" Apparently yes men and women, unwilling to challenge Obama’s basic assumptions or deliver inconvenient truths, are in high demand...”

TRAINWRECK.....the kinda situation where it is soooo horrific you literally can't take your eyes off it....I understand that the casual reader might feel I have been a little harsh with POTUS but OMG...The people in the Administration have taken " clueless" to an all-time new high level....

Read the commentary below from the NY TIMES and understand the sheer magnitude of how bad the outcome of this will be for those who bought into the malarkey sold to them by the Chicago Huckster and his cronies....we have allowed this feckless (i.e. meaning generally incompetent and ineffectual ) idiot and his minions to squander the blood & treasure of our nation for the past 21 months, all to see that those who called him out before the election were right.....it is to weep.

Then add in his brainless Aunt who has been on the public dole since she arrived in this country, stayed illegally and bragged about it on WBZ-TV this week...I'm sorry, trying to defend the Empty-Suit-in-residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be like trying to stop the tide from coming into Boston Harbor.....Good luck with that.

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September 24, 2010, 10:20 pm
Of Punching Hippies and Jumping Ship
By TOBIN HARSHAW

Larry Summers? Outta here. David Axelrod? Him, too. Rahm Emanuel? Give it a minute.

It’s not unusual for a new administration to see an exodus of exhausted senior staff members as it nears the two-year mark; a friend who went to work in the Bill Clinton White House at around that point recalls that the outgoing crew had the look of the first wave to have stormed the beaches at Normandy. But this was still a watershed week: Summers, who, according to insiders, was the dominant voice in the administration’s economic policies, announced on Tuesday that he’s returning in January to Harvard (a place that, for him, may not be any less stressful than the White House); Axelrod, the man at the nexus of the Obama campaign in 2008, will leave Washington to start planning the president’s re-election campaign of 2012; and Emanuel, the hard-driving chief of staff, is playing it coy but is widely expected to depart and run for mayor of Chicago following the surprise announcement that Richard M. Daley will not seek another term.

According to The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Weisman and Elizabeth Williamson, the president has two paths to choose from when it comes to naming successors:

The president could stack his administration with fighters prepared to deal with government shut-downs, veto threats and gridlock. Many Republicans running under the banner of the tea party have pledged an uncompromising stand on spending and efforts to roll back Mr. Obama’s health-care law.

Or, as senior White House officials have said, the president could concentrate on finding common ground on deficit reduction, education and immigration, while guarding his achievements, from health care to student lending to financial re-regulation.

Anne E. Kornblut and Scott Wilson of the Washington Post dug up an interesting quote:

“They miscalculated where people were out in the country on jobs, on spending, on the deficit, on debt,” said a longtime Democratic strategist who works with the White House on a variety of issues. “They have not been able to get ahead of any of it. And it’s all about the insularity. Otherwise how do you explain how a group who came in with more goodwill in decades squandered it?” The strategist asked not to be identified in order to speak freely about the president and his staff.

“Insularity is a fancy word for losing touch with the electorate,” adds Ed Morrissey at Hot Air. “And that much has been obvious since the big push for ObamaCare started in 2009. Emanuel reportedly warned against getting stuck in an almost interminable debate, but the rest of the White House apparently didn’t see the dangers.”

As for the next inner circle, Morrissey thinks we’ll see more of the same, which isn’t good news:

Obama’s choices of replacements have a common thread: they’re Obama insiders. Elizabeth Warren and Austan Goolsbee, two of the most recent appointments, are both inner-circle Obamaites. More importantly, they are almost certain to reinforce the decisions already made by this administration rather than offer heterodox points of view and proposals …

Democratic strategist Peter Fenn says that “this is the way Kennedy worked,” sticking with a small circle of close advisers, but that strategy only works when the advice given succeeds. Kennedy didn’t squander an immense level of popularity in less than two years, though, nor did he extend a recession and a post-recession malaise with bad economic policies as Obama has done. Democrats should worry about insularity. This administration is desperately in need of a reset button.

“Apparently yes men and women, unwilling to challenge Obama’s basic assumptions or deliver inconvenient truths, are in high demand,” adds Jennifer Rubin at Commentary. “This peek at the White House’s circle-the-wagons mentality suggests that Obama is not one to reassess, clean house, and chart a new course after the midterms. It might take him out of his comfort zone. That’s bad news for the country, but music to the ears of the 2012 GOP presidential contenders.”