Dana Perino, who served as White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, says the president risks “diluting the bully pulpit” by doing so many interviews in such a short period of time.

In talking to former CBS reporter Bernie Goldberg about President Obama’s Sunday morning rounds, with the exception of Fox News, Bill O’Reilly says that such a practice, especially if it’s “payback” for Fox TV foregoing to air Obama’s speeches in favor of network programming – is “immature.”

Cartoon Credit: Vic Harville, Little Rock, Arkansas

In a new Vanity Fair hit piece Levi Johnston alleges that Palin rarely attended her son Track’s hockey games, and she “often complained about her job as governor”, saying it was “too hard”. Palin resigned as Governor this summer, citing her family as one of the reasons, although Levi seems to imply that her absence from her sons hockey games may have been to carelessness and not to her duties as Governor and that the “too hard” aspect was not her ability to be a good politician and keep up with her duties as a mother, but suggests ineptitude. Johnston also claims that Sarah and husband Todd talked of divorce often and had a troubled marriage, ignoring that there were no signs of such a rift on display to the public and Sarah publicly laughed off such charges when they were made early last month.

Ace, a political blogger points out the absurdity in the premise that Johnston would have had access to any dirt with which to dish, saying “I don’t know about you, but in my experience, whenever I was dating some girl in high school, her parents were always carelessly exposing family secrets in front of me.” adding “The fact that I was sticking it to their daughter brought me fully within the family circle of trust. I became the family’s therapist/financial advisor/lifecoach based just on the fact that I was ridin’ dirty on their Precious.” Ridiculous when put in those comedically sarcastic terms, yet that is precisely the premise of Johnston’s book. Pathetic.

Even in England, they know this guy is a wanker:

Hang on a minute: this is the grandmother of his son. Whatever you make of the Republican politician, she doesn’t come off worse in this lazy, base ‘exposé’ – Johnston does. And how is he going to explain this interview to his son one day?…

Yet, perhaps Vanity Fair is more at fault here, with its peculiar obsession with savaging Sarah Palin. Having incessantly aimed vitriol at her looks, her ‘narcissism’, her ‘aggressive’ personality and caricaturing her into an elk-shooting bimbo, it has started scraping the barrel. And this time its instrument of choice is Johnston, a teenage scumbag who would put his ego before his child.

Levi’s scumbaggery was recently commented on MSNBC as his credibility, character and fact that his only claim to fame is that he got his teenage girlfriend pregnant was discussed:

In 1990, GQ magazine ran a devastating profile of Kennedy. Two 16-year-old girls near the Capitol startled by a limo rolling up, the door opening, Ted sitting in the back with a bottle of wine, asking one, then the other, to join. A former aide who acted as Ted’s “pimp.” His penchant for dating women so young that one did not know he was the subject of many books. Kennedy, at a swank DC restaurant with his drinking buddy Chris Dodd, throwing a petite waitress on his dinner table with such force that glass and flatware shatters and goes flying. Then Ted throws her on to Dodd’s lap and grinds against her. He is interrupted by other waitstaff. He is later caught in the same restaurant, in a semi-private area, having sex on the floor with a lobbyist.

In 1991, Kennedy’s nephew William Kennedy Smith is charged with rape. Kennedy Smith had been out drinking with Ted and Ted’s son Patrick at Au Bar in Palm Beach. Kennedy Smith is eventually acquitted, and it’s never proved that Ted had any knowledge of what happened on the Kennedy grounds that night. He remarried, in 1992, and very publicly domesticated himself.

But the tawdriness — the ostensible elder statesmen getting s – - t-faced and picking up women with his son and his nephew; the acquittal won, in part, by shredding the accuser on the stand and in the press; privilege winning out, always — is in such stark contrast to Kennedy’s politics that you have to wonder: Is this really what Kennedy thought of women?

So how is it exactly that so many women, and feminist minded women no less, were able to support and admire someone who engaged in grossly inappropriate, occasionally criminal behavior with younger women while binge drinking?

Ignorance of this record could play a major part at least to young citizens. “I didn’t know about Chappaquiddick and the rape case until yesterday,” Miriam Perez, a 25-year-old editor at Feministing.com, told the NY Post. She said that she admires Kennedy’s accomplishments, but is perplexed. “Like every person, he’s human and there are lots of flaws involved,” she says. “But a big feminist tenet is: The personal is political. So I don’t feel it’s fair to fully ignore it in this case.”

As is largely suspected is the reason so many feminists turned a similar blind eye to Bill Clintons many sex scandals which included allegations of harassment and rape, it is Kennedys 100% consistent record in championing abortion law that could shed light on why Teddy got a pass from women.

Kennedy wrote in a letter to a voter in 1971 that “wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized — the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.” But like many other Catholic liberals, from Joseph Biden to Dennis Kucinich, he moved leftward with his party, becoming a down-the-line supporter of abortion rights, with a voting record that brooked no compromise on the issue.

A review of Kennedy’s unwavering pro-abortion record:

• Voted NO on defining unborn child as eligible for SCHIP.
• Voted NO on prohibiting minors crossing state lines for abortion.
• Voted YES on expanding research to more embryonic stem cell lines.
• Voted NO on notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions.
• Voted NO on criminal penalty for harming unborn fetus during other crime.
• Voted NO on banning partial birth abortions except for maternal life.
• Voted NO on maintaining ban on Military Base Abortions.
• Voted NO on banning partial birth abortions.
• Voted NO on banning human cloning.
• Rated 100% by NARAL, indicating a pro-choice voting record.

Ted Kennedys sister Eunice remained against abortion later in her life, so what made Teddy change? Along with her husband, Sargent Shriver, Eunice belonged to America’s dwindling population of outspoken pro-life liberals. “Like her church, she saw a continuity, rather than a contradiction, between championing the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed and protecting unborn human life.” notes Ross Douthat in a NY Times column asking What if Teddy had opposed abortion?

At times, Ted Kennedy’s fervor on abortion felt like an extended apology to his party’s feminists for the way the men of his dynasty behaved in private. Eunice, by contrast, had nothing to apologize for. She knew what patriarchy meant: she was born into a household out of “Mad Men,” where the father paraded his mistress around his family, the sons were groomed for high office, and the daughters were expected to marry well, rear children and suffer silently. And she transcended that stifling milieu, doing more than most men to change the world, and earning the right to disagree with her fellow liberals about what true feminism required.

It’s worth pondering how the politics of abortion might have been different had Ted shared even some of his sister’s qualms about the practice. One could imagine a world in which America’s leading liberal Catholic had found a way to make liberalism less absolutist on the issue, and a world where a man who became famous for reaching across the aisle had reached across, even occasionally, in search of compromise on the country’s most divisive issue.

The July 15th press release stated that all of the Arctic ice would disappear by 2030, however when pressed in the interview, Leipold did not hesitate to call that claim “a mistake”. However, despite the alarming but false information, Leipold defended the organization’s practice of “emotionalizing issues” to persuade public opinion.

Later in the interview, a more expansive agenda that went beyond environmentalism was given to Greenpeace’s motives. “We will definitely have to move to a different concept of growth. … The lifestyle of the rich in the world is not a sustainable model,” Leipold said. “If you take the lifestyle, its cost on the environment, and you multiply it with the billions of people and an increasing world population, you come up with numbers which are truly scary.”

Leipold said later in the BBC interview that there is an urgent need for the suppression of economic growth in the United States and around the world. He said annual growth rates of 3 percent to 8 percent cannot continue without serious consequences for the climate.

What do you think? Hopefully we can all agree that accurate information should be used to persuade the public, but what about the practice of intentionally adding emotion to what is allegedly otherwise just a scientific argument?

‘My husband is not Secretary of State. I am,’ she raged after a translator made a mistake and asked what her partner felt about an international matter.

Mrs Clinton, who was speaking at a meeting in the Congolese capital Kinshasa during her first official tour of Africa, looked clearly rattled.

‘You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?’ she replied incredulously when the male student asked her what ‘Mr Clinton’ thought of World Bank concerns about a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan offer to the Democratic Republic of Congo.

‘If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channelling my husband.’

Notes the DailyMail:  The question was left unanswered as the moderator of the event quickly moved on.

The translator should have asked what ‘Mr Obama’  thought as the student’s question was actually about Barack Obama, not Bill Clinton.

Sidelined for weeks after she was injured during a fall this spring, Mrs Clinton returned to a flurry of speculation that she had been shoved to the side as a diplomatic force.

Commentators said she had been overshadowed by globe-trotting President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and a bevy of heavyweight special envoys assigned to the world’s critical hotspots.

According to the latest polling, former president Bill enjoys a 5% higher favorability rating than current secretary Hillary:

58% Have Favorable opinion of Bill
53% Have Favorable opinion of Hill

See Cartoons by Cartoon by Theo Moudakis – Courtesy of Politicalcartoons.com – Email this Cartoon

3 of the 4 co-hosts are open Obama supporters (Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar both being lifelong liberal Democrats and Sheri Shepherd announcing that her vote for Barack Obama was the first she had ever cast, only Elizabeth Hasselback supported Republican candidate John McCain in the 2008 election) so with this 3 to 2 unbalance against Malkin on a political figure many feel passionate about, one would expect a hostile and heated disagreement similar to many previous gang-ups on The View featuring a guest in opposition to Obama (ie: Ann Coulter, John McCain and others). However, the segment defied conventional wisdom as Malkin stayed strong and her 3 ideological opponents combated meekly, mostly with questions.

Malkin clearly came into the venue ready for hostility, which is probably what quelled more of it from taking place. Co-host Joy Behar had previously called Malkin “a selfish bitch, probably” for focusing more on opposing middle-class entitlement expansion than stopping the Iraq war. Joy made no similar nasty remarks, but did bring up the Iraq war, as well as the “what about Bush?” response to several of Malkins points against the new Obama administration. When Joy tried to bring the focus back to the Bush administration, asking about it’s own misdeeds that Obama is guilty of, Malkin didn’t hesitate to share the blame, saying “Of course there was. And if you are familiar with my work, Joy, you know that I have been at the forefront of criticizing cronyism, corruption in the Republican Party. I was the largest voice against Harriet Myers and Michael Brown and cronyism at DHS. But guess what? News flash. George Bush is not in office anymore. And it’s time for the American public to reckon with the fact that what they were sold was a huge bill of goods.”

Unmentioned in the interview is the fact that the title of Malkins book is actually a reference to a Democrat attack slogan against the Bush administration, though Malkin made clear she intends not to cover up or ignore the corruption and bumblings of other administrations, but rather hold the Obama administration to the standard it set for itself. By this standard, Malkin alleges it is one of the most corrupt administrations in recent history; a point co-host Whoopi Goldberg (who for some reason was dressed as an 18th century milk maid) attempted to challenge her on, though with a false charge that claimed Malkin had stated that the Obama administration is “more corrupt than other presidencies”. When Malkin began to correct Goldberg that the book isn’t a claim of “worse than others” but rather “really bad when you look at Obama’s claims vs reality”, Whoopi cut off the clarification to show Malkin her host-questions card prepared by The Views producers so as to escape blame for the inaccuracy and let Malkin know that Whoopi was in fact “on the same side of the aisle”. This was a reference to some moments earlier when Malkin switched from Joy to Elizabeth Hasselback, noting the transition as a move “to the friendlier side of the aisle”. This produced groans from the audience and objections from both Joy and Whoopi, though its not known why (logic suggests it cant be a serious denial that the person who agrees with the guest would be the “friendlier” side than the ones who disagree, but perhaps it was thought to be bad form to publicly say so? we’re not sure). When Whoopi took the card back after Malkins verification, she held it up to the audience while Malkin proceeded to explain and mouthed “not me” while pointing to it (as the audience laughed) and then again defensively assured Malkin that she didn’t make up the false charge and it was “just given” to her.

Malkin reiterated her point at the end of the segment saying that Obama rode in “on a white horse” promising hope and change and cited the groundswell of youth support Obama enjoyed under the promise of ushering in “change” to Washington with something “new and different” but instead filled his staff positions with old names with corrupt pasts, a long list of unaccountable “Czars” and a first one hundred days of appointments that became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons.

When Michelle was off the set, Whoopi seemingly corrected the dispute about Malkin claiming the Obama administration is the most corrupt by noting that indeed the statement doesn’t appear in the book as Malkin corrected, but rather “the young lady”, as Whoopi referred to Malkin, had made the statement on The Today Show. The full video of Malkin on The Today show can be seen here, but Malkin never makes the claim. Malkin pointed out the false correction to the false statement on her website and implied annoyance that it was made after she had left so she could not correct the assertion on the show.

Speaking of her View appearance on her website, Malkin declared victory, saying “You know you’ve won the argument when the ladies of the View are reduced to arguing how corrupt Team Obama is, and not whether.”

What do you think?