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Trying to counter perceptions that the trip failed to bring about solid results, advisor David Axelrod says, 'Things don't change overnight.' Reporting from Seoul - Even before President Obama boarded his home-bound flight for Washington, capping a grueling weeklong Asian tour, the White House was scrambling to combat perceptions that the trip failed to produce concrete results. Compared to Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, the U.S. is putting its alliances "on a firmer footing" and has "reasserted our leadership in the region," the White House said in a statement released to reporters hours before the president's flight home.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats and Republicans in Congress are working together to craft an immigration reform bill that could become law as early as next year, a senior White House adviser said on Sunday. That legislation could create a path to citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already in the United States, David Axelrod, senior advisory to President Barak Obama, told CNN's State of the Union with John King. "I think some good work is being done on both sides of the aisle to achieve that," Axelrod said, referring to the partisan divide on Capitol Hill.

Here is video of CNN's Wolf Blitzer interviewing Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod, and Anita Dunn. Blitzer asked if there was anything they wish they had done "a little different." Axelrod answered "by in large things have gone as we intended." Axelrod said that Obama "does about two hours of homework every night and then he reads books and magazines after he's done with that." (Video)

Obama fans are in a tight spot. As the White House turns ever harsher and more divisive, supporters are scrambling to explain why President Obama sounds so very different from Campaigner Obama. There are two possible explanations, neither of which is flattering. The first is that Obama was insincere on the campaign trail. The second is that his advisors – David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel -- are in control. The latter view is bound to take hold and it will not boost the president’s flagging popularity ratings. Many who voted for President Obama feel deceived. When he said in Florida...

When Van Jones resigned his White House job, under fire for his pro-communist views, White House adviser David Axelrod said that Jones had himself made the decision to leave the administration. But new documents indicate that Jones didn't even write his own resignation letter. It is now abundantly clear that he was pushed out because the scandal threatened to implicate Obama friend and White House adviser Valerie Jarrett in the scandal that gave him a critical White House position without proper vetting. Jones, a self-identified communist, was an anti-police activist in Oakland, California, before an extreme makeover landed him at...

Fox News is "operating basically as talk radio," President Obama suggested in an interview airing today. After weeks of public feuding between the cable news channel and the president's top aides, Obama seemed to agree with statements by his advisers that Fox is not a real "news station." "I think what our advisers have simply said is that we are going to take media as it comes," Obama told NBC's Savannah Guthrie. "And if media is operating basically as a talk radio format then that's one thing, and if it's operating as a news outlet that's another but it's not...

The Obama team isn’t at war with Fox because it’s conservative. They’re angry because Fox has embarrassed them. Tucker Carlson on the press corps’ shameful silence: It’s not surprising that the White House doesn’t like Fox. Most politicians hate the press, and few hide it well. What’s new and remarkable about the Obama administration’s approach is the demand that everyone else hate Fox, too. “They’re not really a news station,” David Axelrod explained to George Stephanopoulos last Sunday. “It’s not just their commentators, but a lot of their news programming if you watch, it’s really not news… The bigger thing...

Sending Anita Dunn—who is probably not enjoying her proverbial 15 minutes of fame—out onto the north lawn of the White House to attack Fox News is serving its purpose. The responsibility for determining which of the national news networks are legitimate and which ones are not is something the founders did not include in the executive powers section of the Constitution. One might even argue that the inclusion of the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights is a pretty clear sign they thought that giving any part of the federal government the power to do so would not, to...

Buried in the administration's multiple inflammatory statements on Fox News may be their strategy in all of this. In fact, Anita Dunn, David Axelrod, and Rahm Emanuel made hints at it in their statements. Here's the pertinent portion from Axelrod. The bigger thing is that other news organizations like yours ought not to treat them that way, and we’re not going to treat them that way. We’re going to appear on their shows. We’re going to participate, but understanding that they represent a point of view.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs singled out specific shows on the Fox News network for criticism ... ... Tuesday morning, continuing a public feud between the White House and the cable network that gained new momentum over the weekend. Meeting with reporters in his office for an off-camera question-and-answer session, Gibbs parried questions about the White House's harsh criticism of the cable news network, leveled on several Sunday shows by officials including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod. Asked if it was fair for the White House to label Fox an illegitimate news...

