Expose Obama » Valerie Jarrett

Is MSNBC Taking Programming Decisions from the White House?

Ben — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:04:26 +0000

Ben Johnson, The White House Watch

(Was Cenk Uygur purged at the White House’s request?)

After years of mutual courtship, the White House may have consummated its marriage to MSNBC by canceling the program of the network’s most critical host. This unprecedented invasion of journalistic autonomy comes after years of MSNBC’s fawning coverage, promotion of the administration’s objectives, and receiving on-air prompts to guide its coverage to Obama’s greatest benefit.

Now that MSNBC has canceled his short-lived 6 p.m. program, Cenk Uygur is speaking out. Uygur, who continues to host The Young Turks program elsewhere, says the network chief told him in no uncertain terms he had to tailor his program to please “people in Washington.” The executive added MSNBC is composed of “insiders” and plays a vital role in “the Establishment.”

Uygur says at the beginning of his tenure at 6 p.m. — where he replaced Ed Schultz — Uygur “got pulled in” by “the head of MSNBC”:

He said, “I was just in Washington, and people in Washington tell me they’re concerned about your tone.”

…Then he gives me the second part of the speech. He said, “Hey listen, Cenk…I’d love to be an outsider. Outsiders are cool. But we’re not. We’re insiders. We are the Establishment.”

Uygur says the executive concluded by telling….

Voting Present: Obama Dithered 16 Hours Before Killing Bin Laden

Ben — Thu, 05 May 2011 16:32:45 +0000

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

The media are salivating that Osama bin Laden’s death will seal Barack Obama’s re-election. But detailed reports show that the process that led to the event Democrats are calling Obama’s greatest triumph should be tantamount to a disqualification for holding the nation’s highest office. Delving into the details reveals that Obama proved as weak-kneed and indecisive about getting bin Laden as he has about every presidential decision that does not involve spending America into oblivion, advancing fundamentalist Islamic interests, or harassing middle Americans who oppose his agenda.

Analysts confirmed beyond any doubt that Osama bin Laden was on the premises of the Abbottabad compound months ago. This New York Times story notes that Obama asked his key defense advisers for options – on March 22. The Times passes over everything that unraveled in the ensuing month. Outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta pushed for a response in a meeting held last Thursday. Three reporters at the NYT record Obama’s response: “I’m not going to tell you what my decision is now – I’m going to go back and think about it some more. I’m going to make a decision soon.”

Obama finally came to a conclusion – a mere 16 hours later.

Media Matters excoriates the “right-wing media” as “desperate” for pointing this out, but it seems apropos to note the leader of the free world, charged with keeping the homeland safe and meting justice out to international criminals, could not decide whether the man who planned 9/11 should be killed for two-thirds of a day.

What accounts for this indecision? Some bloggers have highlighted the anonymous tale of an alleged White House “insider” posted here. According to that account….

Blagojevich Retrial: Obama Pushed Jarrett To Fill His Senate Seat

Ben — Wed, 04 May 2011 15:36:52 +0000

Judicial Watch

Chicago—Rod Blagojevich’s onetime chief of staff, John Harris, testified about negotiations between his former boss and President Barack Obama to fill the U.S. Senate seat once held by the commander-in-chief.

Obama’s top aide, Rahm Emanuel, called Harris in 2008 to suggest the then-governor appoint Obama’s close friend Valerie Jarrett, according to Harris’s testimony. Harris was the second witness to take the stand in Blagojevich’s corruption retrial, which is taking place in the same Chicago federal court where he was tried last year. In that eight-week circus the impeached two-term governor got convicted of only one count (lying to the FBI) and the jury deadlocked on all others.

The government dropped a couple of charges the second time around, but Blagojevich is still facing 20 counts, among them attempting to sell Obama’s old Senate seat. Shortly upon taking the stand Tuesday, Harris testified that he and Blagojevich discussed the Senate appointment in October 2008 and Blagojevich asked him “What do you think I can get for this?”

In the first trial Harris testified that Obama sent Blagojevich a list of “acceptable” Senate candidates to fill his old seat. The list included then Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs Director Tammy Duckworth, Illinois State Comptroller Dan Hynes, Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., and Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky.

No Time for Sideshows? Obama Holds First-Ever Transgender Conference

Ben — Tue, 03 May 2011 16:50:17 +0000

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

Last Wednesday, Barack Obama offered his long-form Certificate of Live Birth, saying, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do.” He added, “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.” Two days later, he gave his idea of a dignified use of presidential time and resources as the Office of Public Engagement (OPE) headed by his closest advisor, Valerie Jarrett, held the first-ever White House conference devoted exclusively to transgender concerns. Among the transgender activists present at the super-secret gathering was the president of an organization that is lobbying the government to pay for sex-change operations, allow open military service and top-secret security clearances for trannies, and develop “transgender-specific needle exchange programs” for those who abuse intravenous drugs. The activists state although this was the first time the federal government invited them to discuss their agenda, it will not be the last; the next steps are already planned. And the Obama administration is already churning out significant regulations catering to cross-dressers – and silencing their critics.

Transgender, Not Transparency

The nation’s leading homosexual newspaper, The Washington Blade, reported all that was known about the first-ever meeting last week – which was not much. Shin Inouye, a White House spokesperson, confirmed the meeting was scheduled to take place at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building but nothing else. Just like the recent National Action Network summit with Al Sharpton, a bevy of White House celebrities were set to attend, but the White House would not say who they are. Inouye told The Blade, “OPE routinely holds meetings with various stakeholders to discuss various policy issues. Friday’s meeting, like most OPE meetings, will be closed press and off the record.” Inouye would not even state which “transgender” activists would attend, instead telling reporters to search the White House visitor records once they are released. (A Congressional committee scheduled hearings this morning on the enormous gaps in White House visitor logs.)

Nancy Goldstein at The Daily Beast noted the meeting’s air-tight secrecy:

It would be easier to evaluate Friday’s meeting if the public had access to certain basic facts. Like which activists and leaders were invited, or which staffers actually attended. Or what was on the agenda. Or whether it was a “listening” meeting, where members of the administration simply gather to hear a group’s concerns, or an “action” meeting that lays out steps toward change. Or what anyone said, or decided. About anything.

Some transgender people are not happy about the development, saying this sort of access is insufficient. However, the Blade reported the identity of one activist present on Friday – and that person puts the radical nature of the meeting, and the White House, into perspective.

Mara Keisling of the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) told the Blade the White House had sent an invitation. According to the biography posted online “Mara,” who became a “woman” in 2000, is “a transgender-identified woman and a parent…She is a founding board member of the Stonewall Democracy Fund, and has served on the board of Directors of Common Roads, an LGBTQ Youth Group, and on the steering committee of the Statewide Pennsylvania Rights Coalition.”

Mara has had trouble overcoming the vicious discrimination – or gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. Mara implored the LGBs to see themselves as one big family:

In addition to identifying as trans, I identify as a lesbian. There are a lot of gay men who later identify as transgender; there are a lot of lesbians who identify as transgender and vice versa. So the overlaps in our community are really big.

When not trying to change the minds of sexual minorities, Mara agitates to change the ancient teachings of the Christian faith. Mara initiated another first, the Transgender Religious Summit, from January 19-21, 2007, in Berkeley, California. One attendee summarized their goals and beliefs:

[W]e must overcome the theological barriers that traditional thinking erects. We do have a rich heritage in our past. People we now call TG existed in most aboriginal communities around the world. We were revered in many. It was only the influence of European explorers in enforcing their religious dogma that has buried aboriginal spiritual traditions. Our ‘two-spirited’ nature is indeed a gift from God. As such we need to use the Bible/Torah creatively to transform rejection into acceptance.

Now Mara has the ear of the president’s closest advisors.

Mara explained last week there would be no compromise nor separation from among NCTE’s issues at the OPE meeting. Mara told The Blade, “We’re going to say, ‘Here’s our agenda.’” That agenda is more extreme and offensive than most Americans could imagine.

Quotas, Set-Asides, and Security Clearances for Cross-Dressers

NCTE demands the Defense Department “allow transgender people to serve openly.” However, the government must….

Obama Asks Terrorism Help — from Muslim Brotherhood Spinoff

Ben — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 21:05:16 +0000

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

As more sober minds consider ways to keep the Middle East from falling into the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, Barack Obama is “fighting terrorism” by reaching out to the leader of one of the Brotherhood’s American creations. In the process, a White House official revealed that radical Muslims frequently advise the White House office headed by the president’s top adviser and alter ego, Valerie Jarrett.

Preemptive Groveling

Flush with instances of American Muslims supporting Islamic jihad, Rep. Peter King is set to launch his investigation into the radicalization of U.S. mosques, imams, and the faithful they serve later this week. Barack Obama, ever keen to reach out to the Muslim community, decided to get ahead of this by sending a deputy to plead with the extremists for cooperation. On Sunday, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough spoke to a Sterling, Virginia, mosque some believe is a model of moderate Islam: the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS), led by imam Mohamed Magid. Indeed, McDonough began by thanking Magid by name.

Although the Sudanese-born imam presents himself as an ecumenical, anti-terrorism leader active in “interfaith” outreach, his current associations — and those of others at his mosque — present a different picture.

