Vice President on The Huffington Post

Rebecca Sive: You Weren't Elected to Congress to Bargain Our Rights Away and Make Deals

2009-12-08T14:12:31Z

A memo to the Democratic women members of the House and Senate.

TO: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and Debbie Stabenow, Chair of the Democratic
Steering and Outreach Committee

CC: The Democratic Women Members of the U.S. House and Senate

FROM: Rebecca Sive

SUBJECT: Here Is Today's Must-read Talking Points Memo, And It's Not About White House Party Planning

See below for today's talking point.

But, first, a preface to put today's talking point in context.

· You weren't elected to Congress to bargain away the positions that got you elected.

· You weren't elected to Congress with permission from us, (the women who elected you), to forget about the women of America and what we most need.

· You weren't elected to Congress to then become beholden to those who could care less about the rights of women, instead of to the women who elected you.

· You weren't elected to Congress to become a "player," to go to fancy parties, to sit in backrooms and make secret deals, to deal away our constitutional rights, and then go on holiday fact-finding trips to exotic locales.

You were elected to Congress to fight for us. And, in the words of the old Hebrew prayer: If not now, when?

Twenty-odd years ago, a group of us launched EMILY'S LIST with two explicit goals: Elect more pro-choice women to the U.S. Congress and Senate. We, and the millions of women who joined us, succeeded in our mission.

Thanks to us, you're there. We're not: So, here's what we need from you now:

· Stand-up, and say that a healthy America means equal access by all Americans, female as well as male, to the health care we need.

· Stand-up, and say that there can be no health care reform, worthy of the term, if it doesn't protect women's reproductive health.

· Stand-up, and say that it's a false choice to say that there can't be healthcare reform and protection of access to abortion and related reproductive health services.

· Stand-up, and say that you stand united, all of you, in rejecting the idea that when it comes to dealing with America's health care, it makes sense to give up and start dealing, before you've even tried to do the right thing.

· Stand-up, and say that you don't care one whit whether you're in those ever-so-important , Beltway inner sanctums, or not; that you won't be part of any diminution of women's rights, in exchange for access to those boy's clubs.

· Stand-up, and say that you know the only reason you're in Congress in the first place is to advocate unceasingly for the laws and policies women need.

And, remember this, as you contemplate these actions, so at-variance with Beltway business-as-usual:

· Your male co-workers have already forsaken you. Not a single male legislator has stood-up and said that insuring equitable access to women's reproductive health care, including abortion, is requisite to health care reform. We don't exist for them.

· Your President has forsaken you. The President has said nothing about the fundamental unfairness of Stupak-type legislation, its rewrite of the U.S. Constitution, or its deleterious effect on women's health. Apparently, we don't exist for him, either.

So, here is today's talking point:

· Gather yourselves together, and walk over to the White House and Senator Reid's office: Then, say this: It's time to start over. We're not buying your Hobson's Choice, and neither are the women of America. We know who we represent, and we're here to fight for them. And we won't leave, not a single one of us, until this fight is over, and we have won.

Biden's White House Role Changes With Afghan Decision

2009-12-03T16:24:57Z

On the most fundamental matter at stake in the recent debate over the war in Afghanistan, Vice President Joseph Biden ultimately lost.

Weeks before President Barack Obama officially announced that 30,000 additional troops would be heading to a war in its eighth year, Biden was casting doubt on the wisdom of just such a move. Pointing out that the ratio of U.S. expenditures in Afghanistan compared to Pakistan is 30 to 1 -- despite the overwhelming presence of al Qaeda and nuclear weapons in the latter country -- he asked, quite simply, whether further escalation made "strategic sense".

The president decided that it did. And as a result, questions have surfaced about Biden's standing within the administration.

But White House aides say that despite being overruled on the troop-strength issue, the vice president scored some victories. He was able extract a specific date to begin troop withdrawals. He is also considered partly responsible for the new plan's focus on fighting al Qaeda rather than nation-building. And by openly challenging the wisdom of military command, aides say, Biden effectively cleared the way for other administration officials to weigh in with concerns of their own.

When the president finally phoned Gen. Stanley McChrystal and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry (a surge skeptic himself) to announce he had settled on 30,000 more troops, Biden was literally and figuratively right there next to him. And it was Biden who was out defending the policy the next day on the network morning shows.

"My view all along has been [that it's] less important what the number is than what the strategy is," Biden told Good Morning America on Wednesday. "The President's got the priorities right. The number of troops is much less important than that narrowed, clear strategy."

"Every principal involved, from Secretaries Gates and Clinton to Generals McChrystal and Petraeus to Vice President Biden, made important contributions to the final product," a senior administration said, declining to elaborate further.

But the public view of how Biden fared in the debate is mixed. One Democratic foreign policy strategist said it was "disheartening" to see the vice president -- who was tapped for his position "precisely because of his foreign policy experience" -- forced to gloss over the issue of military escalation as if it were of secondary importance.

Moreover, while Biden may have won a withdrawal date, subsequent testimony from administration officials on Capitol Hill has made it clear that the July 2011 target is more an aspiration than a carved-in-stone declaration.

Some foreign policy analysts have more complimentary takes. "What he did was to get the White House to focus on things other than the military," said Larry Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. "He was the one who said 'Focus on Karzai here'; that 'you have to have an end date there'. He also pointed out that if Karzai doesn't make it, it doesn't matter what you do."

"There was a winnowed down set of objectives that was very Biden-esque," concurred Steve Clemons, a fellow at the New America Foundation. "He lost on the troop surge. He lost on the military footprint issue. What he won on was re-clarifying the focus. Their primary object is al Qaeda and their subordinate goal is to continue the economic security and political stabilization of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's not nation building and it's not open-ended."

Clemons also argues that Biden played a key political role for the president, providing a heterodox element to a deliberative process that had been dominated by military voices. He was "the skunk at the picnic," Clemons said. And while such a role would traditionally place someone at the outer edges of the White House inner circle, it fit in with the narrative that the president has fostered a "team of rivals."

There is even, in certain corners, speculation that the vice president's anything-but-secret opposition to the surge was mostly for show. "It was a leak authorized at the very highest levels of the administration," said David Frum, a former George W. Bush adviser who knows a thing or two about White House communications strategy. "It was a play performed for the benefit of Congress so that the liberal members would feel -- in this theatrical performance of adjudication -- that their point of view was represented. I think we know very little about what Joe Biden thinks and feels. We know a great deal about what the administration would like us to think Joe Biden thinks and feels."

White House officials adamantly deny that the vice president was used as some sort of political pawn in the Afghan debate. Indeed, it is understood that within the administration, Biden had been arguing against a military ramp-up, essentially alone, since last spring --before other lower-level officials felt more at ease expressing their reservations.

"The vice president believes it is his job to give the president the best and most candid advice he can -- and to give it privately," said Jay Carney, Biden's spokesman.

In the end, the advice failed to move the president's hand on the key issue of troop strength. But it may have been enough to secure important strategic victories. At the very least, it showed that the vice president is comfortable staking out a dissenting position inside the administration and pulling people to his side -- even if means losing out in the end.

"My impression is that the president highly values Biden's contributions on foreign policy and, in particular, raising tough questions about the recommendations from the military on Afghanistan," said Thomas Mann, a government affairs expert at the Brookings Institution. "Those questions prompted a more serious review and more nuanced, less open-ended commitment. Biden is providing Obama with honest reactions and complete loyalty. I think his standing in the administration will remain strong."

Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

GOP Presidential Candidates Already Jockeying For 2012 Election

2009-11-14T20:17:32Z

WASHINGTON — Sarah Palin is embarking on a book tour. Tim Pawlenty is building a national political operation. Mitt Romney is weighing in on the recession.

They're all jockeying for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination – even if they won't say so.

Steven M. Gillon: The Kennedy Assassination: New Details About the Transfer of Power

2009-11-02T17:54:30Z

Exactly when did doctors give up their efforts to save Kennedy's life? And when did Lyndon Johnson learn that JFK was dead? These are the central questions that need to be addressed in understanding the transfer of power on November 22, 1963. The questions may be obvious; the answers are not.

The Warren Commission concluded that Kennedy was shot at 12:30 pm. He was declared dead at 1:00 pm, and Johnson was informed at 1:20 pm. Most authors writing about the assassination, even those who question the conclusions of the Warren Commission, have accepted this timeline.

New documents recently opened to the public call into question key parts of this timeline. The first piece of evidence is a long memorandum prepared by Parkland hospital administrator Jack Price, who was standing outside Trauma Room #1 as President Kennedy was wheeled in on a stretcher. Price gave the memorandum, which outlined his actions over the next few hours, to author William Manchester. Last year, Manchester's children granted me access to their father's rich collection of materials housed at Wesleyan University for my new book, The Kennedy Assassination - 24 Hours After.

According to the document, Price wrote that Dr. Kemp Clark, one of a team of physicians working on Kennedy, came out of Trauma #1 "and told me that the president was dead and that he would sign the death certificate." Clark did not record the precise time of his conversation with Dr. Clark, but he did note that just after they finished speaking he walked down the hall and saw a priest come in the door. Price asked his assistant to escort the priest to the Trauma room.

The priest was the 70-year-old Reverend Oscar Huber. His arrival at the hospital is crucial to fixing an approximate time for when doctors had given up working on Kennedy. The most reliable source for establishing the time of Huber's arrival is Dave Powers. As a special assistant to the president, Powers played many roles - receptionist, gatekeeper, greeter, and repository of trivia. On trips like this one in Texas, he was responsible for keeping track of the schedule, making sure the presidential party did not fall too far behind.

As they were running into the hospital with the President's body, Powers had instructed secret service agent Jack Reedy to find a priest. For the next few minutes he kept checking his watch, asking the secret service: "What's the story on the priest?" Standing outside the emergency room with Mrs. Kennedy, he occupied himself by writing down everything he saw, including the names of the doctors as they responded to the call for help. "Now I was carrying the President's schedule and I was writing this thing down in pencil or ink," he told NBC newsman Sandor Vanocur in an oral history at the JFK Library.

In a handwritten note that he turned over to Manchester, Powers stated that he saw the priest coming down the hall at 12:50 pm. If true, it would mean that Dr. Clark had already determined that Kennedy was dead at least 10 minutes before the official time stated by the Warren Commission.

If the doctors were ready to declare Kennedy dead at 12:50 pm, why then was the official time listed as 1:00 pm?

The time of death was a fiction created to satisfy Mrs. Kennedy. According to Catholic doctrine, the last rites had to be delivered before the soul left the body. If her husband was already officially dead before Father Huber had a chance to administer the sacrament, it would not have been valid. "Father do you think the sacrament had effect," she asked Huber in the emergency room. He tried to ally her fears. "I am convinced that his soul had not left his body," he said. "This was a valid last sacrament."

Whether doctors had stopped working on JFK around 12:50 pm or at 1:00 pm, may seem like a minor point. The issue is vitally important, however, to understanding the timing of the transfer of power.

For the first few minutes after they arrived at Parkland Hospital, those around the President may have been able to maintain false hope that doctors could save Kennedy. But by roughly 12:50 pm, when Dr Clark told Jack Price that he was ready to sign the death certificate, it was clear that doctors had stopped trying to save his life. The President was dead, and everyone knew it. Within a few minutes, the secret service notified its office in Washington. Shortly after 1:00 pm, Robert Kennedy would get a phone call at his home in Virginia informing him that the wounds his brother suffered proved fatal.

