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PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA Powell calls Obama a 'transformational figure'Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. president-elect Barack Obama is a "transformational figure" whose election provoked an emotional response in the United States and will change the way the nation interacts with the rest of the world. "The whole political environment changed last Tuesday night with the election of Mr. Obama," Powell said at a Korea Foundation forum on the new U.S. administration's East Asia policy. About 150 people attended the event Friday at Seoul's Shilla Hotel.Powell, a retired Army four-star general and Republican who endorsed the Democratic candidate in the last weeks of the campaign, touched on U.S.-South Korean relations during his speech, but mostly spoke on Obama's effect on the American psyche and the president-elect's desire for international open dialogue. "America feels good about itself," Powell told the audience. He added that Obama is "going to listen, to hear what you think. He wants to know what your goals are."  Powell said Sen. John McCain, a close friend of 25 years, would have made a good president. He decided to support Obama because of his "exceptional judgment," which he said was more important than experience, and because Obama was the right person to lead the United States at this point in history. Powell said he watched the election results from his hotel room in Hong Kong, and called his wife and children in the United States when Obama was declared the winner. All of them were crying, he said. "It hit me like a bolt of electricity going through my body. It hit all of us that way," he said. Powell said Obama ran his campaign like a military, using modern information technology and better strategies than McCain. Obama's win shows that African-Americans are judged by their ability and not their skin color, though there are still inequalities between whites and minorities, he said. "We have taken a giant step forward, but race is still a problem," he said.  He said Obama's presidency will be marked by diplomacy and realistic conversations with other countries, including South Korea, which has a pending free trade agreement with the United States. The agreement has been signed but is awaiting approval by the U.S. and South Korean legislatures. Powell said Obama has concerns about the agreement, particularly about South Korean automobile exports to the United States. Obama has to put America's interests first, including those of the states most affected by high unemployment and the downtown of the U.S. automobile industry. "All I know is the president who is coming in will listen to South Korea, and knows that South Korea will listen to us as well," he said. Powell, who was stationed at the Army base in Dongducheon in the 1970s, also said he believes a diplomatic solution will be found to prevent North Korea from producing nuclear weapons. A North Korean diplomat said Pyongyang is prepared for dialogue — or confrontation — with the next U.S. president. South Korean president Lee Myung-bak said he and Obama pledged during a phone call to work together to resolve the nuclear standoff. (Source: Stars and Stripes.) (19 Oct): (The following was posted on GI RoK Brop Blog after Collin Powell came out in endorsing Obama) Collin Powell has always been one of those leaders I could look up to — a military statesman. I have to agree with Powell's comments on the direction of the Republican Party of its shift to the right that makes me feel uneasy as well. I also feel queasy about the Republican party "terrorist" campaign and Muslim linkage ideas. I don't like this kind of mudslinging as it took away from the real issues that the American people wanted to hear about. Americans want to hear someone with vision — and in this McCain has not come across as one with the vision we need for today's problems. VIDEO: Require Active X. CNN: John King Interview: After six months in office, Colin Powell "a little concerned" that Obama is over-spending and sending the nation into debt that future generations have to pay for. (Jul 2009)  Obama Not Saluting the Flag No He Can'tby Anne Wortham (November 6, 2008)Fellow Americans, Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America. I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 perce nt of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. I would have to believe that "fairness" is the equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth. Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism. So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness. (Author: Anne Wortham is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.) One Conservative's View for the FutureThe win of Barack Obama has caused the Republican Party to sit back and take a look at itself. During the McCain campaign, I personally found the attacks on Obama as a "terrorist" -- and the attacks on his wife as well were equally distasteful. Instead of pressing by innuendo that Obama was a Muslim, had links to the PLO and other smear tactics, they should have pressed on the basics of Obama's credentials and his voting record. In his run for the nomination in 2004, McCain was representing himself as himself -- and I liked him better. However, in this campaign he started to move to the right a bit more to appease the neo-cons and faith-based politics crowd -- then he moved to the middle to try to attract Hillary Clinton's supporters sent a flip-flop image. In the end, I voted for the party that was closest to my values -- rather than the man. I was more afraid of Obama's left wing views -- socialism by any other name is still socialism and his stance to pull the troops out of Iraq without an "honorable end" frightened the bejeezus out of me. Even with the success of the surge and deaths down in Iraq, he was still talking against the unpopular war to drum up votes.But in the end, we moderate conservatives knew we were in trouble when in desparation we hung onto the promise of some sensational miracle to rescue McCain from defeat. It never happened. But we can fault the McCain campaign for a lot of mistakes -- when the economic crisis came and the Democrats blamed Bush and the Republicans, McCain did not push the truth that it started with Democrats' Clinton -- and the last two years of Democratic controlled Washington allowed it to happen. Obama pounced when the crisis came and McCain faltered. McCain looked weak -- and the Americans wanted someone steadfast. I truly wish he had not been handled by "strategists" and simply had run his own campaign. Atleast Palin kicked some of them in the teeth and did it her way -- giving her some respect from my view.  What we hated the worst was how the Democrats attacked Palin saying that she was not ready to be President if McCain died of old age. This was sick -- but effective way to say McCain was just too old. The criticism of Palin first caused Republicans to rally around her -- with her image of a hockey mom = pitbull with lipstick -- selling well to the masses. However, her remarks started to seem too shallow on the issues, At that point, we started to wonder whether our blind faith in the party may have been misplaced. The attacks on Palin from the liberals -- coupled with blind backing of Palin from the conservatives -- simply were distractions. What distressed me the most was that no one was talking to the issues -- the economy. McCain just kept saying Obama's plan was bad and his was good. McCain -- and Bush -- simply did not get his point across that the Democrats started the mess and were trying to shift the blame to the Republicans. Obama glibly sidestepped things while pointing to his "plan" -- which is being revised even as we speak after the election results. In his acceptance speech, Obama alluded to things not happening all at once -- meaning that the reality is that the humongous national debt may not make his vaunted programs possible ... and taking the electorate during a recession is suicide.  On the other issues of the right-to-life versus abortion issues, no one touched it. The top issue was the economy with the Iraq War a distant second. There are a gamut of positions and all shades of gray but no one wanted to touch on them. Instead, all the McCain campaign sounded like was we are not Democrats -- and we are not like Bush. No one wanted to touch on the touchy subjects. The Republican strategists made a big mistake in NOT defining how McCain-Palin were different from Obama-Biden. In their lust for the Hillary Clinton vote, they chose to blur the differences...and not touch on issues that define what a conservative is. As I have said before, a conservative is basically a person who saves his money and pays as he goes. A liberal borrows your money (tax) to pay for his things as he goes. Obama wants to tax EVERYONE -- and spread the wealth. Conservatives believe in a strong national defense and foreign policy, responsible and pro-growth fiscal policy, rich and grounded family and moral values. This was not hammered home. Instead all McCain did was attack Obama personally -- instead of espousing the values of conservatism. He didn't need to push for the far right values -- but simply the middle of the road values. He didn't However, with the loss, we do have to say that Obama will be our President for the next four years. However, we remember the defeat of our hero, Ronald Reagan, who lost his heated primary battle in 1976 to Gerald Ford. He told his supporters that the cause indeed does go on. "It's just one battle in a long war and it will go on as long as we all live," Reagan said. He then quoted Sir Andrew Barton, who in his St. Barton's Ode make have taken a thing or two from Leonidas: I will lay me down and bleed a while.The next day, Reagan spoke to his campaign staff. "Sure, there's a disappointment in what happened, but the cause goes on," he said. "Don't get cynical. Look at yourselves and what you were willing to do, and recognize that there are millions and millions of Americans out there that want what you want, that want it to be as we do, who want it to be that Shining City on a Hill." Reagan made me proud to be an American. Obama does not ... though many want to rally round his historic election as the first black American President as a milestone in the development of the American culture. However, he still has not answered many questions about himself -- and it may be too late IF we find out that the American people were snookered with the same fast-talking salesmanship of Bill Clinton. I am not impressed by his rhetoric -- that leaves me feeling like I've just talked to a con-artist with pearly shark teeth blinding me. While he's talking, I'm nodding my head, but after he's finished, I always say, "What was it that he just said." He uses the black gospel style of preaching -- ala Rev. Wright -- when it suits him -- but switched to a cool debate style in the campaign. However, in his acceptance speech he again reverted to his gospel style with repetitions to pound his point home. But what was Obama's points? He made a lot of people feel good. He inspired a lot of young folks with his "Yes, we can" speeches. But has anyone really discussed what it is that they were suppposed to change? How were they going to change things? When will they see the changes? Who is going to implement these changes? BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, how much are these changes going to cost -- and WHO is going to pay for them and WHERE is the money coming from? What will be the impacts of these changes? I am not impressed with Obama.  Remember that there was only a 7 million difference between Obama and McCain. AND the truth is that only 22 percent of the eligible voters turned out to elect Obama -- and slightly less for McCain. This means that about 70 percent of the eligible voters just stayed home and allowed Obama to win by default. The problem was the voters were given the choice of two evils -- and many simply rejected both. The final electoral vote on Election Day was: Obama 349 -- McCain 163 (538 total electoral votes: Missouri (11) (McCain) and North Carolina (15) (Obama) were not final). However, not the popular vote: Obama: 52% (62,450,831) -- McCain: 47% (55,393,549). This was not a runaway mandate -- but Obama has convinced America that it was -- because the Democrats controlled the Congress. With a Democratic Congress and Democratic President, the impression is that they can do exactly as they please. Time will tell.  Candidates (3 Nov 2008) That McCain's campaign kept shooting itself in the foot with wrong choices in strategy only lends more credence to the profound need to reshape the Republican party. Instead of moving to solid conservatism, he moved towards the moderate stance. Mistake upon mistake compounded themselves. Most view Palin as the biggest mistake -- but I'm not convinced that the hype is what did her in. Her popularity in rallying the followers around McCain is noteworthy -- but her tactics as laid out by the McCain camp didn't sit well with me. Also her blunders in articulating her stance on abortion with Katie Courric didn't help. But Palin made a valid point. Her first interview did NOT go well and Palin wanted to pull the plug. Instead, the campaign wanted her to continue -- and then Courric literally set Palin up with trick questions to improve her flagging ratings -- and the threat that her job would be terminated in April. (NOTE: After the Palin interview, Courric salvaged her job -- though her ratings only went up a little and her news anchor still was at the bottom of the ratings.). However, even after the election was over Palin was being accused of many things and hounded in the liberal press. What I saw was Palin whose presence energized the party -- though Collin Powell called in "polarizing" the party -- and though rather green to national politics was a solid politician with good instincts. However, what I also saw was aides from the McCain campaign who were incompetent. For example a prank call got through to Palin and broadcast on the radio -- something that should never have happened. Other instances probably led up to her rebelling completely against her "handlers." Her instincts as a campaigner was right -- but her aides were the ones who were not competent. How will I be able to help? I can forsee my fascination with the internet becoming more involved in building the Republican infrastructure -- like the Democrats did -- to spread the conservative message. The point is that there is a large percentage of Americans who consider themselves conservatives -- about 40 percent -- while only about 30 percent look at themselves as liberals. McCain's strategy tried to attract the Hillary Clinton liberals by moving their commitment left -- while espousing ideals of the right. The row ahead will be a hard one to hoe. It will take more commitment from me than I have done before -- now that I see that America is headed to the left. The thing is that we need to start now to help build the Republican INTERNET infrastructure up to the same level as the Democrats. We need to be the eyes/ears/noses of the right to sniff out deceptions and faults -- and broadcasting them to the world. The Huffington Post (an internet based news) suddenly got credibility during this campaign. We need to find an internet paper that conservatives can support -- and feed it information from the grassroots level. The 47 percent of Americans who feared the move to the left needs to have a network where they can react via text messaging at a moments notice. We need to build up a cadre of conservatives who will sign on to become the "soldiers" of their cause. We need to be able to turn every single conservative into a part-time reporter for the Huffington Post. The Democrats and Obama need to be on notice that they are being watched like a hawk. Just as the "leak" of the illegal alien status of Obama's aunt caused the Democrats to scream foul -- when in truth it was a sham that the mainstream media had NOT done any investigative reporting and only the London Times (England) had the guts to do their homework. The Italian Vanity Fair found Obama's half-brother living in the slums of Kenya. The Republicans need to find an INTERNET newspaper that can become the rallying point for conservatives -- while turning conservatives into part-time reporters nationwide. BUT WHAT IS THE CAUSE? The Republicans need to sit down and redefine its key elements. Even now after the campaign is over, I do not really have a clue as to what the Republicans of 2008 stands for. I understand conservativism -- but I do NOT understand the Republican Party stance. The "party platform" is a dried out board of scribbles that mean nothing to the average Joe the Plumber on the street. The Republicans need to define their key DIFFERENCES from the Obama camp of liberals to dramatically illustrate how modern conservatives are different. Then they have to form action groups at the grass roots level to make people aware of the differences between the Republican and Democrats.  According to the Wall Street Journal on 6 Nov, "The Republican Party begins debating its future Thursday (6 Nov) in Virginia, where a group of leading conservatives will meet to discuss how to rebuild their movement. Party governors continue the conversation at a meeting next week in Miami. Thus begins a battle for the soul of a party whose coalition has been fractured by war and economic turmoil after nearly three decades of electoral success. Key pieces of the longstanding Republican coalition of economic and social conservatives, culture-war soldiers and national-security hawks showed severe stress fractures during the long election, and leaders from different wings are now vying for party leadership. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin carries the mantle of economic populism and blue-collar voters, many of whom are committed social conservatives. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has emerged as a spokesman for economic conservatives focused on small government and low taxes. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal remain popular as rising stars. Interesting StatisticsProfessor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota , points out some interesting facts concerning the Presidential election:
 Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Republican won by Republicans was mostly the&nb sp; land owned by the taxpaying citizens of the country. Democrat territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off various forms of government welfare. Professor Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the"complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase. If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years Who elected Barack Obama?Conservative voters became a key bloc (Dec 2008) The most underreported story of the election is that conservative voters provided the margin of victory for President-elect Barack Obama - a finding that has dramatic implications for both Democrats and Republicans. Normally winning with impressive margins in the popular vote and Electoral College would translate into a governing mandate. Mr. Obama's victory was not an ideological one, however. The electorate is almost exactly as center-right as it was in 2004. The Bush 2004 voters who pushed Mr. Obama over the top rejected President Bush's policies and the GOP, but not conservative principles. When the Democrats take control of both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue in January for the first time in 14 years, maintaining their majority requires that they keep happy the right-tilting voters who changed party support without a corresponding change in belief systems. Even if Democrats hew to a centrist agenda, however, Republicans can win back the disaffected former supporters-but only by convincing the public that they are the true stewards of conservatism. Voters backed the candidate who ran on change, but they haven't much changed their views of the public sector. On the fundamental question about the role government should play in society, voters shifted only slightly from four years ago. In 2004, a 49 percent-46 percent plurality of exit poll respondents said the government should not "do more to solve problems." In the immediate aftermath of the meltdown on Wall Street that the media blamed on free markets run amok, a slim majority of voters, 51 percent, thought the government should do more. Though the lion's share of Mr. Obama's voters wanted more activist government, over one-fifth of his supporters said that the government is already "doing too much." This smaller group cannot be forgotten as Mr. Obama and his advisors weigh their options for everything from financial industry regulations to an automaker bailout. Defying conventional wisdom, Mr. Obama's vaunted ground game only boosted liberal and youth turnout by one percent each of the total electorate. A detailed examination of exit polling suggests that the Democrat's victory primarily was due to three key factors: 1) some conservatives stayed home, 2) many more conservatives who used to consider themselves Republicans no longer do, and 3) almost one-fifth of Bush 2004 voters chose Mr. Obama, with the biggest defectors being conservative-leaning independents, such as "Security Moms" and Catholics. According to an election analysis conducted by American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate, turnout measured by the percent of eligible voters who cast ballots increased by roughly one percent over 2004. Despite the addition of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, "many culturally conservative Republicans still did not see him as one of their own and stayed home," explained Curtis Gans, lead author of the study. He also cited dampened GOP enthusiasm and belief in an inevitable Obama landslide as contributing factors leading to lower conservative turnout. Most conservatives did show up on Election Day, but a significant number voted Democrat. Mr. Obama picked up one-third more conservative voters than Sen. John Kerry, at 20 percent. Self-identified conservatives in exit polling comprised 34 percent of voters in both 2004 and 2008, yet the number who called themselves Republican dropped from 37 percent to 32 percent. In an evenly split nation, the GOP losing 14 percent of its base overwhelmed almost everything else. On statewide ballot initiatives, voters supported gay marriage bans in Arizona, Florida and California. In Florida, Amendment 2 needed to clear the 60 percent threshold the state sets for amending the constitution, and the measure garnered 62 percent support. McCain lost Florida, 51 percent to 49 percent. Even on what is presumed to be safe liberal territory, the environment, the electorate did not tilt leftward. As reported on the Wall Street Journal Web site, "Among five major energy and environmental ballot initiatives from California to Missouri, all but one were voted down." The one that passed, Proposition C in Missouri, encountered no serious opposition. The ideological composition of the electorate, in fact, was almost identical to 2004. Liberals went from 21 percent in 2004 to 22 percent, and moderates were 45 percent four years ago versus 44 percent. Democrats enjoyed a small uptick in voters who label themselves Democrats, from 37 percent to 39 percent. So while Democrats added some new adherents, most of their new seven-point margin in party ID owes to an exodus from the GOP. Two key right-leaning constituencies deserted Republicans: security moms and Catholics. Though the media has made the "gender gap" a household term, the more apt classification was a "marriage gap." Single women were heavily Democrat, and married women leaned Republican. "Security Moms" became the label for married mothers attracted to the hawkishness of the GOP. Almost 30 percent of the women who voted in this election were married with kids, and Mr. Obama won them 51 percent-47 percent. The same exit poll question was not asked four years ago, but most estimates are that Mr. Bush won that group handily in 2004. The demographic has become a key part of the GOP coalition. Highly respected Republican strategist Michael Meyers, president of TargetPoint Consulting, consulted the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and the Republican National Committee and he was among the pioneers of micro-targeting and crafting strategies to reach groups such as Security Moms. He says bluntly, "We cannot win without winning married moms. Period." Mr. McCain also lost ground among religious voters, but not in the manner predicted. Confounding expectations from this spring, Mr. McCain performed just as well with white evangelical Christians as Mr. Bush did in 2004. Catholic voters, however, shifted in large numbers for Mr. Obama. Mr. Bush won the historically Democratic constituency 52 percent-47 percent four years ago. He did this by winning weekly church-going Catholics by a robust 56 percent-43 percent, while essentially splitting Catholics who attend church less often or not at all. Mr. McCain, on the other hand, roughly split weekly church-going Catholics with Mr. Obama, and trailed badly among less devout Catholics, 58-40 percent. Falling from Mr. Bush's 44 percent of the Latino vote to 31 percent clearly hurt Mr. McCain's figures in the Catholic vote. But that drop alone could not account for much more than half of the loss he experienced overall among Catholics. The bulk of the remaining Catholic voters that switched from Mr. Bush in 2004 to Mr. Obama this year likely came from cultural conservatives, including so-called values voters and Reagan Democrats. Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis, a Catholic who is running for the chairmanship of the RNC, is mounting his campaign on a promise to return the party to its conservative roots. He believes that Republican failures to adhere to conservative principles opened the door for Mr. Obama's victory. "President-elect Obama seized on this opportunity and won many Americans to his side by promising to deliver on our broken promises," Mr. Anuzis said in an interview. "Voters expect tax cuts, they expect spending restraint, they expect strong national security, they expect him to respect this nation's values and traditions and they expect him to restore our economic strength and not strangle it with excessive regulations and government involvement." In perhaps his most honest moment of the campaign, Mr. Obama in June told the New York Times, "I am like a Rorschach test." Unlike most politicians who seek to define themselves sharply, Mr. Obama proudly defined himself as whatever different voters wanted him to be. Accomplishing this feat in a heated election was a tall order, but in governing, it becomes nearly impossible. In policy battles, there are winners and losers because lines are drawn, and sides must be taken. For Mr. Obama to maintain the coalition that elected him, he needs to come down on the right side of that line more often than most in his party would like. (Source: Washington Times: Joel Mowbray.) Return to Foreign Policy of a Republic (Nov 2008) The following is an article by Doug Bandow speaks of the same condition that I ranted on above.
The Republican Party and the Internet GenerationThe following is from an article by Rick Moran. "First, get one nationally syndicated talk show host who is known as the "Father of Blogging." Then get three very smart, very tech savvy young conservatives who are already looking at ways to revolutionize the Republican party. Put them on the air at the same time and you get a fascinating discussion about what the future might hold for Republicans if they can make the necessary reforms to become competitive with Obama's Democratic machine. First, what we're up against. This from a transcript of Hugh Hewitt's show from 19 Nov where the talk show host interviewed Pat Ruffini, David All, and Rob Neppell."Pat Ruffini: Yes. Very clearly...it's very clearly the case. Obama is not President-elect without the internet. He would not have been the nominee without the internet. And had we had a much closer race in the general election, two, three, four points, maybe, had we not maybe had this economic crisis crop up, the internet and the youth vote would have been the deciding factor in the general election as well. He's got a network of ten million people on e-mail that are now going to be called upon to pass his agenda. So every member of Congress can expect at a minimum a couple thousand phone calls when one of his bills comes up, because he's built this huge network that he's now going to unleash on passing his policy agenda. Beyond that, he went into cell phones numbers, you know, announced his vice presidential pick by cell phone. He's got a database of six to eight million cell phone numbers. Some think, I would be surprised if Republicans have a database of six to eight thousand cell phone numbers. So that is a huge, those are huge numbers, huge advantages, and it's going to have to be, I think our number one priority tactically, like David said, we're going to have a rich, vibrant debate about what our message should be. But I think everybody...and there is going to be plenty of disagreement on that. But I think everybody can agree, in this particular area, in technology, is something we need to get serious about fast. This huge advantage just didn't appear overnight. Much can be attributed to the way that the left side of the internet developed. They built online communities and email lists that eventually morphed into a fundraising apparatus and a cadre of political activists. Hugh Hewitt has two specific ideas of where to start the reform process: Hugh Hewitt: Number one, I believe the RNC ought to establish an approved vendor list, that is people who actually know what they're doing in the world of online political campaigning. And then number two, the NRSC and the NRCC ought to announce that unless and until a candidate has retained someone from that list, they will not get a dollar of their funds, because they're not serious. Rob Neppell, who developed the Porkbusters program, had this response: Neppell: I think they're great. I'll go you one better on your first idea for an approved vendor list. I mean frankly, I'd just like to see a vendor list. I don't think we've done enough so far to really coordinate amongst ourselves, certainly not anything from any central authority, to really just establish a map of the territory of who is doing what, who has what skills, what companies are conservative-friendly, so to speak, or in this space with an ideological bent that are on the conservative team. So number one, I'd just like to see that start. Number two, I'd add to your idea in that one idea I've suggested for, you know, actually several years now is having some kind of a conservative strike team that would be made up of people like Patrick and David and myself who could come in and talk to a campaign and say okay, here's our bag of tricks. You know, David, here's what he's got, these are the kinds of things he can do, this is what I can do, this is what Patrick can do, and here is the tool kit of all the various offerings that we can bring to the table for your candidate, you know, online in a box. And that's never going to be one size fits all, but having some kind of a consistent review process, and really a QA check that would be provided by a small team of folks like us, I think would go a long way to just getting a baseline of understanding and competence out across consistently with campaigns. (Source: American Thinker.) Obama Cult -- Bleak Future for America? (Nov 2008)The following article is what I have been talking about in this whole page. Obama has been forming a "cult" -- in the sense that they parrot the same mindless sound-bytes that Obama has used ceaselessly in his campaign. The problem we have with Obama is that his "Yes, we can" slogan is nice but what does it mean? "Change"? What change? The problem with Obama is that we never heard the grist of the issues during his campaign -- and the Republicans never challenged him. In the end, we have a President-elect who we know very little about -- and much less about the programs that he wanted to "change." He has surrounded himself with what we fear are left-wing radical progressives wearing the garb of intelligensia -- the academians who have been waiting for forty years for their "star child" to appear. We fear that Obama has sold his soul to this group of respected intelligensia -- who now feel that they finally have an avenue to implement their far-left radical plans for America -- the theme of "social justice" in education, health care, taxation and everything in between. However, unlike the author, we don't believe -- and cannot believe -- that the US has started its descent into Third World status.