A Dangerous Mosque

This author exposed ADAMS’s radical connections nearly seven years. At the time, ADAMS’s chairman was Ahmad Totonji, an Iraqi-born citizen of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia who was named as a defendant in a $1 trillion lawsuit filed by more than 600 relatives of people who died in the 9/11 attacks. He served as Vice President of the Safa Group and the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), which officials have linked to al-Qaeda, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Sami al-Arian. (Al-Arian served more than five years in prison after pleading guilty to conspiracy to aid terrorism, and he is currently under house arrest awaiting his contempt trial, which has been mysteriously stalled.) ADAMS’s legal counsel, Muhammed Ashraf, was the attorney for Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is now serving 23 years in prison for laundering money for Muammar Qaddafi in a plot to kill a Saudi prince.

Magid was on the premises of ADAMS’s Herndon, Virginia, offices when federal agents stormed the facility in March 2002. The “Grove Street Addresses” provided the homes of more than 100 interlocking Muslim organizations that the government accused of providing material support for terrorism. After the raid, Magid assembled a “community building” meeting at ADAMS attended by a variety of extremists.

FBI Snitch, Reagan Euglogizer?

Somehow, this record got Magid invited to speak at Ronald Reagan’s funeral in 2004….

Obama’s Economic Advisers: International Socialists, Union Thugs, NBC Execs, Soros Scholars, Subprime Lenders, Amnesty Shills, and Campaign Cronies

Ben — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 01:40:43 +0000

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

The media enthused when Barack Obama bloviated during his State of the Union Address, “We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.” They now enthuse that the president has appointed members to his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness allegedly designed to cut down inefficient regulations and unnecessary government burdens. None of the media announced that the appointees are a collection of globalists, media elites at NBC News, union thugs, amnesty activists, employees of Soros-funded think tanks, wealth redistributionists, business failures in the subprime lending industry, and Chicago cronies. Nonetheless, today’s issue of USA Today is already spinning the story under the headline, “Obama Wants Business World’s Best Ideas on Jobs.”

Where he would get those ideas is anyone’s guess.

Richard Trumka is perhaps the most conspicuous choice on this job-creating council. Trumka, who recently admitted to Astroturfing the protests in Wisconsin and around the country, is president of the AFL-CIO and a longtime Big Labor activist with a shady history. Michelle Malkin has noted that Trumka led the United Mine Workers when a non-union worker named Eddie York was shot to death in the midst of a mining strike. The UMW aided all eight union members present at the scene of the crime and disciplined none of them. In a separate incident, Trumka incited a crowd in Illinois to “kick the s–t out of every last” person who crossed the UMW picket line. Working his way up the ranks, as AFL-CIO treasurer he was implicated in two money-laundering scandals involving the Teamsters. He said if he were forced to testify before Congress, he would invoke the Fifth Amendment. Trumka climbed the ladder by gripping the coattails of John Sweeney, the union’s former president and member of the Democratic Socialists of America. Sweeney and Trumka saw the union donate more than $200 million in political aid to the Democrats in 2008 and send out more than 250,000 “volunteers,” many of whom worked for Obama in swing states. On February 15, Barack Obama awarded Sweeney the Medal of Freedom.

After succeeding Sweeney as the union’s president in September 2009, Trumka decided to further radicalize the union. Just last fall, Trumka insisted, “We need to fundamentally restructure our economy and re-establish popular control over the private corporations which have distorted our economy and hijacked our government. That’s a long-term job but one we should start now.” To that end, Trumka has worked with European socialists to establish a global tax, a measure that is also a top priority of Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren. Last year, Trumka carried out his threats to go after Democrats who opposed ObamaCare’s “public option,” failing to oust Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln as the Democratic nominee.

The new council position provides no real boost to Trumka; he doesn’t need one. Although certain members of Obama’s Cabinet have not heard from the president after serving two years into his administration, Trumka recently boasted: “I’m at the White House a couple times a week. Two, three times a week. I have conversations everyday with someone in the White House or in the administration. Everyday.”

Trumka is not the only union thug with a seat at the table.

Joseph T. Hansen helps Trumka present the Labor Left’s views. Hansen is president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) and chairman of Change to Win, the AFL-CIO’s major union rival (the one formed by SEIU). Like Trumka, Hansen is already a frequent presidential advisor. Hansen serves as a member of Obama’s Advisory Committee on Trade Policy and Negotiations. Hansen, too, helped elect Obama. UFCW’s political action committee, United Food & Commercial Workers International Union Active Ballot Club, spent $673,309 on Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and $3.5 million on Democratic candidates in 2008 and 2010….

The Agenda Revealed: How Obama Will Rule by Executive Order in 2011

Ben — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 22:07:09 +0000

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

Late last month, a reporter asked the head of the Office of Public Engagement Valerie Jarrett what she would tell her close friend Barack Obama about the American uprising against his aggressive liberalism. She replied, “To stay the course and to know that it will get better.” Those were not idle words of comfort; they were marching orders. The president told the New York Times he runs every decision by Jarrett, and she has admitted to Vogue magazine, “I kind of know what makes [both Obamas] who they are.” When she speaks, Obama listens.

