Jones “Tees Up”…and Whiffs
From the very beginning, the Obama White House has been obsessed with the process by which national security decisions are made — and with getting the press to treat that obsession as evidence that this White House is somehow more serious about national security decisions than its predecessor. Look no further than the Washington Post’s [...]
Holbrooke Back From Telluride, Still Irrelevant
Laura Rozen reports:
But almost a year later, neither Holbrooke nor Mitchell is looking as confident about his status in the administration or prospects for success.
Holbrooke, who once seemed to relish his access to both Obama and Clinton and built a staff of more than two dozen aides while commanding veto power over department South [...]
The NSC Goes Fashion Forward
FP’s Cable blog reports on NSC deputy spokesman Ben Chang, aka Hong Kong Hefner, fashion photographer and disc jockey extraordinaire. By day Chang controls foreign press access in the White House. By night, “dancefloor jazz, funky breaks, old school & classic hip hop, indie pop/rock, new wave, dance punk, mutant disco.” And then there’s the [...]
When is Obama Going to Meet with McChrystal?
The Hill reports that a Republican member of Congress is claiming that he was denied access to General Stanley McChrystal during a recent trip to Afghanistan:
“Miller, who sits on both the Armed Services panel and the Intelligence Committee, told The Hill that the Pentagon denied his request for a meeting with [...]
Did WH Pressure J Street to Drop Poetry Slam?
Why is J Street cancelling an anti-Israel poetry slam at their conference? Could it be White House pressure? According to a statement from J Street director Jeremy Ben-Ami to Ben Smith, the poetry slam was cancelled because,
as J Street is critical of the use and abuse of Holocaust imagery and metaphors by politicians and pundits [...]
Kristol: Gates Blindsided by Rahm
Yesterday, in light of Rahm Emanuel’s comments on delaying the decision on troops for Afghanistan, I asked: “Are Sunday talk show declarations by Emanuel and political advisor David Axelrod an appropriate way to announce the considered judgment of the president at this stage of a long Cabinet-level review process? Or is Emanuel end-running the process? [...]
