rahm emanuel

The New York Times reports that President Obama is considering sending a far smaller number of additional troops to Afghanistan than previously mentioned:
Pentagon officials said the low-end option of 10,000 to 15,000 more troops would mean little or no significant increase in American combat forces in Afghanistan. The bulk of the additional forces would go [...]

So about the meaning of those two statements on the Afghan presidential runoff from President Obama and Prime Minister Brown. I note Marc Ambinder’s curtain-raiser about the ongoing Obama strategy review for the war:
On Sunday, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel caught [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates by surprise when he emphasized that the main question Obama [...]

Apparently Sen. John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) remarks to CNN about waiting until the Afghan election is sorted out before committing more U.S. troops was Obama administration liturgy. The New York Times pieces together White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel’s Sunday-show comments and concludes the administration will wait on the outcome of the election before making [...]

Until now, the Senate’s health reform debate has been largely partisan, with Republicans blasting the various reform bills as a step toward socialized medicine, and Democrats, despite some criticism, firing back that the GOP is merely protecting the insurance industry at the expense of patients. Ideologically driven arguments, both. And the committee votes have reflected [...]

Remember when the former governor and senator from Georgia was lecturing Democrats about how they’d stopped being a “national party”? That was a while ago.

So an Arkansas state senator calls Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “that Jew,” and in the course of explaining away the remark through a folksy defense of “traditional values” — apparently this gentleman thinks Andy Griffith was an anti-Semite or something — he defends himself by saying, “I don’t use a teleprompter and occasionally I put [...]

Last night voters in Illinois’ heavily Democratic 5th congressional district voted in a primary for candidates to replace former Rep. Rahm Emanuel, now the White House chief of staff.
Mike Quigley won the Democratic primary, while Rosanna Pulido won the GOP primary.
Who’s Rosanna Pulido? She was a founder of the Illinois Minutemen, a wing of the [...]

Former Cuban President Fidel Castro has not made a public appearance in more than two years, and conspiracy theorists have been speculating for some time that he may no longer be alive.
Well, if his Sunday column in the Cuban state newspaper, Granma, is any indication, his heart is still beating — and his brain is [...]

Ray LaHood, the Illinois Republican congressman slated to become Transportation Secretary, won’t make traffic jams disappear, eliminate lines at airport security or fix that one pothole you always seem to hit on the commute home.
But commuters are not Ray LaHood’s political base. Reporters are, and fortunately for us, he’s sticking around. LaHood, sometimes at risk to his [...]

Incoming White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had some straight talk for top business executives, telling them to get on board with major health care reform and help for the middle class, the Wall Street Journal says. Emanuel also struck a “combative” pose in addressing the executives, the Journal reported: