Gangster of the Week: Rahm Emanuel

From the Blog: Senator, You're No Jack Kennedy


http://senatoryourenojackkennedy.blogspot.com/2008/05/gangster-of-week-rahm-emanuel.html


I was first introduced to Emanuel by this great profile piece in The Rolling Stone. His gangster status is well documented. While working in the White House, he mailed a dead fish to a pollster he didn't like. Ari Gold from Entourage is based on his brother, Ari Emanuel (In an episode, they are sitting in Ari Emanuel's $2,000 courtside seats). It is rumored that he lost his finger fighting for Israel in Syria, but he actually lost while working at Arby's in high school (I'd stick with the Israel story). My favorite Rahm Emanuel story is how, the night after Clinton's election in '92, he stood up at a celebratory dinner and called out all the Democratic betrayers of Clinton's campaign. After each name he shouted out "Dead...dead...dead...dead..." and stabbed the table with his steak knife after each name. Bad. Ass.

This is the kind of attitude the Democrats need if they are going to remain a force in national politics. His take-no-prisoners attitude is an affront to the notion that Dems are bunch of ninnies and push-overs. He stood up to Clinton and told him that fundraising needed to be his number one priority early in the campaign. Clinton listened and you can make the argument that this won him the nomination (Tsongas, Clinton's chief rival in the primaries, ran out of money cause he had to try to outspend Clinton). His strategic thinking and unbelievable fundraising power provided a net gain of 30 seats in the House when he was the DCCC chair.

He accomplishes the tasks before him, no compromises. He is angry and brash, but that's what this party needs. He's only 48, so he will be a player in Democratic politics for a long time to come. Vice President?


[Note: The youtube video shown at the site has been taken down by the user. Not sure what video that was.]


See also





Rahm Emanuel, President-Elect Obama’s appointed Chief of Staff said: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”



Barack Obama's White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, told business leaders assembled by the Wall Street Journal in November that the economic crisis facing the country is "an opportunity to do things you could not do before."

That has to be one of the most chilling statements I have ever heard uttered by an American political official in my lifetime.

It ranks right up there with the transparent arrogance of Clinton administration hotshot Paul Begala's July 1998 explanation of the use of executive orders by the president to go over the heads of Congress: "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool."

But there was even more to this quote from Emanuel. He followed up that scary and yet candid statement with this: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste."

Every so often, an insider among the power brokers in our establishment elite let's slip an extremely telling remark. I suspect Emanuel meant exactly what he said – though he probably wishes he could take it back.

Why is it that Emanuel and other members of the Obama administration seem downright giddy about the collapse of our economy? Could it be more than the fact that it led them to power? Do they believe they can use this crisis to push through unconstitutional, immoral and draconian anti-freedom measures that will help them maintain control and power under the cover of crisis?

And, if so, is it possible this dire economic calamity was at least partly engineered by insiders from the beginning – for the purpose of enriching the elite and turning the rest of us into serfs?

I'm beginning to open my mind to just such a possibility.


Continue reading here:

http://www.americanideologicalsociety.com/ais/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=821

Rahm Emanuel: Israel’s Spy in the White House

From Mid-East Realities & The Committee On The Middle East. January 1999

http://www.middleeast.org/archives/1999_01_06.htm

ISRAEL'S "SPY" IN THE WHITE HOUSE

Take the word "spy" here in the overall context of the background, role, connections and allegiances of Rahm Emanuel.

He's been on TV quite a bit in the past few days -- tasked with convincing the world that Bill Clinton is to be believed in the latest "Zipper-Gate" scandal. According to Emanuel, Bill just didn't do it!

Actually in this second Clinton term Emanuel has gradually come out more and more into public view after so much behind-the-scenes work going back to Clinton's first Presidential campaign. When Clinton wants to tough-it-out he often now turns to Rahm Emanuel and the many Emanuel can call on his behalf.

These days Emanuel's title is "Senior Political Adviser" and his office is close by to the Oval Office where he can and does constantly monitor all that's going on in the Clinton Presidency.

Emanuel's real role combines money with politics with public relations -- he is a rather unique figure in the Clinton "Kosher Kitchen" White House. Most unique of all in fact is that Emanuel is a kind of out-front spy for Israel while primarily serving as Bill Clinton's main money man.

More so than ever before, money and politics are the heads and the tails of the same coin in the Clinton White House. Both the "show me the money" slogan from last year's hit movie Jerry McGuire, and the current hit movie "Wag the Dog", are take-offs on what contemporary Washington politics has truly become in the Clinton era.

Emanuel has essentially made himself indispensable to Clinton because he is the main link to the money, especially the huge sums of American Jewish money that have poured toward Bill Clinton ever since he became their man anointed to take down George Bush.

Very little if anything goes on in the Clinton White House that Emanuel doesn't know about. And while his super close relations to the Israeli lobby are well known by Democratic insiders, few want to speak on the record about this most sensitive of subjects -- the extraordinary power and clout of the Washington Israel/Jewish lobby that totally dominates the Clinton/Gore Presidency.

DUAL U.S./ISRAELI CITIZEN

Emanuel was a dual Israeli-American citizen until he was 18, he's now 36. His father was in the right-wing Israeli underground in the 40s, the same group that is rumored to have had ties to the Deir Yassin massacre and possibly to the assassination of U.N. negotiator Count Bernadotte.

Emanuel may have given up his second citizenship (quite possibly for tax reasons some indicate); but he never gave up his dual allegiance. During the 1991 Gulf War Rahm in fact volunteered for the Israeli Army (volunteers were not sent to combat but rather to support jobs).

ISRAELI LOBBY PROTEGE

Emanuel got his feet wet in politics back in 1980, just a year after giving up his Israeli citizenship, as an Israeli/Jewish lobby operative.

There was this mildly pro-PLO Congressman from Springfield, Illinois -- Paul Findley -- whom the Israeli/Jewish lobby wanted out of there. Emanuel's first major political and money job was to become the Finance Director for Democrat David Robinson, the man who unseated the long-serving Findley.

Ever since Emanuel has been among the insiders of the Israeli/Jewish lobby, though he has never worked directly for it, unlike the new Assistant Secretary of State for the Middle East, Martin Indyk, and the Special Middle East negotiator, Dennis Ross, both among Emanuel's close friends, as is CNN's Wolf Blitzer, also a former lobby official.

Mid-East Realities & The Committee On The Middle East.
All rights reserved. POBox 18367 - Washington, DC 20036 . MER@MiddleEast.Org
Phone (202) 362-5266, x 638 Fax (202) 362-6965 Web http://www.MiddleEast.Org

(P.S. He is the son of a Jerusalem-born pediatrician who was a member of the Irgun (Etzel or IZL), a militant Zionist group that operated in Palestine between 1931 and 1948.)