The day after the election, as pundits forecast how he would compromise with the Republican House, Barack Obama revealed that he planned to continue moving this country to the Left. As though he were invincibly ignorant to the will of the people, Obama told Democratic volunteers on a conference call, “We’ve just got to work harder to deliver the change the American people want.”

Last week, the Center for American Progress (CAP), which received significant seed money from George Soros, released a 47-page paper illustrating how he could do that: by ruling through executive order, as this author reported he would. Some of their proposals include blocking legislation passed by Congress, advancing the Cloward-Piven Strategy, and levying a new fee on foreign oil. Now, Soros is threatening to dry up the cash flow if Obama does not comply. Obama appears poised to continue shoving the big government liberalism Americans repudiated this month down their collective throat through executive action.

The Obamas' Radical Pal Wants a New Popular Front

Ben — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 00:58:26 +0000

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com


Fmr. SDS Radical Marilyn Katz

All of Obama’s radical revolutionary friends seem to be coming out into the light. Just weeks ago, former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers endorsed Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity.” Then his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, told cameras, “The American government is the real terrorist.” Now Marilyn Katz — a lifelong “revolutionary” and longtime, intimate friend of Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, Barack’s alter ego Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod — has written an article in the socialist magazine In These Times calling for the creation of a new “progressive” organization to motivate his hard-Left base. Katz has spent decades attempting to create socialist-oriented groups dominated by Marxists that included enough deluded liberals to give the appearance of a mainstream political venture. Her article, and the re-emergence of Obama’s Marxist supporters, may signal the beginning of just such a renewed effort.

ObamArrogance

Ben — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 02:35:48 +0000

Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports

Barack Obama has a theory about why you do not appreciate him: You’re stupid.

For months, the president has insisted the reason his part is facing an electoral apocalypse is less than two weeks is that the American people fail to properly understand how great he is. The solution, he insists, is more of him. Obama told a campaign stop in Seattle earlier today he could have sold his policies better. He insisted, “We had to move so fast, we were in such emergency mode, that it was very difficult for us to spend time a lot doing victory laps and advertising exactly what we were doing because we had to move onto the next thing.”

He manfully offered, “I take some responsibility for that.” The fifty-cent-piece stops here.

Throughout his push to ram ObamaCare down the collective American throat, he claimed he had not yet made his case. After the summer town hall meetings, Obama gave a mendacious speech before a joint session of Congress designed to sell his bill. He bought off Democratic senators from Louisiana and numerous other states, making this a simultaneous buy-and-sell job.

The bill eventually passed — but the sale has yet to end. As of March 5, Obama had given 54 speeches on health care alone. Yet a Rasmussen poll taken this week shows 55 percent of all Americans want to repeal ObamaCare, 46 percent “strongly favor” repeal. Nearly half the states in the union have sued the federal government to end the legislation.

Instead of listening to the American people, Obama has chosen to double-down on socialism — and call all dissenters imbeciles.

Last Saturday, Obama stood before a “small Democratic fundraiser” where he told those assembled, “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we’re hardwired not to always think clearly when we’re scared.” The trouble is, Republicans are “playing on fear.” If you think you’ve heard this line before, you’re right. Last summer, when ObamaCare seemed doomed, he said August was the month everyone gets “all wee-weed up.” As a candidate for office, jest-plain-folks Obama told a San Francisco fundraiser:

The Washington Post Discovers Valerie Jarrett

Ben — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 20:04:20 +0000

Ben Johnson, Floyd Reports

Dana Milbank has written an article for today’s edition of The Washington Post entitled, “Valerie Jarrett: The real center of Obama’s inner circle.” In it, Milbank properly writes no matter who replaces Rahm Emanuel as Barack Obama’s chief of staff, “the real power” resides “upstairs from the Oval Office, in the second-floor quarters of Valerie Jarrett.” However, Milbank omits the fact that Jarrett is a left-wing extremist who has served as the chief conduit of the far-Left into the Obama administration — and that she is, unfortunately, the perfect reflection of the president’s and the first lady’s shared values and beliefs.

The brief article states — as if it were news, because it is to those who rely on the mainstream media — that Valerie Jarrett is the most influential person in the White House next to Michelle Obama. It also notes several wisely anonymous officials “raised questions about Jarrett’s effectiveness and judgment.” It then recounts a few of Jarrett’s most recent, misguided actions. She convinced Obama to keep Eric Holder in place as Attorney General, to appoint left-wing ideologue Elizabeth Warren as founding head of the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection (a source told Milbank, “Elizabeth Warren is in the administration because of Valerie”), and to hire their mutual Chicago pal Desiree Rogers as social secretary. Rogers’ lax security policies and diva pretensions resulted in the Salahis crashing a state dinner last year.

But it is leaving out many other, more pernicious ways in which Jarrett has exercised her unparalleled influence.