New Book Blasts Obama's Gulf Oil Spill Response

NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal uses a new book to portray President Barack Obama as disconnected from the Gulf oil spill, charging that he was more focused on the political aftermath than the actual impact of the crisis.

Jindal recounts a pair of private conversations with the president that paint him as consumed with how his actions were being perceived.

On Obama’s first trip to Louisiana after the disaster, the governor describes how the president took him aside on the tarmac after arriving to complain about a letter that Jindal had sent to the administration requesting authorization for food stamps for those who had lost their jobs because of the spill.

As Jindal describes it, the letter was entirely routine, yet Obama was angry and concerned about looking bad.

"Careful," he quotes the president as warning him, "this is going to get bad for everyone."

Nearby on the tarmac, Jindal recalls, then-White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was chewing out his own chief of staff, Timmy Teepell.

“If you have a problem pick up the f——n’ phone,” Jindal quotes Emanuel telling Teepell.

The governor asserts that the White House had tipped off reporters to watch the exchange on the New Orleans tarmac that Sunday in May and deemed it a “press stunt” that symbolized what’s wrong with Washington. - Politico Story

Obama Re-Election Map Not Looking so Good

Two years after his dramatic expansion of the electoral map paved the way to a landslide win, President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign appears likely to resemble the political trench warfare that marked the 2000 and 2004 presidential races.

Last week’s midterm elections saw the trio of conservative-leaning states Obama captured in 2008 — Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana — return to their Republican tendencies while more traditional swing states also broke sharply toward the GOP. - Politico Story

GOP looking form Dem Help in Health Care Fight

Newly empowered congressional Republicans plan to chip away at the health care reform law next year — and they're hoping a handful of at-risk or moderate Senate Democrats will help them out. (See: Republicans Push Health Care Repeal)

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin won a Senate seat vowing to repeal "the bad parts of Obamacare," and Republican aides say they'll hold him to it. Republicans are also eyeing Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Jim Webb of Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana — Democratic senators in red or reddish states who will face voters in 2012. (See: Republican Party Eyes Choking Health Law Funding) - Politico Story

Lets Hear it for Gibss. Good Job

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs threatened to pull President Obama from a meeting with India’s prime minister on Monday when security attempted to restrict the number of U.S. reporters

allowed into the event.

The meeting between Obama and Prime Minister Manmoham Singh proceeded as planned after Indian officials relented.

It was arranged beforehand that eight reporters from the White House press pool would be admitted to the meeting at Hyderabad House in New Delhi, but Indian officials tried to cut the number from eight to five just before the photo-op.

Several U.S. officials pushed to have all eight pool members let in, but it wasn’t until Gibbs said that he was serious about pulling Obama from the event that the whole group was admitted.

“That whole group is going in because they’re going in with me,” Gibbs insisted. - FOX News Story

It is not often that I back anything that Robert Gibbs does, but this was a good job. Pat on the back for Gibbs.

Democrats Blame White House for Losses

The bodies aren’t even cold yet in the House, but the Democratic Party has already opened up a bitter debate over who’s to blame.

The party’s bloodied moderates Wednesday released two years of pent-up anger at a party leadership they viewed as blind to their needs and deaf to the messages of voters who never asked for President Barack Obama’s ambitious first-term agenda.

Liberals pushed back hard: The problem, they say, was those undisciplined moderates, who won delays, unsightly compromises and a muddled message from a too-accommodating administration.

Yet a third group of Democratic politicians and operatives blamed not policy but a failed sales job for the party’s woes.

One thing all sides agree on: The White House blew it. - Politico Story

Calls for White House Shake up Increase

Some of the calls for a White House shake-up are now coming from inside the building.

Frustrated current and former West Wing staffers, speaking on condition of anonymity, told POLITICO they hoped Tuesday night’s humbling losses would persuade President Barack Obama to pursue a much more sweeping fix than just the “natural” post-election churn of personnel his administration has insisted will take place.

Many of those changes are already being seriously considered, among them replacing Political Director Patrick Gaspard with a former top aide to Rahm Emanuel; replacing Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina, who is expected to move to Obama’s 2012 campaign, with Legislative Affairs Director Phil Schiliro; and possibly giving White House energy czar Carol Browner expanded policy responsibilities. - Politico Story

GOP to Control Redistricting Map

A bad night for Democrats Tuesday got even worse at the local level: Republicans were on the verge of winning nearly all 17 of the state legislative chambers they had originally set out for on Tuesday, some for the first time in decades, a shift that puts the GOP in the driver’s seat when the congressional redistricting process begins early next year.

The GOP gains were most significant in the Midwest, where the party picked up state House majorities in the Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and were within striking distance of capturing legislatures in the highly-prized electoral battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin. But Republicans also gained control of both chambers of the New Hampshire and North Carolina legislature, and took the Alabama legislature for the first time since Reconstruction. - Politico Story

The Fall of Nancy Pelosi

In the final days before the election that ended her hold on power, Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted Democrats would keep the House and proclaimed no regrets.

“I didn’t come here to keep a job. I’m here to do a job,” she told an adoring crowd in San Francisco.

The statement was vintage Pelosi, reflecting the unbowed and uncompromising attitude that won her the speaker's gavel and the defiant stubbornness that helped her lose it. - Politico Story

Voters Restore Balance to Washington

Voters Tuesday tore apart the complex map of America President Barack Obama proudly displayed after his 2008 victory, driving Democrats from office in rural areas, the suburbs and virtually the entire South — and unseating a generation of powerful Democratic centrists. - Politico Story

Black Panthers at it Again?

PHILADELPHIA - Fox 29 News spotted Tuesday a member of the New Black Panther Party standing outside of a local polling place where voter intimidation was reported two years ago.

The man was seen outside the polling place in North Philadelphia was wearing a pin that indicated his party affiliation, along with a black hat, sunglasses and leather coat. - MyFoxPhilly