Tag: david axelrod

Senator Smalley is VERY UPSET.

He isn’t very happy with the administration right now:

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

Absent from the article was any indication that Axelrod particularly cares, probably because he doesn’t. Franken’s relevance to the administration began on July 7, 2009 – and it ended on January 19, 2010. That was the window that Congress had to pass their health care rationing bill, and Congress failed to exploit that window. From the administration’s point of view, Axelrod should be raking Franken over the coals, not the other way around; but the Senate gets tiresome when the executive branch does not show proper deference to its members. Which – to everyone’s embarrassment – these days includes Senator Franken.

So I suppose that they have to let him yap.

Moe Lane

PS: One of the most exciting things about the thought of next year’s Senate makeup – from a Republican’s point of view – is the thought that Al Franken can only have a higher profile in the Senate.  Even if we don’t completely flip it.

Crossposted to RedState.

Politico compares Obama to Bush.

Or, the bloom is off the rose.

So, Axelrod’s trying his best to convince people that the fact that independent voters in two states won by Obama broke heavily for the Republican gubernatorial candidates is much less important than a three-point win in a district where conservatives made it clear that they’d rather lose than not be listened to by GOP party leadership.  His best is actually not all that great, given that he’s suggesting (of all things) that candidates next year embrace the President – just like Bill Owens did!  Yes, and just like Jon Corzine did, and just like Creigh Deeds did; so this was sufficiently eyebrow-raising that the Politico was nigh-forced to editorialize:

The cheerful public line from the White House carried an echo of Obama’s immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, another president whose political operation reported sunny skies no matter the weather.

It’s bad when they compare you to Bush.  Although it’s also unfair: the previous administration did things.  This one just whines about how hard it is to do them.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

A roundup of the NEA propaganda scandal.

here’s not much to say about the NEA propaganda scandal that hasn’t been said by others, but a link round-up will be hopefully useful for those getting up to speed.

  • We begin here with the Big Government articles themselves.  Summary: transcripts and audio reveal that the conference call of August 10th involving the federal agencies NEA, United We Serve, and the Office of Public Engagement; and various artist groups‘ involved the explicit recruitment of said artists’ groups to assist in pushing the administration’s legislative agenda.
  • This despite claims by the NEA that said call did not pursue any legislative agenda.
  • Note also that OPE Deputy Director (and Valerie Jarrett crony) Buffy Wicks has long-standing ties with ACORN.
  • Patterico points out the obvious: that both the NEA and the administration lied when they claimed that no legislative agenda was addressed.  Despite the fact that this call was ostensibly hosted by Michael Skolnik, Skolnik explicitly stated that he was working on the behest of the NEA and the White House – a claim that was not refuted either by Deputy Director Wicks or at-the-time NEA Director of Communications Yosi Sergant (both of whom were on the call).  For that matter, the primary interest of Nell Abernathy, director of outreach for United We Serve (also on the call) is to make clear that Skolnik is the cutout between the artists’ groups and the government.
  • I should point out at this point that Sergant is, of course, linked with Shepard Fairey, who had his own representative on the call.
  • Ace of Spades notes that Winner & Associates were on the conference call as well.  You may remember them; they were a Axelrod-affiliated PR group that got traced back as being behind some rather nasty anti-Palin fake grassroots astroturf during the election last year.  They were apparently on the call at the invitation of OPE Director Wicks.
  • You can refresh your memory of the Winner Incident here at The Jawa Report.  How interesting that they were there, and invited by an administration official, no less.
  • Ace of Spades, again, quotes Slublog on the Hatch Act.  As in, this is actually technically forbidden by federal statute (I personally note ‘technically’ because Hatch Act prosecutions are few and far between).
  • Ed Morrissey has what is probably the line of the day (“We do not fund the NEA for it to produce Leni Riefenstahl-type art”), and notes that the Washington Times would like help tracking down some of the call participants.
  • And finally, I would like to remind everybody reading this that groups involved in pushing the administration’s health care agenda had racked up roughly 2 million dollars in grants from the NEA prior to it.

So… the administration lied about their role in a conference call that was nakedly about using NEA client groups to pursue an explicitly pro-administration agenda – a call that, when revealed, resulted in an immediate reassignment of an NEA staffer and an attempt to scrub the record.  Of the groups involved, at least one was not an actual artist organization, and it was made clear throughout the call that the goal was to create partisan political materials, not nonpartisan art.  And, of course, the players involved were all of them affiliated with each other in various, sundry, and in some cases non-artistic ways.

But sure, other than all of that we have nothing to worry about.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The White House rejects interstate competition in health insurance.

This is actually from September 9th – you can tell, because they’re hyping the President’s speech as being a game-changer – but it’s instructive nonetheless. In this clip, Axelrod was asked, point-blank, why the administration isn’t trying to change the rules to let insurance companies compete across straight[*] lines, and his refusal to give a straight answer is almost as funny as is watching Wolf Blitzer pushing him to give one.

Mind you, the actual answer – “There isn’t anything in that scheme that benefits a Democratic client group, and interstate competition is part of the Republican plan that we keep lying about not existing, so we won’t support it” – is politically… fraught.  Nonetheless, it’s instructive to remember that this administration has no interest in a bipartisan solution to health care reform, and even less interest in getting the Democrats in Congress under control.  All the President wants is a bill to sign and the opportunity to declaim that he’s reformed health care.  Anything will do at this point.

(Via Below the Beltway, via The Other McCain)

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

[*As RS commenter NightTwister guessed: this is a Freudian slip, but I’m not going to fix it. On reflection, I like it better this way.- ML]

The – translated – Gibbs PhRMA/Axelrod payola video.

Video via The Conservatives: it’s of Gibbs ducking and weaving away from a question about why Axelrod’s former company’s getting that sweet, sweet ad money from the White House’s new friend PhRMA, so I thought that I’d annotate it. Particularly note the snide comment about free markets at the end.

Yes, there’s a small problem with the bottom-half text. Windows Movie Maker, remember? I do what I can with the tools that I have – and I know that the tools that I have aren’t the best.  Hence, the Wish List.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

How to (legally*) personally profit from your position as a Presidential Senior Advisor.

Just follow these easy steps!

  1. Create AKPD Message & Media, a public relations company that specializes in astroturfing.
  2. Attach yourself to the campaign of the candidate that eventually wins the 2008 Presidential election.
  3. Disengage yourself from AKPD Media, but under circumstances where the company ‘owes’ you 2 million dollars, which it will then pay back over time (we call this ‘income’).
  4. Become a Senior Advisor to the President.
  5. Have the President negotiate a tone-deaf deal between the White House and lobbyist group PhRMA to get the pharmaceutical industry to support health care rationing.
  6. ‘Discover’ one fine summer day that AKPD Media, the company that you created and which is still paying you money, has been given a fat advertising contract by PhRMA to astroturf health care rationing.
  7. Profit!

See The Conservatives, Michelle Malkin, Protein Wisdom, Bloomberg, & Hugh Hewitt for more. Continue reading How to (legally*) personally profit from your position as a Presidential Senior Advisor.

White House: Axelrod spam? All because of outside agitators.

I just had this forwarded by one of my RS colleagues who doesn’t have time to hit this right now. Turns out that the Axelrod spam did happen, and it’s all because of all those awful “outside groups of all political stripes“:

After insisting no one was receiving unsolicited e-mails from the White House, officials reversed their story Monday night and blamed outside political groups for the unwanted messages from the tech-savvy operation.

White House online director Macon Phillips said in a blog posting that independent groups—he didn’t name them—had signed-up their members to receive regular updates about Obama’s projects, priorities and speeches.

The White House had consistently denied that anyone who hadn’t sought the e-mails had received them.

But we can believe them when they now tell us that it’s not their fault. Because nothing, of course, is ever this administration’s fault. Continue reading White House: Axelrod spam? All because of outside agitators.

So, the White House *was* just signing people up without their permission.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Michelle Malkin readers.  More on this topic here.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) I understand that it’s probably legally wise for the White House to assign responsibility for Axelrod’s health care spamming to all those evil, evil advocacy organizations, but really:

“We are implementing measures to make subscribing to emails clearer, including preventing advocacy organizations from signing people up to our lists without their permission when they deliver petition signatures and other messages on individual’s behalf.”

If the petitions were only presented in hardcopy form, somebody had to enter those email addresses into the system. If the organizations in question had provided a digital list of email addresses, somebody had to add them to the White House’s distribution list. If the organizations in question had signed up those email addresses one at a time, somebody on the White House Staff needs to explain why he or she didn’t even set up a please-click-to-confirm-your-registration system.

Somebody with a name.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Read my lips: no new tax increases?’

AoSHQ linked to this piece mostly to highlight the Warren Buffet quote on cap and trade:

“it’s a huge tax and there’s no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. So it — and it’s a fairly regressive tax.”

– Real quickly, Mr. Buffet: how did you vote in the last election, again? –

…but I wanted to actually highlight the following exchange between George Stephanopoulos and Obama crony David Axelrod. In the interests of fair use, I am going to executive summary this one; feel free to compare it against the original. I think that I’ve captured the sense accurately, at least. Continue reading ‘Read my lips: no new tax increases?’

On Axelrod calling Carrie Prejean a dog.

Never blog angry.

Well, not quite true: never blog too angry.  A little anger can help.  Too much, though, and you end up wanting to pound on the wall; this pleases a certain demographic, and you may define ‘pleases’ any way that you like. So, now that I’ve calmed down – some – about Obama crony David Axelrod crassly equating Carrie Prejean with a dog:

When Axelrod was asked if he had weighed in on the Obama family’s dog choice, he answered, “I was only called in for the final three, and one was Miss California.”

…I’ll say this: after an event like the above I’d be embarrassed about me being on the same side of the same-sex marriage debate as Axelrod, except that there’s actually no evidence whatsoever that I am (I already know that I’m well to the left of his boss on this issue). As it is, I’d much prefer to have Carrie Prejean as my spokesperson than the people that have decided to publicly attack her; unlike them, she’s shown no indication that she personally hates her opponents.

I really should stop being surprised at this sort of thing, though. It’s not like it’s going to stop for the next 3.5 years.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.