Back to Basics

Turbo Tax Tim is reportedly thinking about abandoning ship:

Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has signaled to White House officials that he’s considering leaving the administration after President Barack Obama reaches an agreement with Congress to raise the national debt limit, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Geithner hasn’t made a final decision and won’t do so until the debt ceiling issue has been resolved, according to one of the people. All spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions.
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An exit by Geithner would complete the turnover in Obama’s original economic team, with Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Austan Goolsbee scheduled to leave in early August to return to the University of Chicago.
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In addition to Goolsbee, who announced his decision to return to the University of Chicago earlier this month, three other top Obama economic advisers already have departed.

Anybody who suggested raising taxes on small business so the bloated government doesn’t have to shrink in size can’t get out the door fast enough.

No word yet on where Geithner might end up, but some of Obama’s economic team have instinctively returned to the university scene, which is the only place where their theories actually work.

I really miss Tony Snow who served as George W. Bush’s White House press secretary until cancer took him from us too soon. Snow was a journalist with an impressive resume, but beyond that, he had a charm that made him the master of that ugly little pit of hell where White House correspondents gather to report on its events.

I was no fan of Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s first press secretary. I used to call him Glib Gibbs and often wondered if some of the correspondents had secret voodoo dolls with his image. It wouldn’t have surprised me. For all that, he was good at his job which was to protect Obama from the growing perception that he was an idiot who hated America.

I was not surprised when Gibbs decided to move on. Being press secretary is a killer job and he had served in that capacity all through Obama’s campaign and into the White House for most of the first two years there.

Why anyone thought Jay Carney, a former Time Magazine Washington bureau chief, could ever take over is beyond me. I am confident in saying he was probably never picked to play on anyone’s team during his school days. He looks like he has a permanent weggie,. He is beyond being a nerd. He is a caricature of one. Nervous, twitchy, and in way over his head.

In a very real way, Carney reflects the incompetence that can no longer be hidden from the American public (and all others). It’s a national embarrassment to watch Attorney General Eric Holder’s glassy-eyed ignorance, real or feigned, of any question members of a congressional committee might ask.

Then there’s Homeland Security’s Janet Napolitano who apparently has no idea where Mexico is located. As for any useful anti-terrorism action, it was airline passengers who subdued the last two terrorists who tried to blow up a plane and passengers who fought the terrorists in one of the 9/11 planes.

The Obama administration has alienated States that have gone to the courts to put an end to Obamacare, that have sought the right to enforce immigration laws the federal government will not, and are demanding that drilling moratoriums and other restrictions be lifted.

Top Secret Obama Drawing from White House

The skyrocketing national debt will be an issue that the administration cannot paper over with calls for higher taxes and measures that sound increasingly bizarre to ordinary Americans—the latest being to tax people based on how many miles they drive their cars anywhere, such as to work, if they have a job in this economy.

And it’s not just the press secretary who looks and sounds foolish much of the time. Following the triumphant announcement that Osama bin Laden had been found and killed, the next few days were a cornucopia of conflicting statements leaking from the White House and other government spokespersons regarding the specifics of the event.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday she doesn’t want to stay on in her post if President Barack Obama is re-elected to a second term — and she doesn’t want any other job in the administration.

Clinton made the remarks in Cairo in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. She also said she does not want to be defense secretary or vice president and will not run for the presidency in 2016. “There isn’t anything that I can imagine doing after this that would be as demanding, as challenging or rewarding,” Clinton said.

Names that have been rumored as possible successors to Clinton at State include Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, and Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN).

Here’s an excerpt of the interview:

Q- If the president is reelected, do you want to serve a second term as secretary of state?

No

Q- Would you like to serve as secretary of defense?

No

Q- Would you like to be vice president of the United States?

No

Q- Would you like to be president of the United States?

No

Q- Why not?

Because I have the best job I could ever have. This is a moment in history where it is almost hard to catch your breath. There are both the tragedies and disasters that we have seen from Haiti to Japan and there are the extraordinary opportunities and challenges that we see right here in Egypt and in the rest of the region. So I want to be part of helping to represent the United States at this critical moment in time, to do everything I can in support of the president and our government and the people of our country to stand for our values and our ideals, to stand up for our security, which has to remain first and foremost in my mind and to advance America’s interests. And there isn’t anything that I can imagine doing after this that would be as demanding, as challenging or rewarding.

Q- President of the United States?

You know, I had a wonderful experience running and I am very proud of the support I had and very grateful for the opportunity, but I’m going to be, you know, moving on.

Q- I asked my viewers and followers on Twitter to send questions and a lot of them said, “Ask her if she’ll run in 2016 for the presidency.” A lot of folks would like to you to do that.

Well that’s very kind, but I am doing what I want to do right now and I have no intention or any idea even of running again. I’m going to do the best I can at this job for the next two years.