Yet, Lyndon Johnson, standing in a cubicle a few yards away, was still in the dark. The chaos and confusion of the moment, and the profound sense of grief and loss among Kennedy's close aides, only partially explains the delay in telling LBJ that he was now President. Kennedy aides were in denial that their beloved JFK was dead, but also that LBJ, a man they despised, was now President.

When did they finally tell Johnson the news? LBJ told the Warren Commission that White House appointments secretary Kenneth O'Donnell notified him of Kennedy's death at 1:20 pm.

Johnson's statement, however, does not stand up to scrutiny. Just as Kennedy aides pushed back the official time of death to 1:00 pm, it appears that Johnson may have pushed back the clock as well.

LBJ Secret service agent Emory Roberts directly contradicted LBJ's timeline. In a lengthy interview with Manchester, Roberts claimed that he was the one who broke the news. "At 1:13 pm I told Lyndon Johnson that President Kennedy was dead," he told Manchester. "One of my agents had told me that the President was dead and I checked with the agent outside the door of trauma room 1. I went to Johnson. Cliff Carter, Rufus Youngblood, Mrs. Johnson, and the President were there. I said, 'the President is dead, sir.'" According to Roberts, Johnson turned to Cliff Carter and told him to make a note of the time. "Someone mentioned that the time was 1:13 pm," he noted.

Oddly enough, Cliff Carter, LBJ's chief aide on the trip, contradicted his boss and supported Roberts' account. On the ride back to Washington on Air Force One, Carter dictated notes about the events he witnessed at Parkland Hospital. He observed that Roberts was the first to deliver the news, and that two minutes later O'Donnell entered the room and made the announcement again.

Carter repeated the story to Manchester. "There have been many wrong accounts of this." Roberts "did the notifying," he recalled. "He just said, 'Mr. Johnson, the President is dead.'"

How could Johnson have been mistaken about such important details? It's possible given the extraordinary pressure he was under that he simply misremembered the sequences of events. More likely, Johnson was using O'Donnell as political cover to blunt any criticism that might emerge from Kennedy loyalists, especially RFK, that he had been overeager to assume the presidency. Despite receiving a steady stream of pessimistic reports about Kennedy's condition, and being informed explicitly by the secret service that JFK was dead, Johnson refused to take charge until he received the word from O'Donnell.

Technically, the powers of the presidency transferred to Johnson at 12:30 pm when the fatal third bullet shattered Kennedy's brain. For a variety of reasons -chaos and confusion at the hospital, the grief of Kennedy's close advisors and friends, their distrust and disdain for the new President, and LBJ's insecurity -- the United States was without a functioning head of state for nearly 40 minutes.

2morrowknight: Debbie Wasserman Schultz for President/Vice-President in 2016?

2009-10-13T17:44:21Z

It almost happened in 2008. It could happen in 2016. At some point, and some point soon, we'll see a woman in the White House. And her name might not necessarily be Hillary or Sarah. How's Debbie Wasserman Schultz sound? I know, I know, you're saying, "I've never heard of her. She doesn't have the name recognition of Sarah Palin or the major public policy buzz of Kathleen Sebelius. And while she doesn't have the baggage of a Michelle Bachman, she's not a Governor or U.S. Senator." All true. But listen up: Wasserman Schultz is riding a wave that will only get bigger, and she's got a few advantages that few others in the field -- woman or man -- can match.

Here are five reasons she could be on the Democratic ticket in 2016:

Democratic Unifier
Throughout the 2007 and 2008 primary season, Wasserman Schultz was resolute in her support for Hillary Clinton. Whether on TV, radio, or in the blogosphere, Wasserman Schultz was unflappable. But when Barack Obama won the nomination, Wasserman Schultz quickly endorsed him and campaigned vigorously. None of this has been lost on Democratic leaders. Her tireless efforts to unify the Obama and Clinton camps won her kudos from the party faithful, and instantly made her a power player in national politics.

Florida. Florida. Florida.
Wasserman Schultz represents the Sunshine State in the U.S. Congress; having her on the ticket would give the Democrats the upper hand in the infamous I-4 corridor connecting Daytona Beach, Orlando and Tampa. Grab the middle and you win the state -- Wasserman Schultz could be the Dems' surest bet.

Her Jewish Heritage
Before last fall, nobody thought a Jewish-American would ever have a legitimate chance at the White House. But with the tolerant views of 80 million politically involved millennials who helped elect President Obama, Wasserman Schultz's Jewish heritage won't be a liability. How she weighs in on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict between now and then will have a real impact on her standing in the Jewish community, but if she can find a way to please those folks while maintaining cred with younger voters, she could bring far more voters to the polls than Joe Lieberman did for Al Gore in 2000.

She's Tough ... Seriously!
By all accounts, she's funny, engaging and benevolent. But if you've seen her on cable and network shows, you'll know she's also very skilled at dismantling nonsensical arguments, and, leaving unprepared opponents picking their faces up off the ground. And she has used her tenacity, and tirelessness, to fight for the rights of families, women and children.

The 2016 and 2020 Anniversaries
2016 isn't just a presidential election year, it's also the 100th anniversary of Jeannette Rankin being the first woman elected to the Congress. Her victory was all the more remarkable because women couldn't vote -- that didn't come until four years later. The 2016 and 2020 elections promise to be reflective, euphoric and celebratory periods -- and with her considerable political gifts, Wasserman Schultz could take full advantage of the great national mood.

And yes, I know, it's still very, very early. A day in politics is like an eternity, and one day's worth of political earthquakes could shake up or diminish any predictions. I know. But don't tell me that a woman won't be either president of vice-president seven years from now. I just wouldn't bet against it. And I wouldn't bet against Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz being that woman.

Michael Shaw: Reading The Pictures: Nobel Slam Not Enough, Newsweek Tries To Set White House on Fire

2009-10-12T03:58:07Z

Come the first Monday after the Nobel announcement, here's Newsweek jumping on the "he didn't deserve it and who does he think he is, anyway?" bandwagon.

That's the least of it, though. Whereas similar toxicity abounds, Newsweek pivots off the bald and ugly "undeserving" slash in the attempt to drive a high-profile wedge through the White House and in between the President and the V.P.

Given the lead, the relative scale and the anchor text, the suggestion here is that Obama, a more minimal figure, is suffering from an "idea" deficit and that the patriotic Biden not only towers over him from a policy standpoint but can also look you straight in the eye.

Regarding the color scheme, I'm not sure about the red, but the blue-state blue further ostracizes Obama by painting Biden as much more the party's man.

For more visual politics, including our international and domestic argument why Obama deserved the Nobel Prize, visit BAGnewsNotes.com.

David D. Burstein: The Normalizing of the Presidency

2009-09-30T15:48:44Z

For years we've searched for a president who is "like us." We've wrestled with whether or not we'd like to have a beer with George W. Bush, we've talked about elitists and regular folks. But all of this has more or less been a façade. As much as we might like to think our president could be "just like us," it's pretty difficult, for one main reason: you've got to be pretty abnormal to run for president. Think about it: running for president means you have to have the psychological capability and ego to tell yourself, your family, and the world that you can legitimately be the leader of the free world. And you have to be willing to put yourself through the grueling schedule and constants frustrations of a political campaign. That takes a huge ego and certain distance from being a "normal person."

However, Barack Obama might be one of the most normal presidents we have had in years. To find a president who lived in their own house before becoming president, you have to go back to Richard Nixon who lived in a New York City Apartment when he was elected in 1968. Even Nixon at that point was a former Vice President. To find a president who didn't come from the Vice Presidency or an incredibly privileged background or high stature (i.e. Kennedy or Eisenhower), or from a Governor's mansion with a full staff and round-the-clock service, you would have to go back to Warren Harding. (Herbert Hoover had a jet-setting lifestyle before becoming Commerce Secretary and then President). Personally owning and maintaining a house and driving your own car alone are experiences that were fresher in Barack Obama's experience when he was elected than perhaps any other president in recent history.

George H.W. Bush famously didn't know the price of milk when asked and thought supermarket scanners were an amazing invention about two decades after they had become commonplace. John McCain couldn't recall the number of houses he owned during the 2008 campaign. This would not be unexpected of people who have lived in the proverbial "bubble" in the many years preceding these events. It's not so much a knock against them, as an illustration of how far from the "real world" most of our presidents live.

Obama's connectedness to the real world was one of the things that made him appealing as a candidate. One of the reasons so many young people could relate to then-candidate Obama was that he had just recently finished paying off his student debts, something that wouldn't have been possible without his wildly successful books. When he talks to people about real issues on health care or military service, you get a sense that he is closer to understanding those issues than many other presidents have been.

Michelle Obama was famously attacked by Maureen Dowd for talking about how she asks Barack to bring home mousetraps. But guess what? He was bringing home mousetraps as recently as two and a half years ago. I don't think any other president could pass the mousetrap "keep it real" test. He attended parent teacher conferences as a regular non-celebrity parent not as a photo opportunity or a chance to discussion national education policy. When going on vacation this summer to Martha's Vineyard he rented his own house, instead of relying on people to offer their homes for free as past presidents have done, because that's what people do when they go on vacation. And of course, he got his daughters a dog. But all kidding aside, there is really something to be gained from this kind of very recent normal life. It brings a certain kind of freshness to the presidency and a way of doing things that's much more centered on pragmatism and practicality than status or historical precedent.

The president's recent media blitz came under attack for not conserving the power of the presidency. The theory is that the president should only do that much media when you have a major announcement to make. To people who have been in Washington for decades this is part of conventional wisdom and Presidency 101. But the reality is that when the president goes on television people tend to watch, and that is exactly what President Obama wanted, in a very practical way. He has taken the approach to his role as president as a man with a job to get done. That's how he has spent his entire life, trying to get things done, regardless of status or position. This has of course invited criticism. Early in the administration, the President came under fire for overturning of the Bush Administration "jackets-must-be-worn-in-the-oval-office" policy. He was accused of disrespecting the office. But it was not disrespectful. To Obama, relaxing the dress code just seemed like something that might help get the job done, and might help real people feel comfortable in a real-life work environment in the White House. This is not a castle; this is the headquarters of the executive branch.

Should we want a president who is "just like us" or "just one of the folks"? I think that would be frightening. I want my president to be far above my abilities. But having a president whose world is grounded in little more reality is a good thing for helping him put his outstanding abilities to use.

