reina más que por sus propias fuerzas y domina sin apoyo sobre los corazones. La libertad ve en la religión como la compañera de sus luchas y de sus triunfos, cuna de su infancia, fuente divina de sus derechos. La considera la salvaguardia de las costumbres, y las costumbres como la garantía de las leyes y prenda de su propia supervivencia.
Ya desde los albores de la República, la búsqueda de libertad de Estados Unidos ha sido guiada por la convicción de que los principios que gobiernan la vida política y social están íntimamente relacionados con un orden moral, basado en la señoría de Dios Creador. Los redactores de los documentos constitutivos de esta Nación se basaron en esta convicción al proclamar la "verdad evidente por sí misma" de que todos los hombres han sido creados iguales y dotados de derechos inalienables, fundados en la ley natural y en el Dios de esta naturaleza. El curso de la historia norteamericana demuestra las dificultades, las luchas y la gran determinación intelectual y moral que han sido necesarias para formar una sociedad que incorporara fielmente estos nobles principios. A lo largo de ese proceso, que ha plasmado el alma de la Nación, las creencias religiosas fueron una constante inspiración y una fuerza orientadora, como, por ejemplo, en la lucha contra la esclavitud y en el movimiento en favor de los derechos civiles. También en nuestro tiempo, especialmente en los momentos de crisis, los estadounidenses siguen encontrando energía en sí mismos adhiriéndose a este patrimonio de ideales y aspiraciones compartidos.
A las 16:11 hora local, Benedicto XVI pisó suelo estadounidense y fue recibido al pie de la escalerrlla por el propio Bush, su esposa Laura y Jenna, una de sus hijas.
Al recibir al pontífice, Bush realizó una leve inclinación de cabeza y le estrechó la mano mientras se intercambiaban unas palabras. Después lo saludaron Laura y Jenna Bush, que también estrecharon su mano. Mientras duraban los saludos, los dos centenares de invitados a presenciar la llegada del Papa se hacían oír con gritos y vítores al pontífice.
A continuación, Bush y el Papa caminaron hacia la terminal de recepción de invitados de la base aérea, donde desaparecieron de la vista del público. El gesto de Bush acudiendo a recibir al Papa no tiene precedentes: nunca un presidente de Estados Unidos abandonó su residencia de la Casa Blanca y acudió a la base aérea de Andrews a recibir a un dignatario extranjero.
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A pesar de sus defectos (son poco maniobrables, no desarrollan alta velocidad) significaron un punto de inflexión en aviónica y defensa. Ahora es turno del F-22 "Raptor".
