A senior White House official just called me with a very pointed message for the administration's sometime allies in organized labor, who invested heavily in beating Blanche Lincoln, Obama's candidate, in Arkansas.
"Organized labor just flushed $10 million of their members' money down the toilet on a pointless exercise," the official said. "If even half that total had been well-targeted and applied in key House races across this country, that could have made a real difference in November."
My advice to Labor would be this, take the "senior White House official's" advice and save your money. Don't give a single damn dime to any candidates in the midterms save those who have been nothing but loyal to Labor's issues. And I mean NOTHING BUT LOYAL. If there is any question, sit the race out. Hell if the White House is taking victory laps SURELY they can raise all the money and get out all the votes they need to keep the House and the Senate this year.
At this point I am seriously like fuck those guys.
*Oh and since Chris Matthews was crying like a bitch for weeks to get the President to "show some emotion" and now is acting like the word "ass" is just sooooo uncouth, FUCK HIM TOO!!!
White House Communications director Dan Pfiefer makes a key concession about the EPIC FAIL that has been the messaging coming out of his shop for most of last year. Please allow me an edit though.
"It was clear that too often we didn't have the ballS -- Congress had the ball in terms of driving the message," communications director Dan Pfeiffer said. "In 2010, the president will constantly be doing high-profile things to be the person driving the narrative."
Now that more clearly reflects the reality of the situation.
Since Congressional Democrats have basically been mute over the GOP attacks on President Obama after the Northwest flight 253 attempted terrorist attack, the White House decided to pushback themselves.
The Same Old Washington Blame Game Posted by Dan Pfeiffer on December 30, 2009 at 03:34 PM EST
There has been a lot of discussion online and in the mainstream media about our response to various critics of the President, specifically former Vice President Cheney, who have been coming out of the woodwork since the incident on Christmas Day. I think we all agree that there should be honest debate about these issues, but it is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers. Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer.
First, it’s important that the substantive context be clear: for seven years after 9/11, while our national security was overwhelmingly focused on Iraq – a country that had no al Qaeda presence before our invasion – Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda's leadership was able to set up camp in the border region of Pakistan and Afghanistan, where they continued to plot attacks against the United States. Meanwhile, al Qaeda also regenerated in places like Yemen and Somalia, establishing new safe-havens that have grown over a period of years. It was President Obama who finally implemented a strategy of winding down the war in Iraq, and actually focusing our resources on the war against al Qaeda – more than doubling our troops in Afghanistan, and building partnerships to target al Qaeda’s safe-havens in Yemen and Somalia. And in less than one year, we have already seen many al Qaeda leaders taken out, our alliances strengthened, and the pressure on al Qaeda increased worldwide.
To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President.
Second, the former Vice President makes the clearly untrue claim that the President – who is this nation’s Commander-in-Chief – needs to realize we are at War. I don’t think anyone realizes this very hard reality more than President Obama. In his inaugural, the President said “our nation is at war against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.” In a recent speech, Assistant to the President for Terrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan said “Instead, as the president has made clear, we are at war with al-Qaida, which attacked us on 9/11 and killed 3,000 people. We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al-Qaida’s murderous agenda. These are the terrorists we will destroy; these are the extremists we will defeat.” At West Point, the President told the nation why it was “in our vital national interest” to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to fight the war in Afghanistan, adding that as Commander in Chief, “I see firsthand the terrible wages of war.” And at Oslo, in accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the President said, “We are at war, and I am responsible for the deployment of thousands of young Americans to battle in a distant land.”
There are numerous other such public statements that explicitly state we are at war. The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered.
I couldn't really find a way to excerpt that post by Dan Pfieffer and I hope they don't mind but I thought it important enough to quote the whole thing. Of course if there were some Democrats in Washington willing to hit back themselves, this post wouldn't be necessary. But as we have seen by now with the health care fight, Democrats in Washington are still looking for a spine.
Want to know the latest on the Afghan strategy review by President Obama and his administration? Then check out this new piece by Spencer Ackerman about how Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Ft. Bragg, N.C., and Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, the deputy leader of the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., are influencing the outcome.
For whatever reason people tend to still pay a lot of attention to Politico (or Politicol like) stories about the fate of the public option. This leads to a lot of hyperventilating and hyperbole from some segments of the left almost every other day even though it should be well known at this point that they and the folks like them are just trying to drum up clicks on their website. Well the White House has taken the opportunity to bypass a filter and any "leaks" and come out with their own "rumor check".
A rumor is making the rounds that the White House and Senator Reid are pursuing different strategies on the public option. Those rumors are absolutely false.
In his September 9th address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he supports the public option because it has the potential to play an essential role in holding insurance companies accountable through choice and competition. That continues to be the President's position.
Senator Reid and his leadership team are now working to get the most effective bill possible approved by the Senate. President Obama completely supports their efforts and has full confidence they will succeed and continue the unprecedented progress that is being made in both the House and Senate.
"Absolutely false". Did you see that? Ok so at least for the next couple of the days can we at least TRY to keep our powder dry on any story full of "anonymous" sources and ridiculous premises? Sheesh.
You know that story that has been floating around all day about the White House attempting to exclude FoxNews from an interview with the new Wall Street "pay czar"? And the other networks standing up for FoxNews?
Now that Joke Line has beclowned himself over the White House vs FoxNews story perhaps he should read this post from Dan Froomkin. Well actually I am pretty sure that as a Villager in good standing Joke Line won't change his stance because the script says all journos should say the White House is stupid for "picking this fight". But at least he will have some material to site once public sentiment turns and the decision to push back on FoxNews is seen as a smart one in hindsight and as usual he does his usual flip flop with the shift in the journalistic winds.
Are there any good journalists left in the mainstream media?
Last week Joe Scarborough played lap dog, sucking up to Rush Limbaugh and bashing other journalists for attributing a fake quote to him without checking it out. He went so far as to say they should be ashamed and apologize. Didn't matter to him that Limbaugh has said numerous OTHER racist remarks over his career. Nope, Limbaugh had been defamed and somebody had to pay!
Well Joe Scarborough just blatantly lied, probably due to his propensity to read wingnut blogs and watch FoxNews, and said White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Chairman Mao and Mother Teresa were her "two favorite philosophers". Here is what she actually said in context.
And then the third lesson and tip actually come from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa -- not often coupled with each together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say, "Why not?" You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before. But here's the deal: These are your choices. They are no one else's.
Now even if you were to believe that she was serious in saying that Mother Teresa was a political philospher, the context clearly shows that Dunn did not say they were her two favorite and in fact she used their quotes only because they both made the same point about making choices. But you see Scarborough doesn't have the intellectual integrity that he demanded last week of everyone criticizing Limbaugh.
The right wing blogosphere went after blood last week because of the fake Limbaugh quote, are progressives and liberals prepared to do the same? All it takes is for Scarborough and some of these other asshats to repeat this a few times and then it becomes conventional wisdom. We really shouldn't allow this to happen, especially when it is in direct response to Dunn calling out FoxNews for the ideologically driven faux journalism outlet that it is. We can keep on sitting on our hands and keeping our mouth clothes but if we do and we lose more good people because guys like Joe Scarborough are allowed to smear them with impunity then we deserve exactly what we get.
The White House ain't playing about calling folks out for lying in the health care reform debate. Linda Douglass takes on the new AHIP propaganda study.
"It comes on the eve of a vote that will reduce the industry's profits," Douglass told TPMDC. "It is hard to take it seriously. The analysis completely ignores critical policies will lower costs for those who have insurance, expand coverage and provide affordable health insurance options to millions of Americans who are priced out of today's health insurance market or are locked out by unfair insurance company practices."
Do yourself a favor and click on the link to get the extended version of the debunking.
The White House is not taking this kinda crap laying down any more and it is about time!
God bless Anita Dunn for calling FoxNews out for what they are and not allowing Howard Kurtz's cowardly water carrying ass to distort the truth in her message. FoxNews has called themselves the loyal opposition, its time to stop pretending they are anything but.
Its pretty apparent that White House counsel, Greg Craig has been offered up as sacrificial lamb over President Obama's failure to keep the closure of GITMO on his own self imposed timeline. Now the truth is the real failure came from the White House when Republicans and their wingnut allies in the blogosphere and on talk radio took to the airways to fear monger over bringing GITMO detainees to America in order to make sure they faced justice. Not only did the White House not attempt to counter this ridiculous messaging, they didn't even support the Democrats in Congress who tried to do so on their behalf.
Now I remember one of the members of Congress who was most forceful in pushing back on the right wing bullshit was Congressman Jim Moran. It turns out that he isn't happy about how Craig is being treated and he doesn't mind telling it like it is.
"Those of us on the Hill who wanted to defend the administration's policy because we knew we had the facts on our side got no back up, no support, no information," Moran said, speculating that the Obama team simply didn't want to spend political capital on the issue.
That became clear to Moran and others in Congress in May, when the war funding bill was moving through Congress and Republicans took to the airwaves to decry the plan to shudder the prison. "We were at the Alamo, and the cavalry was galloping in the other direction," said Moran, "I think it was a political decision. I don't know who made it, but I very much doubt it was Greg Craig."
Other key appropriators who were trying to fund the effort, such as defense subcommittee chairman Jack Murtha, D-PA, and Appropriations chairman David Obey, D-WI, couldn't and wouldn't fight the Republican machine without Obama's help.
"They talked to the White House and the White House wasn't willing to stand alongside them," said Moran. The thinking among Democrats was, "If we can't take advantage of Obama's credibility on this issue, we probably are not going win."
Now the administration is trying to press the reset button on Guantánamo, but Moran argued the damage is done and it is now nearly impossible to sell the idea of moving the prisoners to U.S. soil.
"This is their first major fuck up, and it's an enormous fuckup, because now that you've lost ground you're not going to be able to recover it," said Moran.
Moran is harsh here but exactly on point also. To me this situation along with the fight over the stimulus bill showed that the White House was somewhat gun shy on their own legislative agenda. This signaled to he right wingers that as long as they were loud and as long as they were repetitive, they could make President Obama and his White House back away from issues they saw as politically difficult. It will be interesting to see where we go from here because Moran doesn't seem very hopeful about the closing of GITMO anymore. And honestly considering how he himself put his ass on the line only to get sold out by he White House, can you blame him at all?
I have been meaning to post on the pissing match that is going on right now between President Obama and his White House and the Pentagon over our strategy and resources in Afghanistan but I got side tracked. Spencer Ackerman has a bunch of great posts at his blog on it starting with this one, and Rachel Maddow did a great job talking through it last night with Rajiv Chandrasekaran.
I don't agree with Bill Maher's anti religous views, but I couldn't have said what he says in this clip any better myself. President Obama and his White House needs to grow a pair. Just sayin.
Please make sure you include it in all of your germane reply to alls through out the day. You don't have to sell people on it, just expose them to it to try to get the word out.
Im sitting here with a big smile on my face because it looks like somebody has woken up the Beast when it comes to health care reform. And he is on OUR side!
First there was news earlier this morning that the WhiteHouse is going to start fact checking some of the smears and lies flying around about health care reform and pushback forcefully on them.
Now here comes several bits of encouraging news over the course of the day.
The DNC's Brad Woodhouse responds to Republican backed teabaggers disrupting townhalls.
Statement from DNC Communications Director Brad Woodhouse on the Republican Party and Allied Groups’ Mob Rule:The Republicans and their allied groups – desperate after losing two consecutive elections and every major policy fight on Capitol Hill – are inciting angry mobs of a small number of rabid right wing extremists funded by K Street Lobbyists to disrupt thoughtful discussions about the future of health care in America taking place in Congressional Districts across the country.
However, much like we saw at the McCain-Palin rallies last year where crowds were baited with cries of 'socialist,' 'communist,' and where the birthers movement was born – these mobs of extremists are not interested in having a thoughtful discussion about the issues – but like some Republican leaders have said – they are interested in ‘breaking’ the President and destroying his Presidency.
These mobs are bussed in by well funded, highly organized groups run by Republican operatives and funded by the special interests who are desperately trying to stop the agenda for change the President was elected to bring to Washington. Despite the headline grabbing nature of these angry mobs and their disruptions of events, they are not reflective of where the American people are on the issues – or the hundreds of thousands of thoughtful discussions taking place around kitchen tables, water coolers and in homes.
The right wing extremists’ use of things like devil horns on pictures of our elected officials, hanging members of Congress in effigy, breathlessly questioning the President's citizenship and the use of Nazi SS symbols and the like just shows how outside of the mainstream the Republican Party and their allies are. This type of anger and discord did not serve Republicans well in 2008 – and it is bound to backfire again.
Then you have 13 experts including members of the CBO advisory committee come out in a letter to Peter Orzag to back the IMAC plan as a cost saving measure in health care reform.
A group of prominent health care experts, including members of a Congressional Budget Office advisory panel, are taking the Obama White House's side in a dispute it is having with the CBO over how much money could be saved by reforming a key aspect of the Medicare system.
In a letter to the president that was made public on Tuesday, 13 academics and experts, including eight members of the CBO's own Panel of Health Advisers said that significant reductions in health care costs could be achieved by creating an independent council to moderate Medicare costs.
"A properly structure Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), with a congressional mandate and authority to do so, can reduce the rate of growth of health expenditures substantially," the author's wrote.
The letter, which went on to favorably cite the CBO, is nevertheless a rebuke of sorts for the office whose director, Douglas Elmendorf, wrote in late July that an independent panel to monitor Medicare spending would achieve little savings over a ten-year period.
And now Robert Gibbs and several Democratic members of Congress have come out and also called out the GOP and special interests for subsidizing the people who are interrupting the town halls of Democratic members of Congress.
The White House has now gone on the offensive over the town halls, with press sec Robert Gibbs blasting Conservatives for Patients Rights, the anti-reform group, for publicly claiming credit for helping organize the sometimes-rowdy meetings.
“You’ve had groups today, the Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, that have bragged about organizing and manufacturing that anger,” Gibbs said during today’s briefing, in what I hope was a reference to our story, adding that CPR is heavily invested in the “status quo.”
Meanwhile, Chuck Schumer, in an interview with HuffPo, blasted the protestors as a “small fringe group” who want to “monopolize the conversation.”
I’m told that DCCC chief Chris Van Hollen is going on Keith Olbermann’s show tonight to keep up the attacks. DCCC spokesman Ryan Rudominer blasted the GOP for being in thrall to “angry fringe voices on the extreme right wing of their party.”
Don't get me wrong, they took their sweet ass time, but at least now it looks like the big dogs are finally coming out with guns blazing to get health care reform passed this year.
It looks like the White House might be bringing back the fight the smears site for health care reform after all.
There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.
It seems like the administration is going to be building up a database of lies and misinformation so maybe, just maybe, we will actually have a tool from the Obama administration to correct the record during the month of August. I can hope at least can't I?
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