The list, for Obama's Forty Ninth Week in Office

Nachumlist ^ | 1/1/10 | Nachum

[Nachum]

 Obama's Forty Ninth Week in Office

Latest Additions to "The List"

"The List" for 1/1/2010

New Year's Day

Erroll Southers, the Obama White House's nominee to head the Transportation Security Administration, refuses to answer questions about whether he would work toward unionizing the TSA.   There are claims that Southers misled the senate in sworn testimony about about an incident 20 years ago in which Southers improperly accessed a government criminal database. The White House did not send Southers' nomination to the Senate until September 10, 2009 -- 243 days into the Obama administration. The nomination was then in committee -- controlled entirely by Democrats -- for more than two months, finally coming to the Senate floor on November 20, when Reid proposed that Southers be confirmed by unanimous consent.

Obama makes the first transexual appointment, Amanda Simpson as a senior technical advisor to the Dept. of Commerce

"The List" for 12/31/2009

The Mayo Clinic, Obama as a national model for efficient health care, will stop accepting Medicare patients as of tomorrow at one of its primary-care clinics in Arizona, saying the U.S. government pays too little.

Letter to Obama from Senators Sessions and Kyl about possible violation of the executive order

The Obama administration, by releasing Qais and Laith Qazali and more than 100 members of the Iranian-backed Asaib al Haq, may have violated an executive order put in place by President Ronald Reagan to prevent negotiations with hostage takers. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl asked this question to the Obama administration in a letter sent to the president in July.

A federal judge is slamming the Obama administration for refusing to take a position in a lawsuit brought against the Palestinian Authority in connection with an alleged terrorist attack in 2000 that claimed the life of a 25-year-old American, Esh Gilmore.

Pattern on the way Obama deals with problems? First, White House aides downplays that something may have gone wrong on their part. While staying out of the spotlight, the president conveys his efforts to address the situation and his feelings about it through administration officials. After a few days, the White House concedes on the issue, and perhaps Obama even steps out to address it.

White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer went after Republicans again on the Obama adminisration's blog

Taxpayer losses from supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will top $400 billion, according to Peter Wallison, a former general counsel at the Treasury

The number of US military dead in Afghanistan doubles in 2009

China on Thursday decried a U.S. decision to impose duties of 10 to 16 percent on Chinese-made steel pipe, the biggest U.S. trade case to date against China, and said it had been made a scapegoat of protectionist interests.

"The List" for 12/30/2009

Obama has rejected his first piece of legislation from Congress, after almost 50 weeks in office

Iraqi hostage dealing: British citizen Peter Moore freed in exchange for terrorists

The United States will slap penalty duties on imported Chinese steel pipes targeted for unfair subsidies, officials said Wednesday, heightening trade tensions between the two powers

U.S. AG Holder’s former law firm, Covington & Burling, represented a number of Yemeni detainees who are/were being held in GITMO.

The US Treasury announced Tuesday a 3.8 billion dollar fresh capital injection into ailing GMAC, the former finance arm of General Motors that became a bank to access federal rescue aid.

Treasuries headed for the worst year in at least three decades as the U.S. stepped up debt sales to help spur growth in an economy recovering from the biggest slump since the Great Depression.  Obama is borrowing unprecedented amounts for spending programs. U.S. marketable debt increased to a record $7.17 trillion in November from $5.80 trillion at the end of last year.

Obama White House takes 3 hours to respond to Dick Cheney remarks

Obama takes 3 days to respond to terror attempt on Delta flight

White House visitors' log shows that ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis was in the White House residence one week before the famous sting videos of ACORN were released

More "visitors" to the White House:General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt visited roughly a dozen times....Goldman Sach's CEO Lloyd Blankfein spent almost an entire day at the White House on October 29.   Steven Rattner,who runs the government's auto task force and is co-founder of the investment firm, Quadrangle Group, met with Larry Summers over 25 times..... George Soros met with Summers in February....SEIU President Andy Stern's top assistant Anna Burger met with the President 10 times....Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, met with the President 4 times.

William Ayers visited the White House three times in 2009

25,000 additional White House visitor records posted online

The CIA rejects Obama claim of intelligence failure over Detroit terrorist

Jide Zeitlin, the Obama administration's nominee to be America's point man for financial reform at the United Nations, has withdrawn himself from consideration for the job, an administration official tells The Cable.  Zeitlin, a former Goldman Sachs executive and telecom entrepreneur, had faced criticism for his business dealings related to Indian contractors and was also accused of identity fraud for an incident in which he admitted to sending an email to investors masked as coming from one of his competitors. Zeitlin testified before Congress that the email was a prank.

While a terrorist was plotting to kill Americans over the Christmas holidays, the Federal Aviation Administration spends $5 million on a three-week-long Christmas party

Obama gives INTERPOL a free hand in the US and says as little as possible about it....this new directive from Obama may be the most destructive blow ever struck against American constitutional civil liberties.

Obama conceded that both human and systemic failures of U.S. Intelligence had failed to bar a Nigerian man posing a reported security risk from boarding that Detroit-bound jetliner - a near-''catastrophic" breakdown in security - Obama left the reporters taking his words in Hawaii and went snorkeling

"The List" for 12/29/2009

The Palistinian Authority believe the US will force Israel to allow them to build an airport

Obama created by executive order Tuesday a National Declassification Center to oversee efforts to make once-secret government documents public.

Obama has apparently issued a long-awaited executive order on classification that fulfills one of his campaign promises by setting up a National Declassification Center to oversee the release of historical documents. But the announcement, ironically, is shrouded in secrecy and confusion.  A new presidential order, and blog entires appear and disappear.

Rep. Peter King of New York, the leading Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, tells National Review Online that the Obama White House has built an “iron curtain” around national-security information in order to block Congress from investigating Northwest Airlines Flight 253. “This administration is not cooperating,” says King. “They have a stonewalling mentality.

The White House has published an internal memo to calm tension between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who is seeking increased control over covert operations.  

GMAC to get another $2.5 Billion

AUDIO: From 2007, Obama tells the nation When he's elected America will be safer from Islamic terrorism because he has lived in a Muslim country

The Obama administration spent Christmas weekend in an internal debate over whether to tell the American people the government failed to protect airline passengers in the wake of the terror attack on Northwest Airlines flight 253

The veteran Justice Department voting rights section chief who recommended going forward on a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party after they disrupted a Pennsylvania polling place in last year's elections has been removed from his post and transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina.

"The List" for 12/28/2009

The Justice Dept. requests that DNA tests for the Detroit Bomber Abdulmutallab be cancelled

Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, ABC News is reporting, quoting American officials and citing Department of Defense documents.

Transcript of Obama remarks on terror attack over Detroit

Obama refers to the Northwest Airlines terrorist as an “isolated extremist”

Nicolas Sarkozy, the most pro-American president of France for half a century, has gone cold on Barack Obama, the most popular American leader in France in generations.

Rep. Don Manzullo (R-Ill.) said last week he was “shocked” to hear a senior Department of Defense official agree with him that the administration’s plan to move detainees of Guantanamo Bay to Thomson, Ill., would pose an increased security risk.

The Obama administration said today it opposed Israel’s move to build about 700 apartments in East Jerusalem.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano conceded Monday that airline security failed in allowing a Nigerian on a terror watch list and allegedly armed with explosives onto a Detroit-bound flight, a turnaround from her declaration a day day earlier that "the system worked."

Obama promised Americans in a speech to Congress that his version of a government-run health care bill would not contain abortion funding. Now his top spokesman confirms that Obama favors the Senate bill that funds abortions over the House bill that bans abortion funding.

Yields on benchmark 10-year notes will climb about 40 percent to 5.5 percent, the biggest annual increase since 1999, according to David Greenlaw, chief fixed-income economist at Morgan Stanley in New York. The surge will push interest rates on 30-year fixed mortgages to 7.5 percent to 8 percent, almost the highest in a decade, Greenlaw said.  Investors are demanding higher returns on government debt, boosting rates this month by the most since January, on concern President Obama's attempt to revive economic growth with record spending will keep the deficit at $1 trillion

"The List" for 12/27/2009

Obamacare: There are scores of provisions in the 383 pages of changes made to the $871 billion Senate bill that benefit only a handful of states, sometimes even a single institution.

VIDEO: 2 million in stimilus dollars to caulk 7 homes

White House sources tell ABC News the President will "likely" speak publicly about the alleged attempted terrorist attack on Flight 253 in the next few days. 

The United States has demanded clarifications from Israel after IDF special forces killed three terrorists Saturday who murdered a civilian, Rabbi Meir Chai, on Thursday.

Plans to send Guantanamo detainees to Yemen must be re-examined in light of an attempt to destroy a Northwest Airlines jet, lawmakers said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that "the system worked."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday there was no indication so far that a botched terror attack on a U.S. airliner was part of a broad international effort.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano tells ABC's Jake Tapper- “everything went according to clockwork” in how passengers, crew and the government reacted to the attempted bombing of Flight 253.  ...But she wasn’t so sure about how well the government performed before the incident. 

Senate health bill is closer to Obama's goal on abortion

Obama's plan to force contractors to hire union workers for large government construction projects is proving easier said than done, confusing and costlier than expected.

Obama scores well among ethics watchdog groups in his first year in office

 

[Nachum]

The list for King KamehObama for the 49th week.

Happy New Year's to you all!

Let me know if you'd like to be on or off the ping list

[Carl LaFong]

Seems more like 49 years.

[mulligan]

And each week was worse than those previous. And next year will be even worse.

[Dinah Lord]

Happy New Years, Nachum.

Could you please add me to your ping list?

Thanks. Dinah

(King KamehObama - heh.)

[Mountain Mary]

on

[MissEdie]

Too bad he won’t add “Resign” to the top of that list.

[Jet Jaguar]

BTTT

[Nachum]

,i>Too bad he won’t add “Resign” to the top of that list.

Just wait till the Republicans take control of both houses. Then we might well see a Richard Nixonion belly flop.