Every Administration has this problem, the onligitory kiss & tell book. Usually they are written by those with slightly disfunctional personalities who make everything about them and are filled with high school level drama.
The Paul O’Neil book was filled with inaccuracies that have been well covered or were disputed by many others who were in the White House. The Richard Clarke Bush bashing book ended up having key points that contradicted Clarke’s own on the record previous statements and testimony. I wrote about many of the contradictions myself and spelled them out in detail. Former Press Secretery Scott McLellend wrote his kiss & tell bookwhich was also shown to have its share of inaccuracies by documents and people in the White House.
While these books are the latest examples, kiss & tell books from both parties tend to be nearly equally incredible. An exception was the book written by former CIA Bin Laden Unit Commander Dr. Michael Scheuer who was hard on both the Clinton and Bush administrations with time showing the book to be at least directionally accurate.
The latest book is By Matt Latimer is quickly showing to be nothing new. Notes and testimony of those around him are showing an all too familiar pattern.
Here is Dana Perino debunking Latimer’s claim that President Bush did not even know Sarah Palin. Considering how tight Bush always was with the Republican Governor’s Association the idea that Bush didn’t even know Palin is next to impossible to believe.
When Speechwriters Kiss and Tell A man I hired was not the star he thought he was.
By WILLIAM MCGURN
When the sun rises over our capital city this morning, its denizens will awake to a truly novel tale: The aggrieved ex-staffer—wait for it!—disillusioned by Washington. The tome out today is by former Bush speechwriter Matt Latimer, who describes the White House as “less like Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing and more like The Office.” In Mr. Latimer’s hands, it reads more like “The Princess Diaries,” full of hurt feelings and high-schoolish drama.
Like all kiss and tells, “Speechless: Tales of a White House Survivor” is thick with atmospherics intended to suggest the author’s importance: a West Wing office, meetings in the Oval, rides on Air Force One, etc. Like most kiss and tells too, it’s divided between heroes (Mr. Latimer and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld) and idiots (pretty much everyone else). And like so many kiss and tells, the tale of failure, foolishness and vanity it reveals is not necessarily the one the author intends.
As the senior staffer who brought Matt to the White House, let me start by adding some perspective. In a memoir that takes us from Matt’s childhood in Michigan through all the morons and phonies he worked for in Washington, only Mr. Rumsfeld gets the full gush. Left unmentioned is that Matt is on Mr. Rumsfeld’s payroll, working on the former Defense Secretary’s memoirs. Not that Mr. Rumsfeld need fear. If this book is any guide, an employer will read how stupid Matt really thought he was only after he’s no longer being paid.
In the same way, Matt neglects to mention that personnel took away his West Wing cubby when they needed space for someone more important. Or that he spent the next few weeks knocking on every door in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, looking for a room sufficiently grand to display his large and ever-expanding collection of framed testimonials to himself.
Ditto for Air Force One. Yes, he was on it, but not because he was important. To the contrary, I put him on it because he was failing. At one point in the book, he admits that he “never felt the connection” he was supposed to feel with the president. Bringing him into the Oval and getting him on Air Force One was a (losing) attempt on my part to get the president to warm up to him. These are distasteful things to have to say publicly about someone who once worked for you. And I would have taken them to the grave had Matt not used these props and the snippets of conversation he picked up to paint a highly distorted view of some very good people during some very tough times.
Nowhere is this clearer than in his account of putting together the address to the nation the president delivered last September during the financial crisis. Matt does capture the chaotic feel that surrounds any last-minute, high-stakes, prime-time speech. In his version most everyone—the president, economics adviser Keith Hennessey, counselor Ed Gillespie, etc.—comes across as a bumbling idiot.
I was gone by then, and had my own doubts about some of the solutions proposed. But I also knew Ed and Keith to be solid free-marketeers. And I had a better appreciation for the difficulties involved when I called Ed and he recounted a Roosevelt Room meeting that had led to the president’s speech.