If it's Sunday, it's beat up on Fox News. Earlier today, my NewsBusters colleague Noel Sheppard posted the disparaging words White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had for the Fox News Channel. That was a sentiment that Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod echoed on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos." Stephanopoulos pointed out comments from Mao Tse Tung admirer White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, which she criticized Fox News. ...more (w/video)...

Mafioso, Goon Squad, Communist, Nazi, Jihadi, Democrat politics as usual--whatever you want to call the thuggish tactics of the Obama administration, the very public threats they are making to the news media to not follow the lead of Fox News in questioning Obama's policies and personnel is a direct threat to the freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.This morning on the Sunday talk shows, speaking on behalf of President Barack Obama, senior Obama advisers David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel carried on the war initiated by White House communictions director Anita Dunn last week on CNN.Axelrod appeared on ABC News' This...

At a time of tension between their organizations, White House senior adviser David Axelrod met with Fox News chairman and chief executive officer Roger Ailes two weeks ago, sources tell POLITICO. The two met privately in Manhattan during the president’s visit to the United Nations. The two discussed news coverage and the relationship between the organizations. Ailes is the founder of Fox News. A key part of Axelrod’s portfolio is the president’s image and broad message. POLITICO has asked Fox for comment, and will update with reaction. White House officials have expressed pique with what they consider heavy coverage of...

George Soros is one of the big sugar daddies of the Democratic Party. He also is the ruler of an archipelago of so-called 527 groups that pose as non-partisan activists groups, but in fact are often hyper-partisan (such as MoveOn.Org), and are often employed by Democrats to influence elections. Soros, for years, has been the top funder of such groups. His influence among Democrats is widespread and enduring (and was well-documented by David Horowitz and Richard Poe in their book, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party). His pet think-tank,...

Here is video of Dick Morris on with Sean Hannity last night where he slapped down Obama Chief adviser David Axelrod. Morris said over the weekend, Axelrod was asked about Dick Morris's contention that if you add 47 million people (or 30 million or whatever the White House number is today) to the Health Care system all at once, you will have a shortage of doctors. Axelrod responded, "What Medical School did Morris go to?" Dick Morris said he wanted to respond to his "former employee" David Axelrod. He said: "David, it's not a matter of Med School - it's...

A top White House aide said Sunday that the thousands of conservative "tea party" demonstrators who marched in Washington on Saturday were "wrong" because they represent only a fringe section of society. "I don't think it's indicative of the nation's mood," David Axelrod, the president's top adviser, said on CBS' "Face the Nation." "My message to them is, they're wrong." ((snip)) Mr. Axelrod vowed that the administration would not be "distracted" by those railing against its health care reform proposal.

White House senior adviser David Axelrod says that the demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Saturday do not represent the views of the broader public when it comes to health care reform.

Hard to believe the arrogance of this Adm., Millions of people protesting everything Obama including Health Care,....... David Axelrod on Deface the Nation says "They're Wrong" (Video)

When asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether Barack Obama had ordered the resignation of green czar Van Jones, White House senior advisor David Axelrod retorted: "Absolutely not -- this was Van Jones' own decision.” Axelrod’s answer is telling. His defiant tone suggests that the thought of firing Jones had never been entertained by President Obama, thus protecting Obama’s image among the radical left. On the other hand, Axelrod’s response might be the product of a special arrangement with Jones – a man who probably knows more than we do about some of Obama’s deepest convictions. Most disturbing however is...

Oh, this should be good. Nebraska readers, let me know if you can attend. I’m sure Axelrod will offer many illuminating thoughts on transparency, disclosure, conflicts of interest, and the corrupting influence of Eeeeevil Drug Companies on policy debates. When pigs fly:

Critics of President Obama’s health-care overhaul are zeroing in on his senior adviser David Axelrod, whose former partners at a Chicago-based firm are the beneficiaries of huge ad buys—now at $24 million and counting—by White House allies in the reform fight. The unwelcome scrutiny, largely from Republicans, comes at an inopportune time as Obama seeks to shore up support for health care reform. It revolves around two separate $12 million ad campaigns advocating Obama’s health care plan that were produced and placed partly by AKPD Message and Media, a firm founded by Axelrod that employs his son and still owes...

In an attempt to push back against the "lies and distortions" circulating abotu healthcare, the White House is launching its own chail email to push for healthcare reform. White House senior adviser David Axelrod emailed supporters today, asking them to forward a message touting the benefits of Democratic legislation. Because opponents of reform are launching "viral emails that fly unchecked and under the radar," it's time for Democrats to fight back, Axelrod said. "So let's start a chain email of our own," he wrote. "At the end of my email, you'll find a lot of information about health insurance reform,...

FOX News' Major Garrett sparred with Robert Gibbs over emails people are receiving about health care when they never signed up for them. White House adviser David Axelrod is apparently behind this effort.

David Axelrod's son is following his father's career path -- that is, the one he had before becoming a political strategist. Ethan Axelrod is joining the Huffington Post, the liberal Web site that has been largely supportive of President Obama. His dad, now a White House senior adviser, was a Chicago Tribune reporter until he quit in 1984 to help run a Senate campaign (and still has a soft spot for newspapers, though his old one is in bankruptcy). "I've been interested in journalism for a while," the 22-year-old Axelrod said Tuesday. "I heard through my father that they were...

Sources say White House cadre bypassing agencies, jeopardizing security JERUSALEM – A small group of officials working mostly from the White House are tightly controlling U.S. foreign policy, bypassing other government agencies and making decisions without employing the expertise of those agencies, according to diplomatic sources speaking to WND. The sources said some of the decisions may be jeopardizing U.S. security. A senior Middle East diplomatic source said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently apologized to a Mideast leader, explaining to him U.S. policy regarding his country is being dictated by the White House and not her agency. The diplomatic...

The media love covering grassroots attacks on major political candidates. The attacks signal a large base of Americans disturbed by a particular candidate or issue. When those grassroots attacks are manufactured by public relations firms, they aren’t real: they’re astroturfed -- fake attacks designed to look like a grassroots movement. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s chief strategist, is a master of astroturf campaigns. It should come as no surprise then that Axelrod and the Obama campaign appear to be behind anonymous attacks against Sarah Palin surfacing on the internet. The attacks on Palin started online shortly after McCain named her his...

Top White House aide David Axelrod told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos today that the administration intends to explore a number of means by which it can overhaul the nation’s health care system, but refused to reaffirm then-candidate Barack Obama’s “firm pledge” to not raise taxes on middle class Americans. “The president had said in the past that he does not believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here,” said Axelrod. “He still believes that, but there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see.” Obama has not always been open to...

The White House seems to be retreating from President Barack Obama’s campaign promise that he would not raise taxes on families making less than $250,000. Under persistent questioning from ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Sunday, Obama senior adviser David Axelrod declined to restate the vow and left open the possibility that the president might sign health care reform legislation that taxes high-cost, employer-provided insurance plans which some middle-class families currently receive tax free. “The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes...

While the White House contended on Sunday that Iran's president wasn't in charge of his country's foreign policy and said his criticism of Washington was little more than "bloviations," US officials stressed Washington is still interested in dialogue with the Iranian leadership. US President Barack Obama's top adviser, David Axelrod, said the US remains open to meeting, alongside its European allies, with Iran in Paris in an effort to curb Teheran's nuclear ambitions. "Let's be clear that we didn't meddle in the election in Iran," Axelrod said. "The dispute in Iran is between the leadership in Iran and their own...

GREGORY: ...the potential of revisiting a second stimulus come the fall. Do you think that’s appropriate? GRAHAM: Yes, I think we should revisit it and make sure that it’s focused on jobs, not adding to the debt. If you had another vote in the Senate or the House, I think it would be redone, it would be more focused on job creation, because it clearly has not helped jobs, has added to the debt, and I think it just missed its mark. So I’d love to revisit it.(snip) GRAHAM: I can be a leader on an issue, quite frankly. I...

I don’t blame him. The “pile of sh*t” that passed the House on Friday, which even Obama pal Warren Buffett describes as a “huge tax,” already shattered The One’s pledge not to raise taxes on people who makes less than $250,000. Now that they’re in for a penny, they might as well be in for a pound:

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said the president won't rule out a health care reform bill that includes a middle-class tax hike. "The president had said in the past that he doesn't believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here. He still believes that," Axelrod told me on This Week, "But there are a number of formulations and we'll wait and see. The important thing at this point is to keep the process moving, to keep people at the table, to the keep the discussions going. We've gotten a long way...

This interview was a disaster, this guy is the Senior Advisor to the President of the United States, even David Gregory was a little stumped today...

Senior presidential adviser David Axelrod said Obama wanted someone whose judicial philosophy is similar to his. He wanted someone who would appreciate constitutional principles but "be ready to adapt them to a modern context."

These guys sure spend alot of time on Dick Cheney even though they tell us what he says doesn't matter, his poll numbers are low, and America doesn't like him. It does my heart well to see Chris Matthews foaming at the mouth...

Real Clear Politics Video

White House senior adviser David Axelrod agreed to take the hot seat Thursday night when he answered questions for the game “Not My Job” at a live taping of NPR’s " Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!" Styled after the old-fashioned radio quiz shows, "Wait Wait" challenges contestants with trivia games based on current news stories and is hosted by playwright Peter Sagal and newscaster Carl Kasell. A former journalist known for his snappy sound bites, Axelrod kept up with jokes on everything from the president’s “perfection” (“The only suggestion he rejected was when I asked him to put on a mole”)...

Finally, there was the conversation weaving between, of all things, Miss California U.S.A. Carrie Prejean, the same-sex marriage opponent who the panel had already mocked at length, and Bo, the Obama family’s Portuguese water dog. When Mr. Axelrod was asked how involved he was in the selection of Bo, he jokingly answered that he “only got called in for the final three.” But as Mr. Axelrod was trying to set the record straight – he actually was not consulted – Mr. Sagal asked about the two runner-ups. “One was Miss California,” Mr. Axelrod cracked to the audience’s laughter.

Here’s a small but revealing sliver of news concerning our cool, hard-to-fathom president: According to his closest advisor, David Axelrod, Barack Obama really likes the novel he’s reading right now. In fact, he likes it “a lot.” The First Novel for the First Reader (revealed by David Leonhardt in The New York Times) is “Netherland,” by Joseph O’Neill — an Irishman schooled in Holland and Britain and now living in New York City. It’s a much-praised, elegantly written, alternately inspiring, and grim portrait of present-day Gotham. O’Neill sees New York as an anything-goes metropolis, teeming with immigrants of color who...

"Many key figures in Obama's political life come from the far left. Does David Axelrod comform to this pattern? Axelrod was born in New York in 1955 to leftish parents Joseph and Myril Axelrod. In the 1940s Myril Axelrod wrote for a left leaning magazine PM. though not officially a communist publication, several Marxists (including labour editor Leo Huberman) and Communist Party members worked on the paper. According to the Traditional Values Coalition Former Communist Eugene Lyons, writing in The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America, noted that PM’s staff included a former editor of the Daily Worker; another...

WASHINGTON -- Damn the tea bags. A top adviser to President Barack Obama takes a dim view of last week's anti-tax "tea parties," promoted by organizers in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party. "The thing that bewilders me is this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. So I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden that people face," David Axelrod said Sunday. The rallies coincided with the deadline to file income taxes, and gave people a chance also to voice frustrations about government spending and corporate bailouts....

Here is video of chief Obama adviser David Axelrod today on CBS News' Face the Nation where he described the "Tea Party" movement as "unhealthy," as if it is made up of just a bunch of disaffected oddballs. He defends Obama as having just cut taxes on 95% of Americans, saying the "teabags should be directed elsewhere." What neither the media or the Obama people want to address is that one of the real drivers behind the movement is not the level of taxes today, but what Obama's spending is going to mean for taxes in the years ahead. His...

Damn the tea bags. A top adviser to President Barack Obama takes a dim view of last week's anti-tax "tea parties," promoted by organizers in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party. "The thing that bewilders me is this president just cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. So I think the tea bags should be directed elsewhere because he certainly understands the burden that people face," David Axelrod said Sunday. --snip-- Axelrod replied: "I think any time that you have severe economic conditions, there is always an element of disaffection that can mutate into something that's unhealthy."

White House senior adviser David Axelrod says President Barack Obama spent about a month pondering whether to release Bush-era memos about CIA interrogation techniques, and considered it “a weighty decision.” SNIP - A former top official in the administration of President George W. Bush called the publication of the memos “unbelievable.” “It's damaging because these are techniques that work, and by Obama's action today, we are telling the terrorists what they are,” the official said. “We have laid it all out for our enemies. This is totally unnecessary. … Publicizing the techniques does grave damage to our national security by...

It is always interesting to see the Democratic pot calling the Republican kettle black and here we have only the latest example of that with Obama's top advisor attacking former Vice President Dick Cheney for his outspoken position on the failures of the Obama administration's early efforts in office. But, even as advisor David Axelrod was attacking Cheney, there didn't seem to be any memory on the part of CNN or Axelrod of the wild-eyed, fire-breathing attacks made by former Vice President Al Gore on President George W. Bush in the years after the 2000 election. On CNN's State of...

Yesterday, everyone on Air Force One was jacked about senior adviser David Axelrod's appearance on "Fox News Sunday." Big Guy has taken some heat the past couple of days for not performing well on the stump - not my fault, from where I stand - and Axelrod decided that instead of explaining Big O's performance, he'd just spend time ripping into former Vice President Dick Cheney. We absolutely hate Cheney. Not because he was a more than competent vice president, or because he could make a speech without sticking his foot in his mouth, or because he had better hair...

David Axelrod responded to Dick Cheney's recent criticism of President Obama Sunday on CNN's State of the Union. "[President Bush] has behaved like a statesman," Axelrod told John King, "I just don't think the memo got passed on to the Vice President [Cheney]." Axelrod disagreed with Cheney's assertion that Obama's terrorism policies were failing. "I find it supremely ironic, on a day when we were meeting with NATO, to talk about the continued threat from al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where they're still plotting against us eight years -- or seven years later," he said. "I think the question...

Lawrence Summers, a top economic adviser to U.S. President Barack Obama, was paid about $5.2 million by hedge fund D.E. Shaw in the past year, disclosure forms released by the White House showed on Friday. Summers was also paid $2.7 million in speaking fees by a range of organizations and companies, including several troubled Wall Street financial firms. The disclosure documents on Summers and other White House officials advising Obama on the global financial crisis covered 2008 and the first few months of this year. Summers became an official adviser on January 20 when Obama took office. Summers, who was...

The thing about fear is that you can see it. For an insight as to what the left today fears most, witness its attempted political assassination of Eric Cantor. The 45-year-old Virginia congressman came to Washington in 2001, and by last year had been unanimously elected Republican Whip, under Minority Leader John Boehner. In recent months, Mr. Cantor has helped unify the GOP against much of President Barack Obama's agenda, in particular his blowout $787 billion stimulus, and yesterday, his blowout $3.6 trillion budget. He's also one of the GOP's up-and-coming talents. Along with Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, or California's Kevin...

"Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." That's what President Barack Obama said to Rep. Peter DeFazio in a closed-door meeting of the House Democratic Caucus last week, according to the Associated Press. A few weeks ago, Mr. DeFazio voted against the administration's stimulus bill. The comment from Mr. Obama was a presidential rebuke and part of a new, hard-nosed push by the White House to pressure Congress to adopt the president's budget. He has mobilized outside groups and enlisted forces still in place from the Obama campaign. Senior presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett and her chief of staff, Michael Strautmanis,...