Beth Armogida: Excerpts from Dick Cheney's Upcoming Book

2009-08-24T20:08:58Z

I was hatched on a cold, Nebraska day, January 30, 1941. It was the first of two fateful events for our country that year. The second took place in December.
--------------------
I remember the spring of 1951 when I was 10 years old. My strategy to invade the playground was in question. I had to find a way to eliminate the other children, so I told the school principal, "Tommy and his friends have a hidden stockpile of water balloons." And while the school administrators were busy searching, I was able to change the school charter to my liking and usurp the power of the principal. Even at 10, I was not to be fucked with.
--------------------
By my senior year in college, I knew exactly what I wanted: Mexico.
--------------------
It was not easy being President Ford's Chief of Staff. Tripping over an ottoman every week was funny when Dick Van Dyke did it, but not when Ford did it. Little did I know that working for a klutzy, former frat boy jock was preparing me for a future "special needs" President.
--------------------
Thanks to my leadership as Secretary of Defense, we won the Gulf War and declared "Mission Accomplished" in a record 18 seconds. 42 days later, when the war actually ended, I reflected on the victory, leaned over to General Schwarzkopf and whispered, "I think my daughter is gay."
--------------------
My tenure as CEO of Halliburton would've been one of the happiest times of my career if I were capable of emotion. I discovered that the corporate world's disregard for morals and ethics was even more appalling than I'd hoped and that Tuesday was lasagna day at the cafeteria.
--------------------
I had just survived my 94th heart attack and shed a layer of skin when I heard the news that Saddam Hussein was found hiding in a giant hole. I asked National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, "What kind of insane, evil man hides in a secret, underground bunker and tries to run a country?" Condoleezza just stared at me and said nothing. Bitch.
--------------------
Apparently, it was wrong to shoot a lawyer friend in the face. I Googled it.
--------------------
The mounting stress of war-time politics and Condoleezza's endless piano recitals affected all of us in the White House. Some members of the administration could handle it; some could not. When Donald Rumsfeld walked up to me and said, "We must stop the leprechauns," I knew it was time for him to go.
--------------------
In the meantime, my plan to choose the most ineffective Attorney General was working brilliantly. Alberto Gonzales' performance surprised even me. He seemed incapable of accepting responsibility. You have to respect that.
--------------------
The human year of 2007 was almost half over, and the President continued to make decisions without my knowledge. The winds of change were strong, and I knew that regaining my absolute dominion would take time. So, to keep my focus, I waterboarded my cat.
--------------------
On June 5th, my displeasure with the President's behavior reached a pinnacle when my faithful henchman Scooter Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison. I met with the President several times to discuss my displeasure and insist on a pardon for Scooter, but the President perpetually changed the subject to Harry Potter. This would've been frustrating if it weren't for my relief that he'd finally grown out of his Spider-man phase.
--------------------
The National Archives and The Committee on Government and Oversight Reform were demanding that my office turn over classified, national security information. I was always very upfront about my secrecy, but they became restless. I used to say, "These guys want my ass more than Senator Larry Craig." That joke always killed at the prayer breakfast.
--------------------
During my final week as "Vice President", I finally told the President how upset I was about his insubordination and attempts to do things behind my back. He turned to me, cocked his head and said, "Tough titties, Dick. Like, what're ya gonna do about it?" I just smiled.

Diane Tucker: Hey, Sarah Palin, Quit Stealing My HuffPost Blogs

2009-07-26T22:59:18Z

(To get Ms. Palin's attention, I'm afraid I used an unforgivable number of ice hockey terms in this post.)

Dear Sarah Palin,

During your resignation speech on Sunday, you complained the media is constantly roughing you up. So I hate to pile on with another attack. Especially since you've been stuck in your own end for months.

But heads up, Ms. Palin, because a Web site with your name on it is stealing my blog content. It says you recently posted Iranians Worldwide Roll Out Green Scroll Against Ahmadinejad. I wrote that piece, but I don't see any links to my original story. In the blogosphere, that's called stealing content.

For the record, this isn't the first time you've taken a cheap shot at me. Earlier this month, you posted Iranian Women: We Feel Cheated, Frustrated, and Betrayed -- again without linking to my original story.

So it's gloves off, "Maverick."

Why? Because it appears the SarahPal.in Web site is for sale, which means somebody is loading it up with stolen content from me, the New York Times, and others -- in order to make a few bucks. And while we're on the subject of money, I see the SarahPAC (your political action committee) has already raised more than $1 million according to your spokesperson Meghan Stapleton. Do you have any idea what I get paid to write these Huffington Post blogs? (Hint: it's not a million dollars.)

For all I know, Ms. Palin, you may not even be aware there's a SarahPal.in Web site. But it has your name on it, so go for a little skate and turn the Webmaster's lights out.

* * *

Chris Weigant: Obama's "Drip, Drip, Drip..." Intelligence Problem

2009-07-13T19:25:06Z

President Obama has always said he wants to look forward, not backward. This, when it comes to the actions of the previous administration, means Obama is content to just identify any problems with George Bush's (and Dick Cheney's) methods on security and intelligence matters, rectify any abuses and correct any mistakes, promise we'll never do it again, and move on. Obama has never advocated -- and, indeed, done what he could to discourage -- any sort of investigation into Bush's actions in response to 9/11 (some of which continued throughout Bush's two terms). Obama's opposition to such investigations has been steadfast and unwavering. He has even (now that he leads the executive branch himself) strongly argued in the courts against any examination of how executive branch power was used under Bush.

This is all understandable. In the first place, presidents always see executive power differently when they arrive in the White House. It's the nature of the job. So we shouldn't be all that surprised when a Justice Department lawyer argues in court in favor of secrecy in the executive branch -- even under President Obama. In the second place, this is a political loser for Obama, and he knows it. He does not want to look like a "sore winner" by digging through all the dirt Bush and Cheney left in their wake. Obama would prefer it if we could all just sweep it under the rug, and trust him when he says he's stopped doing all that bad stuff. "Nothing to see here, folks -- move along," in other words.

But by refusing to tackle the issue at all, Obama faces a steady drip, drip, drip of stories leaking and becoming public. Wiretapping stories, torture stories, and secret CIA covert stories were all in the news in the past week alone. I didn't feel that any of these stories were worth exploring today in depth, mostly because there isn't all that much depth yet. Details are slowly coming out. Until we know a lot more about each of them, it's impossible to draw any conclusions at this point.

Except for a few peripheral comments. Attorney General Eric Holder was the source for one of these stories, saying he is leaning towards appointing some sort of prosecutor to look into detainee abuse. There are several points worth making about this, without going in to too many details (since it was more of an offhand comment, details will be doubtlessly be forthcoming, but mostly don't exist yet).

The first point is that this is how things are supposed to work. Our last few Attorneys General may have caused everyone to forget how the system is supposed to work, so allow me to run it down. The Attorney General is, in essence, the chief prosecuting attorney in the country (a local equivalent would be a District Attorney, or "D.A."). Once appointed, he is supposed to work independently of the White House. The president can give his A.G. broad outlines (such as "Are we doing enough to police Wall Street?" for instance) but cannot order him to do specific things ("Prosecute Senator Beelzebub for corruption, now!"). If the president ever steps over this line (and they do, almost regularly), the A.G. either resigns or threatens to resign. If the president is a lunatic (see: Richard Nixon), then he fires his A.G. for not following his inappropriate orders (see: "Saturday Night Massacre"). The removal of the A.G., either by resigning or being fired, then becomes a political fracas for all to see. But, in normal times, the A.G. is independent. President Obama reminded everyone of this a few months ago, when asked whether he would tell Holder to investigate Bush's excesses, by basically responding: "That's the A.G.'s job, he makes those decisions."

This is the way it is supposed to work. The Justice Department looks into all kinds of criminal wrongdoing, including throughout the executive branch of the government. And it is up to the Attorney General to decide how to investigate such wrongdoing, and whether to prosecute it. Now, Obama has laid down his marker, and said that people (in the C.I.A., for instance) who were following what they considered legal orders will not be prosecuted for doing so. In other words, "I was just following orders" will be an acceptible legal defense (which is problematic in its own way, but understandable politically). Speculation began, after Holder's recent remarks, that what he was talking about were agents and other government officials who had overstepped even the lax guidelines which came out of Bush's Justice Department. But to date, this is merely speculation. Again, though, this is how it is supposed to work -- it's the Attorney General's decision to prosecute or investigate, not Barack Obama's.

The second incidental issue which arose from recent news stories came from the report that Leon Panetta, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, just heard about a program which reported directly to the office of Dick Cheney, and had not been briefed to Congress. Panetta, if the timelines are to be believed, found out about the program a few weeks ago, immediately shut it down, and then briefed Congress the next day. This is all well and good, but raises a very important question (actually, it raises a whole flood of questions), which is mostly being ignored (except for this article on Time magazine's website) -- why was Panetta kept in the dark for four months? As D.C.I., Panetta is supposed to know everything his agency is doing. That's his job. And it took him four months to dig this out. Reportedly, this was because the program was "dormant," which is a partial excuse, but not much of one. As I said, the program itself will raise a flood of questions, and Congress is already expressing an interest in investigating this in both the House and Senate intelligence committees, but it also leads to one very important question -- what else has the C.I.A. been hiding from Panetta (and everyone else, apparently, not named "Dick Cheney")?

Which brings me back to my main point. Before everyone learned the definition of "waterboarding," playschool children talked of (often with an Asian country's name attached at the front) the "water torture." A prisoner would be strapped down, and a huge bucket suspended over their head. This bucket had a very slow leak in it, which resulted in a drop of water hitting the prisoner's forehead every couple of seconds. Its purpose was to drive the prisoner crazy waiting for the drops to hit, to the point where his will would break and he'd spill his guts.

This is exactly the sort of torture President Obama has chosen. If an independent "Truth Commission" had been set up (as Senate leader on the issue Patrick Leahy has been fighting for), it would have accomplished a few things politically -- it would have distanced Obama from the investigation ("The independent commission is looking into that, I am not going to comment until they have finished their work"); it would have been bipartisan, which would have avoided the cries of "Partisan witchhunt!" from across the aisle; it could have offered immunity to lower-level agents in exchange for honest testimony (avoiding the whole "I was only following orders" problem); and it would have gotten the whole story out there in one chunk. Sure, there would have been public hearings of the commission, and it would have generated a story now and then, but one of the reasons for appointing any commission in Washington is to distance yourself from the work of that commission, which would have been possible for Obama.

Since Obama didn't choose this route, one has to wonder if his entire presidency will be distracted by these stories over and over again throughout his term in office. Because things will leak. Journalists still occasionally do their job. This stuff does get out eventually. And, by assuring that each one will be a separate event, complete with its own small-scale media circus, these revelations will happen over and over again, instead of being tied into one all-encompassing investigation. Obama, by trying to politically avoid some of the stickier problems in dealing with his predecessor, may in fact suffer politically by the method he has chosen.

Because the result of the path Obama has charted was on display for all to see last week.

Drip, drip, drip.

Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com

Lincoln Mitchell: Sarah Palin, John Edwards and the Way We Choose Our Vice Presidents

2009-07-07T14:53:41Z

Sarah Palin's announcement that she would resign as Governor of Alaska is either the final word in a strange and frenetic episode of American political history, or it is a first step towards what promises to be, if nothing else, an unpredictable presidential campaign. Palin's speech announcing her decision made her sound like a somewhat bizarre cross between a 21st Century version of Richard Nixon after losing the California governor's race to Pat Brown in 1962, and a precocious tween excited about learning the phrase "affect positive change" for the first time and working it in at every possible, and even impossible, opportunity.

Interestingly, Palin's announcement last week is not the only case of a former vice presidential nominee behaving erratically and embarrassing themselves this year. A few months ago the story of John Edwards' affair and odd behavior of his own once again dominated the talk shows and blogosphere. It may seem unfair to compare John Edwards to Sarah Palin. However, they are both former vice presidential candidates with very little experience in government whose qualifications for high office have been brought into question due to their recent behavior and comments.

The Edwards and Palin stories both underscore the quirk in our electoral system through which vice presidents are nominated. Candidates for both parties win presidential nominations through a difficult, multi-year process during which they must appear before countless editorial boards, interest groups and community events to demonstrate their knowledge and views on key issues, participate in many debates, forums and discussions, survive the scrutiny of investigative journalists from the old and new media and, unless they are are extremely wealthy, convince thousands of people to donate to their campaigns. Nobody can slip through this process easily.

Vice presidential candidates, by contrast simply have to make a good impression on their party's nominee. It seems that in some cases, notably Edwards and Palin, running mates are chosen based on very recent political developments or short term strategic needs, rather than more serious criteria. Presidential candidates regularly defend their running mates as the best person for the job and qualified to be president, but that cannot seriously have been said to be the case for Palin or Edwards. Palin was chosen both because McCain got scared that the party's base would abandon him and because he thought he could move women away from Obama after the tough primary between Obama and Clinton. Edwards was chosen after coming in second in a string of primaries and impressing many as being smart and telegenic.

The vetting process for vice presidential candidates is clearly quite different than that for the people on the top of the ticket. Vice presidential candidates must face a series of, presumably, difficult interviews from the nominee's team and provide information on their background to the candidate, but that is about it. Not only is there no way of knowing whether or not the vice presidential nominee is being entirely forthcoming, but the vice presidential candidate does not have to face any test from voters or the media until she, or he, is already on the ticket.

Being nominated for vice president is unlike any other American political process because vice presidential nominees immediately move into the inner circle of top political leaders in their party. Many recently defeated vice presidential candidates have been the beneficiary of this, vaulting over equally or more qualified members of their own party in presidential contests. Palin would not even be a factor for 2012 had she not been McCain's running mate. Similarly John Edwards and Joseph Lieberman also became stronger presidential contenders than they should have been because of what John Kerry and Al Gore, respectively, did for them by nominating them as their running mates.

The ongoing soap operas into which the political careers of former vice presidential nominees John Edwards and Sarah Palin have descended are amusing, and occasionally disturbing, but for now they are harmless. For either of them to be a political force again they will have to go directly to the voters and win their support and confidence. This seems to be off the table for Edwards and something of a long shot, although far from an impossibility, for Palin. To some extent, their stories are the more benign side of the way we choose our vice presidents. The less benign side of this process is encapsulated in the person of Dick Cheney, who lacked the political skills, or basic human decency to get elected to high office on his own, but as vice president was arguable the most important person in the country for several years during the Bush administration.

Every few years we alter the way our presidential nominees are chosen due to the ample imperfections of the presidential nominating systems, but they way we choose our vice president's has remained largely the same for years. Palin, Edwards, and less amusingly, Cheney, are three good reasons why it would make sense to revisit this system.

Jon Soltz: Biden Sends Right Message on Iraq

2009-07-06T14:20:09Z

Last week, I wrote here on Huffington Post that it was time to start putting pressure on the Iraqi government to settle their internal differences, and make clear that we're no longer going to be their crutch.

I closed by saying, "It's time for President Obama to recognize that, and get tough. If the Iraqis aren't committed to dealing with their internal problems then we should expedite our withdrawal. American troops should never be more committed to the peace and security of a foreign country more than those who live there."

This weekend, Vice President Biden, in Iraq, did just that, reports Bloomberg News:

Vice President Joseph Biden told Iraqi leaders that the path to a secure peace lies in uniting ethnic and sectarian groups and said the U.S. might disengage from their country if it reverts to sustained violence... He also told Maliki that if Iraq fell into a period of sectarian violence or engaged in ethnic fighting, such a step would change the nature of U.S. engagement, a senior administration official said, according to the report.

The Washington Post expands, reporting:

He added that there "wasn't any appetite to put Humpty Dumpty back together again if, by the action of people in Iraq, it fell apart."

The warning was a dramatic indication of the changing U.S. posture in Iraq, the foremost foreign policy concern of the Bush administration. The statements suggested that the Obama administration would absolve itself of responsibility if Iraq again descended into chaos, dragged down by still-unresolved crises. They include border disputes between Kurds and Arabs and also legislation for Iraq's oil resources.

That's exactly what the Vice President had to say, and I have to give credit where credit is due.

Even if the war itself was wrongly waged, it made some sense to provide some security to the Iraqis as they transitioned to a new government. But, Iraqis never took advantage of that security, after a government was formed, through the surge, and the end of the surge, to resolve their major internal differences without violence. In short, the reality of the US leaving them on their own never seemed like a possibility. When there was trouble, we sent more troops in to tamp down violence ourselves.

That hardly encourages self-reliance or self-preservation. It only encourages dependency.

That's why the surge was nothing more than keeping the cork on the bottle, and why the only real option left is to make clear that all of Iraqis leaders and factions will lose, unless they resolve their internal political battles -- now. If we don't, and violence just continues on a loop with the expectation that we'll eventually clean it up, our troops are in danger every time they move convoys, or military transition teams head out.

That's why Vice President Biden did what he did, and why the message he sent was absolutely the right thing to do.

Anne Dunev: Thank You, Bill Maher, For Asking Where in the World is Barack Obama and What is He Going To Do About Healthcare?

2009-06-16T11:04:46Z

Just yesterday I asked my husband, "Who does Obama think he is -- Lindsay Lohan? Every time I look at the news, there is Obama -- having another Kodak moment." Then I find out Bill Maher noticed the same thing. And had the audacity to mention it on national television.

I think President Obama makes a brilliant President. In the sense of a corporate President, not the kind that runs a country. He is great at making speeches, shaking hands and should be the PR rep for our country. He and Michelle make Americans look their best. God knows we can use Obama in the bully pulpit to mitigate the damage by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfield regime -- who were only bullies.

However, we have a couple of issues that need some attention. Our PR is not going to matter much if the Ship of State is rudderless and we crash on the shore of our own greed and stupidity. Americans have been fat, dumb and happy. Now they are now fat, dumb and sick. Not to mention broke. Our currency is going in the toilet as a result of printing money to spend our way out of debt. And more Americans are declaring bankruptcy over their health care bills than for any other reason because they cannot afford simple necessary surgery.

Not being a financial pundit, I will stick to my ideas on health care. I have practiced under socialized medicine in the United Kingdom and under the insurance-based system of the U.S. Which is better? From my viewpoint, as a cash based practitioner who is exempt from the system, I say neither.

As Bill Maher also mentioned, it is a given that we need to get rid of insurance. Take out the middleman and you have doctors and hospitals that have to deal directly with the consumer, and have to answer for their mistakes and get lauded for their successes. It makes medicine compete in a marketplace. And why not? Medicine is big business. A friend of ours just had his neck vertebra fused. The bill was $80,000. This is not charity, nor non-profit. $80,000 is 30% more than the median annual household income in 2007. Our friend's daughter had a premie baby a couple of years ago. For her family of four, insurance premiums are now $4000.00 per month. Annually that is nearly equal to the annual median household income. No one should have to pay that much money for health insurance.

What Bill Maher did not mention is that the other responsible party for the fact hardly anyone can afford to be sick in this country is Pharmaceutical. With socialized medicine the cost is shifted to the government, and borne by the taxpayers, but Pharmaceutical companies still make out like bandits.

But they need the money for research, right?

In The Cost of Pushing Pills: A New Estimate of Pharmaceutical Promotion Expenditures in the United States from the online Public Library of Science researchers Marc-André Gagnon Joel Lexchin concluded:

"From this new estimate, it appears that pharmaceutical companies spend almost twice as much on promotion as they do on R&D. These numbers clearly show how promotion predominates over R&D in the pharmaceutical industry, contrary to the industry's claim. While the amount spent on promotion is not in itself a confirmation of Kefauver's depiction of the pharmaceutical industry, it confirms the public image of a marketing-driven industry and provides an important argument to petition in favor of transforming the workings of the industry in the direction of more research and less promotion." http://http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050001

And here is where the financial crisis meets the health care crisis in this country. You don't have to be a financial pundit to know that any public company is responsible first and foremost to their stockholders. As a public company how do you meet your fiduciary responsibility? You ensure the price of your stock by increasing your bottom-line.

Does that require that you make up new "diseases" as you go? (Restless Leg Syndrome, for example.) Do you bend the rules of science in how you determine what constitutes disease so you can repackage old drugs that have lost their patent? Do you push dangerous new drugs on the market knowing that a little collateral damage is the price of making money, just as it is the price of making war?

According to USA Today in 2005, there were 1,274 registered pharmaceutical lobbyists in Washington, D.C. -- more than two for every member of Congress. In 2003, $143 million was spent on lobbying activities by the Pharmaceutical industry. There are more lobbyists from pharmaceutical than any other industry trying to bend legislators' ears. http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/23518.php

This is big business, and that means that your health care is not in the hands of people who really want to help you, but in the hands of people who view you as a market.

Caveat emptor. You expect to beware in a used car lot. But buying a lemon auto is not nearly as likely to kill you as prescription medicine. Approximately 43,000 people died in car crashes in the U.S. in 2004, and the rate has been declining every year since. 100,000 people die in the U.S. every year from properly prescribed and properly administered prescription drugs, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. The Florida Medical Examiners concluded that three times more people die from prescription medicine as die from illegal drugs.

If prescription drugs weren't so dangerous, why would the pharmaceutical industry have to spend so much time and money on lobbyists in Washington?

That is why I say that neither socialized medicine nor insurance-based medical programs are the answer to our health care problems. The only answer is to make pharmaceutical not-for-profit and remove the greed incentive.

Anti-capitalism and free market, you say? I say that people are dying from an industry that is out of control and refuses to govern itself with any responsibility or ethics. The FDA is the fox guarding the hen-house because it is rife with former and future pharmaceutical executives apparently motivated by vested self-interest.

Most decent people cannot conceive that anyone would profit from knowingly harming others. That is the flaw in capitalism. And that is one reason that evil can exist.

We can create a new health care system, where people receive the help and care they need, at a price that is affordable. We can have dedicated doctors who earn a handsome wage for their hard work. But we have to confront the real issues before us. The system that now exists in all Western countries leaves us all slaves to greed and corruption. We can stop marketing illness and turn our attention to wellness. This means starting over with an entirely new model.

To food companies, restaurants, agribusiness, industry and pharmaceutical we need to say: The health of our children and our own well-being is more important than your bottom line.

We have to willing to unplug from the Matrix, because we are being bilked. If it were only money, let the games go on. But the cost is human suffering and death. We are eating, breathing and drinking man-made chemicals on an unprecedented level. We are Fat, because the food is engineered to make us over-eat. We are Dumb, because we are being lied to regularly. We are Sick, because we are consuming poisons faster than we can process them. We are Broke, because our only value has become the money others can take from us.

It does not have to be this way. It can be how we decide to make it. Are you listening, President Obama?

Eric Alterman: Think Again: Dick Cheney's Post Presidency

2009-05-29T14:33:36Z

Crossposted with the Center for American Progress

Eric Alterman, Danielle Ivory

Former President George W. Bush recently mused with the press about scooping up his dog's droppings. Meanwhile, former Vice President Dick Cheney has taken on the role of attack dog. Some conservatives have suggested that President Barack Obama somehow goaded Cheney into this role when he attacked the VP during the campaign.

Alas, it was no secret to anyone that much of what we call the "Bush administration" was really the "Cheney administration" beginning with Cheney's choice of himself as VP. Cheney's profile in the Bush administration was hardly that of the proverbial "warm bucket of spit." Rather, as de jure vice president, Cheney acted as de facto president, sometimes behind the curtain, sometimes in front of it.

In his excellent book, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency, Barton Gellman wrote, "Cheney's influence in the Bush administration is widely presumed but hard to illustrate. Many of the men and women who know him best said an explanation begins with the way he defined his role." He continued: "Other recent vice presidents have enjoyed a standing invitation to join the president at "policy time." But Cheney's interventions have also come in the president's absence, at Cabinet and sub-Cabinet levels where his predecessors were seldom seen. He found pressure points and changed the course of events by "reaching down," a phrase that recurs often in interviews with current and former aides.

Mary Matalin, who was counselor to the vice president until 2003 and remains an informal adviser, described Cheney's portfolio as "the iron issues" -- a list that, as she defined it, comprises most of the core concerns of every recent president. Cheney took on "the economic issues, the security issues . . . the energy issues" -- and the White House legislative agenda, Matalin said, because he became "the go-to guy on the Hill." Other close aides noted, as well, a major role for Cheney in nominations and appointments.

This was unprecedented. As Robert Kuttner has pointed out Cheney's role actually created a kind of constitutional crisis....

You can read the rest of Eric Alterman and Danielle Ivory's analysis in their recent article, "Think Again: Dick Cheney's Post Presidency."

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College. He is also a Nation columnist and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His seventh book, Why We're Liberals: A Handbook for Restoring America's Most Important Ideals was recently published in paperback. He occasionally blogs at http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation.

Danielle Ivory is a reporter and producer for the American News Project. She lives in Washington, D.C.

This column was recently named as a finalist in the category of "Best Commentary -- Digital" for the Mirror Awards.

GOP Wants More Help From Cheney

2009-05-21T17:15:11Z

Democrats and Republicans may have found an area of agreement: Dick Cheney should keep on campaigning for the GOP cause.

Cheney's apparently endless retirement speaking tour culminated Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute, where he savaged Barack Obama and dismissed criticism of torture as "phony moralizing" and "feigned outrage." Republican poll numbers have continued to crater in the weeks since Cheney first took to the talk-show circuit, but GOP senators told the Huffington Post Thursday afternoon that they think the former vice president will rally voters to their cause.

"I'm sure he can help some," said South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. "I hope he helps where he can. I like the vice president."

Graham qualified that he doesn't see Cheney, 68, as the future of the Republican Party, leaving that role to "some young governor or somebody out there that will emerge over time."

Sen. John Cornyn, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, agreed that Cheney was valuable -- but only in certain situations. "I think the vice president is controversial in some quarters, but there is nobody that knows better than he does what the threats are that are facing our nation and why it is necessary to take extraordinary measures that will affect our country," he said. "I think it depends on the circumstance on the race."

One race he's welcome to appear in will be Sen. John Thune's in South Dakota.

"I mean, I think anybody would welcome having a guy of his stature and that kind of respect," Thune said.

Reporting contributed by Ryan Grim.

Get HuffPost Politics On Facebook and Twitter!

Tom McCaffrey: Controversial New Group: Drunk Drivers Against Mothers

2009-05-20T14:39:07Z

Drunk driving is obviously a very touchy subject as well as serious a problem. It became so out of hand at one time that in the 80's a group of outraged women formed the organization MADD(Mothers Against Drunk Drivers). But just recently a backlash of sorts has reared it's head and seems to be gaining steam. It's called DDAM (Drunk Driver Against Mothers).

The group was started one night in the back room of a fraternity house in Colorado when a bunch of 6th year seniors were playing beer pong and watching porn on Cinemax The President of the group, Chad Chasterston, was wasted when his mom called to tell him she was very disappointed in him due to his recent DUI. Chad was livid when he hung up and started railing against his mom. The other drunk guys joined in and added their two cents about their own mothers and how they were always on their cases about their drunk driving histories.

"My mom is always like 'I can't believe you got drunk and then drove our new car into a lake again'. I'm like fuck you! I like to party! You're just mad because you can't party as hard as me! Delta Chi forever!"

Sure this started as a sort of a joke but recently these men have gotten more organized. Word seems to be spreading also. It has been reported that DDAM groups are popping up on college campuses across the country. They get together every night, pound Jagermeister and talk shit about their moms and moms in general.

We caught up with a DDAM leader at Rutgers, Mike McCallister, as he was pissing on a church. He had this to say, "Moms are total buzz kills these days. All they do is bitch and whine about dudes who like to party. It's always, 'Don't drive drunk or you shouldn't fight with the police or you got my daughter pregnant!' It's like chill out. I like to drink so get off my ass!"

DDAM was gaining momentum but it recently hit a speed bump when Chad, the original organizer, drove his car off of a cliff after a sorority mixer. The Vice President of DDAM had this to say, "What the fuck are you looking at?! I'll kick your fucking ass right now asshole! Gimme my car keys! I'm fine!! I've only had 11 beers!!" He then puked on himself and passed out on the street where he was ironically run over by a sober soccer mom of 3.

Sandy Goodman: Denouncing Obama's Desire for Dijon is Downright Dangerous

2009-05-12T23:45:48Z

My wife and I were driving in Arlington, Virginia last week when our journey was interrupted by a huge traffic jam and a crowd gathered across from a rundown strip mall. Yellow crime-scene tape was stretched between light poles, aiding dozens of police who kept back onlookers and directed traffic as their radio cars and motorcycles half-blocked the roadway. An ambulance was on hand, evidence, we feared, of a terrible accident. But there was no sign of damaged vehicles or injured people. And the crowd appeared relaxed, not grim.

The tip-off was the group of black Chevy Suburban SUVs parked near the police cars. To anyone living in the Washington area and familiar with its countless motorcades, they spell S-E-C-R-E-T S-E-R-V-I-C-E, a clear signal of a VIP visit. "The president or vice president must be around," I guessed out loud.

I was more right than I thought. The president AND vice president were both around, on a cheeseburger outing to an eatery called Ray's Hell Burger. Chomping on 10-ounce cheeseburgers at $7.95 each, Obama and Biden were demonstrating that despite their exalted stations they could shrug off White House formalities and prove they are, at heart, just ordinary folks like you and me (although not ordinary enough for much cheaper McDonald's or
Wendy's ground beef ).

But because right-wing radio and television talkers are on the job 24/7, it is not easy for a Democratic president to be seen as an ordinary person. Democrats are by nature elitist, they insist, even if they are black, brought up fatherless and needy enough to receive not just college, but high school scholarships. In this case, the proof of Obama's elitism was his request for Dijon mustard on his burger.

Several wingnuts went nuts. Sean Hannity charged that Obama had ordered a "fancy burger" with " a very special condiment." Laura Ingraham demanded: "What sort of man orders a cheeseburger without ketchup but Dijon mustard?" And Mark Steyn, guest-hosting Rush Limbaugh's talk show, professed to find the president "amazing," adding that the great elitist "John Kerry couldn't get away with that stuff, but he [Obama] makes it seem like just a regular thing to do."

All three pointed to a television commercial for Grey Poupon mustard that ran a few years ago, that shows two wealthy Britons, each in the back seat of his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce, one relishing a dish topped off with Grey Poupon and the other asking if he, too, can have some. Kraft Foods, which makes the Dijon mustard, wrote a tongue in cheek letter of support to the president, assuring him that "The right to choose condiments freely is quintessentially American and embodies the spirit of our democracy." But a blogger named Alex Balk dinked their condiment, denouncing it as "the processed cheese of mustards" and "the fucking Velveeta of faux-French products."

Perhaps Balk is being too harsh on Grey Poupon. Perhaps asking for Dijon mustard in a hamburger joint is a clear sign of elitism. But then what do we make of the dynamite new revelation from the Bush White House website that George W. and Laura use Dijon in their recipe for deviled eggs? Or that Hannity is a regular consumer of Boca Java gourmet coffee, available only by mail, whose proud makers describe it as "in stark contrast to common marketplace coffee?" Boca Java's various flavors sell for between $15 and $38 a pound, plus $5 or more for shipping and handling. Talk about elitism, Sean!

As for Steyn, he's a Canadian with a sometime sense of humor. But he can be heavy-footed as well. One of his articles inspired a critic to say of his writing style that Steyn "lifts his leg and relieves himself with the force of a Clydesdale..." When he guest-hosted Limbaugh's radio show, Steyn did something like that in describing Obama. Speaking of the president's getting away with something Kerry never could, Steyn added: "That was yesterday, Barack Obama had a hamburger. I don't know what he may do today to prove -- to pass for human." Imagine that, a man can be subhuman and elitist at the same time. And all for requesting Dijon mustard on his burger.

All of which makes me wonder how Steyn would describe the man for whom he was guest-hosting. And before whom he, Hannity, Ingraham and dozens of other right-wing talkers bend the knee and bow the head. Fortunately, we know a good deal about Rush Limbaugh's lifestyle from an article in the New York Times Magazine last July. Limbaugh invited the writer, Zev Chafets, to his "secluded beachfront mansion" in Palm Beach, Florida. Limbaugh, who had recently signed a multi-year, $400 million contract renewal, has five homes on the property, the largest of which is 24,000 square feet, which he shares with his cat. His salon, he told Chafets, "is meant to suggest Versailles. His main guest suite...was designed as an exact replica of the presidential suite of the George V Hotel in Paris."

Talk about elitist cars. Forget those Brits with their phony accents and cheapie Rolls Royces, pretending to be rich. Limbaugh drives a $450,000 Maybach 57S, and keeps half a dozen more of them around for his guests and because "I happen to love fine automobiles." His newest airplane is a Gulfstream G550 that cost $54 million. At Trevini, one of Limbaugh's favorite Palm Beach restaurants, a pepperoni sandwich costs $15.95 at lunch, and dinner entrees run to $40. Talk radio's great man smokes $7.60 La Flor Dominicana Double Ligero Chisel cigars, each one just a few cents less than the elitist Obama's single cheeseburger. El Rushbo is even more serious about his capitalism than his conservatism. "Conservatism didn't buy this house," he told Chafets. "First and foremost I'm a businessman. My goal is to attract the largest possible audience so I can charge confiscatory ad rates." Ditto-heads take note of this real man of the people.

As for Ingraham, so exercised by Obama's eating habits that she cried out on the air: "I don't even like the way the man orders a hamburger!" what can anyone say? Perhaps the liberal author and teacher Eric Alterman had it best years ago, remarking that "this woman was more full of shit than just about anyone I had ever met." Perhaps he had in mind Ingraham's sharp criticism of "liberal elites," who, she wrote, "live in palaces invisible from the road outside, and fly in private jets." Funny, that sounds like a perfect description of Limbaugh's lifestyle.

UPDATE: A week or so after Obama and Biden had lunch at Ray's Hell Burger, we ate there to see what all the fuss was about. The burgers were very large, very juicy, and good -- although not out of this world. And, I can report that next to the the dispensers marked KETCHUP and MUSTARD and MAYONNAISE is one that's just as clearly labelled DIJON.

Robert Guttman: JOE BIDEN: A VICE-PRESIDENT WE CAN BELIEVE IN

2009-05-01T15:07:37Z

It is refreshing to have Joe Biden as our vice-president. Instead of people criticizing him for giving us his views we should be applauding him for saying what is on his mind.

If he doesn't want his family in a confined space--in an airplane or train -then it is his right to say just that when he is interviewed. Obviously, the White House wasn't too pleased with his remarks about the swine flu and how people should react but let's step back a little bit and compare him to our recent vice-presidents. Biden is a winner over any of them by a long shot.

