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Joe Biden takes the partisan party route for his Super Bowl

President Obama went the bi-bipartisan route for his Super Bowl party -- both Democrats and Republicans and fans of the Arizona Cardinals and the other team.

However, Obama's vice president, Joe Biden, opted for the strictly partisan route for his elected guests -- Dems only invited to the vice presidential residence at the Naval Observatory Sunday afternoon.

Here's the list as released today by the White House and edited by The Ticket:

Sens. Tom "Look, I'm the Senior Senator Now" Carper of Delaware, Kent "I'm Not That Funny" Conrad of North Dakota, John "Daschle's Tax Mistakes Were Also Accidental" Kerry of Massachusetts, Bill "Sunshine" Nelson of Florida and Chuck "Where's the Microphone?" Schumer of New York.

Plus Biden's also having over some little people -- Reps. Robert "I'm Not Ed Rendell" Brady of Pennsylvania, Jim "Clinton's Still Not Talking to Me" Clyburn of South Carolina, Steny "I'm With Nancy" Hoyer of Maryland and John "How'd I Get in Here?" Larson of Connecticut. Oh, also Montana's Sen. Max "Gimme the Credit" Baucus.

Seems like a snackin'-good crowd of real funmeisters.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Ticket Notice: Sunday shows--Kyl, Durbin, McConnell, Frank

ABC This Week--Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.); Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.); Eric Schmidt, CEO Google; Frederick Smith, founder of FedEx. Panel: Martha Raddatz; David Sanger, New York Times; George Will; Bob Woodward, Washington Post.

CBS Face the Nation--Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.); Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.); David Brooks, New York Times.

CNN State of the Union With John King--Record job losses; economy in crisis: Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.); Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm (D-Mich.). Economic stimulus: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.); Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.). The economy; banker bonuses: ex-secretary of Labor Robert B. Reich; Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform. Super Bowl media coverage: Larry Fitzgerald Sr., Minnesota Spokesman Recorder; Howard Kurtz.

Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace--Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.); Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

NBC Meet the Press--The stimulus package; financial bailout; the economy: Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas); Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.); Erin Burnett ("Street Signs," "Squawk on the Street"); Steve Forbes, Forbes magazine; Mark Zandi, Moodys. Moderator: David Gregory.

--Andrew Malcolm

Members of all political parties can register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item. RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle now as well.

Photo credit: Dennis Cook / Associated Press

Yes, we can rip off President Obama's slogan and face

White House lawyers, apparently with few other pressing issues to press, are reportedly investigating ways of protecting use of President Obama's image all over the globe.

A whole lotta luck with that, guys.

Bloomberg News' Julianna Goldman quotes a White House spokeswoman: "Our lawyers are working on developing a policy that will protect the presidential image while being careful not to squelch the overwhelming enthusiasm that the public has for the president.”

As The Ticket documented here with copious photos around Inauguration Day, millions of articles bearing his image are already sold and worn virtually everywhere on the planet.

(See some sample photos by scrolling down or clicking on the "Read more" line below.)

Southwest Airlines had a "Yes You Can" ticket sale. Ben & Jerry's has a "Yes, Pecan" ice cream. And Ikea is pushing unassembled furniture out the door with its "Embrace Change" campaign.

Pepsi-Cola has the same old drink but a new symbol that looks remarkably similar to Obama's wiggly planet. Mark Silva reports over on the Swamp that some clean coal coalition is using the Great Change Agent's smiley face in one of its ads without White House complaint.

We haven't seen any ads yet showing the green Obama endorsing his favorite Honeywell thermostat that enables him to keep the Oval Office at Hawaiian beach temperatures. But J. Crew Group is advertising its clothes as worn by First Lady Michelle Obama, who's more concerned about some dollmaker naming a new line after daughters Malia and Sasha. Which the dollmaker said was just an amazing coincidence.

Here's another coincidence the new White House lawyers might not want to pursue. The widely used Spanish slogan -- "Si Se Puede" ("Yes We Can") -- was actually previously used by the recently reviled last president, George W. Bush, when he captured much of the Hispanic vote in his Texas gubernatorial campaigns.

So, who'll sue who?

-- Andrew Malcolm

Yes, you can register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item. RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle now as well.

Now, it's Tom Daschle who forgot to pay taxes--$128,000 worth

More simple, inadvertent, overlooked, accidental, good-faith tax mistakes in the would-be Obama Cabinet.

This time it's Tom Daschle, the former South Dakota senator and Senate Democratic leader who got knocked off by the Republicans in 2004, shown here demonstrating the size of his tax mistakes over three years.

