West Wing Week Oct. 8

A rundown of Obama's week:

Obama Says Goodbye Rahm Hello Pete Rouse

A gentler chief of staff:

Republicans Making Hay of Obama's Golfing

Tony Hayward's yachting isn't comparable to Obama's weekend golfing, although I could care less if Hayward yachts. What else do people expect a rich guy to do on his weekend? People are getting mad at the wrong things. If it disturbs them that Hayward took the yacht out this weekend, then they ought to want to see the country move away from oil dependency. They ought to want to see more regulation of the oil industry. They ought to want to see less of republicans, who are the party of drill baby drill.

The Morning joe crew says that republicans are also starting to make hay out of Obama's Sunday golfing, which is ridiculous.
Contrary to popular belief, Obama is a human who needs to do human activities occasionally, otherwise he could face severe burnout with all the crap that he has to put up with. The least he should be able to do is golf on the weekend. He should also be able to go on dates with his wife and spend time with his kids too.
He's a working stiff who spends day and night in the thankless job of POTUS for a salary of $400,000 a year.
The Morning Joe crew also discusses the next attack on Obama--vacation--and the rumors that Rahm, the guy that both the left and the right love to hate, is leaving.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Rahm Emanuel on This Week June 20

Obama Meeting Again With Netanyahu June 1

Obama and Rahm

Update May 31 via Politico:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has canceled his visit to the White House in the aftermath of the Israeli military's action against a flotilla seeking access to Gaza, the AP reports. White House spokesman Bill Burton said in advance of Netanyahu's decision that the White House was currently "to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy."

The Obama administration is trying to get peace talks back on track. Rahm Emanuel is in Israel, part of a family vacation, and will be meeting with Netanyahu today. Obama met with Netanyahu at the White House on March 24, and apparently, it didn't go so well.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama in Washington Tuesday (June 1),[1] with talks likely to center on the current round of indirect negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians mediated by U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell. [2]

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was expected to meet today (Wednesday) with Netanyahu to deliver the invitation. Emanuel is currently on a private visit to Israel to celebrate the bar mitzvahs of his son and his nephew. Emanuel also is expected to meet tomorrow (Thursday) with Israeli President Shimon Peres to discuss a range of U.S.-Israel concerns.[3][4] The Israel Project

Obama Meets With Cabinet on Oil Spill

Statement from Robert Gibbs on the meeting:

The Deepwater Horizon explosion and BP oil spill presents us with challenges on a number of fronts – from capping the flow at the well head and containing the spill on the ocean’s surface, to controlling the impact of the oil on the coastal shoreline and on the precious wetlands and fisheries in the area. President Obama remains committed to bringing any and all available resources to the Gulf of Mexico. Earlier today the President met with a number of Cabinet members and senior staff in the White House Situation Room to review BP’s efforts to stop the oil leak as well as to decide on next steps to ensure all is being done to contain the spread, mitigate the environmental impact and provide assistance to affected states, including individuals, businesses, and communities.

As we continue to evaluate different options to stop the flow of oil, the President impressed upon his team two things in the meeting today: first, the importance of engaging independent experts in the fields of science and technology; and, second, bringing every perspective to the table to identify potential solutions.

The President was pleased to hear that some of Energy Secretary Chu’s ideas have helped us better understand the dimensions of this serious problem and he asked Secretary Chu to lead a team of top administration officials and government scientists to Houston this week for an extensive dialogue with BP officials to continue to aggressively pursue potential solutions. Throughout the week, the President will continue to dispatch additional Cabinet officials to the region. As the President has made clear before, BP will be paying for all costs of stopping the spill and cleaning it up, and we will aggressively pursue full compensation for damages.

In addition, to deal more generally with the harms created by oil spills, the President has requested that we send legislation to Congress to toughen and update the law surrounding caps on damages.


