MEMORANDUM TO ALL STAFFERS AND REPORTERS

It’s that time of year again, folks! The White House Correspondents Association Dinner is just around the corner, and from the conversations I’ve been hearing in the hallway it sounds like you’re all very excited. Unfortunately from those very same conversations I’ve noticed that some misinformation is going around, so I’ve sent this memo out to clear things up.

Because of the overwhelming celebrity interest in attending the WHCA Dinner, there is not much room for staffers and journalists to attend. There are a few spots available, which we will allocate with a combination of seniority and a lottery system. If you get a spot you will be notified; otherwise, while it pains me to say this, you must assume that you will be unable to attend. I’m very sorry about this, but unfortunately there is nothing that can be done.

For those of you who are attending, there are some new rules and considerations this year that you must bear in mind.

• If you are a journalist or a staffer who is not well known to the public at large, you are not to use the entrance with the red carpet. Please use the entrance around the back, over by where the food deliveries are made. If you attempt to use the main entrance you will be embarrassingly turned away.

• Do not speak to, or make eye contact with, the celebrities unless they speak to you first.

• Do not corner a celebrity, or get between a celebrity and a group of photographers. Serious injury or death could result.

• Before you call animal control to report an escaped diseased weasel, please check with the organizers to make sure Mr. Trump is not at the dinner.

• Think before you post snide comments to Twitter, lest you hurt someone’s feelings. The Kardashian sisters have just as much right to be at the WHCA Dinner as most of the news show hosts.

• The WHCA Dinner is a chance for Hollywood’s greatest stars to come out and shine. Try not to take the spotlight away from them.

• While it may be true, it is not the embodiment of bipartisan politeness to point out that all of the conservative celebrity guests at the dinner are low grade celebrities that no one cares about.

• If your ticket has a red bar, you are required to laugh at all jokes you hear.

• Just pretend that “citizen activist” with the hidden camera is being subtle.

• If in doubt, defer to the good looking people.

• You may find your table is further away from the stage than it was in years past. This will let you eat in relative peace and quiet, and you can still follow along with what’s happening on Twitter.

• Staffers and journalists, remember that while you can go back to fighting and hating each other in the morning, we all have to be friends during the dinner.

• A list of permitted afterparties will be distributed to all attendees. Please do not attempt to crash a party that you are not cleared to attend.

• Don’t forget to vote for King and Queen of Nerd Prom!

With all this in mind, I hope that everyone who goes has a good time. For those unable to make it we will be serving pizza in the Press Briefing Room with a TV tuned to WHCA Dinner coverage, if you’d like to come.

With the fiscal cliff negotiations, the holidays, and the upcoming inauguration, things have been really crazy for everyone in Washington, DC. I’m so busy right now that I have to back off of Twitter for a little while to get caught up on my work.

Fortunately, our nation has a long history of anonymous statements from mysterious administration officials. While I’m on this mini hiatus, to take up the slack we’ll be republishing “re-runs” of Classic Senior White House Official statements from the last 236+ years – some of which even predate the building of the White House itself!

So sit back and take a trip down memory lane while you relieve America’s history. Remember where you were when Ronald Reagan disclaimed knowledge of where he was. Relive history class by reading about dynamic men like Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce. Learn the untold story of how former Chief Justice William Howard Taft once had a different job! You’ll be on the edge of your seat when you re-read the collected speeches of Calvin Coolidge, or learn for the first time about a poor decision made by Richard Nixon. Chills will run down your spine when you learn the shocking truth of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. I promise that you will learn a lot while we re-run the best anonymous senior White House official statements.

The usual @SrWHOfficial fare will return soon enough, never fear. Of course, if some sort of actual big news breaks during the hiatus I’ll be sure to address it.

Negotiation’s on everyone’s mind lately, what with the “fiscal cliff” negotiations and all, so I’m publishing this relevant chapter from my book, From an Anonymous Source.

Chapter 3: The Power of Negotiation

Nothing is more important in politics that the art of negotiation, and when you’re a senior White House official you do a lot of negotiating. Whether it’s with your friends or with your enemies, negotiation and compromise are the lifeblood of politics. There’s no thrill like sitting down at the table and hammering out a workable agreement, giving, taking, cajoling and threatening until you have something both sides can accept, even if it’s not everything you want. Then, you’re done with the people who are actually on your side, and it’s time to get up and go negotiate with some Republicans.

Negotiating with your friends is tough. Negotiating with Congressional Republicans would try the patience of Job. We’ve gone toe to toe at the negotiating table with them many times. We’ve had to negotiate when we had a majority in both houses, a brief time when we had a Senate supermajority, and when we’ve had control of the Senate, but the Republicans had control of the House. Each session is different, but we’ve learned a lot from each one, and I’d like to plot out what we’ve learned. Our negotiating tactics might help you someday, if you have to negotiate with your bank, the homeowners’ association, some lawyers, or, God forbid, Darrell Issa.

1. Always assume that the other party is negotiating in good faith, despite all evidence to the contrary. There’s no reason to assume that they aren’t really interested in working with you, even if every time you’ve done this they’ve refused to budge in any way and only try to sabotage you whenever possible.

2. Fail to press your advantages. This will be perceived as kindness, and will be appreciated by the other party.

3. Negotiations depend on the appearance of strength. The best way to appear strong to your opponent is to make lots of concessions, because that shows you have a surfeit of concessions to give away and can easily afford to do so. Along those lines, yielding to your opponents’ demands without putting up any sort of fight shows that you’re so confident in victory that you’re not afraid to lose what you’re fighting for in the first place.

4. Under no circumstances make them carry out their threats. The mere threat of a filibuster is enough to make any negotiator roll over; these days, it’s considered impolite to try and make the filibustering party actually stand there for 25 hours reading the voting laws of the 48 states and the phone book.

5. If you have reason to believe your party might have an electoral reversal soon, you should never try to force anything through while conditions are favorable to you because that might make the other side accuse you of playing politics. You’ll have to save that for another negotiating session once they’re in control, and just hope that they’re feeling inclined to work with you this time.

6. If, by chance, you find yourself in the minority again, make sure to hamstring yourself and promise not to use any parliamentary tactics that might derail anything. You wouldn’t want those same tactics used against you, the way the Republicans do every chance they get.

7. Do try and meet the other party half way, no matter what. If they demand that five year olds have the right to work cleaning up nuclear waste, counter that it should be limited to those twelve and over. When they scream that’s an assault on freedom, offer to limit it to eight year olds. If they accept, you can present this as a victory. No demand from the wingers is too outrageous to consider and build upon.

8. On a related note, there’s no position you hold that’s so important that you should refuse to budge on. Voters will not appreciate when you stick to your guns and refuse to water down a key provision of a bill because some Senator is throwing a temper tantrum.

9. You must never, ever call them out on this shit either. It violates decorum to go to the public and say “The reason we can’t get anything done in fucking Washington is because these people are fucking babies who throw a hissy fit every time they don’t get their way.”

10. If you do want to complain about the other side, have a surrogate do it for you. You wouldn’t want to come across as petty when dealing with petulant children.

11. The fact that a majority of Americans support you shouldn’t cross your mind. Focus on the very loud tiny majority complaining bitterly about everything you do, including yielding to them.

12. Don’t get discouraged by failure. Even if every time you face off with the opposition you end up having to back down, next time will be totally different. Certainly you don’t need to start thinking that maybe you should start doing things differently.

13. If people point out that you could have passed some piece of legislation when you had a commanding majority and a clear mandate from the American people, tell them that you don’t engage in the old-style of politics, and are reaching across the aisle to the sniggering members of Congress on the other side to get things done.

14. If they say “No,” accept it and move on. That line of negotiation is clearly going nowhere.

15. Finally, remember that victory comes in many forms. You may not have achieved most, many, or hardly any of your objectives, but if you got something out of it, it’s a victory. Even if you actually lose ground, you can turn that into a victory. “At first the Republicans wanted to burn caribou for fuel, but we talked them down to just drilling in the ANWR.” “We weren’t able to avoid extending the Bush tax cuts, but at least we didn’t institute even deeper cuts.” All victories of negotiation.

Just ignore the Republicans laughing at you.

Negotiating with your allies, of course, is completely different. There, you can be as hardassed as you want. Kneecap them, hamstring them, toss them under the bus, even give them the dreaded Rear Admiral; you can do all these things and more to people on your side, because it’s not like they’re going to get fed up with you and stop being on your side. Punching hippies is an excellent way to show voters that you’re the grownup in the room, and if you don’t like the hippies, so much the better.

Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or secretly praise Yog-Sothoth with unholy rituals and those chocolate orange things, most people exchange some sort of gifts around this time of year. It can be very difficult to decide what you should get that special someone who works inside the Beltway, though. Many people just throw their hands up and give up. This can make the holidays a very lonely time for those of us inside the Beltway, so I’m giving you this helpful gift giving guide to help out.

