Rahm Rahm Rahm Rahm Rahm Iran

http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/023863.html

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/rahm-emanuel-former-investment-banker/

Funny, Andrew Ross Sorkin wrote more than one sentence on Rahm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/rahm-emanuel

TP, a progressive website, has one sentence:

According to MSNBC, a senior adviser to Barack Obama has confirmed that Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) has accepted the chief of staff position for Obama’s new administration.

Rahm’s known for controlling the message. Apparently, he doesn’t control HuffPo.

Emanuel is a brawler. He’s legendarily tough and effective and ruthless. Hes the type of guy who makes enemies, then makes lists of his enemies, then makes lists of his enemies’ friends, then makes lists of how they’ll pay. If you thought the Obama administration would be all about bringing people together and would simply make sad faces when stubborn congressmen refused to come to the table, this is a clear sign otherwise. If good feelings don’t suffice, bareknuckle politics will happily be employed.

Rahm Emanuel has been described as a street fighter with a killer instinct—as explosive, profane, wired and ruthless—sometimes as a compliment, sometimes not…

Emanuel has relished raising his hacked-off middle figure at his foes. In conversation with almost anyone about anything, Emanuel uses the F word like a sergeant in a World War II motor pool.

As a Democratic Party official, he once sent a pollster who was late delivering polling results a dead fish in a box. Old Clinton hands still laugh about the night after Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election. In his book, “The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution,” Chicago Tribune deputy Washington bureau chief Naftali Bendavid writes that, as about a score of them sat around a picnic table mushily declaring their love for one another, Emanuel picked up a knife and called out the names of different politicians who had “f–––ed us.” After each name, Emanuel would cry out, “Dead man!”—and stab the knife into the table.

This is from a Jewish blog”

Peace-processors take heart: Rahm, precisely because he’s a lover of Israel, will not have much patience with Israeli excuse-making, so when the next Prime Minister tells President Obama that as much as he’d love to, he can’t dismantle the Neve Manyak settlement outpost, or whichever outpost needs dismantling, because of a) domestic politics; b) security concerns, or c) the Bible, Rahm will call out such nonsense, and it will be very hard for right-wing Israelis to come back and accuse him of being a self-hating Jew. This is not to say that he’s unaware of Palestinian dysfunction, or Iranian extremism, but that he has a good grasp of some of Israel’s foibles as well. All in all, it’s a very heartening choice.

And I’m bummed to see the pick of Rahm Emmanuel. Rahm is DLC, he’s often anti-liberal and he’s Clintonian. Wasn’t he calling for Howard Dean’s head when Dean started his 50-state strategy?

Bummer.

Nadar on DemocracyNow today:
“….Rahm Emanuel, reactionary, right-wing Democrat, a former Clintonite, a guy who knows how to raise special interest money in the White House, is well-known for it, and a hard-line militaristic supporter of Israel’s repression of the Palestinian people….”

I only trust him with pintos.

UBS AG $63,700
AT&T Inc $49,950
Blackstone Group $47,000
JPMorgan Chase & Co $45,700
Grosvenor Capital Management $38,900
Goldman Sachs $32,950
Citigroup Inc $28,500
Lehman Brothers $27,600
National Amusements Inc $26,900
Texas Pacific Group $23,000
Merrill Lynch $20,800
Mf Global $20,400
CME Group $19,650
Carlyle Group $16,250
Morgan Stanley $16,200
Evercore Partners $16,100
Madison Dearborn Partners $16,100
Bank of America $16,000
Kirkland & Ellis $15,500
Bailey Perrin Bailey LLP $13,800
Eton Park Capital Management $13,800

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?cid=N00024813

UBS is at the top of his donor list this past election cycle. Did Phil Gramm deliver the checks from the UBS PAC? The bailout boys pepper his top contributer list. Also, AT&T was number 2 and they just got their desired Telecom immunity.

Emanuel’s only worth somewhere between $5 million and $13 million, according to his financial disclosures.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/CIDsummary.php?CID=N00024813&year=2007

If Obama wants someone to help keep him clean, Nader would provide better advice than Emmanuel.