Showing posts with label David Axelrod. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Axelrod. Show all posts

Saturday, August 22, 2015

Democratic Blues Barack Obama will leave his party in its worst shape since the Great Depression—even if Hillary wins.

Democratic Blues - Jeff Greenfield - POLITICO Magazine
As historians begin to assess Barack Obama’s record as president, there’s at least one legacy he’ll leave that will indeed be historic—but not in the way he would have hoped. Even as Democrats look favorably ahead to the presidential landscape of 2016, the strength in the Electoral College belies huge losses across much of the country. In fact, no president in modern times has presided over so disastrous a stretch for his party, at almost every level of politics.

Legacies are often tough to measure. If you want to see just how tricky they can be, consider the campaign to get Andrew Jackson off the $20 bill 178 years after he left the White House. Working class hero? How about slave owner and champion of Native American genocide? Or watch how JFK went from beloved martyr to the man whose imperial overreach entrapped us in Vietnam, and then back to the president whose prudence kept the Cuban Missile Crisis from turning into World War III.

Yet when you move from policy to politics, the task is a lot simpler—just measure the clout of the president’s party when he took office and when he left it. By that measure, Obama’s six years have been terrible.

Under Obama, the party started strong. “When Obama was elected in 2008, Democrats were at a high water mark,” says David Axelrod, who served as one of Obama’s top strategists. “Driven by antipathy to George W. Bush and then the Obama wave, Democrats had enjoyed two banner elections in ’06 and ’08. We won dozens of improbable congressional elections in states and districts that normally would tack Republican, and that effect trickled down to other offices. You add to that the fact that we would take office in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression, and it was apparent, from Day One, that we had nowhere to go but down.”

The first signs of the slowly unfolding debacle that has meant the decimation of the Democratic Party nationally began early—with the special election of Scott Brown to Ted Kennedy’s empty Senate seat in Massachusetts. That early loss, even though the seat was won back eventually by Elizabeth Warren, presaged the 2010 midterms, which saw the loss of 63 House and six Senate seats. It was disaster that came as no surprise to the White House, but also proved a signal of what was to come.

The party’s record over the past six years has made clear that when Barack Obama leaves office in January 2017 the Democratic Party will have ceded vast sections of the country to Republicans, and will be left with a weak bench of high-level elected officials. It is, in fact, so bleak a record that even if the Democrats hold the White House and retake the Senate in 2016, the party’s wounds will remain deep and enduring, threatening the enactment of anything like a “progressive” agenda across much of the nation and eliminating nearly a decade’s worth of rising stars who might help strengthen the party in elections ahead.
When Obama came into the White House, it seemed like the Democrats had turned a corner generationally; at just 47, he was one of the youngest men to be elected as president. But the party has struggled to build a new generation of leaders around him. 

Eight years later, when he leaves office in 2017 at 55, he’ll actually be one of the party’s only leaders not eligible for Social Security. Even as the party has recently captured more young voters at the ballot box in presidential elections, its leaders are increasingly of an entirely different generation; most of the party’s leaders will fade from the national scene in the years ahead. Its two leading presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are 67 and 73. The sitting vice president, Joe Biden, is 72. The Democratic House leader, Nancy Pelosi, is 75; House Whip Steny Hoyer is 76 and caucus Chair James Clyburn is 75, as is Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, who will retire next year. It’s a party that will be turning to a new generation of leaders in the coming years—and yet, there are precious few looking around the nation’s state houses, U.S. House or Senate seats.
***
Barack Obama took office in 2009 with 60 Democrats in the Senate—counting two independents who caucused with the party—and 257 House members. Today, there are 46 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, the worst showing since the first year after the Reagan landslide. Across the Capitol, there are 188 Democrats in the House, giving Republicans their best showing since Herbert Hoover took the White House in 1929.

This is, however, the tip of the iceberg. When you look at the states, the collapse of the party’s fortunes are worse. Republicans now hold 31 governorships, nine more than they held when Obama was inaugurated. During the last six years the GOP has won governorships in purple and even deep blue states: Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio. In the last midterms, only one endangered Republican governor—Tom Corbett in Pennsylvania—was replaced by a Democrat. (Sean Parnell in Alaska lost to an independent.) Every other endangered Republican returned to office.





Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Obama Boasts: 'I Am the Closest Thing to a Jew that Has Ever Sat' in the Oval Office

President Barack Obama, wearing a traditional Jewish yarmulke, speaks at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, Friday May 22, 2015, as part of Jewish American Heritage Month. The president addressed one of the largest Jewish congregations in Washington to highlight efforts to combat anti-Semitism, a problem he says has created an intimidating environment worldwide for Jewish families. The appearance coincides with Solidarity Shabbat, devoted to showing unity by political leaders in Europe and North America against anti-Semitism. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
President Obama once confided to a top adviser that he believes he is “the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.”
In an interview by an Israeli TV station, former Obama adviser David Axelrod recalled the president venting in a moment of contemplation about criticisms that he doesn’t support Israel strongly enough, JPupdates.com reported.
“You know, I think I am the closest thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office,” the president told Mr. Axelrod. “For people to say that I am anti-Israel, or, even worse, anti-Semitic, it hurts.”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest endorsed the sentiment Tuesday, saying Mr. Obama gave a heartfelt speech at a Jewish synagogue in Washington last month that expressed “the kinds of common bonds and common values that are embodied in his administration that are [also] advocated by the Jewish community.”
“The president does feel that kind of kinship,” Mr. Earnest said.
The TV report came out in advance of an exclusive interview that Mr. Obama conducted with Channel 2’s Ilana Dayan, which will be broadcast later Tuesday.
Mr. Axelrod also was critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has had a frosty relationship with Mr. Obama.
“The world of politics everywhere is divided into two categories: the first and more common is the people who run for public office because they want to be somebody,” Mr. Axelrod said. “A smaller group is made of respectable people who run for public office because they want to do something – something positive. Shape the future in a positive way. I think Benjamin Netanyahucompletely falls in the first category. He is a great politician. He knows what he needs to do to get through the next election. But it seems to me that Israel has to think about what they need to do to get through the next generation.”
Martin Indyk, U.S. special envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations from 2013 to 2014, told Ms. Dayan that “Israelis are ungrateful to this president.”
“They never appreciated his rule whereby nothing will harm the security of Israel,” Mr. Indyk said. “Obama did not manage to get that statement out so that the Israelis can really feel it. You are an emotional nation, not a rational nation. You work from your gut and not your mind. “
He said of Mr. Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this spring, which the White House opposed: “The prime minister really stuck his finger in President Obama’s eye, and this is a disturbing development.”

Saturday, May 30, 2015

‘The News’ now planted progressive propaganda

In October of 2008 Obama and the Dems threw the Fundamental Transformation of America up in garish, jaw-dropping neon lights and the world thereafter was never to be the same.

The communications world now digital gave an about-to-be-jettisoned America its first digital dictator.

Back then David Axelrod astroturfing portrayed Obama’s promised Brave New World as an empty screen, one on which Obama could be projected in whatever image folk wanted him to be, history’s first free phone and easy food stamp president.

Down at core, the new messiah of Hope & Change was nothing but another politician with a deeper trick bag than those who came before him, offering nothing more substantial than a cheap carny’s card trick, a diversion and an outright lie, because Marxist progressives had already corralled the unknowing masses into a malleable ongoing transition—a transition from which there would be no way back.

The presentation of Obama from Denver’s faux Greek Temple was followed by a mass media bombardment of Obama pictures.  For the masses,  his omnipresence courtesy of the World Wide Web was as inevitable as it was inescapable.

Somewhere before this process got up to full speed,  the mainstream media, the one we thought we all knew, dropped all pretense of balance and accuracy and departed Stage Left.  Since investigative journalism had already become a dying art, few really missed it.
Those of us in the ‘alternate media’ naively celebrated replacing the not so dearly departed as the mainstream media alternative.  Little did we realize that Internet giants like Google and Facebook, in league with Big Government,  were already working to suppress conservative alternate media by redirecting all Internet traffic to progressive-supporting news sites.


Saturday, February 8, 2014

David Axelrod wants Democratic donors to stop donating to Hillary Clinton's team

Photo - David Axelrod appears on CBS' "Face the Nation" in Washington in October 2012. (AP Photo/CBS News, Chris Usher)David Axelrod, President Obama's top strategist when he defeated Hillary Clinton in 2008, wants Democratic donors to focus on the 2014 elections, rather than Clinton's likely campaign.
"With the Senate seriously at risk, and the Koch Brothers spending prodigiously, shouldn't Dem funders be focused on '14 and not '16 races?" Axelrod tweeted Thursday afternoon, in what appears to be a very thinly veiled allusion to the Clinton machine that is already coming together.
The tweet comes just days after a Wall Street Journal report on Democratic concerns that the early support for Clinton could hurt the Democratic Party's midterm efforts.
"The formidable campaign apparatus that has sprung up to support a possible 2016 presidential bid by Hillary Clinton is rattling some Democrats, sparking concerns that it could suppress competition for the party nomination and siphon money from candidates running in the midterm elections this fall," the Journal said.

Monday, October 21, 2013

'ASININE’: DAVID AXELROD’S STRANGE ‘SPIN’ FOR OBAMACARE SAVAGED ON TWITTER

David Axelrod may not officially work for President Obama anymore, but you wouldn’t know it by the former White House adviser’s Twitter statement Sunday defending Obamacare by spinning its failed online rollout:
David Axelrods Strange Spin for Obamacare Savaged on Twitter
Image source: Twitter via Twitchy
Twitter users didn’t take long to excoriate Axelrod’s eye-opening apologetic:
David Axelrods Strange Spin for Obamacare Savaged on Twitter
Image source: Twitter via Twitchy
David Axelrods Strange Spin for Obamacare Savaged on Twitter
Via: The Blaze
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Friday, September 13, 2013

No Drama Obama’s Dramatic 2012 Reelection Campaign

Barack Obama with David Axelrod and Robert GibbsThe press liked to call their style No Drama Obama. 
It was a nice turn of phrase that matched the mood of the candidate in 2008. 
But that all changed with the reelection. The personal tensions started earlier and rapidly worsened. They fought in private and in the open. There was plenty of simmering, and often a high boil. The team of rivals rarely achieved a spirit of cooperation and seemed more inclined to bitter, dogged rivalries. 
There was a new actor in the campaign drama: Jim Messina. Obama convinced Messina to leave his political father, Sen. Max Baucus, by calling him the day after Hillary Clinton dropped out of the Democratic primary contest. The sales pitch was neither about hope nor change. “You’re really going to get to run a business,” Obama told Messina. 
Seven days later, Messina was in Chicago with control of the campaign staff and its budget. On his first day at work, David Plouffe handed him a list of half a dozen people.
“Fire them,” Plouffe said.
So he did. Messina would introduce himself to bemused staffers and ask them to visit his office for a second or two. That was the last conversation they would have with him at campaign headquarters. Other staffers might be unhappy at taking the ax to new coworkers; Messina was not one of them. He was in Chicago to bring some order to an operation that had outlived the structure of the primaries. If that meant he was unpopular, so be it.

Just five months after President Obama signed his historic health-​care reform into law, he shared his armored limo with Messina in Seattle, where they had traveled for an event to help reelect Sen. Patty Murray.

Friday, December 21, 2012

The ‘Reagan 13’ give Americans Something to Believe In


In the astroturfed Christmas Card Version of Obama’s 20-day Hawaiian holiday, (Michelle and daughters already there, but starting for Barry this weekend) the mental vision strived for is the regime and its staffers running happily, like the Moon-doggies of old, into the surf.

With Axelrod doing the astroturfing,  who needs Hollywood, and if Gidget can go Hawaiian, why not a lugubrious Valerie or Michelle?

The astroturf version of the Obamas’ $4 million holiday in Hawaii is set to demoralize and depress the proletariat.  It vividly underlines how the rich and powerful get to spend long, care free days kissed by the sun, while the left behind average citizenry of the winter-bound Northeast get to spend theirs slogging through the slush.

The Obamas and their traveling road show can, and do, holiday whenever they want. The real reason for ‘Obama’s Vacation From Four Years of Vacation’ is a strategy session to savor driving the last nails into the coffin lid of “the home of the brave”.

If Obama was power drunk before his reelection, imagine his euphoric mental state as he heads out for Hawaii today.


Confident with the four years the November 6 election grants him, Obama is planning an airtight new world for what he sees as his hapless, can’t-do-anything-to-stop-him constituents.

In the coming new world shaped by the Marxism-obsessed Obama, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod et al, there will be no room for competition.  It goes without saying that there’s never any room for competition in anti-Free Market, Marxist set ups.Confident with the four years the November 6 election grants him, Obama is planning an airtight new world for what he sees as his hapless, can’t-do-anything-to-stop-him constituents.

In the coming new world shaped by the Marxism-obsessed Obama, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod et al, there will be no room for competition.  It goes without saying that there’s never any room for competition in anti-Free Market, Marxist set ups.

Via: Canada Free Press

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Sunday, November 4, 2012

Axelrod: 'They're in deep trouble'


David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama's reelection campaign, dismissed on Sunday the notion that Mitt Romney is making Pennsylvania competitive as the GOP presidential nominee heads there later in the day. 
"They understand that they're in deep trouble," Axelrod said on "Fox News Sunday." "They've tried to expand the map because they know in states like Ohio… they're behind and they're not catching up at this point."
Axelrod argued that Romney's trips to Florida and Virginia are signs that they haven't locked up states where the Republican should be performing well.
"They understand that the traditional, or the battleground, states that we've been focusing are not working out for them," Axelrod said. "Now they're looking for somewhere, desperately looking for somewhere." 

Thursday, October 25, 2012

THE BIG FAIL: Obama Focused On ObamaCare Instead Of Fixing The Ailing American Economy



Doubling Down

Obama Focused On ObamaCare Instead Of Fixing The Ailing American Economy

In Des Moines Register Interview, Obama Has No Regrets That He Focused On ObamaCare Instead Of The Economy. DES MOINES REGISTER“Yes, that begs a question from us, Mr. President. Some say you had a super majority in your first two years and had this incredible opportunity, but because of what you were talking about, as you were running, you had to go to get ObamaCare done. Do you have any regrets taking on some of the economic issues, some of the issues that we’re talking about for your second term, that when you had the chance, so to speak, during your first — do you have any regrets that you didn’t do that at that time?” OBAMA: “Absolutely not.” (President Barack Obama, Interview With The Des Moines Register, 10/23/12)

OBAMA IGNORED CALLS FROM TOP ADVISERS TO FOCUS ON THE ECONOMY INSTEAD OF OBAMACARE

In January 2009, “The Vice President Begged Obama To Make His Early Presidency About Jobs” Rather Than Health Care. “As a pure political proposition, Axelrod advised Obama to dedicate himself to the economy and maybe education, that perennial political winner. Now Axelrod suddenly had reinforcements elsewhere in the new administration. At a meeting in January 2009, the vice president begged Obama to make his early presidency about jobs. The people who’d given him his mandate would understand that times had changed, Joe Biden said. ‘They’ll give you a pass on this one.’” (Noam Scheiber, The Escape Artists, 2012, p. 140)
  • During A January 2009 White House Meeting, Biden “Railed That The Government Was In No Fiscal Shape To Pursue A Health Care Overhaul” That Year. “At one January meeting to discuss the budget, Mr. Biden railed that the government was in no fiscal shape to pursue a health care overhaul this year – to the dismay of many present and others who heard about it.” (Mark Leibovich, “Speaking Freely, Biden Finds Influential Role,” The New York Times, 3/28/09)
Throughout 2009, Then-Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod Advised Obama To Focus On The Economy While Then-Chief Of Staff Rahm Emanuel “Begged” Obama Not To Pursue Health Care Reform. “At various points, Vice President Joe Biden, senior advisor David Axelrod and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel advised the president to focus entirely on the economy and leave comprehensive health care for another day. ‘I begged him not to do this,’ Emanuel told me when I was researching my book about Obama’s first year in office.” (Jonathan Alter, Op-Ed, “Barney Frank Makes A Misdiagnosis On ObamaCare,” Bloomberg, 4/19/12)
  • Obama Insisted That ObamaCare Be A Year One Priority, “Even Waiting A Year Or Two Was Out Of The Question.” “Still, the man with the most important vote was unmoved. Obama told his aides that if he couldn’t reform health care, another generation would pass before a president tried again. Even waiting a year or two was out of the question. ‘The president’s view was, yes we had to deal with the economic emergency at hand,’ said a White House aide. ‘But if we didn’t move on health care in the first few years, we’d probably never be able to get it done.’” (Noam Scheiber, The Escape Artists, 2012, p. 141)
“[E]ven After Winning The Presidency, Obama Was Loath To Accept That The Economy Was Singularly Important” And Disregarded Calls From Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner For It To Be The Immediate Focus. “But even after winning the presidency, Obama was loath to accept that the economy was singularly important. During a conference call with several senior adies early in the transition, Geithner remarked to his new boss that ‘your signature accomplishment is going to be preventing a Great Depression.’ … Even so, Obama’s response was slightly jarring. ‘That’s not enough for me,’ said the president-elect.” (Noam Scheiber, The Escape Artists, 2012, p. 15-16)

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Opinion: All Mitt Needed To Do Was Sound Reasonable, He Succeeded


A Perfectly Plausible President


Mitt Romney needed to pass the usual tests for Republican presidential candidates in his debate Monday night with President Obama.

There was the Ford test (alternatively known as the Palin/Cain/Perry test): Would Mr. Romney say something so obviously misinformed, so manifestly silly, so revealingly ignorant as to disqualify him from serious consideration as a prospective commander-in-chief? He said nothing of the sort.
There was the Goldwater test (unfairly named, but reputations are stubborn things): Did Mr. Romney make pronouncements so belligerent as to make ordinary people fear for their children's safety—or at least provide David Axelrod a chance to make it seem as if he did? He did not, though that won't stop Mr. Axelrod from trying.
And there was the Bush test (not unfairly named but mistakenly understood to mean ideology when it ought to be about consistency): Would Mr. Romney find a deft way to define his foreign policy as something other than a retread of the 43rd president—but also as something defensible, distinctive, and (not least) identifiably Republican?
On this score, Mr. Romney succeeded, too, if only in a manner coyly calculated to raise the hackles of every conservative who has harbored doubts all along about the Massachusetts governor.
Mitt Romney
"We can't kill our way out of this mess," he declared early in the debate, a point that, had it been made by Mr. Obama, would have been treated as evidence of Democratic pusillanimity. He offered a vision for Mideast social and economic progress so wholly unobjectionable it would have made any Peace Corps volunteer proud. On Syria, Egypt, Afghanistan, Iran, drone strikes and China he offered policy prescriptions that—as Mr. Obama didn't fail to notice—were all-but identical in substance to the administration's.
He even got in a personal dig on President Bush toward the end, in connection to the auto bailout.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Morning Jay: Politics and the Gallup Poll


Since about the beginning of President Obama’s tenure, the Gallup poll has generally been one of the least positive polls for the Democratic party. This has prompted outrage and pressure from the left--even from presidential advisor David Axelrod.
Axelrod David
Over the summer Mark Blumenthal of Huffington Post wrote a critique of Gallup’s daily presidential job approval poll. The point of which was that Gallup was over-sampling whites and thus understating President Obama’s position in the adult population. I responded by arguing that Blumenthal’s case was underdeveloped and less-than-met-the-eye, and that was basically where things stood.
Until, that is, this week. President Obama enjoyed a bounce in his Gallup job approval number after the Democratic National Convention, as was to be expected, but there was a twist: it did not disappear. And while Gallup on average had found Obama’s job approval around 47 percent with adults through most of 2012, for the last five weeks it has been regularly above 50 percent. Yesterday, it stood at 53 percent, a number we have not really seen since 2009.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

No White House Press Briefing in Last 15 Days


The White House has not held a press briefing in the last 15 days, according to records on the White House's website. The last one was held on September 24, 2012, by White House press secretary Jay Carney.
However, in that 15 day time period, and including today, there have been 11 press gaggles. Nine have been conducted by Carney, while 2 have been held by principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest. Campaign surrogates David Axelrod and traveling press secretary Jen Psaki have participated in the gaggles.
But there's a big difference between a gaggle and a press briefing. Gaggles are limited only to those members of the press who are traveling with the president of the United States and are not video taped. Press briefings, on the other hand, are open to credentialed media (who obtain White House approval) and are on camera. 
Gaggles tend to by shorter in length than a normal press briefing, usually being held for approximately 10-15 minutes at a time. And are these days very often held aboard Air Force One to accommodate the frequent campaign stops across the country by President Obama.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Ouch: Ann Romney Compares Obama To A Petulant Child For His Post-Debate Temper Tantrum…


Mitt Romney's wife, Ann, equated President Obama's campaign to a petulant child during an interview Tuesday after being asked about charges from the president's campaign that her husband had "lied" during last week's debate.
“I mean, lied about what? This is something he’s been saying all along. This is what he believes.  This is his policy, these are his statements," Ann Romney said in an interview set to air Wednesday on Fox News. "I mean, lie — it’s sort of like someone that’s, you know, in the sandbox that like lost the game and they’re just going to kick sand in someone’s face and say, ‘you liar.’ I mean, it’s like they lost, and so now they just are going to say, OK, the game, we didn’t like the game. So to me, it’s poor sportsmanship.”

In an interview Sunday with CBS News, Obama adviser David Axelrod said Romney's debate positions were "uprooted" from what he had said on the campaign trail.
"I think [the president] was a little taken aback at the brazenness with which Gov. Romney walked away from so many of the positions on which he's run, walked away from his record,” Axelrod said.

Ann Romney said she "knew right away" that her husband was winning the first presidential debate.

"I knew after the first question," she said. "I turned to my son after 50 minutes, and I gave him a nudge, and I said it’s 100 to zero right now. "

She added that she hoped his performance would attract the support of more female voters, a crucial demographic headed into Election Day and one that the president has thus far dominated.

"I had been waiting for a very, very long time for people to see my husband how I see him. And I think that people got a chance to do that at the debate," Ann Romney said.

Axelrod: Romney Trying to Buy Election


A top Obama campaign official accused the Romney campaign of trying to buy the election.
“Listen, I’ll be blunt,” wrote David Axelrod in an email to their supporters. “They are trying to buy this election, and we’re the only ones who are standing in their way. Don’t wait any longer to take ownership of this campaign.”
Axelrod blasting the Romney campaign for taking out television advertisements.
“That’s been the other side’s strategy from the beginning: slamming the airwaves with ads trashing the President and his record,” he wrote.

Friday, October 5, 2012

So Helpful! Media offers questions, advice to top Obama campaign strategist




Surrounded by whooping Republicans and suddenly unfavorable data, chief Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod called in the media cavalry today.

And several reporters on the 11:15 a.m. phone conference promptly offered questions that bordered on advice.
“Axe, I’m not sure you can hear me, David,” said NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, when she was invited to ask a question Oct. 4.

“I’m wondering whether the president, whether you have rethought the strategy of not bringing up either women’s issues, or the 47 percent or some of the other issues that have worked so well for you in your campaign advertising and in your stump speech?”

“I understand that there are a lot — particularly our supporters … who would have liked him to have, you know, entered into the record Bain, the tax returns and certainly the 47 percent” issues, Axelrod replied.

Early in the conference, “Axe” urged the reporters to investigate Romney’s statements during his win at the Denver debate against President Barack Obama.

“We are going to hold Gov. Romney accountable for the things he said last night … as I hope you will make him justify those claims, because we need a honest and a genuine and realistic plan to move forward as a country … not just a bunch of lines designed to get you through a debate.”

Via: Daily Caller


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Monday, September 17, 2012

Axelrod: Billionaire GOP Donor Sheldon Adelson Is Just Greedy


Now the Obama Administration is using what-used-to-be-thinly-veiled-and-is-now-becoming-more-overt-day-after-day anti-Semitism to attack Sheldon Adelson as greedy in their latest campaign email from David Axelrod.

It reads:
Sheldon Adelson, the conservative billionaire Las Vegas casino owner, has pledged to give up to $100 million -- whatever it takes -- to defeat Barack Obama.
Is there one of us with Adelson’s money who wouldn’t?
We know it's not out of love for Mitt Romney, so why part with so much money? As President Clinton reminded us last week, sometimes the answer is as simple as arithmetic.
This is despicable. Adelson has always been concerned about Israel, and Romney is clearly light-years more concerned about Israel than Obama. And just how many millions has Adleson given to charity compared to that Obama hack?
So let's do the math: According to a new report from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Adelson could see up to $2 billion in savings under Mitt Romney's tax plan versus the President's plan. That's how much Romney's policies would favor millionaires and billionaires.
If Mitt Romney wins -- $2 billion more for Adelson. If Barack Obama wins, millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share.
It's a highly cynical but straightforward calculation.
No, the one who has always been cynical is you, Axelrod.
Today, you can help write a different equation.
Here's how it would work for Adelson in a Romney-Ryan administration:
Romney would keep in place the Bush tax cuts, and cut Adelson's income taxes by an additional 20 percent. Adelson savings: $1.5 million per year on income he earns as CEO.
    
Romney's plan eliminates taxes on foreign profits like the ones Adelson makes on his Asian casinos. Adelson savings: $1.2 billion.
Romney's plan maintains the current low tax rate on dividends. Adelson savings: $120 million per year.
Romney's plan removes the estate tax. Adelson heirs save: $8.9 billion.

Saturday, September 8, 2012

THE AUDACITY OF CRONYISM: JARRETT, PLOUFFE, AND DONILON


It’s hard to know which is worse: the arrogance of the Obama administration in assuming that its White House staffers can get away with anything, or the apathy of the media in not holding those staffers accountable.

Actually, let’s scratch the word “apathy” and call it what it really is: abjectness. The media have been abject in their willingness, even eagerness, to serve the political interests of this administration and its re-election effort.
Let’s consider the cases of three staffers, all at the top rung of the White House ladder: Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett, Senior Adviser David Plouffe, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon.   
Valerie Jarrett has been a mentor and ally of Barack Obama for two decades; by all accounts, she has an unshakable bond not only with him, but also with Michelle Obama. And now her clout is apparent to all: aprofile of Jarrett, written by Jo Becker and appearing in Sunday’s New York Times, was headlined, “The Other Power in the West Wing.” As in, there’s the President, and there’s Valerie Jarrett.   
The Times story, all 3300 words of it, was one of those stories that everyone in DC thought they had to read; as another Times reporter, Jodi Kantor, tweeted on Sunday, “The political world pauses as one to dissect Jo Becker’s profile of Valerie Jarrett."
Indeed, Becker’s story was full of grist for Beltway mills. One anonymous presidential adviser (who sounds a lot like re-election campaign guru David Axelrod) pronounced that “Valerie is effectively the chief of staff... She’s almost like Nancy Reagan was with President Reagan, but more powerful.” And a “former senior White House official” (who sounds a lot like ex-White House chief of staff Bill Daley) added, “She is the single most influential person in the Obama White House.” Whoa. Wait a second. Did the former official really mean to say that Jarrett was “the single most influential person in the Obama White House”? If so, where does that leave the President? Is it possible that Jarrett, working with Michelle Obama, is more powerful than Mr. Obama? No, that doesn’t seem possible--unless, of course, it is possible.

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