Vice president's reference to opponents as 'terrorists' deserves condemnation

Outrage flooding in now even from overseas over former Vice President Dick Cheney likening some opponents of President Bush's policies and administration to "terrorists."

Terrorists? Really? With the 10th anniversary of real terrorism coming next month. Pathetic, even for Repugnicans.

It's the kind of over-the-top rhetorical retribution that only inflames political passions and hard feelings at a highly partisan time in the nation's capitol. You have to expect it from the veteran Washington insider and no-holds-barred Republican enforcer who once worked for an oil industry company.

During a meeting with his party's House caucus earlier this week several members reportedly expressed outrage over parts of the pending debt agreement with opponents, likening the other side to terrorists holding the plan hostage to gain an advantage.

At one point the vice president is said to have acknowledged, "They have acted like terrorists."  Seriously, that guy's been out of office for -- what? -- 30 months now. His party lost. Let it go, Mr. Cheney!

The Democratic team of Barack Obama and Joe Biden arrived in Washington in 2009 sincerely determined to change the city's crony culture, to overcome the harsh partisan tone that had infested the former swamp during the first eight years of this century. How can such gentlemen possibly make progress for America when the response from the GOP side invokes terrorism during what should be a simple policy debate?

Oh, wait. What? Oh, that's right. It was Vice President Joe Biden who said that. And it happened during a caucus of his party's angry Democratic House members, not Republicans.

Well, nevermind then.

Forget we brought it up. No condemnation needed. Biden's not the kind of partisan guy to shoot from the lip. He obviously didn't mean it. Or he was misunderstood. Or caught up in the moment. Could happen to anybody who isn't Republican. If, in fact, Biden even uttered it. Lighten up!

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Emily Riley / Reuters (Cheney and Biden, file).

Joe Biden update: He's now charging the Secret Service rent for a cottage to protect him

He's not a Chicago politician by birth, but Vice President Joe Biden is sure learning their ways well.

Like all recent vice presidents, Biden and his wife have a rent-free government home at the Naval Observatory in Washington.

He also has his own home back in Delaware. You remember, the one he commuted on Amtrak from most days all those years he was a senator, which go back to, wow, when Barack Obama was a sixth-grader.

Biden likes his own home, as anyone would. He spends many weekends and some weekdays there. It's in a Wilmington suburb on the water.

He also owns another house next door, described as a cottage. For years Biden's mother lived there. When she passed away, he began renting it out.

After the most recent tenant left, Biden generously offered the cottage to the Secret Service, which provides around-the-clock protection to Biden and Obama. And all their predecessors. And the folks who'd like to be their successors.

So the agents could be close at hand for his own safety's sake, Biden generously offered to charge his bodyguards only $2,200 a month. He said that's the same rent as the previous tenant.

The vice president's already been paid $13,200 so far this year and the contract looks to pay him $66,000 into 2013.

We are learning about this sweetheart arrangement now because eagle-eyed Jim McElhatton over at the Washington Times noticed a Joseph R. Biden listed as a vendor on a federal purchase order. And the reporter wondered if this was the same guy who's so vociferously denounced government waste and no-bid contracts over the years.

The same Democrat who in June helped launch an Obama administration anti-waste campaign by saying: "The President and I are committed to changing the way government works and we are stepping up the hunt for misspent dollars."

In addition to the free Washington house and Secret Service transportation everywhere, the vice president gets those free weekly lunches with Obama at the White House.

Biden's only paid $230,700 a year by taxpayers, plus $10G's in entertainment expenses. And last year the Bidens reported $130,000 or so in other income, including $11,000 from the rental.

When McElhatton asked the Secret Service if it normally pays rent to the people it protects, the agent didn't answer it this way: "It’s a rental property, so we pay rent there.”

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images; Alex Wong / Getty Images (Biden indoors incognito).

Bipartisan debt deal draws bipartisan flak from Limbaugh, Krugman, Beck--and a Gallup warning

No wonder top Senate Democrat Harry Reid wants a quick vote on the bipartisan deficit reduction agreement:

Less than 24 hours in, opposition is jelling quickly. And it too is bipartisan.

Oh, and a new Gallup Poll now gives President Obama his lowest weekly approval rating ever.

Sunday night was all about legislators, who love making deals, having made a deal after making it look hard for weeks. Monday is all about explaining it. At least $2.1 trillion in spending cuts sounds good to many.

But wait, what? Cut $350 billion from defense? In this day and age. With a community patrol officer as president launching protective military attacks against Libya over what its dictator might do to civilians, while Syria's regime actually does kill them by the hundreds and draws wimpy warnings?

Some might see bipartisan unhappiness with the budget deal as a sign of a genuine compromise. Others that it might be doomed. And they could both be right.

Top radio talker Rush Limbaugh points out the maximum $2.4-trillion debt increase would be the largest increase in U.S. history on top of the previous largest increase ever ($1.9 trillion), both by the pen of Obama. Limbaugh predicts Obama will cite a failure of cuts next year and return to his tax increase demands.

Glenn Beck, who also doesn't hold elective office, pronounces:

Don’t be fooled. We’ve just been betrayed by Washington. A deal on the debt ceiling is near and Washington still hasn’t gotten serious about the fundamentals. It hasn’t gotten serious about default. It certainly hasn’t gotten serious about the future. When Harry Reid hails a “bipartisan compromise” you know we’re doomed.

Republicans and Democrats have just negotiated away the future of our children behind closed doors. The big compromise on Capitol Hill features elaborate triggers, tranches, Hornswogglers, Snozzwangers, Super Duper Commissions that will make the Snozzberries taste like Snozeberries, and a whole bunch of other convoluted gibberish that will, no doubt, come with loopholes and create entire new bureaucracies.

What it doesn’t do is fix the problem.

Over on the left, the White House was busy this afternoon trying to calm angry progressives such as bearded talker Paul Krugman. He says Obama surrendered and folded, and he urges a "no" vote on the "disaster."

Firedoglake is organizing calls to Congress to denounce especially the unconstitutional "super Congress" soon to be making further cuts outside the purview of other elected members.

And libertarian-like Texas Rep. Ron Paul joins Krugmen in blasting the agreement for its false promises. Do we hear a can being kicked down the road yet again?

On the polling front, Gallup this afternoon released a new survey finding Obama's weekly job approval is now at 42%, one point lower than his previous lowest.

Such a deal for everyone.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg (Reid); Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images (Joe Biden smiles gamely on Capitol Hill, Aug. 1).

The debt-ceiling debate, @BarackObama & #hashtags: much ado about Twitter

    

As a debt-ceiling agreement has been hammered out, averting default (but not necessarily a credit-rating downgrade), everyone from President Obama to Sarah Palin to John Boehner took to Twitter to make their cases to the American people.

While many Twitter accounts went quiet Sunday (or even a bit earlier) as negotations got down to brass tacks, it's clear social media has become a big gun in the political arsenal -- even if it's one that can misfire.

This past week, the White House instituted a program called "Office Hours," pushing out tweets intended to school users on fiscal policy.

Apparently the administration's emphasis on money talk bored Twitterer....

More bad poll news for Obama as debt deal brings smiles to Capitol Hill

Lots of smiles and happy news from Capitol Hill late Sunday as legislators on both sides optimistically announced a debt limit-spending deal to avert a threatened government shutdown Tuesday.

Even Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, who loves making deals, was glowering a little less.

The initial details of the bipartisan deal leaking out indicate that in return for driving his own job approval rating down to its lowest point ever, President Obama didn't get much out of the professed compromise.

He wanted new taxes; sorry, enhanced revenues. You know, those rich corporate jet owners, et al.

All he got basically, it seems, was an agreement to put off the next spending fight until after the 2012 presidential election. Republican legislators, who said they wanted to debate the debt limit again next winter, gave that up. Which helps them as much as the former legislator now in the White House.

Obama will, no doubt, have more to say about the deal today. See if he throws in more sour grapes as he did after the GOP won its Bush tax cut extensions in last December's talks. Back then, Obama, who promised to bring both sides together if elected in 2008, called his fellow deal-makers "hostage-takers."

We'll hear more too today from legislators on both sides; each caucus will be....

McCain compares Bachmann to Sen. Obama, compares President Obama to Muhammad Ali

John McCain thinks Republicans like Michele Bachmann and Eric Cantor are doing it wrong in these debt ceiling negotiations with Democrats and should instead be backing Mitch McConnell's creative plan.

In an interview with National Review, McCain compared President Barack Obama to boxing great Muhammad Ali, noting the heavyweight champ's sly strategy of allowing opponents to tire themselves out with relatively harmless body blows only to see an energized Ali rally in later rounds for the deciding knockout.

“It seems to some of us that the president, all along, was sort of playing rope-a-dope,” McCain said. “Not surprisingly, he has ratcheted up the level of tension by saying that he couldn’t guarantee people’s Social Security checks. So of course, the calls have been coming into my office; people are worried. They should be worried when the president of the United States makes a statement like that.”

McCain is concerned that in the House "there are Republicans who are committed, like Michele Bachmann, to vote against raising the debt limit under any circumstances," a stance reminiscent of “Sen. Obama,” he said.

