IMHO, this should have precluded her from getting within 50 yards of the White House.
Took the words right out of my mouth!
Posted on 01/15/2012 9:47:07 AM PST by freespirited
If for nothing else, Jodi Kantor’s The Obamas will be remembered for an anecdote from 2010. After he spent hours disputing an allegation in the French media that Michelle Obama thought life in the White House was “hell,” press secretary Robert Gibbs encountered senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. She told him the first lady was unhappy with his work. Gibbs exploded in a rage, informing Jarrett that she didn’t “know what the f— you’re talking about” and that if Mrs. Obama was displeased, well, “f— her too.” Subsequent relations between the senior adviser and press secretary were strained. Gibbs told Kantor he stopped taking Jarrett seriously “as an adviser to the president of the United States.”
It’s about time. Many have wondered—and the Washington Post asked last year—“What, exactly, does Valerie Jarrett do?” No one has a clear answer. Whatever she does, the U.S. taxpayer pays her $172,200 a year to do it. A confidante of the Obamas for more than two decades, variously described as the president’s “closest adviser” and a member of the “innermost ring” of influence, Jarrett clearly has the first couple’s ears. She seems to function as a sort of third party to the Obama marriage, guarding the president and his wife from bad news and outside influence while meeting with Lady Gaga. Her lack of any national political experience whatsoever—she had never been to Iowa before Obama competed there three years ago—has not prevented her from shaping the White House’s political strategy and influencing economic and foreign policies. One might liken her to Don Corleone’s consigliere Tom Hagen, bedecked in a designer shawl, except Hagen gave better advice.
What Valerie Jarrett does best is represent the Obama administration in microcosm. She embodies its insularity, its cronyism, its cluelessness. Born in Iran to a prominent African-American family from Chicago, she took degrees at Stanford and Michigan Law. She worked briefly as a corporate lawyer but hated every moment. So she decided to “give back,” which is Chicago code for cashing in. She campaigned for Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, and worked for him in the corporation counsel’s office. Washington died in 1987, but Jarrett remained in government, working for his successor, Mayor Richard M. “Richie” Daley, son of legendary boss Richard J. Daley. It was all upward from there.
Before long Jarrett stood at the intersection of private interest and public power. She became Daley’s deputy chief of staff and was later appointed to various boards and quasi-governmental agencies that award lucrative contracts—the Chicago Transit Board, the Commission for Planning and Development for the City of Chicago, the University of Chicago Medical Center, and so on. Her social standing, combined with her positions in government and her well-compensated seats on the boards of many companies, magnified Jarrett’s power. She knew everybody. Everybody wanted to know her.
In 1991, another disillusioned attorney, Michelle Robinson, applied for a job in Mayor Daley’s office. Jarrett interviewed her. The two women were instant friends. Before accepting the position, however, Robinson made an unusual request: Would Jarrett mind having dinner with her and her fiancé, Barack Obama? Jarrett accepted, and she has never been far from the couple since.
President Obama, who grew up partly in Indonesia, seems to be drawn to Americans who have spent considerable time abroad, who feel askew in their native land. Jarrett told author David Remnick that the reason she bonded with Barack Obama was that “he and I shared a view of where the United States fit in the world, which is often different from the view people have who have not traveled outside the United States as young children.” Remnick goes on to write that Jarrett viewed America “as one country among many, rather than as the center of all wisdom and experience.” Sounds like the president, all right.
Jarrett was an early supporter of Obama’s political career. From her post at the nexus of Chicago business and politics, she was helpful in introducing the ambitious state senator to rich and well-connected figures. The association was not without embarrassment, however. Jarrett was an occasional collaborator with the developer Antoin Rezko, whose 2006 arrest for public corruption became a shallow pothole in Obama’s road to the White House. And Jarrett herself provided some bad headlines: In addition to her public burdens, she ran Habitat Co., which received taxpayer subsidies to manage low-income housing projects seemingly into the ground. The feds seized one complex in 2006; another, Grove Parc Plaza, was exposed as a decrepit slum by the Boston Globe in 2008.