The principals participating in the meeting included:

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano
United States Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Thad Allen (National Incident Commander for this event)
Department of the Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen
Department of Defense Secretary Robert Gates
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel
Assistant to the President for Homeland Security John Brennan
National Security Advisor General Jim Jones
EPA Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe (Administrator Jackson is currently in Louisiana)
NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco
Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli
Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner
OMB Director Peter Orszag
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology John Holdren
DPC Chair Melody Barnes
CEQ Chair Nancy Sutley
Assistant to the President for Cabinet Affairs Chris Lu

No oil on Mississippi beaches but no beachgoers:

Gibbs on Massa's Fit Pitching

Eric Massa obviously considers himself a very important man. Such an ego. I'm so tired of all these fools. Scapegoating Rahm Emanuel is also getting old. Now Massa's got the media turned on him instead of more important matters. I just heard, Massa's going to be on Glenn Beck's show. Point proven. Good riddance Massa.

Axelrod on C-SPAN Newsmakers Feb. 6

Watch the full video here.

He discusses Al Franken, the riff between Rahm Emanuel and Eric Holder, Richard Shelby, the troll, and the tea party movement.

He says Congress should move rapidly on the jobs bill and quickly move to healthcare, which means the republicans will probably stall the jobs bill.

Axelrod said Obama will call a bipartisan meeting on jobs next week.

Limbaugh Urges Listeners NOT to Donate to Haiti Rescue

Rush tells his followers that they shouldn't donate to Haiti because, somehow, he sees the devastation in Haiti as a positive thing, politically, for Obama. How twisted is that? How evil is that? Some people who have medical emergencies like Rush did in Hawaii rethink life. It seems that Rush is still thoughtless and very hung up on race.

In this video below, Limbaugh makes it sound as though Rahm Emanuel said that the Haiti crisis was too good to waste. Rush's listeners probably know no better. When Emanuel made those remarks he meant that while we're digging ourselves out of a hole, we can simultaneously fix the things that need to be fixed, so that our nation doesn't have another meltdown like this one. He meant we could turn lemons into lemonade. Here is Emanuel's often misinterpreted quote from an WSJ story in 2008:

This opportunity isn't lost on the new president and his team. "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste," Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama's new chief of staff, told a Wall Street Journal conference of top corporate chief executives this week.

He elaborated: "Things that we had postponed for too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." WSJ

I'd hate to be Rush Limbaugh. Ick. He's rotting on the inside.

Joe Scarborough thinks Rush might walk back his comments, but he's only been escalating them:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

White House Press Briefing Jan. 11

The Obamas travel to Delaware tomorrow for Jean Biden's funeral.
There may be a tax on banks to recoup bailout funds.
Also in this video, Chip Reid says "We're not pundits. We're reporters" as the White House press corps debated whether they recently declared Obama over exposed:

Healthcare Bill Weak on Reform?

At this point, I'm hoping they don't just pass a lame bill for political reasons.

“My assessment at this point,” said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon and a member of the Finance Committee, “is that the legislation is heavy on health and light on reform.”

There are a variety of ideas for attacking cost increases more aggressively, including setting Medicare reimbursement rates for doctors and hospitals more rigorously and discouraging workers and employers from buying expensive health insurance policies that mask the true costs of treatment. NYT

See Wyden's idea for healthcare here. Under his plan (I have no idea why it hasn't been considered, but it probably has to do with this), we wouldn't get insurance from employers, but there would be a tradeoff of paying slightly more for guaranteed, comprehensive coverage:

According to that independent analysis, families who have incomes under $40,000 a year will have less out-of-pocket expenses under the HAA than they do now.

Families between $40,000 and $50,000 would pay about $81/year more - about $7 a month. Families between $50,000 and $150,000 would average between $327 and $341 per year more - about $28 a month.

In return for this modest increase these families would have guaranteed coverage that they could never lose, not if they get sick, not if they lose their jobs, not for any reason. This guaranteed coverage would be more comprehensive and include prevention benefits that would help you and your family improve their health. This new coverage would be fully portable - no longer would you need to stay in a job that paid less, or offered less opportunity, just to maintain health coverage. No longer would a parent need to work hours when they needed to be with their children just to maintain full time status for their health insurance.

Two camps at the White House:

The debate underscores a fundamental tension inside the White House between cost-containment idealists and pragmatists.

The first group includes officials like Peter R. Orszag, the budget director, and Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, the medical ethicist whose brother Rahm is the chief of staff. The second includes Rahm Emanuel and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the Office of Health Reform, who must contend with the realities of getting legislation passed. Read more at NYT

Obama's Victory Over Military Lobby

If there's a lobby that's worse than the insurance companies, it's the military lobby. That's where our money really gets sucked up.

But as the president signed a $680 billion military policy bill on Wednesday, it was clear that he had succeeded in paring back nearly all of the programs and setting a tone of greater restraint than the Pentagon had seen in many years.

Now the question is whether Mr. Obama can sustain that push next year, when the midterm elections are likely to make Congress more resistant to further cuts and job losses.

White House officials say Mr. Obama took advantage of a rare political moment to break through one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies and trim more weapons systems than any president had in decades.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said Wednesday that the plan was to threaten a veto over a prominent program — in this case, the F-22 fighter jet — “to show we were willing to expend political capital and could win on something that people thought we could not.”

Once the Senate voted in July to stop buying F-22s, Mr. Emanuel said in an interview, that success “reverberated down” to help sustain billions of dollars of cuts in Army modernization, missile defense and other programs.

Mr. Emanuel said the strategy emerged when the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, told Mr. Obama they needed to “shake up sacred cows and be seen as taking on fights.” More at NYT

Rahm Discusses Fox News Slant

Rahm Emanuel says Fox is not a news organization.
It is a perspective. What's happening is other news organizations are following Fox. I agree. It's almost too late though. There has been a breakdown in what constitutes news and a gradual degradation of the craft of journalism itself. The White House is doing a good thing though. It's pointing out to people that what Fox does is not news. People need to recognize that. They need to know the difference between facts and opinion. There is this scary trend of people believing in things, despite evidence to the contrary.

Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

Wow. What a great surprise!

The Nobel Committee announced Friday that the annual peace prize was awarded to Barack Obama, just nine months into his presidency, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

The award cited in particular Mr. Obama’s effort to reduce the world’s nuclear arsenal. “He has created a new international climate,” the committee said.

The announcement stunned people from Norway to the White House. “There has been no discussion, nothing at all,” said Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, in a brief telephone interview.

Mr. Emanuel said that he had not yet spoken directly to the president. A senior administration official said in an e-mail message that the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, called the White House shortly before 6 a.m. and woke the president with the news.

“The president was humbled to be selected by the committee,” the official said, without adding anything further.
...
Mr. Obama’s foreign policy has been criticized bitterly among neoconservatives like former Vice President Dick Cheney, who have suggested his rhetoric is naïve and his inclination to talk to America’s enemies will leave the United States vulnerable to another terrorist attack.

In its announcement of the prize, the Nobel Committee seemed to directly refute that line of thinking.

“Obama has as president created a new climate in international politics,” the committee wrote. “Multilateral diplomacy has regained a central position, with emphasis on the role that the United Nations and other international institutions can play.”

Interviewed later in the Nobel Committee’s wood-paneled meeting room, surrounded by photographs of past winners, Mr. Jagland brushed aside concerns expressed by some critics that Mr. Obama remains untested.

“The question we have to ask is who has done the most in the previous year to enhance peace in the world,” Mr. Jagland said. “And who has done more than Barack Obama?”

More at the NYT

The Nobel Committee gets it. Obama has changed the tone of international relations at a critical time in history. On the downside, well, here you go. Already with the criticism:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

David Axelrod says Obama didn't seek the prize and that the prize is an affirmation that diplomacy and rebuilding international relationships are important causes:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

See reactions coming in from around the world here. It looks as though the prize will be more headache than it's worth. Obama will react at 11 am eastern at cnn.com.
The announcement:

Colin Powell Skeptical of More Troops in Afghanistan

Whatever decision Obama makes on Afghanistan, at the very least, he has considered and weighed all the options. It appears that most of the hefty advisers, including Joe Biden, are against more troops. But Hillary Clinton is for more troops, according to the NYT:

The competing advice and concerns fuel a pivotal struggle to shape the president’s thinking about a war that he inherited but may come to define his tenure. Among the most important outside voices has been that of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a retired four-star Army general, who visited Mr. Obama in the Oval Office this month and expressed skepticism that more troops would guarantee success. According to people briefed on the discussion, Mr. Powell reminded the president of his longstanding view that military missions should be clearly defined.

Mr. Powell is one of the three people outside the administration, along with Senator John F. Kerry and Senator Jack Reed, considered by White House aides to be most influential in this current debate. All have expressed varying degrees of doubt about the wisdom of sending more forces to Afghanistan. Read more at the NYT

Other Obama advisers against more troops:

In the West Wing, beyond Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has advocated an alternative strategy to the troop buildup, other presidential advisers sound dubious about more troops, including Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, and Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, according to people who have spoken with them. At the same time, Mr. Obama is also hearing from more hawkish figures, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. NYT

Gibbs: Obama Believes GOP Trying to Defeat Health Care

They've done it before. Let's not let the GOP get the best of us, at least not with lies, deceit and fringe lunacy.

Rahm: Vote Duck for a Kinder Gentler Farm

Rahm reads "Duck for President" to kids. Look like Rahm's trying to show his soft side. Funny stuff.

Rahm: Republicans Charged 2003 Prescription Drug Bill

Rahm Emanuel adds perspective to the health care debate in an interview with NPR this morning:

Fiscally conservative Democrats have also raised concerns about cost, but Emanuel urged the country to take a step back and think about the scale of what Congress is trying to accomplish.

"For 40 years, we've had a debate about health care that was solely about expanding coverage. For the first time, you have the dual goals of controlling costs and expanding coverage," he said.

"We're not just running it up on the credit card, which is how they did the prescription drug bill," he said, referring to the passage of a bill in 2003 under a Republican-controlled Congress that added a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

"They charged it, which is a $900 billion charge," he said. "And nobody paid for it."

Emanuel sees giving more power to a commission already in place to advise Congress on how to hold down Medicare spending as key to keeping costs under control. Read the whole thing

Obama Staffers Keep the Mess Busy

Obama meets with advisors

Life at the White House is work, work, work.

The White House mess -- the military-inspired term for the West Wing cafeteria -- opens at 7 a.m. each day. And each day, there is a long line of hungry staffers who have already been at the office for well over an hour.

By 8 p.m., as the doors to the mess are about to close, the orders flow again as bleary-eyed staffers grab dinner before heading back to their offices for another conference call or meeting.

"I think the mess hates all of us," said a frequent customer who is a senior adviser to President Obama.

In a city where work can border on obsession, the Obama staffers stand out. They are not quite the walking dead, but their eyes are frequently ringed with the bags that accompany exhaustion.

"This is a place, because of the stress, the schedule and the sheer hours, that just chews people up and spits them out," said press secretary Robert Gibbs, whose alarm clock is set to 4:30 a.m., though he ignores the early ring more often these days.

All West Wings face fatigue at some point, but the Obama team has had a particularly frenetic start, the result of inheriting the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression and the team's own seemingly chaotic drive to push an agenda that includes the creation of a new health insurance system, auto bailouts, Middle East peace, nuclear nonproliferation, two wars and education reform. Read more at WaPo

Obama Dunks Rahm Emanuel

Peter Orszag and Robert Gibbs also get dunked at the June 25 Congressional luau picnic: