In case you were tempted to buy the faux Washington outrage at BP and its gulf oil spill in recent days, here’s a story that reveals a little-known corporate political connection and the quiet way the inner political circles intersect, protect and care for one another in the nation’s capital. And Chicago.
We already knew that BP and its folks were significant contributors to the record $750-million war chest of Barack Obama’s 2007-08 campaign.
Emanuel lives rent free in a BP advisers house
Now, we learn the details of a connection of Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayoral wannabe, current Obama chief of staff, ex-representative, ex-Clinton money man and ex-Windy City political machine go-fer.
Shortly after Obama’s happy inaugural, eyebrows rose slightly upon word that, as a House member, Emanuel had lived the last five years rent-free in a D.C. apartment of Democratic colleague Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and her husband, Stanley Greenberg.
For an ordinary American, that would likely raise some obvious tax liability questions. But like Emanuel, the guy overseeing the Internal Revenue Service now is another Obama insider, Tim Geithner, who had his own outstanding tax problems but skated through confirmation anyway by the Democratic-controlled Congress.
Read More: By Andrew Malcolm, LA Times
Tags: BP adviser, Rahm Emanuel, Rent freeThe flap over the job offers to Joe Sestak in Pennsylva nia and Andrew Romanoff in Colorado shows that it’s time to move electoral politics out of the White House. Rahm Emanuel, this means you.
President Obama’s first step should be to shutter the Office of Political Affairs. Then he should jettison the various political henchmen — starting with Rahm — who’ve infested the West Wing and put them on the Democratic National Committee, where they belong.
Rahm needs to go
Since President Ronald Reagan created it, the Office of Political Affairs has become a taxpayer-funded campaign office that has helped administrations of all stripes consolidate their power.
Its current head, Patrick Gaspard, has used his perch to try to push Gov. Paterson from running this fall (Paterson later forced himself out), to push Doug Wilder to support Creigh Deeds in the Virginia gubernatorial race (Deeds would up losing the general) — and to persuade GOP state Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava to endorse the Democrat after she lost her primary in the special election in New York’s 23rd Congressional District (which helped keep the seat in Democratic hands).
Your taxpayer dollars at work.
Read More: By Kirsten Powers, NY Post
Tags: Backroom Deals, Barack Obama, corruption, politics as usual, Rahm EmanuelRahm Emanuel cynically said, “You never want a crisis to go to waste.” It is now becoming clear that the crisis he was referring to is Barack Obama’s presidency.
Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he’s doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic crisis and social chaos — thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within.
Obama is creating a crisis so he can institute marxism
Barack Obama is my college classmate (Columbia University, class of ‘83). As Glenn Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward & Piven, two professors at Columbia University. They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands. Add up the clues below. Taken individually they’re alarming. Taken as a whole, it is a brilliant, Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist/Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival … and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for it.
– Universal health care. The health care bill had very little to do with health care. It had everything to do with unionizing millions of hospital and health care workers, as well as adding 15,000 to 20,000 new IRS agents (who will join government employee unions). Obama doesn’t care that giving free health care to 30 million Americans will add trillions to the national debt. What he does care about is that it cements the dependence of those 30 million voters to Democrats and big government. Who but a socialist revolutionary would pass this reckless spending bill in the middle of a depression?
– Cap and trade. Like health care legislation having nothing to do with health care, cap and trade has nothing to do with global warming. It has everything to do with redistribution of income, government control of the economy and a criminal payoff to Obama’s biggest contributors. Those powerful and wealthy unions and contributors (like GE, which owns NBC, MSNBC and CNBC) can then be counted on to support everything Obama wants. They will kick-back hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions to Obama and the Democratic Party to keep them in power. The bonus is that all the new taxes on Americans with bigger cars, bigger homes and businesses helps Obama “spread the wealth around.”
– Make Puerto Rico a state. Why? Who’s asking for a 51st state? Who’s asking for millions of new welfare recipients and government entitlement addicts in the middle of a depression? Certainly not American taxpayers. But this has been Obama’s plan all along. His goal is to add two new Democrat senators, five Democrat congressman and a million loyal Democratic voters who are dependent on big government.
Read More: By Wayne Allen Root, Fox Nation
Tags: Barack Obama, Marxism, overwhelm the system, Rahm EmanuelIn the days of the old Pravda, one could determine who was winning secret Politburo power struggles by just looking at the official Soviet newspaper. Those winning simply got better press.
Perhaps it may be no different here in the United States.
The battle is on for control of the White House
This week two of the heaviest guns in American media, The Washington Post and The New York Times, unloaded their missiles at Obama adviser David Axelrod while heralding White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel as a centrist and pragmatist.
This Sunday’s New York Times, for example, features Axelrod and describes him as the ideological courtier advising the president into darkness as Emanuel remains the level-headed counselor.
Here’s an excerpt from “Message Maven Finds Fingers Pointing at Him”:
“Recent news reports have cast the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as the administration’s chief pragmatist, and Mr. Axelrod, by implication, as something of a swooning loyalist. ‘I’ve heard him be called a “Moonie,”’ dismissed Mr. Axelrod’s close friend, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. Or as the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, joked, ‘the guy who walks in front of the president with rose petals.
Read More: Newsmax
Tags: battle for control, David Axelrod, Rahm EmanuelIt sounds like a story with a happy ending. Eighteen months ago Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were at each other’s throats as they battled for the White House. Then, after Mr Obama’s inspired selection of his old rival for the top US foreign policy post, the two turned into a team, with Mrs Clinton becoming the most formidable asset of the administration.
Clinton doesn’t like being told what to do by Rahm Emanuel
There is only one catch to the tale. There is no guarantee that it will finish on an upbeat note.
Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama are now deluged by foreign policy problems and the secretary of state has to contend with an overbearing White House and her own tendency to voice inconvenient truths.
That said, things have gone more smoothly than anyone would have imagined after the two Democrats’ bad-tempered primary fight.
Read More: By Daniel Dombey, Financial Times
Tags: Barack Obama, Clinton Gaffes, Foreign policy Blunders, Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Tough RelationshipObama fans are in a tight spot. As the White House turns ever harsher and more divisive, supporters are scrambling to explain why President Obama sounds so very different from Campaigner Obama. There are two possible explanations, neither of which is flattering. The first is that Obama was insincere on the campaign trail. The second is that his advisors – David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel — are in control. The latter view is bound to take hold and it will not boost the president’s flagging popularity ratings.
Many who voted for President Obama feel deceived. When he said in Florida last year “we cannot afford the same political games and tactics that are being used to pit us against one another,” people believed him. When he extolled “rejecting fear and division for unity of purpose,” people believed him. When he said on election night “I will listen to you, especially when we disagree,” people believed him.
Rahm and others are controlling Obama
Why has the president left those admirable promises behind? Why is his administration going after Fox News, the Chamber of Commerce, insurance executives, AIG management, the drug industry, the Chrysler bondholders and any and all who oppose his policies?
Many believe that Obama is being manipulated by his political adviser David Axelrod and his Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. The aura of Chicago politics drifts over the capital like a smog. Ironically, the nasty assaults may be calculated to offset a growing view that the president is not tough enough to stand up to his detractors.
Read More: by Liz Peek, Fox News
Tags: Barack Obama, controlling Obama, Pulling his strings, Rahm EmanuelPresident Obama now realizes he probably will have to pass health reform with Democratic votes alone, White House officials say.
The admission is a monumental shift in Washington’s top fight of the year, with the energy now shifting to differences among Democrats, rather than efforts to lure a critical mass of Republicans.
The aides call it more a prediction than a strategy shift, and blame the GOP.
"We were forced into this by Republicans," one official said.
White House gives up on Bipartisan Healthcare Reform
The administration is pointing to increasingly partisan comments by the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley of Iowa, who said while home for summer recess: “I’m not walking away from the table. I’m being pushed away from the table.”
Ken Spain, a spokesman for the National Republican Campaign Committee, said blaming the GOP is "laughable."
Read More: By MIKE ALLEN & CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN, Politico
Tags: Barack Obama, Bipartisanship, Healthcare reform, Rahm EmanuelBy Congressman Darrell Issa
Following reports that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been orchestrating an effort to intimidate members of Congress and Governors who raise legitimate concerns regarding the effectiveness of the stimulus, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Ranking Member Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a letter to Emanuel saying “While this type of scare tactic may work In Chicago, it will not work to intimidate me or other Members of the United States Congress.”
“I and others have dared to bring these facts to the attention of President Obama, the Congress and the American people,” Issa wrote. “You’ve unfortunately reacted by once again resorting to the playbook of the Chicago political machine.”
Last month, Politico reported that Emanuel had “launched a coordinated effort to jam” Senator Kyl and other Administration critics… “[A]fter seeing Kyl and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) again paint the legislation as a failure on Sunday talk shows, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel directed that the letters from the Cabinet secretaries be sent to [Governor] Brewer, according to two administration officials.”
Issa noted, “The fact that the letters were coordinated by you to maximize the level of intimidation is supported by the timing, structure, and content of each letter. Not only were the four letters all sent the day following Senator Kyl’s remarks, but they were also remarkably similar in tone and sentence structure.”
Tags: Congressman says back off, Rahm Emanuel, the enforcerBarack Obama’s Merlin Dust supply must have run out when he arrived in Moscow last week. On previous trips to Europe crowds swooned and the news media gasped in awe, but in Moscow this didn’t happen. He was treated politely, but as if the folks on the street saw heads of state every day. It was quite a contrast to the heroic reception Ronald Reagan received in 1988 and 1990.
He went on to Italy for one those Grand Kabuki meetings of the heads of the Group of Eight leading industrial states. He regained some of the approving respect of the social democrats among them by apologizing once again for the United States, this time in terms of carbon emissions. He returned home claiming that he and the others had reached yet another historic agreement, this one to reduce those carbon emissions sharply by 2050. Of course the agreement was not binding and China and India rejected the notion of limits. So, in sum, the Merlin Dust was ineffective.
The Obama Merlin Dust doesn’t seem to be working with stimulus packages, either. Of the $787 billion one he got from an obliging Congress in February, only about 10 percent has been spent so far and most of that on extending unemployment payments and other “safety net” services. Regardless of how worthy those efforts may be, they do not stimulate the economy.
Read the complete article: By Peter Hannaford, American Spectator
Tags: Merlin Dust, Rahm Emanuel
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