“One of President Obama’s top advisers suggested to the Washington Post the other day that neither Republicans nor the American political system are “worthy” of Obama’s political agenda.  “There’s a moment of opportunity now that’s important,” said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer . “What’s frustrating is that we don’t have a political system or an opposition party worthy of the opportunity.””

Esther Duflo, French Economist, will join Obama’s Global Development Council.
Photo: Flickr.com/poptech

France’s very own Esther Duflo, an accomplished economist, stands to be appointed to Barack Obama’s Global Development Council to advise the President on global development policies and practices. Contention has arisen domestically, however, with some convinced that her talents should be applied in her native France.

Duflo will be one of twelve members of the President’s Global Development Council, chaired by Mohamed El-Erian, Egyptian CEO of PIMCO, the largest bond investor  in the world. The Council was established in February 2012 under the U.S. Agency for International Development.

launched in 2010, the new Global Development Policy, in the words of Barack Obama, is designed to “change the way we do business” around the world and sharpen America’s developmental efforts.

The Council will work to advise the administration on U.S. global development policies and practices, to support new and existing public-private partnerships, and to increase awareness and action in support of development.

Esther Duflo is a decorated, world-class economist who, at the age of forty, is already noted for an impressive array of accomplishments. She was educated in France and received her terminal degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she received her Ph.D. in economics. She is the current Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Poverty Alleviation and Development Economics at MIT and holds a chair at the Collège de France on “Knowledge Against Poverty.”

She is the founder and director of Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), a research center that has launched more than 200 real-life experiments worldwide since its founding in 2003. These experiments define Duflo’s most powerful work in developmental economics, helping to change the way governments and aid organizations address global poverty.

Dulfo’s work with J-PAL espouses a particular method of research through randomized controlled trials, the same method that is used for drug testing. Real-life experiments are run on everything ranging from health to education and to agriculture in poverty stricken regions of the world to determine how aid money should be spent, rather than how much must be spent. These trials allow researchers to test whether certain conditions create similar or different outcomes, providing a better sense of causality in their work.

During a TED talk (a series of conferences focusing on technology, entertainment, and design) she gave in California in 2010, Duflo said with optimism, “in technology, we spend so much time experimenting, fine-tuning, getting the absolute cheapest way to do something — so why aren’t we doing that with social policy?” Much of her life’s work has been aimed at making aid and development programs as effective as possible. Her work has revealed gaps in the most conventional and intuitive forms of aid, like distributing free bed nets to keep away malaria-spreading mosquitos, showing they are unsuccessful and, moreover, unprofitable.

Her innovative technique for evaluating programs aimed to eradicate poverty has brought her a hefty list of impressive awards, and has gotten the attention first of Bill Gates, and now of the U.S. President. In 2009, Duflo won the MacArthur Fellowship, known as the “genius grant,” to further her work at J-PAL. The following year she won the John Bates Clark Medal, the most prestigious award after the Nobel Prize in economics, nicknamed the “Nobel-in-waiting.”

In 2011, she co-authored Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty with Abhijit Banerjee of MIT. It was awarded the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year, and has been translated into at least ten languages. That same year, Time magazine named her one of 100 most influential people in the world. In 2012 Foreign Policy magazine named Duflo one of the “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”

Some have argued that the appointment of this left-of-center French intellectual is adding fuel to the fire of criticism from those who view Obama’s economic policy as socialist-inclined. Nevertheless, Esther Duflo will bring her insight to the table this year, alongside Obama and eleven other experts in the field.

Update: Liberals are upset that Obama’s Cabinet picks are “largely male.”

Secretive about his past but not with national security matters

As if we didn’t already know this news nugget. Team Obama revealed national security secrets to make him look tough before the election.

From the Washington Times:

The Democratic leader of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Monday that the White House appears to be responsible for some highly criticized leaks of classified information in recent months.

“I think the White House has to understand that some of this is coming from their ranks,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein told a World Affairs Councilforum.

The California lawmaker said she was certain that President Obama, who receives a daily intelligence briefing, isn’t disclosing secret information, but she was uncertain about others at the White House. “I don’t believe for a moment that he goes out and talks about it,” she said.

Republicans have slammed the disclosures, arguing that members of theObama administration were intentionally leaking classified material to enhance the president’s national security credentials in an election year. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has appointed two attorneys to lead the investigation into who leaked information about U.S. involvement in cyberattacks on Iran and about an al Qaeda plot to place an explosive device aboard a U.S.-bound airliner.

That hasn’t satisfied some Republicans who have pressed for a special prosecutor.

On Thursday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified in closed session before the House Armed Services Committee on the leaks. Thecommittee’s chairman, Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, California Republican, told reporters afterward that he did not believe thePentagon was responsible for recent national security leaks.

“I feel pretty secure they were not” from the Pentagon, Mr. McKeon said after the three-hour hearing.