Republicans steal Barack Obama's internet campaigning tricks (Sep 2009) Erik Telford remembers all too vividly the dark cloud hanging over him on 5 November 2008, the day after Barack Obama was elected president. For the internet strategist at the rightwing campaign group Americans for Prosperity, election night was a double disaster. Not only had Obama won the votes, he had outwitted his Republican opponents in his use of new media tricks such as email recruiting and social networking. "The left was far ahead of us. The efforts that Obama put into internet campaigning and what he accomplished were extraordinary," Telford says. That cloud hung over the conservative movement for many weeks. A sense of crisis set in, he recalls, with bloggers, strategists and Republican politicians scrambling in different directions. "There was a real lack of leadership, a lot of confusion." But then, almost imperceptibly, something started to happen. Telford noticed Google groups popping up, listserves on which people would send angry emails back and forth. The anger was stimulated by Obama's $800bn stimulus package that was introduced five days into his presidency. With very little leadership, the Google groups began to co-ordinate their response. People took on the onerous job of poring over the bill's hundreds of pages of small print in search of wasteful spending, following the Wikipedia model of crowd-sourcing. They began to uncover items that looked suspicious or ridiculous: electric golf carts, snow machines, a crime museum in Las Vegas. They passed the examples on to mainstream media outlets, notably the new face of the right, snake-tongued Glenn Beck of Rupert Murdoch's Fox News channel, who used it as ammunition to attack the young administration. The anger grew. When Americans for Prosperity put up its own petition against the bill on its website, it had 500,000 signatures within days. "It was a huge wake-up call to all of us," Telford says. "On the right, people had known new media was important but they were still hesitant about it. After the stimulus experience, no one was left in any doubt about its power." Less than eight months later, the seed planted in those anti-Obama Google groups has burst into flower on the streets of Washington. Tens – or even perhaps hundreds – of thousands of livid demonstrators filled the capital, brandishing banners saying "Don't tread on me!" and "Obamunism" – a reference to the president's perceived socialist or even communist tendencies. "Liar! Liar!"they shouted, echoing the outburst of a Republican congressman to Obama's face last week. The noise of that startling crowd could be heard rumbling on throughout this week. Democrats rushed to dismiss the display of rightwing force as the work of mavericks and extremists. Jimmy Carter upped the ante by suggesting the vitriol was racist: many people in America, he said, believed a black man should not be president. For Telford, though, dismissing the eruption as extremist or racist was to miss the point. For him, the 9/12 rally marked the moment at which conservative America finally embraced the new world and recovered its confidence. He believes the movement is now close to catching up with the Democrats in terms of internet savviness; in some ways he contends it has even surpassed them, particularly on Twitter, where much of the heavy lifting behind the so-called "tea parties" against Obama's tax and other policies is being done. Matt Kibbe, who heads FreedomWorks, a national conservative group that led the push behind last Saturday's rally, goes further. He says that the movement has stolen from Obama the techniques he used to such effect last year and is now redeploying them as a stick with which to beat the president. When Obama beat Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, FreedomWorks studied how he did it and then copied him. They set up a ning site, a Facebook-like platform that allows members to talk to each other without having to go through the parent body. The result was explosive. FreedomWorks now has more than 800,000 members who largely organise and fund themselves; all the group itself does is arrange permits for demonstrations and advise on logistics. The phenomenon has steadily built in scale and force, starting with the first tea party protest on 27 February, then a nationwide tea party against taxes championed by Fox News on 15 April and on to the summer's town hall meetings and last Saturday's rally against Obama's healthcare reforms. A plethora of groups have jumped on board, with exotic names such as Tea Party Patriots, Grassfire, Conservatives for Patients' Rights, 60 plus, all loosely working together, with FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity probably the leading partners. Both groups are proud of their internet-fuelled achievements over the past few months. But there is another, more traditional, layer to their work which they are less prone to brag about — the powerful individuals and corporations that bankroll them. FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity are sister groups who came from the same parent body — a campaign called Citizens for Sound Economy, which split in two in 2004. It was set up by one of America's richest men, David Koch, an oil tycoon who has funded rightwing causes for decades. FreedomWorks receives funding from the tobacco conglomerate Philip Morris, as well as from Richard Scaife, another business tycoon, who for years helped fund dirt-digging investigations into Bill Clinton. Local branches of Americans for Prosperity have also received tobacco money; the group has opposed smoke-free workplace laws and cigarette taxes. In the environmental area, too, there has been an affinity between the groups and the corporate interests that back them. ExxonMobil was a sponsor of Citizens for Sound Economy, and both FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity have campaigned vigorously against Obama's plans to reduce CO2 emissions through a cap and trade scheme, working closely with the American Petroleum Institute. "This is same old, same old," says John Stauber of the Centre for Media and Democracy, which investigates corporate lobbying. "Yes there are some new names and new causes, but these anti-government front groups have been around for a long time." The question is: what do the newly emboldened rightwing incubators want? Are they merely concerned with specific objectives such as stopping health reform and cap and trade, or is there a larger, more sinister motive? Liberal critics such as Chris Harris of the monitoring campaign MediaMatters have no doubts. "Legally, groups like FreedomWorks cannot say they are out to unseat Obama. But there's no question that their aim is to topple the president." FreedomWorks insists that about four-fifths of its $8m budget this year comes from small individual donations. Kibbe interprets that as a sign of genuine pent-up anger towards spendthrift politicians in Washington of both parties, and believes it can be traced back to George Bush's bailout of the banks. He admits that the self-propelled uprising has allowed some extremists to join the crowd, but says that groups like his are now trying to devise ways to silence the most egregious ones. "When you have thousands of people gathering in one space, you are always going to have a few nutty people show up." Just how far the movement can go to lift the Republican party out of its doldrums and re-energise it in Congress will become clear next year with the first major electoral test of the Obama presidency: the mid-term elections. According to Peter Brown, a pollster at Quinnipiac University, Republicans tend to turn out in higher numbers in off-year elections, which makes the tea parties highly relevant. "Enthusiasm matters: the more angry people are, the more likely they are to vote. All this activism and demonstrating is not necessarily the end for Obama, but it's certainly not good news." The historical parallel on everybody's mind is 1994, when Clinton's young presidency was bloodied by Republicans taking over the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. It is perhaps no coincidence that the most popular conservative on Twitter, with almost a million followers, is Newt Gingrich, architect of that same revolution. All of which makes Kibbe think that those Democrats who try to pigeonhole the tea parties as a crank phenomenon are playing into the anti-Obama movement's hands. "The Democrats who want to marginalise this movement are making a big mistake. They are insulting the people who they should be courting, and every time they do that our numbers seem to double in size." (Source: Guardian UK.) 'Obamamania' Cooling Off Fast Among Young (Sep 2009) Young Americans showed their collective power when they helped vote President Obama into office. Inspired by his message of "change," they knocked on doors, spread flyers, voted for him by a 2-1 margin, and partied like rock-the-vote stars when he won. Since the election, though, that fervor has died down _ noticeably. And while young people remain the president's most loyal supporters in opinion polls, a lot of people are wondering why that age group isn't doing more to build upon their newfound reputation as political influencers. "It's one thing to get excited about a presidential candidate. It's another thing to become a responsible citizen," says Jennifer Donahue, political director for the New Hampshire Institute Of Politics. She and other political analysts thinks they have yet to prove themselves. Professors and students themselves also are noticing the quiet on college campuses, which were hotbeds for "Obamamania" during the campaign. "They're supportive, but in a bystander kind of way," says Laura Katz Olson, a political science professor at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Erin Carroll, a 19-year-old sophomore at LaSalle University in Philadelphia, blames the lack of engagement on her generation's short attention span. They want change _ right now, she says _ and haven't gotten it. "I feel like everybody walks around with their cell phone and their laptops. We feel like we need everything immediately. So that's what we've become accustomed to," Carroll says. "We're the 'me-me-me' generation." It's not just on college campuses. Russ Marshalek, a 27-year-old professional in Astoria, N.Y., observes his 20-something peers sitting back and letting the president do the work for them. "Rather than allow him to speak FOR us, we need to be inspired BY him, and volunteer in our communities, speak our minds, write, read, think, act," says Marshalek, a social media director who works with small businesses. Such is the fate of Generation Y, as they're known, both praised for their willingness to volunteer but also maligned as the "entitlement generation" _ eager to help but unsure how to deal with tumultuous times that are a first for many of them. On top of that, many of their parents are baby boomers who witnessed, and participated in, the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests that followed John F. Kennedy's death. That's a lot to live up to. But to be fair, says political scientist Mike Wagner says, it's tough for young people _ or any American, for that matter _ to know how to get involved in issues with solutions that aren't always so clear-cut. Volunteering for a candidate? Fairly easy to do. Helping solve some of the toughest issues to face our nation, from health care reform to a deep-seated financial crisis? Not so much. "These aren't easy issues for young people. It's not 'Should we go to war in Iraq?' or 'Should gay marriage be legalized?'" says Wagner, an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska. He sees a lot of young people getting lost in the details, or bored by them. Or like a lot of us, they're more focused on their own worries, such as getting a job or paying off mountains of student loans. Some say the president also could be doing more to engage this demographic that was so key to his early success. "I think young people do have clout, and I think it's a mistake if he doesn't use them," says Mary Ellen Balchunis, a political science professor at LaSalle University, who counts Carroll among her students. Balchunis witnessed the fervor on campus during the campaign _ the "dorm storming," when students persuaded their peers to go to rallies and eventually to the polls. She also recalls how students danced in the streets with nearby neighborhood residents after Obama won. Certainly, health care was on their priority list then, and remains so. An AP-GfK poll conducted earlier this month found that two-thirds of 18- to 29-year-olds rated such reform as "very" or "extremely" important. So far, though, the proposed health care overhauls have failed win the support of a good number of them. Only about half of them said they approved of the way the president was handling health care and only 38 percent said they supported health care plans being discussed in Congress. Balchunis thinks the president could boost youth support on these and other issues _ and get them influencing their parents, as they did in the election _ if he mobilized and spoke directly to them, the way he did during the campaign. He could for instance, make use of the well-organized student groups that campaigned for him to push the issues of the day. If he doesn't, Balchunis thinks that also could have negative ramifications for Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections, because those young voters will lose interest and won't bother to show up at the polls. That's what happened, she says, after her own young generation was initially excited about Bill Clinton when he was first elected president in 1992. Then, just two years later, Democrats lost control of Congress. Letdown is inevitable to a point, says James Emmett, an unemployed recent college graduate. "Of course I'm not as hopeful because everyone's been exhausted, absorbed by the economic realities, from man on the street to Congressman," says the 23-year-old artist who's living with his parents on Long Island, N.Y., while he looks for work. But, he adds, the president needs to "trust that we're still with him, build upon his community of support." Certainly, the ugliness of the political process has turned off some young people, and made even some of the president's most ardent supporters antsy. "The only thing that has changed in my mind is the sense of urgency I feel for the president to do what he came to Washington to do," says Sam An, a 20-year-old student and president of the Young Democrats group at the St. Louis College of Pharmacy. "I feel that if he got some substantial things accomplished, it might quell the heated political discourse." That's tough to do in a system that was set up to encourage legislative gridlock, even if it doesn't fit well with young people's hunger for change, says Joshua Dyck an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo. "Gridlock is as American as apple pie," Dyck says. "The question is whether getting excited about an election and then being exposed to the letdown, the gridlock and compromise, whether that will lead to an erosion of the voter turnout gains we saw in 2008." For her part, Jessica Sullivan, a senior at Elmhurst College in suburban Chicago, remains hopeful about the president, about her generation, and about her own ability to stay inspired and give back. "I have to be," says the 22-year-old who's doing her student teaching this fall. "I'm about to walk out of college in February with a degree in education." And if it wasn't so in college, the real world _ health care, economy, all of it _ is about to get very real. (Source: NewsMax.) OBAMA TRANSITION TEAMObama and the Internet Generation (Nov 2008)The Obama transition team has established www.change.gov, the first-ever Web site dedicated to providing information regarding the transition between one presidential administration and another. This effort is only the latest step to use technology to inform, involve and motivate his supporters, and is reminiscent of several ways Obama revolutionized the ground game in presidential politics. This simply is an extension of his campaign website at BarackObama.com which is now shutting down. One of its innovations was the use of text messaging. On the site one could sign up atVisitors to the "Office of the President-Elect," as the site is called, can share their ideas for running the country and apply for jobs with the Obama transition and administration. The site went up on Nov. 5, the day after the election, and Obama campaign staff and volunteers, many of whom have been working full-time for the campaign for the past two years, and others seeking work with the administration immediately began logging on to apply for jobs. The site advises that applying online is the fastest way to get a position. Applicants are told that if they fill out a short form with their name, location and most recent employer, they will get an email in a few days with a more lengthy online application. "If and when you are considered for a specific position, you will be asked to fill out additional forms, including financial disclosures, and be subject to other reviews which may include FBI background checks," the site advises.Now with the campaign site BarackObama.com shutting down, it appears that the www.change.gov site will be the transitional website until Obama is inaugurated on 20 Jan 2009. As Obama has said in his first press conference, there is only ONE President and he can't use the government resources yet. Thus until then this will be his Press Secretary's office -- as his transition staff settles into the General Services Administration building set aside specifically for the transition staff in Washington, DC. However, looking past the inauguration, this site would be ideally suited to continue to keep his supporters attuned to his campaign promises progress to keep them involved. YES, WE CAN!!! The emphasis is on "WE" ... and try to imagine how powerful an IMMEDIATE email campaign from millions of supporters to any senator/representative who opposes Obama legislation could be. The ramifications of this site are far reaching. The Daily Press Briefings at the White House will give the United States OFFICIAL policy from the US President Obama to the world -- but a site like this would be a direct link from Obama to his supporters in affecting progressive change. Then in four years, Obama will have a ready-made support organization (NOT controlled by the Democratic Party) -- complete with personal contact phone numbers -- to place his reelection campaign into effect. Obama won the nomination through the Democratic caucuses -- the grass-roots function which he worked with finesse. He knows intimately where his power base is. He won the election through a massive outpouring of support from minorities and young voters. He most certainly will not want to let them drift away in the next four years -- and the simple text messaging format is the perfect tool to keep in touch. For those that are iPhone owners, there is software "Obama '08" to organize telephone contacts used to spread the word about Obama's campaign. Similarly, Obama supporters who preferred to use a laptop or desktop PC could download software which literally turned their home computer and home telephone into a campaign phone bank. Download the software for iPhone or iPod HERE. This software was available during the election campaign and may have been the key to instantaneous information dissemination -- followed by forwarding nationwide via partisan blogs. Robo-calling and press-release formats to supporters may have become outdated. Now that the campaign is over, this asset is just too darn valuable to simply dispense with. It most assuredly will somehow be retained to keep Obama's loyal following informed on the "changes" that are taking place -- part of the "Yes, we can" followup. The presidential election provided the Obama camp with the foundations required to "create change and build solidarity" with the" information and tools necessary to help deliver the change." (Source: iPhone.) Obama organized a flawless campaign -- and one element was the use of the internet and text messaging. If there is one thing about Obama that has been learned is that he will not support anything that is not cost-effective. This element is so valuable, it is a keeper -- to be nutured for four years and ready to roll out in 2012. Barack Obama, like him or not, has completely transformed the traditional approaches taken by presidential campaigns in rallying and mobilizing the vote. Four years from now, the GOP will once again have to go toe-to-toe with Barack Obama. Unless the GOP learns its lessons and moves into the 21st century, it will get clobbered again. Of course, the text messaging doesn't apply to those of us overseas, but for those Obama supporters back in the states this might be quite useful. For those that might be tempted to make parallels with the Obama internet and text messaging operations to what we've experienced in Korea -- and to what was seen most recently in the anti-US beef protests -- DON'T. Obama's people ran a well-organized, professional operation, while the NGO protest groups of Korea were disorganized without any central control over the message content. In Korea it was like shooting out the message with a shotgun. Obama's operation was like shooting out the message with sniper accuracy. They had contact telephone numbers down to the district level -- and others in the local area had their own networks. The Obama messages were all vetted to ensure their were no "slips" in accuracy during the last stages of the campaign. The iPhone contacts provided maps and directions if they wanted people at events. Organization was the key for Obama's operations -- while the NGO activist groups could only field chaos. Internet YouTube videos for Updates (Nov 2008) Connecting the White House hearth to the American home, President Franklin Roosevelt talked to people through the radio in the 1930s, with crackling broadcasts delivered near a crackling fire. John F. Kennedy in the 1960s and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s mastered television. For Obama, who built a big part of his campaign on the Internet, it's YouTube. Obama was recording a four-minute address Friday at his transition office in Chicago. It will be posted Saturday through a YouTube link on his transition Web site. And he will continue to do the videos when he takes office on Jan. 20. And he won't be the only one in his administration taking a starring role online. Transition leaders and policy advisers will also appear in videos on a regular basis, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. Other officials, such as Cabinet members, could also take part. President George W. Bush hasn't videotaped his radio addresses for online viewing as Obama plans to do, the White House said. YouTube wasn't around when Bush came into office in 2000, though podcasts of his addresses are available on iTunes, and the audio is posted on. The Saturday radio addresses were initiated by Reagan and have evolved into a weekly fixture of the presidency, accompanied by a response from the party out of power. Still, relatively few people actually hear them on the radio, and Obama is hoping to reach many more with what his transition team calls a ``multimedia opportunity.'' On the campaign trail, Obama promised to use the Internet to make his administration more open and interactive, offering a detailed look at what's going on in the White House on a given day or asking people to post comments on his legislative proposals. The transition team plans to use videos to keep people posted on developments as Obama prepares to take the oath of office on Jan. 20, Psaki said. (Source: Economic Times.) CHANGE.GOV WAIVED BY GOVERNMENT (Dec 2008) U.S. government officials approved President-elect Barack Obama's use of a "dot-gov" web domain name after initially rejecting it when a campaign transition team chief warned a waiver of the rules was necessary so that "a clear message of 'CHANGE'" could be effected. What made this extraordinary was that the request for the waiver was made on 20 OCTOBER 2008 -- before the election. Christopher P. Lu, executive director of the Obama-Biden Transition Project, wrote in a letter dated Election Day that the private campaign organization had made a request to be awarded one of the restricted "dot-gov" addresses, specifically "change.gov," according to documentation unveiled by the government-watchdog group Judicial Watch. Lu said the campaign shouldn't be bound by ordinary rules. "I am writing to request a waiver from the Internet.gov domain naming conventions as outlined in 41 CFR102-173.90 and register and assign the www.change.gov domain to this office," he wrote. "I understand that this CFR citation addresses special restrictions on the use and registration of canonical, or category, names in the Internet .gov domain space and that your office previously denied a request from the GSA Presidential Transitional Team to register this domain." He continued, "As the executive director of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Project, I believe that a clear message of 'CHANGE' is required to effect a successful presidential transition and that establishing the www.change.gov domain is a critical component of this message." On Judicial Watch's blog, the organization said the website "was illegally authorized to register as an official U.S. government domain." "When Team Obama announced its infamous change.gov website, Judicial Watch quickly filed a public records request with the agency (General Services Administration—GSA) that authorized it because the campaign clearly didn't meet the strict eligibility requirements for official government websites," Judicial Watch said. "The GSA, which manages and supports the basic functioning of federal agencies, specifically limits coveted '.gov' websites to U.S. government organizations at the federal, Native Sovereign Nation, state and local levels. These may include governmental departments and programs as well as cities and townships represented by an elected body of officials," Judicial Watch said. "The agency specifically forbids political or campaign information on any '.gov' website as well as any tax-exempt, nonprofit organization that can engage in lobbying or political campaigning," the organization said. However, "Obama's change site proudly features the Obama-Biden Transition Project, a 501c(4) organization that actively engages in lobbying and political campaigning. The website also uses Obama's favorite invented term of Office of the President-Elect, which is definitely not an official government office," Judicial Watch said. "Incredibly, the GSA caved in to Obama machine pressure and reversed its original and appropriate denial of a government domain for political use," the organization said. The World Net Daily stated the agency also came under criticism for its decision. E-mails revealed under the FOIA request showed this comment: "There's a website called www.change.gov and is being used by Barack Obama as what I believe is an inappropriate use of the .gov domain name," said one critic. "This site doesn't appear to follow the very strict guidelines you have listed and I believe it's more of a post-campaign site than should be disallowed." Said another concerned citizen: "I came across www.change.gov recently and it occurred to me that this registration may not be valid according to the guidelines set forth (in federal rules). Mr. Obama has not yet been inaugurated to the office of the president, nor has the electoral college voted yet. Furthermore the content on change.gov closely mirrors Mr. Obama's campaign site. Under these circumstances I question why this registration was approved." (Source: WND.) THE WORST NIGHTMARE: Obama Keeps His Internet Cult (Jan 2009) The worst fears that I wrote about in Nov 2008 (above) is about to come true. Obama wants to keep his internet connection to "muscle" legislation. This pressure will be applied to not only Republicans -- but also many Democrats who are starting to balk at some of the stimulus package even before Obama is inaugurated. Organizers and even Republicans say the scope of this permanent campaign structure is unprecedented for a president. People familiar with the plan say Obama’s team would use the network in part to pressure lawmakers — particularly wavering Democrats — to help him pass complex legislation on the economy, healthcare and energy… Post-Rush: Obama's message war (Mar 2009) Beginning Sunday (15 Mar), the White House will harness every part of the Democratic Party's machinery to defend President Obama's budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political, according to party strategists. A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats' message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. "We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter," the official said. David Plouffe, manager of Obama's presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign's grassroots network. The database—which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers—will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president's legislative agenda. Others involved in the planning included White House senior adviser David Axelrod; the DNC chairman, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; and DNC Executive Director Jennifer O'Malley Dillon. The plan follows the private complaints of some Democrats that Obama let the GOP get the better of him during the debate over pork in the budget bill he just signed, and growing concerns among some Democrats that charges of big spending could stick to the president. Starting this week, President Obama will be "engaging directly with Congress more, and speaking more forcefully on behalf of his budget," a top adviser said. On Sunday morning, three top White House officials will appear on network interview shows to describe brighter days ahead for the nation's economy, and make the case that the budget is an important part of the president's overall recovery plan. And officials throughout the party plan to hammer the idea that Republicans are just saying "no" to the president's budget plans without offering their own alternative. House Republicans, who released an alternative to the stimulus bill, say they'll issue their own budget proposal in the next few weeks. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in January in his opening remarks to this legislative session: "During the 111th Congress, Republicans will strive not to be the party of 'opposition,' but the party of better solutions." The Obama grassroots network—now known as Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee—has launched an e-mail pledge drive on MyBarackObama.com in which supporters sign their e-mail address to the statement: "I support President Obama's bold approach for renewing America's economy." The pledge drive was announced with a video called "Ready for the Fight." Plouffe e-mailed supporters over the weekend with a challenge labeled "The next few weeks": "In the next few weeks we'll be asking you to do some of the same things we asked of you during the campaign—talking directly to people in your communities about the President's ideas for long-term prosperity." This is not an easy message war for Democrats. Obama's budget calls for the largest deficit in U.S. history and a doubling of the national debt to $23 trillion in 2019. That is a big, juicy target for the GOP, which plans to hit this theme relentlessly all spring. Republicans were successful in making earmarks, which accounted for only a sliver of total spending, the centerpiece of debate over the omnibus spending bill. The GOP sees sky-high deficits as similarly easy to explain to the public. So the Democratic allies—the administration, congressional leaders, outside groups and the DNC—are uniting for the push. Democratic strategists explain that the message is designed to accomplish three things:
Jeremy J. Funk, communications director of Americans United for Change, said: "Building upon our previous 'Party of No' ad theme, the new spot calls out Republican leaders for also being the party devoid of ideas for getting us out of the mess they made." The ad will run Sunday through Tuesday on national cable and a mix of cable and broadcast in Washington, the group said. Kevin Smith, Boehner's communications director, replied: "If I had to defend the president's budget—which is being eviscerated by both parties because it spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much—I'd probably waste time on fictitious claims like this, too." Smith said both Boehner and the No. 2 House Republican—Whip Eric Cantor (Va.)—"presented alternative economic stimulus ideas at the White House directly to the President on the third day of his presidency." "We will continue to roll out our alternative solutions when we disagree with their plans," Smith added. "House Republicans will have our alternative budget forthcoming in the next couple weeks." A Republican Senate leadership aide responded: "It really is a silly campaign. What are we saying 'no' to? Trillions in new spending? An unpopular, earmark-laden bill that the President himself was embarrassed to sign? A new national energy tax? Releasing Gitmo terrorists into the U.S.? We'd like to thank them for reminding the American people that we are saying 'no' to those things." (Source: Politico.) Sen Rahm Emanuel Appointed as White House Chief-of-Staff (Nov 2008)Rahm Emanuel is an American politician who has been a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives since 2003, representing Illinois's 5th congressional district, which covers much of the north side of Chicago and parts of suburban Cook County. Emanuel was chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2006 elections. After the Democratic Party regained control of the House, he was elected as the next chairman of the Democratic Caucus. He is the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House, behind Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Leader Steny Hoyer and Whip Jim Clyburn. When Barack Obama asked Sen. Rahm Emanuel to be his White House chief-of-staff, few political insiders were surprised. The Chicago congressman and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus has been described in the past as a profane, hyperactive attack dog — and it is just this sort of steamrolling personality that makes him such a valuable asset. There are few people in Washington D.C. who could make for such a formidable gatekeeper to the Oval Office. Plus, with the 44th President having just four years of experience in Congress, Emanuel's lengthy political background and knowledge of individual lawmakers — not to mention his fund-raising prowess — are perfect for the job. (Source: Time.) President-elect Barack Obama's newly appointed chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, served on the board of directors of the federal mortgage firm Freddie Mac at a time when scandal was brewing at the troubled agency and the board failed to spot "red flags," according to government reports reviewed by ABCNews.com. According to a complaint later filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, Freddie Mac, known formally as the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, misreported profits by billions of dollars in order to deceive investors between the years 2000 and 2002. Emanuel was not named in the SEC complaint but the entire board was later accused by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) of having "failed in its duty to follow up on matters brought to its attention." In dealing with the nation's economic crisis, the new White House chief of staff will almost certainly be involved in discussions about the house and mortgage markets. Emanuel's spokesperson said, "As White House chief of staff he will work with President-elect Obama and his economic advisers to help ensure we protect taxpayers and homeowners." (Source: ABC News.) Critics complain that he is NOT the right person to help with fixing the economy. "So, we already learned on Friday from ABC News that Rahm Emanuel sat on the board of directors of Freddie Mac during the beginnings of the scandal, and was complicit in the board's failure to recognize "red flags" in accounting and lending practices, and that he accepted more than $50,000 in contributions from the organization. Now, we're learning that Emanuel was, just this year, the top House recipient of contributions from hedge funds, private equity firms and the larger securities/investment industry, and that he has received more money from individuals and political action committees in the securities and investment business than from any other industry since being elected to Congress in 2002 after a previous job as an investment banker." (Source: Open Secrets.) (SITE NOTE: The appointment is seen by some as a payback to the Chicago political system where one brings one's own along. Emanuel is a close friend of fellow Chicagoan David Axelrod, Chief Strategist for the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. Axelrod signed the ketuba, a Jewish marriage contract, at Emanuel's wedding, an honor that goes to a family friend or distant relative.) Obama announces transition-team staff (8 Nov 2008)President-elect Barack Obama announced Wednesday the formation of the transition team that will assemble his administration, the first step in preparing to assume the presidency on January 20, 2009. The team, incorporated as a 501(c)(4) organization called the Obama-Biden Transition Project, is headed by a triumvirate of the Illinois senator's close advisers, including John Podesta, who served as President Bill Clinton's chief of staff, Pete Rouse, Obama's chief of staff in his Senate office, and Valerie Jarrett, a family friend and counselor to Obama.Here's how you can tell the campaign is over and the transition has begun: Barack Obama's aides now wear suits and ties, their desks are in the Federal Building on 6th Street in Washington — and Clintonites are everywhere.Along with the three chairs, the Transition Project will include a team of elected officials and veteran political professionals to help steer the turnover of power. In addition to Podesta, the list includes several other former Clinton administration officials, including former energy secretary Federico Pena, former EPA administrator Carol Browner, former assistant secretary of state for Africa Susan Rice and former commerce secretary William Daley. Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who endorsed Obama during the Democratic primaries earlier this year, and who is viewed as a top contender for the position of attorney general, will also aid in the effort. While only one pure Clintonite, former White House chief of staff Podesta, has been added to the Obama inner circle, the shift in Obama's universe is not to be understated. From the top down, his early choices reflect an openness, and even a warmth, to the veterans of 1990s governance. It's a shift from a campaign that in the primary explicitly attacked President Clinton's tenure as a time of partisan strife and missed opportunities. The single most important change in that respect is at the top, and the replacement of the slim, tightly-wound campaign chief of staff, David Plouffe, 41, with the slim, tightly wound Podesta, 59.Two of Vice President-elect Joe Biden's longtime advisers, Mark Gitenstein and Ted Kaufman, will co-chair Biden's side of the transition effort. In past presidential transitions, the officials at the top of the transition team have often landed plum jobs in the president-elect's administration. Warren Christopher, who helped lead the Clinton-Gore transition effort in 1992, also served as President Clinton's first secretary of state. In addition to announcing the co-chairs and senior advisors, the organization formerly known as the Obama-Biden campaign also released a list of staff members who will be aiding the transition effort, among them many veterans of the latest election. Dan Pfeiffer, who served as the Obama-Biden campaign's communications director, will serve in that capacity on the transition team and Stephanie Cutter, who worked as Michelle Obama's chief of staff, will be the chief spokesperson for the transition effort. The chief of staff for Obama's campaign, Jim Messina, will serve in the influential role of personnel director, aided by associate personnel director Patrick Gaspard, the campaign's national political director. Thirty-one of the 47 people so far named to transition or staff posts have ties to the Clinton administration, including all but one of the members of his 12-person Transition Advisory Board and both of his White House staff choices. The full list of senior advisers and senior staff for the transition team follows.The Back End Of The Obama Transition In Six Bullet Points (31 Oct 2008)
Obama Cabinet & Staff PredictionsIn Oct 2008, the speculation was on who was going to fill the cabinet as Obama's election was viewed as inevitable. His aides included Gregory Craig, Scott Gration, Ben Rhodes, Richard Danzig, Samantha Power, Tony Lake, and Susan Rice - a team which was said to funnel through Denis McDonough, an Obama confidante, who briefs the senator. But when it comes to populating the administration's key slots, many of these aides may have to take a back seat in favour of more well-known and politically-connected candidates.Joe Biden has warned that an Obama administration would face an international challenge in its first six months. Faced with such a prospect – or at least fears of it –the advisable option is for Senator Obama to emulate George W Bush, by flanking himself with national security heavy-weights ready to stare down Iran, deal with Afghanistan, handle Russia, withdraw from Iraq and mollycoddle all the Europeans from day one. But a President Obama will also need an impressive economic team and reform-minded coalition-builders manning such portfolios as health, transport and energy. BBC asked, "But is he now re-assembling Bill Clinton's governing team from the 1990s? And will the Obama White House be similar to Mr Clinton's - but with a different man in the Oval Office?" Mr Obama's inner circle during the election campaign was full of people who had never joined the Clinton club in the 1990s. A number of other senior staffers had a background in the offices of congressional big-hitters Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt. Most of the Clinton-era political superstars had naturally gravitated towards Mrs Clinton's campaign, but the lack of Clintonites on Mr Obama's staff had the effect of polarising the two camps. And, at times, Mr Obama was less than complimentary about Mr Clinton's time in office. But now it is as a Republican Congresswoman said, "It's Back to the Future." As of 21 Nov, 31 of the 47 transition or staff posts that Mr Obama has filled so far have gone to people with ties to the Clinton administration, Politico has reported. Eleven of the 12 members of his Transition Advisory Board are Clinton veterans. Mr Obama's embrace of former Clintonites is - like his earlier eschewal - partly born of necessity. If Mr Obama wants to get advice from Democrats with White House experience, then the only resource he really has is the Clinton White House. Mr Clinton, because the preceding Democratic president had served such a long time before him, did not himself have access to the expertise that Mr Obama has at his disposal. As a result, Mr Clinton's team lacked experience - and many observers cite this as the chief reason for the perceived missteps in the early years of his administration. Mr Obama is attempting to learn from his predecessor's mistakes, and draw on the Democratic Party's well of expertise. (Source: BBC.) Top aides to the president-elect had hoped to take a methodical approach to selecting and unveiling their new team, starting with the announcements of top national security and economic players shortly after Thanksgiving. But leaks and rumors have disrupted that plan, suggesting that the "no-drama Obama" mantra famously repeated by his staff may not be as operational in Washington as it was at campaign headquarters in Chicago. Every day since Nov. 4, the president-elect's transition staff has alerted reporters of planned activities for Obama and Biden. And invariably, those events have been more or less ignored in favor of the latest leak of a selection for the Cabinet or White House staff. And unlike in a campaign, there is now simply more information to disseminate and more outlets chasing the ever-elusive scoop. Obama aides insist a nomination is certain only when it is officially announced. The caution is in part an effort to avoid problems experienced by Bill Clinton, who, after waiting six weeks to announce any Cabinet or senior staff appointments, faced a pair of embarrassing withdrawals when his first two picks for attorney general stepped aside because of vetting issues. Seeking to avoid similar episodes, Obama is asking potential appointees to fill out a 63-page questionnaire aimed at unearthing any foible, no matter how personal or seemingly trivial, that could derail a nomination or reflect poorly on the incoming president. (Source: Washington Post.) The sound from the left: not silence, but no howls of betrayal, either. Members of Obama's loyal liberal base — from the Netroots to campus liberals to Hill Democrats — are watching closely as the candidate's vague incantations of hope coalesce into cold, concrete presidential decision making. It's not a seamless transition, but so far the left seems to be cutting Obama some favorite-son slack. Then again, he's been president-elect for only two weeks — even milk bought on the day he was elected hasn't had time to go sour. The list of potential flashpoints between Obama and the left wing of his party is growing, an inevitable development given the sky-high expectations and his need to recruit experienced lieutenants to deal with immense domestic and military problems. John Aravosis, founder of the left-of-center AMERICAblog, says most liberals implicitly trust Obama more than any Democrat in recent memory — and they understand that not every compromise he makes is a sellout. (Source: The Politico.) The Fierce Urgency of Pork (Feb 2009) One of the best descriptions of the Obama Stimulus Package coupled with all else that was going wrong with the Obama nomination process was written by Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post on 6 Feb 2009. Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.WHY SO MANY TAX PROBLEMS? The problem is the Obama White House, which, fully aware of its nominees’ tax issues, decided that those problems were trivial, or that the public wouldn’t care about them, and pushed forward with nominations that in the past would have been quietly shelved. The committees have been blamed by the press and Obama blogs as the problem, but firing back, In little-noticed remarks last week, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, gave us a look inside the confirmation process. Irritated by news reports suggesting the committee had been too hard on Obama’s nominees, Grassley pointed the finger back at the White House. “I want to stress that the Finance Committee is not doing anything different now from what it has always done under the leadership of either Senator Baucus or me,” Grassley said, referring to Democratic chairman Max Baucus of Montana. “We are vetting nominees for the current administration the same way we vetted nominees for the previous administration.” “The tax issues of the nominees considered by the committee this year came to be public only because the nominees chose to proceed.” (Source: Washington Examiner.) (SITE NOTE: A pattern is emerging that Obama, Axelrod and Emanuel seem to think that the American public is nothing more than blind sheep who are not concerned about politics and only in their blind greed to get something for nothing. That is why they sent the nominees forward knowing full well of their lobbyist ties and tax problems. Perhaps in years past, but now they have aroused an angry silent majority and the rules have changed. They are going to be called on every unreasonable nomination -- and if the nominations are confirmed and later screw up, holy hell will be heaped upon Obama for his knowing the truth of these individuals beforehand.) Obama still has hundreds of vital jobs to fill -- Right below is top-level appointees are gaping holes (Apr 2009) President Barack Obama does not have time for a victory lap now that his Cabinet is finally largely in place. One level down, he faces gaping holes in the ranks he needs to fill if there is to be any hope of turning his ambitious agenda into action on health care, the environment and much more. After a spurt of recent activity that followed a problem-plagued start, Obama is outpacing George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on appointments. But Obama, like his two immediate predecessors, is bogged down in a system that has grown increasingly cumbersome over the years. And he's added tougher-than-ever background checks and ethics rules. "Obama will be faster than Clinton and Bush when all is said and done, but it's still a slow process," said New York University professor Paul Light, an expert on the federal government. "A turtle is a turtle is a turtle. The Obama administration is a pretty fast turtle, but it's no hare." (SITE NOTE: Not from the way we see it -- it has been a start that is only made possible by Obama giving exemptions to his "No Lobby" rule. His whole cabinet is filled with special interest lobbyists. The second is the tax affairs that crop up -- simply because Obama vetting standards feels that it is no big deal. They are a very tainted bunch of cabinet officials as a whole.)Stretched thin What's at stake is much more than bragging rights for how quickly Obama can fill in an organizational chart with names for undersecretary of this and deputy assistant secretary of that. These are the people Obama needs to carry out all sorts of promised initiatives and policy shifts, and to assure that the U.S. stays safe along the way. At a recent congressional hearing, for example, Rep. Sue Myrick, a North Carolina Republican, lamented that Dennis Blair, the national intelligence director, doesn't have time to manage the extra responsibilities he's been given on economics and climate change. "The ideal person for that is the principal deputy director of national intelligence," suggested Edward Maguire, the agency's outgoing inspector general. But that's one of hundreds of seats still empty. There are similar stories all across government. NASA is awaiting a new administrator as the space agency approaches a big deadline about when to retire the space shuttle fleet. At the Health and Human Services Department, where Kathleen Sebelius will be the last member of Obama's Cabinet to win confirmation by the Senate, 19 of the top 20 slots are being filled by acting career employees and the 20th is empty. This at a time when Obama is calling for sweeping changes in the way people get health care coverage. Four planned HHS nominations have been announced. At the Interior Department, Obama has yet to name a replacement to lead the Minerals Management Service, central in plans to expand renewable energy production off U.S. coasts. Obama also has not picked someone to head the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a quasi-government outfit that insures the pensions of 44 million workers and retirees — critical when bankruptcies are mounting. The corporation is being run by an acting director from the civil service. 'Neckless government' George Mason University professor James Pfiffner, an expert on presidential appointments, said that while capable civil servants can keep the government functioning, no one expects them to "go off in a new direction" to carry out a new president's policies. Light describes it as a "neckless government," representing the gap between the new Cabinet secretaries and the career employees. "You really need the president's people in there to put the push on for action," he said. All told, Obama has about 500 appointments to make that are subject to Senate confirmation, and about 3,000 positions to fill overall, Light estimates. By the White House's own count, Obama is outpacing his three predecessors at getting top-level appointees confirmed. But the numbers still are paltry, given all the vacancies to be filled. As of March 31, by an internal White House tally, Obama had 38 top-level officials confirmed, compared with 27 for George W. Bush, 37 for Clinton, and 27 for George H.W. Bush. (SITE NOTE: Just a reminder how the Democrats stabbed every one of the appointees repeatedly with unjustified claims and total nonsense. Obama's people think that conservatives have forgotten how they did it back then.)Considerably more names have been announced and are winding their way through the confirmation process. "It's very clear that the Obama personnel operation has picked up speed," Light said. "They're now loading the pipeline quite efficiently." Logjam at Senate That shifts the logjam down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Senate, which must confirm top-level appointees. Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said most of the dozens of names awaiting confirmation didn't arrive until mid-March, and that action now "hinges on Republicans agreeing to move these nominees." And Congress' two-week spring break will put action on hold temporarily until at least late April. Terry Sullivan, executive director of the White House Transition Project, said Obama appears to be on track to get 100 appointments confirmed in his first 100 days, a modern benchmark recommended by some. But he said that still means "the government is mostly empty desks for the first year," which makes it hard to push an ambitious agenda. Obama himself has bemoaned the "onerous" appointments process, taking note in particular of early trouble filling critical spots at the Treasury Department, where several potential nominees backed out after their names were announced. "A lot of people who we think are about to serve in the administration and Treasury suddenly say, 'Well, you know what? I don't want to go through some of the scrutiny, embarrassment, in addition to taking huge cuts in pay,'" Obama told CBS' "60 Minutes" late last month. Obama added to the hurdles by imposing tougher ethics rules and by increasing scrutiny of nominees' taxes after revelations that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had failed to pay $34,000 in payroll taxes and that former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, Obama's first pick for health secretary, owed $140,000 in back income taxes and interest. Darrell West, director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a think tank, said Obama was setting "Mother Teresa standards in a city with very few saints." West called the number of appointees in place "dangerously low given the enormity of the challenges we face. Obama is holding his people to such a high standard it is wounding his administration." (Source: MSNBC.) (SITE NOTE: WHO IS THIS BULLSHIT ARTIST??? The people he is appointing have tax problems that are standard. The lobbyist issue Obama has simply waived. Some of his appointments are proven to be VIOLATORS OF THE LAW. Obama's high standards? Give me a break.)  Secretary of State Prediction: Bill Richardson, Richard Lugar, Greg Craig, John Kerry, Sam Nunn, Chuck Hagel, Hillary Clinton Actual Nominee: Hillary Clinton -- Biggest baggage will be her husband's "philanthropic" work and speaking engagements overseas. Also there may be partisan politics in the confirmation process. The biggest plus for Obama is that it unifies the party but at the same time eliminates clinton as a contender in 2012. As soon as Hillary was confirmed, the Bill Clinton "transparency" on his speaking fees was slammed shut. In fact, it appears that Bill's speaking fees went up after Hillary got her job. CONFIRMED Deputy Secretary of State Prediction: Jim Steinberg, Marc Grossman, Greg Craig, Susan Rice Actual Nominee: Jim Steinberg State Department Legal Advisor Actual Nominee: Harold Koh -- Law: Outgoing Law School Dean. This position is considered a stepping stone to a Supreme Court position. Conservatives very concerned about his nomination because of his radical stance on many national concerns. Since the White House announced in late March that Koh would been nominated to the position of legal adviser to the Department of State, conservative bloggers have fiercely criticized the nomination. In particular, the debate has centered around a report — the accuracy of which is being contested — that the Koh made comments in favor of the use of Shariah law in U.S. courts at a 2007 dinner for Yale alumni. The issue with Koh is that he is a transnationalist and supports the idea that our laws and constitution should be subjugated to international law and treaties. (See Koh's "Is International Law Really State Law?," 111 Harv. L. Rev. 1824 (1998).) In the article Koh prescribes that common internation law (CIL) is federal law. The problem is that if so, it would mean that CIL would be part of the laws of the united states under the supremacy clause — it would then override state laws that conflict with CIL. Secondly it means the president would be scrutinzed by the CIL and could be held responsible for our laws and actions that conflict with CIL. Most recently, Kenneth Starr — whose report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal paved the way for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton — announced his support for Koh at a speech at the Yale Law School, arguing that the Senate should defer to the president's nominations. President Obama's nominee for State Department legal adviser could be a future Supreme Court pick. He believes U.S. law should be based on foreign precedent, and even Shariah law could find a home here. Harold Koh, a former dean of Yale Law School, is an advocate of what he calls "transnational legal process" and argues that the distinction between U.S. and international law should vanish. Koh believes laws of places like Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka should carry equal weight with the laws of Virginia and South Dakota, and that it's "appropriate for the Supreme Court to construe our Constitution in the light of foreign and international law" in its decisions. He also believes foreign law trumps U.S. law on issues such as the death penalty. Echoing Ginsburg, he has said: "The evidence strongly suggests that we do not currently pay decent respect to the opinions of humankind in our administration of the death penalty. For that reason (italics added), the death penalty should, in time, be declared in violation of the Eighth Amendment." In Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down that state's anti-sodomy laws, Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion cited a 1967 British parliamentary vote repealing laws against homosexual acts and a 1981 European Court of Human Rights decision that such laws were in violation of the European Convention on Human Rights. Agreeing with Kennedy, Koh himself filed an amicus brief in the case that argued that international and foreign court decisions compelled the Supreme Court to strike down the Texas law. Koh has also submitted an amicus brief to the Connecticut Supreme Court arguing that foreign precedents require recognition of a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. He also values the opinions of the world's imams. A New York lawyer, Steven Stein, says Koh in 2007 told the Yale Club of Greenwich that "in an appropriate case, he didn't see any reason why Shariah law would not be applied to govern a case in the United States." Koh thinks America is the bad guy on the world stage. He blasted Operation Desert Storm as a violation of international law despite the U.N.'s blessing. He supported the Sandinista move to get the International Criminal Court to force Congress to cut off funding of the Contras in Nicaragua. In 2004, after Operation Iraqi Freedom had begun, Koh lumped the U.S. in with North Korea as part of an "axis of disobedience" regarding international law. Koh says the Supreme Court is now divided between "nationalist" judges who believe our Constitution is the only one that counts and "transnationalists" who believe "we the people" should be changed to "we are the world." The next appointment will tip the balance one way or the other, Koh says. He just might be Obama's first pick to fill the next vacancy. Neil Lewis of the New York Times last year said Koh was widely regarded as a leading contender. This is the man who'll be giving Secretary of State Hillary Clinton legal advice. This is the man who could quite possibly be the next Supreme Court justice. President Obama's nominee to be the State Department's top legal adviser, Harold Koh, "is a radical transnationalist who, based on his writings and statements, aims to use international and foreign law to deprive Americans of our rights as American citizens." So argue a group of respected conservative leaders including former Attorney General Ed Meese, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and Media Research Center President Brent Bozell in a May 5 press statement. Despite repeated warnings to "Say No to Koh", Harold Koh was confirmed. This is a dark day. American sovereignty R.I.P. Say no to Koh? With a vote of 62-35, we didn't even say maybe. This is an indication that so few knew what was at stake, and once again the media abdicated its role of public servant, not Obama's slave. The future of American jurisprudence hung in the very balance. Koh opposes national self-interest. He is dogged and determined to advance his views. He believes traditional sovereignty is obsolete. He has written critically of the very notion American exceptionalism. Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh was confirmed as the State Department Legal Advisor in a roll call vote, 62-35. Koh was tapped for the job nearly four months ago, but has faced criticism from some conservatives for an alleged "transnational" approach to the law. But ranking Senate Foreign Relations Committee Republican Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) threw his support to Koh, in a statement Thursday: "After reading his answers to dozens of questions, attending his hearing in its entirety, meeting with him privately, and reviewing his writings, I believe that Dean Koh is unquestionably qualified to assume the post for which he is nominated." CONFIRMED Attorney General Prediction: Patrick Fitzgerald, Janet Napolitano, Eric Holder, Hillary Clinton, Artur Davis, Deval Patrick Actual Nominee: Eric Holder -- Black, former asst Attny Gen under Clinton, all the right credentials. Only weak spot may be his involvement in the Clinton departure pardon of Marc Rich -- whose wife made a generous donation to the Clinton library after the pardon came through. However, another pardon may jump up to bite him. In his role as Deputy Attorney General, all clemency and pardon requests came through his office. FALN is a Puerto Rican separatist group that was active in the US during the 70's and 80's, setting off 150 bombs targeting government installations. Arrested in the early 80's, the 16 terrorists refused to take part in their own trial, calling the US government "illegitimate." In the 90's, a group calling itself "Ofensiva ’92" began to petition the government for clemency. They didn't get very far until Holder met with them in 1997, telling them it would help their case if the terrorists wrote letter to the Justice Department expressing remorse for their crimes. Eventually, the letters arrived - each one exactly the same as the next. This transparent ploy evidently impressed Holder who began to shepard the clemency request through the Justice Department. Clinton justified his decision saying that the terrorists had served enough time already. Shortly after the decision to grant the terrorists clemency, a Justice Department report stated that the FALN posed "an ongoing threat" and Janet Reno said that their impending release from prison would "increase the present threat of terrorism." Holder denies that Reno was talking about the 16 terrorists he had labored for two years to spring them from jail. (Source: American Thinker.) The fact that Holder is black confirms conservative worries that Obama is bent on enforcing his "social justice" philosophy -- but no one will say it aloud. NRA will be anti-Holder as he backed Janet Reno's 2nd Amendment challenge. CONFIRMED Some question as to whether he may have to recuse himself from overseeing any Illinois corruption investigations by investigator Fitzpatrick because of his Illinois political background. Before Eric Holder was President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be attorney general, he was Gov. Blagojevich’s pick to sort out a mess involving Illinois’ long-dormant casino license. Blagojevich and Holder appeared together at a March 24, 2004, news conference to announce Holder’s role as “special investigator to the Illinois Gaming Board” — a post that was to pay Holder and his Washington, D.C. law firm up to $300,000. Holder, however, omitted that event from his 47-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire made public this week — an oversight he plans to correct after a Chicago Sun-Times inquiry.Deputy Attorney General Prediction: Philip Bobbitt Actual Nominee: David Ogden -- a partner at the Washington law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, will be nominated as deputy attorney general, the second-ranking position at the Justice Department in charge of day-to-day operations. Mr. Ogden, also a senior official in the Clinton Justice Department, has led the transition at the Justice Department since Mr. Obama’s election and has long been rumored as the front-runner for the #2 post; The Senate filled the No. 2 and 3 positions at the Justice Department on Thursday, pushing aside objections from conservative Republicans who questioned the nominees' positions on pornography and the right to die. David Ogden was confirmed 65-height= for the second-ranking position of deputy attorney general, CONFIRMED Solicitor General Actual Nominee: Elena Kagan -- a Harvard Law School dean. Dean Kagan has called military recruiting “discriminatory,” “deeply wrong,” “unwise,” and “unjust.” This nominee for solicitor general believes the military should be banned from campus. Kagan fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate a federal law known as the “Solomon Amendment.” Kagan is known by the gay community as a lesbian and an opponent of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" provisions. She will fill Obama's promise to the gay community. Elena Kagan on 19 Mar 2009 became the nation's first female Solicitor General, a position informally regarded as the 10th Supreme Court justice and, for her, a possible audition for a spot in the starting nine. Kagan, 48, visited the court for her swearing-in, administered by Chief Justice John Roberts in a ceremony that was closed to reporters. She is widely regarded as a serious candidate for any opening on the high court that would be filled by President Barack Obama, her former University of Chicago Law School teaching colleague. CONFIRMED. Secretary of Defense Prediction: Chuck Hagel, Robert Gates (current Sec of Defense), Jack Reed, Richard Danzig, Colin Powell Actual Nominee: Robert Gates -- Gates wants to keep his inner circle of advisors. but the transition team calls them neo-conservatives. May be instant friction if the deputies are Obama nominees with conflicting views. Gates to remain atleast one year to prevent turmoil in DoD during economic crisis as Iraq faces drawdown and Afghanistan increases troop deployments. Obama sees the demographics of the military as being the exact populace that voted against him. In addition, he may face reluctance from Generals to remain in positions where he wants policy changes. In essence, does not want a military backlash in his initial months of office -- as happened to Bill Clinton. His repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" rule from Bill Clinton and make homosexuality open in military may cause a problem. HOLD OVER
Obama is treading on dangerous ground. In Feb 2009 President Barack Obama dressed down and cast aside recommendations made by the CENTCOM Commander Gen. David Petraeus, Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and his own Secretary of Defense in a meeting which left one observer saying that "Petraeus made the mistake of thinking he was still dealing with George Bush instead of with Barack Obama," our 44th president is once again going against the advice of his military commanders on the ground. The basics was the Generals stated that the US needed to remain in a support role for a longer period than the President's timetable. Obama stated, his timetable stands -- PERIOD. The bottom line is that Obama had stated going in that he would listen to his ground commanders. Now in office, he is simply saying I will do it my way. In doing so, however, he has set himself up. If things go wrong, HE will be to blame. The reason that he chose to leave Gates in place was to distance himself from Iraq in case something went wrong with the agreement that the Bush administration had hatched. The troops were being withdrawn from the cities and would move into a "support" role. In truth, the relocation of combat troops -- mainly Marines -- was already underway and reshifting to Afghanistan. But now if something goes wrong, it will not be Gates or Petraeus to blame --nor the Bush policies -- it will be all on Obama's shoulders. Obama has also just alienated the military. Deputy Secretary of Defense Prediction: Michelle Flournoy Actual Nominee: William J. Lynn III -- Obama was expected to determine whether Lynn needs a waiver exempting him from a rule that people cannot work for the government agencies they have lobbied in the past two years. Lynn has been a lobbyist for Raytheon Co., a major military contractor. EXCEPTION TO LOBBY RULE: William Lynn, deputy defense secretary nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for defense contractor Raytheon, where he was a top executive. Questions over ethics issues with Lynn's work as Raytheon lobbyist. Secretary of the Treasury Prediction: Timothy Geithner, Sheila Bair, Eugene Ludwig, Laura Tyson, Michael Bloomberg, Paul Volcker, Lawrence Summers Actual Nominee: Timothy Geithner -- former Treasury Department official under President Bill Clinton. Geithner, 47, has been president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for the past five years. Before that he worked for a couple of years at the International Monetary Fund, and before that he was Larry Summers' right-hand man at the Treasury Department. One thing Geithner doesn't have much background in is economic policy other than financial policy (at Treasury his big job was jetting around the world fighting the emerging markets financial crises of the late 1990s). So the other names on the economic team that Obama is set to announce Monday are going to be important. They're likely to be the ones designing a stimulus package while Geithner spends his days trying to make the banking system work again. (Source: Blog.) Timothy Geithner, nominated as Secretary of the Treasury, failed to pay taxes -- $41,000 worth. The underpayments are mostly related to Geithner's time at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). All U.S. citizens who work for the I.M.F. are required to file self-employment payroll taxes, since the I.M.F., as an international organization, does not withhold these taxes for Social Security and Medicare. After a 2006 IRS audit found that the payroll taxes were missing on his 2003 and 2004 returns, Geithner paid additional taxes and interest of $16,732 (the IRS declined to impose any penalties). Geithner then voluntarily amended his tax returns for 2001 and 2002 for an additional $25,970, but only after the Obama transition team discovered the same lapse in his payroll taxes So he rushed to pay them when the transition team found out about them; and the Obama camp tried to keep the failure to pay a secret? How about that transparency we heard so much about on the campaign trail? How about those huge deficits caused , in part, by people dodging their taxes? Thomas Lifson adds: He also employed an undocumented worker in his household. Zoe Baird had to give up a cabinet nomination over tthis issue alone, but Obama Team says "no problem." Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid dismissed the events as "a few little hiccups," and said he was "not concerned at all" about the impact. (Source: American Thinker and Project on Govt Oversight.) Geithner also employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper.CONFIRMED 10 Republicans voted with the Democrats to allow Geithner's nomination to pass. Australian Prime Minister Keating gave his insight into the man Obama needed so badly to lead the Treasury Department that Congress gave him a pass on his status as a tax cheat. This from Sydney Morning Herald Keating: “Tim Geithner was the Treasury line officer who wrote the IMF [International Monetary Fund] program for Indonesia in 1997-98, which was to apply current account solutions to a capital account crisis.” But Geithner, through his influence on the IMF, imposed the same cure the IMF had imposed on Latin America and Mexico. It was the wrong cure. Indeed, it only aggravated the problem. [snip]  Deputy Secretary of Treasury First Nominee: Annette Nazareth -- a former senior staffer and commissioner with the Securities and Exchange Commission, made "a personal decision" to withdraw from the process. The decision followed more than a month of intense scrutiny of her taxes and multiple interviews. No tax problems or other issues arose during Nazareth's vetting, said the person, who requested anonymity because Geithner's choice of Nazareth was never announced officially. Though popular in policy circles, Nazareth was forced to withdraw from consideration for the deputy treasury slot because senators made it clear she would face tough questioning over her time at the Securities and Exchange Commission — tenure that overlapped with the agency's failure to catch Bernie Madoff. Nazareth has drawn criticism for her role in creating what some considered to be lax oversight of the banking industry. Second Nominee: H. Rodgin Cohen -- Cohen had risen to the top after the withdrawal last week of expected deputy treasury secretary pick Annette Nazareth. H. Rodgin Cohen, a partner in the New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, and the leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, has withdrawn from consideration. …The withdrawal was first reported by ABC News, which quoted sources as saying Cohen decided to take his name out of the running after an issue arose in the vetting process. Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Actual Nominee: Neal Wolin -- played a key role in drafting legislation in the late 1990s deregulating the banking system. Wolin “provided the technical and legal drafting” for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The law that Wolin helped draft has been blamed by some critics, many of them Democrats, for easing up regulatory pressure on huge financial institutions, tangentially helping create today’s mess — and his role drafting it could come under questioning at his upcoming confirmation hearings. Wolin — who was picked after several other candidates passed on the slot — did the legal work under then-Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who is now Obama’s head of the National Economic Council. The difference here is that Summers’ post, unlike Wolin’s, is a non-confirmable one, so he hasn’t been pressed publicly on Gramm-Leach-Bliley. The question now is whether Wolin will come under sharp questioning over his role in creating it. CONFIRMED Undersecretary of International Affairs in Treasury Department First Nominee: Caroline Atkinson -- Director of External Affairs for International Monetary Fund withdrew her name from the post in February. A source close to her blamed the long vetting process. In addition, the IMF is crumbling in the financial crisis and her resume is falling apart. Actually it was because a "tax problem" was discovered in the vetting process. Actual Nominee: Secretary of Education Prediction: Colin Powell, George Miller, Tim Kaine, Linda Darling-Hammond, Joel Klein, Caroline Kennedy, Jim Hunt, Arne Duncan, Inez Tenenbaum Actual Nominee: Arne Duncan -- Duncan, a longtime friend of Obama and a former professional basketball player in Australia. Head of the Chicago school system. Same liberal line for education, but reality may be hard once sitting as Secretary of Education. Mixed record: In just seven years, he's boosted elementary test scores here in Chicago from 38 percent of students meeting the standards to 67 percent. The dropout rate has gone down every year he's been in charge. And on the ACT, the gains of Chicago students have been twice as big as those for students in the rest of the state. However, according to the U.S. Department of Education's National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report for 2007, Chicago public schools have consistently performed below the national average during Duncan's tenure. CONFIRMED Secretary of Veterans Affairs Prediction: Max Cleland, Chet Edwards, Patrick Murphy, Tammy Duckworth Actual Nominee: Eric K. Shinseki -- Japanese-American, former Army chief of staff, military veteran well known for clashing with his civilian bosses in the Bush administration. In 2003, he testified to Congress that it might require several hundred thousand U.S. troops to control Iraq after the initial military invasion. The choice is likely to be popular in military and veterans circles, where Mr. Shinseki is venerated for having been one of the only generals willing to stand up to Mr. Rumsfeld, even at great personal cost. In the years since his testimony, senior Pentagon officials have acknowledged that the war effort would have gone smoother if Mr. Shinseki's advice had been heeded in 2003. Token Oriental. CONFIRMED Secretary of Environment and Energy* Prediction: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Brian Schweitzer, Jeff Bingaman, Dan Reicher, Ed Rendell, Jason Grument, Steve Westly, Pete Domenici, James Woolsey, Philip Sharp, Kathleen Sebelius (Federico Peña) Actual Nominee: Steven Chu -- Nobel Prize-winning physicist who heads the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Chu, the son of Chinese immigrants, won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 for his work in the "development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light." But, in an interview last year with The Washington Post, Chu said he began to turn his attention to energy and climate change several years ago. "I was following it just as a citizen and getting increasingly alarmed," he said. "Many of our best basic scientists [now] realize that this is getting down to a crisis situation." He sought and won the top job at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2004, leaving the Stanford University faculty to focus on energy issues. Chu was in London last night and unavailable for comment, but the physicist has been, in the words of his Web site, on a "mission" to make the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory "the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research, particularly the development of carbon-neutral sources of energy." CONFIRMED Secretary of Health and Human Services Prediction: Harold Ford Jr, Howard Dean, Hillary Clinton, Julie Gerberding, John Kitzhaber First Choice: Thomas Daschle -- Right choice with his experience on health issues. However, since leaving the U.S. Senate following an election loss in 2004, Daschle has been a highly paid adviser to healthcare clients at the law and lobbying firm Alston & Bird. Although Daschle is not a registered lobbyist, he "provides strategic advice to the firm's clients about how to influence government policy or actions," The New York Times reports. Those clients include Abbott Laboratories and HealthSouth. (Source: NewsMax.com.) After being defeated in his 2004 re-election campaign to the Senate, Daschle in 2005 became a consultant and chairman of the executive advisory board at InterMedia Advisors. Based in New York City, InterMedia Advisors is a private equity firm founded in part by longtime Daschle friend and Democratic fundraiser Leo Hindery, the former president of the YES network (the New York Yankees' and New Jersey Devils' cable television channel). That same year he began his professional relationship with InterMedia, Daschle began using the services of Hindery's car and driver. The Cadillac and driver were never part of Daschle's official compensation package at InterMedia, but Mr. Daschle -- who as Senate majority leader enjoyed the use of a car and driver at taxpayer expense -- didn't declare their services on his income taxes, as tax laws require.Daschle has removed his name from consideration due to the tax problems. Obama admits it was a mistake. (Source: Fox News) Actual Nominee: Kathleen Sebelius -- While House officials say President Barack Obama will name pro-abortion Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who has been criticized for refusing to limit late-term abortions, as the Secretary of the Health and Human Services Department. Catholic League president Bill Donohue is one of them:“Kathleen Sebelius is a master at spinning herself. In 2002, she described herself as ‘a practicing Catholic.’ But not always. For example, she opposes capital punishment and animal abuse, but supports abortion. Evidently, being a ‘practicing Catholic’ allows her to protect serial murderers, cats and dogs, but not innocent unborn children. Once official, her selection would add to Obama's growing pro-abortion record as president. The president was forced to select someone else for the top post, which could have a significant impact on abortion issues, because his previous selection, pro-abortion former Sen. Tom Daschle, removed his name from consideration after a scandal over his not paying taxes properly. As the health secretary, Sebelius could have an impact in crafting a health care plan that could cover abortions with taxpayer funds or require insurance companies to cover abortions in their plans. Sebelius is most notorious for her close relationship with late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller, who has escaped prosecution and accountability thus far for allegedly repeatedly violating state abortion laws. He's done so in part because of the lax standards of Sebelius and her political allies, to whom Tiller has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars. Governor Sebelius vetoed a bill last April that the legislature approved that would have strengthened the state's limits on late-term abortions. That followed by a year her veto of a bill requiring explicit medical reasons for a late abortion, which was preceded by vetoing other pro-life legislation in 2006, 2005 and 2003. Her position favoring abortion is so radical and extreme that Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City called on her to stop receiving communion until she disowns her support for the "serious moral evil" of abortion.Sebelius could also, if confirmed by the Senate, could also issue new regulations overturning the protections President Bush put in place that protect pro-life doctors and medical centers. The new Bush regulations provide better enforcement for laws helping medical staff avoid being involved in abortions. (Source: Life News.) Kathleen Sebelius, the pro-abortion Kansas governor President Barack Obama nominated to become the next Health Secretary is upset by opposition to her nomination. However, pro-life groups pledge to not back down from exposing her lengthy record promoting unlimited abortions.Sebelius said that it is "unfortunate" that pro-life groups are leading opposition to her nomination.She said the opposition based on her pro-abortion record should be considered in light of the fact that she supports greater access to health care, according to the Topeka Capital Journal newspaper. Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding "unintentional errors" - the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee. She said they involved charitable contributions, the sale of a home and business expenses. Sebelius said she filed the amended returns as soon as the errors were discovered by an accountant she hired to scrub her taxes in preparation for her confirmation hearings. She and her husband, Gary, a federal magistrate judge in Kansas, paid a total of $7,040 in back taxes and $878 in interest to amend returns from 2005-2007. In addition, Sebelius corrected herself stating that pro-abortion supporters had contributed more to her campaign fund than previously stated. Republicans remained adamant over her selection. Swine flu outbreak in Apr 2009 helped rush the confirmation of Sebelius.CONFIRMED Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Actual Nominee: William Corr -- The Senate is expected soon to approve anti-tobacco lobbyist William Corr for the second-highest post at the Department of Health and Human Services. He is the former executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and, until recently, a registered lobbyist. (SITE NOTE: So much for Obama's pledge on lobbyists. Mr. Corr is not alone in Mr. Obama's circle of lobbyists. Thirty of 267 senior administration officials, about 11 percent of the president's top staff, had lobbied within the past five years, according to National Journal. The list includes Mothers Against Drunk Driving CEO Chuck Hurley to head the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn, who lobbied for defense industry giant Raytheon; and Treasury chief of staff Mark Patterson, who represented Goldman Sachs' interests.) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Actual Nominee: Dr. Margaret Hamburg A bioterrorism expert who once served as New York City health commissioner, also says she wants to restore public confidence in the Food and Drug Administration by putting science first and running an open and accountable operation. One of her first tasks, if confirmed, will be overseeing development of a vaccine for the new swine flu. Hamburg, as an assistant health secretary under President Bill Clinton, helped lay the groundwork for the government's bioterrorism and flu pandemic preparations. Food safety will be Hamburg's top priority after the flu. She wants to shift from chasing outbreaks after they have broken out to preventing them first. That's going to require new laws mandating producers to have written safety plans, as well as greater federal oversight of those plans. Import safety is another weak link. Hamburg's professional career has centered on public health. She is the daughter of two doctors, and her family background is African-American and Jewish. Her mother was the first black woman to earn a medical degree from Yale University. She credits her father's side of the family for imbuing in her a passion for social concerns. She is expected to win Senate confirmation. (SITE NOTE: Notice the nice touch of multi-ethnicity like Obama -- black an Jewish. However, Obama is starting to skirt the bounds of overloading the offices with blacks and risks charges of RACISM (pro-black).) Secretary of Agriculture Prediction: Tom Vilsack, Colin Peterson, Tom Daschle, Jim Leach, Tom Buis Actual Nominee: Tom Vilsack -- former Gov of Iowa briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination in the 2008 race after serving two terms as governor, is a strong proponent of renewable energy and developing the nation’s alternative fuel industry. Mr. Vilsack’s nomination comes at a time of extraordinary tumult for the American agricultural industry, which not only has been battered by the recession, but is also increasingly entangled in the contentious debate over energy policy. The Agriculture Department is also contending with a sharp increase in the demand for food assistance in the wake of the economic turmoil. Both Mr. Obama and Mr. Vilsack are regarded as staunch advocates of ethanol and other bio-fuels as a way to reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil. And Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress are working on a major economic stimulus package, in which they intend to promote the creation of thousands of new jobs tied to “green energy” industries, including the production of solar and wind energy. EXCEPTION TO LOBBY RULE: Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year on behalf of the National Education Association. CONFIRMED Secretary of Commerce Prediction: Norman R. Augustine, Kathleen Sebelius, Ed Rendell, Penny Pritzker, Olympia Snowe, Howard Dean First Choice: Penny Pritzer -- Recused herself from selection -- Skeleton with business dealings would raise tough questions during any confirmation process. She was involved in running and overseeing Superior Bank, an Illinois institution co-owned by her family that was at the forefront of turning subprime loans into securities, the risky practice at the heart of the financial crisis. The bank collapsed in 2001 after regulators discovered accounting irregularities that overstated its assets. Second Choice: : Bill Richardson -- Bows out under pressure. Uncertain of qualifications for the job in these times of economic hardships. New Mexico governor -- previously served as a U.S. Representative and as the U.S. Secretary of Energy. Richardson was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the release of hostages, American servicemen, and political prisoners in North Korea, Iraq, and Cuba. In Dec 2008 some rumors of possible involvement in contract kickbacks in New Mexico. It was a developing story. Bill Richardson opts out under pressure and Obama Transition team rush to squirm out. Sources tell ABC News that officials on the Obama Transition Team feel that before he was formally offered the job of commerce secretary, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson was not forthcoming with them about the federal investigation that is looking into whether the governor steered a state contract towards a major financial contributor. Once the investigation became more widely known through national media reports last month, sources tell ABC News, the Obama Transition Team realized the FBI would not be able to give Richardson a clean political bill of health before the new administration is ready to send his nomination up to the Senate for confirmation. The Richardson camp says the governor was forthcoming, with sources close to the governor noting that there had been reports about the controversy in local media such as the Albuquerque Journal as far back as August 2008. The governor discussed the investigation with the Obama team, they say, and believes that he and his administration have done nothing wrong. His confirmation was going to be held up due to the investigation and Richardson said that he could not in good conscience hold up the confirmation. (Source: Hot Air.) UPDATE New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and former high-ranking members of his administration won't be criminally charged in a yearlong federal investigation into pay-to-play allegations involving one of the Democratic governor's large political donors, someone familiar with the case said. The decision not to pursue indictments was made by top Justice Department officials, according to a person familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be i entified because federal officials had not disclosed results of the probe. "It's over. There's nothing. It was killed in Washington," the person told The Associated Press. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Albuquerque said he had no information about the Justice Department's decision and couldn't comment. Federal investigators reviewed whether political contributions influenced the selection of California-based CDRs made up mostly of executive branch department administrators and gubernatorial appointees. (Source: AP.) The New Mexico Republican Party is asking pointed questions about the DOJ's decision to drop charges against crony Democrat governor and failed Commerce Secretary nominee Bill Richardson. ALBUQUERQUE—In response to news reports that high-level Washington DC officials in the U.S. Department of Justice have decided not to allow indictments related to pay-to-play allegations involving Governor Bill Richardson and members of his administration, Chairman Harvey Yates Jr. released the following statement:Third Choice:: Judd Gregg New Hampshire Republican Senator. Former Governor of New Hampshire and current United States Senator serving as ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee. Gregg has been a United States Senator since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party and was a businessman and attorney in Nashua before entering politics. His replacement, named by Governor John Lynch, was to be Bonnie Newman. His nomination was expected to have heated discussion on views of moving the Census Bureau out from under the Commerce Secretary and reporting directly to the President -- which some feel is unconstitutional as it can lead to gerrymandering and a multitude of ills by skewing data for political reasons. On 12 Feb, Greg suddenly withdrew his nomination. Reason appears to be that Judd Greg simply could NOT support the Obama Stimulus Package and Census move. He will continue to represent New Hampshire in the US Senate. The ultimate embarassment is that the White House was NOT notified -- or those that were notified didn't tell the White House. They found out from reporters. Greg's comments that he was recusing himself because of the stimulus was taken as an insult by the White House. Actual Nominee: Gary Locke -- CONFIRMED A senior administration official said. Locke was the first Chinese-American governor in U.S. history. Locke is a partner in the Seattle offices of the law firm Davis, Wright, Tremaine, where he specializes in energy and governmental relations. According to the firm’s web site, Locke “helps U.S. companies doing business in China, and Chinese companies doing business in the U.S., on a wide range of business, political and legal issues.” Locke served two terms as Washington governor from 1997 to 2005. He declined to seek a third term, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family. Locke chaired the Democratic Governors’ Association in 2003 and delivered a rebuttal to President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address that year. During his time in office, Washington state made top ten lists for the best governed state and won high marks for its tech-savvy government. If confirmed, Locke would become the third Asian American in Obama’s Cabinet, the most any administration has ever had. However, the Obama vetting process did NOT count on a major conservative columnist, Michelle Malkin, being one who covered Locke when she worked for the Seattle Times. She has blown the whistle on Locke even before he enters the nomination process. It’s illegal to funnel campaign contributions through straw donors. It’s illegal for tax-exempt churches to hold campaign fund-raisers. It’s illegal to accept money from foreign citizens who are not permanent residents of this country. It’s illegal to file false public disclosure forms (four years after the temple fundraisers, PDC records were not amended with the Buddhist monks’ correct addresses and occupations). It’s illegal to commit perjury to cover up a political money-laundering scheme.Republicans commented on his FBI background checks as "clean" and "boring". Locke was confirmed without fuss.  Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Prediction: Shaun Donovan, Shirley Franklin, Jesse Jackson, Jr., David Gottfried, Valerie Jarrett Actual Nominee: Shaun Donovan -- Former Clinton administration aide with a national reputation for developing affordable housing. New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, where he managed a $7.5 billion plan that put a half million New Yorkers in affordable housing. The Harvard-educated architect also kept foreclosures away from New York's low- and moderate-income home ownership plan, with just five foreclosures out of 17,000 participating homes. Donovan has worked as a top housing official since March 2004. Before that, he worked at Prudential Mortgage Capital Company as managing director of its affordable housing investments. During the Clinton administration, he was deputy assistant secretary for multi-family housing at HUD. In that role he was the government's chief administrator for managing privately owned, government-subsidized housing. According to top officials of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the department is missing $56 billion reported in 2007. CONFIRMED Asst Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Actual Nominee: Ron Sims -- A court levied the biggest fine for illegal record withholding against Sims in Washington State history — and that record hasn’t finished yet: Sims is culpable for what may well become the largest fine for violations of public records laws in U.S. history: see Yousoufian, Armen. The Seattle Times just reported on the state Supreme Court decision that demanded a higher fine for King County under Sims’ governance for illegally blocking records that Yousoufian wanted to investigate the public financing of Qwest Field, the stadium where the Seattle Seahawks now play. Their years-long delay ensured that Yousoufian could not find any potentially damaging information before a referendum that approved public financing for the NFL stadium. The court found “hundreds” of instances where they gave misleading information or refused to give information at all while Sims was King County Executive. Another public records suit against Sims (for delaying release of election records which revealed that King County officials unlawfully counted hundreds of ineligible ballots in the 2004 governor’s race) goes to trial in April. (Source: Sound Politics.) -- CONFIRMED (Voice vote) However, Washington Post reports that Sims was NOT confirmed. The justices found the actions of Mr. Sims' office to be so "egregious" that they scrapped a lower court's order of a $123,780 fine - the largest ever assessed in a public records case - and recommended that the penalty be increased to as much as $825,000. Mr. Obama nominated Mr. Sims as the top deputy at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just three weeks after the court's ruling, which harshly and repeatedly criticized Mr. Sims' office for its conduct during a 12-year legal fight. Asst Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (Federal Housing Commission) Actual Nominee: David Simmons -- President Barack Obama has named a former Freddie Mac executive to head the federal housing commission. The White House on Monday named David Stevens as assistant secretary at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The position requires Senate confirmation and would put Stevens in charge of the government's housing mortgage-insurance program. Stevens now is the head of Long and Foster Companies, a real estate and mortgage firm. He previously worked at World Savings bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. CONFIRMED Secretary of the Interior Prediction: Lincoln Chafee, Christine Gregoire, Brian Schweitzer, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., John Kitzhaber, Tony Knowles. Ken Salazar Actual Nominee: Ken Salazar -- Hispanic, rising star in Senate from battleground western state Colorado. Former Colorado Atty General. Salazar considers himself a moderate and has at times taken positions that are in disagreement with the base of his party — for a number of years he opposed gay adoption. Appears to be good choice. CONFIRMED Secretary of Labor Prediction: David Bonior, Dick Gephardt, Dan Tarullo, Linda Chavez-Thompson, Rosa DeLauro, George Miller, Andy Stern (NOTE: Problems already surfacing as Secretary of Labor is not included in Economic Council. Labor and union organizations are sensing that they will be cut out of economic policy decisions.) Actual Nominee: Hilda Solis --- Before being appointed to her new role, Solis served on the board of American Rights at Work with several DSA supporters including David Bonior, then AFL-CIO president John Sweeney, labor economist Harley Shaiken and NAACP leader Julian Bond. Hilda Solis was a keynote speaker at the DSA national conference "21st Century Socialism" in Los Angeles in November 2005. Saturday evening delegates recognized the contributions of DSA vice chair and Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson, Occidental College sociologist and longtime DSAer Peter Dreier and insurgent California Congress member Hilda Solis who in turn provided in-depth perspectives of the political scene. In June 2008, the Socialist International Migrations Committee held a Migrations Reform, Integration, Rights forum in Los Angeles. DSA was represented by National Director Frank Llewellyn plus Duane Campbell and Dolores Delgado Campbell of DSA's Anti Racism and Latino networks. Hilda Solis was formally represented by Elena Henry, a caseworker from Solis' East Los Angeles Office. In 2008 Hilda Solis served on Barack Obama's National Latino Advisory Council alongside DSA honorary chair and SEIU vice president Eliseo Medina. Hispanic, Democratic Rep. Hilda Solis of California Solis, who is the daughter of Mexican and Nicaraguan immigrants, has been the only member of Congress of Central American descent. She just won a fifth term representing heavily Hispanic portions of eastern Los Angeles County and east LA. More high praise for Solis in statements from SEIU, Unite to Win, American Rights at Work, and Change to Win. Solis is viewed by environmental groups as one of the foremost proponents of green jobs and environmental justice. GOP threatens to block appointment. During the California Democrat's Jan. 9 confirmation hearing, Solis repeatedly told senators that she could not speak for the incoming Obama administration on the card check bill, and she told Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) that she was "not qualified" to speak about maintaining right-to-work laws that prohibit workers from paying union dues as a condition of employment. "These aren't positions that you're allowed not to have an opinion," Wyoming Sen. Michael Enzi, the ranking Republican on the committee, told Politico. "These are extremely critical things that she was asked about. Each of the people that asked questions from the Republican side asked about different areas of labor law and wondered what she was going to do. And we still don't know." But a hold on her nomination would signal that Solis can expect a contentious relationship with the GOP and would foreshadow the fight ahead over the card-check bill, a top priority for organized labor that would largely abolish secret ballots during votes on whether employees want a union, potentially leading to millions of new union members. Hangup over the belated tax payment (16 years) by husband. CONFIRMED Secretary of Transportation Prediction: James Oberstar, Ed Rendell, Earl Blumenauer, R.T. Rybak, Jane Garvey, Mortimer Downey (Federico Peña) Actual Nominee: Ray LaHood -- LaHood, 63, of US Rep of Illinois (R), who is retiring from Congress. Former top aide to House Minority Leader Robert Michel. LaHood has a friendly relationship with both Obama and incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. who represented Peoria in the House, took his old boss’s seat in the Republican sweep of 1994, and later won a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. Known for his familiarity with House rules and press-friendly style, LaHood urged more civility in the often-rancorous House and held bipartisan member dinners with Emanuel. CONFIRMED Secretary for Homeland Security Prediction: Jessica Tuchman Matthews, Lee Hamilton, Tony Lake, Richard Clarke, Tim Roemer Actual Nominee: Janet Napolitano -- Hispanic, Payback for early campaign support. Can't run for Ariz governor again so needs a new job. She is a border-state governor with law enforcement credentials suited to oversee a sprawling agency with jurisdiction over immigration policy and domestic security. Considered one of the rising stars of Democratic Party. McCain endorsement as she is removed as his competition for reelection. There are those with objections due to her record of openly opposing instituting the border closure to illegal aliens. CONFIRMED Surgeon General First Nominee: Sanjay Gupta -- But considering two months have passed since CNN acknowledged Gupta was being vetted for the post, information about the progress of the surgeon general nomination is curiously scarce in Washington. Gupta's name surfaced after President Obama had tapped former Sen. Tom Daschle to be health secretary and the head of the new White House Office of Health Reform. Farrell said Gupta was apparently offered a dual position in the White House health reform office as well -- and would have been serving under Daschle in both cases. But after Daschle withdrew his name because of tax problems, Obama subsequently nominated separate candidates for health secretary and health reform office director -- meaning Gupta could have had two different bosses with different sets of priorities. "The parameters of the job were no longer clear and perhaps not as appealing," Farrell said. "I just think the ground shifted underneath Dr. Gupta." Then there is a pay cut he would have to take to hold the $153,000 a year position... That process was delayed after Daschle withdrew his nomination in early February; Obama got the process back on track only over the weekend, when he tapped Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius for the job -- but Sebelius ran into immediate trouble from anti-abortion groups over her pro-abortion stands. (Talk is that Sen Howard Dean is being felt out for the position. Dean was a practicing doctor before he became a senator.) Actual Nominee: Dr. Regina Benjamin -- BLACK rural Alabama family physician who made headlines with fierce determination to rebuild her nonprofit medical clinic in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Benjamin has served as the associate dean for rural health at the University of South Alabama's College of Medicine and was president of the State of Alabama Medical Association from 2002-2003. She has received the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights in 1998, and Pope Benedict XVI awarded her the distinguished service medal Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice. In 1995 Benjamin became the first black woman and youngest doctor ever admitted to the American Medical Association's board of trustees. She received her M.D. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 1984; and holds an M.B.A. from Tulane University. She completed her residency in family practice at the Medical Center of Central Georgia in 1987. Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers Prediction: Paul Krugman, Austan Goolsbee, David Cutler Actual Nominee: Christina Romer -- Widely respected University of California-Berkeley economics professor. An expert on the causes of the Great Depression. Husband David Romer also professor of economics at Berkley. DESIGNATED Chairman, Domestic Policy Council Actual Nominee: Melody Barnes -- Black, Center for American Progress (CAP) will run policy formation for such topics as education, immigration, criminal justice, and health care. (NOTE: CAP had already worked out and published a transition plan when Obama entered office. This is the start of the implementation of "Social Justice" in work as Bush did not have much of a domestic agenda.) DESIGNATED National and Homeland Security Adviser* Prediction: Jim Steinberg, Gen Anthony Zinni, Greg Craig, Samantha Power, Susan Rice, Gen James L. Jones Actual Nominee: Gen. James L. Jones CONFIRMED Director of National Intelligence Prediction: Richard Holbrooke, Adm Dennis C. Blair Actual Nominee: Adm Dennis C. Blair -- Pundits see this as the honeymoon being over between progressives and Obama as an activist group protested the appointment. Blair, a four-star admiral and former top U.S. military commander in the Pacific region, has for some time been considered the front runner for the intelligence job. Blair's nomination would keep an experienced military leader in the post, and he has a reputation as a smart thinker. Obama has vowed to "put a clear end to torture" and "restore" a balance between security and constitutional protections. CONFIRMED Chairman of the National Intelligence Council First Choice: Charles Freeman Jr For the last dozen years, Freeman, the former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, has been President of the Middle East Policy Council (formally known as the American Arab Affairs Council) a Lobbying group for the Arab World. One of the groups primary functions is to Publish a quarterly journal called Middle East Policy. The Journal is filled with anti-Israel messages that are beyond even the broadest definition of mainstream of U.S. thinking on the region. Opponents claim he is anti-Israel. Also he lobbied directly for the Chinese oil concerns. Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair announced on 10 Mar that Ambassador Charles W. Freeman Jr. requested that his selection to be Chairman of the National Intelligence Council not proceed. Director Blair accepted Ambassador Freeman’s decision with regret. Actual Nominee: Director of CIA Prediction: John E. McLaughlin First Choice: John Brennan -- Recused self because of criticism from liberal blogs over association with CIA torture issue. (See Obama Intelligence Agenda.) Actual Nominee: Leon E. Panetta -- Former congressman and White House chief of staff for Clinton. Mr. Panetta has a reputation in Washington as a competent manager with strong background in budget issues, but has little hands-on intelligence experience. Mr. Panetta, a native of Monterey, Calif., served eight terms in the House representing his home region before becoming the chief budget adviser to President Bill Clinton in 1993. He then served as Mr. Clinton’s chief of staff from July 1994 to January 1997. Given the focus on the intelligence apparatus in the wake of the terror attacks and the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Obama’s selections in the intelligence field are expected to be closely examined. Troubles ahead as Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller, Democrats both, want to know why Obama’s search for a torture-free nominee couldn’t uncover anyone with actual experience. Both of them evidently wanted Steve Kappes, whose recommendation reportedly led the agency to ban waterboarding. Panetta may have trouble due to activist daughter who will meet with Chavez and other national leaders opposed to the US. CONFIRMED Director of Federal Bureau of Investigation Actual Nominee: Robert Mueller -- Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 and remains FBI director under Obama. HOLDOVER Director of Office of Budget and Management Prediction: John Spratt Jr., Gene Sperling, Jason Furman Actual Nominee: Peter Orszag -- Well-qualified economist who may be not as pro-labor as some might want, but appears to be a good choice. Obama states his mandate is fiscal restraint to cut waste from the budget. DESIGNATED Director of Security Exchange Commission Actual Nominee: Mary Schapiro -- Currently CEO of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, a non-governmental association that oversees all American securities firms. She is a former SEC commissioner. Current SEC boss Cox raised questions about how the SEC failed to investigate fraud allegations surrounding Bernard Madoff, accused of leading a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that bilked investors ranging from Steven Spielberg to Mort Zuckerman. Cox said credible accusations about Madoff were brought to the agency but never formally investigated. It appears allegations that Madoff was a fraud date back 9 years. CONFIRMED Director of Office of Urban Affairs Actual Nominee: Adolfo Carrion -- Carrion was lucky to have already been confirmed in his position when a local NYC pay-to-play scheme came to light. Carrion reportedly accepted thousands of dollars in cash from developers whose projects he approved. The man who is President Obama’s newly minted urban czar pocketed thousands of dollars in campaign cash from city developers whose projects he approved or funded with taxpayers’ money, a Daily News probe found. Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion often received contributions just before or after he sponsored money for projects or approved important zoning changes, records show. Most donations were organized and well-timed. In one case, a developer became a Carrion fund-raiser two months before the borough president signed off on his project, raising more than $6,000 in campaign cash. In another, eight Boricua College officials came up with $8,000 on the same day for Carrion three weeks before the school filed plans to build a new tower. Carrion ultimately approved the project and sponsored millions in taxpayer funds for it. (Source: Daily News.) Not only that, Carrion had home renovations done free of charge by an architect whose projects received official favor from Carrion - the sort of direct personal benefit that gets people indicted. CONFIRMED -- BUT... Deputy Director of Office of Urban Affairs Actual Nominee: Ron Sims -- Ron Sims, the King County WA bureaucrat was nominated to the no. 2 spot at HUD by Obama. Those in his backyard who know him best know the lengths Sims has gone to in order to obstruct public disclosure and stop taxpayers from finding out the truth about his office’s shady dealings. In Apr 2009, blogger Stefan Sharkansky sued Sims over his refusal to release public records related to voter fraud during the 2004 contested gubernatorial election. Sharkansky reported on 25 Apr 2009, Sims and King County settled for $225,000, one of the largest settlements for public records violations in state history. The lawsuit stemmed from my December 2004 request for a list of all voters who voted in the November 2004 election. The county did not satisfy my request in full until January 2007. The documents that they eventually provided to me revealed that county election officials unlawfully counted hundreds of ineligible ballots in the 2004 election: a multiple of Christine Gregoire’s 133-vote “margin of victory” over Dino Rossi in the contested gubernatorial race. Documentation of these illegal votes was withheld from discovery in the election contest trial and not released to me until months after the trial. Consequently, the trial was conducted in ignorance of these potentially outcome-changing illegal votes. Additional documents that were released last month in discovery for my case confirmed that county officials both knew more about the illegal vote counting than they had previously acknowledged, and also knowingly withheld responsive documents from me during 2005 and 2006. The exceptionally large (for records cases) settlement, which King County offered before trial, clearly recognizes the county’s culpability in this matter. Federal Communications Commission Actual Nominee: Julius Genachowski Obama classmate at Harvard. Cautions over "Fairness Doctrine" and the elimination of conservative Talk Radio. Genachowski was an adviser to Obama's campaign and has been a senior executive at Barry Diller's Internet conglomerate, IAC/Interactive Corp. Genachowski worked at the FCC as chief counsel to the chairman and as special counsel from 1994 to 1997. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices David Souter and William Brennan and worked in Congress. Genachowski's nomination was widely expected after leaks from the Obama succession team in January. He must still be confirmed by the Senate. Administrator of NASA Actual Nominee: Charles Bolden -- Former astronaut Charles Bolden nominated as NASA administrator, the retired Marine Corps general will be the first African-American to head the agency if confirmed. The president also will announce that his campaign space adviser, Lori Garver, will be Bolden's deputy, the sources said. Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Prediction: Kathleen McGinty, Ed Markey, Mary Nichols, Lincoln Chafee, Robert Sussman, Lisa P. Jackson (Carol Browner) Actual Nominee: Lisa P. Jackson -- recently appointed chief of staff to New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine (D) and former head of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection CONFIRMED Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency First Choice: Jon Cannon -- a professor of environmental law at the University of Virginia and the former top EPA lawyer, said he was withdrawing as the nominee for deputy EPA administrator because the nonprofit America's Clean Water Foundation had become the subject of scrutiny. Cannon once served on the now-defunct organization's board of directors. The EPA's inspector general concluded in 2007 that the foundation mismanaged $25 million in EPA grants that it had received to help identify environmental risks on farms and to assist states and tribes in complying with water pollution laws. The report found that the foundation could not properly account for the money it had been granted. Actual Nominee: Nominee to the Supreme Court Prediction: Hillary Clinton, Cass Sunstein -- Among those under consideration are California Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno, Solicitor General Elena Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and U.S. Appeals Court judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Pamela Wood. Actual Nominee: Sonia Sotomayor -- As expected. Obama "consulted" all parties and nominated the choice to placate the Latino element. Sotomayor can expect a tough fight because of a perception that she feels "policy" can be made in the apellate courts. Republicans are threatening to filibuster. In another set back, her judgement was brought into question. The Supreme Court ib 29 Jun 2009 restricted how far employers may go in considering race in hiring and promotion decisions, a ruling that puts workplaces across the nation on notice that efforts to combat potential discrimination against one group can amount to actual discrimination against another. The case is Ricci v. DeStefano. The court ruled for white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said city officials violated their rights when it threw out the results of a promotions test on which few minorities scored well. The case drew outsize attention because President Obama's nominee for the high court, Judge Sonia Sotomayor, had been part of a unanimous panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that endorsed a lower-court ruling upholding New Haven's decision. The case was a victory for conservative groups and the firefighters, who said the city's resolution had amounted to denying promotions based on skin color. The court's conservatives prevailed in a decision that said employers needed a "strong basis in evidence" that a test is deficient before discarding the results, rather than just "raw racial statistics" that may indicate a subtle discrimination. "No individual should face workplace discrimination based on race," Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the five-member majority. Civil rights groups said the decision would create a hurdle for employers, especially in the public sector, seeking to diversify their workforces without violating the law. The case has been used by Sotomayor critics as evidence that she allowed her personal preferences to influence her rulings, while her supporters said the decision was a straightforward application of court precedents. The decision tried to find the spot between what can be seen as competing provisions of Title VII -- which says that individuals may not be treated differently because of their race, religion or sex, but also that seemingly neutral testing requirements can be discriminatory if they have a disparate impact on members of one group. (Source: Washington Post.) Ambassador to the UN Prediction: Susan Rice, Caroline Kennedy, Lee Hamilton Actual Nominee: Susan Rice -- Black, well-qualified (SEE Susan Rice. Criticism as her "maturity" in recommending US intervention in the Middle East with military forces as she responded to the hostilities between Israel and Gaza. CONFIRMED Middle East Envoy Prediction: General James L Jones First Choice: Colin Powell -- Our question: Why did Powell decline??? Actual Nominee: George J. Mitchell -- former Democratic Senator from Maine. CONFIRMED Ambassador to South Asia Actual Nominee: Richard Holbrooke CONFIRMED Ambassador to Iraq First Choice:: Gen Anthony Zinni -- Offered job, but then behind his back Christopher Hill selected. Chris Hill is the former negotiator with North Korea and the disastrous six-party talks that dragged on with no resolution. Gen Zinni was offered the job by Security Advisor Gen Jones, but later on the Chris Hill selection was made WITHOUT notifying Gen Zinni. A great deal of friction over this selection. (Source: Big Lizard Blog.) Actual Nominee: Christopher Hill -- What seemed to be a sure move ran into a road block as John McCain and others voiced opposition as Hill has no experience in Middle East affairs in Iraq -- and they pointed out his heritage of the North Korean mess. Many have misgivings about Hill's performance in North Korea under Bush's six-party talks formula. CONFIRMED Ambassador to China Actual Nominee: Jon Huntsman -- GOP Gov of Utah. Logical choice. Rep. Howard L. Berman (D-Valley Village), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the selection "demonstrates President Obama's commitment to a bipartisan foreign policy." "Gov. Huntsman's Chinese language capabilities [and] diplomatic, political and entrepreneurial experience make him a solid choice to navigate the complexities of the U.S.