Members of Congress, their staff, and other officials and staff

Buying gifts for members of Congress and their staff is a real fucking bitch. Many of you won’t be able to get them anything at all, but hopefully the Congressman will understand. For those of you who aren’t lobbyists, you still can’t get that Congressman or staffer much of anything. Worthless but sentimental gifts may be your best bet, like

• Drinking goblets made from the skull of an enemy. You should handcraft it, and ensure that it’s worth less than $50. Even if it’s pretty worthless, they’ll appreciate the sentiment.
• A bus schedule.
• A hand-made cross-stitch wall decoration that says “Bless This Mess, and Sell All Your Stock in DynArmaments”.
• Lindor Balls, the gift that says “I care enough to get you a few chocolate balls that are tasty enough.”
• Most of the things at Walgreens or CVS. Everyone appreciates a box fan or a sweatshirt.
• Use your imagination! There are lots of other crafts you can make that are worthless, but will melt the heart of any Congressperson. If they seem a little offended that you tried to give them a lumpy clay ashtray, tell them it’s a hockey puck that you worked really hard on.

Interns

It’s a little easier to get interns gifts; they aren’t bound as tightly by the gift rules. You should keep in mind that they’re in a constant struggle to survive, so you should plan your gift giving accordingly.

• A carton of cigarettes can go a long way on the Hill. Buy your intern a couple so he or she can trade them for a better life.
• That intern will appreciate basic food staples a lot more than an iPod or DVD player. Pulses, legumes, rice, potatoes, and ground wheat will help sustain an intern through the lean winter months.
• If the intern you’re buying a gift for is male, you can always get him another tie. An intern with more than one tie is a remarkable and special beast indeed.
• You shouldn’t buy firearms for an intern, but you could get them a set of spoons that they could make shivs out of for protection. Capitol Hill is a tough place, and you have to be tough enough to stand it.
• Bright, reflective clothes. It’s important to be able to be seen when crossing the lawless zones of asphalt known as “the street”, where all traffic signs and lane markings are purely advisory. It’s not guaranteed to save your intern’s life, but it might help.
• Alcohol. May need to come in wine cooler or alcopop form.

Journalists

You can get journalists working in DC many of the same gifts as interns, but it’s not exactly the same. A few journalists would appreciate a goblet made from the skull of their enemies as well, but you should ask around first to find out if they’d really like it. There are other presents journalists appreciate though, so consider some of these gifts:

• Bachelor Chow. NB: Spinster Chow is not appreciated.
• A notebook. Journalists can’t get enough spiral bound notebooks.
• Access to the deepest secrets of Washington. If you want to make it a gag present, invite them to learn about the darkest secrets of Washington but tell them it’s all off the record.
• David Gregory bobble-head dolls. Everyone loves such whimsy.
• If you’re a powerful corporation, you may be able to give items of immense value to journalists, like platinum coffee cups, solid gold pants, or a scale model of the Great Pyramid of Giza made entirely out of stacks of $100 bills. To be ethical, you need to make it clear that it’s just a present, with no strings attached.
• A hot plate. You’d be surprised how much this may be appreciated.
• If a journalist is particularly troublesome, give them the gift of a horse’s head. Of course, with their busy schedules being filled with reporting and all, it’s best to put it in their bed while they’re sleeping. If you’re feeling particularly giving, keep the rest of the horse attached to the head. They’ll be filled with the Christmas spirit trying to figure out how to get a horse out of their apartment.

For Anyone

If you’re completely stuck and can’t come up with any ideas for a gift, you can always give the gift of quality eBooks. It’s the gift that says “I can’t think of anything else, but I tolerate you.”

With these helpful tips, you can make that special person in your life in DC happy without running afoul of the law or ethics concerns. Happy Holidays, and may your gift giving be productive.

A lot of tongues have been wagging inside the Beltway about filibuster reform. Some Senators are absolutely besides themselves that it will be a little harder to throw a monkey wrench into the works whenever they feel like it. Not letting Senators block debate from even starting is bad enough, but they’re spitting mad that Harry Reid wants to make them actually get up and read the phone book or the voting laws of the 48 states if they want to hold Senate business up.

Unrelatedly, there are also some, mostly among the professional left, who are concerned about our Administration’s use of drone strikes against targets. They worry that it’s too secretive, too removed, and far too mysterious. They even worry that they might be used against Americans.

Fortunately, there’s a solution. We can combine filibuster reform and drones. I firmly believe that Senators should have to get up and talk when they want to filibuster; not only do they deserve it, but it makes for heartwarming Mr. Smith Goes to Washington-type stories. At the same time, the Senate floor will be under drone surveillance. At any time, while a Senator is filibustering a bill, death may randomly rain down from the sky with a drone strike aimed directly at the speaking Senator. They’ll be subject to the same drone policies as everyone else, and will hopefully lead to them thinking carefully about what they want to filibuster.

Using drones against Senators the same way we use them is only fair, and the possibility of explosions excites even the most lazy and uninformed of voters. Ratings for C-SPAN would go up, and interest in the political process would reach heights undreamed of before. A few people, maybe one hundred at the most, may object to using drones in this manner, but I’m confident the vast majority of the American people will support this.

This is filibuster reform we can all get behind.

Extinction, as they say, is forever.

It wasn’t that long ago that conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans roamed freely in massive herds across this great nation of ours. Americans traveling the Oregon Trail were able to go out and shoot as many of them as they could within the space of about 30 seconds or so to feed their families on the trail. Of course, they could only ever carry 200 pounds of meat back to the wagon, because it never occurred to them to bring the wagon closer or something, so many of those conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans were wasted. Back then, it seemed like nothing could ever reduce their numbers.

Sadly, time, habitat destruction, and overzealous hunting have driven the liberal Republican to extinction. For most people, the only liberal Republican they will ever be able to see is the stuffed Nelson Rockefeller on display at the Smithsonian Institution. The closely related, but distinct, moderate Republican is nearly gone; fewer than six are believed to remain in the wild, and captive breeding programs have not yielded many results. These majestic beasts are on the brink of extinction, and it may be too late to save them.

The conservative Democrat lives in greater numbers, but its herds are much reduced from their former massive size. If we fail to act quickly to save them now, we may lose them forever as well. We believe it is time to designate them as “Endangered” on the Endangered Species List, so we can conserve their numbers and preserve our nation’s political biodiversity. It’s better and more cost efficient to do something now, rather than wait until the situation is extremely dire. Raising conservative Democrats with hand puppets sounds fun, but it’s a much bigger and more expensive hassle than trying to save the ones we already have.

Many people consider conservative Democrats pests unworthy of protection. To that, I say that while they may not be the most attractive of Democrats, or the most useful, and they’re certainly among the most obstructive and whiny, all creatures deserve protection from extinction. With our help, future generations will hear their bleating, and thank us for saving these magnificent animals from the same fate suffered by their liberal Republican colleagues. I ask for your support so that together we can save the conservative Democrat.

If we need to keep them in zoos, though, so be it.

Taking a moment to be uncharacteristically serious…

As you may have heard, Mitt Romney said on 60 Minutes Sunday that people could just go to the ER for health care if they don’t have insurance. This is not only a terribly inefficient and expensive way to implement socialized medicine, but Mitt should know why this is a bad idea from personal experience.

In real life, I have something wrong with me. I would be more specific, but despite three MRIs, two EMGs, and numerous doctor’s visits, we still don’t actually know what the problem is yet. I have numbness, discomfort, and pain in my limbs, difficulty using my hands at times, enough trouble walking because my leg keeps buckling from under me that I have to use a cane, and muscle weakness. All of this is, to boot, exacerbated by cold. It might be CIDP, but we still don’t know; there’s a whole galaxy of remarkably similar disorders that I could have, and the doctors are still currently baffled. I take gabapentin to control the neuropathic pain so I can at least function, but that doesn’t help with the muscle weakness or when my hands claw up. I am fortunate, at least, that I do have insurance and can go see the doctor about this. We aren’t there yet, but I’m getting a referral to a nearby university’s neurology department. Hopefully there I’ll finally be able to get some answers and see what can be done about this.

When someone comes into the ER after having a heart attack, or because they had not had their diabetes looked at, there’s at least something to do. The patient who had to wait to get their shit taken care of at the ER may or may not be able to keep following up, but at least they can fairly quickly get answers like “You have diabetes, and need insulin” or “Oh, perhaps you should lay off the pork products.” They may not be able to get that insulin they need, mind you, but at least they know they need it. An emergency room is not the place to get weird debilitating (and possibly fatal) conditions checked out. An ER doc, while skilled and heroic and all that, is not the doctor who should be handling cancer cases or neurological disorders.

So yeah, I’m kind of riled up. I’ve heard the Republican line for years about how poor people can just get their medical problems looked at at the ER, and it’ll be fine. I’m sorry, but that’s not fine. The ER is great for actual emergencies, but it’s not the kind of place you should go to get a weird vague condition that may or may not be something especially dire. I’ve been going to the doctor for months over this, and have no end in sight. I would not be able to get the care I need at at ER without insurance. If you were to wander into the ER and complain about your limbs hurting in an indescribable way and that you couldn’t walk, they’d send your apparently drunk ass on your way with a huge bill for wasting their time. Even if it turned out you had one of the less dire disorders like this, you may have missed the window where they could have at least prevented more nerve damage, and you’re going to be like that forever.

Plenty of Republicans have said “Send them to the ER”, and I’ve come to expect that. What really bothers me about Mitt’s comments is that he should fucking know better. His fucking wife has MS, for God’s sake; if anyone should know that the emergency room is not a suitable area for the long term treatment of a severe neurological disease, it should be the guy whose wife has a serious fucking neurological disease. These diseases need a lot of work to diagnose them, and you’re not going to be able to get that at an emergency room.

Yeah, I’m a little sensitive to the subject because of my situation, but I’m lucky. It’s not a picnic, but I’m at least able to try and get it dealt with rather than letting it simmer and just bearing the pain and weakness until it hits the breaking point. If I weren’t able to see the doctor about this, though, I would have a very hard time being a productive and functional member of society. I recognize this, and don’t think we should deny people medical care for disorders like this just because they can’t afford a fancy pants horse for equine therapy, or even a prescription to let them keep working. It wasn’t all that long ago that I would have been completely and totally screwed by this. I recognize how lucky I am, and realize how badly I would be affected if my life were just a little different.

What bothers me is that he knows people get illnesses that can’t be fixed at the ER, because his wife has one, and he still says shit like this. Suffer like his wife, but don’t have the funds to get a horse and the best treatment available? Even if treating you would be a net benefit for society because you’d be able to do stuff rather than be disabled and unable to provide for yourself at all? Fuck off, because he and his got theirs.

Like pretty much everyone else inside the Beltway, I was making guesses about who Mitt Romney’s VP pick would be. I even added a section on the Veepstakes to my book, From An Anonymous Source (available now, even), in the section on the race for the Republican presidential nomination. I may not have gotten all the details right (I didn’t think they’d actually do something as dumb as pick Paul Ryan), but I think I nailed it with this paragraph. The last sentence, particularly, is such potent political prognostication that I expect to be getting a bunch of calls from the Sunday morning talk show people very soon.

Vice presidential candidates are usually announced just before the party convention, but the Romney campaign has been unusually vocal about the fact that yes, they are vetting various possibilities in hopes of getting people to talk about the VP nod instead of all of his problems. It hasn’t worked yet, but they keep trying. You can be confident, though, that whoever they pick will be nowhere as smooth as Joe Biden. (Emphasis added, yet also mine.)

Everyone likes book excerpts, except for the fact that you still aren’t able to read the whole book. They’re certainly better than nothing, which is why in addition to the sample of the Introduction, the first two chapters, and the first paragraph of the third chapter that you can read on From An Anonymous Source’s selling page here, I’ve also posted two other chapter excerpts earlier: Chapter 9: The 5 People You Meet On Sunday Talk Shows and Chapter 11: The War On, and For, Words. Now it’s even easier than before to read a fair chunk of the book with almost no effort.

I just went and made sure they were up to date too, so these chapters are exactly what you’d see in the published book. I am, if I may say, particularly pleased with Chapter 11. I think it came out well.

It’s finally happened. After a couple of months of hard work, From An Anonymous Source: An Off the Record Memoir of Politics is now available for purchase on Amazon. I’m afraid that it’s currently exclusive to Kindle and Amazon at the moment; iBooks does not allow self-publishing under a pseudonym, and I wanted to take advantage of KDP Select.

It’s pretty much a steal at $2.99, which is less than an expensive cup of coffee. It’s more than a cheap cup, so it’s not as good of a deal as just a normal coffee, but it’s definitely cheaper than most mochas. It might not be as sweet and creamy as a mocha, and it might not be as amazing as some other Kindle books, but I hope that it’s funny enough on its own. There’s no physical version planned at the moment, but who knows? That could conceivably change.

If you like it, be sure to tell all your friends. If you really really hate it, be sure to tell your friends anyway, because then they might decide to buy it to see why it’s so terrible.