Yeah, but seeing as how you don't ever leave your house...well...that's gonna be a toughie.

heh, Well I am going out to dinner tonight. That count?

Going to order the duck.

* eats popcorn *

Don't you two see you're meant for eachother? There's love in the air so strong you can smell it.

One thing is clear: Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern holds sway at the White House, where he’s listed for 22 visits—the top number on the logs. Visitors in the top 10 also include former Clinton White House Chief of Staff John Podesta, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, National Organization for Women President Kim Gandy, and NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/10/30/seius-stern-tops-white-house-visitor-list/ 


The more pointed variant of this critique was directed specifically at Obama. Unlike 42—who loved to stay up late, jabbing at the speed dial, spending countless hours gabbing with local pols and businesspeople around the country to gauge the political wind and weather—44 not only eschewed reaching out to governors, mayors, or CEOs, but he rarely consulted outside the tiny charmed circle surrounding him in the White House. “What you had was really three or four people running the entire government,” says the former White House strategist. “I thought they put a pretty good Cabinet together, but most of those guys might as well be in the witness-protection program.”

A funny line, no doubt, but an overstatement, surely? Well, maybe not. “I happen to know most of the Cabinet pretty well, and I get together with them individually for lunch,” says one of the most respected Democratic bigwigs in Washington. “I’ve had half a dozen Cabinet members say that in the first two years, they never had one call—not one call—from the president.”

http://nymag.com/news/politics/70829/index1.html 


Wall Street Journal and NY Magazine:-k ...ooof...so far to right that it well...it's just...well...:-s

By the way, I truely think those who cause disaster and reap huge dividends
because of it should get the death penalty. Some on death row killed a couple
people. Big deal. Some of these guys have ruined the lives of hundreds of
thousands and caused ripples which will hurt our entire country for decades.

Many of these people did these things intentionally and in full knowledge
that it would lead to an eventual collapse, but didn't care because they've
made uncounted millions of dollars. To me, that's worse than murder. It's
cold, calculating, and they show no remorse as they lie in court with
"I don't recall that meeting...".

In a Dec. 3, 2009, broadcast, Beck decried that Andy Stern, head of the Service Employees International Union, appears more times in a White House visitor log release than anyone else.

"You've got to ask yourself what the hell happened to this country," Beck said. "If I would have told you instead that the most frequent visitor of the White House, over the secretary of state and everybody else, is a labor union president [Stern] who has repeatedly said workers of the world unite ... would you have believed it?" (For the record, "Workers of the world, unite!" is the popular, if unofficial, translation of the final exhortation in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' Communist Manifesto .)

We found the source of Beck's claim. When the White House released its first batch of visitor logs on Oct. 30, 2009, as part of a pledge to bring more transparency to the White House, Stern's name did indeed appear 22 times, more than anyone else listed, including Clinton, who was listed three times.

But that's not the whole story.

Stern led the pack for the first data release, which covered visits from Jan. 20, 2009 to July 31, 2009. But he was surpassed by several other individuals in the second release, which updates the data through Aug. 31, 2009 (and which was made public more than a week before Beck aired his comment).

Among those who visited more frequently than Stern, according to the combination of the two logs, were Lewis (Lee) Sachs, counselor to Treasury Secetary Timothy Geithner, with 92 visits; associate attorney general Tom Perrelli, with 49; Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski with 47; Spencer Overton, principal deputy assistant attorney general, with 38; and Health and Human Services office of health reform director Jeanne Lambrew, with 27. (Stern visited twice more during the period covered by the second batch of data, giving him a total of 24 visits.)

Another complication is that the first batch of data -- covering the period from Jan. 20, 2009, to July 31, 2009, which found Stern in the lead -- is not a complete accounting of White House visits during that period. It only includes data for visitors whose names were first requested by the public. If no one requested a specific name, that name would not appear in the database. So there's no way of knowing whether Stern actually had the most visits for that period; he simply had the most of anyone whose name was requested by the public. (All records dated after Sept. 15, 2009, will be released, the White House says, with exceptions for issues of national security, personal safety and a few other caveats.)

Finally, there are a lot of important people whose visits are not ordinarily captured by the White House log system -- most notably, Cabinet members, like the one Beck mentioned, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

While the visitor logs show a mere three visits by Clinton, we were able to confirm at least 26 separate White House visits by the secretary of state by using three public Web sites -- the White House's own site, the White House Flickr site and the State Department's site. Our sources column at the right includes the full list of Clinton's 26 visits, with links to the documentation. Since the White House has said that it cannot fulfill our request for a full listing of Clinton's White House visits, it's possible that the number of Clinton visits is actually higher. (And we have not included instances in which Clinton met with the president in locations away from the White House itself, such as flights aboard Air Force One and foreign travel, even though we found evidence documenting those sorts of visits as well.)

So, while Beck did pass along a widely reported finding as he made his point about Stern, the data it was based on was incomplete and out of date by the time of his show, and ultimately the conclusion he drew was incorrect. We rate his statement False.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2009/dec/07/glenn-beck/beck-says-labor-leader-most-frequent-white-house-v/ 

So, because the ever so Most Transparent Administration and the Greatest Show On Earth didn't disclose the actual names and dates and Glenn Beck aired that out this is your big right wing media lie?

I'd be really pissed if I were you.

On top of not getting the hope and change you voted for and the cessation to the endless wars as well as the closing of the evil prison camp we house on foreign soil you now also have to find out that they're NOT the transparent administration they claimed they were going to be. Funny and sad that you harbor those feelings about a "right wing media" when I clearly showed above where they came from...not Beck! Because it's from FoxNews and it's an Op Ed show...and not really news...it's educational for people that didn't know about Jarrett's connections and Van Jones being an out and out communist but so sad, too bad...they're not reporting news.

How you reach to the conclusion that Glenn Beck...little Glenn Beck is fabricating information and passing it off as news when the White House clearly doesn't have a handle on simple protocol is beyond me! I'd like to think that every visitor is documented but clearly this administration doesn't feel the need to comply.




http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/statement-president-first-time-disclosure-policy-white-house-visitor-logs 

I bet their arms get sore from patting themselves on the back all the time....




http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/04/07/president-receives-transparency-award-open-government-coalition 

I bet he placed that right next to his Nobel Peace Prize. I imagine it looks nice there...together. He really earned those. Trophies for all!!![frypan]

I am upset about a lot of things the Obama administration has done and not done. I've said dozens of times here that the administration is way too conservative for my taste, but better than the only other option we're given.

I am relieved and glad that this is what you're worked up about though. At the same point in the previous administration we had suffered the biggest terrorist attack ever and it was discovered that they ignored many warnings. So this is nothing compared to that.

Yeah...with several chances to take out Bin Laden by the Clinton Administration...9-11...oh wait, it's all W's fault...riiight.

Really? Explain please. Because from what I understand, Bin Laden hadn't actually attacked any Americans until 98, 2 months before he was to leave office. Tell me why Bush didn't immediatly go after him once he took office? I mean, if you want to blame Clinton for not doing it his last two months in office, Bush had 9.

Actually what I am seeing now is that everything happening during this admin is this admins fault. I'm cool with it. So yess 911 was Bush's and only Bush's fault.

If memory serves me correctly Bush didn't hit the ground immedietly...he was kinda busy with Gore lawsuits and all...and that assclown knew all about Bin Laden...