-China relationship, including various human rights, trade and security issues," Berman added. Huntsman, born in California, served as a White House staff assistant to President Reagan, ambassador to Singapore under President George H.W. Bush and deputy trade representative under President George W. Bush. The son of Jon M. Huntsman Sr., a Utah multimillionaire and philanthropist, Huntsman Jr. and his wife, Mary Kaye, have seven children, including two adopted daughters, from India and China. Speaks Mandarin from days as missionary to Taiwan. Served in ambassadorial positions before. Most of all outspoken critic of Republican Congressmen who he called "irrelevant." Co-chair of McCain for President. However, is shrewd move because Huntsman has been mentioned as potential Presidential candidate in 2012. Once confirmed by the Senate, as is expected, Huntsman will play a key role in U.S. efforts to recruit Chinese help on several fronts: responding to global economic troubles, addressing climate change and stopping the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea. Huntsman also will have to address human rights in China, a long-standing U.S. concern, and video piracy, a matter of importance to Hollywood. Ambassador to Japan Prediction: Harvard University professor Joseph Nye, who had been considered a leading contender for the post, was apparently sidelined by Roos in the final stage of the personnel decision. Actual Nominee: John Roos -- Roos, 54, heads a company that coordinates M&As if information technology companies in Silicon Valley, and has been a supporter of President Obama for a long time. A Stanford Law School graduate, Roos backed Obama even before the former Illinois senator decided to run for president by holding a fundraiser at his home. The New York Times said the selection of U.S. ambassador to Japan was made by the Obama administration’s Asia expert group and a group of his confidants. They categorized all the candidates into three groups: renowned politicians like former vice president and former U.S. ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale; scholars versed in U.S.-Japan relations like Nye; and President Obama’s supporters or confidants like former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer. The newspaper said Roos lacks knowledge and experience with Japan and that certain U.S. diplomats were puzzled over his selection, but said he can play the role of ambassador based on the strong trust of the president. Ambassador to Sudan Actual Nominee: J. Scott Gration -- Sudan war-torn. Gration was an adviser to Obama during his presidential campaign on a range of military and national security issues. He is also an expert on Africa who was partly raised on the continent and is fluent in Swahili. Gration is a close personal friend of Obama and has considerable experience on African issues. Ambassador to NATO Prediction: James Dobbins Actual Nominee: Special Presidential Envoy to Central Asia Prediction: Zalmay Khalilzad Actual Nominee: Ambassador to the EU Prediction: Carlos Pasqual Actual Nominee: Trade Representative (USTR) Prediction: Lael Brainard First Choice: Xavier Becerra -- Hispanic, US House of Representative (D-CA). Not a "free trader." America's free trade system "is not only broken but it is broken completely," Becerra said back in 2006 when he argued against the Oman Free Trade Agreement. Says he regrets his vote against NAFTA. Opposed CAFTA but voted for the Peru FTA. Voted to admit China to the WTO. Has a 39 percent rating from the Cato Institute on free trade. Voted against withdrawing from the WTO. For starters, Becerra is a member of Sen. Bernie Sanders Progressive Caucus, which has long pushed congresses for fairer trade deals. This matches Obama's hardline stance against the ROKUS FTA. While it was initially reported that he had already accepted, on December 15, 2008, he announced that he would not accept the position Actual Nominee:Ron Kirk -- Ron Kirk, a BLACK, nominated as U.S. Trade Representative in the Obama administration, owes an estimated $10,000 in back taxes from earlier in the decade and has agreed to make his payments, the Senate Finance Committee said Monday. Despite the error, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, issued a statement calling Kirk "the right person for this job," and said he would attempt to have the nomination moved through the panel quickly. Fate undecided as of 7 Mar 2009. U.S. Trade Representative nominee Ron Kirk Monday called for renegotiation of the pending free trade deal with South Korea which he depicted as unacceptable as currently written. (SITE NOTE: The inequality of the numbers of blacks in key positions of power versus the percentage in the population is starting to get a little frightening. The black view of history is NOT how the mainstream America views things. Despite all the education and experience, the perception is that the deck is being stacked racially.) CONFIRMED Nominee for NATO Secretary-General Prediction: Paddy Ashdown Actual Nominee: Human Rights Representative* Prediction: Samantha Power (Christopher Edley) Actual Nominee: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Prediction: General David Petraeus Actual Nominee: Adm. Mike Mullen HOLD OVER CENTCOM Prediction: General Pete Chiarelli Actual Nominee: General David Petraeus HOLD OVER NATO Commander Prediction: General Karl Eikenberry Actual Nominee: General John Craddock HOLD OVER: Supreme Allied Commander Europe PRESIDENTIAL STAFF POSITIONS: Chief of Staff Prediction: Tom Daschle, Greg Craig, David Plouffe Actual Nominee: Rahm Emanuel -- Jewish, father Irgun fighter so plus with Isreal vote. Good choice, but makes enemies. Seen as part of old-style Chicago politics where one brings someone from the old party along when you go up. Emanuel is Sen from Illinois. White House Counsel Prediction: Mark Alexander, Robert Bauer Actual Nominee: Greg Craig -- Only skeleton in closet Return of Child to Cuba. May or may not set well with Miami Cubans who supported Obama. The Washington Post reports today that Greg Craig has been replaced as the point man on Guantanamo and will likely leave the White House. The story places the blame for crafting the Guantanamo strategy for a date certain shutdown, of convincing The One of its wisdom and the failure to follow through, squarely on Craig’s shoulders. It hinted that Obama may now, not be able to meet his January 22 deadline. With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress. Even before the inauguration, President Obama's top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal. After blaming the Bush administration in March for not having detainee files in one place (a normal procedure so codeword intelligence files at CIA or NSA are not comingled with unclassified files at Justice and accessible to uncleared personnel), the White House added more cooks to stir the pot. In May, one of the senior officials said, Obama tapped Pete Rouse -- a top adviser and former congressional aide who is not an expert on national security but is often called in to fix significant problems -- to oversee the process. Senior adviser David Axelrod and deputy communications director Dan Pfeiffer were brought in to craft a more effective message around detainee policy, the official said. After publicly playing the blame game on the files six months ago, it appears the dysfunctional White House is just getting around to reviewing them. The Post drops this little gem at the end of the story: In coming weeks, officials say, they expect to complete the initial review of all the files of those held at Guantanamo Bay. Senior Advisor to President: Actual Nominee: David Axelrod -- Campaign strategist. Payback for job well-done. White House post overseeing energy, environmental and climate policies Actual Nominee: Carol Browner -- Previously named to head the EPA but switched to a White House post. See Carol Browner. Staff Secretary: Actual Nominee: Lisa Brown Cabinet Secretary: Actual Nominee: Christopher Lu -- Chinese, Harvard classmate. Obama aide in Senate. Senior Advisor to President: Actual Nominee: David Axelrod -- Campaign strategist. Payback for job well-done. Chief Performance Officer: First choice: Nancy Killefer -- Dropped out. Obama tapped Killefer for this new job created to police governmnet spending. But then it surfaced that Killefer had money problems of her own -- a tax lien slapped on her DC home in 2005 for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. Actual Nominee: Chief Information Officer Actual Nominee: Vivek Kundra -- Federal agents on 12 Mar searched the office Washington, D.C.'s Chief Technology Officer as part of "an ongoing investigation." The outgoing Chief Technology Officer, Vivek Kundra, was appointed last week Chief Information Officer by the Obama administration. His last day at the city government office was February 4. He was appointed to the Washington post in 2007. "We know the FBI is over there but that's all we know," said a staffer in the D.C. CTO's office, Mario Field, who was working from a separate location. Another source familiar with the raid said the FBI had sent all staffers other than senior executives home for the day. A White House spokesman had no immediate comment. An official in the D.C. government’s office of the chief technology officer has been arrested in a federal bribery sting, according to law enforcement sources. Yusuf Acar, 40, was taken into custody this morning by FBI agents at his home in Northwest Washington, the sources said. Sushil Bansal, who works for a company called Advanced Integrated Technologies Corp was also arrested. The nature of the charges could not be determined, but it was reported to be a bribe scandal. An inside informant wearing a "bug" and recording conversations between Acar and Bansal. The reason they were not released is that Acar stated in wiretaps that he could use the seized money to flee to his native Turkey. What the article DIDN'T say was that KUNDRA ran Obama's internet operation during his campaign operations! What the article didn't say was Obama received millions and millions of questionable contribution dollars during his primary and general election campaigns by computer! Also what the article didn't say was this was an ongoing investigation which went back quite some time! Conjecture over whether Kundra is involved. The following is a list of influential people to the Obama administration from Washington Life: Tom Perrelli: PETE ROUSE Obama’s Economic Recovery ‘Advisory’ Board: Little dissent, lots of self-dealing on climate (May 2009) President Obama’s so-called Economic Recovery Advisory Board held its first quarterly meeting today — it was a spectacle of the sort of self-dealing and corruption that we may rightly expect to become routine if cap-and-trade legislation passes. After the meeting, CNBC’s Becky Quick interviewed ERAB board member John Doerr, head of the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins — that’s right, the very same Kleiner Perkins that has invested more than $1 billion in 40 cap-and-trade-dependent business ventures and that has Al Gore as a partner. Doerr said that ERAB talked about the need for:
Doerr also told Quick that an EPA analysis showed that cap-and-trade would cost Americans less than $100 per year. (LOL!) But we have no reason to believe that Doerr wouldn’t say and do absolutely anything to help ram through cap-and-trade legislation that would enable his firm to steal billions of dollars from consumers and taxpayers through bogus Al Gore-endorsed “green technologies.” If you’re thinking that Doerr is only one voice on the ERAB and that less-biased heads will prevail, think again. Here are the other ERAB members and their interests/positions on cap-and-trade:
So of the 16 members of Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, only one (Feldstein) opposes cap-and-trade. At least six (Immelt, Owens, Doerr, Ferguson, Wolf, Phillips) expect direct financial benefits from cap-and-trade. The remaining members are either Obama supporters/employees or union representatives. Taxpayers, consumers and non-rent-seeking businesses have been left out in the cold. (Source: Green Hell Blog.) EXCEPTION TO LOBBY RULE:
First 100 Days: Unfilled Positions Threaten Obama's Ambitious Agenda (Apr 2009) President Obama, during his first 100 days in office, hasn't allowed modesty to stop him from pushing the most ambitious agenda since FDR. But his plan to reform health care, energy and education could be upended by gaping holes that he has yet to fill in his administration. Obama is outpacing George W. Bush and Bill Clinton on appointments, but like his predecessors, he is bogged down in a system that has grown increasingly cumbersome over the years. And his task has been made even more difficult by his own tougher-than-ever background checks and ethics rules. "It's not hampering his ability to set his agenda," New York University professor Paul Light, an expert on the federal government, told FOXNews.com. "But it will hamper the implementation of his agenda. The real challenge for Obama is to get some people in key positions where they have to produce actual results." As of this week, Obama has had 74 appointments confirmed by the Senate, compared with 30 by George W. Bush at the same point in time. Ronald Reagan holds the record among modern presidents for most appointments confirmed by the Senate at the end of 100 days: 83, according to the White House Transition Project. "Obama right now is out in front of all those guys, except Reagan," Terry Sullivan, executive director of the project, told FOXNews.com. But Obama still has hundreds of positions left to fill. Of the 542 positions that affect policy, the Senate has confirmed 37 percent, according to the project. What's at stake is much more than bragging rights for how quickly Obama can fill in an organizational chart with undersecretary of this and deputy assistant secretary of that. These boxes represent the people Obama needs to carry out all sorts of promised initiatives and policy shifts, and to assure that the nation stays safe along the way. Obama is moving at a good pace compared to Bush and Clinton, Light said. "But he's got a big agenda, more appointments to fill. The activist agenda requires more implementers and executors." At a recent congressional hearing, for example, Rep. Sue Myrick, R-N.C., lamented that Dennis Blair, Obama's national intelligence director, doesn't have time to manage the extra responsibilities he's been given on economics and climate change. "The ideal person for that is the principal deputy director of national intelligence," suggested Edward Maguire, the agency's outgoing inspector general. But that's one of hundreds of seats that remain empty. Similar stories abound all across government. NASA is awaiting a new administrator as it approaches its deadline to announce when it will retire the space shuttle program. At the Health and Human Services Department, where Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is still awaiting confirmation by the Senate for the secretary position, 19 of the top 20 slots are being filled by acting career employees, and the 20th is empty. Obama also has not picked someone to head the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a quasi-government outfit that insures the pensions of 44 million workers and retirees -- critical when bankruptcies are mounting. The corporation is being run by an acting director from the civil service. Obama himself has bemoaned the "onerous" appointments process, taking note in particular of early trouble filling critical spots at the Treasury Department, where several potential nominees backed out after their names were announced. "A lot of people who we think are about to serve in the administration and Treasury suddenly say, 'Well, you know what? I don't want to go through some of the scrutiny, embarrassment, in addition to taking huge cuts in pay,'" Obama told CBS's "60 Minutes" last month. The president added to his hurdles by imposing tougher ethics rules and by increasing scrutiny of nominees' taxes after revelations that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner had failed to pay $34,000 in payroll taxes and that former Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle, Obama's first pick for health secretary, owed $140,000 in back income taxes and interest. But some say that given the scope and magnitude of the positions that remain to be filled, Obama should exercise caution when making appointments. "They're not really taking that long," Sullivan said. "The fact of the matter is, there's nothing more important than these positions. Pepsico takes half a year to hire people, and they're just making potato chips." (Source: AP.) Obama's Team Is Lacking Most of Its Top Players (Aug 2009) As President Obama tries to turn around a summer of setbacks, he finds himself still without most of his own team. Seven months into his presidency, fewer than half of his top appointees are in place advancing his agenda. Of more than 500 senior policymaking positions requiring Senate confirmation, just 43 percent have been filled — a reflection of a White House that grew more cautious after several nominations blew up last spring, a Senate that is intensively investigating nominees and a legislative agenda that has consumed both. While career employees or holdovers fill many posts on a temporary basis, Mr. Obama does not have his own people enacting programs central to his mission. He is trying to fix the financial markets but does not have an assistant treasury secretary for financial markets. He is spending more money on transportation than anyone since Dwight D. Eisenhower but does not have his own inspector general watching how the dollars are used. He is fighting two wars but does not have an Army secretary. He sent Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Africa to talk about international development but does not have anyone running the Agency for International Development. He has invited major powers to a summit on nuclear nonproliferation but does not have an assistant secretary of state for nonproliferation. “If you’re running G.M. without half your senior executives in place, are you worried? I’d say your stockholders would be going nuts,” said Terry Sullivan, a professor at the University of North Carolina and executive director of the White House Transition Project, a scholarly program that tracks appointments. “The notion of the American will — it’s not being thwarted, but it’s slow to come to fruition.” Mrs. Clinton expressed the exasperation of many in the administration last month when she was asked by A.I.D. employees why they did not have a chief. “The clearance and vetting process is a nightmare,” she told them. “And it takes far longer than any of us would want to see. It is frustrating beyond words.” The process of assembling a new administration has frustrated presidents for years, a point brought home when George W. Bush received the now-famous memorandum titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike U.S.” eight years ago this month but still did not have most of his national security team in place when planes smashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. All parties vowed to fix the process, and Mr. Obama has a more intact national security team than his predecessor at this point. But even in this area, vital offices remain open. No Obama appointee is running the Transportation Security Administration, the Customs and Border Protection agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Mr. Obama still does not have an intelligence chief at the Department of Homeland Security, nor a top civilian in charge of military readiness at the Pentagon. Mr. Obama is far enough along in his presidency that some early appointees are already leaving even before the last of the first round have assumed their posts. Among those who have left already is the person charged with filling the empty offices, Donald H. Gips, who quit as presidential personnel director to go to South Africa as ambassador last month. The consequences can be felt in small ways and large — from the extra work for appointees on the job to the slowdown of policy reviews and development. For example, Mr. Obama’s promised cybersecurity initiative to improve coordination among government agencies and the private sector has stalled while he looks for someone to lead it. “There’s every reason to be concerned,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader. “The president deserves to have his full complement of staff in the different agencies.” But the White House expressed less concern because by its count it has matched or surpassed past presidents in putting together its government. “Given that we’re ahead of where previous administrations have been, we feel we’re moving at a fairly quick clip to get everything done,” said Bill Burton, a deputy White House press secretary. Measuring the progress in appointments depends on what positions are counted and who is doing the counting. The White House Transition Project counts 543 policymaking jobs requiring Senate confirmation in four top executive ranks. As of last week, Mr. Obama had announced his selections for 319 of those positions, and the Senate had confirmed 236, or 43 percent of the top echelon of government. Other scholars have slightly different but similar tallies. The White House prefers to include ambassadors, United States attorneys, marshals and judges, who are also subject to Senate votes but are not counted by the scholars. By that count, Mr. Obama has won confirmation of 304 nominees, compared with 301 for Mr. Bush, 253 for Bill Clinton and 212 for the first President George Bush at this point in their administrations. If lower-ranking senior executive service officials and political appointees who do not require Senate approval are counted, the White House said it had installed 1,830 people, at least 50 percent more than any of the last three presidents had at this stage. No matter how the counting is done, though, hundreds of senior positions remain empty with 15 percent of Mr. Obama’s term over. While appointments linger, those jobs are generally filled with acting officials — and the White House says that has not slowed its ability to effect change. But acting officials do not have the full latitude that confirmed appointees do. “It’s just not the same thing,” said Paul Light, a professor at New York University who specializes in appointments. “They don’t have the same authority. They don’t feel the same loyalties or freedom to exert control. And what you get is drift in the agencies.” Blame is being freely passed around. After several early nominees were discovered to have failed to pay some taxes, the White House tightened its vetting. The Senate Finance Committee has a former Internal Revenue Service official helping to go through many nominees’ taxes. And Republican senators are holding up nominees like John McHugh for Army secretary to influence what happens to the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The Finance Committee argued that fault lay elsewhere. Scott Mulhauser, a spokesman for the panel, said it had approved 14 of 16 nominees whose paperwork was received before July. But officials said the process had become so intrusive that many candidates declined to be considered. “Anyone who has gone through it or looked at this process will tell you that every administration it gets worse and it gets more cumbersome,” Mrs. Clinton said last month. “And some very good people, you know, just didn’t want to be vetted.” She added: “You have to hire lawyers, you have to hire accountants. I mean, it is ridiculous.” (Source: NY Times.) White House Discloses 10 More Ethics Waivers for Administration Officials (Sep 2009) Calling President Obama's Executive Order on Ethics for Executive Branch personnel "the strongest ethics standards in U.S. government history," White House counsel Norm Eisen on Friday announced 10 more waivers for Obama administration officials. The waivers will allow the officials to participate with persons with whom and entities with which "the appointees formerly had a professional relationship," Eisen wrote, "because there was a compelling public interest in allowing it." The waivers are for:
Eisen said that waivers have gone to only 16 out of approximately 1,890 appointments. Previous waivers went to:
(Source: ABC: Jake Tapper.) IMMEDIATE CHANGE BY EXECUTIVE ORDERObama Transition Team Works to Identify Immediate Changes (by Executive Order) (Nov 2008)Transition advisers to President-elect Barack Obama have compiled a list of about 200 Bush administration actions and executive orders that could be swiftly undone to reverse White House policies on climate change, stem cell research, reproductive rights and other issues, according to congressional Democrats, campaign aides and experts working with the transition team.A team of four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration. The team is now consulting with liberal advocacy groups, Capitol Hill staffers and potential agency chiefs to prioritize those they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive, said a top transition official who was not permitted to speak on the record about the inner workings of the transition. In some instances, Obama would be quickly delivering on promises he made during his two-year campaign, while in others he would be embracing Clinton-era policies upended by President Bush during his eight years in office. "The kind of regulations they are looking at" are those imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda, said Dan Mendelson, a former associate administrator for health in the Clinton administration's Office of Management and Budget. The list of executive orders targeted by Obama's team could well get longer in the coming days, as Bush's appointees are rushing to enact a number of last-minute policies in an effort to extend his legacy. A spokeswoman said Saturday that no plans for regulatory changes had been finalized. "Before he makes any decisions on potential executive or legislative actions, he will be conferring with congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, as well as interested groups," Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter said. "Any decisions would need to be discussed with his Cabinet nominees, none of whom have been selected yet." Still, the pre-election transition team, comprising mainly lawyers, has positioned the incoming president to move fast on high-priority items without waiting for Congress. Obama himself has signaled, for example, that he intends to reverse Bush's controversial limit on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, a decision that scientists say has restrained research into some of the most promising avenues for defeating a wide array of diseases such as Parkinson's. Bush's August 2001 decision pleased religious conservatives who have moral objections to the use of cells from days-old human embryos, which are destroyed in the process. But Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., said that during Obama's final swing through her state in October, she reminded him that because the restrictions were never included in legislation, Obama "can simply reverse them by executive order." Obama, she said, "was very receptive to that." Opponents of the restrictions have already drafted an executive order he could sign.  The new president is also expected to lift a so-called global gag rule barring international family planning groups that receive U.S. aid from counseling women about the availability of abortion, even in countries where the procedure is legal, said Cecile Richards, the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. When Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he rescinded the Reagan-era regulation, known as the Mexico City Policy, but Bush reimposed it. "We have been communicating with his transition staff" almost daily, Richards said. "We expect to see a real change." While Obama said at a news conference last week that his top priority would be to stimulate the economy and create jobs, his advisers say that focus will not delay key shifts in social and regulatory policies, including some — such as the embrace of new environmental safeguards — that Obama has said will have long-term, beneficial impacts on the economy. The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration's decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. "Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer," Obama said last January. (SITE NOTE: Even before he's in office, his support of Al Gore's global warming campaign is under attack -- especially as the US is digging out from severe winter weather with snowed in Las Vegas and snow in Malibu. Obama supporters are tap dancing to explain it away, but not convincingly as masses of scientists call the global warming theory "bad science.") California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California's rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation's automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country. "An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market," said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists. Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation in December 2007 that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries. Robert Sussman, who was the EPA's deputy administrator during the Clinton administration and is now overseeing EPA transition planning for Obama, wrote a paper last spring strongly recommending such a finding. Others in the campaign have depicted it as an issue on which Obama is keen to show that politics must not interfere with scientific advice. Some related reforms embraced by Obama's transition advisers would alter procedures for decision-making on climate issues. A book titled "Change for America," being published next week by the Center for American Progress, an influential liberal think tank, will recommend, for example, that Obama rapidly create a National Energy Council to coordinate all policy-making related to global climate change. The center's influence with Obama is substantial: It was created by former Clinton White House official John D. Podesta, a co-chairman of the transition effort, and much of its staff has been swept into planning for Obama's first 100 days in office. The National Energy Council would be a counterpart to the White House National Economic Council that Clinton created in a 1993 executive order. "It would make sure all the oars are rowing in the right direction" and ensure that climate change policy "gets lots of attention inside the White House," said Daniel J. Weiss, a former Sierra Club official and senior fellow with the Center for American Progress Action Fund. The center's new book will also urge Obama to sign an executive order requiring that greenhouse gas emissions be considered whenever the federal government examines the environmental impact of its actions under the existing National Environmental Policy Act. Several key members of Obama's transition team have already embraced the idea. Other early Obama initiatives may address the need for improved food and drug regulation and chart a new course for immigration enforcement, some Obama advisers say. But they add that only a portion of his early efforts will be aimed at undoing Bush initiatives. Despite enormous pent-up Democratic frustration, Obama and his team realize they must strike a balance between undoing Bush actions and setting their own course, said Winnie Stachelberg, the center's senior vice president for external affairs. "It took eight years to get into this mess, and it will take a long time to get out of it," she said. "The next administration needs to look ahead. This transition team and the incoming administration gets that in a big way." (Source: Washington Post.) BROKEN PROMISESBudget Issues: Pragmatic, Less Wasteful Government (Nov 2008) U.S. President-elect Barack Obama on 26 Nov pledged to stop wasteful government spending in a news conference in Chicago. "We are going to go through our federal budget, as I promised during the campaign, page by page, line by line, eliminating those programs we don`t need and insisting that those that we do need operate in a sensible, cost-effective way," he said. Obama said budget reform is not an option, but a necessity. “We can`t sustain a system that bleeds billions of taxpayer dollars on programs that have outlived their usefulness or exist solely because of the power of politicians, lobbyists or interest groups. We simply can`t afford it.”Pundits say this speech reflects his willingness to implement his campaign promise to rid Washington’s practice of the “comfortable co-existence” between lobbyists and politicians. On the size of the government, Obama said, “This isn`t about big government or small government. It`s about building a smarter government that focuses on what works. That’s why I will ask my team to think anew and act anew to meet our new challenges." He also said what Americans want more than anything is a smart government with common sense. “They don`t want ideology, they don`t want bickering, they don`t want sniping. They want action and they want effectiveness," he said. Given that Obama also promised a bold economic stimulus on 24 Nov, the 26 Nov speech emphasizing fiscal reform, cracking down on lobbyists, and emphasis on common sense and ideology illustrates his determination to seek pragmatism in his administration. (Source: Donga Ilbo.) Environmentalists, labor unions, civil rights advocates and others place their hopes on Obama (Nov 2008) For years, progressive groups and their causes have been in the political wilderness. Now, with Barack Obama preparing to take the White House and Democrats tightening their hold on Congress, the party's liberal constituencies can see their way to a promised land. Teir vision includes federal laws banning job discrimination against gays; expanded hate-crime laws; public land protections from logging and oil drilling; and easier union organizing of workers. Labor unions, environmentalists and other liberal groups are eagerly preparing for new confrontations with business and conservative interests. They feel secure in having allies in Washington's power centers, 14 years after Democrats last controlled Congress and the White House. (And some consider the exile even longer, dating from Ronald Reagan's 1980 election, because President Clinton's course was largely centrist and he had only two years with a Democratic majority in Congress.) "Everybody is seeing the energy that has been unleashed in this election cycle," said Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group. Obama, who will have the largest Democratic congressional majority since the 1970s, won election on a platform that embraced causes dear to the party's liberal wing: withdrawal of troops from Iraq, a national healthcare plan and a big investment in clean energy. "Every interest group, every group in the party, has a list," said Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf. Some wish lists may be relatively easy to fulfill. An expanded federal hate-crimes law -- a priority of civil rights and gay rights groups -- cleared Congress but was vetoed by President Bush. The Fair Pay Act -- a priority for women's groups that removes obstacles to pay-discrimination lawsuits -- came within four votes of overcoming a filibuster. Other challenges are bigger: a pathway to citizenship for illegal workers, for example; or the union-backed Employee Free Choice Act legislation, vigorously opposed by business groups, that would make labor organizing easier. And liberal groups already have an eye on the economic stimulus plan that the Obama administration and Congress will take up. Unions want the stimulus to include a large infrastructure building program to create jobs for construction workers. Some want to include renovation of dilapidated schools. Civil rights groups and advocates for low-income families want the legislation to allow bankruptcy judges to alter repayment terms for mortgages. Gay and lesbian activists want equal job access and protection for homosexuals. Environmentalists want the stimulus to include "green jobs" through alternative-energy development. In fact, environmental groups -- which tangled with the Bush administration over policies minor and major, including protections for air, water, wildlife, and forests and other public lands -- expect swift and sweeping action from Obama on nearly every issue that matters to them. Environmentalists expect Obama to "hit the reset button," as the Sierra Club's Josh Dorner put it, on a host of regulations that Bush weakened. They expect more input from scientists in framing environmental policy and more action from the Environmental Protection Agency in limiting greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act, in keeping with a Supreme Court ruling from last year. On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to regulate carbon emissions through a "cap and trade" system and to spend $150 billion over 10 years to boost alternative fuels. Goodwill on the left has largely prevented activists from publicly complaining when Obama has distanced himself from campaign commitments. Labor's response was muted, for example, when he said that before acting on a campaign promise to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, he'd order a study of NAFTA. And there was little outcry when he signaled in September that he would delay delivering on a promise to end the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the military. "People are willing to wait a little while," said Elmendorf, the Democratic strategist. Progressives say the Obama transition team's appointments and meetings with interest groups indicate that the welcome mat will be out at the White House. "It feels like there's an air of transparency," said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "It is this different feeling, that the door is not closed -- the door is opening." (Source: LA Times.) NYT reporter warns of one-term Obama (Jan 2009) White House reporters for The New York Times predict that the market collapse will force President-elect Barack Obama to abandon for now many of his campaign promises. If his stimulus plan "doesn’t work out, he may very well be a one-term president,” said Jeff Zeleny, who covered Obama’s campaign. “It’s hard to imagine that he could be reelected if the economy’s in the exact same position four years from now.” “A lot of the things he said on the campaign trail you can now dispense with,” said correspondent Peter Baker. “For the moment he has to focus on the economy.” The reporters, gathered at a Sunday afternoon panel at the New York Times Center in New York City, largely concurred with the assessment that turning around the economy now trumps the issues Obama focused on from the stump until the market meltdown in August. Baker suggested Obama would tackle smaller-scale issues related to his major agenda items as a kind of political “down payment” on his promises, for now would retreat from even some of his firmest pledges. “You’re not going to see universal health care, I don’t think, this year,” Baker said. “You’re not going to see a cap on carbon emissions, as he has promised, probably, this year.” And for all of his campaign trail talk about collective sacrifice, Baker observed, Obama has seemed reluctant to call for austerity in a challenging economic moment. “He hasn’t asked anybody for sacrifice,” Baker said. “His whole economic package is about giving things to people.” Sheryl Gay Stolberg, who has covered the Bush administration for the Times, suggested Obama would use his Inauguration, which takes place in nine days, as an opportunity to ask for patience from an uneasy public. One of Obama’s principal political challenges, Stolberg said, is: “How will he try to lower expectations?” Despite their downbeat assessment of Obama’s first-year prospects, the Times trio also described Obama as a fast learner who quickly adapted to the political challenges of a presidential campaign — and who could show similar adaptability in office. “More than any other politician, he sort of grew, month by month, as you saw him,” Zeleny said, adding that when he was sworn into the Senate just four years ago, Obama hadn’t given much thought to running for president. “At the time, the plan, the Obama plan, was that he would run for governor of Illinois after one term in the Senate, or he might,” Zeleny said. “He had no idea what it was going to be like to run for president.” Ironically, the White House team said, Obama may have found an unexpected cheering section in the form of the Bush administration. Outgoing White House officials who recognize the current president’s unpopularity are hoping the president-elect will be able to carry out parts of the Bush team’s policy vision, particularly with respect to Iraq, that are currently incomplete. “If Obama succeeds, it’s like Eisenhower after Truman,” Baker said, pointing out that Eisenhower perpetuated many of Truman’s anticommunist policies, winning over a public that had been resistant to his predecessor’s ideas. “They think that Obama is not going to change things as dramatically” as people think, he said. Assistant managing editor Rick Berke, who moderated the panel, noted that Obama had already departed from Bush’s precedent in one important respect: He hasn’t sat for a post-election interview with the Times. “When the current president was elected, one of the first things he did was sit down with The New York Times and a battery of reporters,” Berke said. “This president has not sat down with our New York Times press corps in a very long time, as even Bush did.” (Source: NY Times: Alexander Burns.) Obama's first 100 days littered with broken promises (Apr 2009) Alex Conant is a communications consultant who served as the Republican National Committee's national press secretary in 2008 Given all the hoopla and high expectations surrounding the new president, it's easy to overlook how he has shifted since the election in both tone and substance. As we approach the 100-day mark of his presidency, Barack Obama has broken or bent many tenets of his campaign, including promises on war, spending and good government. In terms of tone, Obama promised to be a hope-filled change agent who could fix our politics and "heal a nation." He would do it by refusing to appoint lobbyists to his administration, increasing transparency in government, and forging new bipartisan consensus. His campaign promised to strengthen government checks and balances by limiting the use of presidential signing statements, mandating public review of legislation, and vetoing wasteful congressional earmarks. Yet none of those promises survived his first 100 days. Even before he was sworn in, Obama picked several lobbyists for top administration jobs, including major cabinet deputy secretaries. When challenged to explain and produce the waivers that permitted those nominations, the administration dragged its feet, bending only after embarrassing questions from the White House press corps. The promise-breaking did not stop with the inauguration. Soon after he was sworn in, the president signed an earmark-laden spending bill with virtually no bipartisan support or public review - and then promptly issued a signing statement. The speed and ease with which Obama broke his promises for a new politics are only eclipsed by his policy shifts since taking office. But whereas his good-government reversals have consistently trended toward politics-as-usual, his policy reversals go both ways. Some shifts are decidedly conservative, like his new Iraq policy, which looks strikingly similar to the one he inherited from President George W. Bush. Gone is Obama's promise to remove all combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. Instead, Obama is embracing a conditions-based withdrawal that would leave up to 50,000 troops in Iraq until the end of 2011. Similarly, Obama is showing a greater openness to free trade than he ever did on the campaign trail. Campaigning in Pennsylvania a year ago, Obama promised to renegotiate NAFTA if elected president, and opposed new free-trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea. But now, the Administration says Obama has no plans to reopen NAFTA and is pushing Congress to ratify the trade agreements. That's not to say that Obama is proving to be a conservative. Most of Obama's policy shifts since winning the election are decidedly liberal, especially on issues of taxes, spending and borrowing. During the campaign, Obama portrayed himself as a fiscal hawk, promising to cut taxes for most taxpayers while simultaneously putting our nation on a path toward fiscal responsibility with "a net spending cut." That would require making hard budgeting choices - which Obama has yet to do. Instead, Obama's budget would double the national debt over the next five years and triple it in 10. Similarly, his signature middle-class tax cuts expire in just two years, while his promises to cut taxes for small businesses are postponed until after his term in office. Given the gravity of our nation's challenges, Obama can be forgiven for occasionally prioritizing pragmatism over political pledges. But the speed and scope of his promise-breaking in the first 100 days should not be ignored amid the general excitement surrounding the new president. Look beneath the soaring rhetoric and it is clear Obama's presidency is off to a rocky start. He has consistently capitulated on the substantive issues that brought him into the office, eroding his credibility with many observers and making him appear more like a typical politician. Hopefully, his new positions will lead us toward a more peaceful and prosperous future. But if victory is elusive overseas and recovery is slow at home, voters will become more skeptical of his future promises. (Source: Philadelphia Inquirer.) Michelle Malkin: The selective transparency of Barack Obama (May 2009)Sunlight is for suckers. The New York Post reported on Tuesday that the White House will not release the $328,835 snapshots taken of the president’s Boeing VC-25A that buzzed lower Manhattan. The entire world has seen news and amateur photos and videos of the incident. But if President Obama has his way, taxpayers won’t be able to see the flyover photos they paid for with their own money. This will make for an interesting response to my Freedom of Information Act requests. After the bizarre mission caused distress and panic among countless New York City residents who were intentionally left in the dark about the photo-op stunt, I filed two public records requests with the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Joint Staff FOIA Requester Service Center. The first one requests any and all communication — including e-mail and other public records and including any and all correspondence between the White House Military Office, Department of Defense, and other agencies — related to the planned federal aerial mission over New York City on April 27, 2009. Specifically, I requested all public records related to and including the flight manifests, and related to the origin of the request for the mission. The second filing requests any and all photos taken during the planned federal aerial mission approved by the White House Military Office. What rationale could they possibly use to stifle public disclosure? National security? These were glamour shots to enhance the Air Force One photo portfolio. That’s no secret. The White House ‘fessed up on that. Withholding the photos serves only one purpose: protecting the backsides of those involved in this botched p.r. mission. From Day One, President Obama has demonstrated a rather self-serving selectivity when it comes to transparency. The Obama White House rushed to reverse an 18-year ban photographing the flag-draped coffins of troops arriving back on American soil. And at the behest of the American Civil Liberties Union, his administration is set to release at least 21 classified photographs by May 28 showing detainee abuse in prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Openness in government is fine if it hurts America’s reputation, but not if it harms Obama’s. Moreover, hostility to transparency is a running thread through Obama’s cabinet:
President Obama set the tone, breaking his transparency pledge with the very first bill he signed into law. On January 29, the White House announced that Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act had been posted online for review. One problem: Obama had already signed it – in violation of his “sunlight before signing” pledge to post legislation for public comment on the White House website five days before he sealed any deal. Obama broke the pledge again with the mad rush to pass his trillion-dollar, pork-stuffed stimulus package full of earmarks he denied existed. Jim Harper of the Cato Institute reported in April 2009: “Of the eleven bills President Obama has signed, only six have been posted on Whitehouse.gov. None have been posted for a full five days after presentment from Congress…” It’s this utter disregard for taxpayer accountability that prompted hundreds of thousands of citizens to take to the streets on Tax Day 2009 for Tea Party protests. The trampling of transparency inspired signs that read: “No legislation without deliberation” and “READ THE BILL FIRST.” Obama’s response was first to claim that he hadn’t even heard of the Tea Party movement and then, on his 100-day celebration, to deride all those Americans he is supposed to represent of “playing games.” Projection, anyone? When it comes to toying with transparency, President Obama is a master at “playing games.” (Source: Michelle Malkin.) OBAMA'S FIRST 100 DAYSThe first thing the White House wants you to know about assessments of a president's first hundred days is that those assessments don't matter. “It’s the journalistic equivalent of a Hallmark holiday," a senior administration official said. "They don't mean anything but you have to observe them." Yet advisers are only too happy to tick off a flurry of accomplishments on the economy in the administration’s first hundred days — a mix of old-fashioned palliative measures, such as increased jobless and health insurance benefits for struggling Americans, to a series of sophisticated correctives for the faltering financial system.Among the most significant steps in the first hundred days:
The president also has called for limits on executive pay; ordered the firing of General Motors chief Rick Wagoner as part of the restructuring of the auto industry; and taken credit card executives to task for raising interest rates and fees in the midst of a recession. Aides say the president’s first hundred days have been as productive as any since Franklin Delano Roosevelt. High Stakes The financial crisis is the defining challenge of Barack Obama’s presidency and he knows it. In an early signal of the issue’s importance, the president instituted the “economic daily briefing” — a meeting with top economic advisers in the Oval Office modeled after the daily national security briefings he receives. Famous for his even temperament, the president's mood has darkened, aides say, in only a few instances since taking office: in his dealings with military families who've lost loved ones, and when reading some of the personal letters from Americans telling stories of their own economic turmoil. Nor has the president shied away from articulating his own political stakes. "I'm not going to make any excuses," he told a town hall audience in Fort Myers, Florida on Feb. 10. "If stuff hasn't worked and people don't feel like I've led the country in the right direction, then you'll have a new president." (SITE NOTE: This is the same remarks as Roh Moo-hyun, the Korean Presidential duplicate, who nearly destroyed Korea whose "Peace and Prosperity" programs fed the North and contributed to the funds for its missile/nuclear development. A man who preached hatred -- first against the Americans and then against the Japanese -- and whose incompetence knew no bounds. This is what we think Obama will be. We are just awaiting the impeachment in 2009.)Hitting the Right Note Early on, the president struggled to find the proper tone in discussing the economy. Faced with a financial system in freefall, and the task of convincing Congress his massive recovery plan was necessary, in the first weeks the president spoke in grim terms, at one point going so far as to suggest the financial crisis could be irreversible if his stimulus plan weren’t enacted. That led to concerns Obama’s foreboding tone was exacerbating the confidence crisis on Wall Street and among consumers — a criticism crystallized by former President Bill Clinton in a February television interview. "I like the fact that he didn't come in and give us a bunch of happy talk. I'm glad he shot straight with us," Clinton said. "I just would like him to end by saying that he is hopeful and completely convinced we're gonna come through this." in the end is At the same time, the president had to manage the fury many Americans feel over bailouts of Wall Street, while recognizing he may well need to ask Congress for additional funding to shore up banks in the future. Public anger reached a boil last month when news broke that the insurance company AIG paid $165 million in bonuses to the very financial division executives blamed for running the company into the ground. “I don’t want to quell anger; I think people have a right to be angry,” Obama said on March 19. in the end is At an Oval Office meeting with CEOs of the nation’s top financial institutions, the president told top executives his administration was the only thing standing between them and “the pitchforks” of an angry public. In recent weeks, the president has been striking a more hopeful, if cautious, tone on the economy, while advisers point to “green shoots” of progress: a surge in home refinancings, some loosening of credit, signs of resurgence in the retail sector. “There is no doubt that times are still tough. By no means are we out of the woods just yet,” the president said in mid-April in an economic address at Georgetown University. “But from where we stand, for the very first time, we're beginning to see glimmers of hope. And beyond that, way off in the distance, we can see a vision of an America's future that is far different than our troubled economic past.” in the end is The Next Hundred Daysin the end is The next 100 days may be even more significant than the first. The president’s signature middle class tax cuts are just now getting into the system; the next few months will reveal whether they’ve worked to stimulate demand. Billions in recovery act funds should start to flow into the economy. And in the coming months, the Treasury Department is likely to hold the first auctions to purchase banks’ bad assets. The success — or failure — of that effort will be crucial and telling. "The moment of truth is at hand," said Mark Zandi, an economist with Moody’s, who has advised the Obama administration. "We should see some benefit [from the administration’s policies] in next 100 days. If we don’t, policymakers have to think about plan B — quickly." (Source: MSNBC.) (SITE NOTE: Millions of Americans are also seeing the next hundred days as being crucial in America taking back its nation based on the Constitution. Obama has stacked the deck -- with a Democratic controlled Congress. The Democrats are hell-bent on turning America into a Socialist State.)Obama Plans 100th Day "Celebration" (Apr 2009) The Obama Supporters -- including the national networks -- laid plans to laud Obama for his numerous "achievements." They are so impressed with his "hipness." (Source: Politico.) White House officials have requested up to an hour of airtime for Wednesday, April 29, according to TV Week. The press conference, which falls on the 100th day of Obama's presidency, will probably air in the 8 o'clock hour and address questions of the president's performance. It's likely he'll get that request granted but you can almost see the network presidents gritting their teeth and assenting. This would be the fourth such presser for Obama (he's averaging one a month now). The past three have cost the ABCBSNBCFOX about $30 million bucks total as Lisa de Moraes notes: President Obama might take an additional $9 million to $10 million out of the purse of the broadcast TV industry when he stages another of his news conferences next week to talk about his efforts to bail out the banking and automotive industries.Barack Obama will hand an increasingly besotted American media the opportunity to gush about his presidency on Wednesday (29 Apr), when he marks his first 100 days in office with a formal, prime-time press conference. Perhaps if you're a liberal and approve of the way Obama and the Democratic Congress is FORCING the masses of America to accept change without having a say in the process, then Obama is the Messiah and deserves adulation. The Democratic Congressional method was to cry crocodile tears of bipartisanship and lock the doors to debate. In the future, the term "reconciliation" will mean a truly different thing as the Democrat use it to pass their bills by simple majority. Conservatives are up in arms -- and the changes are being made over the objections of a large percentage of Americans. Obama preached a "crisis" to FORCE his Stimulus Package through -- even though the main bulk of the monies will not be spent until AFTER 2010. It had very little to do with the NOW crisis -- but rather with the political war chests of benefitting the Democrats coming up to the 2012 elections. He screwed the American people. Mr Obama's top adviser David Axelrod has publicly dismissed the 100th day milestone as a "Hallmark holiday" - meaning an invented event of no real significance. But behind the scenes presidential aides have discreetly encouraged comparisons between Mr Obama and his illustrious Democratic predecessor, Franklin D.Roosevelt. Ever since, pundits have used it as a litmus test to grade presidents. It's a crude measure because the president's only power is his prestige and the bully pulpit of the White House, and some of America's greatest presidents got off to a dismal start. Roosevelt (or FDR as he was he was known) took over in the midst of the Great Depression and launched into a whirlwind of lawmaking which he christened the "New Deal". He won every request he asked for from a frightened Congress which had seen enough of economic hard times. His presidency is the gold standard by which other are judged and only Ronald Reagan has been his equal in getting laws adopted by Congress so quickly. Others, such as John F.Kennedy, Bill Clinton and George W.Bush, fell well short. (Source: Telegraph UK.) UPDATE ON 29 APR PRESSER -- SORRY... (Apr 2009) Obama lost 21 million viewers from his first prime-time presser in February, according to James Hibberd, and it looks like Fox made the right call in sticking with its scheduled broadcast: "Wednesday night’s primetime press conference to mark Barack Obama’s 100th day in office was viewed by 28.8 million people, according to Nielsen. That’s a 29% drop from the president’s last press conference, on March 24." The weak showing will probably result in this Obama adulation event not happening again. Obama is Losing his Support (Apr 2009) The nationwide Tax Day Tea Party is a result -- and it may carry forward into national protests when the disparate groups join together for a more powerful voice against the winds of change that none of them want. In his first 100 days, Obama has proven himself a liar who will tell the American people one thing, but do exactly the opposite. He has embarassed the American people in his foreign relations -- and has alientate large portions of the military with his policies. We can only see things getting worse for Obama. However, the OBOTS are convinced that Obama is the most fantastic President that has ever been elected to office. ConservativeAmerican.org says the new President has racked up a whopping 200 scandals, blunders, flip-flops, broken promises and lies in his first 100 days! ConservativeAmerican.org CEO Peter Andrew says “We couldn’t call it the Official Obama Administrtion Scandals, Blunders, Flip-Flops, Broken Promises, Mistakes and Lies List…that’s a mouthful! So we call it simply the Official Obama Administration Scandals List.” The list topped 200 with the addition of the Gitmo Flip-Flop. “While it sounds like a new dance, it’s really a reference to Candidate Obama saying there should be a rejection of the attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo and now President Obama has his own legal black hole at Bagram Air Force Base in Iraq!” Already the first few items have been added to page five of the list. The list includes:
Though this may seem to be a racist comment, what we see is that Obama is stacking his administration with an inordinate number of BLACKS -- in some sort of convoluted logic that he is addressing the ills of past discrimination. However, when Obama fills the key positions with MORE blacks than the percentage of blacks in America's population, there will be cries of DISCRIMINATION....and institutionalized racism. We really don't need this bullshit. No matter how well-qualified they are, the selection on the basis of color is against the law. Obama and the liberals think that "politically correctness" will keep right wing people from saying the truth. But if Obama is not careful, he will step over the bounds. Then the lawsuits will start to fill the courts -- and the liberal ACLU will be forced to put up or shut up forever. When Obama entered office he stated: "My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government." Now check the list above of his nominees and count the tax dodgers, people who hired illegal aliens, etc. -- AND STILL WERE CONFIRMED. Then look at the others who have allegations of sleazy dealings. Obama's nominees are not a very impressive group when it comes to instilling public trust. Not all Mr Obama's policies are popular, and opinion polls also reveal uneasiness with his decision to shut down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility within a year. There have been cat calls from the right. A number of commentators have cast Obama as weak, especially on foreign policy. He is moving ahead with radical change from climate change legislation to defence, where he wants to revamp the way the Pentagon spends money to focus on counter insurgency instead of wars with another power. He is moving "immediately and aggressively" get a Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty passed. The word from Capital Hill is that the votes aren't there to ratify "any" of Mr Obama's groundbreaking bills. Key senators who voted against the nuclear test ban 10 years ago are just as dubious today. The same goes for for climate change, where Democrats recently voted to give their Republican colleagues a de facto veto, deciding that a 60-vote super majority will now be required for climate legislation. (Source: Telegraph UK.) We fear for America. We were warned about Napolitano -- from her battles to gut the illegal immigrant laws while governor. However, now that she is the Secretary of Homeland Security, she has created a firestorm. She seems to think that the borders need to be porous -- and the illegal immigrants should be allowed to reside in the US. The stance on GITMO and the release of terrorists into America will come at a price. She has already offended the conservatives and military organizations by her DHS report that calls the right "extremists" and that veterans can be susceptible for "recruitment" by right-wing extremist groups -- BUT she never named a single group. Republicans are already calling for her resignation -- though only a political trick -- but the grassroots organizations are now realizing that she is a danger to America -- as she implements Obama's policies. We vs. them: To know this president, watch his pronouns (Apr 2009) Presidential aide Dick Darman once said that to understand Ronald Reagan you had to realize he was neither a Republican nor a conservative. He was, Darman said, a populist. Consider some of the 40th president's better-known aphorisms: "Government exists to protect us from each other. Where government has gone beyond its limits is in deciding to protect us from ourselves." "Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it." In an era of Cold War and Great Society programs run amok, Reagan identified the bully as the state. In any "us vs. them" drama he tended to side with "us." He saw himself in the object of the sentence where most folks could also see themselves, taking hits from the subjects—be they communists, bureaucrats, or air traffic controllers. To understand Barack Obama at his 100-days-in-office milestone, you have to realize that he is perhaps not simply a Democrat or a liberal but an anti-populist. Consider the language of the 44th president's major speech on the economy, delivered April 14 at Georgetown University: "I want to talk about what we've done, why we've done it, and what we have left to do." "This is the situation, the downward spiral that we confronted on the day that we took office . . ." "We will hold accountable those who are responsible, we'll force the necessary adjustments, we'll provide the support to clean up those bank balance sheets . . ." If it's not clear who "we" is, then it's plain in a list of accomplishments—"we've already dramatically expanded early childhood education," "we are investing in innovative programs"—leading up to one of the speech's climactic moments: "We have been called to govern in extraordinary times. And that requires an extraordinary sense of responsibility—to ourselves, to the men and women who sent us here, to the many generations whose lives will be affected for good or for ill because of what we do here." There were bright spots, like when the president said "we have to get serious about entitlement reform." But in the 213 uses of "we" I found in Obama's 45-minute speech, the plural pronoun is not referring to the students and faculty at Georgetown or "the men and women who sent us here." In almost every case, the pronoun refers to government in Washington; more precisely, this president and this Congress. They are the subject, the actor; the "us" out here in the countryside (or, say, on Wall Street or Main Street) is the object to be acted upon. While populism alone is no virtue (think Hugo Chavez's Venezuela), an anti-populism that goes around cloaked in thin populist garb will ultimately prove uninspiring and divisive. It proposes and plans without meaning and perspective. It simulates conflicts—we vs. AIG—that miss fundamental problems. One problem, noted in a February speech largely on social issues by Denver's Catholic archbishop Charles Chaput: "American consumer culture is a very powerful narcotic." And in a sermon by John Piper titled "What is the recession for?" a challenge: God intends in these economic times to "wake us up to the constant and desperate condition of the developing world where there is always and only recession of the worst kind." Lost in the Obama lexicon is an everyman discussion of the virtues and vices of spending and lending—the crux of the current economic doom and gloom. Absent from this and other Obama speeches was a call to focus on what global recession means for poor countries, where tightening credit and a drop in exports lead hastily to malnutrition and death. In perhaps the occasion's chief aggrandizement, the White House asked Georgetown to cover "all signs and symbols" where Obama spoke, sparking a controversy over a plywood board cut and painted to cover the Greek Christogram "IHS" above the stage. Obama went on to use religious imagery in his speech—Jesus' parable about the house on the rock, and an economic foundation built on "five pillars" in an allusion borrowed from Islam. The president apparently prefers a naked public square only "we" can fill. (Source: World Magazine: Mindy Belz.) 100 days of Obama: Energy aplenty, no miracles (Apr 2009) Barack Obama opened his presidency by drawing an unflinching portrait of the challenges. Then he set about turning those perils into possibilities. In a dizzying dash to the 100-day mark, Obama made a down payment on the changes he'd promised and delivered a trillion-dollar wallop to wake up the moribund economy. He put the country on track to end one war, reorient another and redefine what it means to be a superpower. All this with a cool confidence that has made increasing numbers of Americans hopeful that the country may at last be heading in the right direction. The public couldn't get enough of it, fixating on Team Obama's every move: the arrival of family dog Bo; the president showing up for work in his shirt-sleeves; the first lady's moxie in baring her arms; Sasha and Malia's swing set; even a visit to the White House by the surviving Grateful Dead. Obama says it is a "weird fishbowl" that he has jumped into. Not everyone's impressed. For all that went right with the president's liftoff (after that small matter of the flubbed oath of office), Obama's opening moves have fallen short in the eyes of many, and have left others wondering where it all will lead. Republicans largely stiffed the president on his call for bipartisanship and cast him as a weak leader on the world stage. Liberals groused that he could have done more and wondered whether he's too prone to compromise. Deficit hawks worried that he's blown a gaping a hole in the budget. Obama himself seems energized. "The decision-making part of it," he says, "actually comes pretty naturally." As for the critics, Obama says, Washington is "a little bit like 'American Idol' _ but everybody is Simon Cowell." Almost overlooked in all the hoopla is the historic nature of Obama's tenure as the first black president. There's been little time to even think about that issue, which commanded so much attention during the campaign, as Obama has grappled with a seizing economy and has rushed pell-mell to reverse the legacy of eight years of Republican rule. "You'd be hard put to find another president facing those kinds of challenges who has acted as intelligently and aggressively to meet the challenges head on," said presidential historian Andrew Polsky, a professor at Hunter College in New York. "He hasn't pushed things to the back burner. Of course, whether any of this works is another question, and it's too soon to know that." Others are less hesitant to draw conclusions. Ted Sorensen, a former speechwriter for President John F. Kennedy, says Obama "seems likely to be one of the great presidents in our history." Former House Republican leader Newt Gingrich says Obama's foreign policy moves have been looking "a lot like Jimmy Carter," a one-term president regarded as a weak leader. Whatever the record so far, it's clear Obama's biggest challenges are still to come. The pledge to overhaul health care will make his successful expansion of children's health coverage look like child's play. While there have been hints the recession may be easing, Obama still needs to stabilize the shaky banking system and get credit flowing again. The clock is ticking on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center within a year, and each detainee poses his own set of problems. Obama's ability to wind down U.S. operations in Iraq and reshape efforts in Afghanistan hinges in large part on factors beyond his control. Obama had hoped that his early actions to ban torture and release top-secret details of past interrogation practices would end a "dark and painful chapter in our history." Instead, they have only inflamed passions and sparked new calls for more investigation and prosecution that are likely to be more than a passing distraction. Change has arrived at a head-snapping rate, a product both of the troubled times and the president's ambitious agenda. There's been the monstrous economic stimulus package that funneled billions into Obama priorities such as health care and renewable energy; a new law to provide 4 million more children with health insurance; another making it easier for workers to sue over discrimination on the job; the easing of Bush-era restraints on stem-cell research; jaw-dropping revelations about past interrogations; plans to put 21,000 more troops in Afghanistan; the White House-orchestrated ouster of General Motors Corp.'s top executive. In smaller ways, too, evidence of change is everywhere. Obama was the first president to host a White House seder to mark Passover. His administration set aside tickets to the annual Easter Egg Roll for gay and lesbian parents. He was the first sitting president to do NBC's "Tonight" show. His weekly radio address airs on YouTube. There have been blunders along the way. It took three nominations for Obama to get his commerce secretary right, two to find a health secretary. Obama apologized after making an off-key joke suggesting that his lame bowling skills made him Special Olympics material. Through it all, the economy has been Job One. For a while, the news was only grim and grimmer. The Dow Jones Industrials average closed at 7,949 on Inauguration Day. By early March, it was closer to 6,500. Job losses piled up in staggering increments: 598,000 in January, 651,000 in February, 663,000 in March. Obama went pedal-to-the-metal to throw money at the problem, first with billions of bailout dollars, next with billions of stimulus dollars, then with a proposed budget expected to produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade. House Republican leader John Boehner of Ohio calls it "a spending spree the likes of which our nation has never seen," and polls pick up growing concern on that front. About half of all Americans say they're "very worried" that the rising national debt will hurt their children and grandchildren, according to an AP-GfK poll. Taxpayers seethed when word surfaced that insurer American International Group Inc., the recipient of billions in bailout money, had paid millions of dollars in bonuses, and it was all Obama could do to keep out in front of the anger and not get flattened by it. By mid-April, tensions had eased, and the president was pointing to economic "glimmers of hope." The Dow was back in same range as around Inauguration Day. For all his focus on the economy, Obama also devoted considerable effort to repairing the nation's tarnished image abroad. His sat down for his first formal TV interview with an Arabic-language station, telling Muslims that "Americans are not your enemy." In Europe, he said America in the past had "shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." He carried the same message to Latin America, entertaining overtures from isolated Cuban President Raul Castro and Venezuela's anti-American president, Hugo Chavez. Breaking with the unyielding tone of the Bush years, Obama said he was rejecting the notion "that if we showed courtesy or opened up dialogue with governments that had previously been hostile to us, that that somehow would be a sign of weakness." Republicans said that was naive, calling the president "a timid advocate of freedom at best," in the words of former Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. The 44th president starts his day with a workout in the White House gym (usually with his wife, Michelle). Then it's breakfast and the morning papers _ he likes the feel of newsprint in his hands. When Obama gets to the Oval Office, he finds a stack of 10 letters on his desk, culled from the 40,000 to 50,000 that arrive daily. The letters are "one of the really important rituals of his day," says senior adviser David Axelrod. Also each morning, Obama gets a briefing on national security, and a second on the economy. "Between 7 and 10, I sort of know what I'm doing," the president says. "After that, who knows?" For all of the problems that Obama knew awaited him, new ones arrived out of left field. "I'm pretty sure that he hadn't boned up on piracy any time recently before he came here," says Axelrod, who credits his boss with moving smoothly from one challenge to the next _ "usually a few furlongs ahead of the others in the room." The trappings of the office, though, still take some getting used to. Like that button next to him that can be used to summon people. "It took him awhile to recognize what that was," says Axelrod. Obama says one of the hardest adjustments has been dealing with the isolation that comes with the presidency. He chafes a little "being inside this bubble," Obama said in one early interview. To fight that, the president negotiated with his security people to keep using his BlackBerry, although his contacts list got chopped down to about 30 close friends and advisers. Known for his even temper, Obama keeps things loose even in meetings on tense subjects, aides say. What annoys him? Axelrod mentions "the scorecard politics of Washington" and takes note of a proliferation of "bloviators" on television. "He doesn't have one of these in his office," Axelrod says, gesturing toward a TV. Axelrod says Obama has settled into the presidency more easily than he did his candidacy. The president seem unafraid to admit he's wrong. Or right. "I screwed up," Obama said after his nomination of former Sen. Tom Daschle for health secretary failed. "On this one I think I'm right," he said to critics of his friendly exchange with Chavez. The president, whose aides dismiss the whole notion of the 100-day yardstick as the equivalent of a "Hallmark holiday," came to office imbued with sky-high expectations from the public and emerged three months later with his approval ratings intact, at a solid 64 percent in the AP-GfK poll. But it's all been too much for many Republicans: Seven out of 10 now disapprove of his job performance, compared with 58 percent in February. And there are still a lot of pages to be written. Though Obama is on TV almost every day, Stanley Renshon, a political psychologist at the City University of New York who is writing a book about the president, says he's still hard to read. Sometimes, he says, "it's hard to get a handle on whether Obama's being prudent or radical." Or, in the view of some liberals, too cautious. Justin Ruben, executive director of MoveOn.org, a liberal advocacy group, said members are thrilled to have a president who's making health care and clean energy priorities. "But on the financial front, the jury's still out and folks are looking to see whether the president is really prioritizing Main Street over Wall Street." Axelrod shrugs off the critics from both ends, saying: "He doesn't work off anybody's checklist." Sorensen, the former Kennedy speechwriter, said some of the Americans who invested such high hopes in "an unknown black man elected president in an overwhelmingly white country" now expect too much, too soon. "He's a very good leader with all the instinctive skills of leadership, including superb judgment," says Sorensen, "but that doesn't make him a miracle worker." "There are no miracle workers." Having inherited two wars and an economy in crisis, Obama talks often about the high stakes for the nation in getting things right. Only rarely does he allude to the stakes for him personally. "I will be held accountable," he said a few weeks into his presidency. "You know, I've got four years. ... If I don't have this done in three years, then there's going to be a one-term proposition." (Source: Townhall.) First 100 Days: Social Policy Takes a Left Turn Under Obama (Apr 2009) From the conscience clause to stem cell research, President Obama has shifted social policy to the left in his first 100 days in the White House. But the reversal of several of his predecessor's regulations has garnered hardly a whimper -- leaving many to wonder how much social issues matter to Americans amid two wars and an economic crisis.