No debt deal necessary for Obama's reelection campaign; he reports raising $86 million last quarter

He may have been leading from behind all spring in those nettlesome national debt reduction talks with congressional Republicans.

Unemployment may be back up to 9.2%. But President Obama is doing great up front where it counts in the political fundraising business to keep his own job in next year's election.

In a video emailed to supporters early this morning, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said the Democrat's bid for four more years in the Oval Office would report raising more than $47 million for the old Organizing for America outfit. And another $38 million-plus for the Democratic National Committee. All from 552,462 donors, Messina said.

All campaigns' fundraising numbers for the April-June quarter are due into the Federal Election Commission on Friday, unless they get an exemption for starting late, as Jon Huntsman did.

Obama's campaign donation total is chump change compared to the trillions in budget cuts he claims to be negotiating with House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

The reported $86 million dwarfs the anticipated quarter totals of his Republican challengers such as former Govs. Mitt Romney at $18 million and Tim Pawlenty and Huntsman around $4 million each.

Not counting Michele Bachmann, who has been a top congressional fundraiser but not yet announced her haul, the Republican field combined has raised around $35 million. An independent committee supporting Romney has collected another $12 million.

Messina claims that the Democrat needs a whole lot more money to compete with what he said could be "as much as" $500 million from outside committees supporting Republicans.

Originally, Obama campaign aides talked of a $1 billion campaign on behalf of their boss. But they have since scaled that back closer to the $745 million he raised for the 2008 campaign, which he won, in case you hadn't noticed.

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No recession for 454 Obama White House aides: They'll make $37,121,463 this year

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Pete Souza / White House

Joe Biden has a beautiful, simple new Twitter account, but will he use it?

Joe Biden was given a valuable Twitter handle a few days ago. A username as concise as @VP is impossible to come by unless you know people in high places.

Fortunately for Biden, one of the creators of Twitter (Jack Dorsey aka @Jack) apparently is a fan of the administration, and will be making a visit to the White House on Wednesday to moderate a Twitter Town Hall with President Obama answering questions from the social network.

Because of scheduling conflicts, the vice president will not be in attendance, which is probably good because how awkward would it be for Biden to explain to the co-founder of Twitter that he hasn't had time in his busy schedule to type out 140 characters to truly break in his new account?

Sure, two tweets have emerged from the @VP account in the two days of its existence, but if Mr. Biden actually wrote them he is speaking about himself in the third person. "VP will join POTUS for mtg at WH w/House & Sen leaders on 7/7; agrees we need balanced approach & cannot continue to kick can down the road," said the most recent @VP tweet.

More than likely the initial tweets were written by someone like Amy Dudley, Biden's deputy press secretary, who wrote the blog post Monday announcing the addition of @VP to the list of other White House Twitter accounts.

But will Biden, always one with a joke, a quip, or something interesting, let his fingers do the talking on his new account? Dudley's opening salvo makes it seem unlikely.

No recession for Obama's 454 White House aides: They'll make $37,121,463 this year

In his numerous fund-raising and policy speeches around the country these days, President Obama often bemoans the difficult economic times and uncertainties afflicting millions of Americans, including the nearly 14 million still seeking work unsuccessfully.

The Democrat argues that his administration needs more time to straighten out the economic mess left by somebody else, who's been gone almost 900 days now.

But good news this morning: The challenging Obama era and 9.1% national unemployment rate do not include the 454 people now helping President Obama do presidential things.

This crowd is being paid a total of $37,121,463 this year. That's up seven staff members and nearly $4 million from 2008, the last year of George W. Bush's presidency.

Fully 141 Obama aides -- or nearly one-in-three -- earn more than $100,000 a year. That's also up from the 130 with that scale salary in Bush's last year.

Twenty-one Obama aides earn the top-dollar $172,200.

The staff names and salaries report, required annually by Congress, was released on Friday by the White House. The timing, however, was probably an accident because last Friday most Americans were not watching the news closely and were thinking of not working for a three-day holiday weekend.

Because Americans would no doubt be pleased to know of the Obama staff's economic success amid the bleak national scene for so many others, we saved the information for today, when most Americans who are still employed are back at their own jobs and can share the joy.

The 2011 White House salary report does not include mention of the 41 unidentified Obama staff members who owe the Internal Revenue Service $831,000 in back taxes. That report came out last fall (Scroll down for the link.)

The report comes as Republicans and Democrats, led from behind by Obama, appear stalemated in closed-door negotiations over a package deal to raise the national debt limit by Aug. 2 and begin spending cuts to tame the $14.2-trillion national debt, up 35% since Obama's inauguration. Obama maintains a deal must include new revenues to cover the rising costs of government.

Having Chicago connections appears to be useful for obtaining the maximum $172,200 salary from the Illinois ex-state senator Obama, who is paid $400,000 a year, almost twice the amount paid to Joe Biden for doing whatever he does. But he's only from Delaware.

The top paychecks include:

Chief of Staff William Daley, who is the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, who just retired and left the top Democratic-machine job there to Rahm Emanuel, who was Obama's chief of staff and before that held the Chicago House seat of Rod Blagojevich, who had given it up to become governor of Illinois, which he no longer is due to impeachment and, now, conviction on 17 counts of fraud.

The Daleys' father, Richard J. Daley, was also a longtime Chicago mayor whose operatives provided Illinois' crucial electoral votes to elect John F. Kennedy president back in 1960 before Obama was born.

Valerie Jarrett has a White House title as long as Chicago's winters (senior advisor and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement). Before this, she was a chief of staff for the most recent Mayor Daley and hired an assistant named Michelle Robinson, who went on, of course, to become Mrs. Barack Obama, whose chief of staff also earns the top $172G paycheck.

This year, the one before Obama's attempted reelection, he reduced his staff by 15 people and $1.7 million.

Some White House aides have already returned to Chicago as campaign employees, including political strategist David Axelrod, who helped elect the most recent Mayor Daley, as well as, briefly, Sen. Obama and then President Obama. Axelrod also made the top salary when he had to live in Washington.

RELATED:

41 Obama aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes

Complete list of 2011 White House staff and their current salaries

861 days and $787 billion in, Obama pleads for more time on creating jobs

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Pete Souza / White House (Obama addresses his staff, file); Kevin Dietsch / EPA (the Obamas greet guests at another White House party, July 4) .

White House bubble? Fundraising Obama boasts he 'could not be prouder' of his presidential record

Did somebody say political disconnect?

When Barack Obama became president of the United States, the national unemployment rate was 7.3%. Today, it is 9.1%, almost 14 million American workers idle. Millions more if you count those who've surrendered to no paycheck.

This despite the spending of $787 billion in stimulus money that was promised to keep unemployment below 8% and generate hundreds of thousands of jobs each month by last year. In May the private sector created 54,000 new jobs.

The Federal Reserve estimates unemployment by the fall of 2012 will be somewhere between 7.8% and 8.2%. No incumbent president in 75 years has been reelected with unemployment above 7.2%.

When Barack Obama became president, the national debt was $10.6 trillion. Today, it is $14.3 trillion, a 35% increase in 885 days. Borrowing of nearly $4.2 billion every day, photo op or not.

On his second day in office when Barack Obama signed that executive order to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within one year, his job approval was 69%.

Yesterday, according to Gallup, Obama's job approval was 43%.That's down 25 points among whites, down 24 among seniors, down 23 among independents, down 22 among men, down 21 among women.

Fifty percent of Americans disapprove of his job.

The latest Bloomberg National Poll finds 2 out of 3 Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Only 23% see signs of economic recovery.

Only 10% expect employment to improve within two years. A plurality favor repealing Obama's trademark healthcare legislation, and Gallup found Americans' economic confidence plunging again this month.

Gallup's latest generic 2012 presidential ballot reveals Obama losing to some Republican 39%-44%.

With his wife, daughters, mother-in-law, niece and nephew on safari in Africa, the president was baching it on the road for a four-speech Thursday. The campaign's first quarter of fundraising totals are due to the Federal Election Commission in early July. His Chicago organization plans to raise $1 billion before Nov. 6, 2012.

So with budget talks with congressional Republicans near collapse and VP Joe Biden off duty at home Friday, Obama was back in New York City on Thursday to do another three Democratic fundraisers. He opened at a quiet restaurant soiree with Wall Street bankers, private equity investors and hedge fund managers, who paid $35,800 per plate to dine with the man who's publicly bashed them so often.

The evening's last Obama event in Manhattan was at the Broadway Theatre, hosted by TV yapper Whoopi Goldberg. The Real Good Talker from the White House promised the 1,400 enthusiastic audience members he wouldn't give a long speech. But during his 21-minute oration he did utter one amazing boast:

The track record of the last  2¹/₂  years is one that I could not be prouder of.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

Don't forget to follow The Ticket via Twitter alerts of each new Ticket item. Or click this: @latimestot. Our Facebook Like page is over here. We're also available on Kindle. Use the ReTweet buttons above to share any item with family and friends.

Photos: Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press (Top, Obama boards Air Force One in New York. Bottom, he embraces Whoopi Goldberg at one of three Democratic fundraisers he attended Thursday night in New York City).