President Obama and Secretary Clinton: The Complete 60 Minutes Interview (VIDEO)

Part 1:




Part 2:



For all of you speculating what this means for 2016...do us all a favor, don't.

Look, it's pretty simple if you think about it. The President and Secretary Clinton went through a bruising Primary process that...ironically left the party stronger as a result, going into the 2008 elections. Neither wants things to get quite that nasty again, so the President is going to great lengths to make sure his top Lieutenants, the one's who might run in 2016, get some time in the sun, complete with a very public pat on the back.

Look at Vice President Biden: he cut the Debt Ceiling Deal (though only temporary), he led the commission on guns, he even dropped the hint on the President's position on Marriage Equality (albeit a bit too early). He made sure the world saw him as the "Happy warrior" running back and forth during the Inaugural Parade.

Dude's running. He's totally running.

And all of that time in the spotlight came courtesy of President Obama.

Now, to balance out the ledger, President Obama has to make sure that his other top Lieutenant got a Grade A going away gift, aka a Prime Time lovefest on 60 Minutes. Not a lot of policy discussed there, but right now...if you really look at it, now both Biden and Clinton can both claim the mantle of the inheritor of Barack Obama's legacy, with Barack Obama's blessing. Let the 2016 contest begin...

...but let it begin closer to 2015, okay? We've still got @#$% to do.

This Sunday! 60 Minutes interview with both President Obama and Secretary Clinton!

All kinds of awesome:

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will appear together in their first joint interview this weekend.

The president and Clinton, who is expected to leave the State Department within days, will tape the interview Friday at the White House with "60 Minutes" anchor Steve Kroft. It will be the president's first dual interview with anyone other than first lady Michelle Obama.

Obama and Clinton forged a strong working relationship over the past four years — and former President Bill Clinton played a vital role in Obama's reelection campaign last fall. But Obama and Clinton were also bitter rivals during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries.

The joint interview comes just after Clinton testified before House and Senate panels regarding the administration's response to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Republicans have been highly critical of the White House's handling of the attack.

The 60 Minutes Interview with Barack Obama for Sept. 23, 2012 (VIDEO)

The complete 60 Minutes interview with President Obama... (VIDEO)

60 Minutes: The Jack Abramoff Interview... (VIDEO)

Also known as the Lobbyist's playbook...



UPDATED 4:10pm, Pacific:

There was more, and I'm putting it all down here.

How to use Congressional Hearing to destroy people...




The Culture of Corruption:




And just to remind you, an emphasized segment detailing the murky-language "perfect" tactic:




And what of Jack's time in Prison?

60 Minutes: The growing threat of "Sovereign Citizens" (VIDEO)

Anyone who's been following the Militia movement has heard of these guys. Nevertheless, I'm glad 60 Minutes took some time to shine a spotlight on them in yesterday's broadcast:

(CBS News video can't get it's act together. The video that is coming through their "Embed this clip" button is of some magnetic kid from Croatia, and not the story I'm talking about. Hence, if you want to see the video, click here.)

It is interesting that this movement has a lot of clear ties to some very racist organizations in the past, yet there is Wesley Snipes, apparently (according to the piece) using Sovereign language in legal filings about his Tax Case.

Personally, I think that says more about Wesley Snipes than it does this movement.

Missed Stories: Lara Logan's Interview on 60 Minutes (VIDEO)

One of the things President Obama mentioned in his speech about his long-form Birth Certificate, was the fact that the Media gets us all distracted on things (like his birth certificate) that we don't need to get distracted on.

Unfortunately, sometimes other, actually relevant events can swamp aside other, equally important stories.

One of those unfortunate circumstances took place during Sunday's announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden. We lost track of Lara Logan's interview talking about her sexual assault while working on the Egyptian Uprising Story for CBS.

This is one of those instances for a woman in Ms. Logan's position, that's both hard and necessary. To have to relive that order is hard, but to share that experience with the world, on a major news telecast, is necessary because it helps chip away at the stigma that seems to still exist about these crimes. Still, she got up in front the camera, and broke that code of silence. I don't even know Ms. Logan, but I'm proud of her for doing this.

It's a damn shame that a proper discussion of what she said was swept aside. Well, at least here, you have a chance to see the interview in case you missed it:



And 60 Minutes Overtime:

Pushback, and Vaporizaton... (VIDEO)

It's not great surprise that folks are starting to complain about the Gulf Oil Spill caused by British Peteroleum's, Transoceans and Haliburton's recklessness. It's been a month. Eleven people are dead, and nothing much seems to have been done to fix the calamity that might wind up destroying the Gulf of Mexico.

The fact that those same voices are starting to complain about the President's lack of action is a little surprising, but at the same time justified. Backing that idea is the notion that a competent administration should rush in and kick BP the hell out of there, and there are signs that may actually happen if BP doesn't get its act together. The fact that the President hasn't done this already is generating ire from even his most devoted followers (or should I say Hillary's).

Can't say I blame them. At the same time, I can't say I blame the President either, even though my preference is that he get off his duff and kick BP out of the Gulf, and present them with a bill for services rendered.

But is that even possible?

One problem is might be the language that exists from the Oil Cleanup Bill that was signed into law after Exxon Valdez.

Would kicking BP out, after they've gone public with the notion that they'll clean it all up on their dime, absolve them of all responsibility?

Would the Obama administration be limited in that bill for services rendered I described, in that it could only be $75 Million dollars? (the current cap on exposure to BP -- short of fraud, which I think you can prove. At least I hope Robert Kennedy does.)

Can you imagine having the President rush to the rescue of a toxic spill cleanup, to actually get it done in a timely manner, only to have his Republican opponents, who'll say anything at this point, mutter that the cleanup should have been the responsibility of the Private Industry that caused it, and that any Government intervention is nothing more than a bailout for Big Oil?

At the same time, I hate to say this...I'm a little glad it's happening this way.

No, I don't want to see oily birds, dead fishes, and Gulf Fishermen with their lives ruined, but I want to see the ineptness of Corporate America exposed. And make no mistake, what you're watching is Corporate incompetence writ large.

We are now recieving hard, visual (and if you're close enough to the Gulf, olfactory) evidence of the total and complete epicfail of the idea that Business can solve everything, and do it better than the Government. That notion is dead. It's been dead since Lehman Brothers collapse, but you're seeing it live and in action.

Last week, 60 Minutes did an interview with a survivor of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and it's the best, and most detailed account of what happened before and after. (Did I hear right that the eleven men who died, weren't so much as burned alive, but vaporized?)

It's a double segment, so it's a little long, but it's worth it, trust me.


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And Part Two:


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This is Duncan Hunter's Brother?!? (VIDEO)

Okay, basic story: there's a canal separating the U.S. and Mexico near San Diego. It 's also the most dangerous body of water in the U.S. as crossing it has cost 550 people, mostly illegal immigrants, their lives.

And...there is a avid right-winger out there, working overtime, risking arrest, to put in some semblance of safety features across this canal, to allow the illegals to at least arrive alive...

...and this right winger is Duncan Hunter's brother???

Great Gosh a'mighty...


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Rahm Emanuel: 60 Minutes Interview (VIDEO)

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and for some extras...

Ballet:


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Arrogance:


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Neatness (or lack thereof):


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The missing finger:


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CBS: The Barack Obama 60 Minutes Interview for Sept. 13, 2009 (VIDEO)

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"Who told you your incompetent little fingers had the requisite skills to edit me!"

Sorry, movie reference.

I recommend the transcript if you have the time. They definitely did a lot of cutting.

KROFT: Before you made this speech, there was a sense clearly in the press and among people in Washington that this program was in trouble.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.

KROFT: That the healthcare reform was in trouble.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right.

KROFT: Do you think that you do you think you changed some minds? Do you think you picked up some votes this week?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, here's a conversation I had with one of my advisors early on in this process. He said, "I've been in this town a long time. I think this is the year we're going to get healthcare done. But I guarantee you this will be pronounced dead at least four or five times before we finally get a bill passed." And so in some ways we anticipated this was just going to be difficult. Look, you're talking about one-sixth of the economy. You've got a whole range of special interests out there that are profiting from the current system and don't want to see it change. You've got a continuing habit of polarization inside of Washington that's hard to break.

And so we knew this was going to be hard. And I think what is true is that as Congress moves forward with all its legislation, the sausage making process got a lot of people confused. They didn't know which bill was which and what the program was. It was important for me to provide some clarity. And as a consequence of the speech that I gave, I think now more people understand what the bill's about. I think there's still going to be some vigorous debate. I think there's still a lot of hard work to get to get done. But I think at least it focused people's attention on why this is so important and what exactly we're trying to do.

Ben Shalom Bernanke (VIDEO)

The President sooo told him to do this.

A year in the making? Humanizing the Fed Chair? He's from Dillon, freakin' South Carolina?? His family business was once located on Main Street in Dillon? How, if you're our President, do you not promote that??

By the way, that's not a joke, or a dig. That's the man's name, Benjamin Shalom Bernanke.

Couple this with Geithner's recent (and I think successful) appearance on Charlie Rose, and this appears to be a coordinated effort by the Federal Government to tell America, "Hey, we hear you. You're pissed. We get it. We got this."

Here's Part 1:



And Part 2:

The Obamas on 60 Minutes...

Barack and Michelle's Interview from 60 Minutes, the complete interview...


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