"It's cultural aggression," former Bush adviser Karl Rove told FOXNews.com, adding that policy changes that "inject government" into moral matters -- like the conscience clause -- will have "enormous consequences." But conservatives like Rove acknowledge that little attention has been given to Obama's agenda shift since he took office -- largely because lawmakers are more concerned with the economic downturn and national security. "They're not getting attention because the defenders of these policies haven't grabbed the stage," Rove said. Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said matters of national and international security -- like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and North Korea's recent missile launch -- have taken precedence in the first 100 days. "That trumps the social issues," Bond told FOXNews.com. The financial crisis, which mushroomed one month before Obama won election in November, determined the government's chief focus, lawmakers say. "The focus of the president's first 100 days has been the economy and getting it turned around," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md. "As a result, people are more focused on the pocketbook issues at the moment" "The economic problems of the country have overwhelmed the rest of the issue terrain," said Tad Devine, former adviser to presidential candidates Al Gore and John Kerry. "People are worried about their jobs, their savings, their homes, their retirement. There's just no daylight for other things to rise to the surface." Devine also cited what he believes is a change in the country's attitudes, saying issues that were once "hot button" topics have lost much of the public's attention. "It's just a different country now. These issues don't have the power that they used to have a decade ago -- even five years ago," Devine said, adding that funding for public education and patients' bill of rights were among the top polling issues when Gore ran in 2000. Devine said the change in cultural attitudes is most clearly seen through the issue of gay marriage. "This was something that, just a few years ago, you didn't have serious discussion of it. There might have been some discussion of it, but it wasn't manifested in legislatures." he said. Stephen Wayne, professor of government at Georgetown University, said, "Things that are expected don't receive a lot of news coverage. He made his positions clear during the campaign. It's something we come to expect when we get a president with a different view."(Source: Fox News.) President's Highs and Lows (Apr 2009) Most significant victory Obama's biggest political push and signature piece of legislation was the more than $700bn stimulus package. It led to scenes of immense drama on Capitol Hill as Obama sought the Republican allies he needed to get the legislation through. After a long struggle, and relatively few changes, the stimulus finally passed through the Senate. Most acclaimed appointment Making Hillary Clinton secretary of state seemed a high-risk move, but has turned into his most acclaimed decision. Putting his former rival in such a high-profile position has paid off. The Democratic party is united, Obama and Clinton work together and America has a box-office roving ambassador. Best joke At a dinner for Washington's Alfalfa Club, the first black US president poked fun at Robert E Lee, the South's leading general in the civil war that ended slavery. "I know that many of you are aware that this dinner began almost 100 years ago as a way to celebrate the birthday of General Robert E Lee," Obama joked. "If he were here with us tonight, the general would be 202 years old. And very confused." Most surprising move Asking the chief executive of GM to resign. In a country where the free market and high capitalism is worshipped as a religion, ousting Rick Wagoner was seismic. It showed how the economic crisis changed the rules of the game. Reasons for liberals to be cautious Bailed out the banks without introducing meaningful state control; financial team full of former Wall Street bankers; no move on gun control; still keen on forging alliances with moderate Republicans. Reasons for liberals to be cheerful Brought back big government into helping the economy and building infrastructure; promised healthcare reform; reformed foreign policy by closing Guantánamo Bay detention centre and easing restrictions on Cuba; released secret torture memos; made the environment the core of his economic policy. First gaffe "It's like it was like Special Olympics or something." With those words, Obama managed to offend the disabled community and all friends and fans of the Special Olympics. He had been discussing his poor bowling skills with talk show host Jay Leno. Apologised and got away with it. Most controversial decision Obama may have decided to draw down the war in Iraq, but he has made winning in Afghanistan the centrepiece of his administration's foreign policy. This worries the left of his party, but Obama believes that the war can, and indeed must, be won. Feelgood moment The new president running side-by-side down a White House corridor with the new First Dog, Bo. The fulfilment of a campaign promise made to his daughters. Most surprising new enemy Paul Krugman, the liberal doyen of the New York Times and Nobel prize-winning economist. Krugman has become one of the most trenchant critics of Obama's economic policy, hammering its bias towards the banking industry and reliance on the people who caused the financial crisis. Of Tim Geithner's plan to save the banks, he wrote: "It fills me with despair." Best outfit Over to Michelle. Her trip to Europe dazzled many fashionistas. One highlight: her elegant yet fashionable black-dominated look at the Rohan Palace in Strasbourg, featuring a jacket by Azzedine Alaia, a print top by Etro, a shirt by Moschino and trousers by Gunex. Most successful foreign jaunt Obama's mission to Turkey was perhaps the most dangerous foreign trip he has taken. It was his first visit to a Muslim country as president. The trick was to upset neither the Muslim world nor Americans back home. Many Turks, especially the young, seemed to relate to the new president. Muslims worldwide appreciated his recognition of American mistakes and his insistence that the United States was not at war with Islam. Americans enjoyed the fact that Obama's global popularity stretched to areas of the world that had loathed George W Bush. (Source: The Guardian UK.) EDITORIAL: Barack's in the basement -- Obama is less popular than Nixon and Carter (Apr 2009) President Obama's media cheerleaders are hailing how loved he is. But at the 100-day mark of his presidency, Mr. Obama is the second-least-popular president in 40 years. According to Gallup's April survey, Americans have a lower approval of Mr. Obama at this point than all but one president since Gallup began tracking this in 1969. The only new president less popular was Bill Clinton, who got off to a notoriously bad start after trying to force homosexuals on the military and a federal raid in Waco, Texas, that killed 86. Mr. Obama's current approval rating of 56 percent is only one tick higher than the 55-percent approval Mr. Clinton had during those crises. As the attached chart shows, five presidents rated higher than Mr. Obama after 100 days in office. Ronald Reagan topped the charts in April 1981 with 67 percent approval. Following the Gipper, in order of popularity, were: Jimmy Carter with 63 percent in 1977; George W. Bush with 62 percent in 2001; Richard Nixon with 61 percent in 1969; and George H.W. Bush with 58 percent in 1989. It's no surprise the liberal media aren't anxious to point out that their darling is less popular than George W. Bush. But given the Gallup numbers, their hurrahs could be more subdued. USA Today's front page touted the April poll results as positive, with the headline: "Public thinks highly of Obama." The current cover of Newsweek magazine ponders "The Secret of His [Mr. Obama's] Success." The comparison with previous presidents is useful because they are usually popular during their first few months in office - and most presidents have been more popular than Mr. Obama. The explanation for Mr. Obama's low approval is that he ran as a moderate but has governed from the far left. The fawning and self-deceiving press won't go there. On Sunday's "Meet the Press," host David Gregory asked a panel about critics who "would say one of the things that he's done in 100 days already is expand the role of government, the size of government." Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin claimed, "That's what he ran for the presidency in the first place for." Perplexed about complaints over Mr. Obama's expansion of government, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham asked: "does no one listen during campaigns?" It was these pundits who weren't paying attention during last year's campaign. In all three presidential debates, Mr. Obama promised to cut government spending and reduce the size of the deficit. He blamed the economic crisis on excessive deficits. At no time did candidate Barack Obama say that more deficit-spending was the solution. Mr. Obama's popularity after 100 days is the second-lowest for a simple reason: He is more partisan and divisive than his predecessors - including Richard Nixon. (Source: Washington Times.) President Obama: At 99 days, 68% approval rating, says new poll (Apr 2009) President Barack Obama has an approval rating of 68 percent, a higher figure than his predecessor had at his 100-day mark in office, a poll found. (SITE NOTE: There is a lot of disparity between the Rasmussen polls and the current spate of polls from ABC/NBC/CBS. One critic pointed out that the people who were respondents were predominately Democrat and black. Thus the results were skewed intentionally. Whether the allegations are true have yet to be proven, but the Obama administration no longer uses Gallup or Rasmussen polls to support their "popularity" of Obama claims -- relying solely on ABC/NBC/CBS polls.) The New York Times/CBS News poll also showed that two- thirds of Americans say race relations in the country are generally good, with the percentage of black respondents who say so doubling since last July. Half of black Americans still believe that white people have more opportunity to get ahead in society, according to the survey. In a sign of the strong support Obama maintains in the black community, 70 percent of the poll's black respondents said the country is on the right track, compared with 34 percent of white respondents. The first U.S. black president will mark his 100th day in office tomorrow by answering voters’ questions in Missouri and holding a primetime news conference in Washington. The nationwide poll of almost 1,000 adults from April 22-26 shows widespread support for how Obama has addressed issues, including whether Congress should investigate interrogation methods authorized by former President George W. Bush. Sixty-two percent of Americans agreed with Obama that hearings looking into the matter aren’t necessary, according to the survey. The telephone poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points for all adults and plus or minus 7 percentage points for black respondents. Bush had an approval rating of 56 percent at this point in his first term in a similar survey. The Times/CBS News poll figures for other recent presidents weren’t provided. In the new poll, 62 percent of white respondents approved of Obama’s performance. Among black respondents, his approval rating was 96 percent. Among all those questioned, 72 percent said they are optimistic about the next four years. And most of the respondents said they expect Obama to make progress in overhauling health care, energy and immigration policy. At the same time, most people questioned said they don't expect the president to be able to end the war in Iraq or the economic recession by the end of his first term. Fewer than half, 48 percent, said the president has started to make progress on changing the way business is done in Washington, one of Obama’s key campaign pledges. Only 39 percent said he’s making headway on another top promise: cutting taxes for middle-class workers. (Source: NY Daily News.) NY Post: 100 Days, 100 Mistakes (Apr 2009) 1. "Obama criticized pork barrel spending in the form of 'earmarks,' urging changes in the way that Congress adopts the spending proposals. Then he signed a spending bill that contains nearly 9,000 of them, some that members of his own staff shoved in last year when they were still members of Congress. 'Let there be no doubt, this piece of legislation must mark an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new era of responsibility and accountability,' Obama said." -- McClatchy, 3/11 2. "There is no doubt that we've been living beyond our means and we're going to have to make some adjustments." -- Obama during the campaign. 3. This year's budget deficit: $1.5 trillion. 4. Asks his Cabinet to cut costs in their departments by $100 million -- a whopping .0027%! 5. "The White House says the president is unaware of the tea parties." -- ABC News, 4/15 6. "Mr. Obama is an accomplished orator but is becoming known in America as the 'teleprompt president' over his reliance on the machine when he gives a speech." -- Sky News, 3/18 7. In early February, the 2010 census was moved out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House, politicizing how federal aid is distributed and electoral districts are drawn. 8. Obama taps Nancy Killefer for a new administration job, First Chief Performance Officer -- to police government spending. But it surfaces that Killefer had performance issues of her own -- a tax lien was slapped on her DC home in 2005 for failure to pay unemployment compensation tax on household help. She withdrew. 9. Turkey tried to block the appointment of Anders Fogh Rasmussen as new NATO secretary general because he didn't properly punish the Danish cartoonist who caricatured Mohammed. France's Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany's Angela Merkel were outraged; Obama said he supported Turkey's induction into the European Union. 10. . . . and he never mentioned the Armenian genocide. 11. The picture of Obama and Hugo Chavez shaking hands. 12. Hugo Chavez gave him the anti-American screed "The Open Veins of Latin America." Obama didn't remark upon it. At least it wasn't DVDs. 13. Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega went on a 50-minute anti-American rant, calling Obama "president of an empire." Obama didn't leave the room. "I thought it was 50 minutes long. That's what I thought," he said. 14. Executives at AIG get $165 million in bonuses, despite receiving an $173 billion taxpayer bailout. 15. "For months, the Obama administration and members of Congress have known that insurance giant AIG was getting ready to pay huge bonuses while living off government bailouts. It wasn't until the money was flowing and news was trickling out to the public that official Washington rose up in anger and vowed to yank the money back." -- Associated Press, 3/18 16. "After pushing Congress for weeks to hurry up and pass the massive $787 billion stimulus bill, President Obama promptly took off for a three-day holiday getaway." -- New York Post, 2/15 17. SARAH PALIN ON: "I WON" AND THE DEATH OF BIPARTISANSHIP "Obama soared to victory on the hopeful promise of a new era of bipartisanship. During his inaugural address he even promised an 'end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.' "Too bad it took all of three days for the promise to ring hollow. "Start with Obama's big meeting with top congressional leaders on his signature legislation -- the stimulus -- on the Friday after his inauguration. Listening to Republican concerns about overspending was a nice gesture -- until he shut down any hopes of real dialogue by crassly telling Republican leaders: 'I won.' Even the White House's leaking of the comment was a slap at the Republican leadership, who'd expected Obama to adhere to the custom of keeping private meetings with congressional leadership, well, private. "It's only gone downhill from there. The stimulus included zero Republican recommendations, and failed to get a single House Republican vote. "It's not just the tactic of using Republicans for bipartisan photo-ops, and then cutting them loose before partisan decisions, that irks Obama's opponents. The new president wasted no time rushing forward with policies and legislation guaranteed to drive Republicans nuts. The first bill he signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act -- a partisan hot-button that drew all of eight Republican supporters in the entire Congress. Then there was the swift reversal of Bush policies on abortion and embryonic-stem-cell research -- issues dear to the Republican base. "And when Obama and the Democrats in Congress took up SCHIP -- the children's health-insurance bill that Republicans say vastly expands government's role in health care -- they had an easy chance for real bipartisanship. After all, the bill had been hashed out in the previous Congress, and a bipartisan accord was reached before President Bush responded with a veto. Did the Obama team push for the compromise version in the 111th Congress? Nope. They went back to the drawing board, ramming through the Democrats' dream version. "Of course, the lack of bipartisanship isn't limited to Capitol Hill. Obama has taken gratuitous swipes at the Republicans who recently decamped Washington, blaming President Bush for everything from the economy and the war to the lack of sufficient puppies and rainbows. And who could forget the Rush Limbaugh flap -- in which Obama's top advisers, including chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, orchestrated a public relations campaign meant to undermine the Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, by framing talk-radio personality Limbaugh as the real head of the Republican Party. "For now, Obama's back-pedal on the bipartisanship promise just makes him look insincere. But the real consequences of the mistake will be felt soon enough. As Presidents Bush and Clinton could tell him, congressional majorities do change -- and at some point, Obama will need Republicans on his side. He'd be smart to spend his second 100 days making up for the serious snubs of his first." -- Sarah Palin is the governor of Alaska 18. "The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today." -- Department of Homeland Security intelligence report 19. Nixes a "buy American" provision in the stimulus bill. 20. "Yes, Canada is not Mexico, it doesn't have a drug war going on. Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there." -- Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. The 9/11 hijackers did not come across the Canada border 21. "The Obama administration is signaling to Congress that the president could support taxing some employee health benefits, as several influential lawmakers and many economists favor, to help pay for overhauling the health care system. The proposal is politically problematic for President Obama, however, since it is similar to one he denounced in the presidential campaign as 'the largest middle-class tax increase in history.' " -- New York Times, 3/14 22. JOE SCARBOROUGH ON: PROMOTING FEAR "During his historic inaugural speech, Barack Obama promised to usher in a transformational age where hope would replace fear, unity would overtake partisanship, and change would sweep aside the status quo. But early in President Obama's first 100 days it is obvious that the only thing that is changing is the Candidate of Change, himself. "The same politician who proclaimed during his inauguration that 'on this day we have chosen hope over fear' soon warned Americans that the US economy would be forever destroyed if the stimulus bill was voted down. "Why was it that same man who promised to put Americans' interests ahead of his own political ambitions chose instead to use the suffering of citizens to advance his agenda? "Maybe he was following the guidance of Rahm Emanuel, who famously said, 'You never want to waste a good crisis.' "They didn't. "The White House's warnings were so over-the-top that Bill Clinton felt compelled to warn the new president against making such grim pronouncements. Americans would quickly warn that the White House would not channel FDR's eternal optimism but rather embrace the gloomy worldview of Edgar Allen Poe. "The Candidate of Hope also quickly adopted the Nixonian worldview that Americans voted their fears rather than their hopes. Over Mr. Obama's first 100 days, that cynical calculation paid off politically for a White House that seemed most interested in appeasing the most liberal members of his Democratic Party. "I expected more from Barack Obama. For the sake of my country, I hope I get it from the new president over the next 100 days." -- Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and author of "The Last Best Hope: Restoring Conservatism and America's Promise" (Crown Forum), due out June 9. 23. Sanjay Gupta was in discussions to become Surgeon General, but the TV personality withdrew after he was criticized for his flimsy political record. 24. Rasmussen finds 58% of Americans believe the Obama administration's release of CIA memos endangers the national security of the United States. 25. Only 28% think the Obama administration should do any further investigating of how the Bush administration treated terrorism suspects. 26. "Obama thanked CIA employees for their work and said they're invaluable to national security. He explained his decision to release the memos, then told everyone not to feel bad because he was now acknowledging potential mistakes. Theirs, not his. 'That's how we learn,' Obama said, as though soothing a room full of fourth-graders." -- The Oklahoman, 4/23 27. By releasing the torture memos, Obama opened American citizens up to international tribunals. A UN lawyer said the US is obliged to prosecute lawyers who drafted the memos or else violate the Geneva Conventions. 28. In their first meeting, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave Obama a carved ornamental penholder from the timbers of the anti-slavery ship HMS Gannet. Obama gave him 25 DVDs that don't work in Europe. 29. TIM CARNEY ON: PICKING BILL RICHARDSON AS SECRETARY OF COMMERCE "Richardson's value in Obama's Cabinet had everything to do with appearances. First, he was the Hispanic pick. Second, because Richardson had run against Obama for President, tapping him for the Cabinet helped the media write the Obama-Lincoln comparisons by burnishing the 'Team of Rivals' image. "But Richardson withdrew before Obama was even inaugurated when news came out about a criminal investigation involving David Rubin, president of a firm named Chambers, Dunhill, Rubin & Co. (although there was no Chambers or Dunhill), who had donated at least $110,000 to Richardson's campaign committees and had also profited from $1.5 million in contracts from the state government. "This was an early warning sign about Obama's vetting process (various tax problems and the Daschle problem would reveal this as a theme), but picking Richardson to run Commerce also highlighted that Obama and Richardson's promise of 'public-private partnerships' -- such as Detroit bailouts, Wall Street bailouts, and green energy--was an open door for corruption and was at odds with Obama's promise to diminish the influence of lobbyists. "The Richardson mistake was one of Obama's first, and it was emblematic. Richardson embodied Obama's attention to self-image and the problems inherent in his vision of an intimate business-government connection." -- Tim Carney is a Washington Examiner columnist 30. Timothy Geithner nomination as Secretary of Treasury was almost torpedoed when it was discovered he had failed to pay $34,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes. He also employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper. He was confirmed anyway. 31. . . . Not so lucky, Annette Nazareth, who was nominated for Deputy Treasury Secretary. She withdrew her name for undisclosed "personal reasons" after a monthlong probe into her taxes . . . 32. . . . or Caroline Atkinson, who withdrew as nominee for Undersecretary of International Affairs in Treasury Department, with a source blaming the long vetting process. Geithner still has a skeleton crew at Treasury, with no one qualified -- or willing -- to take jobs there. 33. "Barack Obama has been embroiled in a cronyism row after reports that he intends to make Louis Susman, one of his biggest fundraisers, the new US ambassador in London. The selection of Mr. Susman, a lawyer and banker from the president's hometown of Chicago, rather than an experienced diplomat, raises new questions about Mr Obama's commitment to the special relationship with Britain." -- Telegraph, 2/22 34. Obama's doom-and-gloom comments and budget bill push the Dow below 7,000, from which it's only recently recovered. 35. "You're sitting here. And you're -- you are laughing. You are laughing about some of these problems. Are people going to look at this and say, 'I mean, he's sitting there just making jokes about money--' How do you deal with -- I mean: Explain. Are you punch-drunk?" -- Steve Kroft, "60 Minutes," 3/22 36. "We have begun to modernize 75% of all federal building space, which has the potential to reduce long-term energy costs by billions of dollars on behalf of taxpayers. We are providing grants to states to help weatherize hundreds of thousands of homes, which will save the families that benefit about $350 each year. That's like a $350 tax cut." -- Obama, describing something that doesn't cut taxes. 37. "The Obama administration has directed defense officials to sign a pledge stating they will not share 2010 budget data with individuals outside the federal government." -- Defense News, 2/19 38. Backtracking on a campaign promise he made to black farmers, Obama significantly lowered the amount of money they could claim in a discrimination settlement against the Agricultural Department. "I can't figure out for the life of me why the president wouldn't want to implement a bill that he fought for as a US senator," said John Boyd, head of the National Black Farmers Association. 39. "I've been practicing bowling. I bowled a 129. It was like the Special Olympics or something." -- Obama on "The Tonight Show" 40. Obama lifts travel and remittance restrictions on Cuba. 41. Obama considers dropping the embargo on Cuba. 42. After warming signs from Raul Castro, Fidel Castro says Obama "misinterpreted" his brother's words, and that Cuba would not be willing to negotiate about human rights. 43. Obama is considering dropping a key demand to Iran, allowing it to keep nuclear facilities open during negotiations. 44. In a letter to Dmitri Medvedev, Obama offered to drop plans for a missile shield in Europe in exchange for Russia's help in resolving the nuclear weapons issue in Iran. 45. Medvedev said he would not "haggle" on Iran and the missile shield. 46. Obama asked Congress for an extra $83.4 billion to fund operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, a special funding measure of the kind he opposed while in the senate. As a candidate, Obama promised to cut the cost of military operations. 47. After trying to woo Europe as the "anti-Bush," Obama made an impassioned plea for more troops in Afghanistan. "Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone," he said. "This is a joint problem it requires a joint effort." Only the UK offered substantial help, most others refused. 48. "While the online question portion of the White House town hall was open to any member of the public with an Internet connection, the five fully identified questioners called on randomly by the president in the East Room were anything but a diverse lot. They included: a member of the pro-Obama Service Employees International Union, a member of the Democratic National Committee who campaigned for Obama among Hispanics during the primary; a former Democratic candidate for Virginia state delegate who endorsed Obama last fall in an op-ed in the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star; and a Virginia businessman who was a donor to Obama's campaign in 2008." -- Washington Post, 3/27 49. Obama bows to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at a G-20 meeting in London. 50. "It wasn't a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he's taller than King Abdullah." -- An Obama aide 51. DANA PERINO ON: REMAINING IN CAMPAIGN MODE "Has it really only been 100 days? In many ways it feels like a lot longer. "That's partly because the new administration remains in campaign mode most of the time. Now that's not in itself a bad thing if you can do that and accomplish your agenda. But what's happened is that a popular new president has laid out a very bold agenda in the midst of an economic crisis, and I don't think Congress is going to get a lot of work done on those big ticket items this year. They'll eke out a couple of small wins on issues like healthcare and maybe energy, but the Democrats will hail them as big victories. The Republicans have been working like a cohesive and loyal opposition party, and they need to continue to outline positive new ideas like the recent one to help grow American's savings. "The early stumbles on the administration's high profile nominations -- Daschle and Richardson for just to examples -- acted like weights around their ankles. In addition, the partisan shots from the White House were unbecoming and I don't think we'll see more of that. Our allies and our enemies -- heck, even we ourselves -- are trying to understand the new foreign policy direction, which in some ways seems to be change just for the sake of change. The next moves by the leaders of other countries -- like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela -- probably will prove that really not much will change just because America has a new president. "In many ways, it's the next 100 days that will tell us more about our new president and what he'll be able to accomplish than we can forecast based on the first 100 days." -- Dana Perino was White House press secretary in the Bush Administration 52. "We can't afford to make perfect the enemy of the absolutely necessary." -- Obama, describing the stimulus bill 53. Three candidates for ambassador to the Vatican -- including Caroline Kennedy -- were turned down by the Holy See because they supported abortion, according to reports. 54. After saying he wouldn't have lobbyists in his administration, Obama made 17 exceptions in the first two weeks in office. 55. . . . including Tom Daschle, who worked as a top lobbyist yet was going to be appointed Secretary of Health and Human Services -- until his failure to pay income taxes derailed his nomination. 56. For an April 14 speech at Georgetown, the administration asked the university to cover up all signs and symbols -- including the letters "IHS" in gold, a symbol for Jesus. 57. Samantha Power, who resigned from the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Rodham Clinton a "monster," was hired to a position on the National Security Council. Samantha Power National Security Council, as director for multilateral affairs. After the 2008 presidential election, Power was a member of Obama's Transition Team, working for the Department of State. In April 2003 Samantha Power signed her name to an open letter, initiated by prominent DSA member Leo Casey , calling for normalization of relations with Cuba. The letter is in line with DSA and Communist Party aims to remove the trade embargo on Cuba. DSA uses the subtle approach of claiming that sanctions are actually encouraging Cuba to violate human rights, so that easing restrictions would make Cuban authorities more tolerant of dissent. Below is a statement circulating among democratic left/socialist folks, largely by members of Democratic Socialists of America, condemning the recent trials and convictions of non-violent dissenters in Cuba. The petition sharply criticized Cuba's poor human rights record, but shared the blame for Cuba's failures with "reactionary elements of the US administration..." The democratic left worldwide has opposed the US embargo on Cuba as counterproductive, more harmful to the interests of the Cuban people than helpful to political democratization. The Cuban state's current repression of political dissidents amounts to collaboration with the most reactionary elements of the US administration in their efforts to maintain sanctions and to institute even more punitive measures against Cuba. Many of the petition's 120 odd signatories were known members of DSA-including Theresa Alt, Dave Anderson, Stanley Aronowitz, Leo Casey, Bogdan Denitch, Bill Dixon, Nancy Fraser, Andrew Hammer, Richard Healey, Michael Hirsch, James Hughes, Maurice Isserman, Mark Levinson, Maxine Phillips, Michael Pugliese, Michele Rossi, Joseph Schwartz, Jason Schulman, Timothy Sears and Ian Williams. Samantha Power is married to Obama regulatory "Czar" Cass Sunstein. 