There are, perhaps, only a few jobs for which you truly cannot prepare, but just leap in and do.

One of those jobs has to be President of the United States. No matter how much you think you've learned--be it in the Senate like Barack Obama, or as the governor of a state, like George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, or even as Vice President, like George HW Bush and Lyndon Johnson--the American presidency is a whole other animal. Often insulated and isolated from those who put you in office, the American president must juggle political, economic, foreign, security and partisan interests to lead the Executive Branch--and the free world--to the best of their abilities.

Obviously, some presidencies are more successful than others.

As journalists assigned to cover the White House, Craig Crawford of CQ Politics and Helen Thomas of the Hearst News Syndicate, together share decades of observing from the White House Press Room. They have watched and noted each success and each blunder. Helen Thomas has covered more presidents than any other present journalist, starting with JFK in 1960, but her career really began in 1945 during Roosevelt's administration. Craig Crawford, who actually interned as a college student in Jimmy Carter's press office, began covering presidential campaigns in 1988 with Ronald Reagan. So there's no shortage of presidential triumphs and stumbles between them, and it is that experience they have collated to create Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do, where they share the attributes of successful presidencies by looking at the choices made by predecessors: from Clinton's prickly and sometimes overly hostile handling of the press to JFK's deft deflectons with humor, from Johnson's brave stance on civil rights, knowing the political costs to him and his party to Reagan's Cold War fight, which alienated him with his conservative base when he began negotiating nuclear disarmament with Gorbachev.

Every presidency is marked with mistakes as the president navigates this unbelievably difficult and occasionally thankless job, but Helen and Craig have listed some basic principles which, if followed, should make any future president successful, such as finding trustworthy advisers, remembering they are not above the law, be honest, have the courage to do the hard thing and keep a clear vision.

I'm happy to have Craig Crawford here with us today to discuss his book, Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do. Please join us to chat on what makes for a successful American presidency.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 1611

PLAYS: 878

(Dr. Walter Heller - tried to save Reagan from himself - didn't work)

With word about the latest recession being "over", I was reminded about the last time we had a deep recession in the 1980s and how we all became familiar with the phrases "Reaganomics", Supply-Side and Voodoo-Economics.

Back in the 80s there was 10% unemployment (on paper) and it felt like it lasted forever. Former Kennedy and Johnson Economic adviser Dr. Walter Heller had a few observations to make when he was interviewed on Face The Nation in 1982.

Dr. Walter Heller: “Had the Carter program, and unfortunately it was rather forgettable, but had the Carter program been enacted, we would be in much better shape today. People seem to forget that Carter, in October of the last year of his presidency proposed a tax program that made just excellent sense. It was much smaller than the President’s program, and it concentrated more of its tax cuts, and this is what people forget, on the supply side, so to speak, on true stimulus of government investment. Instead of having enormous deficits that scare the public and Wall Street, we would have had much more moderate deficits, we’d be much better off today.”

Perhaps hindsight is 20/20 but it's interesting to speculate what might have happened had the Carter program been enacted.

But no, The Great Communicator had a better idea . . or so he said.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (874)

PLAYS: (3051)

When news came that Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, I looked at my husband and said, "just watch, the wingnuts will lose it over this." And sure enough, I was right. But what threw me for a loop was how nakedly partisan CBS's Chip Reid was in attacking Obama for having the audacity to win the Nobel Prize, something even the great St. Ronnie didn't do:

REID: I mean, most Democrats have praised it, and most Republicans have said, you have got to be kidding me -- Ronald Reagan didn't get one, but Barack Obama, nominated 12 days after he was sworn in, gets a Nobel Peace Prize. And the fear among some, even some Democrats, is that this is going to widen the partisan divide and make things even more difficult to accomplish on every front.

Really? Even more difficult than reflexively fighting *every* *single* Obama agenda item now? How is that possible?

It's touching, isn't it, to hear Chip Reid's concern that this will widen the partisan divide? After all, past winners have included Al Gore and Jimmy Carter...obviously the Nobel committee loves them some Democrats.

But here's the thing that all these insulated Beltway Villagers continually forget: Outside of DC, life is more than Republican vs. Democrat, something that Gibbs gently tries to suggest to Reid:

GIBBS: I'll leave the pundicizing to the pundits. The notion that somehow this is going to more greatly divide America, you know, I think it should be mandatory that pundits spend a certain amount of their days each year outside of the friendly confines of the viewership of the Washington, D.C., media market.

Of course, that goes right over Reid's head. For Reid, this is all about dismissing the Nobel committee -- in Norway, mind you, and not subject to the mind-numbing partisan reduction that Reid seems to breathe as oxygen -- as some liberal organization. He just can't get his head wrapped around the fact the Ronald Reagan -- the man who ended the Cold War! -- was never awarded the Peace Prize. As my friend, Steve Benen says:

A few thoughts here. First, when White House correspondents from major news outlets start sounding like members of Grover Norquist's "We Love Reagan" fan club, it's not a positive development.

Second, the notion that Reagan "helped bring the Cold War to an end" is, at best, a dubious proposition.

Actually, I think Chip Reid is unintentionally letting us into his psyche more than he realizes. He's continually been a go-to guy for Republican talking points for years. He routinely criticizes Democrats for things he lets pass by Republicans and uncritically passes on Republican attacks without context or fact-checking. And here again, he mouths the GOP mentality.

But think about it: if the Nobel Peace Prize only supports liberal causes, isn't Chip Reid admitting that peace is liberal? Then we need never look to conservatives again, because they will never bring peace. Right, Chip?

Transcript below the fold

Continue reading »

When I woke up and opened my email box, I have to admit I first thought it was some sort of Onion spoof – Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize? Oh c’mon, where’s the punchline? But less than a half a cup of coffee later, I realized, bloody hell, this actually has happened!

Barack Obama, with less than a year in office, has won the Nobel Peace Prize, only the fourth US president to win it, after Teddy Roosevelt (1906), Woodrow Wilson (1919), and Jimmy Carter (2002), and the first sitting president since Wilson. Ostensibly, Obama has won it for "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples,” and specifically in recognition of his efforts to work toward a nuclear weapons-free world…

Well, obviously, they had to give it to him for a specific reason, and there’s certainly a lot of validity in the ones the Norwegian Nobel Committee decided on. But the Nobel Prize has always been political, which leaves it open to many who have complained about certain recipients in the past – Yasser Arafat and Henry Kissinger probably the most notable of controversial winners. However, Arafat’s and Kissinger’s detractors were their already sworn enemies, primarily Israel, so no real surprise there. But the instant denunciation of Obama’s worthiness has been, astonishingly enough, our own people. Our fellow Americans. Citizens of the United States who should be thrilled to bits Obama has won this incredible distinction and at a time when it is so crucial for America’s battered standing in the world community.

Larisa Alexandrovna, in her blog article, “Republicanistan - A country of its own” gives a great run-down on the scale of venomous spewing from the right, from Malkin’s spittle flecked incoherence to Limbaugh’s OxyContin and Viagra fuelled rage, along with all those who cheered when Chicago lost the Olympics, who have openly expressed the hope Obama’s policies will fail, regardless of how much that would hurt the country, those flag-waving, gun-toting patriots who have called for a military coup – a military coup! – to oust a legitimate and democratically elected leader of our own country. They must destroy the village to save the village. Their war on Obama takes no prisoners, even if the entire country itself should end up as a fatality.

Yet I would suggest that is it exactly these people – yes, these hate-mongering, stark raving loony-toon seething cabal of gibbering wingnuts at the head of the marching moronic army of stoopid peepul – who are directly responsible for Obama’s surprising win.

Continue reading »

From The Colbert Report:

Prevent your valid criticisms of Barack Obama from being unfairly associated with racism by putting on a little blackwashing.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1136)

PLAYS: (1151)

I always find myself uttering low mordant chuckles whenever Karl Rove comes on the teevee (always Fox) to complain about how mean and nasty those Democrats are.

And as you would expect, he is appalled that not just Jimmy Carter but Bill Clinton as well happen to believe that there is a powerful racial element coursing through the more venomous opposition to President Obama's efforts to obtain health-care reform. Or so he told Sean Hannity last night:

Rove: Look his [Clinton's] comment was like Jimmy Carter -- irrational and unbelievably partisan. This is the kind of stuff that he said routinely during the 1990s about his political opponents, denigrating them personally, questioning their motivations.

Yes, that was coming from the mouth of Karl Rove. And not even a whisper of irony.

Rove: Why can't he just accept the fact that people disagree with President Obama's health care plan as they disagreed with his health care plan, because they represent a spirit of liberalism and a government control and government domination of a very personal decision that ought to be left between a doctor and his patient as to the decision for our health.

Problem is, there is in fact data out there that strongly suggests there's a powerful connection between opposition to health-care reform and voters with racist attitudes about Obama. In other words, that Carter and Clinton are right, and Karl Rove and the entire Fox network are wrong.

Steven Livingston at the Washington Post has more:

As evidence of the link between health care and racial attitudes, we analyzed survey data gathered in late 2008. The survey asked people whether they favored a government run health insurance plan, a system like we have now, or something in between. It also asked four questions about how people feel about blacks.

Taken together the four items form a measure of what scholars call racial resentment. We find an extraordinarily strong correlation between racial resentment of blacks and opposition to health care reform.

Among whites with above average racial resentment, only 19 percent favored fundamental health care reforms and 57 percent favored the present system. Among those who have below average racial resentment, more than twice as many (45 percent) favored government run health care and less than half as many (25 percent) favored the status quo.

No such relationship between racial attitudes and opinions on health care existed in the mid-1990s during the Clinton effort.

It would be silly to assert that all, or even most, opposition to President Obama, including his plans for health care reform, is motivated by the color of his skin. But our research suggests that a key to understanding people's feelings about partisan politics runs far deeper than the mere pros and cons of actual policy proposals. It is also about a collision of worldviews.

This is correlative, of course; the data doesn't indicate a cause-effect relationship. Rather, as Levingston explains, both arise out of a right-wing authoritarian worldview.

Continue reading »

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1169)

PLAYS: (1015)

The only thing shameful here is CNN pushing another "can't we all just get along" story and lumping Kanye West, Serena Williams and Rep. Joe Wilson into the same basket, as though all of these things are equal. See look everybody. There are some black people who behaved badly this week too. That and giving Lanny Davis a format to push his Civility Project. Isn't that special? It seems Lanny just wants everyone to get along and act nicely to each other. Heaven forbid we can't have any of that "in-civil" truth telling by the likes of Jimmy Carter.

Maybe he should heed some of his own advice. I think I just found where that "great conservative thinker" George Will got his talking point on This Week. Lanny Davis--Liberal McCarthyism: Bigotry and hate aren't just for right-wingers anymore. From back in 2006 when Lanny was telling all of the dirty f#$%ing hippies to leave poor Joe Lie-berman alone.

My brief and unhappy experience with the hate and vitriol of bloggers on the liberal side of the aisle comes from the last several months I spent campaigning for a longtime friend, Joe Lieberman.

This kind of scary hatred, my dad used to tell me, comes only from the right wing--in his day from people such as the late Sen. Joseph McCarthy, with his tirades against "communists and their fellow travelers." The word "McCarthyism" became a red flag for liberals, signifying the far right's fascistic tactics of labeling anyone a "communist" or "socialist" who favored an active federal government to help the middle class and the poor, and to level the playing field.

I came to believe that we liberals couldn't possibly be so intolerant and hateful, because our ideology was famous for ACLU-type commitments to free speech, dissent and, especially, tolerance for those who differed with us. And in recent years--with the deadly combination of sanctimony and vitriol displayed by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage--I held on to the view that the left was inherently more tolerant and less hateful than the right.

Yes... he actually wrote that. Some things never change, including Lanny Davis.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

The Edge of the American West: Conservatives are outraged over an actual outrage? Color me impressed

t r u t h o u t: Why haven't any Wall Street tycoons been sent to the slammer?

St. Louis Pushes Back: Why Jimmy Carter was right: Popular wingnut blogger links to race-baiting video from white supremacist, anti-Semitic group

Where’s the Outrage?: Speaking with real patients about real end-of-life issues is incredibly difficult.

The Roger Ailes we like

43-Ideas-Per-Minute: Far right's favorite prostitute

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1179)

PLAYS: (1427)

George Will thinks that daring to point out the racism at these tea parties amounts to "liberals' McCarthyism. If anyone's playing the role of Joe McCarthy, it's Glenn Beck, not "liberals" who are pointing out the racist element to these protests, and all the "table pounding" on your part isn't going to change that.

CARTER: An overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man.

BECK: We have a former president who says, if you’re opposed to the president’s health care, you’re a racist.

LIMBAUGH: The left looks at everything through a racial prism. I’m just -- I’m just -- hey, they hit us, we hit back twice as hard.

PELOSI: In the late ‘70s in San Francisco, this kind of -- of rhetoric was very frightening. And it gave -- it created a climate in which we -- violence took place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: The debate not coming down as President Obama called for. Let me bring the roundtable back in. I’m joined by George Will, Peggy Noonan, Bob Reich, Ed Gillespie, and Donna Brazile.

And, George, as we -- as we get to this, let me show two magazine covers from this week. First, Time magazine, Glenn Beck, mad man, and the angry style of American politics. And then in the New York magazine coming out tomorrow, there’s the tattooed face of Barack Obama , big headline, “Hate.”

We -- we heard President Obama say he thinks that a lot of anti- government feeling, the idea that the government can’t do anything right, is behind all this. What’s your theory?

WILL: The president’s right about that. What we’re hearing is the liberals’ McCarthyism, which is, when in doubt, blame people for racism. Litigators have an old argument: When the law’s on your side, argue the law. When the facts are on your side, argue the facts. When neither’s on your side, pound the table. This amounts to pounding the table.

I have yet to see evidence, is there -- does evidence even intrude in this conversation? Is there any evidence that these people are racists? I think not.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Donna?

BRAZILE: Well, George, there’s some evidence that -- not an overwhelming amount of evidence -- that some of -- a small fringe of this movement, clearly there’s some racism. And you don’t have to know the motives of someone’s heart to understand when you see signs, incendiary signs that basically compares him to a witch doctor, an African heathen. We know racism; we don’t have to be told or taught that. That -- that much we do know.

There’s a culture of extremism that has gained mainstream acceptance. And I think the president is absolutely right. When you see it, you have to call it. You shouldn’t duck it. But, on the other hand, you shouldn’t exaggerate it.

This is why we need responsible leaders to denounce it, but more importantly, we need to find a way to have an honest and good dialogue whenever race is a topic so that the president of the United States, which is very busy, does not have to have beer summits all the time.

Nope, no racism here! That's the conclusion of the Village bobbleheads, who in the past 24 hours solemnly nodded their heads as other Villagers said they were shocked, shocked that anyone thinks racism plays a part in the attacks on Obama. After all, didn't a lot of those same people vote for him?

Then they showed the racist signs from the Tea Party rally and said it was a very small minority, this is all about the policies.

And you know, they're actually right - just not in the way they mean.

Because all the powerful right-wing interests in this country really want is an opening, however small. It is all about the policies: Namely, anything that benefits the general population, and not them. The right wing has always been focused on their core mission: Cheap, disposable labor with no legal protections. (Ideally, living in complete insecurity and grateful for whatever crumbs they get.)

The tools they choose to use in their fight are almost incidental to the goal.

Remember, these are the same people who impeached the last Democratic president over his sex life. These are also the same people who asserted Hillary Clinton was a lesbian who was also having an affair with Vince Foster, who by the way, she had killed.

The vast right-wing conspiracy specializes in pushing emotional buttons. They say the most outrageous things they can manufacture, then sit back and watch the fun.

Right now, they're leaning on the race button for all it's worth - because it works. Because it splits us apart, and a split electorate is a lot easier to manipulate.

And here's how liberals add to the divide: "We don't want those people in our party! We don't want those stupid racists!"

Go ahead, keep telling yourself that. It's political suicide, but you keep yourself warm with all that righteous indignation.

I agree with Howard Dean: The guys with the gun racks in the pickup trucks are part of our natural constituency. They have more in common with the inner-city poor than they do with the boys on Townhall.com.

They're economically oppressed and badly served by their country. They often live in states with minimal education standards and little to offer in terms of upward mobility except the military. They work in mines, factories and fields until the day they drop, and no one gives a damn.

At some point (usually via talk radio), poisonous ideas worm their way into their brains. In classic political sleight of hand, their attention is directed "over there," where those brown people on welfare and all those got-dam illegal immigrants gather, sucking up all the opportunities.

And no matter how enthusiastically the white working-class poor cooperate with the right-wing master plan, no matter how tightly they embrace the hate, I still believe they're ultimately economic roadkill run over by the right wing, corporate machine - just like everyone else.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (95)

PLAYS: (235)

Behold the cast of Morning Joe in full tizzy mode because Jimmy Carter dared to state the obvious about the not too thinly veiled racism behind the right wingers protesting President Obama at these Tea Bag protests, and with Joe Wilson's disrespectful outburst on the House floor calling him a liar.

From Media Matters who has more on Joe Scarborough and friends from the same show--Conservatives express outrage about charges that their attacks on Obama are racist.

A bit later Michael Eric Dyson joined the show and unlike Jonathan Capehart, actually tried to beat back some of Scarborough's nonsense. Joe apparently doesn't think that Rush Limbaugh has ever made any racist remarks.

Note to Eric Dyson. If Scar and Mika follow through and have you back on the show some time soon to talk about this some more, go get the mile long list of racist crap that's come out of Limbaugh's mouth that Media Matters has documented and have the list in front of you to read off to them the next time they have you on. Facts and actual quotations from Boss Limbaugh are not their friends.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (96)

PLAYS: (246)

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (90)

PLAYS: (179)

Michael Steele seems to have a problem recognizing racism. Steele does the apples to oranges game and tries to compare what was done to President Bush when those silly lefties were calling him names for dropping bombs on a bunch of people's heads that were never a threat to the United States and lying to the country about that non-existent threat, to what's going on now with President Obama.

Steele says that the "adults in the room need to step up, and I think the adults are myself and President Obama, two African American men at the top of the political structure of this country who can say with some degree of experience and clarity that this is not the context in which we need to have a debate on health care or any issue facing America".

Michael Steele knows full well that President Obama cannot say what Jimmy Carter just said because if he did, the wingnuts would go into full attack mode just as they are right now with President Carter. And of course this is not the context that we need to be having a debate on health care. It is the context the GOP wants us to be having a debate on to "blacken" up President Obama or they wouldn't have put someone with a track record like Joe Wilson up to his stunt on the House floor during President Obama's address to Congress.

Mock, Paper, Scissors: Tengrain Presents the End of the Recession!

WetMachine: Benchmarks and the Broadband Ecology

Rawrahs: Thank you, Jimmy Carter

Susie Bright's Journal (not work-safe): Socialist is the new Black. And while we're doing the not-work-safe stuff, Alabama is still outlawing the sex toys. I'm so outta there forever.

Wonkette: Waitaminit, Judge: 'Saying something is so, does not make it so?' There goes the modern Conservative Movement.

BG filling in today and tomorrow for Mike, who's jamming.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1427)

PLAYS: (1169)

Jimmy Carter's accurate remarks observing the racial animus that is the bedrock of a good deal of the outrageous animosity directed at President Obama have right-wingers like Sean Hannity all in tizzy.

The two of them promptly commiserated on Hannity's Fox News show last night about how awful it was for Carter to bring up the issue:

Gingrich: Well, it first of all is amazing to me that when the Left hated George W. Bush, when they booed him during the State of the Union, when MoveOn.org attacked him relentlessly, when Democrats used vicious language, somehow it wasn't inappropriate.

Now, I don't know if Jimmy Carter thinks there was racism involved in disliking a white president, but I would say that the amount of anger, hostility, and nastiness on the Left against George W. Bush was vastly greater than anything that's happened with President Obama.

OK, done laughing? I know you all got a good belly laugh outta that one. Because we all remember what it was like trying to speak up about Bush, especially after 9/11. Merely criticizing the man brought instant charges of treason.

Some three years after the election, -- and not a mere 10 months -- Bush's defenders did start whining about those awful, mean Bush haters. According to Rich Lowry, the meanies were out there:

Bush is routinely portrayed as a Nazi on left-wing Web sites, which post pictures of Bush with a Hitler mustache and sell T-shirts with Bush's name spelled with a swastika. The anti-war Web site Takebackthemedia.com features a Flash movie complaining that "the media will not tell you of the Bush family Nazi association" and theorizing that in order "to offset their reputation as World War II traitors, former President Bush joined the U.S. Navy as a pilot." (Clever, those Bushes.)

The rest of the piece is devoted to similar examples of Bush-hatred. All of which, as you can see, involved a handful of fringe writers on obscure sites.

Unlike the frothing hatred -- and outright extremist wingnuttery -- we see demonstrated daily by major "news" anchors on cable TV like Glenn Beck and Lou Dobbs.

Moreover, as I noted back then, the animus directed at Bush throughout his inept tenure still paled in comparison to the vicious bile directed at Bill Clinton by the likes of Newt Gingrich and his crowd.

Bob Somerby similarly tore apart both Lowry and Byron York for peddling fake facts in the process of claiming an equivalency between Bush-hatred and Clinton-hatred.

There was, in fact, a significant difference between Bush-haters' reasons for hating Bush and Clinton-haters' reasons, such as they were. The former tended to involve factual matters and real issues, even if they ultimately inspired extreme reactions -- Bush's dubious election, his invasion of Iraq, his handling of Katrina -- while the attacks on Clinton were predicated in many regards on right-wing fantasies: Clinton knocked off Vince Foster, he had dirty dealings in the Whitewater scandal, he was part of a drug-dealing operation out of Mena, he had a black "love child" lurking somewhere in his background, and he was part of a "New World Order" conspiracy to place America under a one-world government. All of these claims actually made their way into the mainstream press -- usually as right-wing talking points -- at the time, despite all of them having not a grain of truth to them.

The same is true of the attacks on Obama: he is alternately a "socialist," a "communist," or a "fascist" (depending on the mood of the talker, though they often seem to be used equivalently), not a real American citizen, actually a citizen of Kenya, and secretly a radical larding up his "czars" with fellow radicals with the intent of turning America into a communist state. He's going to take away your guns and lock conservatives up in concentration camps, after he convenes "death panels" to see who lives and who dies.

It's all a freaking fantasy cooked up in the paranoid fever swamps of the far right, and mainstream conservatives are wallowing right in. Newt "Sarah Palin was right" Gingrich included.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (1528)

PLAYS: (3782)

Following these remarks by Jimmy Carter...

"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man," Carter said. "I live in the South, and I've seen the South come a long way, and I've seen the rest of the country that share the South's attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African Americans."

...who does Anderson Cooper think deserves another spot on his show to weigh in on the subject of racism? Racist Tea Bagger Mark Williams of course! Who else could he have possibly had on besides Williams after that insightful commentary we just had from him on the previous show?

If you're as disgusted as I am with Cooper for bringing this guy back on you can weigh in at his blog, or contact CNN here.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »