Show name	Morning Joe
Caption	Morning Joe opening title since June 1, 2009.
Presenter	Joe Scarborough(2007–present)Mika Brzezinski(2007–present)Willie Geist(2007–present)John Ridley(2007)
Country
Language	English
Location	Secaucus, New Jersey(May 9—October 19, 2007)New York City(October 22, 2007—present)
Runtime	180 minutes (3 hours)
Network	MSNBC
Picture format	480i (SDTV)1080i (HDTV)
First aired	May 9, 2007
Last aired	Present
Preceded by	Imus in the Morning
Related	Scarborough Country
Website	http://joe.msnbc.com

Morning Joe is a weekday morning talk show on MSNBC, with Joe Scarborough discussing the news of the day in a panel format with co-hosts Mika Brzezinski and Willie Geist. It was created as the replacement for Imus in the Morning, which was cancelled in April 2007 after simulcasting on MSNBC since 1996. It airs between 6AM and 9AM U.S. Eastern Time.

History

Morning Joe began as a fill-in program in Don Imus' old slot. After Imus in the Morning was cancelled, former Florida Congressman Joe Scarborough, then the host of the nighttime MSNBC program Scarborough Country, suggested the idea of him doing a morning show instead. He put together what would become Morning Joe with Willie Geist and screenwriter John Ridley. On May 9, 2007, the show debuted as one of a series of rotating programs auditioning for Imus's former slot. Ridley soon dropped out as co-host, opting instead to be a regular guest. Mika Brzezinski joined the program as co-host and news reader shortly after its debut. The program permanently took over the slot in July 2007, although the decision was not officially announced until that October.

Clips from the past few days are available on the official website.

On June 29, 2009, along with the rest of the network, the show launched in 1080i high definition.

During the first quarter of 2009, Morning Joe earned higher ratings in the age 25-54 demo category than CNN's competing program, American Morning. It still had less viewers overall. Both programs regularly finish behind Fox News's Fox and Friends during the same time period.

As of March 2010, the show's ratings remain far behind Fox and Friends, yet regularly earned higher ratings overall than its competitors, American Morning, Morning Express with Robin Meade, and Squawk Box.

Coverage of the 2008 presidential race

The show broadcasted live from Des Moines, Iowa; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Columbia, South Carolina the Republican and Democratic primaries and caucuses in those states. Many of the presidential candidates, such as Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, Barack Obama, Ron Paul, and Mitt Romney have been guests.

Sponsorship

Starting on June 1, 2009, Morning Joe has been presented as "brewed by Starbucks" and the show's logo changed to include the company logo. Although the hosts have previously consumed Starbucks coffee on air "for free" in the words of MSNBC president Phil Griffin, it was not paid placement at that time. The move was met with mixed reactions from rival news organizations, viewed as both a clever partnership in an economic downturn and a compromise of journalistic standards.

Spinoffs

WABC radio edition

A radio version debuted in December 2008, carried on WABC in New York City and other Citadel Media owned and operated stations. Scarborough and Brzezinski host this version, which also replays highlights from the day's television show. For legal reasons, this version is called The Joe Scarborough Show. Scarborough claims that, at least on WABC, the show beat the Glenn Beck Program in the New York City radio market's Arbitron ratings. However, despite acceptable ratings, the radio version was put on hiatus in April 2010. Scarborough intends to bring back the show in a revised three-hour version at an undisclosed time in the future.

Way Too Early

On July 27, 2009, Willie Geist began hosting a new show, Way Too Early with Willie Geist. It airs at 5:30 AM U.S. Eastern Time, 30 minutes prior to Morning Joe.

Daily segments and regular anchors

Morning Papers - daily headline and Must read Op-Ed stories from Newspapers nationwide, at the 6:20 and lower third ().

Morning Grind - daily news roundup, read by Mika Brzezinski at the beginning and thirty-minute mark of each hour.

News You Can't Use - Willie Geist's daily roundup of offbeat news stories.

Politico Playbook - at the 6:20 and 8:20 marks, a Politico staff member (most frequently Mike Allen) provides the day's political news from the website's editorial offices in Arlington, VA.

The Sideline - in a segment during the second half of the 6:00 hour, Willie Geist presents the previous day's sports news. The segment was previously called the Morning Sports Shot.

Business Before the Bell - at the 8:30 mark, Erin Burnett, the anchor of CNBC's Squawk on the Street, reports on the morning's business news from CNBC's NYSE booth.

Political Roundtable - this segment is featured during the show's last half-hour. It is devoted to discussion between the hosts and guests of a political issue of the day.

What Have We Learned Today? - the show's closing segment, in which the hosts and on-set guests joke about what they learned on that day's broadcast.

Regular guests and contributors

Regular guests and contributors include:

Mike Barnicle, freelance columnist.

Maria Bartiromo, CNBC anchor.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor during the administration of U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the father of co-host Mika Brzezinski.

Tina Brown, publisher of The Daily Beast.

Pat Buchanan, MSNBC political analyst and former presidential candidate.

Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post editorial page writer.

Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's Mad Money.

Donny Deutsch, CEO of the advertising/marketing firm Deutsch, Inc. and CNBC/MSNBC contributor.

Harold Ford, Jr., Democratic Leadership Council chairman and former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee's 9th district.

Chrystia Freeland, global editor-at-large for Reuters.

David Gregory, current host of Meet the Press and former NBC News White House correspondent.

Savannah Guthrie, NBC News White House correspondent.

Mark Halperin, MSNBC senior political analyst, editor-at-large at Time Magazine and co-author of the 2008 presidential-campaign history, Game Change.

John Heilemann, writer for New York magazine and co-author of the 2008 presidential-campaign history, Game Change.

Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the Huffington Post.

Bill Karins, New York bureau Weather Channel meteorologist.

Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Jon Meacham, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, co-host of PBS television newsmagazine Need to Know, and former editor of Newsweek.

Andrea Mitchell, chief foreign affairs correspondent, NBC News and host of MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports.

Mike Murphy, political analyst and Republican party strategist.

Peggy Noonan, op-ed columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

Lawrence O'Donnell, host of MSNBC's The Last Word and Emmy-winning writer and producer for the TV series The West Wing.

Norah O'Donnell, MSNBC's chief Washington, D.C. correspondent.

John Ridley, screenwriter and Huffington Post contributor.

Dan Senor, fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and former deputy press secretary for U.S. President George W. Bush.

Sam Stein, Huffington Post correspondent

Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time. Stengel reveals the cover of the coming week's magazine every Thursday.

Chuck Todd, NBC News political director and White House correspondent.

Mort Zuckerman, owner and publisher of the New York Daily News and editor-in-chief of U.S. News & World Report.

Former contributors and segments

Tucker Carlson, political commentator. Carlson left MSNBC to work as a commentator for the Fox News Channel in May 2009.

Courtney Hazlett, MSNBC entertainment correspondent and author of "The Scoop" column and blog featured on msnbc.com. From October 2007 through July 2009, the show's next-to-last segment regularly featured Hazlett and co-host Willie Geist discussing her latest column. The segment, titled Morning Scoop, was sponsored by L'Oréal, whose ad spots continued for several weeks after it had been effectively discontinued. No official announcement or explanation has been given regarding the decision to drop Hazlett from the show. She remains a contributor to the msnbc.com website and other MSNBC programs.

Jackie Meretsky, NBC Weather Plus meteorologist. NBC shut down NBC Weather Plus in December 2008, thus eliminating her position. She was on maternity leave at the time.

Fred Roggin, KNBC-TV sports anchor. Between 2007 and 2010, Roggin contributed a taped sports scores and highlight recap for "The Sideline" and "Morning Sports Shot" segments during the 6:00 hour. Co-host Willie Geist gradually took over the segment in 2010.

Tim Russert, the late host of NBC's Meet the Press.

Sam Tanenhaus, senior editor of the New York Times Book Review. Between April 2009 and March 2010, Tanenhaus would appear on either the Thursday or Friday show to preview the New York Times Book Review's forthcoming issue.

Morning Joe Moment - during August 2009, this was briefly the replacement for Courtney Hazlett and the Morning Scoop. It featured a host replaying his or her favorite moment from the day's show.

Notable incidents

Paris Hilton incident

After about a month of being on the air, Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski became a YouTube sensation. Brzezinski gained notoriety for refusing to read the report of Hilton's release from prison. She felt Hilton's jail sentence was not an appropriate lead story. She protested by taking a lighter from co-host Willie Geist and attempting to burn the script. After Geist prevented her from doing so, she resorted to putting the script in a paper shredder.

Chris Matthews "messed around" comments

On January 9, 2008, the morning after Hillary Clinton's surprise victory in the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, Matthews appeared on the show and said of Clinton,

I'll be brutal, the reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around. That's how she got to be senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win there on her merit.

The comments, widely seen as grossly sexist and unfair, were criticized by such disparate media figures as Bill O'Reilly, and Gloria Steinem. They also resulted in protests outside NBC's Washington, D.C. studios, as well as a joint letter of complaint to NBC from the National Organization for Women, Feminist Majority, and the National Women's Political Caucus. Matthews apologized for the comments on the January 17, 2008 edition of his own MSNBC program, Hardball.

Mika Brzezinski mugged

On December 18, 2008, the show's cohost, Mika Brzezinski, got mugged before coming in to do Morning Joe. Joe Scarborough was visibly and verbally outraged that the hotel they were staying at did not have security outside the door. The show was being taped from Washington D.C. She said on the show, "He wanted $20," and since she only had $6, she was "very scared" since she felt that "I did not have enough."

"Stunningly superficial"

On December 30, 2008, Zbigniew Brzezinski (Mika's father and former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter) came as a guest to discuss the unfolding Israel-Palestine crisis. Scarborough claimed that Yasser Arafat was offered everything he wanted at the 2000 Camp David Summit. This statement provoked Zbigniew to reply, "You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it's almost embarrassing to listen to you". Subsequently, the phrase "stunningly superficial" has become somewhat of a running gag on the show.

Feud with Jon Stewart

On June 3, 2009, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart mocked the Starbucks sponsorship of the program, showing several clips of the Morning Joe cast prominently displaying and complimenting Starbucks products as well as a sycophantic interview with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Scarborough responded that his intent in discussing the sponsorship was sarcastic, and he suggested that Stewart and his "90 writers" didn't understand the joke. On June 8, Stewart feigned embarrassment over missing their alleged sarcasm, claiming, "At the time, I thought your jokey manner was just a way of supplementing your shame over the discomfort you feel deep in your soul after extinguishing the last smoldering embers of any of your program’s journalistic bona fides. But now, I realize that that wasn't the case!" The next day, Stewart and correspondent John Oliver again responded with a skit, involving Stewart impersonating Napoleon and Oliver impersonating an even shorter Arthur Wellesley. After the routine, Jon Stewart joked that he hoped that this would be the end of the feud, since continuing it was becoming expensive for the show.

Clash with Rush Limbaugh

During the Obama administration, Joe Scarborough has sought to distance himself from the more conservative elements in the Republican Party. He has criticized Republicans such as Rush Limbaugh who have celebrated President Obama's failed bid to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago saying that "Republicans have gone off the deep end." On the October 8, 2009 edition of his radio show, Limbaugh fired back by saying that Scarborough was "doing his best impression of [...] a neutered chickified moderate." Scarborough responded the next day on Morning Joe, faulting Limbaugh for uncritical loyalty to George W. Bush during the president's tenure in office. Scarborough specifically said that Limbaugh had put his "testicles in a blind trust for George W. Bush for eight years."

Campaign-donation suspension

MSNBC suspended show host Joe Scarborough without pay from the November 22 and November 23, 2010 broadcasts. It had been discovered that Scarborough had made eight campaign donations to political candidates without management approval during his employment at the channel. This is in violation of NBC News policy, which stipulates that employees must receive permission from the network's president before making campaign contributions. In a written statement, Scarborough said that he agreed with the suspension, apologizing to MSNBC and "to anyone who has been negatively affected by my actions." The suspension followed a similar disciplinary action taken against Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, who had also made unauthorized political contributions.

References

External links

Official website

Category:MSNBC programs Category:American television talk shows Category:2000s American television series Category:2007 American television series debuts

Name	Zbigniew Brzezinski
Order	10th United States National Security Advisor
Term start	January 20, 1977
Term end	January 20, 1981
President	Jimmy Carter
Deputy	David L. Aaron
Predecessor	Brent Scowcroft
Successor	Richard V. Allen
Birth date	March 28, 1928
Birth place	Warsaw, Poland
Party	Democratic
Alma mater	McGill UniversityHarvard University
Profession	politician, critic

Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski (, pronounced ; born March 28, 1928) is a Polish American political scientist, geostrategist, and statesman who served as United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981.

Major foreign policy events during his term of office included the normalization of relations with the People's Republic of China (and the severing of ties with the Republic of China), the signing of the second Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT II), the brokering of the Camp David Accords, the transition of Iran from an important US client state to an anti-Western Islamic Republic, encouraging dissidents in Eastern Europe and emphasizing certain human rights in order to undermine the influence of the Soviet Union, the financing of the mujahideen in Afghanistan in response to the Soviet deployment of forces there (allegedly either to help deter a Russian invasion, or to deliberately increase the chance of such an intervention occurring—or for both contradictory reasons simultaneously being embraced by separate US officials) and the arming of these rebels to counter the Soviet invasion, and the signing of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties relinquishing overt US control of the Panama Canal after 1999.

He is currently Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and a member of various boards and councils. He appears frequently as an expert on the PBS program The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

Biography

Early years

Zbigniew Brzezinski was born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1928. His family, members of the nobility (or "szlachta" in Polish), bore the Trąby coat of arms and hailed from Brzeżany in Galicia. This town is thought to be the source of the family name. Brzezinski's father was Tadeusz Brzeziński, a Polish diplomat who was posted to Germany from 1931 to 1935; Zbigniew Brzezinski thus spent some of his earliest years witnessing the rise of the Nazis. From 1936 to 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to the Soviet Union during Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

In 1938, Tadeusz Brzeziński was posted to Canada. In 1939, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was agreed to by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union; subsequently the two powers invaded Poland. The 1945 Yalta Conference between the Allies allotted Poland to the Soviet sphere of influence, meaning Brzezinski's family could not safely return to their country.

Rising influence

After attending prep school in Montreal, Brzezinski entered McGill University in 1945 to obtain both his BA and MA degrees (received in 1949 and 1950 respectively). His Master's thesis focused on the various nationalities within the Soviet Union. Brzezinski's plan for doing further studies in Great Britain in preparation for a diplomatic career in Canada fell through, principally because he was ruled ineligible for a scholarship he had won that was only open to persons with British subject status. Brzezinski then went on to attend Harvard University to work on a PhD, focusing on the Soviet Union and the relationship between the October Revolution, Vladimir Lenin's state, and the actions of Joseph Stalin. He received his doctorate in 1953; the same year, he traveled to Munich and met Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, head of the Polish desk of Radio Free Europe. He later collaborated with Carl J. Friedrich to develop the concept of totalitarianism and apply it to the Soviets in 1956.

As a Harvard professor he argued against Dwight Eisenhower's and John Foster Dulles's policy of rollback, saying that antagonism would push Eastern Europe further toward the Soviets. The Polish strike and Hungarian Revolution in 1956 lent some support to Brzezinski's idea that the Eastern Europeans could gradually counter Soviet domination. In 1957, he visited Poland for the first time since he left as a child, and it reaffirmed his judgment that splits within the Eastern bloc were profound.

In 1958 he became a United States citizen, although he probably also continues to be considered a Polish citizen under Polish law. Despite his years of residence in Canada and the presence of family members there, he never became a Canadian citizen.

In 1959 Brzezinski was not granted tenure at Harvard, and he moved to New York City to teach at Columbia University. Here he wrote Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, which focused on Eastern Europe since the beginning of the Cold War. He also became a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and attended meetings of the Bilderberg Group.

During the 1960 US presidential elections, Brzezinski was an advisor to the John F. Kennedy campaign, urging a non-antagonistic policy toward Eastern European governments. Seeing the Soviet Union as having entered a period of stagnation, both economic and political, Brzezinski predicted the breakup of the Soviet Union along lines of nationality (expanding on his master's thesis). and supporting non-antagonistic policies after the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the grounds that such policies might disabuse Eastern European nations of their fear of an aggressive Germany and pacify Western Europeans fearful of a superpower condominium along the lines of the Yalta Conference.

In 1964, Brzezinski supported Lyndon Johnson's presidential campaign and the Great Society and civil rights policies, while on the other hand he saw Soviet leadership as having been purged of any creativity following the ousting of Khrushchev. Through Jan Nowak-Jezioranski, Brzezinski met with Adam Michnik, then a communist party member and future Polish Solidarity activist.

Brzezinski continued to support engagement with Eastern European governments, while warning against De Gaulle's vision of a "Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals." He also supported the Vietnam War. From 1966 to 1968, Brzezinski served as a member of the Policy Planning Council of the US Department of State (President Johnson's 7 October 1966 "Bridge Building" speech was a product of Brzezinski's influence).

Events in Czechoslovakia further reinforced Brzezinski's criticisms of the right's aggressive stance toward Eastern European governments. His service to the Johnson administration, and his fact-finding trip to Vietnam made him an enemy of the New Left, despite his advocacy of de-escalation of the US' involvement in the war.

For the 1968 US presidential campaign, Brzezinski was chairman of the Hubert Humphrey Foreign Policy Task Force. He advised Humphrey to break with several of President Johnson's policies, especially concerning Vietnam, the Middle East, and condominium with the USSR.

Brzezinski called for a pan-European conference, an idea that would eventually find fruition in 1973 as the Conference for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Meanwhile he became a leading critic of both the Nixon-Kissinger détente condominium, as well as McGovern's pacifism.

In his 1970 piece Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era, Brzezinski argued that a coordinated policy among developed nations was necessary in order to counter global instability erupting from increasing economic inequality. Out of this thesis, Brzezinski co-founded the Trilateral Commission with David Rockefeller, serving as director from 1973 to 1976. The Trilateral Commission is a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics primarily from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three most industrially advanced regions of the capitalist world. Brzezinski selected Georgia governor Jimmy Carter as a member.

Government

standing with Zbigniew Brzezinski]] Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy for the 1976 presidential campaign to a skeptical media and proclaimed himself an "eager student" of Brzezinski. Brzezinski became Carter's principal foreign policy advisor by late 1975. He became an outspoken critic of the Nixon-Kissinger over-reliance on détente, a situation preferred by the USSR, favoring the Helsinki process instead, which focused on human rights, international law and peaceful engagement in Eastern Europe. Brzezinski has been considered to be the Democrats' response to Republican Henry Kissinger. Carter engaged Ford in foreign policy debates by contrasting the Trilateral vision with Ford's détente.

After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski National Security Advisor. Earlier that year, major labor riots broke out in Poland, laying the foundations for Solidarity. Brzezinski began by emphasizing the "Basket III" human rights in the Helsinki Final Act, which inspired Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia shortly thereafter.

Brzezinski had a hand in writing parts of Carter's inaugural address, and this served his purpose of sending a positive message to Soviet dissidents. The Soviet Union and Western European leaders both complained that this kind of rhetoric ran against the "code of détente" that Nixon and Kissinger had established. Brzezinski ran up against members of his own Democratic Party who disagreed with this interpretation of détente, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Vance argued for less emphasis on human rights in order to gain Soviet agreement to Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), whereas Brzezinski favored doing both at the same time. Brzezinski then ordered Radio Free Europe transmitters to increase the power and area of their broadcasts, a provocative reversal of Nixon-Kissinger policies. West German chancellor Helmut Schmidt objected to Brzezinski's agenda, even calling for the removal of Radio Free Europe from German soil.

The State Department was alarmed by Brzezinski's support for East German dissidents and objected to his suggestion that Carter's first overseas visit be to Poland. He visited Warsaw, met with Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski (against the objection of the U.S. Ambassador to Poland), recognizing the Roman Catholic Church as the legitimate opposition to Communist rule in Poland.

By 1978, Brzezinski and Vance were more and more at odds over the direction of Carter's foreign policy. Vance sought to continue the style of détente engineered by Nixon-Kissinger, with a focus on arms control. Brzezinski believed that détente emboldened the Soviets in Angola and the Middle East, and so he argued for increased military strength and an emphasis on human rights. Vance, the State Department, and the media criticized Brzezinski publicly as seeking to revive the Cold War.

Brzezinski advised Carter in 1978 to engage the People's Republic of China and traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for the normalization of relations between the two countries. This also resulted in the severing of ties with the United States' longtime anti-Communist ally the Republic of China. Also in 1978, Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope John Paul II—an event which the Soviets believed Brzezinski orchestrated.

1979 saw two major strategically important events: the overthrow of US ally the Shah of Iran, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Iranian Revolution precipitated the Iran hostage crisis, which would last for the rest of Carter's presidency. Brzezinski anticipated the Soviet invasion, and, with the support of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the PRC, he created a strategy to undermine the Soviet presence. See below under "Major Policies - Afghanistan."

Using this atmosphere of insecurity, Brzezinski led the US toward a new arms buildup and the development of the Rapid Deployment Forces—policies that are both more generally associated with Ronald Reagan now. In 1980, Brzezinski planned Operation Eagle Claw, which was meant to free the hostages in Iran using the newly created Delta Force and other Special Forces units. The mission was a failure and led to Secretary Vance's resignation.

Brzezinski was criticized widely in the press and became the least popular member of Carter's administration. Edward Kennedy challenged President Carter for the 1980 Democratic nomination, and at the convention Kennedy's delegates loudly booed Brzezinski. Hurt by internal divisions within his party and a stagnant domestic economy, Carter lost the 1980 presidential election in a landslide.

Brzezinski, acting under a lame duck Carter presidency, but encouraged that Solidarity in Poland had vindicated his style of engagement with Eastern Europe, took a hard-line stance against what seemed like an imminent Soviet invasion of Poland. He even made a midnight phone call to Pope John Paul II—whose visit to Poland in 1979 had foreshadowed the emergence of Solidarity—warning him in advance. The US stance was a significant change from previous reactions to Soviet repression in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

In 1981 President Carter presented Brzezinski with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

After power

Brzezinski left office concerned about the internal division within the Democratic party, arguing that the dovish McGovernite wing would send the Democrats into permanent minority.

He had mixed relations with the Reagan administration. On the one hand, he supported it as an alternative to the Democrats' pacifism, but he also criticized it as seeing foreign policy in overly black-and-white terms.

He remained involved in Polish affairs, critical of the imposition of martial law in Poland in 1981, and more so of Western European acquiescence to its imposition in the name of stability. Brzezinski briefed US vice-president George H.W. Bush before his 1987 trip to Poland that aided in the revival of the Solidarity movement.

In 1985, under the Reagan administration, Brzezinski served as a member of the President's Chemical Warfare Commission. From 1987 to 1988, he worked on the NSC-Defense Department Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy. From 1987 to 1989 he also served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

In 1988, Brzezinski was co-chairman of the Bush National Security Advisory Task Force and endorsed Bush for president, breaking with the Democratic party. Brzezinski published The Grand Failure the same year, predicting the failure of Gorbachev's reforms and the collapse of the Soviet Union in a few more decades. He said there were five possibilities for the Soviet Union: successful pluralization, protracted crisis, renewed stagnation, coup (by the KGB or Soviet military), or the explicit collapse of the Communist regime. He called collapse "at this stage a much more remote possibility" than protracted crisis. He also predicted that the chance of some form of communism existing in the Soviet Union in 2017 was a little more than 50% and that when the end did come it would be "most likely turbulent". In the event, the Soviet system collapsed totally in 1991 following Moscow's crackdown on Lithuania's attempt to declare independence, the Nagorno-Karabakh War of the late 1980s, and scattered bloodshed in other republics. This was a less violent outcome than Brzezinski and other observers anticipated.

In 1989 the Communists failed to mobilize support in Poland, and Solidarity swept the general elections. Later the same year, Brzezinski toured Russia and visited a memorial to the Katyn Massacre. This served as an opportunity for him to ask the Soviet government to acknowledge the truth about the event, for which he received a standing ovation in the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Ten days later, the Berlin Wall fell, and Soviet-supported governments in Eastern Europe began to totter.

Strobe Talbott, one of Brzezinski's long-time critics, conducted an interview with him for Time magazine entitled Vindication of a Hardliner.

In 1990 Brzezinski warned against post–Cold War euphoria. He publicly opposed the Gulf War, arguing that the US would squander the international goodwill it had accumulated by defeating the Soviet Union and that it could trigger wide resentment throughout the Arab world. He expanded upon these views in his 1992 work Out of Control.

However, in 1993 Brzezinski was prominently critical of the Clinton administration's hesitation to intervene against Serbia in the Yugoslavian civil war. He also began to speak out against Russia's First Chechen War, forming the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya. Wary of a move toward the reinvigoration of Russian power, Brzezinski negatively viewed the succession of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin after Boris Yeltsin. In this vein, he became one of the foremost advocates of NATO expansion.

Post 9/11

After the September 11, 2001 attacks Brzezinski was criticized for his role in the formation of the Afghan mujaheddin network, some of which later formed the Taliban and al Qaeda. He asserted that blame ought to be laid at the feet of the Soviet Union's invasion which radicalized the relatively stable Muslim society. However, Brzezinski is also accused of having "knowingly increased the probability that they (the Soviet Union) would invade" by supporting Afghan rebels before the invasion and drawing the Soviets into an "Afghan trap".

Brzezinski was a leading critic of the George W. Bush administration's "war on terror". Some painted him as a neoconservative because of his friendship with Paul Wolfowitz and his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard. However in 2004, Brzezinski wrote The Choice, which expanded upon The Grand Chessboard but sharply criticized the George W. Bush's foreign policy. He defended the book The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy and was an outspoken critic of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

In August 2007, Brzezinski endorsed Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He stated that Obama "recognizes that the challenge is a new face, a new sense of direction, a new definition of America's role in the world." Also saying, "What makes Obama attractive to me is that he understands that we live in a very different world where we have to relate to a variety of cultures and people." In September 2007 during a speech on the Iraq war, Obama introduced Brzezinski as "one of our most outstanding thinkers," but some questioned his criticism of the Israel lobby in the United States. This was interpreted as supporting the U.S. downing Israeli jets to prevent an attack on Iran.

Personal life

Brzezinski is married to Czech-American sculptor Emilie Benes (grand-niece of the second Czechoslovak president, Edvard Beneš), with whom he has three children. His son, Mark Brzezinski (b. 1965), a lawyer who served on President Clinton's National Security Council as an expert on Russia and Southeastern Europe, is a partner in McGuire Woods LLP. His daughter, Mika Brzezinski (b. 1967), is a television news journalist and co-host of MSNBC's weekday morning program, Morning Joe, where she provides regular commentary and reads the news headlines for the program. His son Ian served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO and was now a Principal at Booz Allen Hamilton. Ian Brzezinski is a Senior Fellow in the International Security Program and is on the Atlantic Council’s Strategic Advisors Group. Key highlights of his tenure as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy (2001–5) include the expansion of NATO membership in 2004, the consolidation and reconfiguration of the Alliance’s command structure, the standing up of the NATO Response Force and the coordination of European military contributions to U.S. and NATO- led operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Balkans.

As Carter's National Security Advisor

President Carter chose Zbigniew Brzezinski for the position of National Security Adviser (NSA) because he wanted an assertive intellectual at his side to provide him with day-to-day advice and guidance on foreign policy decisions. Brzezinski would preside over a reorganized National Security Council (NSC) structure, fashioned to ensure that the NSA would be only one of many players in the foreign policy process.

Brzezinski's task was complicated by his (hawkish) focus on East-West relations in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights.

Initially, Carter reduced the NSC staff by one-half and decreased the number of standing NSC committees from eight to two. All issues referred to the NSC were reviewed by one of the two new committees, either the Policy Review Committee (PRC) or the Special Coordinating Committee (SCC). The PRC focused on specific issues, and its chairmanship rotated. The SCC was always chaired by Brzezinski, a circumstance he had to negotiate with Carter to achieve. Carter believed that by making the NSA chairman of only one of the two committees, he would prevent the NSC from being the overwhelming influence on foreign policy decisions it was under Kissinger's chairmanship during the Nixon administration. The SCC was charged with considering issues that cut across several departments, including oversight of intelligence activities, arms control evaluation, and crisis management. Much of the SCC's time during the Carter years was spent on SALT issues.

The Council held few formal meetings, convening only 10 times, compared with 125 meetings during the 8 years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Instead, Carter used frequent, informal meetings as a decision-making device, typically his Friday breakfasts, usually attended by the Vice President, the secretaries of State and Defense, Brzezinski, and the chief domestic adviser. No agendas were prepared and no formal records were kept of these meetings, sometimes resulting in differing interpretations of the decisions actually agreed upon. Brzezinski was careful, in managing his own weekly luncheons with secretaries Vance and Brown in preparation for NSC discussions, to maintain a complete set of notes. Brzezinski also sent weekly reports to the President on major foreign policy undertakings and problems, with recommendations for courses of action. President Carter enjoyed these reports and frequently annotated them with his own views. Brzezinski and the NSC used these Presidential notes (159 of them) as the basis for NSC actions.

From the beginning, Brzezinski made sure that the new NSC institutional relationships would assure him a major voice in the shaping of foreign policy. While he knew that Carter would not want him to be another Kissinger, Brzezinski also felt confident that the President did not want Secretary of State Vance to become another Dulles and would want his own input on key foreign policy decisions.

Brzezinski's power gradually expanded into the operational area during the Carter Presidency. He increasingly assumed the role of a Presidential emissary. In 1978, for example, Brzezinski traveled to Beijing to lay the groundwork for normalizing U.S.-PRC relations. Like Kissinger before him, Brzezinski maintained his own personal relationship with Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin. Brzezinski had NSC staffers monitor State Department cable traffic through the Situation Room and call back to the State Department if the President preferred to revise or take issue with outgoing State Department instructions. He also appointed his own press spokesman, and his frequent press briefings and appearances on television interview shows made him a prominent public figure, although perhaps not nearly as much as Kissinger had been under Nixon.

The Soviet military invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 significantly damaged the already tenuous relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. Vance felt that Brzezinski's linkage of SALT to other Soviet activities and the MX, together with the growing domestic criticisms in the United States of the SALT II Accord, convinced Brezhnev to decide on military intervention in Afghanistan. Brzezinski, however, later recounted that he advanced proposals to maintain Afghanistan's "independence" but was frustrated by the Department of State's opposition. An NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Only then did he decide to abandon SALT II ratification and pursue the anti-Soviet policies that Brzezinski proposed.

The Iranian revolution was the last straw for the disintegrating relationship between Vance and Brzezinski. As the upheaval developed, the two advanced fundamentally different positions. Brzezinski wanted to control the revolution and increasingly suggested military action to prevent Khomeini from coming to power, while Vance wanted to come to terms with the new Islamic Republic of Iran. As a consequence, Carter failed to develop a coherent approach to the Iranian situation. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Vance's resignation following the unsuccessful mission to rescue the US hostages in March 1980, undertaken over his objections, was the final result of the deep disagreement between Brzezinski and Vance.

Major policies

During the 1960s Brzezinski articulated the strategy of peaceful engagement for undermining the Soviet bloc and persuaded President Johnson, while serving on the State Department Policy Planning Council, to adopt in October 1966 peaceful engagement as US strategy, placing détente ahead of German reunification and thus reversing prior US priorities.

During the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of his political involvement, Brzezinski participated in the formation of the Trilateral Commission in order to more closely cement US-Japanese-European relations. As the three most economically advanced sectors of the world, the people of the three regions could be brought together in cooperation that would give them a more cohesive stance against the communist world.

While serving in the White House, Brzezinski emphasized the centrality of human rights as a means of placing the Soviet Union on the ideological defensive. With Jimmy Carter in Camp David, he assisted in the attainment of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty. He actively supported Polish Solidarity and the Afghan resistance to Soviet invasion, and provided covert support for national independence movements in the Soviet Union. He played a leading role in normalizing US-PRC relations and in the development of joint strategic cooperation, cultivating a relationship with Deng Xiaoping, for which he is thought very highly of in mainland China to this day.

In the 1990s he formulated the strategic case for buttressing the independent statehood of Ukraine, partially as a means to ending a resurgence of the Russian Empire, and to drive Russia toward integration with the West, promoting instead "geopolitical pluralism" in the space of the former Soviet Union. He developed "a plan for Europe" urging the expansion of NATO, making the case for the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states. He also served as William Clinton's emissary to Azerbaijan in order to promote the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan pipeline. Subsequently, he became a member of Honorary Council of Advisors of U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC). Further, he led, together with Lane Kirkland, the effort to increase the endowment for the US–sponsored Polish-American Freedom Foundation from the proposed $112 million to an eventual total of well over $200 million.

He has consistently urged a US leadership role in the world, based on established alliances, and warned against unilateralist policies that would destroy US global credibility and precipitate US global isolation.

Afghanistan

Brzezinski, known for his hardline policies on the Soviet Union, initiated in 1979 a campaign supporting mujaheddin in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which were run by Pakistani security services with financial support from the CIA and Britain's MI6. Part of the CIA program was led by their elite Special Activities Division and included the arming, training and leading of Afghanistan's mujahideen. This policy had the explicit aim of promoting radical Islamist and anti-Communist forces to overthrow the secular communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan government in Afghanistan, which had been destabilized by coup attempts against Hafizullah Amin, the power struggle within the Soviet-supported Parcham faction of the PDPA and a subsequent Soviet military intervention.

Years later, in a 1997 CNN/National Security Archive interview, Brzezinski detailed the strategy taken by the Carter administration against the Soviets in 1979:

We immediately launched a twofold process when we heard that the Soviets had entered Afghanistan. The first involved direct reactions and sanctions focused on the Soviet Union, and both the State Department and the National Security Council prepared long lists of sanctions to be adopted, of steps to be taken to increase the international costs to the Soviet Union of their actions. And the second course of action led to my going to Pakistan a month or so after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, for the purpose of coordinating with the Pakistanis a joint response, the purpose of which would be to make the Soviets bleed for as much and as long as is possible; and we engaged in that effort in a collaborative sense with the Saudis, the Egyptians, the British, the Chinese, and we started providing weapons to the Mujaheddin, from various sources again—for example, some Soviet arms from the Egyptians and the Chinese. We even got Soviet arms from the Czechoslovak communist government, since it was obviously susceptible to material incentives; and at some point we started buying arms for the Mujaheddin from the Soviet army in Afghanistan, because that army was increasingly corrupt.

Milt Bearden wrote in The Main Enemy that Brzezinski, in 1980, secured an agreement from King Khalid of Saudi Arabia to match US contributions to the Afghan effort dollar for dollar and that Bill Casey would keep that agreement going through the Reagan administration.

According to the "Progressive South Asia Exchange Net," claiming to cite an article in , U.S. policy, unbeknownst even to the Mujahideen, was part of a larger strategy of aiming "to induce a Soviet military intervention." The article includes a brief interview with National Security Advisor Brzezinski, in which he is quoted as saying that the US provided aid to the mujahideen prior to the Soviet invasion for the deliberate purpose of provoking one. Brzezinski himself has denied the accuracy of the interview. According to Brzezinski, an NSC working group on Afghanistan wrote several reports on the deteriorating situation in 1979, but President Carter ignored them until the Soviet intervention destroyed his illusions. Brzezinski has stated that the US provided communications equipment and limited financial aid to the mujahideen prior to the "formal" invasion, but only in response to the Soviet deployment of forces to Afghanistan and the 1978 coup, and with the intention of preventing further Soviet encroachment in the region.

According to Eric Alterman of The Nation, Cyrus Vance's close aide Marshall Shulman "insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it" and President Carter has said it was definitely "not my intention" to inspire a Soviet invasion but to deter one.

The Soviet invasion and occupation killed up to 2 million Afghans. Brzezinski defended the arming of the rebels in response, saying that it "was quite important in hastening the end of the conflict," thereby saving the lives of thousands of Afghans, but "not in deciding the conflict, because actually the fact is that even though we helped the mujaheddin, they would have continued fighting without our help, because they were also getting a lot of money from the Persian Gulf and the Arab states, and they weren't going to quit. They didn't decide to fight because we urged them to. They're fighters, and they prefer to be independent. They just happen to have a curious complex: they don't like foreigners with guns in their country. And they were going to fight the Soviets. Giving them weapons was a very important forward step in defeating the Soviets, and that's all to the good as far as I'm concerned." When he was asked if he thought it was the right decision in retrospect (given the Taliban's subsequent rise to power), he said: "Which decision? For the Soviets to go in? The decision was the Soviets', and they went in. The Afghans would have resisted anyway, and they were resisting. I just told you: in my view, the Afghans would have prevailed in the end anyway, 'cause they had access to money, they had access to weapons, and they had the will to fight." The interviewer then asked: "So US support for the mujaheddin only begins after the Russians invade, not before?" Brzezinski replied: "With arms? Absolutely afterwards. No question about it. Show me some documents to the contrary." Likewise; Charlie Wilson said: "The U.S. had nothing whatsoever to do with these people's decision to fight ... but we'll be damned by history if we let them fight with stones."

One of the CIA's longest and most expensive covert operations was the supplying of billions of dollars in arms to the Afghan mujahideen militants. The CIA provided assistance to the fundamentalist insurgents through the Pakistani secret services, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in a program called Operation Cyclone. Somewhere between $3–$20 billion in U.S. funds were funneled into the country to train and equip troops with weapons. Together with similar programs by Saudi Arabia, Britain's MI6 and SAS, Egypt, Iran, and the People's Republic of China, The arms included Stinger missiles, shoulder-fired, antiaircraft weapons that they used against Soviet helicopters and that later were in circulation among terrorists who have fired such weapons at commercial airliners. Osama bin Laden was allegedly among the recipients of U.S. arms, although the US denies this and claims it did not support the "Afghan Arabs". with the last Soviets leaving on February 15, 1989.

A 2002 study found that, in the wake of the Iranian Revolution, the United States had sought rapprochement with the Afghan government—a prospect that the USSR found unacceptable (especially as its own leverage over the regime was wearing thin). Thus, the Soviets intervened to preserve their influence in the country.

The early foundations of al-Qaida were built in part on relationships and weaponry that came from the billions of dollars in U.S. support for the Afghan mujahadin during the war to expel Soviet forces from that country. The initial bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, the attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole, and the attacks of September 11 were all allegedly linked to individuals and groups that at one time were armed and trained by the United States and/or its allies, although this view has been disputed.

Iran

ian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, meeting with Arthur Atherton, William H. Sullivan, Cyrus Vance, President Jimmy Carter, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, in 1977]] Facing a revolution, the Shah of Iran sought help from the United States. Iran occupied a strategic place in US policy in the Middle East, acting as an important ally and a buffer against Soviet influence in the region. The US ambassador to Iran, William H. Sullivan, recalls that Brzezinski "repeatedly assured Pahlavi that the U.S. backed him fully." These reassurances would not, however, amount to substantive action on the part of the United States. On November 4, 1978, Brzezinski called the Shah to tell him that the United States would "back him to the hilt." At the same time, certain high-level officials in the State Department decided that the Shah had to go, regardless of who replaced him. Brzezinski and US Secretary of Energy James Schlesinger (formerly Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford) continued to advocate that the US support the Shah militarily. Even in the final days of the revolution, when the Shah was considered doomed no matter what the outcome of the revolution, Brzezinski still advocated a US invasion to keep Iran under US influence. President Carter could not decide how to appropriately use force and opposed another US-backed coup d'etat. He ordered the aircraft carrier Constellation to the Indian Ocean but ultimately allowed a regime change. A deal was worked out with the Iranian generals to shift support to a moderate government, but this plan fell apart when Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers swept the country, taking power on February 12, 1979.

China

and Zbigniew Brzezinski meeting in 1979]] Shortly after taking office in 1977, President Carter again reaffirmed the United States' position of upholding the Shanghai Communique. The United States and People's Republic of China announced on December 15, 1978, that the two governments would establish diplomatic relations on January 1, 1979. This required that the US sever relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Consolidating US gains in befriending communist China was a major priority stressed by Brzezinski during his time as National Security Advisor.

The most important strategic aspect of the new US-Chinese relationship was in its effect on the Cold War. China was no longer considered part of a larger Sino-Soviet bloc but instead a third pole of power due to the Sino-Soviet Split, helping the United States against the Soviet Union.

In the Joint Communique on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations dated January 1, 1979, the United States transferred diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. The US reiterated the Shanghai Communique's acknowledgment of the PRC position that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China; Beijing acknowledged that the US would continue to carry on commercial, cultural, and other unofficial contacts with Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act made the necessary changes in US domestic law to permit unofficial relations with Taiwan to continue.

In addition the severing relations with the ROC, the Carter administration also agreed to unilaterally pull out of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty, withdraw US military personnel from Taiwan, and gradually reduce arms sales to the Republic of China. There was widespread opposition in the US Congress, notably from Republicans, due to the Republic of China's status as an anti-Communist ally in the Cold War. In Goldwater v. Carter, Barry Goldwater made a failed attempt to stop Carter from terminating the mutual defense treaty.

PRC Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping's January 1979 visit to Washington, DC, initiated a series of high-level exchanges, which continued until the Tiananmen Square massacre, when they were briefly interrupted. This resulted in many bilateral agreements, especially in the fields of scientific, technological, and cultural interchange and trade relations. Since early 1979, the United States and the PRC have initiated hundreds of joint research projects and cooperative programs under the Agreement on Cooperation in Science and Technology, the largest bilateral program.

On March 1, 1979, the United States and People's Republic of China formally established embassies in Beijing and Washington. During 1979, outstanding private claims were resolved, and a bilateral trade agreement was concluded. US vice-president Walter Mondale reciprocated vice-premier Deng's visit with an August 1979 trip to China. This visit led to agreements in September 1980 on maritime affairs, civil aviation links, and textile matters, as well as a bilateral consular convention.

Brzezinski is alleged to have encouraged China to support the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, as a counter to growing Vietnamese influence in Indochina, though he strongly denies this.

As a consequence of high-level and working-level contacts initiated in 1980, US dialogue with the PRC broadened to cover a wide range of issues, including global and regional strategic problems, political-military questions—including arms control, UN and other multilateral organization affairs, and international narcotics matters.

Cambodia

As part of a wider policy of forcing the Vietnamese out of Cambodia, the United States began funding anti-Vietnamese guerrilla groups. Between 1979 and 1981, the World Food Program, which was under US influence, provided nearly $12 million in food aid to Thailand. In January 1980, the US allegedly started funding Pol Pot while he was in exile. The extent of this support was $85 million from 1980 to 1986.

Brzezinski himself however denied that his administration helped China fund Pol Pot in a letter he sent to the New York Times in 1998. Other sources have also disputed the charge.

Arab-Israeli conflict

On October 10, 2007 Brzezinski along with other influential signatories sent a letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice titled 'Failure Risks Devastating Consequences'. The letter was partly an advice and a warning of the failure of an upcoming US-sponsored Middle East conference scheduled for November 2007 between representatives of Israelis and Palestinians. The letter also suggested to engage in "a genuine dialogue with Hamas" rather than to isolate it further. with Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance at Camp David in 1977]] engages Brzezinski in a game of chess at Camp David]]

Ending détente

Presidential Directive 18 on US National Security, signed early in Carter's term, signaled a fundamental reassessment of the value of détente, and set the US on a course to quietly end Kissinger's strategy.

Nuclear strategy

Presidential Directive 59, "Nuclear Employment Policy", dramatically changed US targeting of nuclear weapons aimed at the Soviet Union. Implemented with the aid of Defense Secretary Harold Brown, this directive officially set the US on a countervailing strategy .

Arms control

and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev sign the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) treaty, 16 June 1979, in Washington D.C. Zbigniew Brzezinski is directly behind President Carter.]]

Academia

Brzezinski was on the faculty of Harvard University from 1953 to 1960, and of Columbia University from 1960 to 1989 where he headed the Institute on Communist Affairs. He is currently a professor of foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C.

As a scholar he has developed his thoughts over the years, fashioning fundamental theories on international relations and geostrategy. During the 1950s he worked on the theory of totalitarianism. His thought in the 1960s focused on wider Western understanding of disunity in the Soviet Bloc, as well as developing the thesis of intensified degeneration of the Soviet Union. During the 1970s he propounded the proposition that the Soviet system was incapable of evolving beyond the industrial phase into the "technetronic" age.

By the 1980s, Brzezinski argued that the general crisis of the Soviet Union foreshadowed communism's end.

Public life

Brzezinski is a past member of the board of directors of Amnesty International, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and the National Endowment for Democracy .

Quotes

"Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat."

"I once put it rather pungently, and I was flattered that the British Foreign Secretary repeated this, as follows: ... namely, in early times, it was easier to to control a million people, literally it was easier to control a million people than physically to kill a million people. Today, it is infinitely easier to to kill a million people than to control a million people. It is easier to kill than to control...."

"The mistakes of the Iraq war are not only tactical and strategic, but historical. It is essentially a war of colonialism, attempted in the post-colonial age." - The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, January 11, 2007.

"[President George W. Bush] has a vision which can be described with two other words: Manichaean paranoia ... the notion that he is leading the forces of good against the empire of evil, that in that setting, the fact that we are morally superior justifies us committing immoral acts. And that is a very dangerous posture for the country that is the number one global power. ... The fact is he squandered our credibility, our legitimacy, and even respect for our power." - The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, March 14, 2007.

Benchmarks are targets that have to be fulfilled. They cannot be fulfilled in an indefinite period of time, so there are timetables in benchmarks.

"This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid, and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our non-proliferation policy."

* Memo to President Carter following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979)

"It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."

* The Grand Chessboard (1997)

"A real cool cat."

describing Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev.

"I personally view with great skepticism all this talk about us creating an Iraqi national army, creating a nation, nation-building and so forth. The problem is we have smashed the state; we have given an enormous opportunity for narrow sectarian interests and passions to rise." - 2007 testimony to Senate Foreign Relations Committee

"Is Taliban a terrorism organization, or is it an ugly, medieval-type throwback of a purely local character?...Now, the Taliban does terrible things. I was talking to someone about this last night at dinner. And this person said 'yeah, but what about the horrible things they do to women,' and so forth. That's the painful part--but the same things happen in some other parts of the world. Are we going to go everywhere and tell them how to structure their social questions?" -On MSNBC's Morning Joe

Film appearance

Brzezinski appears as himself in the 2009 documentary film .

He also appears as himself in the 1997 documentary Eternal Memory: Voices from the Great Terror, a film on the Stalinist purges directed by David Pultz and narrated by American actress Meryl Streep.

Bibliography

Major works by Brzezinski

The Permanent Purge: Politics in Soviet Totalitarianism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)

Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict, Harvard University Press (1967), ISBN 0-674-82545-4

Between Two Ages : America's Role in the Technetronic Era, New York: Viking Press (1970), ISBN 0-313-23498-1

Power and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Adviser, 1977-1981, New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux (March 1983), ISBN 0-374-23663-1

Game Plan: A Geostrategic Framework for the Conduct of the U.S.-Soviet Contest, Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press (June 1986), ISBN 0-87113-084-X

Grand Failure: The Birth and Death of Communism in the Twentieth Century, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons (1989), ISBN 0-02-030730-6

Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century, New York: Collier (1993), ISBN 0-684-82636-4

The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, New York: Basic Books (October 1997), ISBN 0-465-02726-1, subsequently translated and published in nineteen languages

The Choice: Global Domination or Global Leadership, Basic Books (March 2004), ISBN 0-465-00800-3

, Basic Books (March 2007), ISBN 0-465-00252-8

, Basic Books (September 2008), ISBN 0-465-01501-8

Other books and monographs

Russo-Soviet Nationalism, M.A. Thesis, McGill University (1950)

Political Control in the Soviet Army: A Study on Reports by Former Soviet Officers, New York, Research Program on the U.S.S.R (1954)

with Carl J. Friedrich, Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956)

Ideology and Power in Soviet Politics, New York: Praeger (1962)

with Samuel Huntington, Political Power: USA/USSR, New York: Viking Press (April 1963), ISBN 0-670-56318-8

Alternative to Partition: For a Broader Conception of America's Role in Europe, Atlantic Policy Studies, New York: McGraw-Hill (1965)

The Implications of Change for United States Foreign Policy, Department of State (1967)

International Politics in the Technetronic Era, Sofia University Press (1971)

The Fragile Blossom: Crisis and Change in Japan, New York: Harper and Row (1972), ISBN 0-06-010468-6

with P. Edward Haley, American Security in an Interdependent World, Rowman & Littlefield (September 1988), ISBN 0-8191-7084-4

with Marin Strmecki, In Quest of National Security, Boulder: Westview Press (September 1988), ISBN 0-8133-0575-6

The Soviet Political System: Transformation or Degeneration, Irvington Publishers (August 1993), ISBN 0-8290-3572-9

with Paige Sullivan, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States: Documents, Data, and Analysis, Armonk: M. E. Sharpe (1996), ISBN 1-56324-637-6

The Geostrategic Triad : Living with China, Europe, and Russia, Center for Strategic & International Studies (December 2000), ISBN 0-89206-384-X

Selected essays and reports

with David Owen, Michael Stewart, Carol Hansen, and Saburo Okita, Democracy Must Work: A Trilateral Agenda for the Decade, Trilateral Commission (June 1984), ISBN 0-8147-6161-5

with Brent Scowcroft and Richard W. Murphy, Differentiated Containment: U.S. Policy Toward Iran and Iraq, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1997), ISBN 0-87609-202-4

U.S. Policy Toward Northeastern Europe: Report of an Independent Task Force, Council on Foreign Relations Press (July 1999), ISBN 0-87609-259-8

with Anthony Lake, F. Gregory, and III Gause, The United States and the Persian Gulf, Council on Foreign Relations Press (December 2001), ISBN 0-87609-291-1

with Robert M. Gates, Iran: Time for a New Approach, Council on Foreign Relations Press (February 2003), ISBN 0-87609-345-4

References

Further reading

Avner, Yehuda, The Prime Ministers: An Intimate Narrative of Israeli Leadership, The Toby Press, 2010, ISBN 9781592642786

Gerry Argyris Andrianopoulos, Kissinger and Brzezinski: The NSC and the Struggle for Control of U.S. National Security Policy, Palgrave Macmillan (June 1991), ISBN 0-312-05743-1

Patrick Vaughan (1999) "Beyond Benign Neglect: Zbigniew Brzezinski and the Polish Crisis of 1980." Polish Review (1): 3–28

Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Dreams and Reality, Toronto 1984, ISBN 0-9691756-0-4

Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Kanada, Kanada, Warszawa 1986, ISBN 83-7021-006-6

Aleksandra Ziolkowska: Korzenie sa polskie, Warszawa 1992, ISBN 83-7066-406-7

Aleksandra Ziółkowska Boehm: The Roots Are Polish, Toronto 2004, ISBN 0-920517-05-6

Andrzej Bernat, Pawel Kozlowski: Zycie z Polska, Warszawa 2004, ISBN 83-7386-084-3

External links

Interview about US relations with China for the WGBH series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age

Brzezinski at CSIS

Brzezinski at Jamestown

Brzezinski at the Trilateral Commission

The Modern History Project: Zbigniew Brzezinski

CNN Cold War - Profile: Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski

NNDB Profile of Zbigniew Brzezinski, Notable Names Database

Profile: Zbigniew Brzezinski, Johns Hopkins University

Booknotes interview with Brzezinski on The Grand Failure, April 2, 1989.

Cold War: interview with Brzezinski, The National Security Archive, June 13, 1997.

Zbigniew Brzezinski. A geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, The Council on Foreign Relations, September 1997.

Brzezinski: NATO enlargement is central to secure Euro-Atlantic alliance, United States Information Service, October 10, 1997.

Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I started the Mujahedeen, CounterPunch.

Kissinger & Brzezinski discuss the surveillance plane standoff with China, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, April 4, 2001.

Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on Eurasia Azerbaijan International, Winter 1995 (3.4).

Geopolitically Speaking: Brzezinski on the Caucasus Azerbaijan International, Summer 1997 (5.2).

Zbigniew Brzezinski. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy in Eurasia

Zbigniew Brzezinski. Confronting Anti-American Grievances, New York Times, September 1, 2002.

Neal Conan. Brzezinski discusses his participation in the 1978 Camp David, Talk of The Nation, National Public Radio, September 16, 2003.

Zbigniew Brzezinski. We are going to live in an insecure world, October 28, 2003.

Brzezinski on repercussions for diplomacy and the war on terror, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, March 19, 2004.

History Makers Series: Conversation with Brzezinski, The Council on Foreign Relations, March 24, 2004.

Zbigniew Brzezinski. Speaker's notes: Threats, Dangers, and Uncertainties, Johns Hopkins University. October 12, 2004.

Marie-Laure Germon. Brzezinski: "The Neo-Conservative Formula Doesn't Work", Le Figaro, October 18, 2004.

Brzezinski to chair RAND center for Middle East public policy advisory board, RAND Military Corporation, December 8, 2005.

Air Strike on Iran Could ‘Merit the Impeachment of the President’, April 26, 2006.

Former National Security Advisors Clash on Iraq Policy, The NewsHour, Public Broadcasting Service, February 1, 2007.

Brzezinski's Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 1, 2007

A road map out of Iraq, LA Times, February 11, 2007

Terrorized by 'War on Terror', Washington Post, March 25, 2007.

Brzezinski: U.S. in danger of 'stampeding' to war with Iran, CNN, September 24, 2007

Jimmy Carter Library & Museum

The Afghan War and The Grand Chessboard Three-part interview on The Real News (TRNN), January 13–17, 2010

Category:1928 births Category:Living people Category:American people of Polish descent Category:People from Warsaw Category:American anti-communists Category:Carter administration personnel Category:American anti-Iraq War activists Category:American political scientists Category:Columbia University faculty Category:Geopoliticians Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:Harvard Centennial Medal recipients Category:Harvard University alumni Category:Johns Hopkins University faculty Category:McGill University alumni Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:People involved in the Soviet war in Afghanistan Category:American politicians of Polish descent Category:Polish anti-communists Category:Polish immigrants to the United States Category:Political realists Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:United States National Security Advisors Category:Recipients of the Order of the White Eagle (Poland) Category:Recipients of the Order of the Three Stars, 2nd Class

Name	Wesley K. Clark
Born	December 23, 1944
Placeofbirth	Chicago, Illinois
Religion	Church
Placeofburial label	Place of burial
Caption	Clark's official portrait as full general
Allegiance	United States of America
Branch	United States Army
Serviceyears	1966–2000
Rank	General
Commands	Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe,United States European Command,United States Southern Command
Battles	Vietnam WarWaco SiegeKosovo War
Awards	Combat Infantryman BadgeParachutist BadgeDefense Distinguished Service Medal (5)Army Distinguished Service Medal (2)Silver StarLegion of Merit (4)Bronze Star (2)Purple HeartFrench Ordre national du MériteGerman Merit Cross of the Federal Republic (Order of Merit)Presidential Medal of Freedom
Religion	Roman Catholic, former Southern Baptist

Wesley Kanne Clark, Sr., KBE (born December 23, 1944) is a retired general of the United States Army. Graduating as valedictorian of his class at West Point, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford where he obtained a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, and later graduated from the Command and General Staff College with a master's degree in military science. He spent 34 years in the Army and the Department of Defense, receiving many military decorations, several honorary knighthoods, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Clark commanded Operation Allied Force in the Kosovo War during his term as the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO from 1997 to 2000.

Clark joined the 2004 race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination as a candidate on September 17, 2003, but withdrew from the primary race on February 11, 2004, after winning the Oklahoma state primary, endorsing and campaigning for the eventual Democratic nominee, John Kerry. Clark currently leads a political action committee—"WesPAC"—which was formed after the 2004 primaries, and used it to support numerous Democratic Party candidates in the 2006 midterm elections. Clark was considered a potential candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2008, but, on September 15, 2007, endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. After Clinton dropped out of the Presidential race, Clark endorsed the then-presumptive Democratic nominee, Barack Obama. Clark currently serves as the co-chairman of Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group and on the board of directors of BNK Petroleum.

Early life and education

Clark's paternal great-grandfather was a Belarusian Jew who immigrated to the United States in response to the Pale of Settlement and anti-Semitic violence from Russian pogroms. Clark's grandfather, Benjamin J. Kanne, graduated from the Chicago-Kent College of Law and served in the U.S. Naval Reserve as an ensign during World War I, although he was never assigned to a combat mission. Kanne, living in Chicago, became involved with ward politics in the 1920s as a prosecutor and served in local offices. He went on to serve as a delegate to the 1932 Democratic National Convention that nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt as the party's presidential candidate (though his name does not appear on the published roll of convention delegates).

Kanne came from the Kohen family line, and Clark's son has characterized his grandparents' marriage, between Jewish Benjamin and Methodist Veneta Kanne, as "about as multicultural as you could've gotten in 1944."

Clark was born Wesley Kanne in Chicago on December 23, 1944. His father Benjamin died on December 6, 1948, following which his mother then moved the family to Little Rock, Arkansas. This move was made for a variety of reasons, including escaping the greater cost of living in a large city such as Chicago, the support Veneta's family in Arkansas could provide, and her feeling of being an outsider to the remaining Kanne family as she did not share their religion. Once in Little Rock, Veneta married Viktor Clark, whom she met while working as a secretary for a local bank. Viktor raised Wesley as his son, and officially adopted him on Wesley's 16th birthday. Wesley's name was changed to Wesley Kanne Clark. Viktor Clark's name actually replaced that of Wesley's biological father on his birth certificate, something Wesley would later say that he wished they had not done. Veneta raised Wesley without telling him of his Jewish ancestry to protect him from the anti-Semitic activities of the Ku Klux Klan occurring in the South at the time. Although his mother was Methodist, Clark chose a Baptist church after moving to Little Rock and continued attending it throughout his childhood.

He graduated from Hall High School with a National Merit Scholarship, and helped take their swim team to the state championship, filling in for a sick teammate by swimming two legs of a relay. Clark has often repeated the anecdote that he decided he wanted to go to West Point after meeting a cadet with glasses who told Clark (who wore glasses as well) that one did not need perfect vision to attend West Point as Clark had thought. Clark applied, and was accepted on April 24, 1962.

Military career

Clark's military career began July 2, 1962, when he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Clark later said an important influence on his view of the military came from Douglas MacArthur's famous "" speech given to the class of 1962, only months before Clark entered West Point. A recording of the speech was played for Clark's class when they first arrived.

Clark sat in the front in many of his classes, a position held by the highest performer in class. Clark participated heavily in debate, was consistently within the top 5% of his class as a whole (earning him a "Distinguished Cadet" patch on his uniform), and ultimately graduated as valedictorian of West Point. The valedictorian is first to choose which career field of the Army to serve in, and Clark selected armor. He met Gertrude Kingston, his future wife, at a USO dance for midshipmen and West Point cadets.

Vietnam

citation]] Clark was assigned a position in the 1st Infantry Division and flew to Vietnam on May 21, 1969 during the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He worked as a staff officer, collecting data and helping in operations planning, and was awarded the Bronze Star for his work with the staff. Clark was then given command of A Company, 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division in January 1970. In February, only one month into his command, he was shot four times by a Viet Cong soldier with an AK-47. The wounded Clark shouted orders to his men, who counterattacked and defeated the Viet Cong force. Clark had injuries to his right shoulder, right hand, right hip, and right leg, and was sent to Valley Forge Army Hospital in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania to recuperate. He was awarded the Silver Star for his actions during the encounter.

Clark had converted to Catholicism, his wife Gertrude's religion, while in Vietnam. He saw his son, Wesley Clark, Jr., for the first time while at the Valley Forge Hospital. Clark commanded C Company, 6th Battalion, 32nd Armor, 194th Armored Brigade, a company composed entirely of wounded soldiers, at Fort Knox. Clark has said this command is what made him decide to continue his military career past the four-year commitment required by West Point, which would have concluded in 1971. Clark completed his Armor Officer Advanced Course while at Fort Knox, taking additional elective courses and writing an article that won the Armor Association Writing Award. His next posting was to the office of the Army Chief of Staff in Washington, D.C., where he worked in the "Modern Volunteer Army" program from May to July 1971. He then served as an instructor in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point for three years from July 1971 to 1974.

Clark graduated from the Command and General Staff College (CGSC), earning his military Master of Arts degree in military science from the CGSC with a thesis on American policies of gradualism in the Vietnam War. Clark's theory was one of applying force swiftly, which was being advocated by many soldiers at the time, a concept that would eventually become established as U.S. national security policy in the form of the Weinberger Doctrine and its successor, the Powell Doctrine. Clark was promoted to major upon his graduation from the CGSC.

Post-Vietnam

In 1975, Clark was appointed a White House Fellow in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as a special assistant to its director, James Thomas Lynn. He was one of only 14 appointed out of 2,307 applicants. Lynn also gave Clark a six-week assignment to assist John Marsh, then a counselor to the President. Clark was approached during his fellowship to help push for a memorial to Vietnam veterans. He worked with the movement that ultimately helped lead to the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Clark served in two commands with the 1st Armored Division based in Germany from August 1976 to February 1978, first as S-3 of the 3rd Battalion 35th Armor and then as S-3 of the entire 3rd Brigade. He was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal for his work with the division.

The brigade commander had also said that "word of Major Clark's exceptional talent spread", and in one case reached the desk of then Supreme Allied Commander Alexander Haig. Haig personally selected Clark to serve as a special assistant on his staff, a post he held from February 1978 to June 1979. While on staff at SHAPE, Clark wrote policy reports and coordinated two multinational military exercises. As a result of his work on Haig's staff, Clark was promoted to lieutenant colonel and was awarded the Legion of Merit. After his European post, he moved on to Fort Carson, Colorado where he served first as the executive officer of the 1st Brigade, 4th Infantry Division from August 1979 to February 1980, then as the commander of the 1st Battalion, 77th Armor, 4th Infantry Division from February 1980 to July 1982. According to the American journalist David Halberstam, the commander at Fort Carson, then Major General John Hudacheck, had a reputation of disliking West Point graduates and fast-rising officers such as Clark. After two years of not making the list to rise from battalion commander to brigade commander, Clark attended the National War College. After studying there from June 1982 to 1983, Clark graduated and was promoted to full colonel in October 1983.

Following his graduation, Clark worked in Washington, D.C. from July 1983 to 1984 in the offices of the Chief and Deputy Chiefs of Staff of the United States Army, and earned a second Legion of Merit for his work. He then served as the Operations Group commander at the Fort Irwin Military Reservation from August 1984 to June 1986. He was awarded yet another Legion of Merit and a Meritorious Service Medal for his work at Fort Irwin, and was then given a brigade command at Fort Carson in 1986. He commanded the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry there from April 1986 to March 1988. Veneta Clark, Wesley's mother, fell ill as he began this command and died on Mother's Day in 1986. After Fort Carson, Clark returned to the Command and General Staff College to direct and further develop the Battle Command Training Program (BCTP) there until October 1989. The BCTP was created to teach senior officers war-fighting skills, according to the commanding general at the time. On November 1, 1989, Clark was promoted to brigadier general.

Clark returned to Fort Irwin and commanded the National Training Center (NTC) from October 1989 to 1991. The Gulf War occurred during Clark's command, and many National Guard divisional round-out brigades trained under his command. Multiple generals commanding American forces in Iraq and Kuwait said Clark's training helped bring about results in the field and that he had successfully begun training a new generation of the military that had moved past Vietnam-era strategy. He was awarded yet another Legion of Merit for his "personal efforts" that were "instrumental in maintaining" the NTC, according to the citation. He served in yet another planning post after this, as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Concepts, Doctrine, and Developments at Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) at Fort Monroe, Virginia. While there, he helped the commanding general of TRADOC prepare the army for war and develop new post-Cold War strategies. One of Clark's major pushes was for technological advancement in the army to establish a digital network for military command that Clark called the "digitization of the battlefield." Clark was promoted to Major General in October 1992 at the end of this command.

Fort Hood and the Waco Siege

Clark's divisional command came with the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, Texas. Clark was in command during three separate deployments of forces from Fort Hood for peacekeeping in Kuwait.

Some critics, such as left-wing CounterPunch and right-wing FrontPageMag.com, have made allegations that Clark was, to some degree, involved in the Waco Siege, where 74 Branch Davidian followers were killed during the final raid, including their leader David Koresh. Groups making allegations of Clark's involvement note that Clark's second-in-command at the time, future General Peter Schoomaker, met with then-Texas governor Ann Richards and then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who were also allegedly involved with the siege. They also note that some military technology and personnel from Fort Hood, including two M1 Abrams tanks, were lent to the FBI for the operation. Some also suggest that, given the sensitive nature of the materials lent for the operation, Clark had some knowledge of and perhaps a hand in planning the Waco Siege. Others, such as James Ridgeway, dismiss the allegations as conspiracy theories with "little evidence to substantiate them."

His final Officer Evaluation Report for his command at Fort Hood called him "one of the Army's best and brightest"; Clark was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for his work at Fort Hood and was promoted to lieutenant general at the end of his command in April 1994. Clark's next assignment was an appointment as the Director, Strategic Plans and Policy (J5), on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), from April 1994 to June 1996.

United States Southern Command

Army regulations set a so-called "ticking clock" upon the promotion to a three-star general , essentially requiring that Clark be promoted to another post within 2 years from his initial promotion or retire. This deadline ended in 1996 and Clark said he was not optimistic about receiving such a promotion because rumors at the time suggested General Dennis Reimer did not want to recommend him for promotion although "no specific reason was given". According to Clark's book, General Robert Scales said that it was likely Clark's reputation of intelligence within the military was responsible for feelings of resentment against him from other generals. Clark was named to the United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) post despite these rumors. Congress approved his promotion to full general in June 1996, and General John M. Shalikashvili signed the order. Clark said he was not the original nominee, but the first officer chosen "hadn't been accepted for some reason."

The Balkans

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Clark began planning work for responses to the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina upon his appointment in 1994 as the Director, Strategic Plans and Policy (J5) on the JCS staff. While collecting information to outline military options for resolving the conflict, Clark met with Bosnian Serb military leaders including Ratko Mladić, who was later accused of war crimes and genocide. Clark was photographed exchanging hats with Mladić, and the photo drew controversy in the United States. A Washington Post story was published claiming Clark had made the visit despite a warning from the U.S. ambassador. Some Clinton administration members privately said the incident was "like cavorting with Hermann Göring." Clark had actually listed the visit in the itinerary he submitted to the ambassador, but says he learned only afterwards that the visit had never been approved. He also said there had been no warning and no one had told him to cancel the visit, although two Congressmen called for Clark's dismissal regardless. Clark later said he regretted the exchange, and the issue was ultimately resolved as President Clinton sent a letter defending Clark to the Congress and the controversy subsided. Clark said it was his "first experience in the rough and tumble of high visibility... and a painful few days." Conservative pundit Robert Novak later referred to the hat exchange in a column during Clark's 2004 presidential campaign, citing it as a "problem" with Clark as a candidate.

Clark was sent to Bosnia by Secretary of Defense William Perry to serve as the military advisor to a diplomatic negotiating team headed by assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke later described Clark's position as "complicated" because while it presented him with future possibilities it "might put him into career-endangering conflicts with more senior officers." While the team was driving along a mountain road during the first week, the road gave way, and one of the vehicles fell over a cliff carrying passengers including Holbrooke's deputy, Robert Frasure, a deputy assistant Secretary of Defense, Joseph Kruzel, and Air Force Colonel Nelson Drew. Clark and Holbrooke attempted to crawl down the mountain, but were driven back by sniper fire. Once the fire ceased, Clark rappelled down the mountain to collect the bodies of two dead Americans left by Bosnian forces that had taken the remaining wounded to a nearby hospital. After returning to Washington D.C. for funeral services, the negotiations continued and the team eventually reached the Dayton Agreement at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio and later signed it in Paris on December 14, 1995.

Clark returned to the European theater and the Balkans following his USSOUTHCOM position when he was appointed to U.S. European Command in the summer of 1997 by President Clinton. He was, as with SOUTHCOM, not the original nominee for the position. The Army had already selected another general for the post. Because President Clinton and General Shalikashvili believed Clark was the best man for the post, Clark eventually got the nomination. Shalikashvili noted he "had a very strong role in [Clark's] last two jobs." Clark noted during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services committee of the 105th Congress that he believed NATO had shifted since the end of the Cold War from protecting Europe from the Soviet Union to working towards more general stability in the region. Clark also addressed issues related to his then-current command of USSOUTHCOM, such as support for the School of the Americas and his belief that the United States must continue aid to some South American nations to effectively fight the War on Drugs. giving him the command of 109,000 American troops, their 150,000 family members, 50,000 civilians aiding the military, and all American military activities in 89 countries and territories of Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. The position made Clark the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), which granted him overall command of NATO military forces in Europe.

Kosovo War

The largest event of Clark's tenure as SACEUR was NATO's confrontation with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the Kosovo War. The United Nations Security Council introduced Resolution 1199 calling for an end to hostilities in Kosovo, and Richard Holbrooke again tried to negotiate a peace. This process came to an unsuccessful end, however, following the Račak incident. Then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright tried to force Yugoslavia into allowing separation of Kosovo with the Rambouillet Agreement, which Yugoslavia refused. Clark was at the Rambouillet talks and tried to convince Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milošević by telling him "there's an activation order. And if they tell me to bomb you, I'm going to bomb you good." Clark later said Milošević launched into an emotional tirade against Albanians and said that they'd been "handled" in the 1940s by killing large numbers of them.

in Italy on May 9, 1999]] Clark started the bombings codenamed Operation Allied Force on March 24, 1999 on orders to try and enforce UN Resolution 1199 following Yugoslavia's refusal of the Rambouillet Agreement. However, critics note that Resolution 1199 was a call for cessation of hostilities and does not authorize any organization to take military action. Secretary of Defense William Cohen felt that Clark had powerful allies at the White House such as President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that were allowing him to circumvent The Pentagon in promoting his strategic ideas, while Clark felt he was not being included enough in discussions with the National Command Authority, leading Clark to describe himself as "just a NATO officer who also reported to the United States". This command conflict came to a ceremonial head when Clark was not initially invited to a summit in Washington, D.C. to commemorate NATO's 50th anniversary, despite being its supreme military commander. Clark eventually secured an invitation to the summit, but was told by Cohen to say nothing about ground troops, and Clark agreed.

Clark returned to SHAPE following the summit and briefed the press on the continued bombing operations. A reporter from the Los Angeles Times asked a question about the effect of bombings on Serbian forces, and Clark noted that merely counting the number of opposing troops did not show Milošević's true losses because he was bringing in reinforcements. Many American news organizations capitalized on the remark in a way Clark said "distorted the comment" with headlines such as "NATO Chief Admits Bombs Fail to Stem Serb Operations" in The New York Times. Clark later defended his remarks, saying this was a "complete misunderstanding of my statement and of the facts," and President Clinton agreed Clark's remarks had been misconstrued. Regardless, Clark received a call the following evening from General Hugh Shelton who said he had been told by Secretary Cohen to deliver a piece of guidance verbatim. "Get your fucking face off the TV. No more briefings, period. That's it."

Operation Allied Force experienced another problem when NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7, 1999. The operation had been organized against numerous Serbian targets, including "Target 493, the Federal Procurement and Supply Directorate Headquarters", although the intended target building was actually 300 meters away from the targeted area. The embassy was located at this mistaken target, and three Chinese journalists were killed. Clark's intelligence officer called Clark taking full responsibility and offering to resign, but Clark declined, saying it was not the officer's fault. Secretary Cohen and CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility the next day. Tenet would later explain in testimony before the United States House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on July 22, 1999 that the targeting system used street addresses, which gave inaccurate positions for air bombings and that the various databases of off-limit targets did not have the up-to-date address for the relatively new embassy location, although there were some that did not accept this explanation.

The bombing campaign was ended on June 10, 1999 on the order of Secretary General of NATO Javier Solana after Milošević complied with conditions the international community had set and Yugoslav forces began to withdraw from Kosovo. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 was adopted that same day, placing Kosovo under United Nations administration and authorizing a Kosovo peacekeeping force. NATO claimed to have suffered no combat deaths thus making Clark the first US general to win a war without losing a single soldier to combat. NATO did suffer two deaths overall; coming from an Apache helicopter crash that NATO attributed to engine failure. A F117A was downed near the village of Budjanovici. The bombing was noted for its high degree of accuracy, with estimated 495 civilian deaths and 820 wounded reported to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia as a result of the entire campaign. Yugoslavia estimated that number of civilians killed is higher than 2,000 and that more than 5,000 have been wounded. Human Rights Watch estimates the number of civilian deaths due to NATO bombings as somewhere between 488 and 527.

Milošević's term in office in Yugoslavia was coming to an end, and the elections that came on September 24, 2000 were protested due to allegations of fraud and rigged elections. This all came to a head on October 5 in the so-called Bulldozer Revolution. Milošević resigned on October 7. The Democratic Opposition of Serbia won a majority in parliamentary elections that December. Milošević was taken into custody on April 1, 2001, and transferred to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on June 28 to face charges of war crimes and genocide. Clark was called to testify in a closed session of Milošević's trial in December 2003. He testified on issues ranging from the Srebrenica massacre to conversations Clark had had with Milošević over his career. Some anti-war activist groups also label Clark and Bill Clinton (along with several others) as war criminals for NATO's entire bombing campaign, saying the entire operation was in violation of the NATO charter.

Pristina International Airport

One of Clark's most debated decisions during his SACEUR command was his attempted operation to attack Russian troops at Pristina International Airport immediately after the end of the Kosovo War. Russian forces had arrived in Kosovo and were heading for the airport on June 12, 1999, two days after the bombing campaign ended, expecting to help police that section of Kosovo. Clark however, had planned for the Kosovo Force to police the area. Clark called then-Secretary General of NATO Javier Solana, and was told "you have transfer of authority" in the area. General Clark then issued an order for the NATO troops to attack and "overpower" the armed Russian troops, but Captain Blount leading the British troops questioned this order, and was supported in this decision by the British commander of the Kosovo Force, General Mike Jackson, who refused to sanction the attack, reportedly saying "I'm not going to start the Third World War for you." Jackson has said he refused to take action because he did not believe it was worth the risk of a military confrontation with the Russians, instead insisting that troops encircle the airfield—a decision which led to the Russian military surrendering control within two days without conflict.

Nonetheless, the refusal was criticized by some senior US military personnel, with American General Hugh Shelton calling Jackson's refusal "troubling," and hearings in the United States Senate suggested it may amount to insubordination, with Senator John Warner suggesting holding hearings regarding whether the refusal was legal and potentially changing those rules if it was. British Chief of the Defence Staff Charles Guthrie agreed with Jackson and told Clark this on the day Jackson refused the order. Russia eventually withdrew its aid when some nations—including Bulgaria and Romania—granted U.S. requests and disallowed Russian aircraft to fly over their territory, halting their ability to bring in reinforcements.

Retirement

Clark received another call from General Shelton in July 1999 in which he was told that Secretary Cohen wanted Clark to leave his command in April 2000. Clark was surprised by this, as he saw SACEURs as being expected to serve at least 3 years and often asked to stay on for a 4th, while this date would give him less than 3 years of service at the post. Clark was told that this was necessary because General Joseph Ralston was leaving his post as the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and would need another 4-star command within 60 days or he would be forced to retire. Ralston was not going to be appointed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff due to an extramarital affair in his past, and the SACEUR position was said to be the last potential post for him. Clark said this explanation "didn't wash" because he believed the legalities could have been sorted out to let him serve a full 3 years. Clinton signed onto Ralston's reassignment, although David Halberstam wrote that both he and Madeleine Albright were angered at Clark's treatment. Clark spent the remainder of his time as SACEUR overseeing peacekeeper forces and, without a new command to take, was forced into retirement from the military on May 2, 2000.

Rumors persisted that Clark was forced out due to his contentious relationship with some in Washington D.C.; however, he has dismissed such rumors, calling it a "routine personnel action," and the Department of Defense said it was merely a "general rotation of American senior ranks." However, a NATO ambassador told the International Herald Tribune that Clark's dismissal seemed to be a "political thing from the United States." General Hugh Shelton would say of Clark during his 2004 campaign that "the reason he came out of Europe early had to do with integrity and character issues, things that are very near and dear to my heart. I'm not going to say whether I'm a Republican or a Democrat. I'll just say Wes won't get my vote." Shelton never elaborated further on what these issues were.

Civilian career

Clark set himself three initial goals in civilian life—to earn $40 million in the business world to let him practice philanthropy, to become an adjunct professor, and to become a professional golfer. Clark began a public speaking tour in the summer of 2000 and approached several former government officials for advice on work after life in government, including House Speaker Newt Gingrich, White House Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, and Richard Holbrooke. Clark took McLarty's advice to move back to Little Rock, Arkansas, and took a position with the Stephens Group, an investment firm headquartered there. He took several other board positions at defense-related firms, and in March 2003 he amicably left the Stephens Group to found Wesley K. Clark & Associates. Clark began writing, publishing two books—Waging Modern War and Winning Modern Wars—along with writing the forewords for a series of military biographies, as well as a series of editorials.

2004 presidential campaign

Clark has said that he began to truly define his politics only after his military retirement in 2000 around the 2000 presidential election that would give George W. Bush the presidency. Clark had a conversation with Condoleezza Rice. She told him that the war in Kosovo would have never taken place under a Bush administration. Clark found such an administration unsettling, as he had been selected for the SACEUR position because he believed more in the interventionist policies of the Clinton administration. He said he would see it as a sign that things were "starting to go wrong" with American foreign policy if Bush was elected. Clark supported the administration's War in Afghanistan in response to the September 11, 2001 attacks but did not support the Iraq War. Clark continued to warn people as a commentator on CNN that he believed the United States was undermanned in Iraq, and has said the war was "never [about]... WMD or regime change," and believes "the connection to the War on Terrorism was not shown."

Clark met with a group of wealthy New York Democrats including Alan Patricof to tell them he was considering running for the presidency in the 2004 election. Patricof, a supporter of Al Gore in 2000, met with all the Democratic candidates and ultimately supported Clark in 2004. Clark has said that he voted for Al Gore in 2000, but has voted for Republicans such as Ronald Reagan, held equal esteem for Dwight D. Eisenhower and Harry S. Truman, and had been a registered independent voter throughout his military career. Ultimately as Clark himself put it, however, he decided he was a Democrat because "I was pro-affirmative action, I was pro-choice, I was pro-education... I'm pro-health care... I realized I was either going to be the loneliest Republican in America or I was going to be a happy Democrat." Clark said he liked the Democratic party, which he saw as standing for "internationalism", "ordinary men and women", and "fair play."

A "Draft Clark" campaign began to grow with the launch of DraftWesleyClark.com on April 10, 2003. DraftWesleyClark signed up tens of thousands of volunteers, made 150 media appearances discussing Clark, and raised $1.5 million in pledges for his campaign. DraftClark2004.com, another website in support of drafting Clark, was the first organization to register as a political action committee in June 2003 to persuade Clark to run. They had earlier presented him with 1000 emails in May 2003 from throughout the country asking Clark to run. One of DraftClark2004's founders, Brent Blackaby, said of the draft effort: "Just fifty-two years ago citizens from all over the country were successful in their efforts to draft General Eisenhower. We intend to do the same in 2004 by drafting General Clark. If he runs, he wins."

Clark went on Meet the Press in June 2003 and said he was "seriously consider[ing]" running for president. The campaign raised $3.5 million in the first two weeks. The internet campaign would also establish the Clark Community Network of blogs, which is still used today and made heavy use of Meetup.com, where DraftWesleyClark.com had established the second-largest community of Meetups at the time.

Clark's loyalty to the Democratic Party was questioned by some as soon as he entered the race. Senator Joe Lieberman called Clark's party choice a matter of "political convenience, not conviction." Republican Governor Bill Owens of Colorado and University of Denver president Marc Holtzman have claimed Clark once said "I would have been a Republican if Karl Rove had returned my phone calls." Clark later claimed he was simply joking, but both Owens and Holtzman said the remark was delivered "very directly" and "wasn't a joke." Katharine Q. Seelye wrote that many believed Clark had only chosen to be a Democrat in 2004 because it was "the only party that did not have a nominee." U.S. News and World Report ran a story two weeks later claiming Clark had considered some form of political run as a Republican.

Clark, coming from a non-political background, had no position papers to define his agenda for the public. Once in the campaign, however, several volunteers established a network of connections with the media, and Clark began to explain his stances on a variety of issues. He was, as he had told The Washington Post in October, pro-choice and pro-affirmative action. He called for a repeal of recent Bush tax cuts for people earning more than $200,000 and suggested providing healthcare for the uninsured by altering the current system rather than transferring to a completely new universal health care system. He backed environmental causes such as promising to reverse "scaled down rules" the Bush administration had applied to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts and dealing with the potential effects of global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, livestock flatulence and other sources. Clark also proposed a global effort to strengthen American relations with other nations, reviewing the PATRIOT Act, and investing $100 billion in homeland security. Finally, he put out a budget plan that claimed to save $2.35 trillion over ten years through a repeal of the Bush tax cuts, sharing the cost of the Iraq War with other nations, and cutting government waste.

Some, such as Clark's biography writer Antonia Felix, have speculated that Clark's inexperience at giving "soundbite" answers hurt him in the media during his primary campaign. The day after he launched his campaign, for example, he was asked if he would have voted for the Iraq War Resolution, which granted President Bush the power to wage the Iraq War, a large issue in the 2004 campaign. Clark said, "At the time, I probably would have voted for it, but I think that's too simple a question," then "I don't know if I would have or not. I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position—on balance, I probably would have voted for it." Finally, Clark's press secretary clarified his position as "you said you would have voted for the resolution as leverage for a UN-based solution." After this series of responses, although Clark opposed the war, The New York Times ran a story with the headline "Clark Says He Would Have Voted for War". Clark was repeatedly portrayed as unsure on this critical issue by his opponents throughout the primary season, being forced to continue to clarify his position such as at the second primary debate when he said, "I think it's really embarrassing that a group of candidates up here are working on changing the leadership in this country and can't get their own story straight... I would have never voted for war. The war was an unnecessary war, it was an elective war, and it's been a huge strategic mistake for this country."

Another media incident started during the New Hampshire primary September 27, 2003, when Clark was asked by space shuttle astronaut Jay C. Buckey what his vision for the space program was after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Clark responded he was a great believer in the exploration of space but wanted a vision well beyond that of a new shuttle or space plane. "I would like to see mankind get off this planet. I'd like to know what's out there beyond the solar system." Clark thought such a vision could probably require a lifetime of research and development in various fields of science and technology. Then at the end of his remarks, Clark dropped a bombshell when he said "I still believe in . But I can't believe that in all of human history we'll never ever be able to go beyond the speed of light to reach where we want to go. I happen to believe that mankind can do it. I've argued with physicists about it. I've argued with best friends about it. I just have to believe it. It's my only faith-based initiative." This led to a series of headlines deriding the response, such as "Beam Us Up, General Clark" in The New York Times, "Clark is Light-Years Ahead of the Competition" in The Washington Post, "General Relativity (Retired)" on the U.S. News & World Report website, and "Clark Campaigns at Light Speed" in Wired magazine.

on August 19, 2004]] Several polls from September to November 2003 showed Clark leading the Democratic field of candidates or as a close second to Howard Dean. The John Edwards campaign brought on Hugh Shelton—the general who had said Clark was made to leave the SACEUR post early due to "integrity and character issues"—as an advisor, a move that drew criticism from the Clark campaign. Since Dean consistently polled in the lead in the Iowa caucuses, Clark opted out of participating in the caucuses entirely to focus on later primaries instead. The 2004 Iowa caucuses marked a turning point in the campaign for the Democratic nomination, however, as front-runners Dean and Dick Gephardt garnered results far lower than expected, and John Kerry and John Edwards campaigns' benefited in Clark's absence. Although Clark performed reasonably well in later primaries, such as a tie for third place with Edwards in the New Hampshire primary and narrowly winning the Oklahoma primary over Edwards, he saw his third-place finish in Tennessee and distant third in Virginia as signs that he had lost the South, which his campaign had been centered on. He withdrew from the race on February 11, 2004 and announced his endorsement of John Kerry at a rally in Madison, Wisconsin on February 13. Clark believed his opting out of the Iowa caucus was one of his campaign's biggest mistakes, saying to one supporter the day before he withdrew from the race that "everything would have been different if we had [been in Iowa]."

Post-2004 campaign

Clark continued to speak in support of Kerry (and the eventual Kerry/Edwards ticket) throughout the remainder of the 2004 presidential campaign, including speaking at the 2004 Democratic National Convention on the final evening. He founded his current political action committee, WesPAC, in April 2004. He joined the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA as a senior fellow. A managing partner of the companies that support the Center, Ronald Burkle, described Clark's position as "illuminat[ing] the center's research" and "teaching [the] contemporary role of the United States in the international community."

rally Clark attended in 2006]]

Clark campaigned heavily throughout the 2006 midterm election campaign, supporting numerous Democrats in a variety of federal, statewide, Ultimately his PAC aided 42 Democratic candidates who won their elections, including 25 who won seats formerly held by Republicans and 6 newly elected veteran members of the House and Senate. Clark was the most-requested surrogate of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee throughout the 2006 campaign, and sometimes appeared with the leadership of the Democratic Party when they commented on security issues.

Clark has opposed taking military action against Iran and in January 2007 he criticized what he called "New York money people" pushing for a war. This led to accusations of antisemitism.

Clark serves on the Advisory Boards of the Global Panel Foundation and the National Security Network. He also chairman of Rodman & Renshaw, a New York investment bank, and Growth Energy. Before that time, he was ranked within the top Democratic candidates according to some Internet polls. After endorsing Hillary Clinton, Clark campaigned for her in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and Ohio and in campaign commercials. After Barack Obama secured the Democratic nomination Clark voiced his support for Obama. Obama eventually chose Joe Biden as his running mate.

McCain military service controversy

On June 29, 2008, Clark made comments on Face the Nation that were critical of Republican John McCain, calling into question the notion that McCain's military service alone had given him experience relevant to being president. "I certainly honor [McCain's] service as a prisoner of war," Clark said, "but he hasn't held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the navy that he commanded--it wasn't a wartime squadron. He hasn't been in there and ordered the bombs to fall." When moderator Bob Schieffer noted that Obama had no military experience to prepare him for the presidency nor had he "ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down,” Clark responded that, ultimately, Obama had not based his presidential bid on his military experience, as McCain has done throughout his campaign. Clark's retort, however, is what drew rebuke. In referring to McCain's military experience, he stated: "Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.” Both the McCain and Obama campaigns subsequently released statements rejecting Clark's comment. However, Clark has received the backing of several prominent liberal groups such as MoveOn.org and military veteran groups such as VoteVets.org; Obama ultimately stated that Clark's comments were "inartful" and were not intended to attack McCain's military service. In the days following the controversial interview, Clark went on several news programs to reiterate his true admiration and heartfelt support for McCain's military service as a fellow veteran who had been wounded in combat. In each program, Clark reminded the commentator and the viewing public that while he honors McCain's service, he has serious concerns about McCain's judgment in matters of national security policy, calling McCain "untested and untried."

Awards and honors

Wesley Clark has been awarded numerous honors, awards, and knighthoods over the course of his military and civilian career. Notable military awards include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with four oak leaf clusters, the Legion of Merit with three oak leaf clusters, the Silver Star, and the Bronze Star with an oak leaf cluster. Internationally Clark has received numerous military honors such as the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Grand Cross of the Medal of Military Merit from Portugal and knighthoods. Clark has been awarded some honors as a civilian, such as the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000. The people of Đakovica, Kosovo named a street after him for his role in helping their city and country. The city of Madison in Alabama has also named a boulevard after Clark. Municipal approval has been granted for the construction of a new street to be named "General Clark Court" in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He has also been appointed a Fellow at the Burkle Center for International Relations at UCLA. He is a member of the guiding coalition of the Project on National Security Reform.

References

External links

Biography Channel Account

WesPAC

Draft Clark for President (archive only)

Wesley Clark campaign contributions from the FEC

Wesley Clark campaign contributions from OpenSecrets.org

Wesley Clark Issue positions and quotes

Wesley Clark collected news stories and commentary

Wesley Clark Speaks About His New Memoir, War, and the Upcoming Election

Video: Wesley Clark discusses Asia Society Task Force Report on US Policy in Burma at the Asia Society, New York, April 7, 2010

Category:1944 births Category:20th-century Roman Catholics Category:21st-century Roman Catholics Category:Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford Category:Arkansas Democrats Category:American chief executives Category:American military personnel of the Vietnam War Category:American political writers Category:American Rhodes scholars Category:American Roman Catholic politicians Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:Knights Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau Category:Légion d'honneur recipients Category:Living people Category:Recipients of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany Category:National War College alumni Category:NATO Supreme Allied Commanders Category:Order of Leopold recipients Category:People from Chicago, Illinois Category:Recipients of the Bronze Star Medal Category:Recipients of the Combat Infantryman Badge Category:Recipients of the Distinguished Service Medal (United States) Category:Recipients of the Legion of Merit Category:Recipients of the Meritorious Service Decoration Category:Recipients of the Purple Heart medal Category:Recipients of the Ranger tab Category:Recipients of the Silver Star Category:United States Army Command and General Staff College alumni Category:United States Army generals Category:United States Military Academy alumni Category:United States presidential candidates, 2004 Category:Honorary Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire

Name	Ted Turner
Caption	Turner in 2007
Birth name	Robert Edward Turner III
Birth date	November 19, 1938
Birth place	Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
Origin	Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Nationality	American
Known for	founder of TBS and CNN, former owner of the Atlanta Braves, Ted's Montana Grill, philanthropy
Occupation	Media tycoon
Networth	$1.9 billion
Spouse	Julia Gale Nye (1960–1964) Jane Shirley Smith (1965–1988) Jane Fonda (1991–2001)
Children	Laura Lee, Robert Edward IV, Rhett, Beauregard, Jennie
Website

Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III (born November 19, 1938) is an American media mogul and philanthropist. As a businessman, he is known as founder of the cable news network CNN, the first dedicated 24-hour cable news channel. In addition, he founded WTBS, which pioneered the superstation concept in cable television. As a philanthropist, he is known for his $1 billion gift to support UN causes, which created the United Nations Foundation, a public charity to broaden support for the UN. Turner serves as Chairman of the United Nations Foundation board of directors.

Turner's media empire began with his father's billboard business, which he took over at 24 after his father's suicide. The business, Turner Outdoor Advertising, was worth $1 million when Turner took it over in 1963. Purchase of an Atlanta UHF station in 1970 began the Turner Broadcasting System. Cable News Network revolutionized news media, covering the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986 and the Persian Gulf War in 1991. Turner turned the Atlanta Braves baseball team into a nationally popular franchise and launched the charitable Goodwill Games.

Turner's penchant for controversial statements earned him the nicknames "The Mouth of the South" and "Captain Outrageous."

Turner has also devoted his assets to environmental causes. He is the largest private landowner in the United States and uses much of it for ranches to re-popularize bison meat (for his Ted's Montana Grill chain), amassing the largest herd in the world. He also created the environmental-themed animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers.

Early life

Turner was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the son of Florence (née Rooney) and Robert Edward Turner II, a billboard magnate. When he was nine, his family moved to Savannah, Georgia. He attended The McCallie School, a private, boys' preparatory school in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Turner attended Brown University and was vice-president of the Brown Debating Union and captain of the sailing team. He became a member of Kappa Sigma. Turner initially majored in Classics. Turner's father wrote saying that his choice made him "appalled, even horrified," and that he "almost puked." Turner later changed his major to Economics, but he was expelled before receiving a diploma for having a female student in his dormitory room. Turner was awarded an honorary B.A. from Brown in November 1989 when he returned to campus to keynote the National Association of College Broadcasters second annual conference.

Sailing

Turner entered sailing competitions when he was 11, at the Savannah Yacht Club, and competed in Olympic trials in 1964. In 1977, he successfully defended the America's Cup for the United States as skipper of the yacht Courageous. In the 1979 Fastnet race, in a storm that killed participants, he skippered Tenacious to a corrected-time victory. He was on the cover of Sports Illustrated on 4 July 1977 after winning the qualifying time to lead the 1977 America's Cup defense and he was inducted into the America's Cup Hall of Fame in 1993.

Recent controversies

Turner once called observers of Ash Wednesday "Jesus freaks", though he apologized, and dubbed opponents of abortion "bozos". In a 2008 MSNBC interview he also stated that he prays for sick friends, but keeps it short because "I don't want to load up the wires".

Turner caused a stir in Montana in 2003 by funding a project to restore westslope cutthroat trout to Cherry Creek and Cherry Lake. The controversy stemmed from the poison antimycin used to kill fish in the stream.

In 2008, Turner also received attention when he asserted on PBS's Charlie Rose television program that if steps are not taken to address global warming, "Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals." Turner also said in the interview that he advocated drastically cutting the U.S. military budget and Americans having no more than 2 children.

Business activities

WTBS

After leaving Brown University, Turner returned to the South in late 1960 to become general manager of the Macon, Georgia branch of his father's business. Following his father's March 1963 suicide, Turner became president and chief executive of Turner Advertising Company when he was 24 Warner Bros. library and the Fleischer and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons that both were once the property of Associated Artists Productions, which merged with UA Television in 1958).

TNT

Turner used these to add cable channels. In 1988, he introduced Turner Network Television (TNT) with Gone with the Wind. TNT, initially older movies and television shows, added original programs and newer reruns. Since launch in 1994, Turner Classic Movies broadcast the older Warner Bros, RKO, and MGM libraries. TNT used World Championship Wrestling (WCW) to attract a broader audience.

In 1992, the MGM library, which included Warner Brothers properties including the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies libraries and also the Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios Popeye cartoons, became the core of Cartoon Network. Turner's companies purchased Hanna-Barbera Productions, adding additional content. With the 1996 Time Warner merger, the channel's archives gained the post-1948 Warner Bros. cartoon library.

In the mid-1980s, Turner became a force for the colorization of black and white films. In 1985, the film Yankee Doodle Dandy became the first black and white movie redistributed in color after computer coloring. Despite opposition by film aficionados, stars, and directors, the movie won over a section of the public, and Turner colorized a majority of films that he had owned. However, in the mid-1990s, the cost led Turner to abandon the idea. In contrast with TNT, TCM has shown the unaltered versions of films.

Turner Entertainment

Turner Entertainment Co. was established in August 1986 to oversee film properties owned by Ted Turner. In 1988, Turner purchased Jim Crockett Promotions which he renamed World Championship Wrestling (WCW) which became the main competitor to Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Federation (WWF). In 2001, under AOL Time Warner, it was sold to the World Wrestling Federation. Turner has always been fond of professional wrestling.

In 1989, Turner created the Turner Tomorrow Fellowship for fiction offering positive solutions to global problems. The winner, from 2500 entries worldwide, was Daniel Quinn's Ishmael.

Turner Foundation

In 1990, he created the Turner Foundation, which focuses on philanthropic grants in environment and population. In the same year he created Captain Planet, an environmental superhero. Turner produced two TV series with him as featured character. Turner appeared in Gettysburg as Colonel Waller T. Patton in 1993 and reprised the role in the 2003 prequel Gods and Generals; he produced both films.

MIBC

In 1993 Turner and Russian journalist Eduard Sagalajev founded The Moscow Independent Broadcasting Corporation. This corporation operated the sixth frequency in Russian television and founded the Russian channel TV-6. The company was later purchased by Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and an unknown group of private persons. In 2007 the license for TV-6 had expired and there was no application for renewal.

Time Warner merger

Turner Broadcasting System, Inc merged with Time Warner, Inc. on October 10, 1996, with Turner as vice chairman and head of Time Warner's cable networks division. On January 11, 2001 Time Warner merged with AOL as AOL Time Warner. The company has since dropped "AOL" from its name. As of December 2009, AOL has been divorced from the company entirely.

Turner was vice-chairman and Time Warner's biggest stock holder. It is estimated he lost as much as $7 billion when the stock collapsed in the wake of the merger. He stepped down as vice chairman in 2006. When asked about buying back his former assets, he replies that he can't afford them now.

Atlanta Braves

For most of his first decade as owner of the Braves, Turner was a very hands-on owner. He said, "Managing isn't that difficult; you just have to score more runs than the other guy". In 1977, he sent manager Dave Bristol on a "scouting trip" so he could manage the team himself. He only ran the team for one game (a loss) before National League president Chub Feeney told him that managers are not allowed to own financial interest in their club. In the mid-1980s Turner began leaving day-to-day operations in the hands of the baseball operations staff.

Achievements

In 1991, Turner became the first media figure to be named Time magazine's Man of the Year.

He is America's largest private landowner, owning approximately two million acres (8,000 km²), greater than the land areas of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. According to documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, Turner's land has a higher gross domestic product than Belize. He has the largest private bison herd, with 50,000 head. In 2002, Turner co-founded Ted's Montana Grill, a burger restaurant chain specializing in bison meat.

Under his ownership, World Championship Wrestling became the only federation to outrate and outsell the McMahon family and their World Wrestling Federation. This event brought about a rise in popularity to professional wrestling and is now known as the Monday Night Wars. WCW television ratings were also heavily competing with ABC's Monday Night Football.

After the American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, Turner founded the Goodwill Games as a statement for peace through sports.

In 1990, the American Humanist Association named Turner the Humanist of the Year.

In 1998, Turner pledged to donate $1 billion of his then $3 billion to United Nations causes, and created the United Nations Foundation to administer the gift. The foundation "builds and implements public-private partnerships to address the world’s most pressing problems, and broadens support for the UN through advocacy and public outreach." In 2006, the foundation delivered its billionth dollar to UN causes — $600m of which came from Turner and $400m from public and private partners. Turner has pledged to use the remaining $400m of his commitment to leverage additional funds for UN causes and activities.

Turner served in the United States Coast Guard. He is also a recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Gold Medal for Humanitarianism.

In 2006 Turner received the Bower Award for Business Leadership from The Franklin Institute.

Turner was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame on April 26, 2007.

Politics

On 19 September 2006, Turner said in a Reuters Newsmaker conference, of Iran's nuclear position: "They're a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10? We don't say anything about Israel — they've got 100 of them approximately — or India or Pakistan or Russia." He advocated banning men from public office: "Men should be barred from public office for 100 years in every part of the world... The men have had millions of years where we've been running things. We've screwed it up hopelessly. Let's give it to the women."

A proponent of Obama’s healthcare bill, Turner has said: “We’re the only first world country that doesn’t have universal healthcare and it’s a disgrace.”

In 2010 in the wake of both the Upper Big Branch Mine disaster in West Virginia on 5 April that killed 29 miners and on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 roughnecks on 20 April, Turner stated on CNN that "I'm just wondering if God is telling us He doesn't want to drill offshore. And right before that, we had that coal mine disaster in West Virginia where we lost 29 miners ... Maybe the Lord's tired of having the mountains of West Virginia, the tops knocked off of them so they may get more coal. I think maybe we ought to just leave the coal in the ground and go with solar and wind power and geothermals..."

Views on the shifting media landscape

Turner claims to have predicted the demise of newspapers 30 years ago and has called print journalism “an obsolete way of distributing information.”

Through Turner Enterprises, he owns 15 ranches in Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Totaling , his US land-holdings make Turner the largest individual landowner in North America (by acreage).

Turner sponsors the Public forum debate of the National Forensic League.

Turner, on December 8, 2010, stated that he "...is almost to the edge of poverty.", being down to just a few million dollars left out of his previous fortune of billions, or so he told the hosts of MSNBC's a.m. news show Morning Joe

See also

Douglas Tompkins, who likewise owns two million acres (8,000 km²) of land

Millennium Development Goals

References

Further reading

Call Me Ted by Ted Turner and Bill Burke (Grand Central Publishing, 2008) ISBN 978-0-446-58189-9

Racing Edge by Ted Turner (Simon & Schuster, 1979) ISBN 0-671-24419-1

Biographies:

*Media Man: Ted Turner's Improbable Empire by Ken Auletta (W. W. Norton, 2004) ISBN 0-393-05168-4

*Clash of the Titans: How the Unbridled Ambition of Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch Has Created Global Empires that Control What We Read and Watch Each Day by Richard Hack (New Millennium Press, 2003) ISBN 1-893224-60-0

*Me and Ted Against the World: The Unauthorized Story of the Founding of CNN by Reese Schonfeld (HarperBusiness, 2001) 0060197463

*Ted Turner Speaks: Insights from the World's Greatest Maverick by Janet Lowe (Wiley, 1999) ISBN 0-471-34563-6

*Riding A White Horse: Ted Turner's Goodwill Games and Other Crusades by Althea Carlson (Episcopal Press, 1998) ISBN 0-9663743-0-4

* Citizen Turner: The Wild Rise of an American Tycoon by Robert Goldberg and Gerald Jay Goldberg (Harcourt, 1995) ISBN 0-15-118008-3

*CNN: The Inside Story: How a Band of Mavericks Changed the Face of Television News by Hank Whittemore (Little Brown & Co, 1990) ISBN 0-316-93761-4

*Lead Follow or Get Out of the Way: The Story of Ted Turner by Christian Williams (Times Books, 1981) ISBN 0-8129-1004-4

*Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City 1946–1996 by Frederick Allen (Longstreet Press, 1996) ISBN 1-56352-296-9

External links

Turner Foundation

Ted Turner on AskMen.com

Ted Turner speaks at The Global Philanthropy

The Independent: "Turner becomes largest private landowner in US"

The United Nations Foundation

Sports Illustrated cover featuring Ted Turner

Ted Turner Reflects on the Time Warner/AOL Merger at Fora.Tv

Category:1938 births Category:America's Cup sailors Category:American businesspeople Category:American conservationists Category:American environmentalists Category:American philanthropists Category:American television executives Category:American yacht racers Category:Atlanta Braves executives Category:Atlanta Braves managers Category:Atlanta Braves owners Category:Atlanta Hawks executives Category:Atlanta Hawks owners Category:Atlanta Thrashers executives Category:Brown University alumni Category:CNN executives Category:Converts to Christianity Category:Georgia (U.S. state) Democrats Category:Living people Category:Major League Baseball team presidents Category:National Basketball Association executives Category:National Basketball Association owners Category:Peabody Award winners Category:People from Cincinnati, Ohio Category:Professional wrestling executives Category:Time Persons of the Year Category:United States Coast Guard personnel

Name	Sharron Angle
Office	Member of the Nevada Assembly from the 26th District
Term start	January 3, 2003
Term end	January 3, 2007
Predecessor	David Humke
Successor	Ty Cobb
Office2	Member of the Nevada Assembly from the 29th District
Term start2	January 3, 1999
Term end2	January 3, 2003
Predecessor2	Ernie E. Adler
Successor2	Joshua Griffin
Birthname	Sharron Elaine Ott
Birth date	July 26, 1949
Birth place	Klamath Falls, Oregon, U.S.
Occupation	TeacherPolitician
Party	Republican
Alma mater	University of Nevada, Reno
Spouse	Ted Angle
Religion	Southern Baptist
Website	sharronangle.com

Sharron Elaine Angle (born Sharron Elaine Ott July 26, 1949) is an American politician who served as a Republican member of the Nevada Assembly from 1999 to 2007. She ran unsuccessfully as the 2010 Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, garnering 44 percent of the vote.

Personal life

Angle was born in Klamath Falls, Oregon, and moved to Reno, Nevada, when she was three. Her father is a Navy veteran of World War II and served in the Navy Reserve during the Korean War. She attended public schools in Reno and later obtained a bachelor of fine arts from the University of Nevada. Ted and Sharron Angle had two children and, as of October 2010, ten grandchildren.

After graduating college, Angle, a Southern Baptist, worked as a substitute teacher for 25 years, ran a small Christian school for two years, and taught art for five years as a lecturer at Western Nevada Community College in Winnemucca.

In 2003, she hired John Eastman of the Claremont Institute to fight the Supreme Court decision when then Governor Kenny Guinn sued the Legislature to nullify the state constitution and allow a simple majority of the legislature to pass an $836 million tax increase in Angle v. Guinn. Angle used her personal funds to defend the state constitution's two-thirds vote requirement to raise taxes and, with Eastman, took the case to Federal District Court in Nevada, which referred it to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and finally to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Legislature subsequently passed the $836 million tax increase by a two-thirds vote. Angle ultimately prevailed in the suit; in 2006, the state supreme court reversed its 2003 decision and restored the Nevada Constitution's two-thirds vote provision.

In 2003, Angle attempted to arrange a trip to an Ensenada, Baja California prison to assess a drug treatment program implemented there. She also arranged to visit a prison in New Mexico to assess the "Second Chance Program," which licensed its materials from Criminon, a program for rehabilitating prisoners using methods developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Angle sponsored legislation aimed at placing this program in certain women's prisons in Nevada. She states that she voted no because the Nevada Constitution states that taxation must be uniform and equal and so could not vote against her oath of office to which she swore to "uphold and defend the Constitution." On August 25, Angle called for a new primary election on the grounds that some poll workers showed up late for work, or didn't show up at all, in Washoe County, where she was the strongest. On September 1, the Carson District Judge denied her appeal for a new election.

2010 run for U.S. Senate

On April 15, 2010, she received an endorsement for the U.S. Senate race from the Tea Party Express at a rally in the nation's capital. The next day, she received an endorsement from conservative talk radio personality Mark Levin and she was endorsed by several other conservative individuals and organizations, including the Club for Growth, Samuel "Joe The Plumber" Wurzelbacher, Singer Pat Boone, and Phyllis Schlafly.

Despite this support, some prominent Republicans opposed her candidacy. Immediately after the primary, the Republican mayor of Reno, Bob Cashell, who backed Lowden in the Republican primary, endorsed Reid for the general election, calling Angle an "ultra-right winger." Other notable Republicans opposing her included Sig Rogich, a former campaign staffer for Ronald Reagan and assistant to President George H. W. Bush; Republican State Senator and Minority Leader William Raggio; Dema Guinn, the widow of the late Republican Governor of Nevada Kenny Guinn; and former Lieutenant Governor Sue Wagner.

The Washington Post reported on May 28 that Angle was in a "statistical dead heat" with her opponent, Sue Lowden, citing a poll conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Using the same poll data, the Las Vegas Review-Journal speculated that Lowden would win 42 percent of the vote over Reid's 39 percent, and that Reid would win 42 percent of the vote over Angle's 39 percent with a margin of error "plus or minus 4 percentage points." On June 6, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that according to a new Mason-Dixon poll, Angle had "shot into a clear lead in the U.S. Senate Republican Primary" and predicted that she would win the nomination with 32% of the vote and would defeat Harry Reid 44% to 41%.

Angle went on to win the Republican nomination. A June 9, 2010, Rasmussen Reports post-primary poll showed her leading incumbent Senator Harry Reid by a margin of 50% to 39%. A July 2010 poll showed Reid leading Angle by 7 points. The change of margin, 18% in less than a month, is the largest in Senate elections history. That same month, Nevada Tea Party candidate Scott Ashjian released a tape to the media of a recorded conversation he had with Angle where she asked him to drop out of the race. In the tape, Angle speaks candidly about her campaign and says that she cannot defeat Reid with Ashjian on the ballot.

One of Angle's campaign ads aired on television late in her campaign entitled "The Wave" was cited as racist and despicable by Sen. Robert Menendez.

On election day, Angle received the support of about 44% of voters, allowing Reid to return to the Senate. and national. In September, the Las Vegas Review-Journal sued her for copyright infringement after she allegedly posted entire articles from the publication on her campaign website without permission. After the campaign ended, it was revealed that the campaign developed a code word to alert office workers if the media entered the campaign headquarters: "It's time to water the plants." and claiming Angle "pushed a bill favored by the Church of Scientology." Although the Las Vegas Review-Journal said that "no bill was ever introduced,"

During a KVBC-hosted debate on Face to Face with Jon Ralston, Angle was asked "about recent whispers that an Angle legislative proposal to explore a program of massages and sweat-boxes for Nevada prisons was a strange foray into Scientology", a reference to her 2003 proposal to study the program implemented in Mexico and New Mexico. Angle responded, "This program had a recidivism rate of less than 10 percent. They aren't massages. ... it was more of a karate chop. The sauna was a sweat box. When you're in there with 30 guys, it's not exactly a sauna." stating that the controversy had been "largely distorted". Regarding these claims relating to Scientology, Angle told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "The way to ruin a conservative is to pass them off as part of the radical fringe. They always try to marginalize me."

Patriot Caucus

On December 12th, 2010 Sharron Angle announced the formation of a PAC named the Patriot Caucus to "organize a ground game across most battleground states for the 2012 election cycle."

Positions

Education

Angle believes that the U.S. Department of Education should be eliminated, citing that the local approach yields the best academic results ("[The] best education is the education that is controlled closest to the local level as possible.") Angle also holds that the Department of Education is "unconstitutional" and should not be involved in dictating educational standards from Washington, D.C.

United Nations

Angle believes that the U.S. should withdraw from the United Nations, saying it is a bastion of liberal ideology and "the umpire on fraudulent science such as global warming."

Social policy

Angle supports the Federal Marriage Amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Angle is pro-life and opposes abortion, including in cases of rape or incest. In a June 2010 radio interview, broadcast statewide in Nevada, Angle stated that she had counseled young girls in "very at risk, difficult pregnancies" to consider other alternatives, by which they had been able to make "a lemon situation into lemonade."

Separation of church and state

Angle does not believe that the United States Constitution mandates the separation of church and state.

Health care/abortion

Angle favors the privatization of Medicare. She voted against fluoridating drinking water.

Angle opposes abortion, even in cases of rape and incest, saying that it is against God's 'Plan'. In 1999, the Associated Press reported that Angle had proposed a bill that "would have required doctors to inform women seeking abortions about a controversial theory linking an increased risk of breast cancer with abortion." When she introduced the legislation again in 2001, the Las Vegas Review-Journal wrote that critics responded by saying the alleged link was not supported by scientific evidence, calling the bill a "scare tactic."

During the 2010 campaign, Angle told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that, as a state legislator, she had sponsored a bill to remove the requirement that health insurers cover mammograms and colonoscopies. In a debate among the Republican candidates, she repeated her support for lifting "mandates" on insurance companies.

Social Security

Angle has said that the Social Security system should be "transitioned out". In May 2010, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that Angle had claimed in a radio interview on KNPR that "[her] grandfather wouldn't even take his Social Security check because he said he was not up for welfare." The following month the Reid campaign reacted with a television ad stating that "Sharron Angle would end Medicare and Social Security. This is crazy." Angle has spoken favorably of the program in Chile, where current beneficiaries of the public retirement system were allowed to continue but all others were compelled to pay into a private system instead.

Financial reform

Angle favors a comprehensive audit of the Federal Reserve, eliminating the complete Internal Revenue Service code and abolishing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Drugs

Angle has stated that she opposes legalizing marijuana and has stated that she feels the same about alcohol. When her spokesman, Jerry Stacy, was asked to clarify Angle's statement he responded that she doesn't want to bring back Prohibition, saying "Sharron doesn't want to make alcohol illegal," and noting that she has never introduced legislation along those lines, and even voted against taxes on alcohol. "Alcohol is a legal substance, and adults can choose to imbibe," Stacy said.

Global warming

Angle does not believe in man-made global warming. When she was criticized for her comment, however, she retracted the term "slush fund" and said that BP should pay for the consequences of the spill.

Second Amendment and rights to form a militia

Angle has said, "What is a little bit disconcerting and concerning is the inability for sporting goods stores to keep ammunition in stock ... That tells me the nation is arming. What are they arming for if it isn't that they are so distrustful of their government? They're afraid they'll have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways?" and "That's why I look at this as almost an imperative. If we don't win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?" Asked to comment on the issue, her spokesman Jerry Stacy said via email: "Sharron Angle does not advocate a revolution. Her goal is to go to Washington with other like-minded elected officials who understand the proper role of the federal government as already defined by our Constitution."

Congressman Jim Clyburn said in January 2011 that "Sharron Angle's endorsement of 'Second Amendment remedies' in her losing Nevada campaign against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid contributed to the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords." Columnist E.J. Dionne did not "blame" Angle, but he did point out the connection between her call for "Second Amendment remedies" and the 2011 Tucson shooting. CBS News, in a "nationwide telephone poll" of 673 adults, with a margin of error of 4 %, found that "'57 percent of respondents said the harsh political tone had nothing to do with the shooting, compared to 32 percent who felt it did.'"

Canadian ambassador seeks terror border retraction

The Canadian ambassador to the U.S. Gary Doer has asked Angle to retract her baseless assertion that the 9/11 hijackers entered the United States through Canada. Angle claims that the U.S.-Canada border is the "most porous border we have" and "what we know is our northern border is where the terrorists came through." U.S. law enforcement have long determined that none of the hijackers entered the U.S. from Canada, but directly from third countries with visas issued by the U.S.

References

External links

Sharron E. Angle official Nevada Legislature website

Sharron Angle for U.S. Senate official campaign website

Campaign contributions at OpenSecrets.org

Category:Candidates in United States elections, 2006 Category:Candidates in United States elections, 2010 Category:Southern Baptists Category:Members of the Nevada Assembly Category:Nevada Republicans Category:People from Klamath Falls, Oregon Category:People from Reno, Nevada Category:Tea Party movement Category:Women state legislators in Nevada Category:1949 births Category:Living people

Name	Rand Paul
Jr/sr	United States Senator
State	Kentucky
Term start	January 3, 2011
Preceded	Jim Bunning
Alongside	Mitch McConnell
Birth date	January 07, 1963
Birth place	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Occupation	Ophthalmologist
Alma mater	Baylor University(1981–1984)
Religion	Presbyterian
Website	RandPaul2010.com
Residence	Bowling Green, Kentucky
Party	Republican
Spouse	Kelley Ashby Paul (m. 1990)
Relations	Ron PaulCarolyn "Carol" Wells Paul(parents)
Children	William, Robert, and Duncan

Randal Howard "Rand" Paul (born January 7, 1963) is the junior United States Senator for Kentucky. He is a member of the Republican Party. A member of the Tea Party movement, he describes himself as a "constitutional conservative" and a libertarian. He is the son of Republican Congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul of Texas and had never previously held political office. Paul first received national attention in 2008 when making political speeches on behalf of his father. Rand Paul is the first United States Senator in history to serve alongside a parent in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A graduate of the Duke University School of Medicine, Paul has been a practicing ophthalmologist in Bowling Green, Kentucky, since 1993, and established his own clinic in December 2007. In 1994, he founded Kentucky Taxpayers United, of which he is still the chairman.

In August 2009, Paul officially announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky. Paul won the Republican Party's nomination in May 2010, defeating Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson. In the General Election, Paul defeated Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway on November 2, 2010. As a supporter of the Tea Party movement, Paul has been vocal in advocating for term limits, a balanced budget amendment, and the Read the Bills Act, in addition to the widespread reduction of federal spending and taxation. He has gained prominence for his independent positions on many political issues, often clashing with both Republicans and Democrats.

Early life and education

on 2 October 2010, along with his father, Congressman Ron Paul of Texas, and his son, William Paul.]] Randal Howard Paul was born on January 7, 1963 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Carol Wells Paul and Ron Paul. Paul's father is a physician and U.S. Representative of Texas's 14th congressional district. The middle child of five, his siblings are Ronald "Ronnie" Paul Jr., Lori Paul Pyeatt, Robert Paul and Joy Paul-LeBlanc. Paul was baptized as an Episcopalian. Although Ron Paul was a fan of Ayn Rand, her name was not the inspiration for Paul's first name; he went by "Randy" while growing up. His wife shortened his name to "Rand".

The Paul family moved from Pittsburgh to San Antonio in 1965, eventually settling in Surfside Beach, Texas in 1968. In 1976, Paul's father was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Paul attended Baylor University in Waco, Texas from fall 1981 to summer 1984. According to a Senate campaign consultant of Paul's, Paul was enrolled in the honors program at Baylor, and had scored approximately in the 90th percentile on the Medical College Admission Test. During Paul's time at Baylor, he became a member of the NoZe Brotherhood.

Kelley Paul is a freelance writer, and she manages payroll and marketing communications for Paul's surgical practice.

As a member of the Bowling Green Noon Lions Club, Paul founded the Southern Kentucky Lions Eye Clinic to help provide eye surgery and exams for those who cannot afford to pay. In 1999 Paul founded the Non-profit organization National Board of Ophthalmology (NBO).

Political activism

As founder and chairman of the anti-tax organization Kentucky Taxpayers United (KTU) since 1994, Paul regularly presents "taxpayers' friend" awards to state legislators. KTU, which regards itself as nonpartisan, but is criticized for being ideological and conservative, examines legislator records on taxation and spending to inform voters where their own lawmakers stand on the issues. Paul's editorial commentary on behalf of KTU has been published and recognized in the Kentucky Post. Nine of fifteen Northern Kentucky legislators signed the pledge, such as Senator Dick Roeding In 2000, these legislators considered a hotel room tax hike (favored by Governor Paul Patton for helping expand the Dr. Albert B. Sabin Convention Center in nearby Cincinnati), even though the increase might "incur the wrath of Paul's group," as two newspapers put it.

Paul stated that Patton's argument for "revenue recovery" was merely a euphemism for taxes and said that KTU would fight reelection of any pledge-breakers; Adams requested in writing that Paul's group release him from his pledge, stating that it only applied to his first term.

Paul often speaks on his father's behalf, and he and his son William attended the third Republican presidential debate of 2007 in New Hampshire, as well as campaigned door-to-door in the state for his father. At a New Hampshire rally with 250 in attendance (plus 30 members of his own family), Paul repeated a campaign meme by pretending to take a call from Rudy Giuliani during his remarks, and joking that Giuliani needed campaigners and wanted to borrow the Paul family.

On December 16, 2007, the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, Paul spoke at Faneuil Hall in favor of small government principles, calling for what CNN termed a "modern day revolution." He continued campaigning across the country for his father in 2008, traveling as far as Montana.

2010 Senatorial campaign

Primary campaign

In the beginning of 2009, Paul was the focus of an online grassroots movement to draft him in a bid to replace beleaguered Republican Kentucky senator Jim Bunning. The news of his potential candidacy became a topic of national interest and was discussed in the Los Angeles Times and locally in the Kentucky press. Commenting on Paul's possible candidacy, Congressman Ron Paul noted that "Should Senator Bunning decide not to run, I think Rand would make a great U.S. Senator."

On May 1, 2009, Paul officially confirmed that if Bunning, whose fundraising in 2009 has matched his poor numbers in opinion polling for the 2010 election, declined to seek a third term, he would almost certainly run in the Republican Party primary to succeed him, and formed an exploratory committee soon after, while still promising to stay out of the race if Bunning had ultimately decided to run for re-election. Paul made this announcement on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, though the news was first broken by a local Kentucky news site.

On July 28, 2009, Bunning announced that he would not run for re-election, after facing insufficient fundraising. This announcement left only Paul and Secretary of State Trey Grayson as the remaining candidates for the Republican nomination, with Paul announcing on August 5, 2009 that he would officially run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican. The announcement was made through a series of national TV events, radio, and other programs, as well as through newspapers in Kentucky.

Early fundraising success

On August 20, 2009, Paul's grassroots planned a moneybomb to kick off his campaign for United States Senate. The official campaign took in $433,509 in 24 hours. According to Paul, This set a new record in Kentucky's political fundraising history in a 24-hour period.

A second "moneybomb" was held on September 23, 2009, to counter a D.C. fundraiser being held for primary opponent Trey Grayson, by 23 Republican United States Senators, 17 of whom voted for the bank bailout. The theme was a UFC "fight" between Paul and "We the People" vs. Trey Grayson and the "D.C. Insiders." The money bomb ended up raising $186,276 for Paul in 24 hours on September 23; bringing Paul's Senate campaign's total raised to over one million. Later in the campaign, Paul claimed his pledge to not take money from lobbyist and Senators who voted for the bailout was only a "primary pledge" and Paul later held a DC fundraiser with the same Senators who were the target of the September 23, 2009 "moneybomb." Paul ended up raising some $3 million during the primary period.

Primary victory

Although Grayson was considered the frontrunner in July 2009, Paul found success characterizing Grayson as a "career politician" and challenging Grayson's conservatism. Paul ran an ad in February that made an issue out of Grayson's September 2008 admission that he voted for Bill Clinton when he was 20 years old. Although the Paul campaign later removed the video from YouTube, Paul's Democratic general election competitor put it back up on October 20 after Paul had taken exception to the Democrat making an issue out of Paul's own college-age actions. James Dobson, a Christian evangelical figure, endorsed Grayson on April 26 based on the advice of what Dobson described as "senior members of the GOP", but on May 3 the Paul campaign announced that Dobson had changed his endorsement to Paul after Paul and some Paul supporters had lobbied Dobson insisting on Paul's social conservative bona fides.

On May 18 Paul won the Republican Senatorial primary by a 23.4% margin, meaning he would face the Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, in the November 2 general election.

General campaign

On June 28, 2010, Rand Paul supporters held their first post-primary online fundraising drive, this time promoted as a "money blast."

BP oil spill comments

On May 21, 2010, Paul generated some controversy by characterizing statements made by Obama administration officials regarding the BP oil spill cleanup as sounding "un-American". Paul said: }} Paul may have been referring to a statement by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who said "our job is basically to keep the boot on the neck of British Petroleum to carry out the responsibilities that they have, both under the law and contractually to move forward and to stop this spill." Salazar's remark was later slightly misquoted as "boot on the throat" by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs clarified at the same press conference, when asked if this metaphor did not imply hostility to BP, "I think the President accurately conveyed in his remarks yesterday that we are going to do everything humanly possible, and ensure that BP is doing everything humanly possible, to deal with this as comprehensively and as quickly as they can."

Private property and civil rights

Paul criticized the Bowling Green Daily News on May 30, 2002 for supporting the Fair Housing Act. He explained that "a free society will abide unofficial, private discrimination, even when that means allowing hate-filled groups to exclude people based on the color of their skin." On May 19, 2010, Paul stated that he favors 9 out of 10 titles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but had he been a senator during 1960s, he would have raised some questions on the constitutionality of Title II of the Act, which prohibits private businesses who provide public accommodations from discriminating on the basis of race, religion, or national origin against their customers, arguing that it infringes upon constitutional freedoms. Paul stated on National Public Radio, "I'm in favor of everything with regards to ending institutional racism". Paul favors community and neighborhood pressure to persuade private businesses, rather than federal laws that he argued might violate the constitution. Paul said he abhors racism, and he would have marched with Martin Luther King Jr. to repeal Jim Crow Laws. Paul's comments on Title II of Civil Rights Act of 1964 stirred controversy Paul later released a statement declaring that he would have voted for the Act and stated "unequivocally ... that I will not support any efforts to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964". Paul stating that while he "abhors racism," he doesn't like the idea of the federal government determining who a business may serve. Amid a flurry of controversy, Paul became the first American politician to cancel an appearance on Meet the Press in their 64-year history. Additionally, RNC Chairman Michael Steele, publicly denounced him, saying that Paul's opposition to the Civil Rights Act is a "misplaced" philosophy for the 21st Century.

Paul addressed his feelings about intentions of the legislation relating to public offices, stating that he "overwhelmingly agrees with the intent of the [Civil Rights Act] which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation and Jim Crow laws," and that Constitutional challenges to the law have been settled by the courts.

On May 21, 2010, Paul appeared on The Situation Room and told host Wolf Blitzer that he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act.

Board certification

On June 14, 2010 the Louisville Courier-Journal reported that Paul, who described himself as a "board-certified" ophthalmologist, was not certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology. From 1995 through 2005 Paul had an AMA-recognized certification until it lapsed. Paul is currently certified by the National Board of Ophthalmology, a rival organization founded by Paul himself in 1999 with Paul as president and his wife as vice-president. Paul has said the group has since recertified several hundred ophthalmologists. The National Board of Ophthalmology's mailing address is a UPS Store in Bowling Green, Kentucky; the organization lacks a website, and is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS).

Paul stated that he founded the National Board of Ophthalmology after a dispute with the American Board of Ophthalmology over recertification requirements. Paul has also explained his decision to let his recognized certification lapse resulting from "the kind of hypocritical power play that I despise and have always fought against." In interviews before the May 2010 Republican Senatorial primary, Paul stated that he was certified by both boards. and that "you vilify me and make it out to sound, 'Oh, ... there's something wrong with him as a physician because he chose not to register (with the American Board of Ophthalmology).'"

Paul has been licensed to practice medicine in Kentucky since 1993, and his license is in good standing with no history of disciplinary action. The Courier-Journal reported: "There is no indication that Paul isn't qualified to practice ophthalmology." a college secret society described as a cross between Yale's Skull & Bones and the Harvard Lampoon. Coverage of the story died down after Paul denied he had kidnapped anyone or forced anyone to take drugs or worship a so-called "Aqua Buddha". However, coverage of the event was subsequently revived in mid-October when Politico ran a new story on the topic, this one quoting articles from a 1983 NoZe newsletter as well as a different classmate's claim that in those days "Randy smoked pot, he made fun of Baptists." Within the week, Paul's opponent ran a TV ad asking why Paul had belonged to a group that had mocked Christianity and Christ and had tied up a woman and made her worship "Aqua Buddha". The story received widespread national media attention after a contentious October 17 debate between Paul and Conway in which the two candidates sparred extensively over the accusations and exchanged many insults. Paul refused to shake his opponent's hand after the debate had concluded.

Endorsements

Paul has secured endorsements from several public figures and political organizations. They include the Downsize DC Foundation, Concerned Women for America, Gun Owners of America, Steve Forbes, FreedomWorks, Club for Growth, James Dobson, Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Cathy Bailey, Jim Bunning, Erick Erickson, National Federation of Independent Business, Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, National Right to Life, US Chamber of Commerce, National Vietnam and Gulf War Veterans Coalition, Mike Huckabee, and Tony Perkins/FRC Action PAC.

Political views

Abortion and bioethics

Paul is opposed to abortion and supports a Human Life Amendment and a Life at Conception Act. He also opposes abortion in cases of rape and incest, but supports use of the morning-after pill. He opposes federal funding for abortion.

According to the Paul campaign, Paul received a 100% pro-life score on a Kentucky Right to Life survey and indicated on the survey that he opposed human cloning. This was disputed by Kentucky Right to Life, however, who endorsed Paul's primary opponent instead and claimed that Paul did not, in fact, answer the cloning question.

Campaign finance reform

Paul opposes the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and has called it a "dangerous piece of legislation". Instead, he supports regulating the contracts given out by Congress and placing limits on corporations receiving government contracts. Paul opposes legislation limiting the amount of money individuals, corporations, and organizations can give to candidates. Additionally, Paul has proposed "mandating a clause in all federal contracts over $1 million that requires the recipient to pledge not to lobby government or contribute to campaigns during the terms of the contract."

Civil liberties

Paul opposes the USA PATRIOT Act, including warrantless searches and breach of individual privacy.

Economics and tax cuts

Paul has been a longtime opponent of the bank and auto industry bailouts.

He also opposes the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 and the Federal Reserve's control of the money supply and interest rates. He has advocated allowing the free market to regulate interest rates, and supports Congress' constitutional role in controlling the money supply. Paul endorses H.R. 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, a bill, introduced by his father, mandating an audit of the Federal Reserve. Although Paul would abolish the Federal Reserve, he supports transparency and accountability of the semi-private institution. Additionally, Paul opposes inflation and supports "restoring the value of the dollar that has devalued by approximately 95% since the Federal Reserve's inception in 1913".

Paul supports tax cuts and a Balanced Budget Amendment, and has criticized both Republicans and Democrats on deficit spending.

In October 2010 the Kentucky coordinator for Americans For Fair Taxation stated that Paul would "vote for the FairTax", which would replace federal income taxes with a 23% national consumption tax and includes rebate provisions for taxes on all money spent up to the poverty line. The Associated Press confirmed with a representative of the Paul campaign that the statement fairly reflected Paul's position, saying that while he supports tax reform in general, he hasn't committed to the proposal, adding that it is "a little complicated to administer" and that "it would probably work better at the state level than the national."

Education

Paul supports returning control of education to local communities and parents and thus eliminating the federal Department of Education, but he says that some functions of the Department of Education, such as disbursing student loans and Pell Grants, should be transferred to other departments instead of being eliminated. Paul opposes federal regulation of homeschooling.

Energy

Paul supports allowing the free market to compete and dictate which forms of energy to use. He opposes subsidizing energy companies, and would support allowing tax breaks for companies that produce alternative energy such as wind, solar, or geothermal. He has said that subsidizing the energy industry will only add incentive for companies to lobby the federal government.

Health care

Paul opposes federal government involvement in health care. He would repeal the HMO Act of 1973 that "drives a wedge between the patient and [one's] doctor". He believes that government has driven up the cost of health care and causes the quality and coverage to decrease. Paul would support a free market approach to health care, including tax deductions for medical expenses. He opposes federal regulations discouraging businesses from providing coverage. He supports Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Paul also stated that he does not support such changes for current retirees or people nearing retirement. He opposes birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants. Paul has said that courts should review the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," to conclude whether or not it should apply to the children of illegal immigrants. If court challenges fail, Paul would support a constitutional amendment that would deny citizenship to children of illegal immigrants who are born in the United States.

Medical marijuana

Paul believes the issue of medical marijuana is a states' rights issue and that the federal government should not interfere. In August, the Associated Press reported that Paul said he was opposed to the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes,

National defense

Paul supports eliminating issuance of visas to people from nations deemed as terrorist or rogue. He would not vote to close Guantanamo Bay detention camp, and supports trying suspected terrorists in military tribunals. Paul believes that when the United States goes to war, Congress must declare war as mandated by the US Constitution, and says that he would have voted against an invasion of Iraq.

Same-sex marriage

Paul opposes same-sex marriage, but believes the issue should be left to the states to decide.

References

External links

Senator Rand Paul official U.S. Senate website

Official Campaign Website

Category:1963 births Category:American activists Category:American ophthalmologists Category:American political candidates Category:Baylor University alumni Category:Candidates in United States elections, 2010 Category:Duke University alumni Category:Kentucky Republicans Category:Living people Category:People from Bowling Green, Kentucky Category:People from Brazoria County, Texas Category:Physicians from Kentucky Category:Ron Paul Category:Tea Party movement Category:United States Senators from Kentucky

Paul C. Moreno was a Democratic state representative from El Paso, Texas. He was born in 1931 and grew up in “El Segundo Barrio” of El Paso. After high school he served six years in the U.S. Marine Corp and saw combat in the Korean War. He then received his BBA from the University of Texas El Paso then attended but did not complete his JD from the University of Texas at Austin .

Rep. Moreno first won election to the Texas House in 1967. He was the longest serving Hispanic elected official in the country, and presides as the Dean of the Texas House. Committed to the beliefs that everyone is entitled to sound legal representation and that all voices should be heard, he is a cofounder of El Paso Legal Assistance and a founding member of the Tejano Democrats.

He has been a passionate and outspoken advocate for the poor, the disabled, the disenfranchised, and education. In his role as a legislator, he proudly represents constituencies whose voices are not always among the most powerful. Many people consider Mr. Moreno the "Conscience of the House”.

He was defeated by Marisa Marquez in the 2008 Democratic primary for the 77th district.

Category:1932 births Category:Living people Category:Members of the Texas House of Representatives Category:Texas Democrats

Name	Mika Brzezinski
Birthname	Mika Emilie Leonia Brzezinski
Birth date	May 02, 1967
Birth place	New York, New York
Education	Williams College, 1989
Occupation	Television journalist
Gender	Female
Status	Married
Title	Co-host: Morning Joe
Spouse	James Patrick Hoffer (October 23, 1993)
Children	2 Children
Relatives	Zbigniew Brzezinski (Father)Emilie Benešová Brzezinski (Mother)
Ethnicity	Polish and Czech
Credits	Morning Joe

Mika Emilie Leonia Brzezinski (; born May 2, 1967) is an American television news journalist at MSNBC. Brzezinski is co-host of MSNBC's weekday morning program, Morning Joe, where she provides regular commentary and reads the news headlines for the program. Additionally, she reports for NBC Nightly News and serves as alternating news anchor on Weekend Today. Brzezinski was previously a CBS News anchor and correspondent.

On December 8, 2008, Brzezinski and Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough began hosting a two-hour late-morning radio show on WABC (770 AM) in New York City. As of April 26, 2010 the radio show was replaced by Mark Simone.

Early life

Brzezinski was born in New York City, the daughter of foreign policy expert and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and sculptor Emilie Anna Benešová, a grandniece of Czechoslovakia's former president Edvard Beneš. Her father was then teaching at Columbia University, but the family moved to McLean, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., in late 1976, when Zbigniew was named National Security Advisor by newly-elected President Jimmy Carter.

Brzezinski attended The Madeira School during her high-school years. She graduated in 1989 from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, where she majored in English, after transferring from Georgetown University as a junior.

Career

Brzezinski began her journalism career as an assistant at ABC's World News This Morning in 1990. A year later, she moved to Tribune-owned FOX affiliate WTIC-TV/WTIC-DT in Hartford, Connecticut. There, she progressed from assignment and features editor to general assignments reporter. In 1992, she joined CBS affiliate WFSB-TV/WFSB-DT in Hartford and quickly progressed through the ranks to become its weekday morning anchor in 1995. In 1997, she left that role to join the CBS network news, where she served as a correspondent and as anchor for the overnight Up to the Minute news program.

In 2000, Brzezinski began a short hiatus from CBS, during which she worked for rival MSNBC on the weekday afternoon show, Home Page, with co-anchors Gina Gaston and Ashleigh Banfield. She returned to CBS as a correspondent in September 2001, which thrust her into the limelight as a principal "Ground Zero" reporter for the September 11, 2001 attacks. Brzezinski was broadcasting live from the scene when the South Tower collapsed. (Coincidentally, her former MSNBC co-anchor, Ashleigh Banfield, was reporting from Ground Zero for MSNBC.)

In her last position at CBS, Brzezinski served as a CBS News correspondent, substitute anchor, and segment anchor for breaking news segments and routine updates. During this period she was a frequent contributor to CBS Sunday Morning and "60 Minutes."

Brzezinski returned to MSNBC on January 26, 2007, doing the evening "Up To The Minute" news updates. Since then she has anchored primetime newsbreaks during the week, filling in on MSNBC Live weekdays and on the weekends. Brzezinski appears daily as a co-host and news reader on MSNBC's morning program, Morning Joe, with her father as a frequent guest. On Morning Joe, Brzezinski pointed out that she is a Democrat and her co-host, Joe Scarborough is a Republican.

Protesting trivial journalism

On June 26, 2007, near the beginning of Morning Joe, Brzezinski refused to read a report about Paris Hilton's release from jail. One hour later during another news break segment, her producer Andy Jones again pushed the story as the lead, ranking it over Republican Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana's break with President Bush on the Iraq war, which Brzezinski considered more important. After several sarcastic remarks from host Joe Scarborough, she attempted to light the story's script on fire on the air, but was physically prevented from doing so by co-host Willie Geist. She then tore up the script, and one hour later, got up and ran another copy of the script through a paper shredder retrieved from Dan Abrams's office. The incident was quickly popularized on the Internet, and in the days that followed Brzezinski received large quantities of fan mail supporting her on-air protest as a commentary on the tension between 'hard news' and 'entertainment news'. Similarly, on July 7, 2010, she spent significant airtime objecting to pressure to report on Lindsay Lohan and Levi Johnston, eventually having Pat Buchanan report the stories with the caption "News You Can't Use."

All Things at Once

Brzezinski authored a book, All Things at Once, which was published by Weinstein Books in January 2010. The publisher describes it as "a candid and inspiring motivational book that will help women of all ages confront the unique professional and personal challenges they face in the key moments of their lives."

Personal life

Since 1993, Brzezinski has been married to TV news reporter James Hoffer, now of WABC-TV. They have two daughters. In her 2010 autobiography, Brzezinski writes about an incident when she fell down the steps of her home while holding her then-4-month-old daughter, breaking the baby's thighbone.

References

External links

Morning Joe homepage on msnbc.com

Morning Mika, Mika Brzezinski's personal website

Mika Brzezinski's Twitter page

Category:American motivational writers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television reporters and correspondents Category:Women journalists Category:New York Democrats Category:Radio personalities from New York City Category:People from New York City Category:American people of Polish descent Category:Williams College alumni Category:1967 births Category:Living people Category:American women journalists Category:American people of Czech descent

Name	Juan Williams
Caption	Juan Williams speaking at Chautauqua Institution in 2007
Birth date
Birth place	Colón, Panama
Occupation	Author, journalist
Education	Haverford College
Credits	CNN CrossfireFox News SundayNational Public Radio

Juan Williams (born April 10, 1954) is an American journalist and political commentator for Fox News Channel. He also writes for several newspapers including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal and has been published in magazines such as The Atlantic Monthly and Time. He was a senior news analyst for National Public Radio (NPR) from 1999 until October 2010. At The Washington Post for 23 years, Williams has worked as an editorial writer, op-ed columnist, White House correspondent and national correspondent.

Williams is the author of Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (1988), a companion to the documentary series of the same name about the African-American Civil Rights Movement;Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary (2000), a biography of Thurgood Marshall, the first black American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States; and Enough (2006), which was inspired by Bill Cosby's speech at the NAACP gala, and deals with Williams' critique of black leaders in America, and as he puts it the "culture of failure." Williams has received an Emmy Award and critical praise for his television documentary work and he has won several awards for investigative journalism and his opinion columns.

Early years

Williams was born in Colon, Panama, near the Canal Zone. His father, Roger, was a boxing trainer and his mother, Alma, a seamstress raised him in the Episcopal Church. When he was four years old his family emigrated to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. In high school Williams earned a scholarship to attend Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, New York where he became clerk of the student body, editor of the student paper and was captain of the baseball, cross-country and championship basketball team. Williams then received a scholarship to Haverford College where he graduated with a B.A. in philosophy in 1976. The paper took disciplinary action against Williams and published an apology by him. On November 2, 1991, Williams wrote: "It pained me to learn during the investigation that I had offended some of you. I have said so repeatedly in the last few weeks, and repeat here: some of my verbal conduct was wrong, I now know that, and I extend my sincerest apology to those whom I offended."

National Public Radio

Williams joined NPR in 2000 as host of the daily afternoon talk show Talk of the Nation. He then served as senior national correspondent for NPR, interviewing newsmakers as well as providing analysis of major events in interviews with the anchors for the newsmagazines Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition Saturday and Sunday. As a result of Williams' commentary on the Fox News Channel, NPR's President and CEO Vivian Schiller requested that Fox stop identifying him as an NPR host in 2009. NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard maintained that: "Williams tends to speak one way on NPR and another on Fox." Williams' comment on January 26, 2009, to Bill O’Reilly and Mary Katharine Ham, while appearing on Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, triggered the move. He commented, "Look, Bill, I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." According to NPR, the remarks were "inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR." As to the reason for the termination of Williams' contract, NPR’s President and CEO Vivian Schiller offered the following comment: "News analysts may not take personal public positions on controversial issues; doing so undermines their credibility as analysts..." On October 21, 2010, Schiller told an audience at the Atlanta Press Club that Williams' feelings about Muslims should be between him and "his psychiatrist or his publicist—take your pick." Schiller later apologized to the media; however, not to Williams. William Saletan of Slate.com compared the Williams situation to that of Shirley Sherrod, saying that both Sherrod and Williams had their words taken out of context in a way that made them appear racist and led to the loss of their jobs, except that Williams was victimized by liberals, rather than conservatives as in Sherrod's case. Saletan said that while Williams' confessed fears of Muslims were "unsettling", the context was Williams' argument that such fears should not be used to curtail the rights of Muslims or anyone else, and that Williams consistently argued that Muslims in general should not be blamed for the terrorist activities of Muslim extremists.

On January 6, 2011, the same day NPR's Board concluded the investigation about Mr. Williams firing, NPR's senior vice-president Ellen Weiss, who according to Williams fired him over the phone, resigned from her post. Additionally, NPR Board decided to forgo the bonus corresponding to 2010 of CEO Vivian Schiller for her poor handling of Williams case.

Juan Williams commented: "It's good news for NPR if they can get someone who is the keeper of the flame of liberal orthodoxy out of NPR". "She had an executioner's knife for anybody who didn't abide by her way of thinking," he said. "And I think she represented a very ingrown, incestuous culture in that institution that's not open to not only different ways of thinking, but angry at the fact that I would even talk or be on Fox."

Fox News Channel

He has been a Fox News Contributor since 1997. After NPR announced his termination from their network in October 2010, Fox News offered him a new $2 million (a "considerable" raise), three-year contract and an expanded role at their network that includes a regular guest-host role Friday nights on The O'Reilly Factor.

Following his firing from NPR, Williams appeared on The O'Reilly Factor and discussed his thoughts on how his role at Fox played into NPR's decision: "I don't fit in their box. I'm not predictable black liberal. You [O'Reilly] were exactly right when you said you know what this comes down to. They were looking for a reason to get rid of me because I'm appearing on Fox News. They don't want me talking to you."

Williams' 1988 book, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954–65, was written with the Blackside production team as a companion to the first season of the PBS series Eyes on the Prize. His 2003 book, This Far by Faith, is also a companion to a PBS series.

Williams is a contributor to a number of national magazines, including Fortune, The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, Ebony magazine, TIME and GQ and frequents a wide range of television programs including ABC's Nightline, Washington Week on PBS, and The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Personal life

Williams married Susan Delise in July 1978 and they have a daughter, Rae, and two sons, Antonio (Tony) and Raphael. Their son, Tony, who was a Senate page and intern for GOP Senator Strom Thurmond from 1996 to 1997, was a speechwriter and legislative correspondent for GOP Senator Norm Coleman from 2004 to 2006, and in 2006 ran for Council of the District of Columbia, losing to Tommy Wells. Their younger son, Raffi, is currently studying journalism and playing lacrosse at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

Williams has previously been active on the Haverford College Board of Trustees, the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program, the Washington Journalism Center and the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

Front Page Award, Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild (1979)

Education Writers of America (1979)

Columnist of the Year, Washingtonian (1982)

Emmy Award (1989)

Outstanding Memorial Book, Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in the United States

Best National Book, Time

Political commentary award, American Association of University Women

Selected bibliography

References

External links

Juan Williams: Fox News Biography

A Conversation with Juan Williams — Video from researchchannel.org

Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:African American journalists Category:African American television personalities Category:African American writers Category:American columnists Category:American people of Panamanian descent Category:American political pundits Category:American political writers Category:American radio journalists Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Haverford College alumni Category:Washington Post journalists Category:Fox News Channel people

Name	Joe Scarborough
State	Florida
District	1st
Term start	January 3, 1995
Term end	September 5, 2001
Preceded	Earl Hutto
Succeeded	Jeff Miller
Party	Republican
Date of birth	April 09, 1963
Place of birth	Atlanta, Georgia
Alma mater	University of Alabama,University of Florida Levin College of Law
Profession	Attorney, currently television host
Spouse	Melanie Hinton (div.)Susan Waren
Religion	Baptist

Charles Joseph "Joe" Scarborough (; born April 9, 1963) is an American cable news and talk radio host, author, and former politician. He is currently the host of Morning Joe on MSNBC, and previously hosted Scarborough Country on the same channel. Scarborough served in the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 2001 as a Republican from the 1st district of Florida.

Early life and education

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Scarborough graduated from Pensacola Catholic High School in Pensacola, Florida (although he is not a Catholic). He received a B.A. from the University of Alabama in 1985 and a J.D. from the University of Florida College of Law in 1990. During this time he wrote and produced CDs with his band, Dixon Mills, and taught high school. He was admitted to the Florida Bar in 1991,

Scarborough's most famous case was representing Michael F. Griffin, the accused killer of abortion doctor David Gunn, in early to mid 1993. He made several court appearances for Griffin. "There was 'no way in hell I could sit in at a civil trial, let alone a capital trial,' he claims now, referring to the prospect of prosecutors seeking the death penalty against Griffin." Scarborough assisted Griffin in choosing a trial lawyer from the many who offered their services, and he also shielded the family from the media exposure, pro bono.

Scarborough also helped to raise his political profile and made numerous contacts by assisting with a petition drive in late 1993 to oppose a 65 percent increase in the City of Pensacola's property taxes. He signed the Contract with America. Scarborough served on the Armed Services, Judiciary, Government Reform, and Education committees. In 1998, he was named Chairman of the Civil Service Committee.

Scarborough was one of a group of about 40 freshmen Republican legislators who dubbed themselves the "New Federalists" after the Federalist Papers. Scarborough was elected Political Director of the incoming legislators. The New Federalists called for sweeping cuts in the U.S. government, including plans to "privatize, localize, consolidate, [or] eliminate" the Departments of Commerce, Education, Energy and Housing and Urban Development, but were largely unsuccessful in their goals. Gingrich tapped Scarborough to head a Republican task force on education, and Scarborough declared, "Our goal is to get as much money, power and authority out of Washington and get as much money, power and authority into the classroom as possible."

Scarborough sponsored a bill to force the U.S. to withdraw from the United Nations after a four-year transition by eliminating federal funding. He also voted for the "Medicare Preservation act of 1995," which cut the projected growth of Medicare by $270 billion over ten years, and against the "Small Business Job Protection Act of 1996," which raised the minimum wage to $5.15. Scarborough had a conservative voting record on economic, social, and foreign policy issues, but was seen as moderate on environmental issues and human rights causes (including closing the School of the Americas and Lori Berenson).}}

While in Congress, Scarborough received a number of awards, including the "Friend of the Taxpayer Award" from Americans for Tax Reform; the "Guardian of Small Business Award" from the National Federation of Independent Business; the "Spirit of Enterprise Award" from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the "Taxpayer's Hero Award" from the Citizens Against Government Waste; and the "Guardian of Seniors' Rights Award" from the 60 Plus Association.

Committee memberships

104th Congress --Committee on Government Reform and Oversight --Committee on National Security (formerly Committee on Armed Services) 105th Congress--Committee on National Security—Committee on Government Reform and Oversight--Committee on Education and the Workforce 106th Congress-- Committee on Armed Services--Committee on Government Reform-- Committee on the Judiciary 107th Congress--Committee on Government Reform-- Committee on the Judiciary

Resignation and controversy

Scarborough announced his intent to resign to spend more time with his children five months into his fourth term in Congress. "The realization has come home to me that they're at a critical stage of their lives and I would rather be judged at the end of my life as a father than as a congressman," Scarborough said. A special election was held to replace him.

On July 20, 2001, Scarborough's constituent services coordinator, Lori Klausutis, age 28, died after hitting her head on a desk when she fainted while apparently alone in Scarborough's Fort Walton Beach, Florida, office. According to Scarborough, soon after her death, allegations "spread all over the Internet" that he had been involved, although there was no evidence of foul play. In 2003, he joked about the incident with Don Imus on Imus's radio program. In 2004, it was the subject of a public spat between Scarborough and filmmaker Michael Moore. In 2010, Markos Moulitsas was banned from MSNBC after mentioning the incident in his Twitter feed.

Post-Congressional politics

After leaving Congress, he joined the law firm of prominent Florida attorney Fred Levin. He practiced law with the firm Beggs and Lane, the oldest firm in Florida. He was appointed to the President's Council on the 21st Century Workforce in 2002.

In August 2005, Scarborough confirmed reports that he had been asked to consider a challenge to U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris for the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Bill Nelson's reelection bid. However, he announced later that month that he was renewing his contract with NBC.

In July 2006, former aides to Harris's 2006 Senate campaign claimed that Harris had called potential Scarborough supporters and raised the death of an aide in his home district office as a means to prevent his entry into the race. Scarborough, who had never intended to enter the race, initially considered suing Harris but decided to let the incident pass. He later told Nelson that drawing Harris as an opponent in the race made Nelson "the luckiest man in Washington."

In early 2009, Scarborough confirmed reports that he had been approached by Florida Republicans who wanted him to run for the Senate seat vacated by Republican Mel Martinez. Scarborough said he was not likely to run as he believes he can have more influence over public policy as the host of Morning Joe, than he would as a U.S. Senator. However, he has not ruled out a political career in the future.

In October 2010, Scarborough called former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich "cartoonish" and said that Gingrich engages in "hate speech."

Media career

Scarborough is the host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe, which features interviews with top newsmakers and politicians and analysis of the day’s biggest stories. Previously, he hosted Scarborough Country, a primetime news show. He and Mika Brzezinski also recently launched a syndicated talk radio show called the Joe Scarborough Show on ABC Radio Network.

While still serving in Congress, Scarborough founded the free weekly Pensacola-area newspaper The Florida Sun in 1999. The paper later merged in 2001 and is now known as the "Independent News."

In April 2003, he embarked upon a television career with the launch of Scarborough Country on MSNBC, until he began hosting Morning Joe full-time.

Scarborough briefly hosted a three-hour radio show in 2005. The show aired in a competitive time slot (10am–1pm US ET) and struggled to gain affiliates; those few that did carry the show usually carried it in the noon–3pm US ET slot or in late nights instead. After a few months, Scarborough left the show to focus his time on other priorities. (After being vacant for over a year, the slot was filled by Dennis Miller's radio show in 2007.)

Morning Joe

In May, 2007, Scarborough became one of the rotating hosts auditioning for the slot vacated by Imus in the Morning on MSNBC, as host of Morning Joe. Morning Joe and he won the slot permanently in July 2007. According to Nielsen Ratings, Morning Joe generally comes in third to Fox and Friends and American Morning, though a recent Washington Whispers article noted that Morning Joe had reached a viewership of 547,000 viewers, 16 times the audience held by Don Imus at his peak. He has also appeared on other MSNBC shows as a commentator or panelist, primarily Hardball with Chris Matthews and Race for the White House.

On November 10, 2008, Scarborough made headlines when he said the word "fuck" live on his show. In discussing Barack Obama's transition team, Scarborough contrasted the reputation of Clinton-era staffers with Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel by saying "These were decent steady men who don't go around flipping people off or screaming 'fuck you' at the top of their lungs." The comment was not bleeped out, and while Scarborough's guests and cohosts reacted with shock and amusement, he continued with his point, apparently oblivious to what he had said, until co-host Mika Brzezinski broke in and informed him of his mistake. Scarborough apologized, saying that he thought he had only "said the letter, not the word" and commented that "my wife's going to kill me." Glenn Greenwald criticized him for hypocrisy in light of his demands on several occasions that the Federal Communications Commission impose heavy fines for use of the word. Morning Joe has subsequently been broadcast with a 7-second broadcast delay.

On September 23, 2010, Scarborough said the following to former President Bill Clinton:

MSNBC suspended Scarborough without pay for two days on November 19, 2010, for violating NBC News' policy against making contributions to political candidates, the same offense that had briefly sidelined fellow MSNBC host Keith Olbermann two weeks earlier. Scarborough had donated $4,000 to Republican candidates in Florida. He was allowed to return to Morning Joe on November 24.

Radio

On December 8, 2008, Scarborough and Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski began hosting a two-hour late-morning radio show on WABC (770 AM) in New York City, replacing 12-year veteran host John Gambling. As of April 26, 2010, the radio show has been put on "hiatus" to redevelop its format into a new three hour show. Many, including Don Imus, have speculated that the show has actually been canceled by Citadel Media. It has been noted that the schedule of WABC would not allow for the program to be expanded an additional hour.

Books

In his book The Last Best Hope, released on June 9, 2009, Scarborough outlines a plan to help guide conservatives back to a political majority after their defeats in the 2006 midterm elections and the 2008 Presidential election.

Personal life

In 1986, Scarborough married Melanie Hinton. They had two sons, Joey and Andrew, and divorced in 1999. His younger child was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. While interviewing Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in June 2005, Scarborough expressed concerns about the possibility that one of his sons may have suffered vaccine damage, perhaps attributable to the sharp increase during the 1980s in the amount of thimerosal injected into infants: "My son, born in 1991, has a slight form of autism called Asperger's. When I was practicing law and also when I was in Congress, parents would constantly come to me and they would bring me videotapes of their children, and they were all around the age of my son or younger. So, something happened in 1989."

In October 2001, Scarborough married Susan Waren, a former aide to Florida Governor Jeb Bush and a former congressional committee staffer. He currently rents a home in Washington, D.C.

Scarborough is also an avid soccer fan. As mentioned on ESPN's "Off The Ball" podcast, Scarborough details his dedication to Liverpool FC, a soccer team that competes in the Barclays Premier League in England.

Scarborough has also starred in a television commercial for Dave and Buster's.(2010)

References

External links

Official Site

Morning Joe — MSNBC

Campaign contributions made by Joe Scarborough

OnTheIssues page for Congressional terms

American Politics Journal

Chris Matthews Interviews Joe Scarborough on Hardball 06/09/09

Matt Lauer interviews Joe Scarborough on The Today Show 06/09/09

Who is Joe Scarborough?

Category:American bloggers Category:American political pundits Category:American political writers Category:American talk radio hosts Category:American television personalities Category:Baptists from the United States Category:Florida lawyers Category:Florida Republicans Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Florida Category:MSNBC Category:Radio personalities from New York City Category:People from Atlanta, Georgia Category:People from Pensacola, Florida Category:University of Alabama alumni Category:University of Florida alumni Category:1963 births Category:Living people

Joseph O'Neal (Joe) Christopher (born December 13, 1935 in Frederiksted, U.S. Virgin Islands) is a former outfielder who played in Major League Baseball from through . Listed at 5' 10", 175 lbs., he batted and threw right-handed.

Christopher is credited as the first baseball player from the Virgin Islands to appear in a major league game. He reached the majors in 1959 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, spending three years with them before moving to the New York Mets (1962-65) and Boston Red Sox (1966).

While in Pittsburgh, Christopher was used as a backup in three outfield positions for Bob Skinner (LF), Bill Virdon (CF) and Roberto Clemente (RF). He was first called up when Clemente was injured, making his debut in nothing less than Harvey Haddix’s pitching masterpiece of 12 perfect innings on May 26, 1959. As a member of the 1960 World Series Champion Pirates, he was a useful spare part, pinch-running in three games and scoring two runs (games 2 and 5).

Christopher became the Mets’ fifth pick in the 1961 MLB Expansion Draft. In 1964 he enjoyed easily his finest season as a major-leaguer, hitting .300 with 16 home runs, 76 RBI, 78 runs, 163 hits, 26 doubles, and eight triples in 154 games, all career-highs. He had a career-best day on August 19, collecting two triples, a double, and a home run in an 8–6 victory over his former Pirates teammates. Then, on September 25 he broke up the no-hit bid of Cincinnati Reds pitcher Jim Maloney at Shea Stadium. His second-inning single was the only hit against Maloney, who had to settle for a 3–0 shutout.

Christopher played briefly in 1966 for the Red Sox and was dealt with pitcher Earl Wilson to the Detroit Tigers, who sent Julio Navarro as part of the package. Although Christopher’s major league career had come to an end on June 9, 1966 (he never played for Detroit), he stayed active in the minors through 1968. He also played winter baseball in Dominican Republic, Mexico and Puerto Rico.

In an eight-season career, Christopher was a .260 hitter with 29 home runs and 173 RBI in 638 games, including one five-hit game and eight four-hit games. Since retiring, his consuming passion has been his art. He devotes himself to drawing (in a Pre-Columbian style), from which he gains patience and concentration.

See also

List of players from Virgin Islands in Major League Baseball

External links

Baseball Library

BR Bullpen

Retrosheet

Artistic Work article

Virgin Islands Baseball

Category:1935 births Category:Living people Category:United States Virgin Islands baseball players Category:Major League Baseball outfielders Category:Pittsburgh Pirates players Category:New York Mets players Category:Boston Red Sox players Category:Syracuse Chiefs players Category:Richmond Braves players Category:African American baseball players

Joan Maureen Walsh (born September 18, 1958) is a liberal editor, writer, and blogger. Since February 2005 she has been the editor-in-chief of Salon.com, a San Francisco-based American liberal politics and culture Web site. She joined Salon as its first full-time news editor in 1998, and became managing editor in 2004. Walsh had previously worked for In These Times and the Santa Barbara News and Review. She has written freelance articles for a variety of newspapers and magazines, including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and The Nation.

Walsh writes frequently on current American political topics, typically in blog form at Salon. Criticisms of the Iraq War, the George W. Bush administration and conservatives have been featured in her posts. She regularly appeared on MSNBC's Scarborough Country and Hardball with Chris Matthews as well as CNN's Campbell Brown, where she has debated with conservative guests including Pat Buchanan, Liz Cheney, Dick Armey, David Frum, Terry Jeffrey and G. Gordon Liddy. She also has appeared on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, The Rachel Maddow Show, The Ed Show, as well as CNN's Larry King Live and "D.L. Hughley" talk shows. Walsh made her second appearance on The O'Reilly Factor in June 2009, discussing the murder of Dr. George Tiller and her views on the responsibility of journalists and the impact of their words in controversial matters.

Other areas of interest include education, community development, urban poverty issues and baseball. She has published two books, Splash Hit: The Pacific Bell Park Story and Stories of Renewal: Community Building and the Future of Urban America.

References

Category:American magazine editors Category:American writers Category:1958 births Category:Living people Category:American online journalists Category:University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni

Name	Eric Cantor
Caption	Official Congressional portrait
Order	Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives
Term start	January 3, 2011
1blankname	Speaker
1namedata	John Boehner
2blankname	Whip
2namedata	Kevin McCarthy
Predecessor	Steny Hoyer
Order2	23rd Minority Whip of the United States House of Representatives
Term start2	January 3, 2009
Term end2	January 3, 2011
Leader2	John Boehner
Deputy2	Kevin McCarthy
Predecessor2	Roy Blunt
Successor2	Steny Hoyer
Office3	Republican Chief Deputy Whip
Term start3	2003
Term end3	2009
1blankname3	Whip
1namedata3	Roy Blunt
Preceded3	Roy Blunt
Succeeded3	Kevin McCarthy
Order4	Member of theU.S. House of Representativesfrom Virginia's 7th District
Term start4	January 3, 2001
Predecessor4	Tom Bliley
Order5	Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from the 73rd District
Term start5	January 1992
Term end5	January 2001
Preceded5	Walter A. Stosch
Succeeded5	John O'Bannon
Birth date	June 06, 1963
Birth place	Richmond, Virginia
Residence	Richmond, Virginia
Alma mater	George Washington UniversityThe College of William & Mary Law SchoolColumbia University
Party	Republican
Spouse	Diana Fine Cantor
Profession	Attorneyreal estate executive
Religion	Judaism Cantor graduated from the Collegiate School in 1981. He enrolled at George Washington University (GW) in 1981, and as a freshman he worked as an intern for House Republican Tom Bliley of Virginia and was Bliley's driver in the 1982 campaign. Cantor was a member of Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity while at GW and received his Bachelor of Arts in 1985 He earned a Juris Doctor degree from William & Mary Law School in 1988, and received a master of science degree from Columbia University in 1989.
align	"right" |94,935
align	"right" |192,652
align	"right" |49,854
align	"right" |113,658
align	"right" |
align	"right" |230,765
align	"right" |74,325
align	"right" |24%
align	"right" |88,206
align	"right" |163,706
align	"right" |4,213
align	"right" |2%
align	"right" |138,123
align	"right" |233,531
align	"right" |79,607
align	"right" |138,196
align	"right" |15,164
align	"right" |6%
State	Virginia
District	7
Before	Tom Bliley
Start	2001}}

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:American Orthodox Jews Category:Columbia University alumni Category:George Washington University alumni Category:Jewish members of the United States House of Representatives Category:Majority Leaders of the United States House of Representatives Category:Members of the United States House of Representatives from Virginia Category:Members of the Virginia House of Delegates Category:People from Henrico County, Virginia Category:People from Richmond, Virginia Category:Virginia lawyers Category:Virginia Republicans Category:William & Mary Law School alumni

Name	Dylan Ratigan
Birth date	April 19, 1972
Birth place	Saranac Lake, New York
Occupation	Television journalist and show host
Gender	Male
Status	Single
Ethnicity	Irish American
Credits	Host of MSNBC's The Dylan Ratigan Show
Url	http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31510813/

Dylan James Alexander Ratigan (born April 19, 1972) is an American television host primarily covering financial markets, the global economy, and politics. He is host of The Dylan Ratigan Show which airs weekday afternoons on MSNBC.

Early life

Ratigan was born in the village of Saranac Lake in upstate New York. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in political economics from Union College in Schenectady, where he was a member of the crew team. He has served as a contributor to ABC News and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald and Chicago Tribune.

Morning Meeting launched June 29, 2009. Ratigan also contributes to other NBC News programs. Ratigan described the show's imperative as "to discuss any and all political issues with no directive other than to provide compelling content." The show was the second ever on the network to air in HD, as the network launched their programming in that format.

MSNBC announced in December 2009 that, beginning in January 2010, Ratigan would no longer host Morning Meeting and would instead host a new program, The Dylan Ratigan Show which debuted on January 11 and airs weekday afternoons.

"I think that it should be a bigger political issue than whether somebody bought an airplane ... Forget the private jets, forget who got a million dollar bonus. Fifty billion dollars," he said, minimizing what he saw as populist side issues to "the real question" of how "government policy makers" are to deal with the "problems of contract law" inherent in the agreements of businesses receiving government assistance during the financial crisis.

"The banks are being asked to take 'haircuts' on their toxic assets, why are the Goldmans and the Deutsche Banks of the world not being asked to take haircuts on their toxic credit default swaps? It's a real question. I will continue to pursue it for sure, I hope others will as well." Ratigan praised New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's subpoena of AIG to determine the bank payouts as "legitimate inquiry" and looked forward to "a body of lawmakers in Washington D.C. who are going to ask, it appears, some of the same questions that I'm asking."

References

External links

Dylan Ratigan biography on CNBC

Category:American broadcast news analysts Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American television journalists Category:MSNBC Category:People from Essex County, New York Category:Union College, New York alumni Category:1972 births Category:Living people

Honorific-suffix	MEP
Constituency mp1	South East England
Parliament1	European
Term start1	14 July 1999
Birth date	September 01, 1971
Birth place	Lima, Peru
Nationality	British
Spouse	Sara Hannan
Party	Conservative
Alma mater	Marlborough CollegeOriel College, Oxford
Profession	Journalist
Religion	Christian
Website	www.hannan.co.uk

Daniel John Hannan (born 1 September 1971) is a British politician and Member of the European Parliament, representing South East England for the Conservative Party, and in Europe, the European Conservatives and Reformists grouping. He is the Secretary-General of the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists.

In the Parliament, he previously sat with the Non-Inscrits, having been expelled from the European People's Party–European Democrats group in 2008. Recently the Conservatives and other anti-federalist parties formed a new eurosceptic group, with which he now sits. Hannan is a Eurosceptic and a Unionist, and he is strongly critical of European integration. He currently serves on the Committee on Legal Affairs and the delegation to the ACP–EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly. the family owned a cotton farm in Santa Cruz, Bolivia). Hannan's father served in Italy during the Second World War with the North Irish Horse. Hannan has indicated that his father's Irish Catholic origins made him more sensitive to issues related to Northern Ireland and The Troubles.

After spending his childhood in Peru, Hannan was educated at Marlborough College and by Oriel College, Oxford, where he studied Modern History. He speaks English, French and Spanish.

Early political career

Hannan was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association (OUCA) in 1992. When standing in OUCA's committee elections for Michaelmas 1991, his strongly Eurosceptic views prompted accusations of "xenophobia" in the Oxford student paper Cherwell, prompting Hannan to threaten them with legal action. He also served as national vice-chairman of Conservative Students from 1992-3, and then chairman of Conservative Graduates from 1994. He had earlier established the Oxford Campaign for an Independent Britain, and on 12 September 1992 led a members' protest at a European financial summit held in Bath, which was widely televised and, he has since light-heartedly claimed, led to the withdrawal of the Pound Sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism a few days later.

Through the CIB he became involved with the Bruges Group, and after he graduated he became, in 1994, director of a Eurosceptic political think-tank, the European Research Group. In 1996 he was hired by the Daily Telegraph as a leader-writer, and in 1998 he was given a place on the Conservative candidates' list for the following year's European Parliament election. He later became a speechwriter for party leader William Hague. In 1999 he stood down from his posts at the European Research Group and Conservative Graduates.

A year after his first election, Hannan courted controversy when he appeared to be using the Conservative Party's central office as headquarters for a campaign to persuade Danish voters to block the introduction of the European Single Currency; however, he was able to show that the campaign was actually being run from his Westminster flat.

In his first term, he served on the Committee on Fisheries and the Delegation for Relations with Afghanistan. describing it as "a disgusting travesty," and has praised the work of John Laughland, a supporter of Slobodan Milošević who "chronicles, in pitiless detail, how the judges crashed through a series of legal norms and conventions in their increasingly frantic attempts to secure a conviction", though Hannan has taken what he claims to be "the more conventional view that Milosevic was a calculating Commie who unleashed a series of calamities". Hannan claimed in 2007 a system where international law was used to regulate domestic matters would "create the opportunity for a dictatorship far worse than Milošević's", because the courts could try democratic leaders, even though they themselves had no democratic mandate.

Campaign against the Lisbon Treaty

Hannan opposed ratification of the Lisbon Treaty in the European Parliament, and was one of several MEPs who took part in a demonstration in the chamber after Parliament voted to endorse the Treaty. He has continued to speak against the Treaty, and in the manner of Cato the Elder's famous call, Carthago delenda est, he ended every speech, whatever its subject, with a call for the Lisbon Treaty to be put to a referendum: "Pactio Olisipiensis censenda est".

Expulsion from the EPP-ED

Attempts by several MEPs to disrupt the work of the Parliament caused sufficient annoyance for a majority of Members to endorse a rule change giving the Speaker/President the discretion to limit the use of filibustering procedures where he "is convinced that these are manifestly intended to cause, and will result in, a prolonged and serious obstruction of the procedures of the House or the rights of other Members" (Rule 20, para 1). In the parliamentary session just before the new rule was to be presented by the President of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering, Hannan criticised what he termed a deviation from the rule of law. He continued speaking after his allocated time had ended by quoting Edmund Burke, but was interrupted mid-quote and had his microphone cut off by Luigi Cocilovo, one of the 14 Vice-Presidents. He then responded by damning, without vocal amplification, what he claimed were Parliament’s deviations from its own rules;

Pöttering is a German national and a member of the same political group (EPP-ED) as Hannan. Hannan's remarks were attacked by other MEPs from the EPP-ED. The head of EPP-ED, Joseph Daul, responded by initiating proceedings to expel Hannan immediately from their Group. Daniel Hannan left the EPP-ED on 19 February 2008. He sat, for the remainder of the five-year term as a Conservative without pan-European affiliation (Non-Inscrit). Following his 2009 re-election, he sits with the new eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists along with his Conservative Party colleagues.

YouTube hit

On 24 March 2009, after Gordon Brown had given a short speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in advance of the G20 London summit, Hannan followed up by delivering a 3-minute speech criticising in very strong terms the response by Gordon Brown to the global financial crisis. He finished the speech: }}

The final phrase, "the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued government", was a quote from a speech by Labour Party leader John Smith criticising then-Prime Minister John Major in 1992.

A video clip of the speech went viral on YouTube that evening, attracting more than 630,000 views in 24 hours. It became the 'most viewed today' YouTube video worldwide two consecutive days. and on the Glenn Beck Program the following day. He also appeared on Your World with Neil Cavuto, where he stated he would have voted for Ron Paul in the 2008 presidential election had he been an American citizen. The main British television channels, particularly the BBC and ITV, gave the speech fairly limited coverage, for which they faced some criticism from Conservative MPs and "a handful of viewers"; Conservative MP Nigel Evans stated that their lack of coverage rendered YouTube the 'ultimate in public service broadcasting'. As of July 2010, there have been 2.7 million views of the clip. Nearly all of the hits are from the UK and US.

Political positions

Electoral reform

Hannan argues in his writings and in the media (for example, during an appearance on Question Time on BBC television on 28 May 2009) for ballot initiatives (whereby electors can directly enact legislation as happens in Switzerland), a power of recall (whereby a sitting Member of Parliament can be forced to submit to re-election if enough of his local electorate support this), fixed term parliaments, local and national referendums, open primaries and the abolition of party lists.

Afghan and Iraq wars

Hannan supports the British efforts in the Afghanistan war after the September 11th attacks, pointing out that "more British subjects died in the Twin Towers than in any terrorist atrocity in our history – more than at Lockerbie or Omagh". He also supports a timetable for set military withdrawal from the country. He wrote in June 2010, "there comes a point when our presence is doing more harm than good, serving to destabilise Pakistan rather than to stabilise Afghanistan. We are reaching that point now."

He opposed the Iraq War.

Drugs

As a libertarian, Hannan is opposed to "victimless crimes" and is in favour of drug decriminalisation. "I’d start with cannabis, and if that worked I wouldn’t in principle be against decriminalising heroin.”

Commentary about the United States

Hannan describes himself as an Atlanticist with inherently positive views of the United States as well as other English-speaking nations. He endorsed then-Democratic candidate Barack Obama for President on 18 October 2008. He stated that a McCain presidency would mean an "imperial overstretch", particularly arguing that the U.S. should have been preparing to leave Iraq immediately. He labeled Obama's opponents as symbolic of "big federal budgets, protectionism, crony capitalism and, for that matter, the socialisation of failing banks."

On 14 June 2010, Hannan took back his endorsement, which he called his "single most unpopular post" in his blogging career. He argued, "Any American reader who wants to know where Obamification will lead should spend a week with me in the European Parliament. I’m working in your future and, believe me, you won’t like it." He also accused the Obama administration of straining the special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., particularly over the Falkland Islands.

Praise for Iceland's economic miracle

Hannan has been a regular visitor to Iceland for 15 years. His best man organised his stag night there to celebrate its refusal to join the European Union, and has declared Icelanders to be the sturdiest and most self-reliant people he knows. Hannan's critics have pointed to his extravagant praise for Iceland's economic miracle prior to the 2008 crash, in which he advocated that other countries should emulate the Icelandic model of minimal national and international regulation as their model. In an October 2004 piece for The Spectator, entitled Blue-Eyed Sheikhs, Hannan wrote "For 70 years the Althing has been dominated by the splendidly named Independence Party, which has pursued the kind of Thatcherite agenda that is off limits to EU members ... Icelanders have no more desire to submit to international than to national regulation. That attitude has made them the happiest, freest and wealthiest people on earth. Long may they remain so". He also said "In the ten years that I have been travelling to Iceland, I have watched an economic miracle unfold there" and that "Today, Icelanders are absolutely rolling in it".

Hannan has responded to Iceland’s crisis by writing that the country "would be mad to join the EU"; if they'd adopted the euro, their currency would have been unable to fall to cushion the blow. He continues to praise "the enterprise of your people. You understand that independence is the natural condition of a free-standing citizenry." Iceland formally applied to join the EU in July 2009 after a narrow vote in the Icelandic parliament. On his blog Hannan reacted to the news of the Icelandic EU application by claiming again that Iceland would never join the EU and pointing out that so far it had only "voted to start discussing terms, not to accept them". After all the issue would at the end be decided by the people in a referendum and they would never accept membership.

In July 2010, Hannan wrote while on a visit in Iceland, "Reading the British press, you might have the impression that Iceland has collapsed... as in Mad Max." He wrote that, in contrast, "[l]ife there is better than in most EU states" and "[a]fter two decades of phenomenal growth, there has been a correction, and Icelanders are now living like Danes". Thus, he concluded that Iceland's status proved that other European nations did not have to bailout their banking systems to avoid economic chaos. In December the same year Hannan wrote on his blog that "[b]eing outside the euro, Iceland has been able to devalue, and is now exporting its way back to growth." Referring to a recent article in The Economist he wrote: "No less a Euro-integrationist organ than The Economist has now come round to the view that Iceland was spared Ireland’s fate for two reasons: it refused to bail out its banks, and it was outside the euro."

NHS criticism

In April 2009, he criticised supporters of the National Health Service, saying that those who claimed it was the greatest British invention were clearly forgetting about parliamentary democracy, penicillin, the discovery of DNA, the abolition of slavery, or common law. He also argued that the NHS has left Britain with low survival rates for cancers, strokes, high chances of becoming iller in hospital, and constant waiting lists. David Cameron, who had said that his priorities were "three letters: NHS", distanced himself from Hannan's remarks, saying that Hannan has "some rather eccentric points of view".

Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Hannan said of the media storm around his comments: On a visit to the US, I was asked by an interviewer whether I would recommend a British-style health-care model, paid for out of general taxation. I replied that all three parties were devoted to the NHS, and that it had public support (although I added that this was at least partly the result of the inaccurate belief that free health care for the poor is a unique attribute of the British system). But I didn't want to dissemble: I have for years argued that Britain would be better off with a Singapore-style system of personal health-care accounts. So I cautioned against nationalisation, citing international league tables on survival rates and waiting times.

Also making the wider point that: "we seem to have lost the notion that a backbencher speaks for himself. I like David Cameron, and want him to be Prime Minister, not least so that Britain stops racking up debt. But the idea that I therefore agree with him on every issue is, when you think about it, silly."

However, he is also on record as saying "For what it’s worth, I think Enoch Powell was wrong on immigration. The civil unrest that he forecast, and that many feared in 1968, didn’t materialise. Britain assimilated a large population with an ease that few countries have matched. Being an immigrant myself, I have particular cause to be grateful for Britain’s understated cosmopolitanism."

The Times' associate editor Daniel Finkelstein said that "many immigrant families would find Dan's endorsement of Powell threatening and unpleasant, even though I am sure that was not his intent."

Writing in on The Telegraph website, Mr Hannan said: "I’m surprised that no one has picked up on the thing that I most admire about Enoch Powell, namely his tendency to ignore conventional wisdom and think things through from first principles. Like Rowan Williams, he always did his hearers the courtesy of addressing them as intelligent adults. Both men regularly got into trouble in consequence, either because they were genuinely misunderstood or because their detractors affected to misunderstand them. Neither responded by dumbing down. That, in politics, takes a special kind of integrity."

Publications

Daniel Hannan has been a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph since 1996. He has also written for various other newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the German daily Die Welt, the Swiss weekly Weltwoche, The Sunday Telegraph, The Catholic Herald, Freedom Today, the Brussels Journal and The Spectator.

He is the author of Time for a Fresh Start in Europe (1993) A Guide to the Amsterdam Treaty (1997), The Euro: Bad for Business (1998), The Challenge of the East (1999), What if Britain Votes No? (2002), The Case for EFTA (2004), and The New Road to Serfdom: A Letter of Warning to America (2010) and contributed to Treason at Maastricht (1994), by Rodney Atkinson and Norris McWhirter.

He was the co-founder of Direct Democracy and co-author, along with 27 Conservative MPs elected in 2005, of Direct Democracy: An Agenda for a New Model Party, which proposes the wholesale devolution of power and the direct election of decision-makers. These ideas were developed further in a series of six pamphlets, The Localist Papers, serialised in The Daily Telegraph in 2007. In 2008, he published the book The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain together with Douglas Carswell.

Awards and prizes

In 2009 he was awarded the Bastiat Prize for Online Journalism for his Telegraph blog.

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External links

Daniel Hannan's Blog

Profile at European Parliament website

Video of his attack on Gordon Brown

Category:1971 births Category:Alumni of Oriel College, Oxford Category:British libertarians Category:Conservative Party (UK) MEPs Category:Critics of the European Union Category:Direct democracy activists Category:English people of Irish descent Category:Libertarian politicians Category:Living people Category:Members of the European Parliament for English constituencies Category:Old Marlburians Category:People from Lima Category:Peruvian people of British descent Category:MEPs for the United Kingdom 1999–2004 Category:MEPs for the United Kingdom 2004–2009 Category:MEPs for the United Kingdom 2009–2014 Category:Bastiat Prize winners

Name	Christopher Hitchens
Color	green
Caption	Hitchens in 2007
Birthname	Christopher Eric Hitchens
Birthdate	April 13, 1949
Birthplace	Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, UK
Occupation	Writer and pundit
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford
Nationality	American/British
Religion	None
Genre	Polemicism, journalism, essays, biography, literary criticism
Spouse	Carol Blue (1989–present)
Children	Alexander, Sophia, Antonia
Relatives	Peter Hitchens (brother)
Influences	George Orwell, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Joseph Heller, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Vladimir Nabokov, Richard Llewellyn, Aldous Huxley, PG Wodehouse, Evelyn Waugh, Paul Mark Scott, James Fenton, James Joyce, Albert Camus, Oscar Wilde, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Martin Amis, Kingsley Amis, Ian McEwan, Leon Trotsky, Colm Tóibín, Bertrand Russell, Wilfred Owen, Isaiah Berlin He is a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits and in 2005 he was voted the world's fifth top public intellectual in a Prospect/Foreign Policy poll.
Name	Hitchens, Christopher Eric
Short description	Author, journalist and literary critic
Date of birth	13 April 1949
Place of birth	Portsmouth, England, UK}}

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