What Kind of Beer Is Served at the White House?

By Claire Suddath Thursday, Jul. 30, 2009

From left: Emmanuel Dunand / AFP / Getty; Brendan Smialowski / Getty

"Let's grab a beer." That was the invitation extended by President Obama, who is seeking to dial down the racial tension surrounding black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.'s July 16 arrest by a white police officer. On July 30, Gates and the arresting officer, Sergeant James Crowley, will meet with Obama at the White House to have a beer and discuss the maybe-racist-maybe-not incident in which the three men find themselves entangled. Anticipatory news reports of the drinking session have included a seemingly bizarre fact: the White House only serves domestic, or American-made, beer. A report in the Boston Globe claimed that the patriotic policy has been in place since the Johnson Administration and that Gates, an admitted fan of Germany's Beck's and Jamaica's Red Stripe, would once again be out of luck. Is this true? Does the White House only serve American alcohol?

"Not at all," says former White House executive chef Walter Scheib. Scheib, who oversaw the White House kitchen from 1994-2005, says the White House is a home, and like any home it stocks and serves whatever the First Family enjoys. "If the President woke up one morning and demanded nothing but microbrews from Polynesia, well, then the White House would serve nothing but microbrews from Polynesia," he explains. Scheib says that although there has never been an American-only policy in the White House kitchen, domestic products are frequently highlighted at official events. "We are America's home and obviously we like to to highlight what's best in America," he says.
Barry H. Laundau, presidential historian and author of The President's Table: 100 Years of Dining and Diplomacy, says that alcohol preference at the White House changes from administration to administration. Rutherford B. Hayes was a public teetotaler but a private drinker; the President would invite guests upstairs for a secret cocktail while his wife, "Lemonade Lucy," served non-alcoholic drinks downstairs. The Eisenhowers rarely served mixed drinks, Ronald Reagan enjoyed the occasional screwdriver, and George W. Bush, a recovering alcoholic, drank Buckler, a non-alcoholic beer made by Heineken (which is Dutch).
John F. Kennedy served Dom Pérignon champagne at nearly every function, while Lyndon B. Johnson switched it up with Piper-Heidsieck. Richard Nixon favored European wines; he considered himself somewhat of an expert, and a few of his bottles are still stocked in the White House cellar. After California vineyards gained prominence in the 1970s, administrations became a bit more U.S.-centric. Reagan, Bill Clinton and both Bushes regularly served California bottles at official functions. Sometimes the White House will purchase a beverage from a visiting dignitary's home country. Tsingtao beer has been served at every Chinese state leader's visit since 1979. 
Beverages at private events are a little harder to track. "They don't usually publicize what anybody drinks because then companies can use it for advertising purposes," explains Scheib. Maybe that's why the White House kept mum on Obama's beer selection until the day before the meeting, when he selected Bud Light.


When Henry Louis Gates Jr. comes to the White House, he will be able to get whatever kind of beer he wants, even if it's German or Jamaican. Crowley, who reportedly favors the domestic wheat beer Blue Moon, will receive the same treatment. There has been no word on whether the White House carries these brews on a regular basis — though that may not matter. In a July 27 appearance, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs offered to make the beer run.

White House creates new cyberspace watchdog

The White House Friday moved to stem escalating cyber crime as threats to Internet security and wireless technology grow at an alarming pace.

US President Barack Obama announced the creation of a White House office that will coordinate protection of government security, financial systems, air traffic control programmes and other systems.

The problem is “the most serious economic and security challenge that faces the nation,” Obama said.

In addition, the Pentagon is reportedly planning to create a new military command for cyberspace, the New York Times reported. But defence officials have not yet presented the plan to Obama, the newspaper said.

WHITE HOUSE TRIES TO BRIDGE ABORTION DIVIDE

WASHINGTON -- The White House has begun bringing together a diverse group of abortion-rights supporters and opponents to help craft policies both sides can embrace: preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing demand for abortion.

President Barack Obama appears to be trying to make good on his pledge to defuse tensions around polarizing issues.

The effort could also be in his political interests. While he may not win over abortion opponents on the issue, if he is seen as having a genuine interest in finding common ground, that could persuade some to judge him on other policies where they may agree with him, such as economics.

Interviews with several participants suggest there is some common ground, but plenty of disagreements remain. It will be challenging for the White House to settle on policies that reach across the spectrum.

Participants said that abortion opponents tended to focus on efforts to help pregnant women keep their babies, while the abortion-rights camp focused on preventing unwanted pregnancy.

Some in the antiabortion community, for instance, suggested more support for pregnancy "crisis centers," which discourage women from having abortions. But abortion-rights supporters say these centers give out inaccurate information. Abortion-rights supporters want more support for contraception, which some abortion opponents are unenthusiastic about.

"Not everyone may agree on every issue we discuss, but we think there is enough common ground and potential for common ground here that people can help us to move forward," said domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes, who is leading the initiative.

The meetings -- anywhere from a dozen to two dozen people at a time -- began about a month ago and are expected to continue for another six to eight weeks. The White House hopes to have a proposal formed by late summer, Ms. Barnes said.

At the end of the process, the White House doesn't plan to seek any official endorsement for its proposals from any of the participants, Ms. Barnes said. Staff will review the comments and materials provided and develop recommendations for the president.

Mr. Obama has made it clear that he supports legal abortion, and he has taken several steps already that are consistent with that view. He lifted rules that prevent U.S. funding for international family-planning organizations that promote or offer abortion. And he also is allowing much greater federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, which many abortion opponents decry. But in each case, the president emphasized that he hoped to find ways to bridge the divide over the issue.

"I would like to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies that result in women feeling compelled to get an abortion or at least considering getting an abortion," he said at a news conference last week.

At the start of the initiative, the White House took off the table any discussion of whether abortion should be legal.

Ms. Barnes told participants that the White House is interested in hearing ideas in several areas, among them: sex education; responsible use of contraception; maternal and child health; pregnancy discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere; and adoption.

Participants say that suggestions included: improving education about use of contraception; better access to emergency contraception (which can be used after sex); improving education about sex, relationships and the "sacredness of sex"; stamping out employment discrimination against pregnant women; improving family-leave policies; and encouraging adoption.

One suggestion was to set a concrete goal for abortion reduction, such as a 25% reduction in four years. The number of abortions peaked in 1990 at 1.6 million and has declined every year since then, reaching 1.2 million in 2005, the latest year for which data are available.

David Gushee, an abortion opponent and professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University in Atlanta who has participated in the talks, said the act of convening people is valuable. "When people get into a room working on a common problem it's harder to demonize them when they leave the room."

"If you hear all points of view it makes for better policy," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, another participant in the discussions.

Another participant, Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, was skeptical that the effort could reduce tension around the abortion fight.

"There will still be women who need abortion and still groups trying very hard to prevent access to that right," she said. She is fine with the president reaching out to the other side, she said, as long as his policies continue to support the abortion-rights agenda.

At least one of the loudest voices in the abortion debate wasn't in the room. Douglas Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, said he wasn't invited to participate.

He said that Mr. Obama's policies on funding and other matters will inevitably lead to more abortions. "We think this is a political hoax mapped out by career pro-abortion activists and adopted by a politician with an abortion record far to the left of the mainstream."

Remembering the Lessons of Economics 101: Why Increasing the Federal Deficit Does Not Mean that Our Kids Must Sacrifice to Pay the Bill

By Robert Kramer

Everyone who took Economics 101 (at least when I took it 40 years ago) remembers their professor asking what at first might have appeared to be a trick question: "When the economy goes into recession, the natural tendency of consumers is to spend less and save their money. Is that a good thing for the economy?"
Sounds logical enough. When your income drops or you face the threat of losing our job, you tighten your belt. How could that not be the right thing to do?

Of course the answer is that such belt tightening is a disaster for the economy. It contributes to the downward spiral of economic activity: less consumer demand, less money invested to create products to sell to consumers, less people hired to make or sell those products, less consumer demand and so on.
Now you can't require that individual consumers spend more when they have less money -- so the answer to ending the recession or restoring growth is for the Federal Government (all of us acting together) to invest more money in the economy and put people back to work. And that's true even if you have to massively increase the Federal deficit.

That critical understanding was one of the chief lessons America learned from the New Deal. But, at least until its massive and irrefutable failure this year, the conservative conventional wisdom that dominated political and economic debate since the mid-1970s has convinced many Americans that deficits are always evil.
The conservatives' success in vilifying deficits as a tool of fiscal policy is all the more remarkable because the Republican administrations of Reagan and Bush II created many times more deficits than all of the other American presidents in our history combined. But it has served their interests, none the less, to pray upon normal people's natural aversion to debt as a weapon in their war to reduce the size and spending of the public sector.

Perhaps their most successful argument has been their claim that when we run Federal Budget deficits that our children will be forced to "sacrifice" in order to pay off the massive debts that have resulted from our "out of control" Government spending.


It may sound obvious that when the Federal Government spends more than it takes in -- and borrows money to make up the difference -- that our kids must ultimately sacrifice to pay the bill. But when you look more closely, this notion is also wrong.


Someone must, of course, always pay the bill for the debt we have incurred. The fallacy comes from the view that future generations must "sacrifice" to do so. In fact, they are often much better off than they would be if the Government "lived within its means' and didn't create the deficit in the first place.

To understand why, you have to think about what we really mean by "wealth" or "well being". Wealth is created when people produce products or services out of the raw materials we find in our environment using the tools we have created for that purpose. Wealth is created by human labor -- by economic work.
The measure of whether or not future generations will be wealthier or must "sacrifice" because of our actions today is whether those actions generate more labor and allow that labor to be more productive in the future. In other words, the amount of wealth we produce is a function of the number of hours we work as a society and the degree to which we increase the productivity of labor so we can produce more wealth per hour.
The more fully we employ our work force -- the more we invest in education, and technological innovation -- the more wealth we create.


When the Federal Government borrows money to put more people to work -- to build bridges, or mass transit lines, or repair schools, or provide health care or to allow people to buy food -- it directly increases our store of wealth and that of our children. That is particularly true if people are working to create products that will be used over many years or increase our productivity -- like a new power grid, new schools, or public transportation. What's more if that deficit is used to jump start the economy to begin the upward economic spiral of more consumer demand, more investment, more employment, higher incomes, more demand and so on, it can exponentially increase the wealth of future generations.

In times of economic recession or slow growth, deficits do not force future generations to sacrifice to pay off our debt. In fact the use of deficits bequeaths our kids wealthier more prosperous lives -- even after they pay off the debt created by the deficit.


Our kids would be in far worse shape if we failed to generate the deficit and allowed the downward spiral of economic activity to continue.

By fits and starts Franklin Roosevelt learned these lessons during the Great Depression. His willingness to generate deficits early in his first administration gradually put the brakes on the economy's downward slide, until advisors convinced him that he must cut the deficit. That caused the economy to slide back in to deep recession until it was rescued by the massive deficits generated by World War II. After Pearl Harbor no one questioned the absolute necessity of fully employing everyone in America -- and all of our plant and equipment -- to produce what was necessary to win the War -- even if we had to generate deficits to do it.

Clearly in some circumstances excessive Federal debt can crowd out other debt, drive up interest rates and choke off economic growth. A recession is not one of those circumstances.
Next month President Elect Obama has proposed that Congress consider a large jobs and economic recovery program that is intended to create or preserve 3 million jobs -- and jump start our economy.


Some Republicans will argue by analogy that when times are tough you don't increase your spending, you tighten your belt and live within your means. That may be a good idea for an individual. It's a terrible idea for a country.

When times are tough for a community or country, we need to do whatever is necessary to put everyone to work producing more wealth. That's what will determine the economic well being of future generations, not the size of our deficit.

Robert Creamer is a long time political organizer and strategist, and author of the recent book "Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win," available on Amazon.com.

White House Email Trail Grows Cold with Death of Bush IT Expert

By Rebecca Abrahams

How many licks does it take to get to the Tootise Roll center of a Tootsie Pop? The world may never know...

For those of you who remember the famous 1969 animated Tootsie Roll commercial -- the wise old owl's line is indeed applicable to the missing White House emails -- the world may never know.

Unfortunately, this holds true more than ever with the untimely death of Bush IT guru Mike Connell. Connell was killed this past Friday while attempting to land his private plane three miles outside Akron-Canton Airport. Connell, 45, was the only soul onboard the aircraft. The accident is under investigation.

The Associated Press reported Connell's death with three brief paragraphs, noting that Connell:

"was a Republican media consultant who helped operate campaign Web sites for President Bush and former presidential nominee John McCain."

The AP failed to mention that Connell was also the chief architect of George W. Bush election websites including GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com -- the primary email account used by Karl Rove during his tenure as Senior White House Advisor. Connell's company, GovTech Solutions, was responsible for building and managing congressional email servers and firewalls, including websites for the House Judiciary Committee, Financial Services, Ways and Means and Administration Committees. Connell also managed the servers for former Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth J. Blackwell in 2004.

Mike Connell had also been subpoenaed to testify in an Ohio lawsuit regarding his knowledge of vote rigging and the outsourcing of the vote count to Smart Tech servers in Chatanooga, Tennessee before they were rerouted back to Blackwell's office during the 2004 election. The same SmartTech servers were also used to run Connell's GeorgeWBush.com and GWB43.com websites.

Ohio attorneys Cliff Arnebeck and Bob Fitrakis were banking on Connell's testimony to substantiate their racketeering case against Karl Rove for alleged criminal wrongdoing in the 2004 election.

In a telephone interview on August 2, 2008, Arnebeck told me:

Mike Connell comes into play because he has been a common instrument in many facets of Rove's activity that we see as a criminal enterprise. He comes into play in Florida in work in 2000 and it is not clear to me what he is doing. But if you are in the State system, you've got a strategic asset to be in the system during an election and whether that is in terms of any of this Choicepoint business or any vote counting or registration data base, I don't know the answer to it but he was in the system. In 2004 he was doing web and server hosting in Chatanooga, Tennesee for the Ohio vote in the general election of 2004.

Arnebeck added:

Connell, in an oversight capacity of data processing and is in a position to tell us as a witness how things relate to another and to tell us where there may have been opportunities where corrupt activity may have been in play.

With respect to Connell's knowledge about the missing emails, Arnebeck referred to Connell's 2006 meeting with cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore. Arnebeck said, "My understanding is that there was there was a conversation in which Mr. Connell asked about data destruction and the conversation was terminated when Spoonamore said 'if you're talking about White House emails, I will not talk about this -- discussion is over.' Connell then knowing that destruction would be illegal -- may have proceeded to destroy, although I do not know that, it could be that he went back to Rove or an intermediary to say that it would create a legal problem and Rove would then have gotten someone else to take care of data destruction. We just don't know."

One thing is certain, Arnebeck was concerned about Connell's security and said:

One of the people we're working with received a tip from someone who appeared to be credible that Rove had threatened Connell that if he did not take the fall for what happened in Ohio and keep Rove out of it, that his wife (Heather) would be prosecuted for having crossed the line for some kind of lobbying laws. And one of the people with whom we are consulting made inquiries sufficient to satisfy him that this is a credible tip and threat seems to be in play and on that basis I took steps I believe appropriate to try and protect a person we have already publicly identified as key witness against harm and threats and put Mr. Rove on notice that we don't intend to have any witness intimated by him.

One of the steps Arnebeck was referring to was a July 24, 2008 email to US Attorney General Michael Mukasey warning of Rove's threats against Connell:

Thursday, July 24, 2008 1:50 PM

From:Arnebeck@aol.com
To:AskDOJ@usdoj.gov

Dear Attorney General Mukasey:

We have been confidentially informed by a source we believe to be credible that Karl Rove has threatened Michael Connell, a principal witness we have identified in our King Lincoln case in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, that if he does not agree to "take the fall" for election fraud in Ohio, his wife Heather will be prosecuted for supposed lobby law violations. This appears to be in response to our designation of Rove as the principal perpetrator in the Ohio Corrupt Practices Act/RICO claim with respect to which we issued document hold notices last Thursday to you and to the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.

See: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=6189 and http://www.archive.org/details/ElectionFraudInOhioCourtCase.

I have informed court chambers and am in the process of informing the Ohio Attorney General's and US Attorney's offices in Columbus for the purpose, among other things, of seeking protection for Mr. Connell and his family from this reported attempt to intimidate a witness.

Concurrently herewith, I am informing Mr. Conyers and Mr. Kucinich in connection with their Congressional oversight responsibilities related to these matters.

Because of the serious engagement in this matter that began in 2000 of the Ohio Statehouse Press Corps, 60 Minutes, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, C-Span and Jim VandeHei, and the public's right to know of gross attempts to subvert the rule of law, I am forwarding this information to them, as well.

Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney

cc: Robert Fitrakis, Esq.

Henry Eckhart, Esq

Heather Connell has not returned my call but Arnebeck says the family is publicly denying any foul play or knowledge of threats against Connell or his family members. However, Arnebeck points out, Connell may have kept things to himself in order to protect his loved ones.

Connell's tragic death has dealt a real blow to Arnebeck's lawsuit. In an email dated today, Arnebeck told me he asked Dave Margolis, the Justice Department's top career organized crime fighter to "make sure the best resources are used in the investigation of the crash."

With the loss of a key witness, it's unclear whether Arnebeck's lawsuit will reach trial. But there may be still a way to determine Karl Rove's involvement in the missing White House emails and the US Attorney Purge -- President-elect Barack Obama could demand the backup tapes from the Secret Service.