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After months of public missteps, embarrassing distractions and declining poll numbers, the White House is rolling out a new-look Obama to recapture the public imagination.Instead of the staid, stuffy image Obama has been sporting, campaign stylists have chosen a youthful, hip image popular among the tween set."Back in 2008, Obama became inexplicably popular and rode it all the way to the White House," according to administration Coiffure Czar Christophe LeBon. "My 28-member team thought, 'who is inexplicably popular in 2010 and how can we best capture his essence?' I think we nailed it."This search resulted in a new look that insiders...

The White House attempted to push back against allegations that Barack Obama or his staff attempted to bribe Joe Sestak into withdrawing from the Democratic Senate primary by offering him a job, but they may be creating bigger headaches with their defense. Axelrod tells CNN’s John King that there is “no evidence” that the bribe attempt ever happened, even while he acknowledges that it would have been “a serious breach of the law.” In order to believe that there is “no evidence,” though, one has to discount the repeated direct testimony of Sestak himself (via The Daily Caller): Senior adviser...

So, when will the Obama White House come clean about Rep. Joe Sestak? The Pennsylvania Senate nominee has charged for months that the White House "offered [him] a job" -- reportedly secretary of the Navy -- to abandon his primary challenge to Republican-turned-Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter. But Sestak stayed in and last week defeated Specter. Then, on "Meet The Press" Sunday, he reiterated the claim. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and special adviser David Axelrod both say the matter has been "looked into" and nothing "inappropriate" occurred. Sure they'd say that. Otherwise, they could be facing criminal charges. At least...

The "most open and transparent" president in American history is still playing hide-and-seek with the press, and even the liberal New York Times has begun to notice it, as indicated by this headline: "Obama Turns His Back On the Press." If the mainstream media were not so ideologically wedded to Obama's big-government agenda, they would be doing more than pointing out his secrecy and hypocrisy with the occasional headline. They'd be skewering him daily for his marked inaccessibility. Not having a genuine news conference since July would be remarkable for the least transparent administration, let alone one that made openness...

While President Obama assures Americans that his White House is the “people’s house,” he covertly gives political advisors taxpayer-funded personal drivers traditionally reserved for cabinet members and national security officials. Obama and Jarrett, who was his “Olympic Czar,” are so tight that he refers to her as a “sibling.” Before joining the administration Jarrett was involved in a series of real estate scandals, including several housing projects operated by convicted felon and Obama fundraiser/friend Antoin "Tony" Rezko. Besides getting a personal military driver to chauffer her around town and to and from work, Jarrett also gets Secret Service protection, which...

On November 4, 2008, America changed. On that day, an inexperienced candidate with a scant resume and views that contrasted with the majority of the population was elected to the most powerful office in the world, the Presidency of the Unites States of America. Brand Obama is an ongoing series that chronicles the powerful psychological techniques used in this improbable campaign. Axelrod had one main problem: How to maintain support when his candidate was easily attackable on many fronts. He was selling a facade without much foundation. In the face of relentless attacks from a professional political adversery, how could...

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday that President Obama does not decide who receives Secret Service protection and who does not. That doesn’t appear to be accurate. According to federal statute, there is a small group of government officials, starting with the president, who automatically receive Secret Service protection. There are varying degrees of protection. All other individuals who receive “protectee” status must be designated as such by an executive order from the president, according to the Secret Service website. The Secret Service often provides recommendations on who can or should be protected based on their own...

President Obama has expanded the very small group of top aides who are given the privilege of taxpayer-funded personal drivers — who take them from their house to work and back home again each day — to include two top political advisers. The Bush White House did not give the same privileges to any of its political advisers, according to former Bush administration officials. There is a record of the Clinton White House doing so once for two months, according to documents obtained by The Daily Caller. Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, both senior advisers to the president, have been...

What if Bush had said this?

In response to widespread reports over the weekend that Barack Obama committed a major diplomatic faux pas in his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, adviser David Axelrod, as expected, denied that the President snubbed Israel's head of state. According to a report at Reuters, Axelrod stated on CNN's State of the Union news program, "This was a working meeting among friends. And so there was no snub intended," White House senior adviser David Axelrod told CNN's State of the Union news program. Axelrod noted that the two leaders had met in private for two hours and...

