Tag: white house

“Founding Founders.”

Ye gods and little fishes.

founding founders

The question is, will it stick around? That’s actually not immediately obvious. If White House staffers are simply being slapdash historical illiterates again, then sure, it’s going to get fixed to the “Founding Fathers” with all due speed. But on the other hand, this might actually be – God help us all – political correctness. “Founding Founders” is precisely the sort of tin-eared circumlocution that one would expect from a cadre that thinks that proper communication involves tying the English language to a chair, and then making it scream.

Beltway “whistleblowing” groups: not-curiously silent on Barack Obama’s lack of transparency.

I mean, it’s not that we don’t know why.

The solution to this quandary about transparency in the Obama White House is pretty easy to resolve…

Whether it’s responding to Congress, media questions, or FOIA requests, this administration is no better than its predecessor. The big difference: Obama is a Democrat. And because he is a Democrat, he’s gotten a pass from many of the civil liberty and good-government groups who spent years watching President Bush’s every move like a hawk.

No one knows this better than John Kiriakou, the CIA agent who reported to federal prison two weeks ago for blowing the whistle on the agency’s use of torture[*]. During an interview at an Arlington, Va., coffee shop, Kiriakou said the time has come for Washington watchdog groups—organizations like Public Citizen, Project on Government Oversight, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and others—to admit that President Obama hasn’t come close to making good on his promise to make government more transparent and accountable.

Continue reading Beltway “whistleblowing” groups: not-curiously silent on Barack Obama’s lack of transparency.

Barack Obama v. Disappointed Iowan Sixth Graders.

Mr. President? I’d like to introduce you to some of the American people that you are harming with your petulant closing of the White House to tours.

“The White House is our house! Please let us visit!”

Continue reading Barack Obama v. Disappointed Iowan Sixth Graders.

White House: The DC Circuit Court has made its NLRB decision…

…now let it enforce it:

President Obama’s spokesman denounced the invalidation of the so-called ‘recess’ appointments as a “novel and unprecedented ruling,” adding that the decision has “no impact on the ongoing operations of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

“The decision is novel and unprecedented,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said during the press briefing. “It contradicts 150 years of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations. so, we respectfully but strongly disagree with the ruling.” Carney said that over 280 intrasession recess appointments have been made since 1867.

And, thanks to the Obama administration, that particular little political pressure valve may be clamped shut forever! All because Barack Obama and his team of N-dimensional geniuses apparently don’t know how to deal with people who will tell them “No.” Continue reading White House: The DC Circuit Court has made its NLRB decision…

White House raises pointless petition threshold response to 100,000.

Which means, on a practical level, that it’s now four times as hard to get the White House to formally and officially shoot down your damfool idea.

The White House announced Wednesday that it was quadrupling the number of signatures required to receive an official response to a petition on its “We the People” website.

“Starting today, as we move into a second term, petitions must receive 100,000 signatures in 30 days in order to receive an official response from the Obama Administration,” White House director of digital strategy Macon Phillips wrote in a blog post. “This new threshold applies only to petitions created from this point forward and is not retroactively applied to ones that already exist.”

Sorry if I’m cynical about this, but then the only legitimate purpose that I can see for these things is to poke the Obama administration with a pointy stick on, say, legalizing marijuana. Or closing Gitmo. Or drone strikes.  Or anything else that the President does that broke a campaign promise, although admittedly a list of that is admittedly a bit more extensive than I first contemplated.  Anyway, if you think that Barack Obama is actually going to take any of these petitions seriously, well. Please don’t operate heavy machinery.

Moe Lane

White House to try the same thing again…

…in the hopes that this time, it’ll be different.  The ‘Benjamin Button’ reference made by Ronald Brownstein below is in reference to the GOP’s policy agenda, which is pretty explicitly to reverse all of the catastrophic features of  President Obama’s policy agenda: the conceit is that we’re going to have the same debates over again.  And Brownstein reports that this is just fine with the White House, for some reason:

…early indications are that the White House also sees these Benjamin Button debates as a chance to take the offense for 2012—and to launch a renewed and reframed effort to contrast Obama’s vision of government’s role with that of the ascendant congressional Republicans. As David Axelrod, Obama’s chief White House political strategist, argued in a recent interview, 2010 unfolded largely as a referendum on Obama’s performance, but in 2012 “voters will be faced with a choice. And I view that as an opportunity.”

You know, there’s a meme called ‘framing’ which is very popular among my opposite numbers on the Left.  It’s a viciously seductive concept that derives its power from telling liberals and progressives, essentially, that the ongoing rejection of their pet policy positions by the public is due primarily because they simply haven’t found the right rhetorical angle with which to present their case.  I love framing.  I want to meet the person who managed to infect enough Democrats with this meme to reach the critical threshold of delusion, and send him/her a fruit basket.  Framing has done more for the GOP than anything else that I can think of, and stories like the above is why. Continue reading White House to try the same thing again…

Bill Clinton denies role in WH/Sestak bribe.

Background: as you may recall, starting last year (and as recently as May 2010) Joe Sestak began to allege that the White House offered him an administration job in exchange for dropping out of Pennsylvania’s Senate Democratic primary.  These allegations were both surprising and unsurprising; unsurprising because such offers are made all the time (something similar was reported in Colorado’s Democratic Senate primary), but surprising in that it’s usually not admitted to so openly, given that such offers are also against the law.  Sestak never recanted and the administration claimed that he had garbled a perfectly-innocent and certainly not felonious invitation by President Clinton to have Sestak serve on a commission.  As Sestak had gone on to win the primary anyway, it seemed obvious that all parties involved on the Democratic side of things wanted to let the matter drop quietly.  As for Clinton… he never said anything at all on the subject, really.

Until now (see also here).  Bill Clinton’s now denying that he tried to get Sestak out of the race. Continue reading Bill Clinton denies role in WH/Sestak bribe.

WH nervously denies Rahmbo cut-and-run.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Hot Air readers. And Jules Crittenden readers.

Given that the Telegraph report came out yesterday afternoon, it’s amazing that they’ve gone to the trouble of denying it before the start of business hours today. And to Fox, no less.

The White House Monday dismissed reports that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel plans to leave his post after becoming frustrated with the Obama administration as “ludicrous.”

[snip]

In response to the report, a senior White House official told Fox News the “ludicrous” story was “not worth looking into.”

Continue reading WH nervously denies Rahmbo cut-and-run.

The White House *has* been stumbling, Politico.

Well, this is rich.  In the process of complaining about how the White House seems to be a combination of Mayor Daley and Barney Fife – no, really, that’s explicitly the two figures that they used – Politico reports:

One senior House Democrat said it is baffling “how one group of people can be so good at campaigning and so bad at politics” — a phrasing nearly identical to that of a second veteran House Democrat who expressed the same sentiment.

(H/T: Instapundit) No, what’s baffling is that there are senior members of the Democratic party who are actually still possessed of the belief that the Obama administration was good at campaigning. I mean, I understand that it’s necessary to keep telling the rank-and-file that they won in 2008 because their leader was off playing… what’s the phrase? “12-dimensional chess?”… but surely the higher-ups need to be firmly in contact with Reality Non-Unicorn, yes? Continue reading The White House *has* been stumbling, Politico.