President Obama had wanted Daschle to be secretary of Health and Human Services and also honcho the administration's signature healthcare reform out of the White House.

But it turns out Daschle failed to pay $128,000 in taxes over three years in private life when he was getting paid $1 million a year to offer advice to rich people. Good thing Daschle wasn't nominated to be secretary of the Treasury.

Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be for the top Treasury officer to also make simple, inadvertent, overlooked, accidental, good-faith, ultimately corrected tax mistakes?

Oh, wait that did happen. Timothy Geithner missed paying $43,000 in taxes and didn't repay some until the Obama transition team insisted. But because it was so accidental and he's so good with money and numbers, Geithner got confirmed anyway by his party's Senate. So now he's lecturing bonused bankers about their outrageous greed.

What do you suppose will happen to Daschle over the revelation, initially by ABC News, that he didn't pay nearly three times that much money in taxes? His confirmation hearing is yet to be scheduled, but committee records indicate he filed amended returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007 just 29 days ago and has so far paid more than $140,000 in back taxes and interest.

The White House issued a statement late Friday night saying, "The president has confidence" that  Daschle's the right guy for healthcare reform. Which isn't the question actually.

Daschle was way too busy to speak Friday, so he sent out his poor spokeswoman, Jenny Backus. She said: "Sen. Daschle is embarrassed and disappointed by these errors."

Well, as long as he's embarrassed, it's probably OK for Daschle to join the administration of the ex-senator from Illinois who's going to be transparent, not allow a single lobbyist anywhere near power and change the way things are done in Springfield.

No, uh, make that Washington.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of taxes, there aren't any to register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item. RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle now as well.

Photo: Ron Edmonds / Associated Press

What now for Michael Steele's new Republican Party?

In case you're one of the three or four American Republicans who have not yet congratulated Michael Steele for becoming the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, there's still a little time left.

As The Ticket noted earlier today, the 50-year-old former Maryland lieutenant governor became the first African American to head the party of the first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. It's always good to see more mustaches on public figures, a sign of great intelligence. Steele won 91-77 in a field of five at day's start. (See his video remarks below.)

Steele received congratulations from Govs. Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, Mitt Romney, a ton of party state chairpersons, Reps. Eric Cantor and John Boehner, Sen. Mitch McConnell, a bunch of other senators, all Republicans and, shockingly, the entire Republican Governors Assn., among many others.

Steele even got congratulations from someone named Tim Kaine, a Democrat governor who just became chairman of the Democratic National Committee to build up his Washington credentials most likely to become President Obama's VP running mate in 2012, when Joe Biden will be too old to stand next to the Boss and not say anything.

There are two main purposes to such perfunctory political messages and neither has anything to do with the verbal boilerplate used about honored, delighted, pleased, yada-yada. The first purpose of issuing such a public congratulations, when you can simply just text or phone the guy yourself, is to ride the principal's coattails and get your own name in the news.

The second, less recognized, is to sigh silently to yourself, "Thank God, he got the job, not me."

Steele is a moderate conservative, well-liked, someone who listens well, despite his D.C. upbringing. He was known as a team player and team builder during his own days on the 168-member RNC. And he'll need all that to play a major role in maintaining the party's still impressive fundraising while rebuilding its structure, technology and morale after significant defeats.

Importantly, he's a very experienced and savvy media player who can put a fresh voice to the party often associated with old white guys opposed to stuff. If he's active and aggressive in that area, he can displace the political pretenders and showmen who tend to fill the leadership vacuum left when both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney walked out the door. At least Ronald Reagan left behind an experienced sitting vice president to hold the White House for four more years.

Steele's also going to have to count on the GOP's 22 surviving governors for ideas and successes and candidates; the GOP always does better nationally with a chief executive as its candidate, not a congressman, with all due respect to ex-Rep. Lincoln.

Whatever your political affiliation, it's important for an enduring democracy to have at least two functioning political parties for balance and the generation of challenges and new ideas. In that sense even the most excited and partisan Democrats have a vital stake now in the successful cyclical cleansing and reconstruction of the other party. 

We published the complete text of Steele's brief remarks here this afternoon. They're worth reading, the story of an inner city kid who rose in the ranks of politics and knows firsthand about exclusion. One of his goals is to broaden the Republican Party's base beyond the small towns, suburbs and South. One striking thing he said was:

We're going to bring this party to every corner, every boardroom, every neighborhood, every community, and we're going to say to friend and foe alike, we want you to be a part of us, we want you to work with us, and for those of you who wish to obstruct, get ready to get knocked over.

An indication perhaps that Chairman Steele intends to live up to his name.

-- Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of mustaches, register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item? RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle as well.

