Obama administration officials are holding discussions that could result in White House counsel Gregory Craig leaving his post, following a rocky tenure, people familiar with the matter said.
"That's right Cracka BOW to your Negro Master!"
Mr. Craig, the top lawyer at the White House and a close aide to President Barack Obama, has helped lead the administration’s efforts on several national-security issues that once enjoyed popularity but have since become become political liabilities for Mr. Obama.
These include the closure of the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the release of Bush administration-era national-security documents, and efforts to find legal ways to indefinitely hold some detainees who can’t be put on trial.
The decision to close the Guantanamo facility became a political problem for Mr. Obama when concerns arose that some of the detainees would be released into the U.S. and the public soured on the move.
Of course, you can count on the White House for that transparency that Obama touted, right?
Mr. Craig didn’t respond to questions about his job as White House counsel for this article.
The people familiar with the matter said a final decision hasn’t been made.
In a statement, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina said: “We’ve addressed these rumors before. They are nothing more than typical Washington parlor games. It’s disappointing that while we are focused on reviving the economy and fighting two wars, others spend their time pointing fingers in an attempt to promote their own status.
Well, not so much. Wait! Was that a veiled swipe at Hillary? Remember Mr. President Douche Nozzle, only reason you got that President’s job is because Hillary knew it would destroy your party for her to continue the fight.
Moving right along, it appears this is the reason that this guy is on his way out:
Mr. Craig has come under criticism from inside the administration and in Congress for a perceived failure to manage the political issues that have originated from Mr. Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo, according to officials in the administration and in Congress. This criticism has drawn focus away from president’s priorities, such as health care and energy.
[…]
As an example of the difficulties Mr. Craig faced, the officials cite the president’s move in May to reverse a decision that would have led to the release of photos showing abuse of terror detainees during the Bush administration.
Weeks earlier, Mr. Craig brought Mr. Obama plans to release Justice Department memorandums detailing the Bush administration’s policies on terrorism detainees. Some Obama national-security officials complained they hadn’t been consulted, people familiar with the matter said, and the objections prompted weeks of debate inside the administration.
Mr. Craig and Attorney General Eric Holder won the fight to release the memorandums, with minimal redactions, but the White House had to move quickly to limit political damage. Former Vice President Dick Cheney sharpened criticism of Mr. Obama during a televised speech that followed Mr. Obama’s own address intended to explain his national-security vision.
At around the same time, the administration was running into trouble with plans to move to northern Virginia at least some Chinese Muslim Uighurs who remain detained at Guantanamo despite being cleared for release. The furor over the possible release of former suspects in the U.S. led Congress to overwhelmingly pass new restrictions, including barring spending to close the Guantanamo prison.
Mr. Obama signed executive orders during his first week in office to close the Guantanamo prison, to review the cases of the more than 200 detainees there and to draw up possible changes to detention and interrogation policies.
At the time Mr. Obama enjoyed public support for his Guantanamo plans, polls showed. Six months later that public support has dissipated, polls show.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), one of the administration’s allies on the Guantanamo closure, faulted the White House handling of Guantanamo. “Announcing the closure without a plan has put in jeopardy the ability to close Guantanamo. Now public opinion has turned,” Mr. Graham said Monday.
Looks like the reason why this guy is on his way out; is simply because he could not or would not push through the President’s agenda. When the support dropped from the America people and the agenda could not be fulfilled, Obama throws him under the Bus. So typical for the Chicago thug politics that Obama is infamous for.
I will be the first to admit; I have not always agreed with Michelle Malkin in the past. But I am totally in agreement with her on the Obama Administration and on Matters of the Military; and most importantly on the subject of the war on terror.
Michelle has released a new book on the Obama Administration. It is called:
Here the video of Michelle on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News Channel: (H/T and Thanks to the guys at HotAir.com)
I might even buy me a copy of this book, but really, I have blogged about most of it; so, for me, it would be a huge review.
You can get Michelle Malkin’s Book right here or by clicking the link on the picture of the book above:
If you would have told me, a year ago, that I would be praising Hillary Clinton for something she said; I would have asked you what kind drugs you were on and to share some of it with me! (I kid about the drugs, but this still is a very good story.)
First the Video:
Quote:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Iran will never achieve its goal of obtaining a nuclear weapon, declaring to Tehran: “Your pursuit is futile.”
“What we want to do is to send a message to whoever is making these decisions, that if you’re pursuing nuclear weapons for the purpose of intimidating, of projecting your power, we’re not going to let that happen,” Clinton said.
“First, we’re going to do everything we can to prevent you from ever getting a nuclear weapon. But your pursuit is futile, because we will never let Iran — nuclear-armed, not nuclear-armed — it is something that we view with great concern, and that’s why we’re doing everything we can to prevent that from ever happening. … We believe, as a matter of policy, it is unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.”
As a security summit in Thailand earlier this week, Clinton raised the possibility of a “defense umbrella” over the Middle East to protect other nations from a nuclear-armed Iran, marking the first time a senior administration official has publicly broached the prospect of the Persian nation succeeding in building a nuclear weapon.
Clinton said the Obama administration might still engage with Iran’s regime, even though she thinks the people there “deserve better than what they’re getting.”
The only question that I might have is this; Does President Obama agree with this position? Another concern that I have is that this could be a signal of War drums beating. I am sure that the Secretary knows, that our forces are still fighting in Afghanistan and that we do still have forces in Iraq and that the job there is still not entirely done yet.
However, I do commend Secretary Clinton for her tough stance towards Iran’s terrible President and Islamic Oligarchy.
I just hope that President Obama agrees with Secretary Clinton and does not try and back-peddle that stance and play the role of terrorist appeaser. If he does, it would mean the total discrediting of Secretary Clinton and further more of America’s leadership role in the World.
Update: No Quarter, who is a Pro-Hillary liberal Blogger; links in. Hey, we might not agree on politics. But I’ll any kind of linkie love that I can get! 😛 😀
In other words, negotiating with Iran at this time would indeed betray the protesters, but we’ve done this before and want to do it again now.
Fair enough, perhaps. Our experiences with the Soviet Union and China do establish that we have at times negotiated with repressive regimes. But it doesn’t follow that we should negotiate with Iran at this time.
In any event, this much is certain: our negotiations with the Soviet Union and China did not cause either power to eschew nuclear weapons. Indeed, to my knowledge negotiations have never induced any nation that was aggressively pursuing nukes to change its mind. That kind of persuasion takes a massive show of force (Libya and arguably Iraq) or regime change.
Thus, while the administration may have its own motives for negotiating with Iran, there is no reason for Israel to believe that such negotiations will protect Israel’s interest (potentially a life-and-death one) in preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. Clinton’s case that Israel should rely on U.S. attempts to pursuade Iran not to go nuclear, rather than taking matters into its own hands by attacking Iran, is not a powerful one.
Reporting from Washington — Invoking an argument used by President George W. Bush, the Obama administration has turned down a request from a watchdog group for a list of health industry executives who have visited the White House to discuss the massive healthcare overhaul.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sent a letter to the Secret Service asking about visits from 18 executives representing health insurers, drug makers, doctors and other players in the debate. The group wants the material in order to gauge the influence of those executives in crafting a new healthcare policy.
The Secret Service sent a reply stating that documents revealing the frequency of such visits were considered presidential records exempt from public disclosure laws. The agency also said it was advised by the Justice Department that the Secret Service was within its rights to withhold the information because of the “presidential communications privilege.”
Just another lying Politician, like the rest of them. No Change, at all.
Updated to Add: I did not want to say too much here. Because my shoulder was hurting me pretty bad. It is a little batter and plus, I do want people to come to my blog. This whole thing stinks to high heaven, and even the Liberals are pissed about it; and rightly so. Barack Obama and the other Democratic Party candidates railed against the Bush Administration for this same very thing during the 2008 election. So, what does Obama do, once he is in the White House? The very same damned thing. President Barack Obama promised total transparency when he was elected and what does he do? Lies out his rather large ass, that’s what! I tend to believe that Obama is going to face a very large backlash here and this one might be his undoing come 2012.
The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.
Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:
– June’s total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends. But many of the mythical jobs are in industries that have absolutely no job creation, e.g., finance. When the official numbers are adjusted over the next several months, June will look worse.
– More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don’t count on the unemployment roll.
– No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted. Why? Because they hadn’t searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.
– The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut to those who cannot find a full-time job and the total unemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle in the range of 25 million.
– The average work week for rank-and-file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the work force, slipped to 33 hours. That’s 48 minutes a week less than before the recession began, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data 45 years ago. Full-time workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity. If Americans were still clocking those extra 48 minutes a week now, the same aggregate amount of work would get done with 3.3 million fewer employees, which means that if it were not for the shorter work week the jobless rate would be 11.7%, not 9.5% (which far exceeds the 8% rate projected by the Obama administration).
– The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (i.e., for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.
– The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at $18.53 an hour.
– The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs — 223,000 in the last report alone.
– The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent. Instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes in the way they conduct business. General Motors and Chrysler, closed hundreds of dealerships and reduced brands. Citigroup and Bank of America cut tens of thousands of positions and exited many parts of the world of finance.
Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.
So much for “The One” fixing the economy. Oh, right; he misread it. Looks like this Blogging gig get might be my only job for a long time to come. The Left is now spinning saying it will never recover.
I happen to like John Stossel; because he dares to take on the Liberals. Not in a mean or nasty way. But by simply stating the truth.
He writes about Michael Moore’s latest Movie:
Michael Moore has been working on another documentary. This time, he’s taking on capitalism:
“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money.”
How ridiculous is that? The wealthy, and everyone else, almost always decide that they don’t have enough wealth. People ask their bosses for raises. We invest in stocks hoping for bigger returns than Treasury Bonds bring. “Greed” is a constant. The beauty of free markets, when government doesn’t meddle in them, is that they turn this greed into a phenomenal force for good. The way to win big money is to serve your customers well. Profit-seeking entrepreneurs have given us better products, shorter work days, extended lives, and more opportunities to write the script of our own life.
He goes on…:
Moore also fails to understand is that it was not “capitalism” run amok that caused today’s financial problems. In reality, it was a combination of ill-conceivedgovernment policies and an overzealous Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates to fuel a bubble in the housing market. Then it was government that took money from taxpayers and forced banks to accept it.
Moore ought to understand that, because he makes a good point when he says his movie will be about “the biggest robbery in the history of this country – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.”
That is indeed robbery. It sure doesn’t sound like capitalism.
Nope, sounds more like socialized Healthcare or simply Socialism in general; to me.
According to the press release you linked, Chris, “Moore has made three of the top six highest-grossing documentaries of all time,” which presumably means he has accumulated a great deal of wealth. Apparently, since he continues to foist his so-called documentaries on an unsuspecting public, Moore has decided that he doesn’t have enough wealth. He wants more–a lot more.
Like most anti-capitalists, Moore has no problem personally profiting from his own endeavors while demonizing other successful persons and attempting to have them dispossessed of their wealth. The good news is that Moore ultimately has to answer to the marketplace and thus may find himself begging for work from the very people he now condemns if enough of his audience members wake up to the fact that he’s a charlatan and stop shelling out their increasingly scarce cash for his celluloid propaganda.
Mike is right on point; that is exactly how the socialists in America are. The Socialist left wants to preach to America, how evil, rotten, nasty and no good the evil capitalist system is; all the whole pocketing a profit from their lectures, Movies and the books that they just happen to make a profit at. It is more of that “Yea for me, but Nay for thee”, type of mentality and outright hypocritical nonsense that the Far Socialist left is known for.
The troubling thing about it, is this; these knuckle-headed socialists basically control the Democratic Party and it’s message. Hence my reasoning for not wanting anything to do with them or their Party any longer.
Give me Capitalism, Freedom and Liberty or Give Me Death!
Five months after Congress approved a massive package of spending and tax cuts aimed at reviving an ailing economy, the jobless rate is still climbing and the White House is scrambling to reassure an anxious public that President Obama’s prescription for economic recovery is on the right track.
Yesterday, Obama took time out of his first presidential trip to Moscow to defend the $787 billion stimulus package, arguing that the measure was the right medicine at the right time. “There’s nothing that we would have done differently,” he told ABC News
So, beings the Democratic Party’s proverbial teeth chattering session, where they realize, “Uh-Oh, we messed up! Now how do we fix it?”
Back in Washington, senior Democrats on Capitol Hill were nervously contemplating whether additional government stimulus spending may be needed to pull the nation out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Senior administration officials acknowledged that the effects of the stimulus package have been overshadowed by an unexpectedly sharp drop-off in employment since the measure passed in February. But they reported that only about $100 billion has so far been spent and that as increasingly large sums flow out of Washington, the program is on pace to save or create 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.
“It is clear from the data that there needs to be more fiscal stimulus in the second half of the year than there was in the first half of the year,” White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said. “Fortunately, the stimulus program designed by the president and passed by Congress provides exactly that.”
Leading economists agree that the most powerful effects of the stimulus package have yet to be felt. But even if the measure lives up to Obama’s expectations, it would barely offset the 433,000 jobs the nation lost last month alone, and the resulting employment would represent a drop in the bucket compared with the 6.5 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007.
“Just 130 days out on the adoption of a very, very major effort to get the economy moving, certainly I don’t think we can make a determination as to whether or not that’s been successful,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday. But, he said, “I think we need to be open to whether or not we need additional action.”
Oh Yes! We just poured a couple generation’s worth of money into a Economic system that is basically; on it’s face, is broken and does not work. This did not work, so, we’re going to basically pour money into that same broken system and see if we can make the economy recover.
If anything this ought be a lesson for the Democratic Party that Keynesian Pump Priming, just does not work. But you think that the Democrats would learn that lesson? No. Because they’re dumb!
Of course, the Republicans are a bit more smarter about this:
Republicans, meanwhile, pounced on news that the unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent in June and accused the Democrats of sinking the nation deeper into debt to finance an economic recovery package that has failed to save American jobs. Noting that the Obama administration predicted earlier this year that stimulus spending would keep the unemployment rate under 8 percent, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the No. 2 Republican in the House, said, “I think any objective measure would indicate there’s a failure when you have a commitment of nearly $800 billion in taxpayer funds and you have the type of job loss we’re experiencing.”
With many economists forecasting that the jobless rate will continue to climb — and is likely to stay above 10 percent through much of next year — Republicans vowed to make the 2010 midterm election a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy. “I think they’re going to have some significant problems,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who leads the GOP campaign operation in the Senate, “and I view those as opportunities for us.”
Hopefully, the Republicans will frame these opportunities properly. Of course, their track record here as of late, has not been too good.
Meanwhile, in the reality sector:
Despite the deepening pain of the recession, many Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill yesterday counseled patience. They said it would be extraordinarily difficult to win approval for more spending on the economy when Obama is pursuing a host of other expensive initiatives, including a $1 trillion expansion of the nation’s health-care system. And they argued that the current stimulus package should be given a chance to work.
The stimulus was designed to deliver a gradually stronger push to the economy through the end of next year. It contains about $499 billion in new spending and about $288 billion in tax cuts for working families, businesses, college students and first-time home buyers.
When the measure passed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that about a quarter of the money would be spent by year’s end, and that about 75 percent would flow by the end of 2010. So far, economists said, spending appears to be on track.
According to administration estimates, about $158 billion in new spending had been committed to specific projects by the end of June, but just a fraction of that money — about $56 billion — had been delivered to struggling state governments, unemployed workers and other recipients. An additional $43 billion had been left in the pockets of individuals and businesses through uncollected taxes, much of it the result of Obama’s signature Making Work Pay tax credit for working families.
Those figures track closely with estimates by Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, who calculates that the government made $242 billion in stimulus funds available for various purposes through the end of June and paid out about $110 billion. In a recent analysis, Zandi predicted that “the maximum contribution from the stimulus should occur in the second and third quarters of this year,” when it will add more than three percentage points to overall economic growth.
“It’s pretty much according to plan in terms of the payout and in terms of its economic impact. This is in the script,” Zandi said. The problem, he said, is that “the economy has been measurably worse than anyone expected,” with a surprisingly sharp “collapse in employment and surge in unemployment” that caught most economists off guard.
“That’s why the administration’s forecasts have been so wrong,” he said.
None of this surprises me in the least. I warned on this blog long ago that this would happen. But, of course, you have the Democrats spinning this, and very hard too:
The White House continues to predict that the stimulus package will save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year. Zandi predicts it will fall short of that, producing about 2.5 million jobs — still a significant impact.
Whatever the number, Democrats are hoping it will be enough to convince voters that Obama is leading them out of the economic wilderness.
“I think the president was very clear that things were going to take a long time to turn around,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in charge of electing Democrats to the House. Republicans “are making the argument to the American people that doing nothing would have been the best policy. And I don’t think people will buy that. . . .
“The measures we have taken have certainly prevented things from getting much worse.”
According to what figures? Because the charts I have seen, say otherwise:
What this chart shows is that unemployment was far higher with the stimulus plan, than it would have been, if Team Teleprompter would have just left well enough alone.
What this means to me personally is this; I will most likely be unemployed until like 2010 or longer. Thereby making myself impossible to he hired anywhere, because I haven’t worked in so long. Which is just wonderful.
Thank you President Bambi Teleprompter for ruining America, you feckless idiot!
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