White House aides tried to stop ObamaCare

Barack Obama has previously declared himself a "pragmatist" rather than an "ideologue" and insisted that he listens to all points of view. Not so, according to a recent White House expose by Bloomberg. According to the article, several of Obama's closest advisors tried to talk him down from his health care dreams, worrying about the practical and electoral consequences. The president, a profile in stubbornness, refused to listen.

-- Rahm Emanuel, the most moderate of Obama's advisors, "suggested the president consider a scaled-back version and declare victory" after Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts. Obama refused. Earlier on, in a meeting shortly after Inauguration Day, Emanuel also warned the president about taking on health care reform.

-- Joe Biden is described as being "pessimistic" about health care reform from the very beginning. At the post-Inauguration Day meeting, Biden "said Americans didn’t care enough about health-care coverage to make it a priority".

-- David Axelrod "voiced caution" at the same meeting. Later on in the debate, he confronted the president and explained, "The polls are difficult and there’s a lot of grousing on the Hill about it, and this is going to cost a lot politically in the short run." Obama still refused to back down.

-- Even Ezekiel Emanuel, a rationing-obsessed budget advisor to the president, was skeptical. After Scott Brown emerged victorious in Massachusetts, he wrote in an e-mail that health care reform was "dead...F---ing dead."

In the end, Obama ignored all of them, along with countless Democrat legislators and a majority of the American people. He did have one key ally though. Politico has reported that the president was pushed hard by Nancy Pelosi to ignore Emanuel's concerns and still pass the bill. Ultimately he sided with her over virtually everyone else.

House condemns Obama on Israel

Last week, Barack Obama kicked American-Israeli relations to their lowest point in decades by abandoning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House. An Israeli aide later said Netayahu had been treated in a way usually reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea. Obama's actions were so offensive that a heavy majority in the House of Representatives condemned the president over the weekend.

Meanwhile, in Washington, 337 congressmen – three-quarters of the House of Representatives – signed a bipartisan letter to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressing solid support for Israel and the expectation that differences between Jerusalem and Washington will be smoothed over quickly and in private.

“We are writing to reaffirm our commitment to the unbreakable bond that exists between our country and the State of Israel and to express to you our deep concern over recent tension,” the letter read. “A strong Israel is an asset to the national security of the United States and brings stability to the Middle East.

“We are concerned that the highly publicized tensions in the relationship will not advance the interests the US and Israel share. Above all, we must remain focused on the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear weapons program to Middle East peace and stability.”

The letter stated that the US’s unswerving commitment to Israel’s security has been essential in forging previous Israeli-Arab peace agreements, “both because it convinced those who sought Israel’s destruction to abandon any such hope and because it gave successive Israeli governments the confidence to take calculated risks for peace.”

"Deep concern" is fighting words in Capitol Hill's hyper-polite culture. Condemnation of his policy on Israel might be Obama's first, real, bipartisan achievement. The highest signatories were House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Minority Whip Eric Cantor. Blue Dog Democrats also signed en masse.

All this led to some spectacular backtracking by David Axelrod. The president's advisor had previously called Netanyahu's decision to build apartments in East Jerusalem "destructive" to peace and "an insult." Yesterday on CNN, he moderated his rhetoric, insisting that there had been "no snub intended" by the United States and that Israel is a "close, dear and valued friend of the United States, a great ally, and that is an unshakeable bond." All this should serve as a message to moderate Democrat congressmen: If you band together and stand firm, the president will be forced to listen.

Meanwhile, Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, has kept his lips sealed. He can't be happy about the administration's snub though. Emanuel is a former civilian volunteer with the Israeli Defense Forces and has strong connections to Israel. He's also a close friend of Axelrod's, with whom he's likely spoken since Netanyahu's visit.

Clash between two of Obama's czars

One of the downsides about appointing unelected and unaccountable officials is there's usually no one to reign them in. As Obama's treatment of Israel creates tremors throughout his administration, Central Region Czar Dennis Ross and Mideast Peace Czar George Mitchell are having at it.

Sources say within the inter-agency process, White House Middle East strategist Dennis Ross is staking out a position that Washington needs to be sensitive to Netanyahu’s domestic political constraints including over the issue of building in East Jerusalem in order to not raise new Arab demands, while other officials including some aligned with Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell are arguing Washington needs to hold firm in pressing Netanyahu for written commitments to avoid provocations that imperil Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and to preserve the Obama administration's credibility.

Ross is perhaps Obama's sanest czar. A product of the president's "team of rivals" thinking at the beginning of his term, Ross fervently supported the Iraq War and worked as a Fox News contributor. Mitchell is a former Democratic Senate Majority Leader and is widely respected throughout the Middle East. Nevertheless, his comment about staying tough on Israel so Obama doesn't lose "credibility" is very telling. In other words, the president has hurt feelings because Netanyahu announced the apartments' construction in East Jerusalem while Biden was in the country. But it's difficult to see how snubbing the leader of one of America's strongest allies in the White House boosts their credibility.

Either way, Ross will now have to be destroyed by the more radical elements of the Obama Administration. An unnamed official is leading the charge.

“He [Ross] seems to be far more sensitive to Netanyahu's coalition politics than to U.S. interests,” one U.S. official told POLITICO Saturday. “And he doesn't seem to understand that this has become bigger than Jerusalem but is rather about the credibility of this Administration."

So American-Israeli relations are in shambles, the president doesn't care, and the one czar who expresses concern is practically accused of treason.

Rahm using GPS to track major White House players

CBS aired a rare interview with Rahm Emanuel last night. Among the usual blather about how much Emanuel swears and his penchant for political hardball, Katie Couric was given a tour of Rahm's White House office. Next to Emanuel's desk computer was another device: a GPS tracking system.

According to Couric, Emanuel uses the device to track the major players at the White House, including the president, first lady, vice president, second lady, and their family members. The readout shows where each person is, right down to the very room they're in. Presumably the GPS is activated through its quarries' cell phones, which emit an electronic signal that can be pinpointed. For some reason, CBS was allowed to point a camera at the device's screen. If you look carefully, you'll notice two names at the bottom who are listed as being in Chicago -- "SAP David" and "SAP Valerie". That would be Senior Advisors to the President David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett.

Given what a ruthless and paranoid political operator Emanuel is, the fact that he's tracking the most powerful men in the world via GPS is concerning. This sort of cell phone stalking is usually reserved for the National Security Agency, which has often abused the power. The only way to stop a cell phone from emitting a traceable signal is to remove its battery -- something Republicans might want to consider next time they're at the White House.

Watch the full interview here:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Rahm strikes a nerve with David Axelrod

The recent speculation over whether Rahm Emanuel is splitting with the administration hasn't gone over well with David Axelrod.

“This is what Washington does — it gets itself into a tizzy,” White House senior adviser David Axelrod said, adding that the president’s team is determined to “stay tight.” “We dismiss it for what it is. There aren’t 10 people outside of Washington who give a rat’s ass about any of this. They’ve got bigger stuff to worry about, and we’re trying to worry about that. The same people who are all in a tizzy right now are the same people who called us idiots for the better part of two years.”

Except people outside Washington are concerned about this. Axelrod, who is one of the president's closest advisors, has been described as seeing the president as a political messiah. Two of the president's other three top dogs, Robert Gibbs and Valerie Jarrett, reportedly feel the same way. If the already-arrogant president is being advised by suck-ups who worship the ground he walks on, he can't be trusted to run the country.

Axelrod also said that Obama's administration is completely united, which we know is completely bogus. Emanuel has been trying to talk the president off his health care/KSM civilian trial suicide path for months now. Axelrod apparently still isn't listening.

Is Rahm playing CYA on health care?

For weeks, we've been wondering what Rahm Emanuel is up to. The fiery chief of staff has been leaking stories to the Washington Post arguing that he's the only one at the White House who has a clue. According to the articles, if Obama had listened to Emanuel's more moderate advice, he wouldn't be sinking in political quicksand today. In particular, Emanuel emphasized that he wants the administration to quietly abandon health care and start talking about job creation.

Previously, we've wondered if Emanuel is just trying to stave off the radical left, which hates Rahm right now for his pragmatism. Now, we have a different theory. Obama is mounting one last attempt to try to ram through his health care legislation, which the public overwhelmingly despises. He may as well lead congressional Blue Dog Democrats onto a plane and then fly them into the side of a mountain. Moderate Democrats, with their eyes on the election calendar, are starting to buck the president. A single ObamaCare bill needs another majority vote in both the House and the Senate to become law. It almost certainly won't happen.

Rahm, who wants to shift the focus to jobs, no doubt realizes how incredibly stupid this is. When ObamaCare fails again and Republicans clean up this November, Democrats are going to start looking for a scapegoat. Rahm's message? "It sure as hell wasn't my fault. I tried to stop this crazy thing."

It almost makes you pity Emanuel. We've noted before how the president's three other closest advisors -- Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod -- all see Obama's election as manifest destiny for radical progressives. Poor Rahm is a realist surrounded by left-wing whackjobs who think Obama is a secular Christ figure. He's also a moderate check on their extreme views, which means we should hope he keeps his job for as long as possible.

More on Rahm

Here's an update on our last post on Rahm Emanuel. Dana Milbank's piece, which defended Emanuel and attacked his critics like Leslie Gelb, got its information from a leak in the administration somewhere. Where else but from Emanuel himself? It looks like the famously combative Rahm is doing a little self defense.

ObamaWatchNews has previously reported that the president's brain trust consists of four people: David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett, and Emanuel. Interestingly, Milbank attacks all of them, except Rahm, as being "in love with the president" -- information that could have only come from the inside. It almost makes you wonder if Emanuel wrote the whole piece himself.

Emanuel must be very isolated in the administration right now. If he's going so far as to leak inside information to reporters in order to defend himself, resignation seems like the next logical step. Once he goes, there will be nothing standing between the president and his administration's radical leftists.

Rahm Emanuel: The sanest person in the White House?

Can it be so? Dana Milbank wrote a fascinating column in the Washington Post wondering if Emanuel is the only sane person in the west wing.

"Obama's problem is that his other confidants -- particularly Valerie Jarrett and Robert Gibbs, and, to a lesser extent, David Axelrod -- are part of the Cult of Obama. In love with the president, they believe he is a transformational figure who needn't dirty his hands in politics.

The president would have been better off heeding Emanuel's counsel. For example, Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig's effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, arguing that it wasn't politically feasible. Obama overruled Emanuel, the deadline wasn't met, and Republicans pounced on the president and the Democrats for trying to bring terrorists to U.S. prisons. Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco.

Obama's greatest mistake was failing to listen to Emanuel on health care. Early on, Emanuel argued for a smaller bill with popular items, such as expanding health coverage for children and young adults, that could win some Republican support. He opposed the public option as a needless distraction."

When Rahm is the only thing standing between Obama and his dreams of a left-wing fantasy land you know we're screwed.

Like we said, the White House is being run by Chicago

Edward Luce of the Financial Times has an incredible article up on Barack Obama's White House, an absolute must-read for all Obama Watchers. Luce talked with dozens of Obama's allies and discovered that the old Chicago gang is running the show in Washington. Of course, we told you that months ago, but it's great to see a journalist finally do some legwork on this. Luce found that, other than the president, the people who command the president's attention are Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Gibbs. This Gang of Four has unprecedented power in Washington. Luce writes:

"And barring Richard Nixon’s White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle."

With the exception of Gibbs, the members of that inner circle are all old cronies from Chicago.

"The president, who is the first to keep a BlackBerry, rarely holds a meeting, including on national security, without some or all of them present."

Emanuel used to be a congressman, but how the hell do the other three know anything about national security?

Luce also reveals that Obama's cabinet members are often shut out in favor of his Chicago dream team, particularly Emanuel who has alienated many others in the administration with his bullying and profanity.

John Kennedy trusted his talented brother and attorney general Bobby. Richard Nixon was advised most closely by the brilliant Henry Kissinger. George W. Bush turned to Dick Cheney and Condoleeza Rice. When Barack Obama needs advice about governing, he turns to three old Chicago hacks and a pompous press flack from Alabama.