republican foreign policy analysts. and i think when dick lugar says what s the end game, how do you define victory and what is it going to cost and how are we really going to be involved henceforth, i think those are legitimate questions that serious people of all stripes have about this and that the president didn t answer. susan page, i m going to play one of the president s bites from last night. it was in response a little bit to how we framed our question, what happens the next time there s a humanitarian crisis. here s what the president said on this. some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. the united states of america is different. and as president, i refuse to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves before taking action. susan page, on this question there seemed to be a little bit of conflict in the speech. on one hand the president said libya was a special case. on the other hand he made this a little broader statement whi
did the president explain it to you better than he did the last ten days? i thought i was pretty clear on it from the beginning. but there s a lot of folks in this country, mostly on the right, who, of course, are going to oppose him no matter what he says so he keeps having to n or dveais n cl bothers them so much. he works on his time, the right time. he did everything right. you know, he got the americans out of libya. then he formed a coalition. then he led the bombing campaign. of course we should bomb first because we have the know-how how to kick butt. that s what america does very well, especially in that part of the world. then he passed it off to other people so that we don t have the cost and we don t have to be holding the bag if something goes wrong. i don t know how anyone can look at this and say this is exactly how it should have been done. i don t back the president on everything, but on this one, yeah, i think he did everything right. and yet i saw a poll today, i t
we ve done since the lame duck when we did $41 billion, we ve now done two short-terms $4 billion and $6 billion that gets us to $51 billion. i think it s up to us now to come up with something within the next two weeks. i hope it will be a long-term cr because i think that we make a mistake if we don t think that these short-term crs do not have adverse impact on families. we seem to be thinking only in terms of what s good for us up here in washington and what s good for us politically. the fact of the matter is we are fighting two wars. we have action going on in pakistan, action going on over in libya, and the families of these men and women need stability in their lives. so we ought to get serious about doing a long-term cr so that
plan to get out. republicans are in some cases predictably condemning the president s speech for the lack of that, but even democratic support has been a b tepid. ultimately the president will be judged by whether we win, but what does winning look like. is it sicmply getting rid of gadhafi. let s get ready to rumble. comedian and commentator bill maher joins us. we ll get his take on the tea party, libya, the race for the republican nomination, and then there s donald trump among other things. and speaking of trump, we said last week he dipped a toe into the waters. now he s dived in head first and declared the waters fine, come on in and he s producing his own birth certificate. is trump serious about being a birther or is he just serious about getting a little bit of attention? also the shutdown showdown. the democrats are trying to drive a wedge between the mainstream republicans and the tea party, but let s face it, when democrats and republicans are not arguing over whether
the republicans are winning this message war. finally, is it possible for the u.s. to become a country of secular atheists that is also ruled by radical islamists. newt gingrich seems to think so. we re going to start with president obama s speech on libya. howard fineman is the senior political editor for the huffington post and susan page, the washington bureau chief for usa today and i have to call her madam president of the gridir gridiron. and she s on there today. howard and susan, at first we outlined four questions for president obama to answer in his speech and today we ll see how he did. first, take a look at some of the republican responses to the speech since he gave it. he made a very puzzling comment, and that was regime change by force would be a mistake. gadhafi must have been somewhat comforted by that. now we re in this position of having a president of the united