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(Reuters) - Senior White House officials responsible for navigating the administration through a trio of scandals met on Thursday with outside Democratic strategists for advice on how to get past the controversies and back on track advancing the president's agenda. The White House is trying to regain the upper hand after being knocked on the defensive over its response to deadly attacks in Benghazi, Libya, the seizure of journalists' phone records in a Justice Department leak investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for special scrutiny. Now, President Barack Obama's closest advisers want to find a way...

Tipsville . . . Sneed is told that Attorney General Eric “Fast and Furious” Holder’s days are numbered. Sneed hears President Barack Obama, who is this/close to Holder, has set his sights on Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as a possible replacement “when the heat dies down on the latest hot-button scandals to hit the U.S. Justice Department,” said a top White House source. SNIP “The president will wait until the heat dies down — and a little time has passed beyond that — before he does anything to Holder because Holder is a close pal, and that’s a big deal...

Congressional testimony this week showed the appalling lengths to which the Obama administration went to cover-up its mishandling of last fall’s terrorist attack at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, but President Obama’s precise role in the cynical operation remains hidden.Americans still don’t know what President Obama knew and when he knew it. We don’t know what exactly he did when he learned on Sept. 11, 2012 that U.S. officials in Benghazi were under attack. Obama may have gone to bed while the attack was in progress, leaving others in the administration to develop a politically expedient cover story calculated...

The Libyan militia group that the State Department hired to defend its embattled diplomatic mission in Benghazi had clear al-Qaida sympathies, and had prominently displayed the al-Qaida flag on a Facebook page for months before the deadly attack. That organization, the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, was paid by the U.S. government to provide security at the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. But there is no indication the Martyrs Brigade fulfilled its commitment to defend the mission on Sept. 11, when it came under attack.

Several posts on what is believed to be the Twitter profile of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev indicate that that the 19-year-old Chechnyan immigrant was a supporter of Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election.

In Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, the White House is described as a playpen with children running amuck, with little if any adult supervision. Larry Summers, part of Obama’s former economic “dream team,” is reported to have said “We’re home alone. There’s no adult in charge.” (I love this part!) In preparation for the propaganda film Zero Dark Thirty, the intelligence community hemorrhaged classified information about the Osama Bin Laden raid to mega-director Kathryn Bigelow, expecting a hagiographic ode to Obama. But Obama and Hollywood blacklisted the movie for portraying torture...

Just a couple minutes ago, presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett, who is personally close to President Barack Obama, tweeted, that "If there's one thing we should all agree on, it's protecting women from violence." Jarrett's tweet comes the same hour Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that the Obama administration would allow women to serve in combat. The AP reports: Senior defense officials say Pentagon chief Leon Panetta is removing the military's ban on women serving in combat, opening hundreds of thousands of front-line positions and potentially elite commando jobs after more than a decade at war. The groundbreaking move recommended by...

And Obama's advisor (Jarrett) went on to compare the current president with Abraham Lincoln. "I think you can't compare the Civil War to what we're going through," she said. "But we've been through a really tough time in our country. And seeing how Lincoln had to work so hard just to make the progress that he did, how he never gave up, and how resilient he was, and [how] he tried a whole range of different strategies. And I think obviously that resonated with the president. And so it kind of reaffirmed what he already knew, which is you have...

Reports indicate that Marine General James Mattis is being forced out of CENTCOM for questioning certain aspects of the Obama administration's Middle East policy. In particular, it appears his questions surrounding the U.S. response to Iran's nuclear ambitions drew the ire of civilian military and security advisers. These civilians were apparently upset by the way Mattis pushed them to "consider second and third-order consequences of military action against Iran." Nor did they appreciate the way he pushed them to think long term and consider what the U.S. will do if Iran develops non-nuclear weapons that can be used to keep...

Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett on Sunday predicted more minorities and women would be tapped for positions in the president’s Cabinet. “His cabinet, when he's finished -- and he's far from finished -- will have diversity, including women, including people of color,” said Jarrett in an interview with CNN. “He believes he makes his best decisions when he is surrounded by people who have different perspectives and give him their best ideas,” she continued. “And so, one picture does not speak a thousand words in this instance. I spent a lot of time in the Oval Office, and I'm in...

alerie Jarrett Pushed Away from Obama Toward End of Campaign Daniel Halper December 17, 2012 11:42 AM During the tail-end of the presidential campaign, Valerie Jarrett, a close aide to Barack Obama, was pushed away from the president. The news of the conflict is reported in a new Politico e-book, which came out today. "Obama adviser Jarrett — a close friend of the First Family but an unpopular figure with much of the president’s staff — was irritated with the debate prep team after the Denver debacle. Another adviser said she made it clear 'the team, and not just the...