David Axelrod tells the Huffington Post that health-care reform passed because Republicans downgraded to DEFCON 2 after Scott Brown's surprise victory in the Massachusetts Senate race: "Some of the steam went out of the opposition after that," Axelrod said. "I think that people felt like they had made a statement. Perhaps they felt like they had killed health care reform... They thought the fight was over. And that [the president] couldn't now succeed. I do believe that. And it is almost as if they had made the statement that they thought they had stopped the thing. And so it created...

It says a lot when Vice President Joe Biden comes across as the Obama administration's most skilled statesman. Last week during a visit to Israel, Mr. Biden was caught off-guard by an announcement that work would progress on 1,600 apartment units in Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, a Jewish enclave in the northern part of the city claimed by Palestinians. This faux pas could have ended civilly. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu apologized for the bad timing of the announcement, and Mr. Biden reiterated the strength of the relationship between the two countries. Life should have gone on. Instead, Secretary of...

Top White House adviser David Axelrod says that if Congress passes the Democrats' national health care bill, it will be politically impossible for Republicans to undo the changes brought by the massive legislation. "I say, Let's have that fight. Make my day," Axelrod said on "Meet the Press." "I'm ready to have that, and every member of Congress ought to be willing to have that debate was well." Axelrod made the point as he put forward the now-common argument that House Democrats who have already voted for the health care bill once should do so again because they will be...

In yet another display of this Administration's inexplicable and blatant arrogance, White House adviser David Axelrod dared the GOP on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday to try to repeal ObamaCare once it is approved. Axelrod claims that it will be politically impossible for the GOP to successfully challenge the mammoth 2 trillion dollar plan once it is in place, due to its supposed compassionate provisions for the underserved. Several things are worth bearing in mind concerning these recklessly erroneous claims:

Obama strategist David Axelrod and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs threaten that the Obamacare bill will be passed by this upcoming week. However, that would be despite the lack of votes that stand in the way of such a passage, according to top Democrat vote counter, James Clyburn of South Carolina. So just how in the world are the defiant Democrats going to overcome the reality that they have insufficient votes for passage? Are they just delusional, or do they have some chicanery up their sleeves? It may well be chicanery as according to Axelrod, the White House is retreating...

The audacity and arrogance of the Obama administration was once again on full display this week when Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod appeared on NBC’s Meet The Press responding to questions surrounding Congressional use of the “Slaughter Solution” to pass healthcare reform. Explaining why Democrats shouldn’t follow Constitutional laws Axelrod justified their actions, “The one thing I am sure of is that the American people don’t know or care much about the sequencing of parliamentary procedures.” Axelrod is far from the first administration official to share his elitist attitude over the American people, but he is the latest to...

You remember Jim Baker he was the Secretary of State said, "F**K the Jews, they didn't vote for us anyway" When Baker ran the state department under the first President Bush, he was famous for his disdain of Israel and tilting American Foreign Policy toward the Palestinians. Barack Obama is following James Baker's cynical "isolate Israel" lead. When Baker was Secretary of State he kept a tea of "Jew Boys."--- Daniel Kurtzer, Dennis Ross, and Aaron Miller, they were Baker's closest advisers and the designers of the Bush's policy to reach out to the PLO, appease terrorism and blame Israel...

AXELROD: AMERICANS ‘DON’T KNOW OR CARE MUCH ABOUT’ PARLIAMENTARY PROCEDURE (Via BB)

One of President Obama's most senior aides has described Israel's sudden announcement of plans to build 1,600 homes in occupied East Jerusalem as an "affront" to the US which could undermine peace efforts in the Middle East. Yesterday, David Axelrod said the move, which overshadowed a visit to Israel by the US vice-president, Joe Biden, was "very destructive". "This was an affront, it was an insult but most importantly it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region," he said on NBC's Meet the Press. "For this announcement to come at that time was very destructive." Axelrod,...

A prominent Chicago Democrat, mulling the Times's story on David Axelrod and Axelrod's complaints about Washington's "palace intrigue pathology," emails that the White House's problem is that Chicago is different from Washington, but not in that way. My correspondent's provocative take: First, court intrigue is the way of politics in Chicago and Illinois. Second, Ax's -- and to a degree Obama's -- problem is that they aren't used to governance that requires multi-party and intra-party skills, where the chief executive isn't in absolute control of all levers of government. The "Chicago Way" is profoundly misunderstood. It isn't, first and foremost,...