Former Time magazine leftist-turned-VP Joe Biden flack Jay Carney has a new job.

Or a new title, anyway.

He’s replacing Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary.

President Obama has chosen former journalist Jay Carney to replace press secretary Robert Gibbs, a longtime loyalist, when he leaves the post in mid-February, according to a senior administration official.

The White House will also name two new deputy chiefs of staff: Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the Office of Health Reform, and Alyssa Mastromonaco, White House director of scheduling and advance.

Carney, now the communications director for Vice President Biden, came to the White House in 2009 after a long career in journalism that included serving as Washington bureau chief of Time magazine.

Carney’s conservative-bashing credentials are solid.

Those on the right will remember Carney’s shameless attempt to blame Rush Limbaugh and conservative bloggers for spreading an ugly, empty rumor about Michelle Obama that was disseminated by Hillary Clinton supporter Larry Johnson.

Blame Righty skillz to pay the billz? Check!

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More Jay Carney moments from Newsbusters here.

The Obama Culture of Corruption won’t be the same without her. But the question is: While lying, eco-radical czar Carol Browner may be stepping down (Politico has the scoop), does it really mean she’s stepping out of the inner circle?

Word has it she may have lost out to health care czar Nancy DeParle for the coveted deputy chief of staff position (As I’ve previously reported, DeParle’s got her own set of baggage).

In any case, it’s a Pyrrhic victory unless the Republicans are able to hold her accountable for all her dirty green deeds.

My archives are stuffed with Browner’s power-grabbing, transparency-undermining, science-distorting antics that stretch across two Democratic administrations. She and her energy lobbyist husband Thomas Downey are immovable Beltway fixtures — and it looks like she has no plans to leave D.C.

More via NYT:

Carol Browner, who has served as President Obama’s top environmental adviser in the White House, will leave the administration soon, a senior White House official said Monday night. Carol Browner, White House director of energy and climate change policy, in December.Alex Wong/Getty Images Carol Browner, White House director of energy and climate change policy, in December.

Ms. Browner had been viewed as a close adviser to Mr. Obama in the White House. A veteran who was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Clinton, her name was floated as a possible candidate for a deputy chief of staff when Rahm Emanuel departed to run for mayor of Chicago.

But that talk faded after Mr. Emanuel’s job went to William Daley, another cabinet secretary under Mr. Clinton. And Ms. Browner’s chief portfolio — climate change — appears headed toward the back burner in the wake of the Republican gains last fall.

In a news conference just days after the November elections, Mr. Obama all but conceded defeat on his efforts — led by Ms. Browner — to get a comprehensive energy bill through the Congress.

Proving they live in Bizarro World, the Times performs this nifty bit of P.R. work on Browner’s behalf:

Ms. Browner was praised for her work during the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, a performance that was said to have increased her stature in Mr. Obama’s White House.

WHO praised her — other than the NYTimes, I mean?

An increasing number of Democrats have raised their voices against Browner’s War on Carbon.

She infamously bullied auto execs to never put down anything in writing ever.

Obama’s own oil spill commission singled out Browner for misleading the public and “contributing to the perception that the government’s findings were more exact than they actually were.”

And her BP data doctoring was under fire by both Senate and House Republicans.

The GOP must not let her slip out the door quietly without answering for her abuse of power under oath and in the full light of public hearings.

I’ll withhold my usual “DLTDHYOTWO” until such time.

Isn’t it horrible when a bunch of bureaucrats make you leave the town where your home is and where your kids have gone to school for the past couple of years in order to fly to another city just to prove you live there? I hate when that happens:

Rahm Emanuel’s wife may have to fly in from Washington, D.C., to testify Tuesday in the Election Board case about whether or not her husband is eligible to run for mayor of Chicago.

Hearing officer Joe Morris tried sometimes in vain Friday to keep the hearing from devolving into a circus.
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But the amateurs scored a victory with their insistence that they wanted to put Emanuel’s wife, Amy Rule, on the stand.

“I can’t think of anything in the world more pertinent to the case than calling Rahm Emanuel’s wife to testify: If she lives in Washington, D.C., and has to fly here to say they live in Chicago … am I missing something?” said objector student Alice Coffey.
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“We object strenuously” to having to bring in Rule to testify, said Emanuel’s attorney Mike Kasper. “She is the mother of three young children and it’s no secret they attend school in Washington, D.C.”
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Taping “Connected to Chicago,” to be broadcast at 2 p.m. Sunday on WLS-AM (890), Emanuel called summoning his wife dirty pool.

When somebody who came up through Chicago politics calls something “dirty pool,” it tends to lend credibility to the request.

It’s a ridiculous debate to be having anyway. All we need to do is look at the history of voting in Chicago elections to realize that everybody, alive or dead, is either a resident or qualifies as a resident of Chicago.