Residents of states that refuse to set up health insurance exchanges under Obamacare are set to be hit with higher premiums under new rules announced by the Health and Human Services Department. Insurance companies will be charged 3.5 percent of any premiums they sell through the federal exchanges, the department announced Friday. And insurers are likely to pass that surcharge on to clients, leaading to higher premiums. The only states to be affected are those that refuse to set up their own exchanges because of opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. They are almost certain to be...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Valerie Jarrett’s Radical RootsPosted By John Perazzo On November 14, 2012 @ 12:45 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 3 Comments It was recently revealed that for several months, President Obama’s closest and most trusted advisor, Valerie Jarrett, has been leading secret negotiations with representatives of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in an effort to develop normalized relations between the U.S. and Iran. Hallmarks of such a relationship would include the commencement of direct airline flights between American cities and Tehran; the granting of entry permits for citizens of each country to visit the other;...

A Chicago lawyer is the key player behind the secret talks between the US and Iran. Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday. A close friend of Michelle Obama, Valerie Jarrett is assisting the US government communicate behind the scenes with the representatives of Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Jarret, who was born in the Iranian city of Shiraz, is a senior advisor to US President Barack Obama. Last month, The New York Times reported that the US government is engaged in secret talks with Iran aimed at establishing a direct line of communication once the US presidential elections are over. The National...

It’s no secret that close Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett can be a fiery figure. In fact, while researching her past work in Chicago, it quickly became obvious that her tenacious, and controversial, attitude was present long before her days in the White House. No story illustrates that better than when she used the press to lambaste a business for an innocuous omission that she saw as a racial slight. While serving as the Department of Planning and Development Commissioner, Jarrett once harassed a white business owner for not paying sufficient deference in print to the memory of the city’s first...

The deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, demand the outing of President Barack Obama’s Iranian-born,  chief advisor Valerie Jarrett. Three times Stevens and his staff were denied help to save their lives on the day of their death. While the courageous serving America were denied help, private citizen Valerie Jarrett seems to have a 24-hour, around-the-clock security detail, with five or six Secret Service agents at her disposal at home and abroad.  (former Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell, Breitbart News interview. ) “At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to...

Can someone answer me this ? Why would Valerie Jarrett want to be the puppetmaster of the President ? What would cause a person to step into that role ? Why would they take on that job ? Telling Barry every move to make, what to say, what to do, who can talk to Barry, who can't, what to do when the U.S. credit rating was downgraded. Who would want to do the job of the President but not actually be the President ? Why ?

[..] “She’s there to try to promote what she understands to be what the president wants,” the former aide said. “Ultimately the president makes his own decisions. The question that is hard to get inside of, the black box, is whether she is really influencing him or merely executing decisions he’s made. That’s like asking, ‘Is the light on in the refrigerator when the door is closed?’ ” [..] When the billionaire investor Warren E. Buffett showed up for a private lunch with the president last July, the table was set for three. [..] Mr. Obama’s first two chiefs of...

The State Department’s top security officer is coming under scrutiny for playing a role in creating a special board that is investigating last month’s fatal attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. One of the State Department’s accountability review board’s key tasks will be to probe why the office of Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, rejected requests for more diplomatic security in Libya in the weeks leading up to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. Mr. Kennedy, a career diplomat whose portfolio includes being the top security officer, signed the memo Oct. 1 that set up the review...

'Matchmaker' Rev. Jeremiah Wright 'provided cover for gays' After nearly four years in office, many Americans still express frustration that much about Barack Obama remains a mystery as establishment media remain incurious about the Democratic president, while seemingly ready to dispatch crack investigative teams at a moment’s notice to probe into the personal lives of Republican figures such as Sarah Palin. Largely ignored in 2008 was research by the Hillary Clinton campaign based on contacts developed with members of the church Obama attended for two decades, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. This is the first of a series...

