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(Ted and Joan Kennedy - Election Night 1962 - battling the stigma of nepotism)

Going a back a ways today. The legacy of Ted Kennedy, who left us this year, has been remembered of late as a staunch supporter of Universal Health Care - his tireless arguments in favor of reform of our shattered Healthcare system and the uphill battle he encountered for so many years in the process. But we don't spend much time on the early days of Ted Kennedy, the candidate for Senate. His opponent George Cabot Lodge, son of the former running mate to Richard Nixon in 1960. Ted Kennedy had to weather the baggage of being the brother of the President, How would that impact his ability to be an effective member of the Senate, even as a Junior Senator. The questions were frequently asked, even on this episode of Meet The Press.

Ted Kennedy: “Mister Spivak, I want to make my position extremely clear that my decisions in the United States Senate will be based upon my own belief of what I think is in the best interests of the state, the best interests of the nation, and in the dictates of my conscience. I have disagreed with the President before. I imagine I’ll disagree with him in the future. But upon this will be made my determinations about the questions effecting both the state and the nation.”

On October 28, 1962, with the Cuban Missile Crisis on everyone's minds, the Senate seat race in Massachusetts took a serious backseat to the events 90 miles south of the mainland.

But even so, 1962 would be the beginning of the Ted Kennedy years.

Hell has officially frozen over. After more than a decade of hyper-partisanship and knee-jerk, reactionary opposition to the other, the entire political spectrum of Meet the Press's roundtable panel--Markos Moulitsas, Joe Scarborough, Ed Gillespie and Tavis Smiley--all agree on one thing: the health-care reform bill sucks. There's the vaunted bipartisanship Obama sought.

Laughing off Whiter House adviser David Axelrod's spin of the historic (and not-as-bad-as-it-seems) nature of the bill, Markos points out that all this bill does is expand an already broken system, a proven failed program in Massachusetts. Scarborough adds that for all the White House talk that the insurance companies hate the bill, there is no regulation that Congress didn't capitulate on after pushback from the insurance lobbies and if they hate it so much, why has the value of their stock gone up so much recently? Former RNC Chair Ed Gillespie can barely contain his glee at the thought of the seats the GOP will pick up, because of this bill, and Smiley notes that Candidate Obama's rhetoric doesn't measure up to President Obama's actions and bemoans the incrementalism mentality:

I do believe that you have to stand on your principle. With all due respect to the White House and the President, who deserves who deserves great credit for taking this issue on and pushing further down the field than any other seven Presidents have done, you still have to ask, where is the principle that we started out with, and how firm have we stood on that principle? I thnk the danger for this White House is this: that the President and his team appear to be incrementalists. I warned the last time I was on this program, quoting Dr. King, about taking “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.”

I love that line, and it resonates as much today as it did when Dr. King tried dissuade those who wanted to take an incremental approach to civil rights and segregation.

The sad thing is how clear this is to us here outside the Beltway, and how badly calculated this was to those inside the White House. And I don't think this was some malevolent intent on their part, but just a triangulating, DLC/Centrist move that completely didn't take into account that we now inhabit the post-Clinton/Bush era. I don't think there's any question that the White House must accept responsibility for the lameness of the bill--although they'll never do it publicly and risk giving more fodder to the GOP media--Feingold and Webb are already pointing fingers.

And at this point, I don't know what can be done to make this better. Tempting as it might be to thrown in the towel, the ramifications of that politically (you throw a bone like that to the GOP and nothing will get through Congress next session) will be a nightmare, and besides which, there's no guarantee they'd be able to achieve anything, much less anything better on a second go-round. So all in all, I have to agree with Joe Scarborough, as much as it deeply pains me to do so: we've been screwed.

Opinions You Should Have: Democrats To Actually Vote For Own Bill

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!: Progressive Expectaions

The Bobblespeak Translations: Meet the Press - December 19, 2009

Sen. Fritz Hollings: They're all against jobs

Majikthise: COP15: Obama's high-handed pseudo-deal

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Share The Damn Road, Ketchup Is A Vegetable, Santa Claus Blog

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(Governor Alfred E. Driscoll (R) - His legacy: The New Jersey Turnpike)

The world of politics seems to be one endless procession of bright lights, sterling hopefuls and utter flame-outs.

During the 1948 Presidential campaign, the name Alfred E. Driscoll was bandied about as a possible vice-Presidential running mate with Thomas E. Dewey on the Republican ticket. It surfaced again in 1952. But neither panned out and New Jersey Governor Driscoll quietly faded from the public scene after leaving office in 1954. His legacy, it would appear, are a number of bridges along with championing the cause of the New Jersey Turnpike.

At the time though, (1948) eyes were trained on him as serious Capitol Hill material, as is evidenced by this rather lively discussion on an early incarnation of Meet The Press regarding the postmortem on the 1948 election and the disastrous defeat for the Republican party.

Lawrence Spivak: “Fortunately, I have before me Governor, Clarence Buddington Kelland’s quotation on the campaign. Mister Davis, a moment ago asked you about it and I’d like to read it to you and see if you agree or disagree with what he said. He said ‘Dewey’s campaign was smug, arrogant, stupid and supercilious. No issues were stated or faced.’ You think that was true of the Republican campaign, that they failed to state their issues or face them?”

Governor Driscoll: “ Well I would like to enter an emphatic denial on the first part of . . that statement. I think that the Republican party did fail for reasons that are now apparent, which were perhaps not apparent at that time. To adequately state and fight the issues.”

Although it's clear Driscoll wasn't up for exchanging fistfuls of mud with the panel, his answers give some indication where the Republican party's troubles lay in 1948. And one could say the same for the election of 2008, sixty years later.

Some things don't change.

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Rachel Maddow responds to Dick Armey's insulting remarks about her during today's AFP tea bagger rally. As usual Rachel displays about 1000% more class than the sexist ass Dick Armey could ever hope to muster in his life time. I wonder if Dick Armey will be accepting any more invitations to appear with Rachel Maddow on Meet the Press again so he can respond to her face to face.

From Think Progress--Dick Armey sneers at ‘a woman named Maddox’ who ‘has a Ph.D. in something that doesn’t matter.’:

During today’s AFP-sponsored “Code Red” anti-health reform rally on Capitol Hill, one of the speakers — former House Majority Leader and current corporate defender Dick Armey — derided MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Armey was prepared to introduce Sen. Tom Coburn (whom he bizarrely referred to as “Doc Colbin” a couple of times), but Coburn wasn’t there yet. So instead, he told a story that was a shot at Maddow:

ARMEY: The last time [Coburn] and I were together, I had the amazing opportunity to watch him receive a lecture on health care from a woman named, uh, uh, uh, “Maddox.” A television personality. Who I’m told has a Ph.D. in something that doesn’t matter. Who knew she was qualified to lecture the good physician on health care in America because she had actually gone to a doctor once.

Rachel replayed her exchange with Tom Coburn on Meet the Press and had this response for Dick Armey:

Maddow: That was my only exchange with Tom Coburn in front of Dick Armey. Now if Mr. Armey thinks I was not qualified to be in that discussion because Tom Coburn is a gynecologist and I'm not, I wonder why Dick Armey thought that he was qualified to be in that room?

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So nice of David Gregory to make sure we all got to hear what the man who's been wrong about everything, Alan Greenspan, thinks about what we should do now to fix the economy he helped to mess up, or whether or not the Fed should be audited.

MR. GREGORY: This is an interesting question about our role in the world, how the rest of the world sees us, our commitment to capitalism and, in corporate America, Dr. Greenspan, the notion of where is the certainty? Washington is a big question mark now when it comes to climate policy, healthcare policy. A lot of businesses saying, "Look, we don't know what's coming down the pike." There's no impetus to grow, to expand, to invest.

DR. GREENSPAN: That's the key problem; that is, investment occurs when you have a stable economy and when you can foresee what's going on in the future. Because, remember, you make a risky investment which may have 10 years or 15 years life to it, and unless you have some semblance of a notion as to what is out there...

MR. GREGORY: Hm.

DR. GREENSPAN: ...you're going to be reluctant to invest. And that is key. I mean, I agree with Jim in this respect. I think it's very critical that we get the uncertainties out of the system.

MR. GREGORY: Do you think additional stimulus for jobs makes sense at this stage?

