captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org-- >> hello, i am linda gasparello, co-host of "white house chronicle." which is coming up in a few seconds. but first, a few thoughts of my own. it is springtime in washington. for baseball fans, you know what that means. the nats are getting ready for their season this year, and they have a new thing that is called natitude. for women it means something

different. go out and buy something beautiful. i forgot to buy my hat, but in the meantime, i have one that has natitude. here it is. it's not quite the nats hat, but it is pretty naty, wouldn't you say? we will be back with a message from our sponsor and a surprise guest. with natitude. >> many have spoken out on the need to transition to a clean energy future. at exelon, we are acting. by 2020 we are committed to reducing or displacing 20 million metric tons of and -- more than 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gases by greening our operations and offering more low carbon electricity in the marketplace. exelon, we are taking action and we are seeing results.

>> "white house chronicle" is produced in collaboration with whut, howard university television. and now your program host, nationally syndicated columnist llewellyn king, and co-host linda gasparello. >> welcome back to "white house chronicle." i told you that i have a great guest, and i do, it is none other than the host of the show, llewellyn king. >> thank you, linda. >> after that great introduction? >> i am a great guest, linda. >> would you like to wear the natitude hat? which is your hat. >> it does look remarkably like my hat. >> put that in thinking cap on. >> let's go with the show. [laughter] >> let's go on with the elections. >> what a show that has been.

this is going to go down in history like the long parliament that sat forever in england and would not go away. >> getting them to go away is first. >> this will be the bait -- a great build up to the election. the enormous length of time. the ups and downs. the ins and outs. >> has this benefited republicans? this length of time? >> i am not sure that it has at all. >> the 20 debates? this is more like a demolition derby. >> that may be true. you put your finger on it with demolition derby. nonetheless, it is an extraordinary event. what is disappointing is that all the candidates have given us don't seem to have given us much more in these months then

they gave us initially. one wants to be the president of debates, one wants to be the president of morality, one wants to be the president of money, etc. there has not been any fast growth and the subjects on the table have remained remarkably constant and very narrow. we have not seen much discussion about pakistan or iran. not a lot about europe or the rest of the world. >> the economy. >> china, a growing force in the world. the great raven beginning to -- dragon beginning to stand on its hind legs. we have not heard about that. we have heard about trivial issues, all of the issues like contraception, with which we were bored a long time ago. -- any day i expect to have one of the candidates to start talking about fluoride in water, or one of the tired subject that exercise people. >> we still have not come to the general election yet.

>> it is interesting that the selection of a candidate for the republican nomination has almost eclipsed the real president, who is there running the country and having to keep the job. -- hoping to keep the job. >> do you not think that for president obama, he has absolutely lucked out by this long, drawn-out primary season. where it is still uncertain about who is going to be the nominee? this is a lucky thing for him. we have gotten to know these candidates in a way that maybe we would not have known or would not have wanted to know. >> it will prepare him on policy and in every way on debate. he has gotten quite smart at stealing their thunder by doing a press conference on the same day as a primary, or something else like that. >> and he is still the president, he can still command the attention. i think that he is enjoying this scrum in the republican

party, trouble for the republicans is a there is a feeling of none of the above, there is a great sense, more than i ever remember -- there is always some of that but more than i ever remember in one party, a sense of none of the above. >> >> nobody was to rally around. i would say for the present, and this, call scrum, the president has the benefit it the way women look at him and believe me, women are an important part of the election. they voted in more numbers since 1980 than men have. them at one point, it looked at the of these republican men had no mothers, wives, girlfriends or daughters. that somehow women were some alien force to be dealt with at arm's length. >> well, you know, there is one thing, as howard dean said, the former head of the democratic

party -- >> national committee -- >> national committee, rather. he said the one group you don't want to alienate is women. >> slightly more than half the population. generally it is a good idea to have them on your side. >> but here again, the luck for the president -- all of their talk about their reaction to the president's mandate in health care, contraception being a mandate, this is all brush back -- blown back in luck to the present and it has been a boon to the local television stations getting the advertising. the cable television stations in getting the audience for cable networks. and of course, it has been a marvelous sandbox for reporters to play in. and they cover themselves and the stuff, having a delightful fund. it is very difficult, though, to know what is going to do for a general election because the president's's chances depend on

events overseas as much as domestic antagonism. >> that is true. and events overseas, as we have seen it this week, are changing the context of really of the presidential election. >> that is right. >> let's move on to one of the things that has come up in the primaries in the republican primaries, which is the topic of energy. i know this is one of your favorite topics. gas, in particular. >> the reason i talk about energy, and i will tell you the story is back in 1969 i started working for an energy paper and in 1973 and founded "the energy daily" which i proceeded to publish for 33 years, which gives me some sense of energy, which can be dangerous because things change. the energy has come back as a subject. and yet historically it is a terrible subject for president because they can't deliver on it. they can make press --

bring the price of gasoline to to put $50. that is ludicrous. the price of gasoline is not determined by the american president but in the world will the market where you have the great dragon sucking it up, china, and right behind it -- >> and the price of gas is determined also by unrest in the middle east. >> absolutely. there is a premium. i think it is 30%. the american petroleum institute say they think it is about 15%. i think it is about 30%. it is he jitter price, though wary price, what the new york mercantile exchange and other exchanges that trade futures in gasoline look at in oil it sells, they look at the disturbance in the middle east and they don't know what is going to happen, we don't know what is going to happen. so, there is always that.

and the idea has been floated by most of these candidates, most vigorously by the english and others as well, that we could be magic was self-sufficient in oil in the united states. we are self-sufficient in gas, there is plenty of it. we are self-sufficient in the field we used to make electricity, which is uranium. uranium and coal, which will have a great deal, and gas. the problem is oil. well, we have somewhere between 2% and 3% of the total world supply of wheel in the ground in the u.s.. you can drill more and more holes -- and millions have been drilled in the contiguous 48 states, and you will find some more. you can also frack, as you do for gas, break up moroccans different shale formations and the oil out but it is very expensive -- break up the rock.

it costs $50 just to get the oil to the surface. i notice chevron, i imagine one of the great wise oil companies, if that is not an oxymoron, it has withdrawn from shale speculation in oil -- >> that happened this week. >> a big deal. >> the oil is not there, -- >> what are the projections of the american petroleum institute? do you think there will be a 100-year flow? >> absolutely. we are producing more oil than we had in quite a long time. there is oil coming out of north dakota, which is now the third or fourth largest producer -- it is really amazing, north dakota doing this. there is oil, i believe, in the eastern part of the gulf of

mexico. quite possibly off the virginia coast, but it is less well approved. but there are not many oil options. there are a lot of gas options and we know where the fields are. at least 100 years guaranteed supply -- we will sell a little abroad. but to believe that the gas story can be repeated in oil is, i think of a fictitious and dangerous. >> and an outright lie. but i do not know if it is outright lie -- not sure i'd all, but i think it is deeply held. i think for example the american potential -- petroleum institute really believes it but they should call chevron on the phone to see what those chaps think. but this seems like we have this in and yang in energy. democrats tend to be people interested in alternatives and then we have republicans interested in the extraction industry, as was george w. bush

-- george w. bush. therefore, he went there to look for solutions in energy. this is going to be a yin and yang problem. >> i am not sure i'd understand your yn and yang analogy. oil and gas is extracted, coal is extracted. nuclear is somewhat more sophisticated, but you at some point have to extract uranium. so it all has some extraction. it is most acute with oil. and it is endedgenes of the bush family, so naturally they will look to that. but it is interesting that george w. bush when he was president, we would see him riding around with a white pickup truck, that was running on gas. it was not running on -- >> not natural gas -- >> it was petroleum gas, that is it. someone wrote to me about it when i mentioned this --

>> i think maybe at this point, i might like to talk to our viewers -- or our listeners on siurus xm potus channel 124, our program can be heard on channel 124 saturday's three times -- the first, 9:30 a.m. in the morning, 3:30 p.m. in the afternoon, and 6:30 p.m. in the evenings on siriusxm potus channel 124 and it can also be viewed on 200 channels in the united states and on a voice and american television. we are very proud of that. we recently happen to have met a woman who is austrian who watches the program in austria. that was a great thrill for us. all right, back to the united states. the candidates have been talking some what about business from a little bit about

entrepreneurship. what does that mean to you? >> they all talk about entrepreneurship. entrepreneurship is something that i think is in the genes. now universities are trying to teach it. and there is a foundation that wants to encourage it. >> did it start of the lemonade stand? do you have it in your genes? >> i think med romney has been a little disingenuous in talking about himself as an entrepreneur. basically a well-healed kid goes to work for an investment bank and makes a load of dough. is that really are entrepreneurs should? >> that he could feel the pain of those who are the entrepreneurs. >> entrepreneur r's want to work for themselves. like my friends who started a restaurant in washington called terasol. in a combination of the word terre which means earth, or

land,,sol, which means sun. >> thank you for the language lesson, linda. these are people who want to run a restaurant. combining it with pots and things that are made -- >> it is an artist and a gallery with things -- >> but those are real entrepreneurs. my father was and entrepreneurs. he had a pickup truck, his name on the side and he repaired water comes. anything that was broken. but that more entrepreneurs. if you could get that and move it into a large business or even a medium-sized business you really succeeded. but these are not people -- our friends in the restaurant are not worried about whether they get tax breaks. they would like to stay in business long enough to pay taxes. >> therein lies where the emphasis of the republican conversation -- they think it is all about taxes. >> because they have a lot of

money and they think about taxes. when arthur kroc start at mcdonald's, he was not worried about how much taxes could pave but whether he could sell enough of the hand auger -- hamburgers. >> my father used to sell -- >> we know who to blame. >> my dad, for not being as successful as arthur kroc. >> it is very important that entrepreneurs are people who want not to be employed, they want to be self-employed, they would like to make some money but mostly they would like to be self-employed. amorite -- >> right. how can they do that in this environment? >> it is not so much easy -- but it is made harder by large chains -- chains. much harder to start a

restaurant against mcdonald's or tgi fridays or any change then it used to be. so, thousands, and facts hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs will not get going because of chain supermarkets and everything. >> even more than that. there is access to capital. they are not getting the access to capital that they need. the banks are not letting up on the stranglehold. and yet, republicans complained endlessly about the changes in banking regulations. we are not sure that all of that is to the detriment of the business. i think some of it actually would have freed up some capital for these small entrepreneurs. >> been never had capital and banks never had wanted to lend to them. i started many new businesses -- it is not easy but it is enormously rewarding. >> moving on -- llewellyn,

you've been involved with a really, really dreadful disease in the united states, which is not well understood. it is called chronic fatigue syndrome. >> thank you for raising this, linda. this is my pro bono. this is something i do because a friend of mine from the 1970's, a colleague, was laid out in this disease. >> and health care is the subject of this presidential election. >> and desperately ill for 33 years. i wrote a column about her for this and get i write and i got hundreds of letters there so i wrote more columns and that hundreds more letters. then i started a youtube channel -- mecfs alert on youtube where i interviewed

people. in million people are affected. no cure. about 70 million worldwide. we do not know. it is absolutely debilitating, painful, awful. you lose your life. you stay alive, but you can't enjoy anything. if you are constantly fatigued. this leads doesn't help. pain, headaches, the stage yet -- sleep does not help. a ghastly disease but it is under the radar. doctors cannot diagnose it easy. there are no treatment. insurance companies do not want to know about the. >> insurance companies will not cover this? >> and i don't know. i think it varies from a -- insurance plan to insurance plan but they don't like it and want to treated as psychosomatic, when it is not. it is not a mental problem. it is a vast physical problem for a lot of people who heard, and hurt. >> also one of the problems that doctors do not know how to code

the disease -- >> i do not think it is coding, i think it is too amorphous because in medicine, there are no markets. it is a disease of the immune system but you cannot find it in soft tissue, bodily fluids, or blood, anything that says you have this disease, except you had it. and people who get it amazingly seem to know the moment they got it. usually after exercise they collapse and in begin this terrible journey into hell. the most famous suffered is laura hellenbrand who succeeded in writing to the best sellers, but she has to stay in her house, but managed with a very supportive husband. the people i had net are scarcely able to get through the day, let alone, to be productive.

we hope very much that there would be more government attention, more research dollars, and more tolerance of this disease. some people just think, they are lazy and they are tired. >> is that a common -- >> mononucleosis on steroids. >> a common response of people afflicted -- >> i have letters of people from out of their homes, girls who have did -- been just ignored. i have been interviewing some of the young victims of this disease, girls in their teens and a 20's who will never get married, never have children, never enjoyed their teens and all of those marvelous things that are part of the human condition. and i have really become rather absorber in it and anyone who was interested, please write to me, and i will be happy to share what knowledge i have. go to the website, mecfs alert

and see these little five-minute videos i have put up. >> and the book and write to you on the web site? >> better than writing -- right. >> what is the hope? >> like a hobo for all disease. that a cure will be found. but before a cure, maybe just something to ameliorate the suffering. there a tv -- two stages dealing with this sort of disease. if it does not kill you instantly. when you want -- need a cure. this is something that does not kill. there are a lot of suicides, though, but it does not kill in the normal way, except it breaks the spirit. some sufferers say they lie in bed and imagine after days and days of not being able to get up that they are in their coffins already. the hope is always, for the whole team and a brake -- human race and so many things,

research, research, followed by deployment. you will find drug manufacturers, once a drug is found -- it parallels aids, another immune disorder. >> in what way? >> initially it had a stigma, it still has sigma. it was a surprise. they had to find the virus and then they had to attack the virus with a cocktail of drugs because one drug -- >> but the thing that happened with aids was very quickly aids got celebrity advocates. >> well, i am not sure it was that quick. i started a publication on aids and there was not anybody who wanted to work for it. it took a long time -- it was a patient's disease, homosexual disease, and it had strange connotations' involving

primates. it was when people like elizabeth taylor solve the artistic community dying, that they got up. unfortunately, chronic fatigue syndrome does not have an elizabeth taylor. it needs a ford spokesman -- and someone who does not have it because people who have attended be too sick and too unreliable because they are sick. >> is it on the congressional radar at all? does it have an advocate up in congress? >> to a very small extent, harry reid. but i have not been able to speak to him about it. i have spoken to senator harkin, who is aware of it. >> wow. let's move on to something a little bit different, certainly. now for something completely different, as monty python would say -- parliament. >> straight out of monty python, isn't it? >> how is it different than

ours? >> the system is very different. it has some virtues and some negatives. i will run through the negative s. parties control. you cannot have an independent in our election. you can, but you will not get anywhere. you need to be selected by the party and your political career is substantially in the party and your voting record is controlled by the party and your very constituency is issued by the party, if you will. >> a little bit predestined. >> you have to take over the party before you take over the government, which is what tony blair did. but the thing everybody sees is question time, because cease- fire -- c-span, and their ingenious -- where was pbs? c-span ended genius has started running this highly entertaining weekly -- used to be twice a week, but now it is weekly -- and it is a riot in entertainment. people say some very witty

things. they also say some quite awful things. verbatim quote -- "sit down, you fat faced twit." not always polite. but if a primus beer cannot handle with -- prime minister cannot handle it -- newt gingrich, i think desperately wishes he were in the house of commons where he might succeed, but he might not be prime minister. >> that would be our last question. thank you very much for coming along with me today. we will do this again. >> absolutely. >> thanks very much. ♪

>> many have spoken out on the need to transition to a clean energy future. at exelon, we are acting. by 2020, we are committed to reducing, offsetting, or displacing what and 15 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually, through greening are operations, helping our customers and communities reduce their emissions, and offering more low carbon electricity in the marketplace. at exelon, we are taking action and we are seeing results. >> "white house chronicle" is produced in collaboration with whut, howard university television. from washington, d.c., this has been "white house chronicle," a weekly analysis of the news with insight and a sense of tumor, featuring llewellyn king, linda

gasparello, and guests. this program may be seen on pbs stations and cable access channels. to view the program online, visit us at whitehousechronicle.com. visit us at whitehousechronicle.com.