As a young single woman, Michelle Robinson was a fixture in the home of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, who along with Rev. Jeremiah Wright “arranged” her marriage to Barack Obama, according to sources in Chicago who know the couple. Jackson’s daughter, Santita, is still one of Michelle’s best friends. “It all relates back to Trinity and to the Jesse Jackson orbit of blacks here in Chicago who gave Obama legitimacy and helped him establish his identity as a black man,” Robyn explained. “The political left wanted to push a black to the presidency, and the key operatives in the...

Obama’s closest adviser — often pegged as the real power in the White House — is tied to the presidential debate commission, providing yet another link in the web between the two entities, The Daily Caller has learned. Valerie Jarrett — who Ed Klein called ”Ground Zero in the Obama operation” — is the senior adviser and assistant to the president for intergovernmental affairs and public engagement. She served on the board of the Joyce Foundation with the husband of Janet Brown, the executive director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, beginning in 2002. ... The Joyce Foundation is a...

A ruling handed down on September 13th by the D.C. District Federal Court has finally made clear what many have known for years–that the Obama Administration’s Iran policy was initiated and advanced by a group with illicit, hidden ties to the Iranian Regime and financed by the U.S./Israel- hating George Soros. In 2009, Barack Obama turned over virtually all responsibility and authority for foreign policy negotiations with Iran to Trita Parsi and his National Iranian American Council (NIAC). Founded by Parsi in 2003, the Washington-based NIAC is a powerful lobbying group that is “…widely considered the de facto lobby for...

Why would Muslim oil billionaires finance and develop controlling relationships with black college students? Well, like anyone else, they would do it for self-interest. And what would their self-interest be? We all know the top two answers to that question: 1. a Palestinian state and 2. the advancement of Islam in America. The idea then was to advance blacks who would facilitate these two goals to positions of power in the Federal government, preferably, of course, the Presidency. And why would the Arabs target blacks in particular for this job? Well, for the same reason the early communists chose them...

Put a skirt on Barack Hussein Obama and parade him before the world. Call him President Valerie Jarrett. That, more than anything else, is who and what Barack Obama really is. With full apologies to the awesome Investors.com, who called Valerie Jarrett “Obama’s Rasputin”, Rasputin’s got nothing on Jarrett. At least the mad monk came out of the dark, front and center into the palace, whereas Jarrett gets to hide on the taxpayers’ tab in the deepest of shadows. In the sewer of Chicago politics, the Iranian-born Jarrett has never faced a court of law as one of the city’s...

Full title: Bombshell Obama Vetting: 1979 Newspaper Article By Valerie Jarrett Father-In-Law Reveals Start Of Arab Purchase Of U.S. Presidency Why would Muslim oil billionaires finance and develop controlling relationships with black college students? Well, like anyone else, they would do it for self-interest. And what would their self-interest be? We all know the top two answers to that question: 1. a Palestinian state and 2. the advancement of Islam in America. The idea then was to advance blacks who would facilitate these two goals to positions of power in the Federal government, preferably, of course, the Presidency. And why...

White House: She receives more protection than our Libyan ambassador, calls the president by his first name, dines and vacations with the First Family and had the power to call off three strikes against Osama bin Laden. Ambassador Chris Stevens did not have a Marine detail in Benghazi, Libya. But White House senior adviser and Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett reportedly had a full Secret Service detail on vacation in Martha's Vineyard. "Jarrett seems to have a 24-hour, around-the-clock detail, with five or six agents full time," Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said in an interview recently with Breitbart news. If Stevens...

How 'bout a little refresher re. Obama political Godfather  and actual (16-count!) convicted felon Tony Rezko...? The Syrian-born Rezko is an infamous Chicago slumlord, fast-food restauranteur, and sleazy political operator who played a key role in the Blagojevich case- as well as the unlikley ascension to power of Barrack Hussein Obama.Obama's longtime ally, friend, and top fundraiser was found guilty of 16/24 counts of felony influence peddling back in June 2008. Of course the story was mostly buried/detached from his bud Barry in the run-up to that year's most unfortunate (for us) presidential election whilst the jury convicted Rezko of wire...

Nobody knows how Barack Obama managed to pay for the higher education he received. Obama's decision to keep his education records a secret is considered unworthy of attention by the media. [A] syndicated column written by a Chicago Tribune columnist in 1979 provides a fascinating light on the cabal that seems to have formed around Obama. The kicker is that the column was written by Vernon Jarrett, longtime influential Chicago black leftist, close friend of Frank Marshall Davis, and father-in-law of Valerie Jarrett, the closest aide to President Obama, and a major figure in his rise within the Chicago political...

Searching old newspapers is one of my favorite pastimes, and I have tried to use them many times to shed light on current events - or to inform readers about how the past is prologue to our very interesting present-day quandaries. Recently, I came across a syndicated column from November 1979 that seemed to point 30 years into the future toward an obscure campaign issue that arose briefly in the 2008 presidential campaign. Though by no means definitive, it provides an interesting insight, at least, into how Chicago politics intersected with the black power movement and Middle Eastern money at...

The New York Times is developing a bad habit of sending its columns to the Obama administration for approval. Daniel Harper at the Weekly Standard reported yesterday on a no-no committed by then-contributing Times columnist Peter Orszag, former director of Obama's Office of Management and Budget and an Obama-care booster in an October 20, 2010 column, "Malpractice Methodology." Halper wrote in part: The latest Bob Woodward books reveals that Peter Orszag, at the time a columnist for the New York Times, sent a draft of an article to White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett for review and comments before publishing....

Ambassador Chris Stevens did not have a Marine detail in Benghazi, Libya. But White House Senior Advisor and Obama confidante Valerie Jarrett has a full Secret Service detail on vacation in Martha’s Vineyard, according to Democratic pollster Pat Caddell. That’s the pathetic foreign policy of the Obama administration, says Caddell today in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News. “Jarrett seems to have a 24 hour, around the clock detail, with five or six agents full time,” Caddell explains. “The media has been completely uninterested. We don’t provide security for our ambassador in Libya, but she needs a full Secret Service...

Look, Jarrett’s defenders might say, there’s nothing wrong with being powerful. Somebody has to be powerful. And that’s true, but there is something wrong with abusing power. Consider this passage from Becker’s Times piece, describing Jarrett’s ways: “She can also be imperious — at one event ordering a drink from a four-star general she mistook for a waiter—and attached to the trappings of power in a way some in the White House consider unseemly for a member of the staff.” Attached to the trappings of power how, exactly? Here comes the answer: A case in point is her full-time Secret...

A curious specter will be hovering over the Democratic convention this week. It is the ghost of Frank Marshall Davis, Communist Party USA member 47544 and mentor to a young Barack Obama. .....Frank Marshall Davis's politics were so radical, and so pro-Soviet, that the Democrats who ran the Senate in 1956 summoned him to Washington to testify on his pro-Soviet activities. Even more remarkable, the FBI placed him on the federal government's Security Index, meaning that if a war broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union, Obama's mentor could have been placed under immediate arrest. I've noted...

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett’s real-estate investment jumped in value between 2010 and 2011, documents show Senior White House adviser and long-time Obama confidant Valerie Jarrett’s role in a number of controversial Chicago housing developments has garnered her investments worth millions of dollars while highlighting the administration’s extensive business ties to presidential donors. Before joining the Obama administration in 2009, Jarrett was president and chief executive officer of the Habitat Company, a real estate development firm founded by major Democratic donor Daniel Levin. Before that, she served three years as commissioner of the Chicago Department of Planning and Development...

Joe Klein (author of "The Amateur")said his sources in the Clinton camp told him that Jarrett invited Hillary to lunch two weeks ago and asked her if she would accept the VP slot to replace Biden. Hillary refused to encourage an offer. Klein said that Bill and Jarrett (and it is assumed Michelle and Barry) were for it, but Hillary figured that if Obama lost, she would be finished and she wanted to preserve her options for 2016.

Henry Wallace’s Progressive Party of the 1940s was nothing but a tool the Communist Party USA – and by extension, the Soviet Union. Today’s Democratic Party is also heavily infiltrated by the now pro-Chinese Communist Party USA and their almost as equally extreme comrades from Democratic Socialists of America. It turns out that around this time, Vernon Jarrett was a leader of the Chicago chapter of American Youth for Democracy – the youth wing of the Communist Party.

President Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before saying yes, because he got cold feet about the possible political harm to himself if the mission failed. Instead of listening to advisors from the U.S. military, Defense, or even State, Obama was acting on the advice of White House politico and close friend Valerie Jarrett. Valerie Jarrett? This account comes from Richard Miniter's upcoming book Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors who Decide for Him. Miniter has written a half-dozen books on the war on terror. He is relying on an unnamed source...

