Voted for Obama, but not a Democrat or Republican...fyi

IMO, the change people are looking for is a change from the policies and actions of the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. So going back to Clinton appointees is going in the right direction to an extent. At least he balanced the budget. Even Republicans like my father and father in law are upset with the direction Bush took the country and the GOP...fiscal irresponsibility and pandering to religion.

For real change we would need to get rid of all current politicians and start fresh...

whenever people talk about the Clinton administration "balancing the budget", I always wonder if they are conveniently overlooking the national debt?

What does America think?

The point isn't that the Clinton appointees are good or bad....its that Obama promised he would be bringing in new people who weren't the usual DC insiders.

...Obama haters...

Take a deep breath. Relax. Ahhhhh....

Now....I hate to tell you this, but people are going to be talking about Obama a lot in the next four years since he going to be the president.

Every criticism of Obama and his policies isn't due to "hate" or to "racism."

Believe it or now, Obama is going to make mistakes and say things that are wrong and that are untrue, just like every other politician has always done.

...Obama haters...

Can you please show a link or something that shows this to be fact?

I thought he campaigned on changing the direction of the country, not on keeping experienced people out of important positions.

Do you Obama haters realize how ridiculous you sound when you go on about all these criticisms? The US is just wrapping up an administration, that left no stone unturned in screwing up the state of the entire world. The very least you could do is accept that.

Just a couple of points against the "Clinton team" to even thigs out.

Clinton could have had Osama Bin Laden but passed.

Clinton appointees and democrat regulation set the groundwork for sub-prime lending and the sub-prime collapse. The pressuring of Fannie and Freddie to take on sub-prime loans and the name Franklin Raines ring a bell?

Disclaimer, at the moment I'm not partisan, both parties have done their share to wreck the country.

TF

Clinton could have had Osama Bin Laden but passed.

When Clinton tried to get anti-terrorism legislation passed in 1996, Republicans fought it tooth and nail. Senator Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, went so far as to call certain provisions in the bill "controversial" and "phony" (1) - all of which have since been passed in the wake of 9/11.

To this day there is a popular email floating around that claims that Clinton was offered Osama bin Laden and he refused him. The truth is that the Sudan offered to arrest bin Laden and turn him over to Saudi Arabia. For ten weeks Clinton tried to persuade the Saudis to take bin Laden. They refused to do so for fear of fundamentalist backlash, and the FBI & Justice Department determined there was not sufficient evidence at that time to indict him in U.S. courts. (2)

In 1998, after the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton bent a President Ford-era ban on assassinations, authorizing the CIA to use deadly force against bin Laden (An attempt was made when operatives fired an RPG at bin Laden's motorcade, unfortunately hitting the wrong vehicle in the convoy). (3)

Clinton also ordered cruise missile strikes on bin Laden's camp in Afghanistan and at a pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan suspected of manufacturing VX nerve gas. This action was met with staunch resistence from Republicans and immediately cries of 'Wag the Dog' dominated the discourse. Further action would have resulted in further attacks from the GOP. He also sponsored legislation that would have frozen the assets of any organizations believed to be funneling money to al Qaeda. It was killed by Republican Senator Phil Gramm of Texas. - The same legislation passed immediately following 9/11. (4)

A number of al Qaeda attacks were prevented under the Clinton administration, including plots to bomb Los Angeles Airport, the UN building, and New York City tunnels. Dozens of international terrorist cells were also neutralized. These successes were praised by a number of counter-terrorism experts, including Robert Oakley, from Reagan's State Department, who gave Clinton high marks but criticized his obsession with bin Laden. (5)

During the transition period in 2001, Clinton's National Security advisor, Sandy Berger...

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good.

Obama has a momentous opportunity to do what he repeatedly promised over the course of his campaign: bring actual change. But the more we learn about who Obama is considering for top positions in his administration, the more his inner circle resembles a staff reunion of President Bill Clinton's White House. Although Obama brought some progressives on board early in his campaign, his foreign policy team is now dominated by the hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990s. This has been particularly true since Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the Democratic primary, freeing many of her top advisors to join Obama's team.

"What happened to all this talk about change?" a member of the Clinton foreign policy team recently asked the Washington Post. "This isn't lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time."
(cont'd)

I voted for Nader and I'm certainly no fan of the Clintons, but I disagree ....

You'd should take this up with Bill Clinton, because Clinton himself admits that Sudan offered to arrest and extradite bin Laden to the U.S. and Clinton declined to take him into custody.

The government of Sudan, employing a back channel direct from its president to the Central Intelligence Agency, offered in the early spring of 1996 to arrest Osama bin Laden and place him in Saudi custody, according to officials and former officials in all three countries.

The Clinton administration struggled to find a way to accept the offer in secret contacts that stretched from a meeting at a Rosslyn hotel on March 3, 1996, to a fax that closed the door on the effort 10 weeks later. Unable to persuade the Saudis to accept bin Laden, and lacking a case to indict him in U.S. courts at the time, the Clinton administration finally gave up on the capture.

The point isn't that the Clinton appointees are good or bad....its that the whole premise of Obama's campaign was his promise that he would bring change to DC, i.e. his administration wouldn't be made up of the same old people and the usual DC insiders who had contributed to the failed policies of the past (to paraphrase BO's own standard stump speech).

Its getting so bad with all the Clinton retreads that the Obama people are arguing that since Hillary Clinton didn't really have an official post or appointment in the Clinton administration, she shouldn't be counted as a holdover from the CLinton administation when she becomes secretary of state.

I am sure Obama's message of change is meant to a completely different end than one understood by you.