At Thursday's White House press briefing Robert Gibbs took a question about Senator Kit Bond's (r) continuing temper tantrum over briefings concerning the underwear bomber. The White House is not curling up in the corner and saying, "Please. Don't. Hurt. Me." on this one:
....Q Senator Bond accused the White House of using JohnmBrennan for political purposes, saying that he was being -- doing the role, your role. This economic report --
MR. GIBBS: Let me just address that. Let's understand this: John Brennan has been working in counterterrorism for more than 25 years -- right? First as a CIA agent hired by President George W. Bush to work at the CIA, and then to stand up the National Counterterrorism Center. Okay? We asked him to stay on. I don't have the slightest idea what political party John Brennan is a member of. I've never had a political conversation with John. I know this: John is there each and every day working in his office to try to do everything he can to keep the American people safe.
And I would suggest, whether it's to Senator Bond or others on Capitol Hill, that these are decisions best left to people that have an understanding of counterterrorism, experience in counterterrorism and law enforcement, rather than to politicians on Capitol Hill.
Q But his specific accusation was that he was being used in a way that a press secretary is supposed to -- I mean, that he was enunciating Obama's policy.
MR. GIBBS: I think Kit Bond didn't -- I don't think Kit Bond liked to hear what he already knew, which was he'd been told that Abdulmutallab was in FBI custody after what happened on Christmas Day.
Now, I'll let you, Jonathan, ask Kit Bond whether he understands the protocols of how the FBI deals with suspects enough to understand that at that point it would have been obvious he would have been read his Miranda rights. I don't know whether Kit Bond was confused or whether he just doesn't want to admit the facts....
...And then we have Sally Quinn, the self-appointed arbiter of Washington's social scene. Since the White House scandal story broke in mid-January, Quinn has gabbed on the networks and cable channels, passing judgment on the president and hissing at first lady Hillary Rodman Clinton.
"If you consider the life of Bill Clinton," she said on "60 Minutes," "whenever he leaves the White House, he's going to get on a plane, and where is he going to go?"
"What do you mean?" a baffled Mike Wallace asked.
"Well, he -- he doesn't even have a home," she sniffed. "I mean, when you think about it, he's homeless. I mean, they've lived in sort of government properties all their lives..."
"...and when we die we'll be buried in a Pullman grave and go to a Pullman hell."
"...Washington has its own version of a celebrity-driven culture, but these people are unattractive and lack charisma so what makes them celebrities is their substance," says Eli Attie, a former White House speech writer in the Clinton administration and now a writer and producer for "House," the Fox television show. "If you drain that from the interaction, it doesn't have a point any more. You just have a photo of you and the vice president, and anyone willing to give $500 to the Democratic party and wait three hours on a tarmac in Kansas City can have that..."
Hey, it was the President, I didn't give $500 to the Democratic Party, I was taking the pictures, and it was in St. Louis. And yes, it was fun, so I'll take it.
As for the inside the beltway cocktail weenie circuit, feh, I'd rather have a brew and barbecue at Gates with friends.
After President Obama's address to the joint session of Congress last night the White House hosted a blogger conference call with Dan Pfeiffer, the Deputy Communications Director. He made a short opening statement then took questions for about twenty minutes. Blue Girl and I were in on the call (I'm not certain if any of the rest of the clan around here dialed in). Bloggers from Kos, MyDD, Firedoglake, and other places in blogtopia (yes, skippy coined the phrase!) also participated.
Dan Pfeiffer, White House Deputy Communications Director: ...I assume you all just got a chance to watch the President's speech, or at least had a chance to read it. Just a little top line stuff here. We feel very good about the speech and think it accomplished many of our goals tonight. Primarily to communicate to the American people what health reform is and what it isn't, and to make a compelling case for why we need to act now. Getting into this debate we knew, we were comforted by the fact that according to some polls three in four Americans still believe, three in four Americans believe that we need to reform the health and [garbled] we need to do it now. There was clearly a lot of confusion about what health reform meant. That confusion was a product of a [garbled] process that, that did not have one specific proposal, of a lot of lies and distortions that gained traction over the course of the summer. And so the President sought to clear up a lot of that confusion. We believe he was successful in that and have sort of regained the momentum here to proceed forward. And with that I will take any and all questions folks may have....
This afternoon the White House held a blogger conference call with John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, and Dr. Richard Besser, Director of Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response at the CDC, in concert with the H1N1 Flu Preparedness Summit. "...Secretaries Kathleen Sebelius (HHS), Janet Napolitano (DHS), and Arne Duncan (ED), along with Homeland Security Advisor John Brennan, hosted [the all day event] ...with states to further prepare the nation for the possibility of a more severe outbreak of H1N1 flu in the fall..."
There is a comprehensive web site chock full of information at flu.gov. The conference call was to inform new media and promote information resources available to the public.
The transcript:
.... John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security:...This summit today is a critically important opportunity for us to let the American people know that H1N1 is something that we're going to be dealing with over the coming months. We went through the, the spring experience. We learned a lot from that, but there's still a lot to be done. And so this preparedness summit is the, the opportunity for the government to work with state and local officials, public health officials, and the American public through flu, www.flu.gov to make sure that people understand what the status of this influenza is and what the government is doing to address it. As we talked in the summit today, this is a dynamic situation. There's a lot that is unknown about the, the future of, progression, of the, the disease. And what we're going to have to do is make sure that we're able to adapt quickly to the evolving situation in the coming months. Which is a combination of making sure that we're able to conduct the surveillance activities, as far as watching its progression in the southern hemisphere, carrying out those mitigation measures to minimize the impact, as well as to move forward with a vaccination program which is being pursued at this point and will be launched if a safe and effective vaccine can be found. And then, also, to make sure that we have regular communication with the, the American people. It's one of the things that President Obama has said directly to me on many occasions - that the safety and health of the American people is foremost on his mind. And he wants to make sure that we're doing everything possible to prepare for that. And so given that we have to do a lot within the coming months today's summit brought together notable specialists throughout the fields that are related to following the influenza strain. And so what we're trying to do is make sure that this is going to be a team effort as we go forward in the coming months. And with that I turn it over to Dr. Besser.
Dr. Richard Besser, Director of Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response at the CDC: Thanks very much. As we've been saying all spring, there's, there's a lot of uncertainty when there's a new infectious disease. And we saw with H1N1 rapid spread after introduction in, in the United States. And what we were saying at that time is that we needed to track this virus as it spread through the southern hemisphere and plan for the fall because of uncertainty, because of our inability to predict what will take place in this country when, when, when the fall comes. This meeting today has been a tremendous opportunity to pull, pull together people from a variety of sectors. So we have public health here, we have governmental, we have folks from the Department of Education , Homeland Security - many different groups that have to work together to plan for what could take place in, in the fall. What we know now is that the virus is causing significant disease in the southern hemisphere. And that we need to be prepared for a variety of scenarios in, in this country - from a worst case to, to a, a milder case. And this effort today is really an attempt to encourage, inspire people across the country to step up and do that kind of intensive planning that will pay dividends in, in the fall. We know that every year seasonal flu will come. That's a, a certainty. And so in addition to, to dealing with, with the, the arrival of H1N1 we need to be planning for seasonal flu on top of that. And as we've said repeatedly seasonal flu causes on average thirty-six thousand deaths per year. There's shared responsibility, there's things that we need to do in government, there are things that need to be in, in schools and across communities, and there are things that individuals need to do. We're working hard on a vaccine, but at this point we don't know yet that there will be a, a vaccine that will be ready to go. But we have to do the planning that would be required should a vaccine, a safe, effective, and recommended vaccine be available. We're, we know there's uncertainty but we are very confident that with collaboration and coordination and, and communication we can really reduce the impact of, of this virus on our communities. And with that I think we're ready to open it for questions...
Congress and the President are working to enact health care reform legislation that protects what works about health care and fixes what is broken. Missourians know that inaction is not an option. Sky-rocketing health care costs are hurting families, forcing businesses to cut or drop health benefits, and straining state budgets. Millions are paying more for less. Families and businesses in Missouri deserve better.
MISSOURIANS CAN'T AFFORD THE STATUS QUO
* Roughly 3.5 million people in Missouri get health insurance on the job [1], where family premiums average $12,925, about the annual earning of a full-time minimum wage job.[2]
* Since 2000 alone, average family premiums have increased by 92 percent in Missouri.[3]
* Household budgets are strained by high costs: 20 percent of middle-income Missouri families spend more than 10 percent of their income on health care.[4]
* High costs block access to care: 15 percent of people in Missouri report not visiting a doctor due to high costs.[5]
* Missouri businesses and families shoulder a hidden health tax of roughly $400 per year on premiums as a direct result of subsidizing the costs of the uninsured.[6]
AFFORDABLE HEALTH COVERAGE IS INCREASINGLY OUT OF REACH IN MISSOURI
* 13 percent of people in Missouri are uninsured, and 72 percent of them are in families with at least one full-time worker.[7]
* The percent of Missourians with employer coverage is declining: from 69 to 61 percent between 2000 and 2007.[8]
* Much of the decline is among workers in small businesses. While small businesses make up 76 percent of Missouri businesses,[9] only 42 percent of them offered health coverage benefits in 2006 -- down 4 percent since 2000.[10]
* Choice of health insurance is limited in Missouri. WellPoint Inc. (BCBS) alone constitutes 68 percent of the health insurance market share in Missouri, with the top two insurance providers accounting for 79 percent.[11]
* Choice is even more limited for people with pre-existing conditions. In Missouri, premiums can vary based on demographic factors and health status, and coverage can exclude pre-existing conditions or even be denied completely.
MISSOURIANS NEED HIGHER QUALITY, GREATER VALUE, AND MORE PREVENTATIVE CARE
* The overall quality of care in Missouri is rated as "Average."[12]
* Preventative measures that could keep Missourians healthier and out of the hospital are deficient, leading to problems across the age spectrum:
o 14 percent of children in Missouri are obese.[13]
o 23 percent of women over the age of 50 in Missouri have not received a mammogram in the past two years.
o 39 percent of men over the age of 50 in Missouri have never had a colorectal cancer screening.
o 69 percent of adults over the age of 65 in Missouri have received a flu vaccine in the past year.[14]
The need for reform in Missouri and across the country is clear. Missouri families simply can't afford the status quo and deserve better. President Obama is committed to working with Congress to pass health reform this year that reduces costs for families, businesses and government; protects people's choice of doctors, hospitals and health plans; and assures affordable, quality health care for all Americans...
[emphasis in original][footnotes follow]
Very interesting. The contrast in content with Roy Blunt's plan is jarring.
...CHENEY: It's nice to know that you're still loved and are invited out in public sometimes.
The reason I've been speaking, and in effect what I've been doing is responding to press queries such as yours, is because I think the issues that are at stake here are so important. And, in effect, what we've seen happen with respect to the Obama administration as they came to power is they have moved to take down a lot of those policies we put in place that kept the nation safe for nearly eight years from a followon terrorist attack like 9/11. Dealing with prisoner interrogation, for example, or the terrorist surveillance program.
They campaigned against these policies across the country, and then they came in now, and they have tried, very hard, to undertake actions that I just fundamentally disagree with.
SCHIEFFER: Well, do you -- I mean, should we take that literally? You say that the administration has made this country more vulnerable to attacks here in the homeland.
CHENEY: That's my belief, based upon the fact, Bob, that we put in place those policies after 9/11. On the morning of 9/12, if you will, there was a great deal we didn't know about Al Qaida. There was the need to embark upon a new strategy with respect to treating this as a strategic threat to the United States. There was the possibility of Al Qaida terrorists in the midst of one of our own cities with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent.
It was a time of great concern, and we put in place some very good policies, and they worked, for eight years. Now we have an administration that's come to power that has been critical of the programs, but not only that, there's been talk about prosecuting the lawyers in the Justice Department who gave us the opinions that we operated in accordance with, or referring them to the Bar Association for disbarment or sanctions of some kind, or possibly cooperating with foreign governments that are interested in trying to prosecute American officials, those same officials who were responsible for defending this nation for the last eight years...
...Q Thanks, Robert. Yesterday former Vice President Cheney was again defending some of these harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, and something specific he said I wanted to see whether you agree with. He said that these tactics had "saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives." Do you think that's true or false?
MR. GIBBS: I don't have -- I don't know what he bases that off of, so I don't have any genuine reaction to it.
Q One thing presumably he bases it off would be the CIA memos he's been asking for. He says there are CIA memos that would show in fact that hundreds of thousands of lives have been saved and terror attacks have been prevented. I think it was April 26th you said it would take about three weeks to go through and decide. We're getting close to that --
MR. GIBBS: Let me check --
Q -- where do we stand?
MR. GIBBS: I'll check on where that is. I've been struck, Ed, in watching the former President and the former Vice President take markedly different views to their lives post their administration. I think many have. And I think the answer that he gave to the future of the Republican Party picking Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell was an illuminating answer about what you're going to see going forward.
Q How so?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I think that -- I think you've got a series of ideas and a series of thoughts that in many ways the last election was about and the last election rejected. I think going forward -- they're essentially going forward by looking backward. And if the Vice President believes that's a way of growing and expanding the Republican Party, then we're happy to leave him to those devices...
Senator Claire McCaskill (D) made a number of Twitter posts today from the "Fiscal Accountability Summit" at the White House:
Will tweet from White House this afternoon.Fiscal Accountability Summit. On panel re:procurement with McCain. Serious $ to be saved there. about 6 hours ago from web
Isn't "republican economic adviser" an oxymoron? Just asking.
Nothing sounds better than a President of my party talking seriously about deficit reduction.Good bye accounting gimicks that hide the prob about 3 hours ago from TinyTwitter
