The 'Barack Obama' Discussion Thread [merged]

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British Teen Banned from U.S. After Sending Drunk E-mail to President Obama

Sending drunken e-mails to your friends is embarrassing. Sending drunken e-mails to the President of the United States is a matter of national security.

Seventeen-year old Luke Angel of Bedfordshire, England told British tabloid The Sun that American authorities have barred him from entering the U.S. as a result of a nasty message he sent to the White House.

"I don't remember exactly what I wrote as I was drunk. But I think I called Barack Obama a p***k. It was silly—the sort of thing you do when you're a teenager and have had a few," he said. "The police came and took my picture . . .I don't really care but my parents aren't very happy."

Angel—that really is his last name—said he was inspired by watching a documentary on the 9/11 attacks.

The Telegraph reports that London's Metropolitan Police alerted local law enforcement about the "threatening" message. The natural assumption is that the Met got wind of the incident from officials in the U.S.

A spokeswoman from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told The Sun there are around 60 reasons a person can be banned from entering the country, but that she was "prohibited from discussing specific cases."

RobbieFTW wrote:If he's the Dem nominee, then I'll vote for him. I always vote democrat.

RobbieFTW wrote:Forgiveness Man. . . was that you?

WATCH: Obama Surprised By Political Cost Of Health Care Reform
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/07/obama-on-60-minutes-midterms-video_n_780132.html


WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says the political cost of overhauling the health care system turned out to be higher than he had expected. And he admits that he gets discouraged at times when dealing with the economy.In an interview airing Sunday night on CBS' "60 Minutes," Obama said the health care system itself is huge and complicated and that changing it eluded previous presidents because it was so difficult."I made the decision to go ahead and do it, and it proved as costly politically as we expected - probably actually a little more costly than we expected, politically," he said.Obama said he thought that he would find common ground with Republicans by advancing health care proposals that had been introduced by Republican administrations as well as potential presidential candidate Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts."I couldn't get the kind of cooperation from Republicans that I had hoped for," he said. "And that was costly, partly because it created the kind of partisanship and bickering that really turn people off."Obama said the danger of a second major recession is "much reduced" and a great depression is not on the horizon. Still a danger, he said, is the nation being "stuck in a new normal where unemployment rates stay high."

"I do get discouraged. I mean, there are times where I thought the economy would had gotten better by now," he said. "One of the things I think you understand as president is you're held responsible for everything. But you don't always have control of everything, especially an economy this big."However, Obama sounded optimistic about the nation's economic future."I am constantly reminded that we have been through worse times than these, and we've always come out on top," he said. "And I'm positive that the same thing is going to happen this time."Obama said his two years as president haven't changed his ideals."But I think that in terms of how I operated on a day-to-day basis, when you've got a series of choices to make - I think that there are times where we said let's just get it done instead of worrying about how we're getting it done," he said. "And I think that's a problem. I'm paying a political price for that."Reuters notes that Obama cited the economy as the primary reason for his party's setbacks on Tuesday:

Big election losses suffered by Democrats were "first and foremost" a reflection of the economy's weakness rather than a wholesale rejection of his policies, President Barack Obama said on Sunday."The party in power was held responsible for an economy that is still underperforming and where a lot of folks are still hurting," Obama told the CBS program "60 Minutes" in an interview.

Obama called the midterm elections "a referendum on the economy."