Does Dick Cheney ring a bell? He was not a fun, outspoken man of the people type of vice-president like the former senator from Delaware. Cheney was one of the oddest choices for vice-president in our nation's history. He added no electoral votes to the ticket and it would be hard to find anyone who thought he had a pleasant and sunny personality. He was a dour and sour personality who spoke in a monotone. And, often we didn't know where he was located. And, we aren't even going to mention his policies.

What about Al Gore? He was rather rigid in his demeanor and was never too outspoken or controversial. He always seemed to be lecturing us on how to behave or how to act and seemed like a stern school teacher we once had.

Does anyone remember Vice-President Dan Quayle from my home state of Indiana. He did not add a lot of gravitas to the ticket or to his tenure in the first Bush administration. He was not a vice-president we could believe in.

And George Herbert Walker Bush was a fine gentleman as the vice-president under Reagan but he definitely wasn't a man of the people as can be said of our current vice-president.

Walter Mondale was another gentleman but not one to be outspoken and colorful like Biden.

And, we don't even have to go into Spiro Agnew who had to leave his office as vice-president. He certainly ranks near the bottom of America's vice-presidents.

So, looking back we can see that we are lucky to have someone like Joe Biden as our vice-president. He may veer off the reservation as he did with his remarks on the swine flu but it just makes us think how better off we are today with Biden rather than with a Cheney or an Agnew.

Biden, with his background on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is a valuable help to the president who is focused more on domestic issues than on international affairs at the moment. We can all be glad that the vice-president is a person of substance who adds to--rather than detracts from the administration.

If he sometimes says what is in his mind before checking with the White House staff it just adds to the unique character of the Obama-Biden administration.

So, stop the criticism of the VP and enjoy his good nature and spontaneity.

Kathleen Reardon: Barack Obama -- More Presidential By The Day

2009-04-16T13:29:45Z

What makes a president presidential? From communication research we know it comes from credibility defined largely by expertise, trust, conviction, comfort and something called homophily (perceived similarity).

President Obama's expertise gaps occasionally show. For a while he was blaming the past - the economic burden left to him by an irresponsible prior administration. That comes up now and then, but he's moved on. He is more informed now and it shows.

With regard to trust, he has gone to the people with speeches, town meetings, even on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno, which was criticized intensely by many Republicans. All are part of getting his messages out to us in an era of media sound bites. It is smart. Where he falls down a bit here is in transparency that was promised. It showed in White House Press Secretary Robert Gibb's press briefing on March 30 when he clumsily tried to explain why GM CEO Rick Wagoner was forced out by President Obama but failed CEOs of Banks were still in place. And his presidential trustworthiness slips, too, by his willingness to bet the bank, so to speak, on the ideas of two men - Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers. Here is where they seem uncertain. Here is where we hear less than we need to know and he may too.

Conviction is evident when he speaks. It was evident in his comments to the Iranian people, somewhat lacking in his press conference on March 24th. But overall, he has developed a demeanor of confidence that does not slip over the line into arrogance, as it so often did with President George W. Bush. President Obama has a number of aligning actions at easy reach (e.g., "Well, look ...." ) that help him to convey his ideas with confidence rather than close-mindedness. Our previous president confused those two.

His comfort level is more evident by the day. When Vice President Biden made a joke about Chief Justice Robert's flub of the oath of office, the new president was immediately testy. He was as yet uncomfortable in his new role, tired from the election and inauguration, and snapped too soon when he might have made light of the issue or merely given Joe a friendly nudge. We rarely see that testiness now.

He is also still one of us more than he is one of them. And this is critical - a line he needs to watch as power always alters those who possess it. When I heard a senator complaining about the president making time to meet with his children when they get home from school, claiming that CEOs don't do that, just like real men don't eat quiche, it was laughable. More senior managers and working people in general ought to at least call when their kids arrive home from school because they usually have a lot to say at that point unlikely to be expressed later when they're tired and hungry. President Obama hasn't fallen for the myth that the only road to success is the one that leaves your family in the dust.

Rare is a president who learns so fast, who observes so deeply, who can take criticism and walk away better for it. In these ways, whether or not we agree with his decisions regarding more troops in Afghanistan, more money for bailouts, rights of detainees, prioritization of pressing issues, and even his family's choice of dog, it's worth noting that he is emerging into a president cognizant of his power, yet aware, too, of those who gave it to him. He delays on promises delivered now and then, and there's a tendency toward insularity in his choice of advisers, but he learns his limits and new ways to lead as he goes and that's a far cry better than what we had before.

Dr. Reardon also blogs at bardscove.

Bettina Duval: Secretary?!!

2009-04-05T18:09:21Z

A few days ago my daughter phoned from college with the news that she had been asked to run for the Executive Branch of student government at college. This comes as no surprise since this year Elizabeth was elected to serve on her student Senate. Bubbling with excitement, Elizabeth relayed, "John is running for President, Fentriss for Vice-President, James for Treasurer...and they want me to join their slate and run for Secretary."

"Secretary?!" I queried.

"Yes, and the election is next week. We had a meeting to write our party platform and target our voter base. Each of us has an assignment. I am going to make the flyers!" As she chattered on and on, the inevitable chorus of thoughts began to resonate in my mind, "Secretary? Why not President? Or even Vice-President?"

Having been surrounded by the inner workings of the body politic has clearly imprinted the importance of electing women on Elizabeth. In fact, my daughter has been well trained to run for office and she has the courage to take a risk. Most important, she is confident in her abilities. She is a young woman who isn't fettered by the old feminist lore of how, but instead thinks how high.

For the past seven years I have dedicated all of my energies to develop an organization to support women who are running for office in California. My idea of a vacation with my girlfriends includes traveling to Washington, D.C. to march for choice. I just can't help but wonder why she did not comprehend the stereotype in what her team proposed for her -- the common assumption that the woman's role should be the "Secretary."

After hanging up the phone, I contemplated a common reflection for 21st century women, "What advancements have we made as women and how will the next generation of leaders, like my daughter, make the women's movement their own?"

Long ago, I remember chaperoning a field trip to the Skirball Center in Los Angeles. During the tour, I remember another mother saying that she would not tell her daughter that she can have it all because you can't. Did she feel encouraging her to reach for the top was an exercise in folly? How can women hope to break sexist barriers if they don't dare to risk it all?

Now I question, "Does Elizabeth want it all?" I don't know the answer what all is anymore. I do know that Elizabeth does not care what office she is running for. She just wants to opportunity to serve. For her the thrill simply comes from an invitation by the Junior class boys to join the slate. She is already immersed in developing their website and how to get out the vote.

At times, the next generation of women leaders appears to be oblivious to the barriers that my generation experienced. Or, if they are aware of them, they no longer hold the same importance for them. They will work within the parameters that are set. We fought to not be pigeon-holed as the Secretary, but to win the right to be the President. We consciously knew that we had to work twice as hard, be three times as efficient and strive for the opportunity to succeed.

For now, Elizabeth is content to stay busy with her campaign. As I write this, she is probably outside of the dining commons asking for votes. She has the courage. She has the training. Elizabeth can do anything she puts her mind to and I'm sure she will make a wonderful secretary. But next year, I'm sure she'll make a great President.

VP's Economist: Budget Reconciliation Shouldn't Be Used For Major Legislation

2009-03-22T10:48:34Z

The Vice President's chief economic adviser said Sunday that the White House agreed that "major" energy or health care policy should not be part of the crafting of the budget. But he wouldn't completely disavow the possibility including such policy in the reconciliation process, which would allow Democrats to bypass a filibuster.

"I don't think [the president] took it off the table," said Jared Bernstein. "I think it has to stay on the table but something we'd rather avoid."

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Bernstein said that he agreed with Senate Budget Committee chair Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) that "major legislation" should not be included in the reconciliation process. Reconciliation presents a tempting vehicle to pass contentious law, because it is subject to an up-or-down vote as opposed to a 60-vote threshold for ending debate.

But, as Conrad noted earlier in the program, there were downsides to such a course of action. "I have said for weeks, I don't think it would be wise to use the reconciliation process to write major legislation," said the North Dakota Democrat. "That's not what reconciliation was designed for. It was designed for purely deficit reduction. And the problem is, if you try to use it here, not only does it deeply offend the minority, but more than that, it doesn't work very well."

Asked to respond, Bernstein stipulated that: "we agree with Senator Conrad on this point." He went on to say that the president was getting a "bad rap" for his budget, before being cut off by host George Stephanopoulos. While Bernstein tried later, in vein, to clarify his point, it was Conrad who got in the last word.

"Put it this way, it is not included in the budget that I will present to my colleagues," the Senator said. "I have said for weeks, I don't think it is the right way to write substantive legislation because if you get into the details and we won't do that here, it just doesn't work very well."

Michael Bendetson: My Interview with Walter Mondale

2009-02-19T10:37:00Z

Last week, I conducted an interview with Mr. Walter Mondale. The discussion allowed Mr. Mondale to reflect on his distinguished political career, while also providing him an opportunity to voice his opinion on current problems confronting the United States.

Walter Mondale was one of the most influential American politicians in the second half of the 20th Century. He is most well known for his position as Vice President during the Carter Administration. Mondale revolutionized the role of the Vice President, and became the first to actively participate in policy decisions. In 1984, he was the Democratic nominee for President, where the incumbent Ronald Reagan subsequently defeated him. Prior to his endeavors as Vice President, Mondale served as a Senator of Minnesota and was a major proponent of President Johnson's Great Society programs. His last role in public life was that of Ambassador to Japan during the Clinton Administration. Mondale was known for his liberal stances in politics and his desire to assist societies most neglected members.

Michael Bendetson: Over the course of your career, you have stepped away from politics on a number of occasions to work in the private sector. Yet after a few years away from public service, you always seem to be drawn back into politics. What specifically inspired you to postpone your lucrative law practice to reenter American politics?

Walter Mondale: I would put your question a bit differently. I always wanted to be in public service, and only went into the private sector when the voters decided it was time for me to step down. I love public life. I love the issues. I love working with people. I am an old progressive. I like building support for and getting things done. I think in many ways, it is one of the best things you can do for your friends, your family, and your community. The goal is to try to make a more trusted and just society. In America, we have a real opportunity in the most impressive of nations, to do just that.

MB: During your tenure in the United States Senate, you had quite a distinguished career. Out of the many pieces of legislation that you worked on and sponsored, what specific bill(s) are you most proud of?

WM: I would like to put it, in a plural. The Civil Rights Acts (1965 Voting Rights Act and the 1968 Civil Rights Act), which I supported and had to be done. In addition, I am proud for my support of education bills that improved education at all levels (Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Higher Education Act of 1965, and Bilingual Education Act). These bills helped open up education to all Americans. I chaired the select committee on Equal Education Opportunity. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we can provide all Americans with a good education, a problem that still haunts the country.

MB: The Constitution delegates very little power to the position of Vice President. However, throughout the Carter Administration you managed to play an important role with your involvement on all major domestic and foreign policy decisions. How would you define the role of the vice president? Further, do you have any suggestions or recommendations for Vice President Biden?

WM: Well, [Vice President] Biden and I are old friends and we have talked about your question more than once. Incidentally, I think he is getting off to a very good start. I believe the model [President] Carter and I set up, with some variations, is essentially the way it should be done. I was a general advisor to the President. I helped represent the President on the Hill with legislation and other matters. In addition, I represented [the administration] around the country and around the world in diplomatic affairs. I tried to be a trouble-shooter in the government when reforms were needed and I could be of service to the President. Finally, I just tried to be the Presidents friend and confidant. I was his eyes and ears and did everything possible to help the man. I think that is the way it should be done, and that is the way Biden is approaching his job. Of course, Biden brings tremendous strengths with his background in the Judiciary Committee and international affairs. The fact that he has served in Congress for so long and is so well liked, he is going to do very well.

MB: One of the defining issues of the Carter Administration was in fact the Iran Hostage Crisis. What mistakes were made in the handling of the situation? In addition, what if anything would you have done differently?

WM: Let me quote Gary Sick. Gary Sick was a retired captain in the U.S. Navy. When he came into office, he was an official for the National Security Counsel. He had a tremendous amount of experience with Iran and even spoke the language. He headed the task force to deal with our hostages and their return. He lived through every moment of [the Iran Hostage Crisis]. He wrote a book called All Fall Down, which is the best single history of that tough period. When he was finished with book, he was asked your question. He said, "If I had been one of those hostages, I would want President Carter to be my president." I think by that statement, he knew that Carter would worry about him and try to do the right thing for the country and them. Indeed, that is I what, I think we did. It was really rough on those hostages. We thought about it and tried to act everyway we could, but we were in the middle of the first example of Islamic Radicalism under [Ayatollah] Khomeini. We could have started a war, but we did not. We could have done things to endanger the life's of our hostages their, but we did not. We tried through diplomacy, direct action, indirect action, and pressure from our allies and friends. We did everything we possibly could, that was reasonable. We were thinking and working to try to get our hostages home, everyday we were in office.

MB: Before the 2008 summer Olympics, many individuals were calling for the United States to boycott the games. The protest was with regards to Chinese policy toward Tibet, as numerous claims of human rights violations were made. Many referenced President Carter's decision to boycott the Summer Olympics of 1980 in Moscow. Would you have approved of a boycott this past summer? Further, do you still stand by the decision to boycott the Olympics in 1980?

WM: Yes, I think we did the right thing in 1980. The invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union was a fundamental rupture of international laws and a very dangerous precedent that had to be dealt with. We had only limited remedies that we could use to punish and impose costs on the Soviet Union. One of them was to terminate America's participation in the Moscow Olympics and to try to get other countries to join us. The reason is the same as applied in 1936. Adolf Hitler used those Olympics to build his stature in the world and to show his people that the world respected him, even though he was a monster. We [Carter Administration] felt that we could not go to Moscow and play as though things were normal in the midst of what they [Soviets] were doing in Afghanistan. I think the circumstances were different in 2008. The Chinese have not invaded Tibet. In most cases we should not cancel the Olympics, because for many of the athletes this is there only opportunity. A boycott should be used rarely and only in cases where it is fundamentally abhorrent to be involved in the games. Nevertheless we should speak up about Tibet. There are other things that should be done; I am most certainly not content with remaining silent on this issue.

MB: One of the focal points of your 1984 presidential campaign was that of honesty. At the Democratic Convention, you exclaimed, "By the end of my first term, I will reduce the Reagan budget deficit by two-thirds. Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." The line soon become a rallying cry for President Reagan and the Republican Party. Do you have any regrets about incorporating that line in your speech?

WM: Well, I have had friends tell me [the line] was pretty dumb politically. However, I knew that if was elected, we were facing an awful budget. We were deeply in deficit and could not maintain the status quo. It was Reaganomics and it simply had not worked. If I became elected, I wanted to have the public remember that I had said something about it. I also knew that Reagan's people had said he was going to raise taxes. In fact after he was reelected, Reagan raised taxes several times. I think history vindicates me, but I notice no candidates after my presidential campaign have talked about raising taxes- maybe there is a political warning there.

MB: Many pundits believe that your selection of Geraldine Ferraro as a running mate helped to break the glass ceiling with regards to women in national politics. In 2008, Senator Clinton nearly won the Democratic Primary and Governor Palin was the vice presidential nominee on the Republican ticket. After witnessing these events, please evaluate the importance of your decision to place the first women on a major party ticket?

WM: I am very proud of my decision. I think Gerry [Ferraro] was very good candidate. Further, I believe in the principle that we should search for the best talent to fill these important positions. One of America's problems has been despite how talented women might be; they have a hard time breaking through that glass ceiling. The same was also true for African Americans. This was one of the reasons why I was so thrilled that [Barack] Obama was elected President. We [Mondale Campaign] did not win the election, but I think we established a precedent that made it easier for women to think about running for president and vice president.

MB: As a man who personally held the Senate seat, unsuccessfully ran against the incumbent, and also is a Minnesota resident, you are in perfect position to provide commentary on the 2008 Minnesota Senate Election. At this juncture in time, the people of Minnesota are represented by only one Senator. Although the Minnesota Canvassing Board has already certified a Franken victory, the battle for the Senate has moved into the courtroom. What do you thing will be done to resolve this situation? In addition, what do you think should have been done to expedite this process?

WM: I do not know how this election will turn out. It is in the middle of what is referred to as "judicial contest" and in the process of looking at 4,000 absentee ballots. I have heard predictions that it will take months to resolve this situation, buy maybe and hopefully sooner. I do no think that anyone truly knows how long it will take. However, there are a few things we do know. The election was truly phenomenal. There were 3 million ballots cast, and the candidates came within 200 votes of each other. As a result, every ballot had to be recounted. Our mechanisms for counting ballots are very efficient and effective, and maybe the best system in the country. The reason for the disputes is based principally on absentee ballots. The outcome has to be just. I also hope the process can be expedited, because there is a lot of serious business going on in our nations capital. Minnesota deserves two senators and America deserves hundred senators.

MB: One of the main focuses of the Carter Administration was that of conservation of energy. While various steps such as the creation of the Department of Energy were implemented by President Carter to reduce dependence on foreign oil, the current United States energy policy appears to be nearly unchanged. Why do you feel there has been little movement on this issue? Also, what in your opinion needs to be done to create an energy independent America?

WM: Energy is one of those tough issues. Almost everything that you can do that would make a significant impact requires you to frontload pain and backload pleasure. This is not always a popular thing to do. We did it. We set up the Department [of Energy], deregulated the price of gas and oil, and began the search for all alternative forms of energy. We studied solar, wind, geothermal, and many other forms. Most of what we are enjoying now was started under [President] Carter. When we left office, [Americans] were using 2 million gallons of oil less than when we entered office. If they kept those programs in place and built on them, by now we would be in a far better position than we are in now. Reagan and a lot of others felt there was no problem. They were optimistic. Reagan said, "There is more oil in Alaska than in the rest of the world combined, including the Middle East." Of course it was not true, but it made you feel good for a while. As a result of this mentality, we lost a lot of time. Now, I am hopeful that under the leadership of President Obama and as Americans see the awful consequences of these energy shortages including terrorism, global warming, and a damaged economy, that we will focus more of our attention on energy independence.

MB: Throughout your years as Senator, Vice President, and Ambassador, you have done an extensive amount of traveling across the globe promoting American values and ideas. Based on your experiences abroad, why is America detested in so many areas around the globe? In addition, what can be done to improve the global reputation of the United States?

WM: I think the worst thing that happened under our last president, was the excess in hubris. Displayed with idea that America can push people around. There was also this extraordinary confidence in what the military could do force other governments and societies to respond to what we wanted. There was a belligerent and pushy way that they [Bush Administration] approached not only our enemies, but also our friends. If you look at the polls and the international surveys, they show that we [America] have really alienated a lot of the world. I think our reputation can improve quickly, if we change our approach- as Obama is beginning to do so.

MB: With a Democratic Congress and an enthusiastic public, President Obama has great window of opportunity to accomplish his proposed legislation. What are the main issues that President Obama should be focusing on?

WM: That is a tough question. I have never seen a new president confront more tough and diverse issues, than those that President Obama is forced to deal with. All of these issues are controversial and extremely costly. Right now, we are trying to get a stimulus package that will help pull us out of this deep recession. We have to try to get a better healthcare system. We need to do a better job in education. We need to do better with alternative energy and global warming. We need to restore America's reputation across the globe. We must find a better solution to dealing with Iran and their nuclear capabilities. There are so many issues that this President and this Congress have to deal with. However, I am optimistic, because the American people have spoken and given a mandate to the new president.

Biden: "I Know As Much Or More Than Cheney"

2009-01-15T11:12:42Z

In his first newspaper interview outside of Delaware since the election, Vice President-elect Biden reiterated to the New York Times statements he made during the campaign as to how he will implement the VP office more prudently than his predecessor Dick Cheney, who he has described as "the most dangerous Vice President probably in American history". The interview marks the latest installment in an ongoing objurgatory exchange between Biden and Cheney that has played out through various media outlets.

When asked about conservative criticism from the likes of Cheney and The Weekly Standard, who predict an insignificant VP office for the next four years, Biden seems to take the high ground, diminishing the importance of outside perception. From the Times:

Mr. Biden said that view was fine with him. "It's O.K. if that's what everyone perceives," he said. "It's irrelevant what the outside world perceives. What is relevant is whether or not I'm value added."

He said he would bring more to the job than any of his predecessors, except possibly Lyndon B. Johnson. "I know as much or more than Cheney," Mr. Biden said. "I'm the most experienced vice president since anybody."

Thus, where Cheney added brute influence, Biden promises to add value. The Times also points out that Biden, who will be 74-years-old in 2016, has no intention of running for President and thus will be free to dedicate the extent of his time and efforts towards the Vice Presidency. This, interestingly enough, makes him especially similar to Cheney.

His statements to the Times remain consistent with those from the campaign: that he will execute the office as prudently and selflessly as possible to dial back eight years worth of what he considers to be blatant abuse of power. Or in other words, he will put "country first."

Among the many abuses that are often cited, what was most highlighted during the campaign was Cheney's inappropriate involvement in the legislative side of the administration's agenda. Cheney then mocked Biden for this criticism in an interview with Fox News' Chris Wallace. As Huffington Post reported this past December:

"He also said that all the powers and responsibilities of the executive branch are laid out in Article I of the Constitution," Cheney said in a interview that was conducted on Friday. "Well, they're not. Article I of the Constitution is the one on the legislative branch."

"Joe's been chairman of the Judiciary Committee, a member of the Judiciary Committee in the Senate for 36 years, teaches constitutional law back in Delaware, and can't keep straight which article of the Constitution provides for the legislature and which provides for the executive," Cheney added. "So I think I'd write that off as campaign rhetoric. I don't take it seriously."

Of course, Article I does indeed mention the role of the Vice President rather explicitly:

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

Needless to say, the former and the soon-to-be current VPs probably will not resolve their differences anytime soon. Biden even stipulated last month that, while he may feel somewhat sorry for Bush for the constant excoriation he receives, he has no pity whatsoever for Cheney. Speaking to CNN's Larry King, Biden said "I feel somewhat badly for him. I think the incident in Iraq was -- was unfortunate, that guy throwing the shoes. It was just -- it was just uncalled for and was -- I think that President Bush and, unlike Vice President Cheney, is, upon reflection beginning to acknowledge some of the serious, if not mistakes, misjudgments that he made."

According to the Times, Obama has promised Biden ample involvement in all areas of concern, including weekly lunch sessions. With such freedom, the extent to which Biden uses his influence, and particularly his foreign policy expertise, will presumably be totally up to him -- and his promise to return the office to its historically less unbridled capacity.

Paul Jenkins: Not a Woman in the Picture

2009-01-10T15:09:16Z

The photographs of the current, future and former living presidents at the White House earlier this week were remarkable for the fact that such a meeting has not occurred since 1981. And because, for the first time, an African-American president-elect is present. And because, once again, there isn't a woman anywhere in sight.

Yes, this is self-evident: we know no woman has ever been elected president in the United States. Or, really, ever come close. For all of Hillary Clinton's groundbreaking campaign, she was not even nominated. For all of the hand-wringing at the prospect of Sarah Palin being within a 72-year-old heartbeat of the presidency, she became the laughing stock of a ticket that went down to stinging defeat.

Under the last two administrations, women have made significant breakthroughs, gaining access to previously unattainable posts, such as Speaker of the House, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Secretary of Energy, Secretary of Agriculture, Secretary of Interior and Secretary of Transportation. However, even under Barack Obama, at least for now, some positions remain off-limits to women: Senate Majority Leader, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of the Treasury, and CIA Director, for instance. Is it a coincidence that in the world's largest economy, whose military expenditure accounts for half the global total, the most senior posts dealing with money and war are still reserved for men?

It is surely true that Clinton smashed one glass ceiling and Palin, in her own way, too. But those were hardly the last such hurdles on the way to the presidency. If even ostensibly progressive presidents such as Bill Clinton and Obama are skittish about putting women in charge of Defense, the CIA or the Treasury, what does that say about the political system's ability to imagine a woman running all three, as President? True, no African-American had filled any of those posts either, and that did not prevent Obama from rising to the presidency. But do we really want to wait around for the type of confluence of events that happened in 2008 to reoccur? And for a woman with Obama's near-outlandish political skills, and sense of timing to emerge?

That is, in fact, part of the challenge. Before Clinton, no woman had seriously run for the presidency, and no woman appears to be doing so now. The situation is most dire on the Republican side because it is assumed that Obama will run for the Democrats in 2012. Republican women in Congress or statehouses are a dispiritingly dwindling group, which explains the ludicrous Palin selection. Once John McCain (or his advisors) decided he needed a woman on the ticket, the choice really boiled down to a group of eight Republican women Senators or Governors. Of those, only two passed the non-negotiable GOP presidential litmus test of being pro-life, Palin and Sen. Elizabeth Dole, who is older than McCain and so politically unskilled that she ended up losing her North Carolina reelection bid in a landslide. That left Palin, who may be trying to position herself for 2012, a testament to the Republican Party's slim pickings among women. Never say never, but there is a reason Dan Quayle, who actually made it to the vice presidency and is more articulate than Palin, has remained ensconced in a comfortable life of private "work."

Among Democrats, there is both more time and more talent, but besides Clinton, no elected woman has emerged as a high-profile national political leader. Ironically, such public standing is often bestowed on those who have previously run for president, and lost (think Joe Biden or Al Gore, for instance). Senators such as Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota took a visible role in Obama's campaign but, as so often, they were simply very effective surrogates for the male candidate. It is debatable if this positions them for a future run or dooms them to the supporting cast. There are others, of course, such as newly elected Sen. Kay Hagan (who blasted Dole out of the Senate), who could go the Obama route and leapfrog all those who have been patiently plodding their way to the top job.

Even Democratic women face redoubtable challenges: they make up less than a quarter of their party's members of Congress, and even fewer are Governors. Half the states have never elected a woman Senator, and half the states have never elected a woman Governor. The slow progress of women in American politics is best illustrated by the country's dismal 69th place ranking in the percentage of women in national legislatures. This standing has deteriorated in each of the last ten years as women have gained more power in predictable countries such as Sweden or the Netherlands, but also in Latin America, Africa and Asia. These gloomy statistics are a powerful reflection of the United States' plummeting civil rights leadership, Obama's election notwithstanding: the country is falling further behind others when it comes to a whole array of rights for women, gay people and other minorities. Dozens of countries from Vietnam to Angola and Argentina now elect more women than Americans do. Dozens of countries from South Africa to Belgium to Colombia offer more rights for gay people than America does. And of course, the poor, workers, children, religious minorities have all seen their rights eroded, both relatively and absolutely, in the United States in the past decade. That we can always point to a horrifying although dwindling number of countries where women are considered chattel (Saudi Arabia), gay people punished by death (Nigeria), and children enslaved (Cambodia) does not mean the United States is not also failing to progress fast enough in these respects.

Last year's Democratic presidential primary was briefly the stage of a debate over whether sexism or racism were bigger impediments to election. The question is artificial, meaningless and impossible to answer. Artificial because it benefited neither of the leading candidates, but it did help their competitors, as was evidenced when the Republican nominee tried to wedge the issue of sexism between Democratic women and their male nominee. Meaningless because racism and sexism are hardly mutually exclusive. And impossible to answer because the statistical and empirical data can be manipulated to provide whatever answer is required. Leaving that pointless discussion aside, the bottom line remains: women have been shut out of the presidency in the many decades since they became enfranchised.

Among the handful of women who are nonetheless hopeful for a shot at the presidency, even in the long run, Janet Napolitano should be near the top. She is breaking ground in Obama's cabinet by taking over the Department of Homeland Security, a fairly recent creation that has been the preserve of men. Napolitano is a former US Attorney and the current Governor of Arizona, where she has, by all accounts, done a formidable job. She could surely be presidential material at some point. That, however, would require her to break yet more ground, as a single woman. After all, as Laura Bush said of Condolleeza Rice: she isn't interested in being president "because she is single."

Bob Cesca: The Most Ridiculous Political Quote of 2008

2008-12-31T13:49:56Z

Reviewing the constant variety of political and cable news hackery from a year that was so thoroughly clogged with incredibly ridiculous performances that we barely avoided a massive eruption of liquid hot crazy, we can easily find more than a few quotes that were almost totally overlooked, along with too many hacks, hoopleheads and outright doofs who weren't given a full turn at the flogging pole.

For instance, I'm hoping that in 2009 TIME blogger and MSNBC contributor Mark Halperin is finally recognized as not just another very serious haircut amongst a media gaggle of masturbation-addicted cardboard standees, but in fact as a Drudge-caliber hackery-factory providing the establishment media with absolutely the most unforgivably ridiculous pearls of conventional wisdom in an already super-stupid media world.

Out of all of the various lists documenting the year's worst this or that, I haven't spotted any of Halperin's greatest hits for some reason. His insufferably decrepit posts include the daily "Five Important People Who Aren't Obama" lists which appear to be five totally random names blurted out in numerical order without any explanation or insight -- ostensibly proving that he can both spell and count. The parasitic hackery twin to his "Halperin's Take" posts are his PageCast videos in which he tells us about news events, and that we should "watch out for them." For example: Congress! Watch to see what happens with it and what the congressional members say in Congress.

Yeah... and...? This is sort of like a doctor telling you, "You have a thing. Watch to see what happens. Bye!" Naturally there isn't anything after the "and..." because it would ruin the illusion that Halperin knows something.

He's also famously responsible for hands-down the most ridiculous establishment media blog post from all of 2008: "Things McCain can do when running against Obama that Clinton has been unable to do well or at all." In it, he lists a series of recommendations to the McCain campaign for how it could defeat the Obama campaign in the general election, including these very serious tips:

6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama.

7. Exploit Michelle Obama's mistakes and address her controversial remarks with unrestricted censure.

Remember, this is TIME. Not some fringe far-right conspiracy blog -- wait, or maybe it is. Either way, how else do you explain the kicker:

11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama's unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

In other words, embrace the false whisper campaign rumors labeling then-Senator Obama as a one-man terrorist sleeper cell. Later, after Media Matters and others called him out, Halperin updated this post with the truly lame excuse: "This is analysis of what is likely to happen, not advice or endorsement." Uh-huh. So "things McCain can do" isn't advice? Halperin also deleted an entire paragraph which indicated advice to McCain's staff and replaced it with two backpedaling paragraphs -- neither of which was noted as a correction or update.

But Halperin aside, there was one jaw-droppingly ridiculous quote that went almost entirely overlooked, perhaps because it was one of seemingly hundreds of nincompoopish displays of nincompoopery -- all of which were unforgivingly compressed into a dense, rapid-fire three months of political insanity.

This means only one thing. The quote comes from Governor Sarah Palin.

As I'm sure you'll recall, Sarah Palin had trouble with things like "facts" -- specifically and most shamefully, she had no idea what the Vice President of the United States does. I mean, no clue. Which is fine, I suppose, unless you're actually running to become, you know, the vice president. On several public occasions (I can't even imagine the verbal fumbling during private rehearsals), she was specifically asked to describe the job and I'm reasonably certain she never once got it right. For example:

...a Vice President has a really great job, because no only are they there to support the President agenda, they're like a team member, the team mate to that President. But also, they're in charge of the United States Senate, so if they want to they can really get in there with the Senators and make a lot of good policy changes that will make life better for Brandon and his family and his classroom. And it's a great job and I look forward to having that job.

Yeah, it sounds like a great job, if she had been running for Senate Majority Leader, that is.

And during the vice presidential debate -- the vice presidential debate! -- she was asked to describe the role of the vice president, and this was one of her two answers:

Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president's agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we'll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation.

What about that agenda and there also? Cooperative with the president's... whah? And yet the post-debate conventional wisdom was that she somehow nailed it. Mark Halperin gave her a "B" and wrote: "...she succeeded enormously. She had a solid 90 minutes of rapid, confident discourse... didn't leave Tina Fey much to work with."

Yeah, she couldn't accurately or coherently describe the job for which she was campaigning, but since she didn't choke on her own tongue, well then, great success! And as for Tina Fey? The vice presidential debate sketch was probably the funniest of the year. Good call, Halperin.

But that wasn't the worst of it. Here now, The Most Ridiculous Political Quote of the Year, courtesy of Sarah Palin on October 4, 2008:

Q: One of the things you talked about last night was the flexibility the vice president has--
PALIN: Yeah.

Q: --Uh. What did you mean by that?

PALIN: Uh. That thankfully our founders were wise enough to say we have this position and it's constitutional -- vice president will be able to be not only the position flexible, but it's gonna be those other duties as assigned by the president. A simple thing.

That last sort-of sentence -- "a simple thing" -- was actually correct, believe it or not. The vice president's job description, according to the Constitution, is an extraordinarily simple thing. Which, consequently, makes it unbelievably difficult to butcher. Like Sarah Palin did. Multiple times. But in this instance, on the FOX News Channel with Carl Cameron, she couldn't even form actual sentences using words that line up to form a coherent thought. In fact, I would love to see the sentence structure for "vice president will be able to be not only the position flexible." Position flexible?

That she wasn't summarily laughed off of the national stage right then and there is a testament to the forgiveness of horny middle-aged white Republican men. Yes, in 2008 the Republicans nominated for vice president a person who on multiple occasions couldn't accurately say: The vice president breaks ties in the Senate, and succeeds the president if he or she is killed or incapacitated. Instead we got something about "position flexible" and a lot of winking.

And she's already being championed as a favorite for the Senate in 2010 -- not to mention as a serious contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. This naturally means we'll get to hear more from Sarah Palin for many years to come as a de facto leader of the Republican Party. We can only hope that she'll be asked to describe these jobs many, many times along the way.

Happy New Year Position Flexible There Also!

BobCesca.com

Order my book: One Nation Under Fear, with a foreword by Arianna Huffington. Also available in stores.