Bill Daley's quick exit of the White House underlines what is the reported case for some time, that the Obama administration is a handful of insiders from the Chicago campaign days, and that there is no prospect of a change in weather in the event POTUS is returned in 2013. The Obama presidency is entirely about the Obama elections. This is not unprecedented. However, the undermanned state at the White House means that business will wait until POTUS can convince a new Cabinet and a new staff to give him direction. With the likelihood of a GOP win in the Senate in November, and the GOP continuing comfortably in the House, an Obama return will produce a White House of few ambitions. Daley was the last hold of the Democratic Party on POTUS Obama. From now till Election Day, POTUS is a lone operator with a fundraising operation to pay for his re-elections staff in Chicago and nationwide. It is striking that there is so little made of the the Daley jolt. Who is Jacob Lew? Am told he is an observant Jew (Orthodox) and trustworthy. Will Lew have operating room at the White House? Unlikely Lew will have more success that the previous CoS. There is one authority at the WH, am told: FLOTUS with her agent Valerie Jarrett. It is not ideology. It is Shakespeare Lite. We look forward to the tell-all from the Obama years, starring FLOTUS.
" business will wait until POTUS can convince a new Cabinet and a new staff to give him direction."
To do what? What is going to interest his Listlessship if the voters are stupid enough to repeat their 2008 mistake?
Spies like us . . .
January 10, 2011
Dear President Obama,
Sacrificing for a ones country comes in many forms. From stepping into the political arena to stand up for what one believes in to hiding out in a foreign land to make certain that nations intentions are peaceful. If I had to pick I’d rather end up as a spy then a politician. At least its over quick in the very end rather then getting tortured like Jimmy Carter for decades for being the only President, other than you, in modern history that almost single handedly decimated a nation by not doing what was necessary to preserve it and grow it economically. How did a former submariner end up such a failure will forever be a mystery to me. Smart people as President are not a prerequisite; people of good character and rock solid commonsense are though. Right now we are in the thick of trying to find your replacement; there are days I wonder why we do this this way, but then I remember we are a free people and we fight it out this way because we are free, so naturally it’s going to be a bit messy. Besides what would be the fun in not having something for the next guy to fix:)
Back to spying. One of the primary ways the peace is maintained is reading each others eMail. When nations look to hide their intentions we know that they are up to no good. I often wonder why nations waste so much wealth in these endeavors. One wonders who sold them on such stupidity? Is it not much easier just to open your doors ask for a little help to meet your national objectives, and do some free trade, and and grow your economy, and the wider peace, in the process? Guess that notion is alien to some. Yet, here we are, we and they must do what we can to preserve the peace. Did I just say “they?” Because like the weird lady in that Poltergeist movie once said “They’re here” in that eerie voice. The United States is probably the most spied on nation in the history of nationhood. We are an open society we let anyone come in here, with or with out the proper paperwork:) At some access points we even train future Olympians by leaving pole vaults near the fence to give them a fair shot at the fence! Complete with an entire political party, and half of the other one, cheering them on . . .
Regardless, the way we treat theirs and they treat ours is a bone of contention with me. One wonders what they seek to gain by such mistreatment? Do they think that it will garner them much support? I cannot see how considering their own domestic population would relocate if it could, and we would welcome them with food stamps and a 3 foot high fence, complete with a rubber stamp! The notion of excrement for brains comes to mind. But hay, that’s what passes for intellect these days in dictators so like I always say “When in Rome, act like a Roman!” Ever been to Rome? Nice place. Nuts drivers, as well as people on those two banger scooters. That’s a risk they are willing to take. The same with spies. But, even spies have families. Wives and children. Does the world need one more crying widow and orphaned child? Or another war to open up a closed society murdering it’s own people? We sure hope not. We pray for peace, but we prepare for avoiding war by spying. Do you ever wonder what the world would be like if those in the most closed societies just opened their doors, and stopped wasting so much wealth and time trying to keep the door shut? You see what happens eventually is this all comes to a head and a nation like ours is forced to act.
Not with people just checking out what the other guy is doing with his mail, but with B-52’s.
Mr. President do you ever wonder why those nations choose that?
I do.
Respectfully,
Joe Doakes
Fine end to the junkyard dog that gave us Bush v. Gore: dismissed, disregarded, deflated.
From WSJ Political Diary:
Sweet Home Chicago
Chief of Staff Bill Daley is leaving the White House in a puff of smoke, but the farewell assumptions about his ill-suitedness to the job are less telling than the changes in the White House itself since he came to Washington a year ago.
Mr. Daley said as recently as October that he planned to stay through this year's election and then resign. So whatever the divisions were, they seemed to have accelerated in recent months.
Mr. Daley was hired at a time when the White House was trying to shake its anti-business reputation. It was in January 2011 that President Obama wrote an oped in The Wall Street Journal touting his executive order to get rid of "dumb" regulations that "stifle job creation and make our economy less competitive." Between then and now have come the political charms of the Occupy Wall Street movement and Mr. Obama's class-warfare re-election strategy.
Mr. Daley is also said to have been done in by his failures of diplomacy on Capitol Hill and the fact that Democrats in Congress found him too even-handed in his criticisms of the legislative process. Democrats cranky over the president's negotiations during last year's budget standoff were upset by Mr. Daley's remark to Politico that "on the domestic side, both Democrats and Republicans have really made it very difficult for the president to be anything like a chief executive."
The Huffington Post cited senior administration officials as saying that the president was surprised and caught off guard by Mr. Daley's decision. But in November Mr. Daley was effectively demoted from his day-to-day management of White House operations and replaced by Mr. Obama's pal Pete Rouse, who has been known for greater finesse in legislative affairs. Mr. Daley is being replaced by Office of Management and Budget director Jacob Lew, whose expertise can also be deployed to head off Republicans and administration critics in that area.
Mr. Daley is a former commerce secretary, JP Morgan executive and Al Gore campaign manager. He has twice considered running for governor in Illinois, but his rather unflattering tenure at the White House may end up costing him ground in that ambition.
Mr. Daley joined the White House in a game of musical chairs between Chicago and Pennsylvania Avenue. When his brother Richard declined to stay on as mayor of Chicago, former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel ran for mayor, opening the chief of staff position for Mr. Daley. Sometimes getting hired is the easiest part.
-- Collin Levy
First order of business upon getting back to Chicago: trim the eyebrows.
Maybe he was boffin' FLOTUS and POTUS got wind of it....
POTUS isn't anyone to fear.
Sad news: Tony Blankley died Sunday from stomach cancer. Back before Rove was known as Bush's Brain, Blankley, officially Gingrich's public affairs director, was known as Gingrich's Brain. Urbane, witty, unfailingly courtly, possessed of an extraordinary CV, he and his debate skills and command of facts will be sorely missed. His splendid taste in clothes is not likely to be equaled any time soon, either.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/09/BAQ91MMKAS.DTL
Has FLOTUS accepted the role of Lady MacBeth Lite? http://t.co/UmAGdHuq
We can only hope. She was Macbeth's undoing.
Tell that to bin Laden, Hillary Clinton, and John Boehner.
I don't attribute to Obama any of the disappointments suffered by the 3. He's a wuss, a puppet of stonger-spined forces, a minority manniquin.
RE: Macbeth . . .
April 28, 2011
Dear Mr. Obama,
America knows that this whole political theater we are being treated to is a dry run of sorts and that if you stay in the very high 30s to the 40s you’ll be the nominee of the democratic party. Biden? You’ll put him in a home and stick us with another life insurance policy as bad if not worse than you are. I write today not about that, but about a Presidents duty as the commander of The United States military and your mother. You see I’m just a citizen, still a net taxpayer, XXXX, I make vanilla ice cream look exciting. You? Not so much. Your mother got back at her father and you are the byproduct of that rage she felt for her father, and now you are the President of The United States. Ponder that. Wow.
Enough pondering. Yesterday I read that more of our soldiers paid the ultimate price for a war that was forced on us on September 11, 2001 when nineteen islamic XXX cases decided that the strip club in Florida did not provide enough excitement so they set off in search of the 72 virgins. I also wonder where are all the war protestors like when Bush was in office? On September 12, 2001 my father said to me that we should turn the desert into green glass. I realize now that he was correct. There is no such thing as a proportional response when this nation is directly attacked - who ever the attacker - nuclear armed or not. To me all we are doing is fighting for one side of the same muslim/arab coin and we have put ourselves into a situation that will be impossible to kill or bomb our way out of. How does one make peace with an entire religion that is dedicated to your national extermination?
Doesn’t America deserve a clear choice between war and peace? See I’m for doing it or not doing it. This is crazy. No sane man in the last generation would ever commit to such lunacy, even a women would know that at some point the cost would be too high. That is what I thought most liberal democrats were for? I guess I was wrong liberal democrats must be passive aggressive types, kind of like your mother and her father. Payback is a real XXXX. Man, do we all have to pay for the fact that she hated the old man, and taught you to hate too? Wow. That’s nuts. It’s like that play Macbeth, no matter how much that broad washed her hand the stain of blood would not fade. Your mothers hatred of this nation and her father was transferred into you, now you must follow through with it. You should have called your book “Dreams of My XXXXX Off Mother.”
So how many people have to die to make you feel like America has paid the price? How much wealth needs to be destroyed? How small must America become? How high must gasoline prices go? How much rioting must be set upon our land? How much pain do you intend to inflict before The United States of America has paid the price of what your mother did to you because her father was a nut? I’m just trying to plan my day and the service members of this great nation are just trying to survive their service. I sure hope that on November 6, 2012 we really do have a choice because this is shaping up to be a three party race, I smell it. I think America might actually go for that third party after you and what the Republicans have done.
Are there any adults left in The United States of America? Anyone? I’m not picky I just need one.
Respectfully,
Joe Doakes
You're pretty smart about a lot of things but you don't have Obama pegged correctly, IMO. If this were a game of Dungeons and Dragons he'd be about an 80 hit-point Chaotic Evil monster, with the ability to cast an Appear Wussy spell that drains other characters at 10 hit-points per turn.
Ron Paul would bring all the troops home right away. Is he an adult in your book?
I don't understand a thing you said after "you don't have Obama pegged correctly." But you could be right. It would be very Sun-Tzu of him. I tend to underestimate people I think are cretins.
In my darker moments I want Ron Paul to become President of The United States of America . . . I say darker because I know what that would cause and at times I see the value in a cathartic cleansing of con heaped upon scam and then written into laws, that will soon be used to put BP executives in jail for what the federal government failed to do.
I say let gold rise to $5,000, $10,000 or $20,000 dollars an ounce to back all of those dollars out there. Let all of those "good" muslims annihilate the bad "muslims." Let Iran develop and mount implosion type nuclear devices on missiles with ranges of a quarter of the Earths circumference, Let them base them in Venezuela, I even think I'd like to see Israel finally be forced to have to go for it, and further I'd love to live in a world where people who have actually bled for this nation, like General David Petraeus, and thousands of others like him, have to witness a nation that they have sacrificed so much for be torn asunder to such a degree that they would be forced to act and get involved in politics to higher degree if not something far more. I even think that having Communist China take Taiwan and letting North Korea overun South Korea is a good idea . . . maybe they can jump off and take Japan . . . lord knows the Japanese could use a few extra hands in cleaning up Fukashima!
Ron Paul's go my vote. Let's go for it!
Look . . . I fell your pain (biting lower lip, wishing I got that blue dress dry cleaned and invested in that extra bottle of KY) . . . there is a smarter, wiser and more stable way to rescue this nation from disaster, divided government is a great start, the commies I mean Democrats are going to have an exceptional time holding on to it, and as far as the Presidency, the casino holds the cards and is going to stack the deck . . . again in my darker moments I think we should just go for it . . . but remember this just in case I get vaporized . . . if we foul this one up it's mushroom clouds for breakfast and I'm heading for the mountains to shoot deer with the rest of the locals.
"mountains to shoot deer"
Well, if it comes to mushroom clouds, I say you could contemplate shooting a few politicians with impunity. True, they don't yield as much meat, but the emotional satisfaction would be unequaled.
"... you could contemplate shooting a few politicians with impunity....the emotional satisfaction would be unequaled."
Not to mention how good they would look on your fender when you're driving home.
Indeed!!
Not to mention the fact that joedokes101 lives up there in a target-rich environment.
"I'm a lover not a fighter" . . . besides what's the point . . . they will just grow another one . . .
Careful or this talk will be used for fodder next time there's a shooting like the one in Tucson - which hopefully there never will be. Families lose a Dad or a Mom.
And as Joe says, they'll just grow another one.
The real enemies are ignorance and loss of the American Dream. Only a desperate, ill-educated, ill-informed electorate could put garbage like Barbara Boxer, Tom Harmon and Harry Reid in office.
Teachers unions elect Democrats who support teachers who teach to the lowest common denominator which produces a whole new crop of Democratic voters looking for a handout which supports the next generation of teachers. You can do all the grousing you want about the pols but until you break this cycle of ignorance it's a waste of ammo.
Lighten up, Lou. We're talking about an unlikely comic-book style,, dystopian future.
"Families lose a Dad or Mom ... and as Joe says, they'll just grow another one."
How much lighter can I get?
"Sad news: Tony Blankley died Sunday...."
Blankley's death for me was the most rattling by far of 3 recent instances of younger, era-affecting icons handed their final exit. With Jobs and Hitchens, we observers had more advance notice, mental prep for their vanishings. Also, despite having prodigious brains, their politics and lifestyles inserted huge distances of personal identification, emotional attachment, inspiration. It was decidedly opposite with Blankley: a Renaissance man - intellectually ravenous across the spectrum of topics, charming, entertaining, quick, articulate, tactical and strategic thinker, worldly, sense of humor, grasp of history, consummate gentleman, someone whom I could never read and hear enough. We who happily Occupy Bachelorville see Blankley a brother and process his death with profound sadness and a jarring reminder of hourglass sands.