On Tuesday, President Barack Obama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett dodged questions about the Department of Treasury’s decision-making behind terminating 20,000 non-union Delphi salaried retirees’ pensions during the 2009 auto bailout. Jarrett also refused to answer why she has Secret Service agents assigned to her personally to protect her. Video shot by Washington Times reporter Kerry Picket shows Jarrett coming over to Picket when she didn’t hear her original question on her Secret Service detail. “I’m sorry,” Jarrett as she moved in to hear the question again. Jarrett then walked away as Picket asked a followup question. With Jarrett still only...

That's right- same Valerie Jarrett that  can't even run an apartment complex Born-in-Iran Valerie Jarrett is known as 'the brains behind Obama' and has long been Barry's -as well as wife Michelle's- most trusted confidant. Today as Senior White House Adviser, Jarrett's probably the most powerful woman in the world... So it's a surprise -while it's not- that this military know-nothing had the power/arrogance/lack-of-personal-limitation-awareness to put the kaibosh on three golden opportunities (Jan/Feb/Mar 2011) presented by the Pentagon to catch Osama Bin Laden prior to the date when the Navy SEAL operation was eventually carried-out-- May 2, 2011.  The source of the startling...

I need a quick list of all the Communist and Marxist ties in the Obama administration for use at a meeting tonight. Something beyond his mentor, Frank Marshall Davis, and appointee Van Jones. I know this topic is rich, and I hope other FReepers can help me tie it altogether in one neat package. Thanks in advance.

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...

At the urging of Valerie Jarrett, President Barack Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden on three separate occasions before finally approving the May 2, 2011 Navy SEAL mission, according to an explosive new book scheduled for release August 21. The Daily Caller has seen a portion of the chapter in which the stunning revelation appears. In ”Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him,“ Richard Miniter writes that Obama canceled the “kill” mission in January 2011, again in February, and a third time in March. Obama’s close adviser Valerie Jarrett persuaded him...

On Obama Adviser’s Disclosure Form: ‘Bermuda’ A lot of attention has been focused lately on Mitt Romney’s offshore finances in places like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. But the word Bermuda pops up on the financial disclosure forms of one of President Obama’s top advisers too. Valerie Jarrett’s financial disclosure form filed May 4 lists a line of credit from a Bermuda insurance company valued between $100,000 and $250,000. We’ve asked the White House what exactly this mark is, and we’re waiting to hear back. In the meantime we’ve spoken to tax experts who have said that the filing could...

Valerie Jarrett Blames Fox News for Class Warfare!

Valerie Jarrett is President Barack Obama’s closest adviser, so close that she can and does overrule senior campaign adviser David Axelrod and members of the Obama cabinet. In a radio appearance on June 30, just two days after the US Supreme Court upheld the ObamaCare individual mandate as a tax, Jarrett appeared on a radio show to bask in the administration’s big win. “We will take it [the court victory] any way we get it,” said Jarrett. “I mean, we argued both ways. We thought this fell within the commerce clause, the court ruled it was a tax.

Valerie baring her soul

Well, a Canada progressive newspaper got around to releasing the story of Jarrett's wedding. A MPP is a Provincial (similar to State) Member of Parliment Obama attends wedding of Toronto Liberal MPP’s son; Tony Balkissoon, 29, a lawyer in the Windy City, married Laura Jarrett, also a lawyer, whom he met while they were students at Harvard Law School.

The first family walked over to a wedding in their hometown neighborhood tonight. President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle and daughters Malia, 13, and Sasha, 11, are here for their first trip to the city as a foursome in two years. While the White House never confirmed why the Obamas were visiting their hometown, it was widely expected they were here to attend the wedding of the daughter of their friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett at Jarrett's nearby home.

Up to 200 police officers are expected to be taken off the crime-ridden streets of Chicago to provide security at the wedding of a senior White House adviser as President Barack Obama flies in to attend. The First Family will jet into Chicago this evening as Valerie Jarrett’s daughter Laura Jarrett, a former Harvard Law student, prepares to wed fellow graduate Tony Balkissoon on Saturday. The wedding will take place in the backyard of the Jarrett family home in Kenwood, with some gatherings planned at the nearby Obama mansion. Between 100 to 200 police officers will be drafted in to...