“Are you ready to work really hard?”

“Are you ready to get dirty?”

That was the rallying cry from first lady Michelle Obama Thursday as she invited local school children to help her pick crops from the White House garden.

The crops are the bounty from the garden that Obama started in the spring to promote healthy eating .

And it’s frugal eating too.

“Do you know how much food has come out of this garden so far? Over 740 pounds of food have come out of this little piece of land,” Obama told the kids.  The whole thing — from start to harvest — came in under $200, she added.

Some of the youngsters at the harvest had been helping with the garden as it grew — along with Jim Adams, the chief horticulturist at the White House and the chefs at the executive mansion.

Everything harvested Thursday, including some gigantic sweet potatoes, was being donated to charity.

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Photo credit:Reuters/Larry Downing (Michelle Obama in the White House garden on the South Lawn)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney tonight joins a chorus of critics who say President Barack Obama is taking way too long to decide whether to send another 40,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

Cheney, no fan of any of the current administration’s foreign policy initiatives, prodded the White House to fulfill the president’s promise to give the U.S. armed  forces a clear mission in Afghanistan and to do it now.

“It’s time for President Obama to make good on his promise. The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger, ” Cheney said in remarks prepared for delivery at the Center for Security Policy, a Washington think-tank.

“Having announced his Afghanistan strategy last March, President Obama now seems afraid to make a decision, and unable to provide his commander on the ground with the troops he needs to complete his mission,” Cheney said.

Cheney also refuted what he said was a complaint by White House chief of staff  Rahm Emanuel that “the Obama administration had to start from scratch to put together a strategy.”

“The new strategy they embraced in March, with a focus on counterinsurgency and an increase in the numbers of troops, bears a striking resemblance to the strategy we passed to them,” Cheney said.

“Now they seem to be pulling back and blaming others for their failure to implement the strategy they embraced. It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity,” he added.

Earlier in the day, Obama said he could reach a decision on a new strategy before the outcome of Afghanistan’s presidential run-off on Nov. 7 And he pushed back against  critics who accuse him of vacillating.

“We are going to take the time to get this right,” Obama told MSNBC.

“We’re not going to drag it out because there is a sense that the sooner we get a sound approach in place and personnel in place, the better off we’re going to be. But we also want to make sure that we don’t put resources ahead of strategy.”

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Photo credit:Reuters/Joshua Roberts (Cheney speaking on national security in May)

The massive overhaul of the U.S. healthcare system backed by President Barack Obama could face a court challenge if it is ever enacted into law.

Republican Senator Charles Grassley, speaking at the Reuters Washington Summit, said a number of people, including Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, have questioned whether it is constitutional for the government to require U.S. citizens and residents to purchase a product offered by private, for-profit companies.

The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce.

But many conservatives believe that clause does not allow Congress to require U.S. residents to purchase a good or service.

Healthcare reform legislation would require U.S. citizens and residents to purchase healthcare insurance, with the federal government providing subsidies to help low and moderate income people afford it.

Grassley said he thought the mandate - which is something health insurers have insisted on in exchange for dropping many industry practices such as excluding coverage for preexisting conditions - would face a court challenge.

But Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus disagreed. He said the mandate was constitutional and that all Americans share a “moral” responsibility in making sure the U.S. health system works.

“Some Americans are rich, some are poor, some are beautiful, some are ugly, some are tall, some are short, some are fat, some are skinny — when it comes to healthcare reform, everybody is the same,” Baucus told reporters on a telephone conference call. “Illness does not care if you are old or young or beautiful or ugly or whatnot. We are all in this together as Americans.”

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Photo credits: Above: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst. (Grassley at Reuters summit); Blog thumbnail: Reuters/Jason Reed. (Baucus smiles after Finance Committee  approves healthcare reform bill)

President Barack Obama started his day by learning he had won the Nobel Peace Prize,  but that didn’t stop him from quickly turning downright prickly.

After a meeting with Americans who had been ripped off by the financial system, Obama on Friday said big banks and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce were trying to block some of his efforts at financial regulatory reform.

They specifically want to torpedo his plan for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency, he said. Legislation creating the agency is now working its way through Congress.

The proposed agency would help ordinary people who borrow money for homes or other purposes, he told an East Room gathering at the White House.

It would get rid of those “ridiculously confusing contracts” that govern everything from credit cards to home mortgages.

“A lot of the banks and big financial firms don’t like the idea of a consumer agency very much,” Obama said. “In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is spending millions on an ad campaign to kill it.”

It was the ads that aggravated him.

“You might have seen some of these ads — the ones that claim that local butchers and other small businesses somehow will be harmed by this agency,” he said. “This is, of course, completely false.”

“We’ve made clear that only businesses that offer financial services would be affected by this agency. I don’t know how many of your butchers are offering financial services,” the president added.

He noted the Chamber had spent nearly half a billion dollars to lobby the government over the past decade.

And he said big banks were trying to maximize “their profits at the expense of American consumers, despite the fact that recently a whole bunch of those same American consumers bailed them out as a consequence of the bad decisions that they made.”

The Chamber of Commerce, seeing the attack coming, put out a note in advance saying they completely agree that consumers need protection.

They just don’t think a big new federal agency should be created to provide the protection.

Instead, the Chamber favors leaving consumer protection to the six federal regulators already doing the job. Their powers could be beefed up so they could become even more effective, it said.

And that ad about the local butcher?

The Chamber says a Consumer Financial Protection Agency would have sweeping authority over virtually every business that extends credit to American consumers.

So if the local butcher lets his customers pay him tomorrow for hamburger meat today,  he might be seen as offering financial services and his books could be open to federal scrutiny.

The agency would “have the ability to collect information about his customers’ financial accounts and take away many of their financial choices,” the Chamber’s ad says.

What do you think? Does that ring true?

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama makes remarks on financial regulatory reform Oct. 9 in the East Room of the White House)

It’s never going to top any charts, but the folks who put a recording of HR3200 online for your listening pleasure are back.

This time, they’re offering a digital recording of the Senate Finance Committee version of healthcare reform offered by chairman Max Baucus. And they keep the site updated with all modifications to the bill as it moves through the committee.

The voice actors doing the reading see their performances as a public service. “We read, you listen, we ALL decide,” is the slogan atop their Web site.

The way they see it, voters need to know what’s in the bills — minus the political spin. But they know some of us don’t take time to actually read the contents, including some members of Congress.

HR3200, formally known as America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 is over 1,000 pages. But the voice artists make it easy for you to catch every word. You can even download the recordings to your favorite MP3 player.

In America’s Healthy Future Act of 2009, the Baucus bill, you gotta love hearing Title III Subtitle A Part II on strengthening the quality infrastructure read by a professional.

For more Reuters political news, click here.

Photo Credit: Reuters/Punit Paranjpe (researcher in India), Reuters/Choi Bu-Seok (People try out iPod devices in Seoul)

Former President Jimmy Carter said out loud what Democrats had been whispering for a while, that the protests against the country’s first black president are tinged with racism.

Carter’s forceful words threw the issue into the forefront of public debate.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African American,” Carter said in an interview on NBC.

While others had raised the issue, it wasn’t until Carter’s blunt words that it reached a crescendo as loud as the protests.

Carter mentioned his southern roots in saying ”that racism inclination still exists” in the country and many white people believe African Americans are not qualified to be president.

Critics of Obama have protested at town hall meetings around the country, rallied in Washington, and even yelled out on the floor of the House of Representatives (Congressman Joe Wilson’s “you lie”).

Michael Steele, the first black chairman of the Republican National Committee, issued a statement that said: “President Carter is flat out wrong. This isn’t about race. It is about policy.”

Steele accused Democrats of trying to shift attention away from the president’s unpopular healthcare plan.

“Characterizing Americans’ disapproval of President Obama’s policies as being based on race is an outrage and a troubling sign about the lengths Democrats will go to disparage all who disagree with them,” he said.

Obama did not respond to a shouted question by a reporter about Carter’s racism comments.

UPDATE: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says that Obama doesn’t believe the criticism is racist. “The president does not believe that it’s based on the color of his skin.”

Is there an objective barometer for whether a protest is based on racism or policy?

What do you think? Are the protests about race or policy or both?

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Photo Credit: Reuters/Eric Thayer (Carter at 2008 Democratic National Convention), Reuters/Molly Riley (Steele after being elected RNC chairman in January)

Hundreds of people  lined up at  Arlington National Cemetery Sunday to visit the grave site of  Edward Kennedy a day after the long-time senator from Massachusetts was laid to rest in a private service.

A simple cross and a memorial tablet mark the gravesite, near those of  the late senator’s brothers,  Senator Robert Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy.  On Sunday, small bouquets of flowers were placed on the ground nearby.

Edward Kennedy died last week, at age 77, after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

Several hundred people stood in line in the hot sun to visit his grave — a small group was already waiting when the cemetery opened at 8 a.m., The Washington Post reported. That area of the cemetery had been closed to the public since early Saturday morning.

Kennedy’s widow,  children, extended family and close friends attended a private burial service Saturday evening as darkness fell on Washington.

For more Reuters political news, click here

Photo credit: Reuters/Yuri Gripas ( Gravesite of late U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy at Arlington National Cemetery)

U.S. Senator Jim Bunning asked a Treasury Department official the question other lawmakers had avoided at a banking committee hearing on Wednesday — so, what about that profanity-laced tirade by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner?

Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr, on hand to testify about credit rating agencies, played down the drama of Geithner’s widely reported “conversation” on Friday with regulators who were refusing to toe the Obama administration’s financial reform line.

Barr said he attended the meeting in question, where sources said Geithner used expletives in urging cooperation from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and others.

“The secretary made clear the regulators are free to defend their own agency prerogatives. They’re independent agencies … We had a long discussion about macro-prudential versus micro-prudential regulation, the kind of conversation that we have had with them on many occasions,” Barr said.
But Bunning, a Kentucky Republican known for his bluntness, wasn’t buying this bland description of a closed-door session that sources described as tense and uncomfortable.
Under pressure from Bunning, Barr replied, “I won’t characterize the exact verbiage that was used … senator, you will not be surprised to learn that in Treasury, as occassionally up on the Hill, there’s some colorful language.”

Said Bunning, “I’ve been accused of that. I understand.”

There is a new crisis on the agenda for President Barack Obama.

While trying to revitalize a nosediving economy, rebuild the collapsing auto industry, rein in North Korea’s unpredictable Kim Jong-il and overhaul the costly healthcare system, Obama now can ponder his response to an Iran reeling from a disputed election and the biggest street protests since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

Several leading Republicans have hammered Obama for what they say is a too cautious approach to the disputed vote that gave hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a big win over former Prime Minister Mirhossein Mousavi. Obama said on Monday he was “deeply troubled” by the post-election violence but it was up to the Iranians to work out who their leaders will be.

Republicans say that is not good enough.

“He should speak out that this is a corrupt, fraud, sham of an election.  The Iranian people have been deprived of their rights,” Senator John McCain said on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday.

While Obama considers his next move on Iran, however, he will also grapple with North Korea during a White House meeting on Tuesday with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. The South Korean leader has taken a tough line on North Korea even before Pyongyong ratched up tension in recent weeks by test-firing missiles, restarting a plant to produce weapons-grade plutonium and holding a May 25 nuclear test.

Here's another one that you can loosely file under "Government aid to newspapers," even though there's no money that taxpayers would fork over to newspapers. Maryland Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin introduced a bill on Tuesday to allow newspapers to become non-profit organizations to help them survive.

Cardin points out that this wouldn't help big chains facing bankruptcy, falling advertising revenue or some combination of the two. Instead, it's designed to let the little guys -- the community newspapers -- survive, he says.

SENATOR CARDIN INTRODUCES BILL THAT WOULD ALLOW AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS TO OPERATE AS NON-PROFITS

His Goal is to Help the Newspaper Industry Survive

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), today introduced legislation that would allow newspapers to become non-profit organizations in an effort to help the faltering industry survive.

In recent months, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Rocky Mountain News, the Baltimore Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others, have either ceased daily publication or announced that they may have to stop publishing. A number of other publications, including newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, owners of The Baltimore Sun, have filed for bankruptcy or have had to institute severe cutbacks that have impacted news coverage.

The Newspaper Revitalization Act would allow newspapers to operate as non-profits, if they choose, under 501(c)(3) status for educational purposes, similar to public broadcasting. Under this arrangement, newspapers would not be allowed to make political endorsements, but would be allowed to freely report on all issues, including political campaigns. Advertising and subscription revenue would be tax exempt and contributions to support coverage or operations could be tax deductible.

The measure is targeted to preserve local newspapers serving communities and not large newspaper conglomerates. Because newspaper profits have been falling in recent years, no substantial loss of federal revenue is expected.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," said Senator Cardin. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy.

"While we have lots of news sources, we rely on newspapers for in-depth reporting that follows important issues, records events and exposes misdeeds. In fact, most if not all sources of journalistic information - from radio to television to the Internet - gathers their news from newspaper reporters who cover the news on a daily basis and know their communities. It is in the interest of our nation and good governance that we ensure they survive."

According to Barclays Capital, newspaper advertising revenue was down by about 25% for 2008, and circulation continues to steadily decline at most major newspapers as readers increasingly turn to alternative electronic news sources.

Senator Cardin added: "This may not be the optimal choice for some major newspapers or corporate media chains, but it should be an option for many newspapers that are struggling to stay afloat.

(Photo: Reuters)