Continue reading>>>

It is no less true today, that simple truth is applied to many things, when you apply for a job, apply for a loan, try to rent an house, the first thing done is a background and credit check.

If you want to work for a bank and you have a criminal history that includes embezzlement, no matter how much you SAY it was just a youthful indiscretion, or you stay silent and hope no one will notice – you simply will not get the job in the bank. You can protest that it was a long time ago, that you did`nt know it was embezzlement – that it just isn`t FAIR to have to answer for things you did way back then…. then the second page of the background report shows that you still have business dealings with the same people that you were involved in the embezzlement with, that you in fact have put them in charge of large amounts of other peoples money. That shows a lack of character, a lack of responsibility and it shows you hav`nt changed at all.

Why is it somehow wrong to apply that thought process to the man that is the President of the United States of America? Why would you (the voter) not DEMAND to have the most thorough background and credit check done before that person was cleared for the job – why would that person asking for your vote, your trust, not be EAGER to show their entire background report and cheerfully and truthfully answer ANY reasonable questions that might arise?

Would a reasonable person be justified in having reservations about a candidate that not only refused to answer legitimate questions fully, but used surrogates to attack, mock, and question the motives of the citizen that would ask the legitimate question, and demand documentation to back it up.

I have some questions for the man that would ask for my vote to re-elect him to the Presidency. I believe they are legitimate, reasonable questions that a serious candidate would WANT to be sure were answered fully.

1) Mr. Obama, please explain your association with, and your reaction to John C. Drew and this information he has written about.

2) Mr. Obama, please explain why you put persons ( Valerie Jarrett & David Axlerod) with these backgrounds in senior adviser positions and do they (and you) disavow and now repudiate those views?

3) Mr. Obama, I have heard your surrogates and media pets decry that to bring up things from many years ago is not fair, bad form and simply un-American (of course in the next breath they do exactly that with other candidates – but I digress) Sir, in that context, please explain why you would willingly associate publicly with violent, radical racists wwaaaay back in 2007? And while we`re at it, how did it happen that the leader of that group was admitted to the White House in 2009?

Mr. Obama, will you give a full and truthful answer to these things in your background? Will you explain to the American people, that you are asking to TRUST and re-elect you how these folks have seemingly hid their past from you? Will you make a public statement that denounces and holds in contempt anyone that would seek to provoke racial violence? Will you REQUIRE anyone in your cabinet and appointee`s to publicly disavow any radical, socialist,communist, or anti -American activities and associations – both past and present?

Will you Mr. Obama?

“Show me his friends and I`ll show you OUR future”

I would strongly encourage readers to read, listen to and then fully research the above links – the information is not only easy to locate, it is vital that you are an INFORMED voter.

This must be the work of the same geniuses who had selected September 17, 2009 to announce a deal with the KGB Russians over the deployment – or rather non-deployment – of U.S. antiballistic systems into Poland to protect against the impending Iranian missile threat.

You remember September 17th, right?  The day on which, exactly 70 years earlier, another dictator, who had made a deal with the Soviets Russians over Poland, sent in his hordes, permanently annexing rather more than half of that unhappy country and unleashing a reign of terror fully equivalent to that on the other side of the Molotov-Ribbentrop line?

Oh, and don’t tell me, let me guess.  The Black & Tan gaffe, like the September 17th gaffe, will be billed as “pure coincidence…”

Where do we get these people?

First Peter Orszag turned in his ID card. Then Christina Romer went. In short order, Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel announced their exits. Jim Jones is gone, too. There are a lot of empty desks in the White House these days.

But that leaves room for new people to fill them. So far, President Obama has hired mostly from within. That’s a sign he’s happy with the advice he’s received. And in many ways, he’s right to be. This administration entered office with the economy teetering on the edge of the abyss. His team has successfully pulled us onto firmer ground.

Read the whole story: Newsweek

The Hill reports:

The White House says the new book by famed Washington journalist Bob Woodward, “Obama’s Wars,” paints a picture of an “analytical, strategic and decisive” wartime president and “does not reveal anything new” about the administration’s war strategy.

After excerpts of Woodward’s book containing revelations appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post late Tuesday night, a senior administration official responded that the full picture is one of a president asking hard questions to make difficult decisions about Afghanistan — not simply a White House badly divided over strategy.

While the early previews of the book, due out Monday, focus on intense infighting among Obama’s national security team leading up to the president’s decision on a strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the official said “the debates in the book are well-known because the policy review process was covered so exhaustively.”

“The president comes across in the review, and throughout the decision-making process, as a commander in chief who is analytical, strategic and decisive, with a broad view of history, national security and his role,” the official said.



The book shows that Obama was at odds with the Generals (he fired 2 Four-star Generals) and came up with his own 6-page exit strategy. Obama is putting politics above national security. This is what happens when you have a president that is worried about Washington politics than protecting America.