In that meeting, the Fed chairman and the Treasury secretary warned the president that if he didn’t intervene, the global financial system was in danger of collapsing and America of plunging into another Great Depression. Certainly the decisions should be debated. But, Matt takes the cheap route, snarking about people struggling with those decisions while never explaining what he would have done differently.
As for how conservative President Bush was, this too is a legitimate argument that will continue for years. As conservatives debate, however, surely the hurt feelings of a speechwriter ought to be weighed against a record that includes turning around the war in Iraq, standing up for our intelligence officers, supporting our allies in Eastern Europe with missile defense, cutting taxes, concluding trade agreements, appointing good judges up and down the federal bench, and standing firm on the preciousness of human life—positions that brought down the derision and mockery of elites across our country.
In fairness, it’s not all yucks. On the day Mr. Rumsfeld resigns, Matt recounts a scene in the Defense secretary’s office. “You were my star,” (emphasis in the original) he tells Matt. “And, uh, I probably never told you that.” Right there in the secretary’s office, Matt reports, “I started to cry.’”
Right there too we see Mr. Bush’s greatest failing: Never did he look into young Matthew’s moist eyes and tell him, “You are my star.” If he only had we would have a very different book.
I think this video goes a little too far. With that said it makes some very interesting points that can push you right out of your comfort zone.
Most people would freak if they had ANY idea what Bible thumping, greek history reading, philosophy geek, gun-toting radicals most of the Founding Fathers really were. They were literally ready to shoot people over a tax that today we would consider small. They believed that if the government’s thugs pushed too far that it was your duty as an American to resist with force of arms. Jefferson very much believed that if any government went too far and disobeyed the Constitution and as a result the citizens extracted some of the government’s blood as a result that it was a good thing and should happen from time to time. History has become SO white washed and filtered that most people really don’t understand the hearts and minds of the Founders. As much as I admire Jefferson, I don’t think I could be as hard core as he was.
The norm for the world is tyranny of some type or oligarchy and central control. America’s experiment in human freedom, by world standards, is radical libertarian stuff. By OUR standards, having a society that is used to freedom, here the radicals are those who wish to be more like the rest of the world.
So the video asks, “Are Honduran’s more patriotic than we Americans and are they more in line with the ’spirit of Jefferson’ than we Americans are?” This video makes the case that this may very well be the situation we find ourselves in. The Honduran people did the right thing as they caught their own president red-handed going for a fast version of the “Hugo Chavez take over”.
This video is important to watch, even if you don’t agree it is thought provoking and a bit discomforting, which makes it a good intellectual exercise.
This one is pretty rich… Film maker Michael Moore says that capitalism is evil. The same system that has made him a multi-millionaire. Tom Tancredo says fine, if you love Marxism so much than spread the wealth, starting with your own.
Finally someone has come up with a satirical response to famed Patty Joseph who says that with Obama being elected she wont have to worry about paying her mortgage or paying ger gas.
That group is the Apollo Alliance. They are an elite group of people from ACORN, the SEIU union, and other groups.
The man in question today is Jeff Jones. So Obama has had dealings with not just one founder of the Weather Underground terror group, but two founders of it. This is a must see video.
Glenn Beck asks a prudent question, when Obama wrote in his books that he sought out marxist professors for guidance, when did he ever come out and renounce those views?
Democrat pollster Pat Cadell, ACORN and these groups that wrote the stimulus bill are looting the country:
His name is Van Jones. This is why Obama has picked so many czars. This is how characters like this who could not get confirmed by the Senate can work in the White House.
Newt Gingrich on how public schools administrators and unions run the school for the purpose of paying the union and bureaucracy. No kidding. My upcoming book will have plenty to say on that very topic.
This is Congressman Anthony Wiener and he is a good Democrat to watch because he makes the most outrageous policy positions sound so good and so reasonable, but when the surface of his rhetoric is examined you realize that it all falls apart. This is a great lesson on how a genuine anti-capitalist can make the most destructive policies seem so seductive.
While you watch Joe Scarborough interview this guy keep a few things in mind.
Medicare has a 4% overhead Wiener says, but since there is no incentive to keep it lean to make a profit their bureaucratic overhead costs are much higher than that of an insurance company. And since the government regulations have taken most of the market forces out of the system the costs rise at twice the rate of inflation. When a government has a monopoly, costs go up which means debt and rationing will go up.
Wiener says that the profits that insurance companies make means fewer health care dollars for you. It is just this simple, even with making a profit, the cost of private health insurance bureaucracy is cheaper than a government bureaucracy.
Joe Scarborough correctly asks (but blows the follow up). So should we only have Social Security and not private pension plans??
Great question Joe, Democrats are already saying that Social Security may default in two years (LINK). FDR intended Social Security to be a government program for only a few years and then wanted to roll it over into something like private annuity plans for every citizen. FDR never got his wish. Instead of investing that money and pre-funding our retirements the money was used for political reasons and now its broke when it didn’t have to be. The simple truth is that even with the few crashes we have had since the founding, there has never been a 25 year period even on a market as volatile as the stock market where if you invested your money in a diversified way that money would not have grown nicely for you. That includes the time of the great depression.
The private sector was able to grow costumers wealth and make a profit at the same time. Should we ban the IRA or the annuity or the trust fund and just have Social Security because “every dollar in profit the investors made was another dollar you didn’t get”? …Of course not and if you made such a comparison you would be laughed out of the room.
A SUMMARY OF THE 2009 ANNUAL REPORTS Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees
Wiener: I’ve asked you three times. What is their value? What are they bringing to the deal?
Whatever value they have lost is due to government intrusions into their business that you have always supported. You have created the very inefficiencies you now blame the insurance companies for. I know you don’t get that because you’re an economic ignoramus, but that’s the reality.
Wiener: Time out. Let’s focus on one thing at a time. This isn’t a commodity, Joe. Health care isn’t a commodity.
Yes it is and just because you say it isn’t does it make it so. I’d like to think that the LAWS of Gravity wouldn’t apply if I fell out of a window. It’s just as stupid to think that the LAWS of Supply and Demand don’t apply to health care.
Wiener: Correct. I want Medicare for all Americans.
Great. We’ve run out of beer and you want to invite more people to the party so we can drink their beer. That’s going to make for one hell of a brawl when all the beer runs out.
Well said.
Another poster at hotair.com makes another important point for doctors and the elderly:
Congressman Weenie and Joe, as usual, missed the point entirely. The problem is not what the insurance companies offer: but that they don’t and can’t offer the one thing thing inherent in every governmental action – the threat of coercive force.
Remember the federal health care police with GUNS in the HillaryCare plan?
By all accounts, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE) should have made a killing while serving the public. Instead they were ran and abused for the purpose of making Democrat appointees rich and we have seen the result.
Private companies are made to deliver by force of contract law, the government can do what ever it wants. Where would you put your money?
End game; do you want the government to do for health care what they have done for social security.
The Obama Admionistration asked you to send emails from friends that oppose or report on the ObamaCare bill to flag@whitehouse.gov. In essence they are asking you to report citizens as enemies of the state.
The administration says that they are not collecting names or such, they just want to collect “disinformation”.
But here is the problem. It is illegal to delete any info from White House communications. Everything is archived forever (theoretically by law anyways). So if they are doing this it is illegal, BUT if they arent it is still illegal because it is illegal for the federal government to track peoples exercize of their Fisst Amendment rights as the FBI did in the 50’s and 60’s.
The Hill Magazine is reporting that the White House has set up a “heathcare war room” to undermine and get around citizens who oppose the ObamaCare bill.
Instead Democrats are meeting with lobbyists with millions in funds to spread around and leftist economist and former clinton official Robert Reiche is sick of it LINK.
UPDATE III – Cornell Law Professor: Palin is right about “Death Panels” for Obamacare – LINK.