The Chicago method was on full display after Obama defeated John McCain, when functionaries from across the state of Illinois lobbied for the president-elect’s now vacant Senate seat. Evidence released at the trial of former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich reveals that Jarrett, who has never been elected to anything, wanted to replace her protégé in the Senate. This was something incoming chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was only too happy to make happen, since he had no desire for Jarrett to join the Obamas at the White House. But the president-elect overruled both advisers. He wanted Jarrett by his side. Later she became mistrustful of Emanuel when she learned that he had tried to sideline her.
The feeling was mutual. One of Obama’s more flowery hagiographers, journalist Richard Wolffe, divides the administration into “revivalists,” who want the president to be true to the spirit of hope and change, and “survivalists,” who believe compromise is necessary in a divided country. Jarrett is the leader of the revivalists, and her fingerprints are on every blunder and boo-boo the White House has ever made. She bragged to a conference of leftwing bloggers that she had hired noted environmentalist and 9/11 Truther Van Jones, later forced to resign. She campaigned extensively for Obama to travel to Copenhagen and make the case for holding the 2016 summer games in Chicago before the International Olympic Committee. Obama took the trip; the IOC chose Rio. During this time Jarrett met with George Kaiser, the Obama bundler and investor whose solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra was up for a huge loan guarantee. Jarrett, according to government documents, was warned about Solyndra’s shaky finances on the eve of the president’s visit to the company’s facility in Fremont, California. Obama went anyway.
One could be forgiven for thinking that the president tends to side with the revivalists because they feed his ego. Jarrett’s descriptions of Obama are adoring. “I knew the unique combination of leadership qualities that Barack has would push him to greatness,” she told Richard Wolffe. “They always have. Barack has this kind of a—what’s the way to describe it?—restless spirit.” Obama, she told Remnick, has “been bored to death his whole life. He’s just too talented to do what ordinary people do. He would never be satisfied with what other people do.” Fed a constant diet of words like these, is it any wonder Obama decided to press on with his health care overhaul after Scott Brown won in Massachusetts, refused any meaningful compromise with Republicans during last summer’s debt ceiling fight, and insisted on giving one “major” address after another even though they have done nothing to advance his agenda or salvage his underwater approval rating?
The House is lost, Obama’s reelection looks dicey, but Jarrett is flying high. In one sense she is the most successful Obama courtier of them all: She has outlasted her rivals. Gibbs is gone. Internal clashes led to Emanuel’s sudden discovery that he had always wanted to be mayor of Chicago. Emanuel’s replacement, fellow Chicagoan Bill Daley (brother of Richie), was muscled out last week; word is he fought with Jarrett too. Her persistence is matched only by her tone-deafness. Wolffe describes the president’s first visit to Chicago after his inauguration. From the window of his helicopter Obama could see that his arrival had caused a major traffic jam. “We shouldn’t have come here in rush hour,” he reflected. This was too much for Jarrett. “You know what, Mr. President?” she said. “You may not be enjoying your new life, but I am.”
Better enjoy it while it lasts—which won’t be for long if Obama continues to listen to his inept political fixer.
It bears repeating, what you describe is the absolute truth. Those of us who have paid attention have known about her control and influence for years. I find it interesting that we are hearing things about her with a little more frequency. Obviously with some people the bloom is off the rose. We can only hope.
I thought everyone knew what Valerie Jarrett does - she makes the final decision on policy issues, foreign and domestic.
Although that is a role normally played by the President of the United States that's not the way it is for this President. It's just not the Obama way. He needs the support of Jarrett before any important decisions are made. She is the real "One".
“Jarrett is a remora”
Perfect analogy.
***I believe Jarrett actually runs the White House—the Presidency.***
Then there is that “unknown source” that claimed that Hillary and Panetta sidelined Jarrett and Obama, then ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, lest Jarrett influence Obama into not making a decision to nail Osama’s hide to the wall.
If “I” had been prez I would have ordered the execution of OBL, cut off his head and display it in alcohol, then fay the skin and nail it to the WH wall! But then I’m not the prez.
I think the real meaning of this is, "... He just agrees with my personal agenda too much to do what ordinary people do...."
Iranian birth. Explains a lot. Never could stand this woman...she’s pulling the puppet strings all right.
According to the documents obtained by Judicial Watch from the Illinois Secretary of State, Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.) Jarrett was a member of the Board of Directors for the Woodlawn Preservation and Investment Corporation along with several Davis and Rezko associates, as well as the Fund for Community Redevelopment and Revitalization, an organization that worked with Rezko and Davis
.....
As Chief Executive Officer of the Habitat Company Jarrett also managed a controversial housing project located in Obama’s former state senate district called Grove Parc Plaza. According to the Boston Globe the housing complex was considered “uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage...In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale — a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.” Ms. Jarrett refused to comment to the Globe on the conditions of the complex.
Excellent thread by Starwise contains much information on Jarret and Rahm-E by various posters and a very good article to boot.
Obama Aides Hire Defense Counsel for Blagojevich Probe (Emanuel, Jarrett)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2156010/posts
Yeah...go figure. I never thought I woud see the day I would say “You go, Gibbs!”
Someone help me!!!!!!!! I have entered an alternate universe!!!!!
Much background here:
Valerie Jarrett’s Father-in-Law Was a Communist – Worked With Obama Mentor Frank Marshall Davis
https://romanticpoet.wordpress.com/tag/valerie-jarrett-vernon-jarrett-communist/
~~~~~~~~
Excerpt:
Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran to American parents James E. Bowman and Barbara Taylor Bowman. Her father, a pathologist and geneticist, ran a hospital for children in Shiraz, as part of a program where American doctors and agricultural experts sought to help jump-start developing countries’ health and farming efforts. When she was five, the family moved to London for one year, returning to Chicago in 1963.[citation needed]
In 1966 her mother, Barbara T. Bowman, was one of four child advocates that created the Erikson Institute. The Institute was established to provide advanced knowledge in child development for teachers and other professionals working with young children.[citation needed]
As a child she spoke Persian and French.[3]
Jarrett graduated from Northfield Mount Hermon in 1974. She earned a B.A. in Psychology from Stanford University in 1978, and a Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981.[citation needed]
In 1983 Jarrett married Dr. William Robert Jarrett, son of famed Chicago Sun-Times reporter Vernon Jarrett. She attributes her switch from a private to a public career to their daughter Laura’s birth and her own desire to do something that would make the daughter proud.[4]
To one reporter’s e-mailed question about her divorce, she replied, “Married in 1983, separated in 1987, and divorced in 1988. Enough said.”[4] In a Vogue profile, she further explained “We grew up together. We were friends since childhood. In a sense, he was the boy next door. I married without really appreciating how hard divorce would be.”[4] William Jarrett died of a sudden heart attack in 1993.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Jarrett
~~~~~~
Much background
Valerie Jarrett Slum Queen
http://www.brayincandy.com/id168.html
Many of the Van Jones records/videos have been removed...he is a Communist and Valerie Jarrett knew it but then Ms. Jarrett is no US Constitutionalist........Bill Ayers is another old friend of both Obama's along with the Rev. Wright. The Black Panthers, Black Radical Congress, Cornel West and his in-your-face Afro, Obama is plain and simply surrounded by Anti Americans who are Communist and Marxist acually raised by them....Valery Jarrett is speaking for the country as she speaks through Obama and Michelle most of the time. Need more proof? read Marc Thiessen's book, "Courting Disaster"....Obama is not stupid...he is systematically striping the nation of both its wealth and security. .....it is easy to research and see what this Marxist is doing.
You got that right!!!
Ain’t that the truth! Stuffed and mounted, or placed on a pike for the crows to pick at.
bttt
I believe Jarrett actually runs the White House.
Some truth to it but she is only one of his handlers,she isn’t smart enough to pull all the strings.
$oro$ is another one,a lot of strings attached to Obama.
Whats proof enough for you, party registration?
She hired Van Jones, the only one of these communists scumbags honest enough to admit he is one.
OBAMA WATCH CENTRAL
WorldNetDaily Exclusive
Communist sympathizer introduced top adviser?
Valerie Jarrett’s family worked closely with Obama mentor Frank Marshall Davis
http://www.wnd.com/2009/09/109222/
Ping.
I have a better idea. Instead of a bronze statue, I’d rather see the Lord give him an Acts 12:23 experience!
Acts 12:21 And upon a set day Herod, arrayed in royal apparel, sat upon his throne, and made an oration unto them.
Acts 12:22 And the people gave a shout, saying, It is the voice of a god, and not of a man.
Acts 12:23 And immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because he gave not God the glory: and he was eaten of worms, and gave up the ghost.
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