Way to bury the lead there, Wall Street Journal. Forget various Democrats whining about where that sweet, sweet campaign contribution money is going: this is a bit more pressing.
[Dick] Harpootlian said he visited Joe Biden, the other most prominent potential 2016 contestant, in the White House about a month ago and told the vice president he would support him if he decides to run.
Continue reading Nasty South Carolinian bigot Dick Harpootlian visited White House.
Sometimes I wonder whether the Obama administration’s absolute and total contempt for its most rabid supporters is based on the same thing as my absolute and total contempt for its most rabid supporters. Because let’s face it: if you spent eight years screaming about Imperial Presidencies and Unitary Executives and how George Bush was a unilateralist cowboy and similar agitprop, this passage should be the equivalent of a poisoned-tipped dagger in the kidney.
Senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer outlined the lessons learned in a three-page memo that Obama discussed with his Cabinet in recent weeks, according to several administration officials who have read the document.
Among its conclusions is that Obama, a former state legislator and U.S. senator, too often governed more like a prime minister than a president. In a parliamentary system, a prime minister is elected by lawmakers and thus beholden to them in ways a president is not.
As a result, Washington veterans have been brought into the West Wing to emphasize an executive style of governing that aims to sidestep Congress more often.
Continue reading Internal White House Memo: Time for an Imperial Presidency! …*Suckers*.
There is no ‘mystery’ why WH Chief of Staff Denis McDonough is operating a White House at its current nadir of influence and power, and this passage explains why:
McDonough’s no-profile public approach shouldn’t mask the two most important things about the role he has played this year. First, he is a chief of staff for a self-actualized president. Obama hired seasoned Washington figures — Rahm Emanuel, Jack Lew, and Bill Daley — in his first term. McDonough is the first chief of staff who is younger than the president, the first whose career depends on Obama. He is, beyond that, very close to the president. He is “as close as a staffer can be,” said former National Security spokesman Tommy Vietor. The upside of that relationship is that McDonough speaks for Obama and has access to him in a way that Daley, in particular, never did.
It’s obvious, in fact: Denis McDonough is an extension of Barack Obama’s will, and Barack Obama is incompetent. Garbage in, garbage out.
Via… I am not sure.
Moe Lane
What it is doing is apparently a little more convoluted:
As the law stands now, in order to be covered by March 31, people would actually need to have insurance by March 1. And since it takes up to two weeks to process insurance applications, consumers would have to apply by Feb. 15, the Associated Press reported recently. (People must apply by Dec. 15 if they want coverage starting Jan. 1.)
The Administration, however, has recognized that there’s a “disconnect” between the actual and effective deadlines, as the deadline to get health insurance in time to comply with the ACA is currently six weeks earlier than the final deadline to buy it. Now, the Administration is working to make sure the two deadlines line up with each other, says the HHS official. An announcement about when it will enforce the penalty for being uninsured, and whether that penalty will be delayed beyond the de facto March 31 deadline, will come shortly. The insurance requirement still kicks in Jan. 1, and the enrollment period will close March 31 as planned, the official adds.
Continue reading The White House is not delaying the individual mandate, per se.
They’re starting to crack under the strain, guys.
A top Senate Democrat said that a leading House Republican told President Obama that they could not ‘even stand to look at you’ during negotiations over the government shutdown.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said in a Facebook post that the alleged confrontation happened during a meeting between Republicans and the president.
Spokesmen for both Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor say neither official said or remembers anyone else saying they couldn’t stand to look at President Obama at a White House summit during the government shutdown, as Democratic senator Dick Durbin of Illinois alleged in a Facebook post.
“The speaker certainly didn’t say that, and does not recall anyone else doing so,” says Michael Steel, Boehner’s spokesman. Cantor spokesman Rory Cooper also says his boss did not say and does not remember anyone saying that.
Annnnd here’s the confirmation of the denial from… the White House: Continue reading Rift between Dick Durbin and… White House? [UPDATE: Durbin calls Barack Obama a liar.]
A couple of things about this report:
The Obama administration Sunday said it’s called on “the best and brightest” tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems.
The unusual Sunday 600-word blog post from HHS was the first update in more than a week on the many failings of an expensive website that HHS itself described as “frustrating for many Americans.” But it didn’t specify who the administration had called in, or when the American people would see clear-cut results on Healthcare.gov.
Continue reading White House bringing in “*Top* Men” to ‘fix’ #Obamacare exchanges.
I have to go with Erika Johnson, here: this is a bit of a cave from the Obama administration. Or at least a tacit admission that its Let’s be Blue Meanies to the American People! strategy just didn’t work.
White House tours will resume on “a limited basis” starting Nov. 5, the White House announced Friday, while it will reopen its gardens and grounds to visitors on Oct. 26 and 27.
Secret Service spokesman Robert Novy said the tours would continue through Jan. 15 and occur three days a week, on average, though the exact number of days would vary. Before the White House halted the tours in March, they had taken place five days a week.
Also: do you think this particularly sounds like a House ready to defer to the President? Because I don’t think that that this particularly sounds like a House leadership ready to defer to the President. Continue reading White House gives up, will reopen White House to tours.
I couldn’t have come up with a better metaphor for this administration if I tried.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In the famous White House kitchen garden, tomatoes are rotting on the vine. Herbs have gone to seed. And the sweet potatoes – a favorite of President Barack Obama – have become worm food.
It’s another impact of the government shutdown, one that only the fox and the many squirrels that live on the White House grounds could love. Continue reading White House kitchen garden, like all unfunded agitprop exercises, now going to seed.
They are going to go see their war monuments whether you and the rest of the Democratic party likes it, or not.
Stop embarrassing yourself: more importantly, stop embarrassing me. I feel at least mildly responsible for not being able to keep you out of office in 2008 and 2012.
:rolling eyes: Every time I think that we’ve exhausted the mine of Why the inability of a Democratic President to do anything is not a reflection upon him, somebody comes up with a new wrinkle.
In the last six weeks – the IRS story broke first on May 10 — those handful of stories have driven every other narrative out of the news headlines. That’s in spite of the Obama Administration’s attempts to shift the focus back to the ongoing immigration debate, jobs and the economy and the U.S.’ role in the world.
While you can debate the relative bad-ness of each of the stories for the White House, what’s not debatable is that everyone in the administration from President Obama on down has been driven by the news rather than driving it over these last weeks. That inability of even the President of the United States to push his preferred message on a given day/week/month points to a fundamental new reality of politics: The bully pulpit just ain’t what it used to be.
Continue reading If it’s Monday, it must be time for another “Being President is HARD!” article.