Photo credit: Associated Press

Illinois Democrats begin erasing someone named Rod Blagojevich

(UPDATE below)

Just like China and the old Soviet Union, Illinois authorities began today erasing the presence of Gov. Rod Blagojevich from public property.

A day after the state legislature ousted the first governor in Illinois history (and the 8th in U.S. history), transportation crews began covering some 32 state tollway signs that say: "Rod R. Blagojevich, Governor." (See WGN-TV video below.)

They were erected five years ago at a cost of $480,000.

Those signs are everywhere in Democratic Illinois because the proud public servants of that super state and the fine, fine city of Chicago spare no expense in ensuring that the good citizens of that historic state, the honest taxpayers who work from morning until night to support their families and the dreams of their little children who deserve an excellent education and an extraordinary future, are able to exercise their fundamental rights as citizens of a free Illinois to be fully informed as to which esteemed elected official should get credit for the impressive tollway, airport, street improvement or other really good things that happen there.

Just in case those very same names should ever come up again on, say, a re-election ballot.

According to hallowed Illinois tradition, traffic accidents, construction projects and other annoyances or impediments for people actually trying to get somewhere in the Land of Lincoln are not deemed to require a sign taking responsiblity for the ungodly mess. Not until some months after things are cleaned up and looking good.

On the other hand, when a formerly fine public servant who's been deemed fit to serve several times by those same well-educated voters runs afoul of the party rarely or more likely of federal prosecutors, then their cult of personality must be erased immediately. And they never officially happened.

Just for fun, start counting the number of days until you hear another illinois Democratic politician, President Barack Obama, utter the name of his one-time friend and ally in public. Prediction: The final number will be right up there with number of dollars in the economic stimulus package.

The new Democratic governor, Patrick Quinn, was lieutenant governor and hadn't spoken to the Democratic ex-governor since mid-2007 because they belong to different factions of the one-party rule there. Quinn today called the state's constitutional officers, all of whom happen to be Democrats, to a meaningless symbolic meeting so that cameras could show state government getting back to meaningless symbolic meetings.

In one of the least memorable statements in recent political history, Quinn noted that God put eyes in the front of human heads so that people can look forward and that is what he intends to do, look forward. With his eyes. On the front of his head.

According to the rules of Illinois political scandals, Quinn referred to Blagojevich only as "my predecessor" and said he expected to hear merely silly "chirping" from the disgraced Democrat.

The tollway signs will cost about $15,000 each to cover up Blagojevich's unreasonably long name. (UPDATE: A tollway spokeswoman sends corrective word that total Illinois coverup cost is $15G's, not per sign.)

State officials just happened to have the coverup material handy. The work will be done largely at night, allegedly to minimize traffic disruptions. One day Rod is there protecting Illinois tollways. The next -- poof! -- he's gone. It's easier for everyone that way.

Governor Patrick Quinn's fine Irish name will not go up on the same signs.

At least not until things settle down and no one is looking.

--Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of signs of progress, register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item? RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle as well.

Photo credit: Associated Press

President XLIV allows a few Cardinal fans in for Super Bowl XLIII

Remember last winter New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson had a Super Bowl party at his home and ex-President Bill Clinton stopped by to ensure his former Cabinet member was gonna endorse Hillary for the party's presidential nomination?

And Clinton, who obviously looks very excited by the XLIInd game in this photo, left the shindig thinking the bearded Bill was onboard. Hardly anyone remembers who won that Super Bowl, except it wasn't New Mexico. So the NFL decided to have an other one this year.

That party didn't turn out that well. The two Bill buddies turned a bit bitter. And James "Richardson is a Judas" Carville wasn't all that happy either.

This year the new president isn't the other Bill's wife. It's Barack Obama.

As The Ticket reported the other day, the Great Change Agent is throwing caution to the wind, abandoning traditional nonpartisan political protocol about the best team winning and selling his allegiance to a team whose owner supported Obama's candidacy.

Wasn't there some Illinois governor recently ousted for allegedly offering to sell his office's services?

The prez needs to be careful here. Sure, Obama says he's fundamentally a Bears fan. But we're talking football. NFL football, which is more important than anything in this country except high school football, oh, and college football. The Super Bowl is a cultural icon. True, American car makers can't afford to advertise on the show this year.

But NBC has promised to have Obama for a game-day interview which, of course, is the main reason so many millions of Americans will be watching. Sure do hope Mr. Moving Forward follows form and trots out some brand-new, horribly depressing economic figures to flatten the escapist kickoff.

Listen for him to go on a bit more about the Cardinals and Kurt Warner being a great underdog story and how Kurt is close to Obama in age; not really, but it sounds nice. The Dems know it'll be years before they win Arizona, so throw the Cards under the Jeremiah Wright honorary bus and stick with Pennsylvania's Terrible Towels.

(Also, need we point out, Arizona is the home state of a certain Republican who had some negative things to say about Obama during the recent general election campaign. He declined the invitation. To quote Sean Connery, "That's the Chicago way!")

But the real measure of the White House sensitivity is that after the boss publicly proclaimed his favorite team and Vice President Joe Biden enthused "Me too," Obama's team made an announcement: The  XLIIIIth president will have his own White House party to watch Super Bowl XLIII. And, as an ardent advocate of bipartisanship, Obama is even inviting a few Cardinals fans.

We've got the official invitation list below. If you're not on it, order your own pizza at home.

--Andrew Malcolm

Speaking of winning teams, register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item? RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle as well.

White House Super Bowl Party invitees

Sens Bob Casey (D-PA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Arlen Specter (R-PA), Reps. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Artur Davis (D-AL), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Charlie Dent (R-PA), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Trent Franks (R-AZ), Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Paul Hodes (D-NH), Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-DC), Patrick Murphy (D-PA), Fred Upton (R-MI).

Photo credit: Associated Press

Michael Steele named new GOP chairman

It's official. The new face of the National Republican Party is Michael Steele, a 50-year-old African American, the first in the history of Abraham Lincoln's party.

At a time when Barack Obama is serving as the first African American president in history, the move is an interesting play to corral minority voters who will be crucial to a Republican comeback.

But Steele is actually a Republican. A foe of abortion, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland and native of that state regaled the Republican Convention in St. Paul, Minn., last year with his calls for offshore drilling. He got the whole convention floor to chant, "Drill, baby, drill," a call that echoed on the campaign trail whenever vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin referred to it.

Michael Steele, who has argued the party needs to broaden its reach, won 91-77, in the sixth round of voting during the session in Washington after the three other candidates had dropped out. The last guy standing was Katon Dawson, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, who belonged to a whites-only country club for years.

"As a little boy growing up in this town," a beaming Steele said in accepting the appointment, "this is awesome." We have a complete video and transcript of Steele's full remarks on the jump; scroll down or click on the "Read more" line below.

Promising to bring the party to every corner and every group in the nation's geography and warning obstructionists to "get ready to get knocked over," Steele said the party of Abraham Lincoln is a conservative party and "we will cede no ground to anyone on principles."

As Ticket reported earlier this month, Steele's job to resurrect the Grand Old Party after two disastrous elections -- in which it lost a majority in Congress and its hold on the White House -- is not impossible. When Jimmy Carter won the presidential election in a sweeping renunciation of the Nixon White House in 1976, things looked bleak for the Republican Party. But 48 months later, Ronald Reagan ushered in a three-term period of GOP rule.

Democrats have already tapped their chairman -- Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, a moderate Democrat from a state that is trending from Republican to Democrat. Now that Republicans have tapped someone from the state on the other side of the Potomac River, maybe they'll meet in the middle -- in D.C.

Reaction from moderate Republicans was immediate -- and positive.

"Today is a great day for the GOP," said Christopher Barron, a political consultant and former political director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group. "The message Steele's election sends is a powerful one. This isn't George W. Bush's Republican Party anymore. "

-- Johanna Neuman

Members of all parties can register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item? RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle now as well.

Photo: Associated Press

Is Rod Blagojevich already plotting a comeback?

And so it begins.

Impeached by an eye-popping 59 of the 59 senators serving in the Illinois Senate, now ex-Gov. Rod Blagojevich used the last minutes of his executive power to grant a pardon to a former drug dealer and janitor at a homeless center where the former governor's wife worked, and clemency for a prominent Chicago real estate developer who was already pardoned for forgery charges.

Already, politicos in Chicago are speculating about Blagojevich's motives -- and how the pardon moves might help launch a comeback.

On MSNBC this morning, anchor Tamron Hall noted that Danny Rostenkowski, the once-powerful chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was toppled by the infamous post office scandal in which it came out that he was keeping ghost employees on the payroll. Rostenkowski went to prison, left politics, became a political commentator for television's ubiquitous talking heads and taught at Loyola University.

For the full text and video of Blago's farewell remarks, click here.

Hey, with that head of hair, to say nothing of his love for the microphone, Blagojevich is a natural.

-- Johanna Neuman

Follow all the political comebacks. Register here for Twitter alerts on each new Ticket item. RSS feeds are also available here. And we're on Amazon's Kindle as well.

Photo: Associated Press