58. "Chicago has yet to recoup the $1.74 million cost of President Obama's victory celebration in Grant Park -- despite a burgeoning $50.5 million budget shortfall that threatens more layoffs and union concessions." -- Chicago Sun-Times, 2/20 59. Firing Rick Wagoner as president of GM. 60. Threatening to fire Vikram Pandit as CEO of Citigroup. 61. Threatening to fire anyone the administration doesn't like from any company. 62. Not adopting a dog from a shelter. 63. "The GAO study asserts that officials from most of the states surveyed 'expressed concerns regarding the lack of Recovery Act funding provided for accountability and oversight. Due to fiscal constraints, many states reported significant declines in the number of oversight staff -- limiting their ability to ensure proper implementation and management of Recovery Act funds.' " -- ABC News, 4/23 64. "The National Newspaper Publishers Association named Obama 'Newsmaker of the Year.' The president is to receive the award from the federation of black community newspapers in a White House ceremony this afternoon. The Obama White House has closed the press award ceremony to the press." -- Los Angeles Times, 3/20 65. "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." -- Attorney General Eric Holder 66. "I didn't want to get into a Nancy Reagan thing about, you know, doing any seances." -- Obama, on consulting with only "living" presidents 67. Obama quietly announced that he would not press for new labor and environmental regulations in the North American Free Trade Agreement, going back on a campaign promise. 68. NICOLE GELINAS ON: MISSPENT STIMULUS "One of Obama's most poignant missed opportunities was in not using the historic $787 million stimulus package to reorder state and local government's spending priorities. As states and cities continue to spend ceaselessly and without results on education and healthcare, they're crowding out investments in the physical infrastructure that the private sector needs to rebuild the economy. "In the stimulus, of the more than $200 billion that went directly to states and cities, nearly 70% went to education and healthcare spending. Only 24% went to infrastructure spending. "But the states and cities in the most trouble already spend way too much on education and healthcare, pushing taxes up and sending private industry away. They don't spend nearly enough on infrastructure, which attracts the private sector and builds the real economy. "As David Walker, former comptroller general of the US, said at the Regional Plan Association's annual meeting a week ago, nationwide, we are the 'highest in the world' on education. We are 'the highest in the world' on healthcare. 'Nobody comes even close.' On infrastructure, by contrast, we are 'below average' in both critical new investments and in much-needed maintenance spending. "And, as Democratic governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell said at the same conference, when President Dwight Eisenhower left office, infrastructure spending was about 12.5% of non-military domestic spending. Today, it's about 2.5%. "This shortfall is obvious to anyone who's ridden on an "express train" to the outer boroughs or driven on the Cross Bronx Expressway recently. But in New York, as elsewhere, the stimulus money has just allowed the state to ramp up spending on its wasteful, inhumane Medicaid program and its nosebleed public-school spending. "Meanwhile, the subways are about to crumble into oblivion -- taking the economy with them. The same is true of decaying infrastructure in California and in aging states across the nation. "The stimulus was a once-in-a-generation chance to change this. Instead, it made the situation worse." -- Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to City Journal 69. "The Justice Department is asking the Supreme Court to overrule Michigan v. Jackson, the 1986 Supreme Court decision that held that if police may not interrogate a defendant after the right to counsel has attached, if the defendant has a lawyer or has requested a lawyer. This isn't the first time the Justice Department, under President Obama, has sought to limit defendants' rights." -- TalkLeft blog 70. "By any measure, my administration has inherited a fiscal disaster." -- Obama 71. "Ahh, see. I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can't end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I'm going to get grilled every time I come down here." -- Brushing off questions from the White House press corps 72. On Earth Day, Obama took two flights on Air Force One and four on Marine One to get to Iowa, burning more than 9,000 gallons of fuel. 73. "President Obama's plan to require private insurance carriers to reimburse the Department of Veterans Affairs for the treatment of troops injured in service has infuriated veterans groups who say the government is morally obligated to pay for service-related medical care." -- Fox News, 3/17 74. "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it." -- Obama during his first State Of The Union address. A German invented the automobile 75. RALPH PETERS ON: FUMBLING IN AFGHANISTAN, FAKING IT IN PAKISTAN "We're squandering blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Instead of concentrating fiercely on the vital task of destroying al Qaeda and its friends, the Obama administration's determined to erect a modern nation where no nation exists. Afghanistan isn't a country. It's a dysfunctional reservation inhabited by tribes that hate each other. There's no 'Afghan' identity. And even if our blind-to-reality efforts succeeded perfectly, the result would be meaningless. "Except as a target range where we can gun down terrorists, Afghanistan doesn't matter. Next door, Pakistan matters immensely. But we don't know what to do about it. With 170 million anti-American Muslims descending into chaos as Pashtuns, Baluchis, Punjabis, Sindhis and others claw each other over the country's shabby remains, Pakistan's corrupt president shrugs, its military cowers, its loathsome intelligence services collude with Islamist extremists, and the safety of its nuclear weapons grows doubtful. "Pakistan may be this generation's chamber of horrors. "The Obama administration's response? Drill more wells in the Afghan countryside. Dramatically reinforce our troops in Afghanistan, sticking them with an impossible mission of modernizing a pre-medieval landscape while exposing them at the end of an insecure 1,500-mile supply line through, of all places, Pakistan. "As for Pakistan itself, the Obama administration wants to send billions of dollars to a thieving government that makes Nigeria's look like a Quaker meeting and to hand Pakistan's military more arms -- weapons that might soon be used against us. "Pakistan was a bad idea when it was created in 1947. It's a worse one now. Afghanistan wasn't even an idea, just an accident of where other borders ended. We can't 'save' either one -- because neither wants to be saved on our terms. "Obama said the right things -- that Afghanistan isn't Iraq and that our goal should be the destruction of al Qaeda. But his policies just regurgitate our Iraq strategy (one he opposed) in a profoundly different context, while ambitious generals echo Vietnam-era calls for more forces. "Our troops will do whatever we ask, to the best of their magnificent abilities. But we should ask them to do things that make sense. We need creative strategic thought, but we're succumbing to sheer inertia. And the president's supporters who howled that we should abandon Iraq to concentrate on their candidate's 'good war' don't seem to be volunteering to do any fighting. Meanwhile, our president's trapped himself inside his own campaign promiseing, Vietnam!" -- Ralph Peters is the author of "Looking for Trouble: Adventures in a Ben World" 77. "President Obama failed to consult Congress, as promised, before carving out exceptions to the omnibus spending bill he signed into law -- breaking his own signing-statement rules two days after issuing them -- and raised questions among lawmakers and committees who say the president's objections are unclear at best and a power grab at worst." -- Washington Times, 3/24 78. Adolfo Carrion was confirmed as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, but is serving under a cloud after allegations that he accepted thousands of dollars in cash from developers whose projects he approved. 79. KYLE SMITH ON: GOING AFTER RUSH LIMBAUGH "Every so often an unfocused athlete forgets about the field of play and climbs into the stands. Ty Cobb did it. Ron Artest did it. Maybe no one did it with more sick flir than the greasy, furious Hanson Brothers who, in 'Slap Shot,' climbed into the stands to give a beatdown to a fan. "In March, Barack Obama sent his own personal Hanson Brothers, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and spokesman Robert Gibbs, out to attack a non-politician -- Rush Limbaugh -- who was sitting innocently in the stands jeering the action. Limbaugh didn't even throw a cup of beer. "Senior White House staffers, who have already fallen into the classic trap of paying more attention to polls than fixing the country's problems, had become obsessed with surveys showing that Limbaugh was an unpopular figure with swing voters. Pretty soon Emanuel and Gibbs developed Limbaugh Tourette's. To paraphrase Joe Biden's witty putdown of Rudy Giuliani, for a few days every sentence they uttered contained three things: a subject, a verb and Rush Limbaugh. "El Rushbo, chuckling over his cigar as his ratings skyrocketed, could not have been more pleased if a picture had emerged of Obama wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt and burning the American flag on Harvard Square. Even that portion of the public that doesn't like Rush squirmed at the embarrassing spectacle of the president's men going all Mean Girls on an entertainer. George W. Bush's spokesmen maintained a dignified silence about Michael Moore. Picture them fanning out over the Sunday talk shows to denounce, and drive up the box-office receipts of, 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' Wouldn't you have loved that, Michael?" -- Kyle Smith is a Post columnist 80. Forced banks that didn't want TARP money to take it, then added on stipulations about pay and government control after the fact. Secretly forced Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch, then allowed the bank to be criticized for overpaying. 81. "More than 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States," Obama said in Mexico, yet factcheck.org says, "The figure represents only the percentage of crime guns that have been submitted by Mexican officials and traced by U.S. officials. We can find no hard data on the total number of guns actually 'recovered in Mexico,' but US and Mexican officials both say that Mexico recovers more guns that it submits for tracing. Therefore, the percentage of guns 'recovered' and traced to US sources necessarily is less than 90%." 82. Obama: "[Jim Owens, the CEO of Caterpillar, Inc.], said that if Congress passes our plan, this company will be able to rehire some of the folks who were just laid off." Jim Owens: "I think realistically no. The truth is we're going to have more layoffs before we start hiring again." 83. "In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive." -- Obama in Strasbourg, France 84. Joe Biden: "If we do everything right, if we do it with absolute certainty, if we stand up there and we really make the tough decisions, there's still a 30% chance we're going to get it wrong." 85. Joe Biden: "You all worked for change. You wanted to see change. Well, that wasn't a hard thing to try to communicate to the American people. Obviously, obviously, we needed a change almost no matter who was running." 86. Joe Biden: "You know, I'm embarrassed. Do you know the Web site number? I should have it in front of me and I don't. I'm actually embarrassed." 87. "There are more than 6.5 million trucks in the United States. The program Congress terminated allowed 97 Mexican trucks to roam among them. Ninety-seven! Shutting them out not only undermines NAFTA. It caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade coming out of 40 states." -- Charles Krauthammer, 3/20 88. DAVID M. DRUCKER ON: BOWING TO CONGRESS "Although the president possesses enormous political capital -- both because of high approval ratings and because his administration is still in its infancy -- he has generally declined to exercise it with Democratic leaders in the House and Senate, including when it comes to crafting legislation key to moving his agenda forward. "Rather he has allowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) to craft legislation as they see fit -- even though the very bills in question were proposed by the president and involve key planks in his agenda. Among them were Obama's signature $787 billion economic stimulus bill, his first major piece of legislation that was signed into law in February; and now health care reform, currently being negotiated on Capitol Hill with minimal input from the White House. "This soft-pedal style of leadership runs the risk of forcing Obama to embrace legislation constructed for narrow partisan interests rather than in a manner capable of garnering broad bipartisan support. Over time, the public might come to see Obama's deference to Pelosi and Reid as a weakness of leadership not befitting a president in tough times." -- David M. Drucker is a staff writer for Roll Call 89. "It has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census, there are irresolvable conflicts for me." -- Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who became the second failed Commerce Secretary nominee 90. In the third sentence of his first speech as president, Obama said, "44 Americans have now taken the presidential oath." The correct number is 43, as Grover Cleveland served twice. 91. The $49 million inauguration -- triple what taxpayers spent at Bush's first inauguration. 92. Giving the Queen of England an iPod full of his own speeches. 93. Three prime-time briefings in his first 100 days, eating into television revenues and this Wednesday pre-empting "American Idol." 94. "The United States government has no interest in running GM. Your [GM] warranty will be safe. In fact, it will be safer than it's ever been, because starting today, the United States government will stand behind your warranty." -- Obama 95. GM is given $15.4 billion in loans from the government. 96. The Obama Administration is trying to scuttle a lawsuit filed in federal court against Iran by former US embassy hostages. The lawsuit alleges that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the hostage-takers who interrogated the captives. 97. GLENN BECK ON: BAD ECONOMIC PREDICTIONS "Ten days before his inauguration, the President's chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Rohmer, released a report describing what to expect economically during the first 100 days and beyond. It presented two starkly different scenarios: one good (if the stimulus were to be passed), and one terrifyingly bad (if we did nothing). Amazingly, the report estimated that if the stimulus package were to pass, the unemployment rate would not go above 8% at any time until at least 2014. "It's already at 8.5%. "In fact, while there is an acknowledged level of uncertainty, the projections estimated that the unemployment rate would be lower today if we had done nothing at all. This suggests one of two things: either the administration misjudged the seriousness of our economic problems, or the stimulus plan is actually making things worse. I suspect it's a little of both. "Remember, when the President's budget was released, he was roundly criticized for his never ending deficits, even under his own optimistic scenarios for growth. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected deficits that were even uglier. But, if the President and his economic planners were this far off, this soon, how much worse does the future look now? "The election was supposed to bring 'change,' but I was hoping for more than the letter after the President's name, the positivity of the media coverage, and the hypoallergenic qualities of the White House puppy. President Obama didn't get us into this situation, but so far he's doubling down on the same spending philosophy that did. Common sense tells us that new debt is not the cure for old debt. No matter what the slogans say, that won't change in 100 days or 100 years." -- Glenn Beck is the host of the "Glenn Beck" show, weekdays at 5 p.m. on Fox News. 98. "Education Secretary Arne Duncan has decided not to admit any new students to the D.C. voucher program, which allows low-income children to attend private schools ... For all the talk about putting children first, it's clear that the special interests that have long opposed vouchers are getting their way." -- Washington Post, 4/11 99. Obama enrolled his daughters in a DC private school. 100. "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." -- Obama to Rep. Peter DeFazio, after the Democratic congressman voted against the stimulus bill. (Source: NY Post.) EMAIL: List Personalizes Attack on Obama (Apr 2009) The following was on the email circuit of forwarded emails. Though anonymous, it reflects the frustration with Obama from the conservative elements in the society. The disturbing thing about this list is that it seems to reflect the growing ANIMOSITY -- not political, but personal. This is only in the first 100 days. This following list is less a commentary on events of Obama's first 100 days than a list of a 100 disturbing things that cause conservatives to stand up and say that Obama is a DANGER to America and its way of life. There is an overall picture of Obama as a left-wing Socialist whose pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-big government (nationalization of banks and industry -- also called fascism), anti-small business coupled with his pro-Islamic jihad movement and naive international policies are paving the way for disaster both domestically and internationally. The list is a condemnation of Obama as a leftist politician -- a man who promised everything to everyone as he campaigned as a moderate, but upon garnering the reins of government became a left-wing politician whose Machiavellian political style was exposed. This list is a condemnation of Obama who said he was NOT a socialist -- but whose actions prove that he indeed is a socialist who lied just to get into office. To conservatives, he is a President who cannot be trusted who in 100 days has started to undermine the American way of life and its core values. Undermining Our Values 1. Calling for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act on the White House website. 2. Calling on the White House website for the expansion of federal hate crimes to include homosexual behavior. 3. Calling on the White House website for policies like the “Fairness Doctrine” that could silence conservative and Christian talk radio. 4. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of human embryonic stem cell research. 5. Repealing limitations on taxpayer-funding of abortions overseas. 6. Pledging $50 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund, which supports China’s draconian one-child policy. 7. Proposing new rules to gut conscience clause protections for pro-life doctors and other medical personnel who don’t want to be forced to perform abortions or other procedures that violate their values. 8. Proposing increased funding for the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. 9. Calling on the White House website for “a goal that all middle and high school students do 50 hours of community service a year,” (mandatory volunteerism). 10. Inviting homosexual families to the White House Easter Egg Roll. 11. Allowing his attorney general to call for the reinstatement of Clinton-era restrictions on the Second Amendment. 12. Breaking his promise not to appoint lobbyists to his administration. He hired 17 in his first two weeks. 13. Breaking his promise to sign legislation only after a five-day period of public comments. 14. Asking that the monogram for Jesus Christ be covered up during a televised speech at a Catholic university in which Obama quotes the Sermon on the Mount. Undermining Our National Security 15. Apologizing for America in Europe and Latin America. 16. Bowing before the Muslim king of Saudi Arabia. 17. Pledging to base America’s foreign policy toward Iran on “mutual respect” in a video to the Iranian people and Iran’s Holocaust-denying dictator. 18. Returning the bust of Winston Churchill given to George Bush after 9/11 by our British allies. 19. Giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the leader of America’s most loyal ally, a box of DVDs that don’t work in British DVD players. 20. Ordering Guantanamo Bay closed without any idea of where to send the terrorist suspects held there. 21. Suggesting that some of those terrorists now at GITMO may kill again, but may also be released onto U.S. soil and set up with welfare benefits. 22. Caving to communist Cuba by relaxing travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban Americans before any Cuban political prisoners have been released. 23. Shaking hands with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. 24. Sitting silently though a 50-minute anti-American diatribe by Nicaragua’s communist president, Daniel Ortega. 25. Releasing Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the suspected of masterminding the 2000 suicide bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. 26. Releasing classified CIA memos outlining our interrogation techniques. 27. Telling our CIA agents not to be discouraged when he acknowledges their “mistakes.” 28. Declaring a new openness to “truth commissions” and prosecuting intelligence officials involved in enhanced interrogations of terrorists. 29. Proposing to send a $900 million foreign aid package to Palestinians in Gaza. 30. Asking Congress to relax the law so that some of that money could go to the terrorist organization Hamas. 31. Calling for the U.S. to eliminate its nuclear weapons. 32. Telling Russian President Demitri Medvedev that America’s commitment to missile defense is negotiable. 33. Dropping the term “enemy combatants” for GITMO detainees. 34. Dropping the term “terrorism” for “man-made disaster.” 35. Dropping the term “Global War on Terror” for “overseas contingency operations.” 36. Giving his first interview as president to the Arab language network Al-Arabiya. 37. Telling the Muslim world that his “job” was to communicate “that the Americans are not your enemy,” when it’s Muslim extremists who have declared war on us. 38. Proposing that military veterans use private insurance for the cost of a service-related injury before they would be eligible for coverage through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Undermining Free Enterprise 39. Signing the trillion-dollar plus so-called “stimulus” bill, which the Congressional Budget Office said would actually hurt long-term economic growth. 40. Saying Caterpillar wouldn’t lay off workers if his trillion-dollar stimulus bill passed Congress. Obama signed the bill on Feb. 17th. On March 17th, Caterpillar laid off nearly 2,500 workers. 41. Hosting a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit” one week after signing the trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill. 42. Railing against “outrageous recklessness and greed” of AIG bonuses that were legally protected in the so-called “stimulus” bill he signed four days after it passed, not five as he promised. 43. Breaking his promise on earmark reform by signing the $410 billion “omnibus” spending bill with billions in earmarks. 44. Proposing a $3.6 trillion budget that doubles the national debt in five years and triples it in ten years. 45. Proposing a “carbon cap and trade” scheme that will raise energy taxes by hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars. 46. Burning more than 9,000 gallons of jet fuel to fly to Iowa for Earth Day to promote “wind power.” 47. Proposing $634 billion in higher taxes for socialized health care. 48. Proposing to raise taxes on small business owners. 49. Saying the White House is open to the idea of taxing employer-sponsored health care benefits as income. 50. Signing a massive expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, calling it “a down payment on my commitment to cover every single American.” 51. Establishing the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research to give bureaucrats the power to ration health care and tell your doctors what care you can and cannot have. 52. Signing the 2009 Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which the Sierra Club praised specifically because it “will safeguard millions of acres … from oil and gas leasing.” 53. Suggesting he has found $1.5 trillion in bogus “savings” by not spending money in Iraq that we were not planning to spend years from now. 54. Ordering his Cabinet to “cut” $100 million in spending in 90 days, after proposing nearly $5 trillion in spending in his first 90 days. 55. Proposing to limit tax deductions for home mortgage interest. 56. Proposing to limit tax deductions for charitable donations. 57. Refusing to allow banks to repay TARP money. 58. Bailing out AMTRAK with a 10% increase in its taxpayer subsidies. 59. Bailing out the United Auto Workers Union with billions of taxpayer dollars to GM and Chrysler. 60. Bailing out the United Auto Workers by giving it a majority ownership stake in Chrysler. Yes, the union will own the company. 61. Bailing out Big Labor by issuing an executive order mandating that infrastructure projects paid for with “stimulus” funds must use union labor, guaranteeing higher costs for the taxpayer. 62. Bailing out Big Labor again by repealing regulations requiring the disclosure of how union dues are spent. So much for “transparency.” 63. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then vowing that the government will back auto warranties. 64. Saying, “The United States government has no interest in running GM,” then firing the CEO of General Motors. 65. Allowing states to set their own fuel efficiency and emissions standards, making it harder for struggling auto makers to compete. Personnel Is Policy 66. Nominating Timothy “The Turbo Tax Evader” Geithner as Treasury Secretary to oversee the IRS. 67. Nominating as attorney general Eric Holder, who urged Bill Clinton to pardon tax evader Marc Rich and 8 FALN terrorists. 68. Nominating David Ogden, a prominent attorney for the pornography industry, to be Deputy Attorney General. 69. Nominating Tom Daschle, who owed more than $140,000 in back taxes, as Health and Human Services Secretary. 70. Nominating Kathleen Sebelius, who is ardently pro-abortion and owed $8,000 in back taxes, to be HHS Secretary. 71. Nominating Janet Napolitano, who said, “crossing the border is not a crime per se,” as Homeland Security Secretary. 72. Nominating Steven Chu as Energy Secretary. Last September, Chu said, “Somehow, we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which at that time were roughly $8.00 a gallon. 73. Nominating Ron Kirk, who owed more than $6,000 in back taxes, as Trade Representative. 74. Nominating Bill Richardson, who was embroiled in an ethics scandal, as Secretary of Commerce. 75. Nominating Nancy Killefer, who also owed back taxes, to be the government’s “Efficiency Czar.” 76. Nominating Rosa Brooks, a leftwing acolyte of George Soros, as an advisor to the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Rosa Brooks Senior advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Michele Flournoy. Reportedly named after communist radical Rosa Luxemburg, Brooks is the daughter of prominent DSA member, Movement for a Democratic Society board member and Progressives for Obama founder, Barbara Ehrenreich. Rosa Brooks is a well known "liberal" newspaper columnist and writer on defense and international relations. Brooks has served as Special Counsel to the President at George Soros' Open Society Institute. 77. Nominating Harold Koh, an ardent supporter of using international law in the interpretation of our Constitution, to be the top legal advisor to the State Department. 78. Nominating Carol Browner, who was a member of the Socialist International, to be “Climate and Energy Czar.” 79. Nominating John Holdren, an environmental extremist and advocate of population control, as the White House Science Advisor. 80. Nominating Dawn Johnsen, who is so pro-abortion she once compared pregnancy to slavery, to to direct the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. 81. Nominating Charles Freeman, an anti-Israel, pro-Arab apologist, to be head of the National Intelligence Council. 82. Nominating Tony West, who represented American Taliban John Walker Lindh and exposed the Bush Administration’s terrorist surveillance program, to the Justice Department’s Civil Division. 83. Nominating Annette Nazareth to be Deputy Treasury Secretary, who withdrew after a month-long probe into her taxes. 84. Trying to nominate pro-abortion Catholics to be ambassador to the Vatican, a move even John Kerry opposed. (SITE NOTE: Most notable was Caroline Kennedy that the Vatican refused.) 85. Appointing Ellen Moran of the pro-abortion group Emily’s List as his White House communications director. 86. Appointing Melody Barnes, a board member of Emily’s List and Planned Parenthood, as his director of the Domestic Policy Council. 87. Appointing Harry Knox of the Human Rights Campaign (the largest homosexual rights lobbying group) to the White House’s Faith Based Advisory Council. 88. Appointing Adolfo Carrion as Director of White House Office of Urban Affairs, even though he is under investigation for kickbacks in a scandal nearly identical to one that cost GOP Senator Ted Stevens his election. 89. Nominating David Hamilton as his first appointment to a federal appeals court. Judge Hamilton has issued a number of controversial rulings, including prohibiting the Indiana House of Representatives from opening sessions with prayers in the name of Jesus. Other Obama Outrages 90. Telling congressional Republicans to stop listening to Rush Limbaugh. 91. Coordinating attacks on Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer out of the White House. 92. Hosting weekly parties at the White House, serving up $100-a-pound Waygu beef during what Obama called, “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” 93. Laughing it up on 60 Minutes as the country is mired in a recession. 94. Allowing Air Force One to buzz the Statue of Liberty and lower Manhattan, creating panic in New York City. 95. Disparaging Special Olympians on the Tonight Show. 96. Allowing his Department of Homeland Security to issue a report accusing pro-life, smaller government conservatives and returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans of being “rightwing extremists.” 97. Promising to push for comprehensive immigration reform, i.e., amnesty. 98. Killing the school voucher program in the District of Columbia, while sending his two daughters to an elite private school, rather than D.C.’s public schools. 99. Moving the Census out of the Department of Commerce and into the White House. 100. Relying too much on his teleprompter. FACT CHECK: Obama disowns deficit he helped shape (Apr 2009)That wasn't me, President Barack Obama said on his 100th day in office, disclaiming responsibility for the huge budget deficit waiting for him on Day One. It actually was him -- and the other Democrats controlling Congress the previous two years -- who shaped a budget so out of balance. And as a presidential candidate and president-elect, he backed the twilight Bush-era stimulus plan that made the deficit deeper, all before he took over and promoted spending plans that have made it much deeper still. Obama met citizens at an Arnold, Mo., high school Wednesday in advance of his prime-time news conference. Both forums were a platform to review his progress at the 100-day mark and look ahead. At various times, he brought an air of certainty to ambitions that are far from cast in stone. His assertion that his proposed budget "will cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term" is an eyeball-roller among many economists, given the uncharted terrain of trillion-dollar deficits and economic calamity that the government is negotiating. He promised vast savings from increased spending on preventive health care in the face of doubts that such an effort, however laudable it might be for public welfare, can pay for itself, let alone yield huge savings. A look at some of his claims Wednesday: -- OBAMA: "Number one, we inherited a $1.3 |
