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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (323000)	9/6/2009 8:51:24 PM
From: Brumar89	3 Recommendations Respond to of 793755

The 8:45 call March 10, 2009 My story today: The vast new left-wing conspiracy sets its tone every morning at 8:45 a.m., when officials from more than 20 labor, environmental, and other Democratic-leaning groups dial into a private conference call hosted by two left-leaning Washington organizations. The “8:45 A.M. call,” as it’s referred to by members, began three weeks ago, and it marks a new level in the coordination by the White House’s allies, at a time when the conservative opposition is struggling for a toe-hold and major agenda items like health care reform appear closer than ever to passage. The call has helped attempts to link the Republican Party to radio host Rush Limbaugh, and has served as the launching ground for attacks on critics of Obama’s policy proposals. It springs from a recognition of what was lacking in the Clinton years, said Jennifer Palmieri, the senior vice president for communications at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, one of the groups hosting the call. “[CAP President John] Podesta’s and my experience was in the White House during the Clinton years, and we didn’t have a coordinated echo chamber on the outside backing us up,” she said. “There’s a real interest on the progressive side for groups to want to coordinate with each other and leverage each other’s work in a way I haven’t ever seen before.” The 8:45 AM conference call is to create that echo chamber. By Ben Smith 02:52 PM politico.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (323000)	9/6/2009 8:55:47 PM
From: Brumar89	4 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793755

Rahm Goes Apeshit on Liberals in the Veal Pen More from FDL - the anger has been building. By: Jane Hamsher Friday August 7, 2009 2:21 pm On Tuesday, Common Purpose held its weekly meeting where lobbyist Erik Smith and a comm person from the White House tell liberal interest groups what they should be saying that week. Then if anyone gets out of line, they kick their asses. Along with Unity 09 and the 8:45 am call, they exist to form a solid left flank and keep the White House immune from liberal criticism. I like to call them collectively "the veal pen." This week's meeting was somewhat remarkable -- as Jonathan Martin reported, Rahm Emanuel showed up. But Martin's account is an entirely sanitized version of the meeting. It sounds like Rahm dictated it himself, in anticipation of the stories that would no doubt immediately start to materialize about the heated event. In JMart's version, Rahm made a "request" and said that "he didn’t like seeing dollars used by liberal groups to target congressional Democrats." Um, it's missing a few words, most of them four letters in length. Admittedly I wasn't there and like about 9,000 other people in DC just heard tales that made their way down the food chain, but it appears Greg Sargent wasn't so easily played: Sources at the meeting tell me that Emanuel went on a tirade against the Dem-versus-Dem attacks, calling them “f–king stupid.” This was a direct attack on some of the attendees in the room, who are running ads against Dems right now. Tellingly, Rahm raised the specter of a loss on health care, sources at the meeting say — which suggests that the White House may be less certain about victory than officials allow publicly. “He started out with, `We’re 13 and 0 going into health care,’” one source at the meeting said, meaning that Rahm was touting the White House’s string of pre-health care legislative victories. Look, Rahm has told the Blue Dogs they can do what they want to on health care. Maxine Waters confirmed it. When the Blue Dogs held the bill hostage, they got everything they wanted -- Rahm and Jan "bail" Schakowsky got progressives to drop their very meaningful demands, which Mike Ross acknowledged "would have led to single payer." They gave them up in exchange for a meaningless floor vote on single payer. Go team. Rahm was always going to beat the shit out of progressives to vote for a bad bill. The goal of the whip count effort was to make it impossible to pass a bad bill by getting progressives to commit to vote against one in sufficient numbers, such that Rahm had to either beat the Blue Dogs up or fail. But first he was always going to beat up the progressives. This is interesting: The organizations that are usually at the Common Purpose meeting include Rock the Vote, the unions, the LCCR, the Sierra Club, HCAN, Bob Creamer (Jan Schakowsky's husband) of Americans United for Change, CAP, Media Matters, MoveOn, Campaign for America's Future and numerous other groups that earn their seat at that particular table by not bucking the White House. (The notable exception is MoveOn, who bravely sent a letter to their members telling them to contact the White House and tell Obama to rein Rahm in on triggers. I'm going to guess THAT precipitated quite the phone call.) Rahm unleashed a tirade on them all, telling them that they were going to fuck up the Democrats if we "failed" to pass any old health care bill (which appears now to be the health insurance industry approved co-ops). But I doubt you'll hear any of them confirming that the White House hasn't pressured them to stop their attacks on Democrats any time soon, because it came in the form of a flying shit fit at top volume with four-letter verbiage liberally applied. Shorter Rahm: Leave the Blue Dogs ALOOOOOOONEE!!! campaignsilo.firedoglake.com

To: Brumar89 who wrote (323000)	9/6/2009 11:41:58 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	6 Recommendations Respond to of 793755

These organizations may kid themselves that they're doing no harm, but that's not true. They are the institutional liberal validators who telegraph to liberals that there are problems, that things are happening that are not good for them. They are trusted to decode the byzantine rituals of government and let the public know when their interests are not being served, that it's time to pay attention and start making a racket. When they fail to perform that task, the public is left with a vague feeling of anxiety, intuitively understanding that something is wrong but not knowing who or what to blame. So what is he saying, that organized criticism by the left-wing action groups is being strangled by Rahmbo's centralized planning? Oh, the irony! Oh, the schadenfreude!