DR. GREENSPAN: No. I think what is missing in this whole discussion is that the--what I presume to be the major source of the recovery, and that is the remarkable increase in the amount of stock market wealth that has occurred in the last six to nine months. People think stock prices are just paper profits. They are not. They create real purchasing power and, most importantly, they create a fluidity into the financial system which is the reason why even though banks are not lending freely at this particular stage, they are solvent and the problems that we had six to nine months ago have disappeared, because essentially $5 trillion worth of increased equity is pouring into the economy. And you can see it in the retail sales figures. 401(k)s, for example, have increased by half a trillion dollars.

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Mitt Romney cites the average wages of government workers being higher than private sector workers as a sign that our government spending is out of control. First off, I'd like to know where he is getting these numbers since David Gregory didn't ask him. Second, these Republicans only seem to be worried about deficits and spending when a)Democrats are in charge and b) when it's spending to get people to work instead of spending for war or tax cuts for the rich.

GREGORY: Governor Romney, our role in the world here. The auto companies going through bankruptcy; and yet, we find out this week that, in fact, the Chinese are buying more cars for the first time more than Americans.

ROMNEY: We can compete around the world, there's no question about that, David. We have the capacity to do that. The American workers are the best in the world, our technology is at the leading edge. America, long term, can be the, the powerful economic engine it's always been. But the real threat right here is something that Alan Greenspan just said, and that is that if we don't take action to rein in the scale of government and the growth of government spending and the compensation levels of government workers--you saw government workers, average government workers, are now making $30,000 a year more than the average private sector worker. These kinds of excesses and the massive deficits that, that, that government is putting in place, over a trillion dollars a year for these coming several years, this threatens our long-term viability, because it, it, it suggests that we could have runaway inflation. And, and the Fed and the federal government are going to have to rein in, pull back from what have been the excesses of these past years, Republican and Democrat. It's not a partisan issue, it's a growth of government issue. And it's got to stop, or America's future could be very much in jeopardy.

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Mr. Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran who never found a war he didn't like John McCain thinks we should not be talking about a timeline to withdraw from Afghanistan. McCain also apparently thinks that the eight years we've already spent in Afghanistan hasn't been long enough to "break the enemy's will" so we can "win". I would like for Sen. McCain to explain how anyone "wins" an occupation. Of course that would require him admitting that's what we're doing there, which is never going to happen.

DAVID GREGORY: We're back with Senator John McCain. Welcome back to the program. A lot to discuss here. A lot to react to. Let's get to your big issue this week. The issue of withdrawal. You heard Secretary Gates say here today, "July 2011 is a date certain for the beginning of the withdrawal." Do you have a problem with that?

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Yes. But let me also say-- David, I support the President's decision. I think it's the right decision. I think that it can lead to success. It's a tough decision on his part to send young Americans into harm's way. As Secretary Gates said, casualties will go up, tragically. But I think he made the right decision. And I think that-- he is-- the reality is, he's not only-- a tough decision to send young Americans into harm's way. But is-- significant elements of his own party are-- are opposed.
So, I strongly support the decision. The problem with the date certain now is that not only there's a problem with that itself, but there's-- a significant contribution between what Secretaries Gates and Clinton were saying and what the President--

DAVID GREGORY: Contradiction. Contradiction.

SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Contradiction.

DAVID GREGORY: Yeah.

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Looks like David Gregory is bound and determined to have John McCain beat Bob Dole's record for Meet the Press appearances before the year is over. During his appearance this week, despite his kind words for Sarah Palin, it sounds like he just threw her under the bus with this remark.

McCain: I'm entertained every time I see people attack her and attack her and attack her -- she's irrelevant but they continue to attack her.

Sarah Barracuda is doing her best to make sure she stays relevant whether the Republican Party likes it or not, John -- and sadly we've got you to thank for that. Look how he has that gritted teeth smile and the dagger look at Gregory for asking the question. I also have a lot of trouble believing that he read, much less enjoyed, Palin's book.

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(Joseph Califano - Two Years in the hotseat and a pink slip for the trouble)

During the early days of the Carter Administration Joseph Califano was appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. By all accounts it was a strained relationship which eventually led to his firing in 1979. From 1977 until 1979 he was the center of several controversies, including the banning of Saccharine, Affirmative Action and quotas in the College system, the Medicare/Abortion issue, a National Health Insurance proposal, smoking and even the 1977 outbreak of Swine Flu (yes, there was Swine flu even then). Califano was not handed softballs, to be sure. As these two exchanges from a 1977 appearances on Meet The Press will attest:

Carol Simpson (NBC News): “Mister Secretary, the Swine flu mass immunization program was a disaster from start to finish, and I have a two part question: first of all, to find out whether your agency, given the same information as was given the agency a year ago, would have embarked on such a program? And secondly, what are you going to do now that the American people have really become frightened by mass immunization programs and what are you going to do if we have a similar vaccine in the future that might be necessary to be given to the people?”

Joseph Califano: “Miss Simpson, I am not prepared to say what I would have done had I been in the government a year ago. It is not clear to me in what ways different decisions would have been made. I intend to look at that thoroughly and carefully as I think that kind of public health decision is difficult as the Secretary has to make. The greatest damage the Swine flu program has done, aside from the human tragedy of the individuals paralyzed and killed has been the impact on immunization programs, particularly for children. There are sixteen million children in this country under the age of fourteen who have not been immunized against Polio, and a large part of that is attributable to the peoples fear about immunization programs. We’ve got to restore confidence . The first step we’ve taken is to open up the entire process for selecting the vaccines for next year. We’ve done that and we haven’t made the selections yet, but every fact that’s relevant to that will be available to the public. We also intend to have a substantial stepped up program of education for children and parents in the immunization area , and to try and get the children of this nation immunized.”

Nancy Hicks (New York Times): “President Carter campaigned on a promise to bring National Health Insurance to the American people. Does this still have a high priority, and if so when might we expect a legislative draft?”

Califano: “This has a very high priority. I regard the Social Security issue, the welfare reform issue, the American family issue and National Health Insurance is four central Presidential priorities for me. We would expect to have legislation before Congress next year in this area. I will be working with and recommending a program during this year.”

Hicks: “Beginning of the year or end of the year?”

Califano: “I don’t know whether it will be the beginning or the end of the year. If President Carter continues the way he’s going on other programs it will be the sooner the better, and closer to the beginning of the year than the end of the year.”

Needless to say, 1977 was not the year of Universal Health Care. Nor was 1978 or 1979 for that matter.

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(Abraham Ribicoff - Secretary of Health, Education And Welfare in 1961 - also Hand Holder, Paranoia Assuager, Debunker)

In 1961, JFK introduced a bill that would provide medical assistance to the Aged. It later became known as Medicare and would later pass in 1965 during the Johnson Administration. As is always the case, the mere mention of anything connection with a government aid program where Healthcare is concerned is immediately tossed into the realm of Socialized Medicine. And in 1961 it was no different.

Newly appointed Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Abraham Ribioff was confronted by a dizzying array of skepticism from the Insurance and Pharmaceutical industries who instantly labeled any kind of Healthcare reform as Socialized Medicine. As is evidenced by this exchange between Ribicoff and Meet The Press co-founder Lawrence Spivak:

Lawrence Spivak: “ Mister Secretary, as you know the AMA and others have charged that the Medical Bill for the Aged under Social Security is an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine. Now if you thought there was a chance that the bill might be an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine, would you still be for it?”

Abraham Ribicoff: “ Well, it’s not an opening wedge to Socialized Medicine, I’m for the bill.

Spivak: “No, I’m asking if you thought that it was an opening wedge . . .

Ribicoff: “I would be against it . . .I would be against the bill if it were Socialized Medicine. . . “

Spivak: “If it opened the door to Socialized Medicine?”

Ribicoff: “It doesn’t open the door to Socialized Medicine”

Spivak: “Would you tell us what makes you so sure that it doesn’t?”

Ribicoff: “Because you and I and every other American, Mister Spivak has the right to choose his own doctor. There is nothing in this bill that has anything to do with doctors. This bill takes care of the health needs to the people of America, our aged over sixty-five, and basically takes care of their hospital bills, their nursing home bills and their visits to the home for home care. The bill specifically provides that each and every American has the right to choose his own doctor and his own hospital.”

The bill wound up being defeated, owing to a Congress recess and an overheated paranoia campaign (sound familiar?). But the Medicare Bill did finally pass in 1965.

The eerie sense of Deja-vu is everywhere.

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(Ernst Reuter - first Mayor of Postwar Berlin - no easy gig)

With the 20th anniversary of the end of the Berlin Wall coming up, I've been running through some events involving Germany, and most notably Berlin, during the height of the Cold War.

Ernst Reuter had the somewhat herculean task of being the first Lord Mayor of postwar Berlin. In 1948 he was faced with the blockade of Berlin by the Soviet Army which effectively cut off all supplies of food and fuel to the city. Reuter appealed to the West for help and it began the famous Berlin Airlift, which singlehandedly saved the city from starvation.

On March 30, 1949, Reuter visited the U.S. and was invited to participate in a segment of Meet The Press where the subject of Berlin and the Cold War in general were discussed.

May Craig: “Mister Mayor I’m thinking of it in the larger sense, as long as the Communists hold the basic doctrine of world revolution how can there be peace unless everybody else submits?”

Ernst Reuter: “ As long as Western powers and the free world is not insisting on the liberation and not fulfilling the task to liberate these peoples who want to be free, that will be very difficult. But in the long run the Soviets cannot stay against the greater moral strengths of the western peoples, that is impossible. I don’t know, maybe after twenty, thirty years we will have a war, I don’t know. But for the time being I can see the possibility to come to a solution, at least for the time being without a war.”

Reuter, who died in 1953 never got to see the fruits of his labor, but he was a very integral part of the Big Picture.

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(Willy Brandt, 1961 - You'd chain smoke too if you had the Russian Army staring at you all day)

Since next week signals twenty years since the infamous Berlin Wall came down, I thought I would post a few items dealing with Germany during the Post-War years. Talk of reunification had been going on since 1946, with the Russians vehemently opposed to it at every opportunity. There had been showdowns between east and west at various times all the way up to November 9, 1989. Always Berlin was perceived as the flash point in any heating up of the Cold War and life in Berlin was regarded by many as life under a heated microscope.

But before August of 1961 there was no wall separating the two Berlins. Only miles of barbed wire fence and checkpoints and troops.

Willy Brandt had the dubious distinction of being Mayor of West Berlin during this time. It was certainly no easy task.

On March 12, 1961, Brandt sat down to a panel interview on Meet The Press and asked about the situation as it currently was in Berlin.

Stewart Hensely (UPI): “Mister Mayor, Soviet Premier Khruschev a few weeks ago sent a communication to Chancellor Adenauer which he restated the demands on Berlin and Germany. This came after a period of relative quiet. Do you anticipate that this Spring or this Summer we’re going to see another increase in pressure on Berlin to bring a crisis as we had in ’58 and ’59?”

Brandt: “It’s hard of course to predict what will happen, but personally I’m inclined to believe that we will not have a new Berlin crisis within the next few months. But the memorandum indicates that new pressure might come sometime later this year.”

Prophetic words from Brandt, since less than five months later the Russians constructed a vast and inescapable wall, dividing the two Berlins. Frequently referred to as "The Wall of Shame", it stood in mute testimony to just how tenuous peace was. And it stood there for 28 more years.

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(In case you were getting all dewey-eyed for the 70s)

Before George P. Schultz landed in the Reagan Administration as Secretary of State, he served for a while as Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon, right during the fabled Energy Crisis of the 1970s.

Granted, we hadn't gone through this kind of thing before. It was 1973 and we were about to be distracted in a big way by Watergate, but the thought of skyrocketing gas prices, panic buying at the pumps and oil companies raking in massive profits just hadn't happened this way before or to this extent.

And so everyone, including Schultz was busy scratching their heads wondering what to do as is evidence by this exchange during his appearance on Meet The Press from December 2, 1973.

Irving R. Levine (NBC News): “Would not higher prices for gasoline favor higher income groups to the disadvantage of lower paid people?”

Schultz: “Not necessarily. The . . obviously you have a family budget with so much purchase of gasoline and fuel oil, and to the extent that lower income groups use proportionate to their income a little bit more than higher income groups, it has some of that effect. But I don’t think it’s a major problem in the family budget.”

Levine: “ But would not a lower . . .

Schultz: “It’s much more of a problem than if we don’t pay the price that is necessary and we don’t have any fuel.”

Levine: “But would not a person with a big income feel free to buy whatever amount of gas is necessary to do the driving that he wishes to do, where a lower income person would not be able to?”

Schultz: “That is true of all kinds of things that are reflected in the buying power of people at different incomes.”

Levine: “ Do You oppose rationing entirely, even as a last resort?

Schultz: “Well I said it should be the absolute last resort, and I’m not really sure that it is a genuine alternative in the sense of being really a workable type of system. Of course there are various kinds of rationing, and depending on how its designed it could work better or worse. I think it is worth remembering that toward the end of World War Two we had patriotic fervor and so on, we had six thousand people in OPA, enforcing . .getting after people in the black market, which I think gives you an idea the difficulties of a rationing system.”

Okay, no simple answer. But the disconnect associated with "well, only higher income people drive" strikes me as typical Republican response. Even during the course of the interview, Schultz offers a few snide asides about higher and lower economic brackets. And of course, he was very much in favor of letting the marketplace go insane.

Remember the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results - or as a friend put it, doing the same thing over and over and knowing what the results are going to be.

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David Gregory talks to author Jon Krakauer about his new book 'Where Men Win Glory' and Gen. McChrystal's part in the cover up of Pat Tillman's death.

GREGORY: Jon Krakauer, I want to get to a key element of your book, "Where Men Win Glory," about Pat Tillman and how it relates to this current conversation about Afghanistan. Because it does involve General Stanley McChrystal, who was obviously critical on the stage now and was critical in the Tillman story of well. As a reminder, if you look at pictures of Pat Tillman, the NFL star with the Arizona Cardinals, decides to enlist in the Army, serves in the Rangers after 9/11. This was certainly a big story when he enlisted. And at the time, General McChrystal was actually head of Special Operations command.

So Pat Tillman was killed in a friendly fire incident and ultimately won the Silver Star, and that's what you focus on in the book and in a subsequent piece that you wrote for The Daily Beast. And here's what you wrote: "An October 5 Newsweek article [said, about General McChrystal] that `he has great political skills; he couldn't have risen to his current position without them.

But he definitelydoes not see himself as the sort of military man who would compromise his principles to do the politically convenient thing.' In the week after Tillman was killed, however, this is precisely what McChrystal appears to have done when he administered a fraudulent medical"--excuse me--"a fraudulent medal recommendation"--we're talking about the Silver Star--"and submitted it to the secretary of the Army, thereby concealing the cause of Tillman's death." Briefly explain what happened.

KRAKAUER: The--after Tillman died, the most important thing to know is that within--instantly, within 24 hours certainly, everybody on the ground, everyone intimately involved knew it was friendly fire. There's never any doubt it was friendly fire. McChrystal was told within 24 hours it was friendly fire. Also, immediately they started this paperwork to give Tillman a Silver Star.

And the Silver Star ended up being at the center of the cover-up. So McChrystal--Tillman faced this devastating fire from his own guys, and he tried to protect a young private by exposing himself to this, this fire. That's why he was killed and the private wasn't. Without friendly fire there's no valor, there's no Silver Star. There was no enemy fire, yet McChrystal authored, he closely supervised over a number of days this fraudulent medal recommendation that talked about devastating enemy fire.

GREGORY: And that's the important piece of it. And, and he actually testified earlier this year before the Senate, and this is what he said about it.

(Videotape, June 2, 2009)

LT. GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: Now, what happens, in retrospect, is--and I would do this differently if I had the chance again--in retrospect they look contradictory, because we sent a Silver Star that was not well-written. And although I went through the process, I will tell you now I didn't review the citation well enough to capture--or I didn't catch that if you read it you could imply that it was not friendly fire.

GREGORY: Even those who were critical of him and the Army say they don't think he willfully deceived anyone.

KRAKAUER: That's correct. He, he just said now he didn't read this hugely important document about the most famous soldier in the military. He didn't read it carefully enough to notice that it talked about enemy fire instead of friendly fire? That's preposterous. That, that's not believable.

GREGORY: All right, part of this debate. Thank you all very much.

We'll continue our discussion with Jon Krakauer in our MEET THE PRESS Take Two Web Extra. Plus, read an excerpt from his book, "Where Men Win Glory." It's all on our Web site at mtp.msnbc.com. And we'll be right back.