The communications team at the White House has an extremely difficult job — and I admire how hard Ben Rhodes, Bill Burton, Tommy Vietor, and of course Robert Gibbs and others work to connect the President’s policy direction with a communications effort that furthers the Obama agenda.
This is a guest note by Yousef Munayyer, Executive Director of The Jerusalem Fund & The Palestine Center. The above photo is credited with appreciation for its use to the talented photographer, Atef Safadi.
Just when things seemed to be lightening up regarding homosexual men and women serving their nation and saluting their Commander-in-Chief honestly and openly, the Army walks back toward the nation’s institutionalized bigotry.
This is a guest note by former John F. Kennedy Special Counsel and Adviser Theodore “Ted” Sorensen. The piece in part responds to several critiques of the Obama White House management team, including essays by Edward Luce of the Financial Times, myself, and former Council on Foreign Relations President Leslie Gelb.
Tonight, Charlie Rose spends an hour discussing all things Iran with my colleague Flynt Leverett — a former senior staff member of the National Security Council, State Department, and CIA and now a member of our team at the NAF American Strategy Program — and his wife, Hillary Mann Leverett, also a former senior State…
One of my former New America Foundation colleagues and great friends, Douglas Rediker, did not need a recess appointment and was sworn in Thursday in the Cash Room of the Department of Treasury.
John Bolton is now formally and appropriately addressed as “Ambassador Bolton” because of the right of the executive branch to make recess appointments in the wake of inaction by Congress on presidential nominations. Bolton never got a confirmation vote in the Senate.
Japan’s Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, is having a tough time. The popularity of his cabinet has fallen to the high 30s/low 40s from previously unsustainable, stratospheric heights — but structural change has costs, and I remain optimistic that Democracy 2.0 is taking over in Japan.
I don’t know the figure myself but someone should compute how much of every federal $ committed to non-agricultural, non-nuclear renewable energy sticks inside the U.S. vs. how much leaks out to Germany, China, India, and Scandinavia.
David Frum and many observers think that he was excommunicated from the Cheney-dominated halls at the American Enterprise Institute because of a hard-hitting, honest appraisal of Republican self-delusion and hyperventilation over the health care battle. If you missed Frum’s humdinger of an essay titled “Waterloo“, read it here. And here is the GOP empire’s response….