SUNDAY JANUARY 06 2002
.
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton turned down at least three offers involving foreign governments to help to seize Osama Bin Laden after he was identified as a terrorist who was threatening America, according to sources in Washington and the Middle East.
.
Clinton himself, according to one Washington source, has described the refusal to accept the first of the offers as "the biggest mistake" of his presidency.
.
The main reasons were legal: there was no evidence that could be brought against Bin Laden in an American court. But former senior intelligence sources accuse the administration of a lack of commitment to the fight against terrorism.
.
When Sudanese officials claimed late last year that Washington had spurned Bin Laden's secret extradition from Khartoum in 1996, former White House officials said they had no recollection of the offer. Senior sources in the former administration now confirm that it was true.
.
An Insight investigation has revealed that far from being an isolated incident this was the first in a series of missed opportunities right up to Clinton's last year in office. One of these involved a Gulf state; another would have relied on the assistance of Saudi Arabia.
.
In early 1996 America was putting strong pressure on Sudan's Islamic government to expel Bin Laden, who had been living there since 1991. Sources now reveal that Khartoum sent a former intelligence officer with Central Intelligence Agency connections to Washington with an offer to hand over Bin Laden � just as it had put another terrorist, Carlos the Jackal, into French hands in 1994.
.
At the time the State Department was describing Bin Laden as "the greatest single financier of terrorist projects in the world" and was accusing Sudan of harbouring terrorists. The extradition offer was turned down, however. A former senior White House source said: "There simply was not the evidence to prosecute Osama Bin Laden. He could not be indicted, so it would serve no purpose for him to have been brought into US custody."
.
A former figure in American counterterrorist intelligence claims, however, that there was "clear and convincing" proof of Bin Laden's conspiracy against America.
.
In May, 1996, American diplomats were informed in a Sudanese government fax that Bin Laden was about to be expelled � giving Washington another chance to seize him. The decision not to do so went to the very top of the White House, according to former administration sources.
.
They say that the clear focus of American policy was to discourage the state sponsorship of terrorism. So persuading Khartoum to expel Bin Laden was in itself counted as a clear victory. The administration was "delighted".
.
Bin Laden took off from Khartoum on May 18 in a chartered C-130 plane with 150 of his followers, including his wives. He was bound for Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. On the way the plane refuelled in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington, but he was allowed to proceed unhindered.
.
Barely a month later, on June 25, a 5,000lb truck bomb ripped apart the front of Khobar Towers, a US military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The explosion killed 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected.
.
Clinton is reported to have admitted how things went wrong in Sudan at a private dinner at a Manhattan restaurant shortly after September 11 last year. According to a witness, Clinton told a dinner companion that the decision to let Bin Laden go was probably "the biggest mistake of my presidency".
.
Clinton could not be reached for comment yesterday, but a former senior White House official acknowledged that the Sudan episode had been a "screw-up".
.
A second offer to get Bin Laden came unofficially from Mansoor Ijaz, a Pakistani-American millionaire who was a donor to Clinton's election campaign in 1996. On July 6, 2000, he visited John Podesta, then the president's chief of staff, to say that intelligence officers from a Gulf state were offering to help to extract Bin Laden.
.
Details of the meeting are confirmed in an exchange of e-mails between the White House and Ijaz, which have been seen by The Sunday Times. According to Ijaz, the offer involved setting up an Islamic relief fund to aid Afghanistan in return for the Taliban handing over Bin Laden to the Gulf state. America could then extract Bin Laden from there.
.
The Sunday Times has established that after a fierce internal row about the sincerity of the offer, the White House responded by sending Richard Clarke, Clinton's most senior counterterrorism adviser, to meet the rulers of the United Arab Emirates. They denied there was any such offer. Ijaz, however, maintained that the White House had thereby destroyed the deal, which was to have been arranged only through unofficial channels. Ijaz said that weeks later on a return trip to the Gulf he was taken on a late-night ride into the desert by his contact who told him that Clarke's front-door approach had upset a delicate internal balance and blown the deal. "Your government has missed a major opportunity," he recalls being told.
.
Senior former government sources said that Ijaz's offer had been treated in good faith but, with the denial of the UAE government, there was nothing to suggest it had credibility.
.
A third more mysterious offer to help came from the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, then led by Prince Turki al-Faisal, according to Washington sources. Details of the offer are still unclear although, by one account, Turki offered to help to place a tracking device in the luggage of Bin Laden's mother, who was seeking to make a trip to Afghanistan to see her son. The CIA did not take up the offer.
.
Richard Shelby, the leading Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, said he was aware of a Saudi offer to help although, under rules protecting classified information, he was unable to discuss the details of any offer. Commenting generally, he said: "I don't believe that the fight against terrorism was the number one goal of the Clinton administration. I believe there were some lost opportunities."
.
Copyright 2002 Times Newspapers Ltd. This service is provided on Times Newspapers' standard terms and conditions. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material from The Times, visit the Syndication website.

meh. he was prez. it happened. this conviently blaming the past admin when its your guy in office but not doing the same when your guy was the past guy and theirs is in office is nonsense.

there should be a rule. on your watch..... you own it. Period.

Much easier to bitch that way and there is no need to actually think through things.

Bush was the prez when the worst terrorist attack on our soil happened. He kept claiming he was directly resonsible for it not happening again. He should get credit for both.

Nice. Lot's of hard facts from named sources in a right wing newspaper owned by Murdoch.

Hey, I'm convinced. It's not like there was an effort to absolve the Bush administration of any blame for 9/11 or anything.

Not how it works obviously.

Now when you say the economic melt-down started in the last administration, well, that's a load of crap, it's all Obama's fault. But 9/11, that was Clinton's fault.

C'mon, the logic is perfectly clear.

Drama queens.

*throwing my hands in the air*

ooooh take my breath away!