His name is Dr. Ezekeil Emmanuel. He is the health care advisor to President Obamna and is the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel.
Cass Sunstien is another presidential advisor who has written the same thing.
Watch this video…
UPDATE I –
Crystal Lake Health Care Panel: White House to AARP “Your at the table or your on the menu”
“Half of health care dollars are spent at the last years of your life, so they plan to save dollars by not spending that money.”
UPDATE II – Former Clinton Advisor Dick Morris: “The demonstrators are right, I have read the bill & it means the end of medicare. For the elderly, this is a matter of life and death, literally.”
UPDATE IV – Independence Institute video on how special interests destroyed Oregon state run health care:
UPDATE V – Betsy McCaughey with Senator Fred Thompson, ”It will hit the elderly the most”:
Fifty-one percent (51%) of Americans have a favorable view of the “tea parties” held nationwide last week, including 32% who say their view of the events is Very favorable.
Thirty-three percent (33%) hold an unfavorable opinion of the tea parties according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Fifteen percent (15%) are not sure.
While half the nation has a favorable opinion of last Wednesday’s events, the nation’s Political Class has a much dimmer view-just 13% of the political elite offered even a somewhat favorable assessment while 81% said the opposite. Among the Political Class, not a single survey respondent said they had a Very Favorable opinion of the events while 60% shared a Very Unfavorable assessment.
Not only does this indicate the divide between the people and the government, so much for bringing us all together, it also shows that NBC and other networks views are mimicking the political class that is now so unpopular.
One-in-four adults (25%) say they personally know someone who attended a tea party protest. That figure includes just one percent (1%) of those in the Political Class.
David Axelrod, a top adviser to President Obama, on Sunday characterized the protests in dozens of cities on the day federal income taxes are due as potentially “unhealthy.”
So much for dissent being patriotic as the Democrats who tried to wreck the war effort USED to say.
Fifty-eight percent (58%) of Americans say they followed recent new stories about the tea party protests, including 32% who followed Very Closely. Forty-one percent (41%) say they didn’t follow the reports.
Radio personalities John and Ken recently hosted a “taxpayer revolt” in Fullerton with a crowd of between 8,000 and 15,000 — and the L.A. Times wasn’t there to cover it. At the Readers’ Representative blog is a letter that editor David Lauter mass-mailed to “dozens” of readers who had written to complain about the lack of coverage.
Thanks to each of you for writing. I appreciate hearing from all of you — even the ones who called me a moron.
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Michelle Malkin reports today, the LA Times is reporting on upcoming far left ANSWER protests before they even happen:
This is why Old Media is dying. The Los Angeles Times today recycles press releases from left-wing A.N.S.W.E.R. announcing a protest of AIG this afternoon and an anti-war rally next weekend. The paper has no problem serving as advance publicity team for radical Left groups:
Demonstrators plan to rally outside the AIG building today in downtown Los Angeles to protest the giant insurer’s decision to pay $165 million in bonuses to key employees. American International Group Inc. recently received the first part of $180 billion in federal bailout funds.
“We’re going to be down there with whoever we can get,” said Ian Thompson of the Los Angeles chapter of the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (A.N.S.W.E.R.) coalition. “We’re going to be expressing anger and outrage about the new bonuses that were announced, that will be given to the very same folks who helped cause the financial meltdown.”
UPDATE – Related Story – Study says that elite media acts as ideological gatekeepers to censor news LINK …ya think?
This video from Sweden is another example of the culture war that is happening in parts of Western Europe.
There have been some reports of the violence in the southern Swedish city of Malmo where the police and other emergency services are too afraid to respond to calls. Parts of Malmo, as in some parts of France, have become a state within a state.
You don’t have to agree with this Swede’s video, but it does give a valuable perspective to the culture war that is happening there. You won’t see a video like this in class because it will make the radically politically correct freak out and just because the PC crowd might not like it, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a great deal of truth in the video.
Just look at these Swedish newspaper reports from 2004 -
Malmø, Sweden. The police now publicly admit what many Scandinavians have known for a long time: They no longer control the situation in the nations’s third largest city. It is effectively ruled by violent gangs of Muslim immigrants. Some of the Muslims have lived in the area of Rosengård, Malmø, for twenty years, and still don’t know how to read or write Swedish. Ambulance personnel are attacked by stones or weapons, and refuse to help anybody in the area without police escort. The immigrants also spit at them when they come to help. Recently, an Albanian youth was stabbed by an Arab, and was left bleeding to death on the ground while the ambulance waited for the police to arrive. The police themselves hesitate to enter parts of their own city unless they have several patrols, and need to have guards to watch their cars, otherwise they will be vandalized. “Something drastic has to be done, or much more blood will be spilled” says one of the locals.
The number of people emigrating from the city of Malmø is reaching record levels. Swedes, who a couple of decades ago decided to open the doors to Muslim “refugees” and asylum seekers, are now turned into refugees in their own country and forced to flee their homes. The people abandoning the city mention crime and fear of the safety of their children as the main reason for leaving.
ALL of the 600 windows at one of the schools in Malmø have been broken during the summer holiday. Window smashing alone costs the city millions every year. City buses have been forced to avoid the immigrant ghetto, as they are met with youths throwing rocks or bottles at them if they enter. Earlier this year, a boy of Afghan origin had made plans to blow up his own school.
People working at the emergency ward at the major hospital in Malmø receive threats every day, and are starting to get used to it. Patients with knives or guns are commonplace. They have discussed having metal detectors at the emergency entrance, but some fear this could be seen as a provocation.
Lisa Nilsson has lived in Manhatten, New York City, for 25 years. After moving back to Malmø, Sweden, she now misses the safety of New York. She never walks anywhere in Malmø after dark, but takes a taxi everywhere she goes.
Rapes in Sweden as a whole have increased by 17% just since the beginning of 2003, and have had a dramatic increase during the past decade. Gang rapes, usually involving Muslim immigrant males and native Swedish girls, have become commonplace. Two weeks ago, 5 Kurds brutally raped a 13-year-old Swedish girl.
22-year-old Swedish woman going out for fresh air gang raped by three strange men. The only said one word to her: “Whore!”
Ali Dashti comments: “Stories like this are in Swedish newspapers every week. Swedish media usually take great care not to mention the ethnic background of the perpetrators, but you can usually read it between the lines.”
One more: how have Swedish politicians reacted to the chaos caused in one of their major cities because of Muslims of whom even the police seem to be afraid? By making it easier for Muslims to enter Sweden:
Sweden’s politicians view arranged marriages as a positive tradition: a cultural pattern that immigrants should be allowed to preserve even in Sweden. The Swedish government feels that interfering in arranged marriages is an encroachment upon private life. In addition, immigrant couples can apply for family reunification in Sweden even if they’ve never seen each other before – as long as the marriage is entered in a culture with a tradition of parents arranging marriages on behalf of their children. A 2002 study by Växjö University economics professor Jan Ekberg found that immigration cost Swedish taxpayers DKK 33 billion that year, compared to just DKK 10 billion in Denmark. And while one might assume that the rise in costs would result in knee-jerk opposition to immigration, just the opposite has happened in Sweden. A Swedish government commission has proposed abolishing the so-called “seriousness requirement.”
This famed video has been featured all over the world. It examines the culture war and how that war is played out as a radicalized Islamic population grows. (Hat Tip Jim Quinn)
While I do not care for the picture that this youtuber added on at the end of the video, the video’s content itself makes an interesting case worthy of consideration and discussion. Politically correct extremists and those who choose to manipulate political correctness will find this video greatly offensive. Too bad.
Scenes such as those seen in London in January when protestors clashed with mounted riot police at a protest over Israel's action in Gaza could become more common sights in the UK. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid
