Washington insiders say he will quit within six to eight months in frustration at their unwillingness to "bang heads together" to get policy pushed through.
Mr Emanuel, 50, enjoys a good working relationship with Mr Obama but they are understood to have reached an understanding that differences over style mean he will serve only half the full four-year term.
Friends say he is also worried about burnout and losing touch with his young family due to the pressure of one of most high profile jobs in US politics.
"I would bet he will go after the midterms," said a leading Democratic consultant in Washington. "Nobody thinks it's working but they can't get rid of him – that would look awful. He needs the right sort of job to go to but the consensus is he'll go."
Regulators on Friday shut down a Nevada bank, raising to 83 the number of U.S. bank failures this year.
The 83 closures so far this year is more than double the pace set in all of 2009, which was itself a brisk year for shutdowns. By this time last year, regulators had closed 40 banks. The pace has accelerated as banks' losses mount on loans made for commercial property and development.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. took over Nevada Security Bank, based in Reno, with $480.3 million in assets and $479.8 million in deposits. Umpqua Bank, based in Roseburg, Ore., agreed to assume the assets and deposits of the failed bank.
Clinton working toward U.N. "Small Arms Treaty" to eliminate Constitutional right to bear arms
Written by Editor
Saturday, 19 June 2010 11:11
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just announced the Obama Administration would be working hand in glove with the U.N. to pass a new “Small Arms Treaty.”
Disguised as legislation to help in the fight against “terrorism,” “insurgency” and “international crime syndicates,” the U.N.’s Small Arms Treaty is nothing more than a massive, GLOBAL gun control scheme.
If passed by the U.N. and ratified by the U.S. Senate, the U.N.’s Small Arms Treaty would almost certainly FORCE national governments to:
Enact tougher licensing requirements, making law-abiding citizens cut through even more bureaucratic red tape just to own a firearm legally;
CONFISCATE and DESTROY ALL “unauthorized” civilian firearms (all firearms owned by the government are excluded, of course);
BAN the trade, sale and private ownership of ALL semi-automatic weapons;
Create an INTERNATIONAL gun registry, setting the stage for full-scale gun CONFISCATION.
SEC: Government destroyed documents regarding pre-9/11 put options
Written by Editor
Thursday, 17 June 2010 08:06
Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.
An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.
The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.
Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly even.
After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or persons who bet the stock would fall.
The US remained the world’s biggest manufacturing nation by output last year, but is poised to relinquish this slot in 2011 to China – thus ending a 110-year run as the number one country in factory production.
The figures are revealed in a league table being published on Monday by IHS Global Insight, a US-based economics consultancy.
Last year, the US created 19.9 per cent of world manufacturing output, compared with 18.6 per cent for China, with the US staying ahead despite a steep fall in factory production due to the global recession.
That the US is still top comes as a surprise, since in 2008 – before the slump of the past two years took hold – IHS predicted it would lose pole position in 2009.
[Editor: This "campaign finance" bill -- called by some the "Free Speech Gag Bill" -- limits the ability of political groups to communicate with their members unless they have more than 1 million members, have been in existence for more than 10 years, have members in all 50 states and raise 15 percent or less of their funds from corporations. The bill was essentially DOA because of opposition from the NRA, until democrats added an exemption for the NRA, upon which the NRA dropped their opposition and the bill is moving forward.]
House Democrats have offered to exempt the National Rifle Association from a sweeping campaign-finance bill, removing a major obstacle in the push to roll back the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
The legislation, offered by Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, would require special-interest groups to disclose their top donors if they choose to run TV ads or send out mass mailings in the final months of an election.
Democrats are justifying the NRA exemption, saying the organization has a long history of being involved in the political process, and they say the real goal of the new campaign finance bill is to expose corporations and unions that create ambiguous front groups to run attack ads during campaigns. Unions would not be allowed to use the NRA exemption.
Lieberman pushes legislation to give U.S. Federal government "absolute power" over Internet
Written by Editor
Saturday, 19 June 2010 11:03
The federal government would have “absolute power” to shut down the Internet under the terms of a new US Senate bill being pushed by Joe Lieberman, legislation which would hand President Obama a figurative “kill switch” to seize control of the world wide web in response to a Homeland Security directive.
Lieberman has been pushing for government regulation of the Internet for years under the guise of cybersecurity, but this new bill goes even further in handing emergency powers over to the feds which could be used to silence free speech under the pretext of a national emergency.
“The legislation says that companies such as broadband providers, search engines or software firms that the US Government selects “shall immediately comply with any emergency measure or action developed” by the Department of Homeland Security. Anyone failing to comply would be fined,” reports ZDNet’s Declan McCullagh.
The 197-page bill (PDF) is entitled Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, or PCNAA.
Technology lobbying group TechAmerica warned that the legislation created “the potential for absolute power,” while the Center for Democracy and Technology worried that the bill’s emergency powers “include authority to shut down or limit internet traffic on private systems.”
The bill has the vehement support of Senator Jay Rockefeller, who last year asked during a congressional hearing, “Would it had been better if we’d have never invented the Internet?” while fearmongering about cyber-terrorists preparing attacks.
Obama executive order mandates "lifestyle behavior modification"
Written by Editor
Tuesday, 15 June 2010 11:58
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is fond of saying, “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.” Well, the Obama Administration certainly has not let the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil rig crisis go to waste, using it as a smokescreen to silently assault and further diminish American citizens’ personal freedom.
While the nation has its eyes and ears focused on the blame game ping-pong match between President Obama and BP top brass, President Obama on Thursday, June 10, quietly announced a new Executive Order establishing the “National Prevention, Health Promotion, and Public Health Council.”
Claiming the “authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America,” President Obama has truly gone off the deep end this time in his most atrocious attempt to date to control every aspect of Americans’ lives.
According to the Executive Order that details the President’s “National Prevention and Health Promotion Strategy,” the Council will be charged with carrying out ” lifestyle behavior modification” among American citizens that do not exhibit “healthy behavior.”
