So, we finally got the celebration from Iraqis that Dick Cheney predicted six years ago. Except that a spontaneous outpouring greeted the departure of U.S. troops from major cities, not their arrival as "liberators" in the way that the former vice president predicted at the start of the war.

Thus, it makes sense that Cheney was a tad grumpy yesterday. Cheney suggested that our troop withdrawals could make a "waste" of the sacrifices to date if Iraqis cannot hack it on their own.

You'd think he would want to claim credit for this development and portray it as a sign of success for what the Bush administration put in place.

But once again, Cheney is covering his bases in case everything falls apart. He's warned that Obama has made us less safe, preserving an "I-told-you-so" stance in case we are attacked again. Now, if Baghdad goes up in flames he'll get boasting rights.

Funny how the only way for Cheney to look good is for America and its friends to suffer.

After so many years in the media wilderness, Ron Paul might be on to something that makes it to the spotlight (and maybe even into law): Forcing the secretive Federal Reserve to be a bit less reserved when it comes to revealing how our money and banks are regulated.

CQ's Emily Cadei reports that the libertarian congressman's proposal to audit the Federal Reserve is gaining significant support from across the political spectrum. It seems that plenty of Democrats and Republicans would welcome public scrutiny of bank regulators, especially as the Obama administration is proposing to give the Federal Reserve even more power.

In a recent speech to the Cato Institute (see video below), Paul argues that there can be no meaningful monetary reform without real transparency from those who are regulating the money.

Paul's feisty bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination could not catch a break out of the pack, despite its fundraising strength, internet savvy and an intensely loyal following. Paul supporters are rallying around his latest cause with a non-profit group, Campaign for Liberty, which claims a quarter-million members and $3 million in fundraising.

Bringing his presidential campaign tools to bear on an issue like messing with the elitist Federal Reserve could pay off this time.

 
Abandoning family values in their own lives is one way for GOP leaders to expand their base beyond social conservatives. (Produced by CQ's Andrew Satter)

Craig chats with Don Imus about liberator status for Gen. Patton's Boston regiment, the evils of tobacco, Pres. Obama's celebrity hood, his parents' yard work and Colorado Bob's Blue Corn. (RFD/WABC, 6/24)

Craig shares his quit-smoking strategy with Pres. Obama (and anyone else who's ready to kick the habit).

Craig on "Imus in the Morning"
Wednesday (6/24) 6:30 AM EST
Listen Live: WABC-AM (NYC) / WJZW-FM (DC)
(Simulcast on RFD-TV)

Join the campaign to establish
Liberator Status for Patton's Boston Regiment

Admittedly I am a bit late to the party on the grave matter of our President's Ninja-like fly-killing skills, but this story seems to have an amazingly long shelf life.

Maureen Dowd got a whole column out of it. PETA is outraged, calling it an "execution." Stephen Colbert is mock outraged.

Dowd speculates that the incident resonates because "Americans fear that President Obama is too prone to negotiation, comity and splitting the difference."

Sure enough, only PETA seems to want a president who wouldn't harm a fly.

For more on the exploits of our Superhero-in-Chief,
check out Politics Un-Seriously

Here's hoping that Iranians can do a better job of resisting a "supreme" order than Americans did in 2000.

 Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has declared that his deranged puppet, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, won the election, ordering protesters off the street.

But it looks like the unsatisfied Iranians aren't taking it. Too bad the American people did not show more gumption when our Supreme Court elected George W. Bush despite overwhelming evidence that he actually lost the 2000 election.

• Netanyahu declines to second-guess Obama on Iran
• GOP calls Obama timid as he seeks footing on Iran
• Congress Backs Iran Protests
  

CQ's Andrew Satter reports: Health care tops the agenda this week.

Thanks to some Capitol Hill lawmakers who can't seem to give it up, that $13 billion presidential helicopter program still has not been fully grounded.

President Obama, who canceled the program earlier this month, once called the Bush  Administration's helicopter binge "an example of the procurement process gone amok."

But CQ Politics reports that the House Armed Services Committee is still trying to push the Pentagon to buy some of the helicopters that were to become Marine One's next generation, despite already agreeing to pay $85 million in termination costs to the manufacturers. (John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff)

This boondoggle started when the Bush White House got all dreamy about building a futuristic craft that could fend off terrorist attacks and resist the electromagnetic effects of a nuclear blast.

But when the price tag for the Bush copter craze nearly doubled (from $6.8 billion to $13 billion), the program faced the budgeting equivalent of a nuclear blast, that old bugaboo of federal procurement -- the cost overrun.

Ah, if hypocrisy were a killer virus, we'd all be dead. But even by Washington standards the GOP is on a roll.

Nevada Sen. John Ensign, always first in line to call for the resignation of scandalous colleagues, reveals his own sexual affair with a staffer and only relinquishes a relatively meaningless Republican Party leadership position. Presumably, he will continue to pursue his presidential ambitions.

What happened to GOP claims that voting against Iraq war funding is nothing short of unpatriotic? Only five House Republicans voted in favor of yesterday's measure to provide $106 billion in funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The GOP health reform plan is out. All four pages of it. The outline claims it would put the nation on a path to universal health insurance by reforming Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Frankly, it makes no sense.

C'mon GOPers, even George W. Bush could do better than this.

This is transparency? The Obama Administration is following its predecessor's tradition of keeping secret the logs of those who visit the White House.

So much for the quaint idea that the White House is the people's house. It's only for the people who get clearance and enjoy complete anonymity, thanks to Obama's veil of secrecy.

This matters because it's important to know who is getting access to the President and his immediate staff. What are they hiding? Probably less than it seems, but it's difficult to know when the logs are classified.

You wouldn't think that David Letterman and Leon Panetta would ever have much in common, but both are in war of words against Republicans.

Letterman apologized again last night for cracking a tasteless joke about Sarah Palin's daughter. Panetta, through a spokesman, tried to recast his words in a recent magazine interview implying that Dick Cheney would welcome a terrorist attack.

"The Director does not believe the former Vice President wants an attack," CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said in a statement. "He did not say that." Here's what Panetta did say about Cheney in the New Yorker interview: "It's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."

Panetta's claim that he didn't mean what he said is less believable than Letterman's explanations. Letterman clearly was joking about Palin's adult daughter -- even though the Alaska governor accused him of targeting her underage child. But the late night comic still ended up apologizing.

The CIA chief might also find that if you cannot convincingly explain your words you'll probably have to take them back.

Three surprises while scanning the news . . .

1) Why did Leon Panetta suggest that Dick Cheney wants terrorists to attack again? His comments in The New Yorker ring true enough, that the former vice president might see another attack as vindication for his claim that President Obama has made us less safe. But the whole Cheney flap had simmered down -- and now, Panetta is giving Cheney another chance at the limelight. Or, if terrorists do strike again, maybe the CIA chief can blame Cheney. Give it a 7 on the 1-10 Weirdness Scale.

2) In this age of Democratic party success and a seemingly leftward drift, how can it be that Gallup reports a plurality of Americans calling themselves conservative? 8 on the Weirdness Scale.

3) I know that Howard Dean and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel can't stand each other, but still it continues to surprise me that Obama has kept the former party chair out in the cold. Dean is struggling to matter these days. 5.5 on the Weirdness Scale.

Who are we to gripe about Iran's arguably rigged election? We most likely elected the wrong guy in 2000.

If the Supreme Court had not hastily short-circuited the Florida recount, we might know for sure whether another tally could have confirmed what we now know to be true -- that most of the state's voters really intended to elect Al Gore. Or we might have seen some meaningful scrutiny of suspiciously late-arriving military overseas ballots that actually delivered George W. Bush's last-minute margin of victory.

Under the circumstances we probably ought to leave the outrage about Iran's questionable balloting to nations with a better established record of putting the real winners in office.

President Obama on Saturday proposed more Medicare and Medicaid cuts that, when combined with his earlier revisions, amount to $622 in savings over 10 years -- most it from Medicare. Obama called for slowing annual Medicare payment increases to hospitals, medical device-makers, outpatient treatment facilities and other providers in order to encourage them to deliver more cost-effective care. He also advocated cutting federal subsidies for hospitals that treat the uninsured, and paying lower prices for drugs under Medicare's outpatient prescription drug benefit. (Adriel Bettelheim, CQ White House correspodnent).

How inconvenient for President Barack Obama that the preacher he used for political advantage in Chicago again surfaces to embarrass him. Let's be clear: Obama does not subscribe to Jeremiah Wright's demented ideas, but he definitely used the fiery preacher to establish a base for propelling his lofty ambitions. Now that Obama has outgrown Wright he can pretend it all never happened. (Is this fear of guilt by association the reason why Obama still hasn't picked a full-time church to attend in DC?)

Just days ago I worried about this. Two months ago Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned against "rightwing extremism" and was roundly criticized for it. Since then, several Americans have lost their lives to political extremists.

Napolitano's report predicted imminent violence to be committed by hate-motivated groups and movements, such as hatred of certain religions, racial or ethnic groups. "It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."

Recent rightwing murders support Napolitano's findings. Terrorists among us, egged on by polemicists such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, pose a more serious threat than the Muslim killers we mostly worry about.

How to Add Your Comments on Trail Mix

 

Craig and Keith Olbermann discuss Sarah Palin's outrage at David Letterman, which prompted the CBS talk show host to say he was guilty of "poor taste." (MSNBC, 6/10)

How to Add Your Comments on Trail Mix

When nations do bad things, they earn forgiveness by exposing their sins. Covering them up only compounds the error.

Isn't there a bit of contradiction in extolling the need to maintain proof of the Holocaust, as President Barack Obama did last week in Germany, and choosing to hide evidence of Americans torturing terrorist suspects?

If the point is to learn the lessons of the past by not concealing or denying the past, perhaps it is best to face the horrors of what was done.

The argument that releasing torture photos puts us at risk by encouraging more terrorism seems phony to me. It's just an excuse to pretend it didn't happen.

Transparency brings honor in this case, despite the short-term embarrassment.

Craig on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann"
Tonight (6/10) MSNBC 8:55 PM ET
Topic: the Palin/Letterman Flap

Virginia's first contested Democratic primary for governor in more than three decades ends tonight. Win or lose, Terry McAuliffe is likely to be the story.

• The Candidates: Creigh Deeds | Terry McAuliffe | Brian Moran
• CQ Video: Virginia Primary Primer
• Another Poll Shows Deeds Ahead in Virginia Gubernatorial Race
• As Virginians Head to Polls, Reports Show Last-Minute Help From Big Backers
• Previous Virginia Democratic Primay Results
• Sink Leads McCollum in Florida
• Eye on 2010 Blog

Let's say you owe someone a lot of money, but instead of paying back even a third of what you owe, you sell everything you own to someone else and walk away.

If you look at the Chrysler-Fiat deal in this way, it is no wonder the Supreme Court wants to slow it down and take a harder look.

In the rush to save the Chrysler brand, some of the company's most loyal creditors are getting royally screwed. For instance, three Indiana public employee pension funds loaned $42 million to Chrysler and would recover only 29 cents on the dollar under the proposed Fiat-Chrysler deal.

While the court was silent about its reasons for delaying the deal, the case is based on the complaint filed by creditors such as the Indiana pension funds.

This is a zero-sum game, helping auto workers at the expense of public employees.

Vote Counting Time in Virginia

The first contested Democratic primary for governor in more than three decades goes to the voters today. Win or lose, Terry McAuliffe is likely to be the story.

• The Candidates: Creigh Deeds | Terry McAuliffe | Brian Moran
• CQ Video: Virginia Primary Primer
• Another Poll Shows Deeds Ahead in Virginia Gubernatorial Race
• As Virginians Head to Polls, Reports Show Last-Minute Help From Big Backers
• Previous Virginia Democratic Primay Results

What is a terrorist? Someone who kills another for a political cause is a terrorist, right?

An anti-abortion killer ought to be considered a terrorist. The anti-government killer who blew up a federal building in Oklahoma City was a terrorist.

Terrorists are not just Muslim extremists who would kill us. Terrorists can also be among us, as so-called Americans who kill for political reasons.

Craig ponders how foreign leaders seem like high school kids (Trail Mix Web Cam).

Ok, so Barack Obama threw down the gauntlet with an exceedingly blunt speech in Cairo that, while not a policy address in diplomatic terms, provided a road map for ending hostilities between Jewish and Arab interests.

If the President's direct words, holding both sides accountable for progress, are not soon echoed by mainstream Israeli and Muslim leaders then the world shall know that they are not now and perhaps shall never be true agents for peace.

If electing a Christian with Muslim and African heritage, who has repeatedly stood firm for the preservation of Israel's Jewish state, is not enough to promote an eventual end to this ridiculous conflict then what more can the American people do? We've tried everything, from Jimmy Carter's conciliations to George W. Bush's war mongering. This presidency could be your last chance, folks, or you're on your own.

Obama spoke essential truths on Thursday. He said things that neither side dares to say in public -- namely, that Arabs privately accept Israel's right to exist, and that Israelis privately acknowledge the inevitability of a Palestinian state.

"It is time for us to act on what everyone knows to be true." -- President Barack Obama

It is time for each side to step up and lead their peoples to the place that Obama described. If they don't, we can rightly conclude that neither side is worthy of American support.

Craig on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann"
Tonight (6/5) MSNBC 8:15 PM ET

There's nothing like an Obama speech high. Thankfully, I was up early this morning to hear the live broadcast of our President's 6:10 AM ET address to the Muslim world in Cairo. It was a moment that made good on the promise of this man to begin the process of transforming relations and undermining terrorists.

"You have the ability to reimagine the world," Obama to young Muslims at Cairo University.

For the first time since Jimmy Carter's Camp David accords we have a president with the skills, understanding and commitment to make peace in a region that has bedeviled the world for generations. Carter's 1978 brokering of a deal between Egypt and Israel to recognize each other and pursue peace still stands as the only lasting agreement of its kind since those days.

Obama's phenomenal speech gracefully shifted from historical tensions to current conflicts between Muslim nations and the western world. Without taking sides he was not shy about noting the wrongdoing of extremists on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, for instance.

Perhaps his most controversial words at home will turn out to be calling Afghanistan a war of necessity, while labeling Iraq a "war of choice." Although Obama has said such things before, his political foes will probably seize upon his decision to say it on foreign soil.

But acknowledging that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake -- or at least seeming to say so -- will probably do more to impress the Muslim world than just about anything else in this historic speech.

• CQ Transcript: President Obama Calls for 'New Beginning' Between U.S. and Muslim World
• Obama calls for new beginning between US, Muslims
• Obama invokes Koran in key points of Cairo speech

Sadly, many Americans are falling prey to illusory economic relief with online "payday" loans that charge triple digit interest and pile on more debt than they can handle. Some in Congress are trying to stop this predatory practice. Others are enabling these despicable loan sharks. American News Project's Lagan Sebert and David Murdock report.

Craig on "Imus in the Morning"
Thursday (6/4) 6:30 AM EST
Listen Live: WABC-AM (NYC) / WJZW-FM (DC)
(Simulcast on RFD-TV)

Craig laments the fall of GM with his matchbox cars.
(Trail Mix Web Cam)

Craig on "Imus in the Morning"
Thursday (6/4) 6:30 AM EST
Listen Live: WABC-AM (NYC) / WJZW-FM (DC)
(Simulcast on RFD-TV)

On the heels of taking over the nation's biggest auto maker, the federal government is now poised to take over a bank giant, Citigroup.

Just what exactly is going on here? In the presidential campaign Republican extremists accused Barack Obama of being a socialist. Most reasonable people scoffed at such silly talk. Whatever you call whatever is happening (state-directed capitalism?), it makes the socialism charge seem less silly, especially once the Democratic health reform plan emerges.

Webster's dictionary defines socialism as "governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods." There does seem to be a little of that going on these days.

• Obama: Nationalization of GM to be short-term
• Free-Market Health Care: The Sound of Silence
• Polls: 26% Say U.S. Already Has Partially Socialist Economy / Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism

Here's the political problem with today's announcement that the federal government is taking over General Motors (which seems more significant than the auto giant's bankruptcy filing): Down the road President Obama now runs the risk of being held responsible for the company's fate.

What if, two years from now, the government's $50 billion investment for majority ownership looks like the dumbest business venture since New Coke. Obama could pay a political price.

On the other hand, if the feds can turn GM around, Obama will get the credit. But he's up against the prospect of harmful congressional meddling in GM's operations, the company's poor marketing prospects and the near-disastorous examples of other publicly-run businesses, such as Amtrak or the U.S. Postal Service.

With all that's on Obama's plate, becoming Automaker-in-Chief seems to be a risky move in the long run.

• Forced by Obama, General Motors Files for Bankruptcy
• White House Fact Sheet on General Motors Restructuring
• CQ Transcript: White House Background Briefing on General Motors 

Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor might as well immediately explain her 2001 comment that a female Hispanic judge would often reach a better decision than a white male judge. The Senate Judiciary Committee will certainly be looking for an explanation at her confirmation hearings.

So far, the White House -- and the President himself -- have muddled things and stirred more debate on an issue that might have been best left alone until the hearings. A written explanation from Sotomayor, or even something through a spokesperson, could quickly rob conservatives of this overblown controversy. The longer she waits, the more contrived her response might seem.

White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs suggested last week that Sotomayor would  "say that her word choice in 2001 was poor." However, Gibbs acknowledged that he had not heard that from Sotomayor. Instead, he said he had learned it from people who had talked to her - but he did not indentify those people.

President Obama also tried to explain away the Sotomayor statement. "I'm sure she would have restated it," he said on Friday, but gave no clue how he knew that.

White House damage control has not been convincing because Obama and Gibbs were just speculating about what Sotomayor would say. Now, it would be helpful to hear what she has to say.