NY Times Editorial Started Firestorm Versus Rahm Emanuel

November 30, 2009 (LPAC)—Saturday's New York Times lead editorial, trashing President Obama and Rahm Emanuel for running an amateur hour foreign policy, has triggered a firestorm of attacks against the White House chief of staff. Dozens of blogs picked up on the significance of the Times editorial slash-and-burn expose of Emanuel's role in wrecking U.S. peace initiatives in the Middle East. Other attack fronts have also been opened against Emanuel, including his underhanded scheming to oust White House General Counsel Greg Craig, who made the fatal mistake of believing Obama's campaign rhetoric against the Bush-Cheney unitary executive, the commitment to shut down Guantanamo, and expose the torture policies of the previous regime.

Another major blow to the Obama presidency was delivered last Monday, when CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric delivered a devastating indictment of Obama's failures on almost every policy front, from Afghanistan, to health care, to jobs. Citing recent polls that showed the President's approval rating way below 50 percent, and that showed only 14 percent of Americans believing that health care reform will be cost neutral, and seven percent believing that the stimulus created jobs. Couric also nailed the President for incompetence in his recent Asia trip, where no advance agreements were made, and the trip was seen widely as a total bust.

We may not yet have reached the "Harlow's Monkey" point, where everybody turns on the President and his tutu-wearing side kick, but we are close. The Chicago press continues to nail Obama's "Chicago mob" for bringing the Daley style of shallow, brutal, back-stabbing politics to Washington, always singling out the troika of Emanuel, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett as the hatchet team.