Obama Team Protects it's Own

If White House social secretary Desiree Rogers survives this week's withering attacks over her role in last week's state dinner security breach, she'll have gotten by with a lot of help from her friends in the West Wing.

As a House committee opened hearings Thursday on how two uninvited partygoers were able to enter the White House grounds and shake hands with President Barack Obama, top presidential aides delivered a clear message to critics of this favored staffer: Back off.

In a White House not known for its tolerance of staffing errors, Rogers has been the beneficiary of an unprecedented show of support from senior administration officials. A former corporate executive from Chicago, Rogers has known the Obamas for more than a decade and seems blessed with a status that may shield her from the fate of departing White House counsel Greg Craig or Louis Caldera, the Military Office head who was canned for a botched Air Force One photo op.

Rogers's office starting taking heat last week after it was reported that the White House did not station staff members at the security checkpoint to help the Secret Service screen guests at the state dinner for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, as has been customary in previous administrations. When the House Homeland Security Committee invited Rogers to testify about how Tareq and Michaele Salahi managed to reach Obama unimpeded, the White House declined to make Rogers available and said its internal report on the incident would suffice. - Politico Story

Make a scape goat out of the career security people at the White House, just don't touch one of Obama's personal friends. Blame blame blame, just not us. That is the Obama way.

Arknasas Senator in Trouble for Re-Election

Senator Blanche Lambert Lincoln has found herself right in the middle of the national debate over health care, and that’s a tough spot as she prepares to face Arkansas voters in 2010.

As she did in September, Lincoln trails four possible Republican challengers in the latest Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 survey. In fact, support for the incumbent ranges from only 39% to 41% in these match-ups.

The two-term senator, who was reelected with 54% of the vote in 2004, appears more vulnerable because of her visible and pivotal role in the Senate debate over health care. Lincoln was the last Democrat to vote for allowing the debate to formally begin, and she has taken pains to point out that a vote to begin debate is not a vote for the bill. - Rasmussen Reports Poll

Obama's PR Stunt on Jobs, Still Blaming Others

Is the White House jobs summit an event that will spur tangible actions or simply a glorified public-relations stunt?

Some are asking that question as the White House on Thursday hosts a slew of the country's best and brightest business executives, finance experts, economists, small business owners and labor leaders to discuss ways to generate job creation.

"The president's really looking forward to having a wide cross section of people from small, medium and lagre businesses," senior White House adviser Valerie Jarrett told "Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts today. "All coming together and working with him and his economic team to see if we can come up with some new, fresh ideas to help jumpstart the economy."

With the country dealing with its highest unemployment rate in 26 years, the administration is under pressure to get Americans back to work. While unemployment is traditionally a lagging indicator -- taking longer to turn around than the stock market and other economic indicators -- time is of the essence.

"We inherited an economic meltdown 10 months ago when he took office. He moved boldly to get us back on track with a variety of measures. We still have an unemployment rate that is far too high," Jarrett said. "He thinks today is a great opportunity to bring in new fresh ideas." - ABC News Story

ABC, CBS and NBC Scooped by Comedy Central on Climate Change

ABC didn't cover it. CBS didn't either. And NBC apparently wouldn't go near it.

The network news broadcasts have ignored a growing scandal over evidence of a potential climate cover-up — and now they've even been scooped by the fake news at Comedy Central.

"The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" produced its "reporting" on Climate-gate Tuesday night, when Stewart quipped, “Poor Al Gore. Global warming completely debunked via the very Internet you invented. Oh, oh, the irony!”

Stewart described leaked e-mails from Britain's University of East Anglia, including one referring to a researcher's "trick" to "hide the decline" in some temperature readings in recent decades.

"It's just scientist-speak for using a standard statistical technique — recalibrating data – in order to trick you," Stewart said sarcastically.

Nearly two weeks since news broke of the e-mail scandal, climate change skeptics have gloated; a leading climate scientist has resigned; at least one U.S. lawmaker has called for an investigation, and countless prominent news outlets have deemed the story worthy of major reporting. - FOX News Story

Obama - Not Working With Black Caucus

The long-simmering family feud between the Congressional Black Caucus and the first African-American president burst into the open on Wednesday, with members boycotting a financial overhaul vote as a warning shot at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The 43-member caucus — which included Illinois Sen. Barack Obama from 2004 to 2008 — has chafed against President Obama and his top aides since the Inauguration, complaining that the White House takes it for granted and plays favorites with conservative Blue Dog Democrats.

Ten CBC members decided to boycott the House Financial Services Committee vote en masse after a tumultuous morning meeting at the Capitol between Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel failed to yield a deal, according to people familiar with the meeting.

The bill passed easily, but Waters suggested the CBC’s 43 members could vote with the GOP to scuttle a variety of Democratic bills if Obama and Emanuel don’t address what she thinks is a lack of understanding of the CBC’s wide-ranging goals of reducing urban unemployment, home foreclosures and bank failures.

“I think that it is important for us to educate those people around [Obama],” Waters told reporters. “We’ve got to get his people educated and moving. We have not brought these issues to him personally — it is important first to educate those people around him so they understand.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), who recently accused Obama of bowing down to the GOP on health care reform, was more pointed, shouting “Yes!” when asked if he was disappointed with Obama’s level of attentiveness to African-Americans’ needs. - Politico Story

Climategate Continues to Grow

Ripples created by the disclosure of global warming files now being called "ClimateGate" continue to spread, with congressional attention growing and the head of a prominent climate change group stepping aside.

Phil Jones, the head of the Climactic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said on Tuesday that he will relinquish his post while the U.K. school conducts an investigation into allegations of scientific and professional misconduct.

Jones' announcement comes as he and his allies, who published some of the foundational data used to support the claim that global warming exists, have been pummeled by waves of criticism. As CBSNews.com reported last week, the leaked files show that prominent scientists were so wedded to theories of man-made global warming that they ridiculed dissenters who asked for copies of their data, plotted how to keep researchers who reached different conclusions from publishing, and concealed apparently buggy computer code from being disclosed under the Freedom of Information law.

The reverberations have extended beyond the campus of the University of East Anglia and the CRU. E-mail messages from Michael Mann, a professor in the meteorology department at Penn State University who has argued that mankind is threatening "entire ecosystems with extinction in the decades ahead if we continue to burn fossil fuels at current rates," appeared in the leaked files. Now Penn State has opened an investigation into Mann's work, and the U.K.'s weather agency has been forced on the defensive as well. - CBS News Story

Obama Team - Welcome to being Commander in Chief

President Barack Obama and his aides have seen their political mortality.

Confronting the complexities and dangers of the Afghan escalation has ushered in a new, more grounded reality for a White House that has gotten far on Obama’s charm, congressional might and a campaign cockiness aides carried into the West Wing.

That’s over. White House officials now are bracing for brutal months ahead, filled with second-guessing on the war plan and mounting casualties, along with deepening unemployment and a legislative slog on financial reform and climate change.

Through it all, the nation has seen the president confront a challenge that has split his party, divided him from his most loyal followers and left him no truly good choices. Here’s what we’ve learned from watching Obama and his team craft the policy and the speech that deepened U.S. involvement in Afghanistan:

They are back to reality: The war debate, which played out during a bumpy stretch for this White House, has brought many aides back to earth. Nine meetings on the complexities and extreme dangers of this war will do that. Gone are the predictions of swift, transformational change, at least for energy and financial regulations. The political front is no better. They fully expect to lose seats in the House and probably in the Senate and can only hope for a political surge as they head into Obama's reelection.

"The biggest worry is that this becomes a political football," a senior administration official said. "The concern is that you end up having to deal with constant attacks from the right and the left on this." - Politico Story

It is all so easy to blast a sitting a President when you are running for election. It is easy to second guess every decision. It is easy to say you would have done it better. Now, you have to make the tough calls and live with those decisions. The shoe is now on the other foot. Welcome to being the President.

Obama Troop Surge Met with Mixed Emotions

JACKSONVILLE, North Carolina -- Battle-weary U.S. troops and their families braced for a wrenching round of new deployments to Afghanistan announced Tuesday by the president, but many said they support the surge as long as it helps to end the eight-year-old conflict.

As President Barack Obama outlined his plan to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan -- while pledging to start bringing them home in 2011 -- soldiers, Marines and their families interviewed by The Associated Press felt a tangle of fresh concerns and renewed hopes.

"All I ask that man to do, if he is going to send them over there, is not send them over in vain," said 57-year-old Bill Thomas of Jacksonville, North Carolina, who watched Obama's televised speech in his living room, where photos of his three sons in uniform hang over the TV.

One of his sons, 23-year-old Cpl. Michael Thomas, is a Marine based at neighboring Camp Lejeune. He'll deploy next year to Afghanistan. Another son is in the Navy, and a third recently left the Marines after serving in Iraq.

An ex-Marine himself, Thomas said he supports Obama's surge strategy. But he shook his head when the president announced a 2011 transition date to begin pulling out troops.

"If I were the enemy, I would hang back until 2011," Thomas said. "We have to make sure that we are going go stay until the job is done. It ain't going to be as easy as he thinks it is." - FOX News Story

Did Bush Intentionally Let Bin Laden Escape?

Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) on Monday accused former President George W. Bush of “intentionally” letting Osama bin Laden escape during the American invasion of Afghanistan.

“Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away,” Hinchey said during an interview on MSNBC.

“That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq,” the Democratic congressman continued. “There’s no question that the leader of the military operations of the U.S. called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al Qaeda.”

When host David Shuster followed up to ask if Hinchey really thought Bush “deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away,” the congressman responded: “Yes, I do.”

“I don’t think it will strike a lot of people as crazy. I think it’ll strike a lot of people as being very accurate,” Hinchey said. “All you have to do is look at the exact circumstances and see that’s exactly what happened.”

“When our military went in there, we could have captured [the Taliban],” he insisted. “But we didn’t. And we didn’t because of the need felt by the previous administration, and the previous head of the military, that need to attack Iraq.” - Politico Story

This has to be another one of those vast right wing conspiracies.

Sen. Harry Reid's Nevada Troubles

As Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid struggles to pass a health care bill in Washington and his polling numbers in Nevada continue to tank, there’s another aggravation he can’t seem to escape — the Las Vegas Review-Journal and its publisher, Sherman Frederick.

Frederick has called Reid a “political corpse,” said a visit by President Barack Obama to Nevada earlier this year “was only to try to stop Nevadans from bouncing their unpopular senior Sen. Harry Reid in 2010” and suggested that “Reid’s power so far has done more for Reid personally than it has for Nevadans as a whole.” A recent Frederick blog post openly mocked Reid’s reelection theme: “Isn’t the slogan ‘Harry Reid — independent like Nevada’ libelous as hell?”

The antipathy emanating from “the RJ,” as it’s known, which has a daily circulation of 175,000 readers and is far and away the largest newspaper in the state, is another obstacle Reid faces in trying to balance his responsibilities as Senate leader with his efforts to boost his popularity in Nevada enough to win a fifth term next year. The combative Reid, however, has not been shy about firing back, telling an RJ advertising exec at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce meeting in August that he hoped “you go out of business.”

The uproar over those comments led to a halfhearted attempt at reconciliation between Reid and Frederick, whose newspaper did endorse Reid’s last reelection bid in 2004. “He didn’t pull a knife on me or anything,” Frederick said afterward. “He didn’t wrestle me to the ground and give me a noogie.”

But nothing changed, except that Frederick recently acknowledged changing his registration from Democrat to Republican and served as the moderator for a forum for potential GOP Senate opponents to Reid. - Politico Story

Seven Stories Obama Doesn't Want you to Hear

Presidential politics is about storytelling. Presented with a vivid storyline, voters naturally tend to fit every new event or piece of information into a picture that is already neatly framed in their minds.

No one understands this better than Barack Obama and his team, who won the 2008 election in part because they were better storytellers than the opposition. The pro-Obama narrative featured an almost mystically talented young idealist who stood for change in a disciplined and thoughtful way. This easily outpowered the anti-Obama narrative, featuring an opportunistic Chicago pol with dubious relationships who was more liberal than he was letting on.

A year into his presidency, however, Obama’s gift for controlling his image shows signs of faltering. As Washington returns to work from the Thanksgiving holiday, there are several anti-Obama storylines gaining momentum.

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

But they all are serious threats to Obama, if they gain enough currency to become the dominant frame through which people interpret the president’s actions and motives.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about: - Politico Story

Democratic Coaltition for Health Care Falling Apart

WASHINGTON -- With the Senate set to begin debate Monday on health care overhaul, the all-hands-on-deck Democratic coalition that allowed the bill to advance is fracturing already.

Some Democratic senators say they'll jump ship from the bill without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. Others say they'll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed overboard. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the heart and soul of the party.

There's no clear course for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to steer legislation through Congress to President Barack Obama. You can't make history unless you reach 60 votes out of 100 senators, and don't count on Republicans helping him.

But Reid is determined to avoid being remembered as another Democrat who tried and failed to make health care access for the middle class a part of America's social safety net.

"Generation after generation has called on us to fix this broken system," he said at a recent Capitol Hill rally. "We're now closer than ever to getting it done."

Tensof millions of Americans lack health insurance or are underinsured, either because their employers don't provide it or they are out of work.

Only the U.S., Turkey and Mexico among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 30 member nations fail to provide something close to universal coverage.

Reid's bill includes $848 billion over 10 years to gradually expand coverage to most of those now uninsured. It would ban onerous insurance industry practices such as denying coverage or charging higher premiums because of someone's poor health. Those who now have the hardest time getting coverage -- the self-employed and small businesses -- could buy a policy in a new insurance market, with government subsidies for many. Older people would get better prescription coverage.

Most people covered by big employers would gain more protections without major changes. One exception would be those with high-cost insurance plans, whose premiums could rise as a result of a tax on insurers issue the coverage.

The public is ambivalent about the Democrats' legislation. While 58 percent want elected officials to tackle health care now, about half of those supporters say they don't like what they're hearing about the plans, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll. - FOX News Story