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October 27, 2009
Exclusive – Oval Office Watch – Tuesday, October 27
Agenda-driven polling produces skewed results - CLICK HERE.
Fox Wars
Charles Krauthammer, Townhall.com
Rahm Emanuel once sent a dead fish to a live pollster. Now he's put a horse's head in Roger Ailes' bed.
Not very subtle. And not very smart. Ailes doesn't scare easily.
The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."
Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.
The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox. Read article.
Rules for a Radical White House
Heritage.org
Politico’s Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report....
"President Obama is working systematically to marginalize the most powerful forces behind the Republican Party, setting loose top White House officials to undermine conservatives in the media, business and lobbying worlds.
With a series of private meetings and public taunts, the White House has targeted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the biggest-spending pro-business lobbying group in the country; Rush Limbaugh, the country’s most-listened-to conservative commentator; and now, with a new volley of combative rhetoric in recent days, the insurance industry, Wall Street executives and Fox News.
Obama aides are using their powerful White House platform, combined with techniques honed in the 2008 campaign, to cast some of the most powerful adversaries as out of the mainstream and their criticism as unworthy of serious discussion."
We are in no way the first to point this out, but this Obama administration strategy is taken directly from the pages of Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals. It identifies thirteen rules for progressive activists including, “The thirteenth rule: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Explaining just how far progressives must be willing to go to marginalize their “enemies” Alinsky explains .......... Read article.
The White House and the Fox News Feud
Geoff Metcalf, News With Views.com
Headlines are screaming about the all too public dust up between the Obama White House and Fox News. Fox has obviously gotten under the too thin skin of the administration and the president seems both willing and enthused to accept poor counsel from the Rahm Emanuel ‘Chicago style’ wing of advisers.
Even the New York Times begrudgingly admits the White House “by deploying official resources against a troublesome media organization, seems to have brought a knife to a gunfight.”
All administrations get a turn in the barrel, from the fourth estate. Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon (big time), Reagan, Bush (’41), Clinton, and Bush (’43) have all been mercilessly bludgeoned by the media. Clinton mitigated the sting a tad while Rich Kaplan ran CNN and earned the cable pioneer the title “Clinton News Network” (which although harsh is softer than the more common appellation from the right of “Communist News Network”).
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoi, the Russian writer, once observed, “History, shows us that governments, as seen from the reign of Caesar to those of the two Napoleons and Prince Bismarck, are in their very essence a violation of justice… governments will never consent to diminish the number of those well-trained and submissive servants, who constitute their power and influence."
The White House angst (fanned no doubt by the rabid Rahm Emmanuel) is in large measure a self- inflicted wound. Left leaning media bias is an axiom. Bernie Goldberg highlighted the empirical realities in his book ‘Bias’ but Saturday Night Live (for sure no member of the radical right) eviscerated the “Jack Squat” Obama administration.
It is significant and potentially emblematic of a begrudging sea change that increasingly the collective voice of the left is now acknowledging the “mandate for change” has thus far resulted in “nada." Read article.
Obama's Third World press rant
Wesley Pruden, Washington Times.com
Throwing rotten eggs at "them lyin' newspapers" has always been great sport in America, and sometimes even effective politics. But it has to be done with wit and humor, which may be above Barack Obama's pay grade.
Thomas Jefferson despised newspapers, with considerable justification. They printed libels and slanders about him that persist to the present day. Yet he famously said that if he had to choose between government without newspapers and newspapers without government, he would cheerfully choose to live in a land with newspapers (even not very good ones) and no government.
Harry Truman threatened to demolish the manhood of a newspaper music critic who criticized his daughter's singing. Richard Nixon compiled an enemies list, prominently including newspapermen. I made Bill Clinton's enemies list and dined out on it for weeks. George W. Bush confessed, no doubt accurately, that he never read newspapers.
The president's media environment is "target rich," but as any bombardier could tell you, there's more to scoring a bull's-eye than opening the bomb-bay doors. In a fit of pique, John F. Kennedy canceled the White House subscription to the New York Herald-Tribune (may it R.I.P.) because he thought it relished stories about Democratic zits and covered up Republican pimples. The ban didn't last; the White House soon subscribed again, and JFK poked a little fun at his over-the-top pique.
Something more sinister is afoot in Mr. Obama's carefully plotted campaign to destroy his perceived enemies in the press, television and even business. Rush Limbaugh is only the face of the opposition, and the ultimate target of the White House scheme is to marginalize and destroy the Republican Party first, and then everyone else unwilling to get in the lockstep parade toward the hazy dream of Utopia. Read article.
Obama's thug politics dirty health care endgame
Mark Tapscott, Patriot Room.com
Large majorities of Americans are adamant about protecting their right to choose their doctors and most are outraged at the prospect of having government bureaucrats intervene in the process. But Obama knows that if the doctors say it's OK, opposition to government-run health care will begin to evaporate.
The attack on Fox News is the least likely of the three to succeed, but that may not matter. The White House can inflict serious economic pain on the chamber and the medical profession, but attacking Fox just drives the "fair and balanced" news network's ratings through the roof.
Keynoting the anti-Fox effort with Anita Dunn, an admirer of Chairman Mao - whose genocide total far exceeded those of Hitler and Stalin - was inept. Besides, singling out one news organization still brings back nasty memories of Tricky Dick and the White House enemies list for millions of older Americans.
Obama can't silence Fox, short of going the Hugo Chavez route (which is being tested, by the way, via the Federal Communications Commission). But he also knows that, if he can neutralize the chamber and the doctors, Fox could become just so much noise.
More likely, Obama and the boys are about to be reminded that mere mouse clicks can put Fox's Middle Americans right where they are needed most, on Capitol Hill. And thug politics can't stop them. Read article.
In Their Own Words
Arnold Ahlert, Political Mavens.com
–”The White House stopped providing guests to ‘Fox News Sunday’ after Wallace fact-checked controversial assertions made by Tammy Duckworth, assistant secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, in August. Dunn said fact-checking an administration official was ’something I’ve never seen a Sunday show do.’”–FoxNews.com
–”Let’s not pretend they’re a news network. Fox News often operates almost as either the research arm or the communications arm of the Republican Party.”–White House Communications Director Anita Dunn on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” Oct. 11, 2009
“And the third tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers, Mao Tse Tung and Mother Teresa… the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple plan…”–White House Communication Director Anita Dunn, June 2009 St. Andrew’s Episcopal School at the Washington National Cathedral
–”White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN that President Obama does not want ‘the CNNs and the others in the world [to] basically be led in following Fox.’ Obama senior adviser David Axelrod went further by calling on media outlets to join the administration in declaring that Fox is ‘not a news organization.’ ‘Other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way,’ Axelrod counseled ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. ‘We’re not going to treat them that way.’”–FoxNews.com
–”First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist; then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist; then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist; then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew; then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.”–attributed German Pastor Martin Niemoller. Read article.
Meet Obama's keeper: Valerie Jarrett
Belfast Telegraph.co.uk
Valerie Jarrett is arguably the most powerful person in the White House apart from the President. Robert Draper meets her.
On 25 January 2008, the day before the South Carolina Democratic primary, Barack Obama endured a gruelling succession of campaign events across the state.
When his staff informed him the evening would conclude with a brief show-up at the Pink Ice Ball, a gala for the African-American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha, Obama flatly refused to attend. "We're not gonna change anybody's mind," he said.
Rick Wade, a senior adviser, Stacey Brayboy, the state campaign manager, and Anton Gunn, the state political director, took turns to beseech their boss. The gala, they told Obama, would be attended by more than 2,000 college-educated African-American women, a constituent group that was originally sceptical of the candidate's "blackness". They would be in and out in five minutes. Obama's irritation grew. "Man, it's late, I'm tired," he snapped. The three knew what their only option was at this point. "If you want him to do something," Gunn would later tell me, "there are two people he's not going to say no to: Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama."
At the day's penultimate event, a rally in Columbia, Gunn, Brayboy and Wade pleaded their case to Jarrett, the Obamas' long-time friend and consigliere. Jarrett informed Michelle of the situation and when the candidate stepped offstage from the rally, Obama's wife told him he had one last stop to make before they called it a night.
"I told Anton I'm not going to any Pink Ice Ball!" Obama barked. Then Jarrett glided over to the fuming candidate. Her voice was very quiet and very direct.
"Barack," she insisted, "you want to win, don't you?"
Scowling, Obama affirmed that he did.
"Well then. You need to go to Pink Ice."
"And he shuts up," Gunn recalls, "and gets on the bus." Read article.
Why defeating the Taliban is key to stopping Al Qaeda: Only in Afghanistan and Pakistan have we seen jihadism actually take root in large numbers.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, CS Monitor.com
Sophisticated critics of sending more US troops to fight the Taliban argue that the group is not as central a threat to American national security as Al Qaeda.
Yet, for Al Qaeda operationally, there is nothing more important now than the Taliban wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
To start with, the critics are undoubtedly correct in underscoring Afghanistan's near-irrelevance, and thus lack of influence, in the development of modern Muslim thought as well as the central importance of Arabs to Al Qaeda. I can't think of a single Afghan intellectual who has shaped either Sunni or Shiite militancy.
To be sure, the Arab world's dysfunctional efforts to come to grips with modernity created the pestilence that struck us on 9/11 and has slaughtered so many Muslims – especially in Iraq. And it's a decent bet that the slow evanescence of jihadism as a vibrant religious calling among Sunni Arabs – assuming it continues – will be the death knell for jihadists globally. Read article.
Why Wait To Disarm Iran? There's no possible advantage in waiting until Tehran has nukes.
Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com
A contradiction must be faced by those of us who don't especially like the propaganda name neoconservative, but who wish that there was a useful term for someone who favors a robust American attitude toward totalitarian and aggressive states. This contradiction often takes the form of wanting to emphasize a threat without overstating it.
One can begin by viewing this argument from its opposite side. In the recent past, extremely nasty and dangerous one-party or one-man regimes in Serbia and Iraq have made real trouble for their neighbors and been a nightmare to their "own" people and have mocked all the canons of international law but have been considered by many commentators as too risky to confront. Go look this up, and you will discover that those who didn't want to confront Slobodan Milosevic or Saddam Hussein would always stress the awesome power of violence that they had at their command.
If NATO bombed the Serbian positions around Sarajevo, say, it would unleash a monster of reaction that would draw a Russian intervention on the side of Belgrade, trigger a massive backlash throughout the Balkans, drown the region in bloodshed and "a wider war," and all that. Likewise, a military move against Saddam Hussein would incite him to saturate our troops with chemical weapons, ignite the oilfields, destroy Israel, inflame the "Arab street," and overthrow every friendly Middle Eastern government, etc., etc. Those of us who wanted to get rid of these hideous governments were bombarded with arguments that said, in effect, they are not only a threat but actually a lethal threat, and their forces are made up of people who are 10 feet tall. The contradiction cut both ways, in other words. Read article.
Cripple Iran to Save It
John Hannah, Washington Institute.org
If current negotiations falter, international efforts to curtail Iran's nuclear program may escalate to the imposition of "crippling sanctions" or even the use of military force. A crucial question that policymakers must consider is whether such punitive measures would help or hinder the popular uprising against the Iranian regime that emerged after the country's fraudulent June 12 presidential elections.
The so-called green movement -- the color has been adopted by the opposition -- poses the most serious challenge to the survivability of the Islamic Republic in its 30-year history. Few analysts doubt that if it succeeded in toppling Iran's hard-line regime, the crisis over the Iranian nuclear program would become far more susceptible to diplomatic resolution.
Before June 12, conventional wisdom suggested that both harsh sanctions and military action would likely strengthen the Islamic Republic by triggering a "rally around the regime" effect. Iran's rulers, so the argument went, would exploit outside pressure to stoke Persian nationalism, deflecting popular anger away from the regime's own cruelty onto the perceived foreign threat -- in effect, short-circuiting the country's incipient democratic revolution.
But the conventional wisdom has taken something of a beating post-June 12. Before the elections, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sought to blame all of Iran's travails -- a deteriorating economy, international isolation, the mounting threat of war -- on the United States and Israel. But the Iranian people were buying none of it. On the contrary, by the millions they have gone to considerable lengths over the last four months to make one thing clear: When affixing responsibility for the misery, shame and danger being visited on their once-great nation, they focus overwhelmingly on the ruling regime itself -- on its economic incompetence, its tyrannical nature, its international belligerence. There's good reason to doubt they would react differently now were the United States and its partners to impose painful sanctions. If anything, the bloody crackdown the Iranian people have endured since the election has only fueled their hatred of the current ruling clique and their determination to be rid of it as soon as possible. Read article.
Is Obama Turning Us into the Next Evil Empire?
Selwyn Duke, American Thinker.com
When Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an "evil empire" in 1983, he was articulating in the boldest terms what had always been an American understanding. The Kremlin had long been fomenting communist revolution the world over, and we had long pursued our policy of "containment."
Thus did we fight wars in Korea and Vietnam, facilitate coups d'état against people such as Salvador Allende and support anti-communist rebels such as the mujahedeen in Afghanistan. Of course, plans didn't always come together. There was the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the covert Iran-Contra operation getting front-page exposure. The "police action" in Korea ended in a stalemate and Vietnam just became stale, losing the public and political support necessary for victory.
Many also questioned the wisdom and even the legality of some of these foreign interventions, and other people, often for ignoble reasons, refused to wrap their minds around the fact that there is such a thing as the lesser of two evils and that it is virtually always the anti-communist option. As for any mistakes or moral lapses -- which ever plague endeavors of mortal design -- for now, I'll just steal a concept from Otto von Bismarck and say that sometimes foreign policy is like sausage, in that it may look good when it's served, but you wouldn't want to be there when it's made. Other times, though, viewing it in its totality is like being presented with whole octopus. The only way it can be stomached is if you keep your eyes closed.
Barack Obama's support for the Honduran ex-president who would be king, Manuel Zelaya, is without American precedent. Zelaya is Hugo Chavez' mini-me, as he, like the vitriolic Venezuelan, sought to subvert his nation's constitution and extend and expand his power. And of this there is no doubt. The Honduran constitution prohibits a president from serving more than one term, and Zelaya, aided and abetted by Chavez and a mob of thugs, was using illegal methods to circumvent the prohibition. This is why Honduras' supreme court ruled against him; it's why he was opposed by the nation's congress, the majority of its people and the Catholic Church. It's why Zelaya was removed from office.
In taking the wrong side, Obama has turned what could have been a temporary crisis into a protracted one, a situation that could devolve into bloody civil war. And what's so tragic is that supporting the interim government of Roberto Micheletti likely would have diffused the situation and yielded long-term stability. Read article.
Who Leaked to Iran?
Ken Timmerman, NewsMax.com
For three long years, the United States, Britain, and France kept the secret while their intelligence services shared information they had been gathering on what appeared to be a top secret underground nuclear weapons plant near Qom.
At the very last minute, just four days before the allies planned to shock the world by revealing detailed information on the secret nuclear plant, the Iranian government sent a tersely worded letter acknowledging the existence of the site to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and pledged to open it for future inspections.
“Someone leaked,” says Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, who works extensively on U.S. policy toward Iran. “Someone informed the Iranians that we knew about the plant, prompting them to write to the IAEA. “
The consequences of that leak may prove fatal to the effort by Western powers to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions short of war. The leak allowed the Iranians to defuse a tense standoff with a Western alliance united as never before. French President Sarkozy was visibly fuming when he stood next to President Obama in Pittsburgh on Sept. 25 to talk about the new nuclear plant whose existence the Iranians had just revealed. Sarkozy had been planning to drop that bombshell the day before, during a speech at the United Nations. But Obama personally asked him to hold back. Read article.
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