Winter's Picks
Barack Obama smoked for most of his adult life. He promised his wife he'd quit when he decided to run for president.
Yet has he? The answer is ambiguous at best, as Time columnist Michael Kinsley points out in this op-ed piece.
But Kinsley also suggests we should give Obama a pass on this one - that his other attributes outweigh this deadly habit.
Quote: If Obama actually has accomplished the miracle of giving up cigarettes at the apogee of a presidential race, he should be happy to let us know this and add to his superman image. And if he hasn't? Well, if he is straight with us about it, we should forgive him. So he's not a superman. Neither are we. In a democracy, that is a good thing for ruler and ruled to know they have in common. Furthermore, as presidential vices go, this one is not near the top. As for being a role model for youths, Obama's good habits outweigh this single bad one.
What do you think? Should we just "look the other way" or is this a bigger issue?
That would be Karl Rove, former deputy chief of staff to President Bush and now a big Republican pundit.
Rove cautions Obama against getting mired down on the issue of Guantanamo. He also said the president-elect is pretty much stuck with Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.
“Any other selection now would embitter her supporters, even if she publicly declines the appointment," he said.
Quote: One challenge the president-elect faces is setting a starting agenda that's too ambitious. Even a popular new president has finite political capital and time. The congressional pipeline moves more slowly than any White House wishes, especially a new administration.
Well, at least one rapper - Jim Jones - says he is due to the election of Barack Obama.
According to this article, Jones said he's dropping the term "nigga" from his vocabulary, and replacing it with "Obama."
Quote: If words have power, and the slang we use says something about the people we are, then Jimmy’s linguistic U-turn indicates a very powerful shift: away from self-describing as niggas (rebellious, angry, ignorant, hunted), and toward self-describing as Obamas (cool, intelligent, humble, powerful).
She may no longer being running for vice president, but Sarah Palin is still pretty busy. Unfortunately, some think all that national publicity violates Alaska law.
Boiled down, the complaint is that Palin talked to Fox News about her run for the vice presidency - but did it from the governor's office.
Quote: Zane Henning, a North Slope worker from Wasilla, said he filed the complaint with the attorney general. He says Palin is promoting her future political career on state property, pointing in particular to the governor's Nov. 10 interview with Fox News Channel host Greta Van Susteren.
"The governor is using her official position and office in an attempt to repair her damaged political image on the national scene," Henning wrote.
A Palin spokesman pointed out the governor was not a candidate at the time of the interview, but otherwise said little.
It started as a throw-away answer on ESPN, got repeated in more detail on 60 Minutes, and now the president-elect has created a little bit of a firestorm in the sports world.
He's come out in favor of an eight-team playoff seaon, and jokes he's ready to throw his weight around on the matter.
Quote from the 60 Minutes piece: Kroft: "I have one last question: As president of the United States, what can you do, or what do you plan to do about getting a college football playoff for the national championship?"
Obama: "I think any sensible person would say that, if you've got a bunch of teams who play throughout the season and many of them have one loss or two losses, there's no clear, decisive winner, that we should be creating a playoff system. Eight teams, that would be three rounds to determine a national champion. It would -- it would add three extra weeks to the season. You could trim back on the regular season. I don't know any serious fan of college football who has disagreed with me on this. So I'm going to throw my weight around a little bit. I think it's the right thing to do."
