A Paycheck for the First Lady

     Even as First Lady Laura Bush met with Greta Van Susteren, Chris Wallace, and others to discuss her years in the White House, an OpEd appeared in the Washington Post that attempts to lay out the rationale for issuing a paycheck to the next First Lady, and those that follow.

     Lauren Rikleen titles her piece “First Lady: A Job Worth A Paycheck”, and it appeared in the December 26th edition. Ms. Rikleen outlined a host of things that the First Lady does, including being the hostess to many State functions at the White House and elsewhere. Nancy Reagan espoused drug usage as her cause, while Laura Bush has worked tirelessly to bring women’s issues to the forefront on an international stage, such as breast cancer awareness in cultures that deem women as a lower class than men. Mrs. Bush has also been a champion of lteracy. The First Lady often represents the President, and the Country, on the international stage.

     This idea, in fairness to Michelle Obama, was not reported in the media as being something that she herself has suggested, nor have there been any comments from sources close to her staff. Should such an issue come up, Mrs. Obama’s role as the First Lady is just like the role of the wives (or spouses) of our Ambassadors, our top military brass, our Senators, Congressmen, and Governors. Let us remember, Grandma Robinson will be joining the family as at least a parttime resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue– can we deduct her room and board (and AirForce One travel) from Michelle Obama’s budget for the White House?

     NBC’s Andrea Mitchell brought up the subject of a paycheck for Michelle Obama because, after all, she has to give up her career for her husband to be in the White Hosue. She went on to say that Michelle’s impressive credentials reflect the need for a more defined role of the First Lady in our public policy and affairs. My, a mere 16 years since Hillary Clinton was berated for the concept of the “Billary” Presidency– the two for one concept. As my memory serves me, even before entering the White House, Sen. Hillary Clinton was a highly qualified attorney who had served a counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, she had served as Arkansas’s First Lady, developing her causes, and she was willing to pt all of her expertise into her husband’s Presidency, uch as attempting to bring about universal health care. I don’t recall Andrea Mitchell, whose husband is former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, making any calls for a paycheck for the First Mom Hillary!

     Realistically, the benefits and lifetime perks that will follow Michelle Obama after their four years in the White House, as well as the book deals and the speaking engagements, will more than make up for the loss of her salary. Hell, she’ll have a shrine made to her in the Barack H. Obama II Presidential Library, presumably to be built in Chicago.

Biden confirms Obama Media access: No questioning Allowed!!

     Sen. Joe Biden was able to show the American public exactly how the media has allowed the Obama campaign to set the standard for access to them, and how our freedom of press and speech may be altered in the future.

    During an interview on Florida’s WFTV, Barbara West asked Sen. Biden some difficult questions, and actually had to confrontational with the Senator as he became angered at the context of her comments, including quotes from Karl Marx.

    In the aftermath of the Joe the Plumber comments, it was acceptable for the media to dig into his past and rake him over the coals; it has been reported that government computers in Ohio were used to reveal some of the Joe the Plumber information. It was acceptable to dispatch hundreds of media and investigators to Alaska to dig out the dirt on Gov. Sarah Palin. But how many journalists and camera crews were parked in Hyde Park in front of the home of William Ayers?

     WFTV later received a cancellation of Jill Biden’s interview, as well as a notice from the Obama campaign that the likelihood of any further contact with the campaign is unlikely. Can we see what we may face in an Obama administration?

    While the leftwing blogosphere whines and cries about the “ineptness” of the anchorwoman, her credentials are impressive, having worked for ABC for 16 years, and she was a principal assistant to the late Peter Jennings. She obviously was not trained at the same school of journalistic ethics that Andrea Mitchell attended!!

UPDATE:  As would be expected, the Obama leftist warriors have begun an all out assault on Orlando’s WFTV and their anchor, Barbara West. Please show them support and appreciation for being willing to challenge the Obama team:

             barbara.west@wftv.com

             news@wftv.com

McCain challenges NBC’s Journalistic Ethics: Andrea Mitchell needs a “Reality Check”

     Sen. Joe Biden’s weekend statement about the testing of Barack Obama’s “mettle” with an international crisis within six months of an Obama inauguration has had the Obama camp on the defensive, Biden himself trying to clarify the remarks, Gen. Colin Powell’s Obama endorsement a lackluster news story, and the McCain camp using it to its fullest.

    FOX News and other media outlets have analyzed and dissected the story from every angle.

    Yet, NBC and MSNBC, primarily through the tainted journalistic ethics of Andrea Mitchell, have failed to show the news story in the full perspective that the others have. Ms. Mitchell, whose liberal leanings have become far more evident since her husband, Alan Greenspan (the former Fed Chairman), retired, portrayed the Biden clip as the Delaware Senator praising his running mate’s strength as a President. He has a “strong spine” was one of Biden’s characterizations. Never did NBC show that part of the clip that highlighted Biden’s primary campaign thoughts about Obama’s lack of experience for the Presidency.

      Again today, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough was discussing the story, but the producers only played the same clip that Andrea Mitchell had played. To Scarborough’s credit, he stated that the “wrong clip” was played, and then he explained what the context of Biden’s remarks implied.

      This is the statement from the McCain-Palin campaign regarding NBC’s outright disregard for journalism:

A statement from McCain-Palin spokesman Michael Goldfarb:

 

“Joe Biden’s commented on Sunday that Barack Obama’s election as President would, within six months, result in ‘an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.’ Biden further added that the American people would not perceive Barack Obama’s response to this crisis as correct. ‘It’s not gonna be apparent that we’re right,’ he said. Biden’s remarks capture perfectly the message of this campaign: Barack Obama is too risky, too inexperienced, to serve as commander in chief–that his election by itself will provoke our enemies, and that his brief record raises serious questions as to how an Obama administration would respond to such a challenge.

“This campaign highlighted Biden’s remarks throughout the day yesterday. We held a conference call with Mayor Giuliani who asked what Joe Biden meant. We released a statement highlighting Biden’s remarks and asking what kind of crisis his unconditional meetings with the leaders of rogue states might provoke. Our surrogates and spokesmen also noted the comments in radio and TV appearances. Yet on NBC Nightly News last night, when Andrea Mitchell reported on Biden’s remarks, she failed to play the relevant portion–the portion that this campaign and a variety of news outlets had found controversial, or revealing as the case may be. Instead, Ms. Mitchell played a tape of Joe Biden talking about how Barack Obama has ‘steel in his spine.’

“This morning, on MSNBC, the network again aired the tape of Biden, and again they aired the segment in which Joe Biden heaps praise on his running mate. But Joe Scarborough noted that the network had played the wrong clip, and that what Joe Biden said directly reflects the central criticism this campaign has made of Barack Obama: that his inexperience, his poor judgment, and his foreign policy proposals will, in Joe Biden’s words, ‘guarantee’ a crisis.

“So how is it that NBC repeatedly failed to play those remarks?”

 

During the Republican National Convention, Andrea Mitchell reported from the floor of the convention. At no time in her broadcasts did she report in anything but a biased nature, blatantly disrespectful to every person she spoke with on the floor.

Perhaps it is time for BOTH Andrea Mitchell and the divisive Keith Olbermann to call it QUITS.

Added Note: Sen. McCain, while using this Biden gaffe on the campaign trail, has personalized it by addig his own international test, as a pilot staring down at Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis in 1963. “I have been tested” is a part of his mantra.