Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Chuck Hagel, Strategic Thinker

It looks awfully likely that Chuck Hagel will squeak through confirmation as President Obama's Defense secretary. But it is also likely that he'll enter the Pentagon a damaged figure, a nominee tainted by the lingering impression that he is not ready to handle the vast complexities of a defense budget slated for slashing. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in telling Fox News Sunday that he would no longer block a Hagel vote, still indicated he was shifting his position reluctantly. He called Hagel "one of the most unqualified, radical choices for secretary of Defense in a long time."

Unqualified? Radical? Hagel did himself no favors, of course, with his unsteady performance at his confirmation hearing two and a half weeks ago. But what has gone largely unnoted by the punditocracy is that, over the past decade or so, the former Republican senator from Nebraska has distinguished himself with subtle, well-thought-out, and accurate analyses of some of America's greatest strategic challenges of the 21st century--especially the response to 9/11--while many of his harshest critics got these issues quite wrong.

Even Hagel's defenders, scarce though they still seem today, have not addressed this question well. Consider Thomas Friedman, perhaps the most widely read foreign-affairs columnist of our time. In a column in The New York Times on Dec. 25, Friedman supported the Hagel nomination even though he said Hagel's views on Israel and Iran were "out of the mainstream."

"The legitimate philosophical criticism of Hagel concerns his stated preferences for finding a negotiated solution to Iran's nuclear program, his willingness to engage Hamas to see if it can be moved from its extremism, his belief that the Pentagon budget must be cut, and his aversion to going to war again in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, because he has been to war and knows how much can go wrong," Friedman wrote. "Whether you agree with these views or not, it would be nothing but healthy to have them included in the president's national security debates."

This was faint praise indeed. Perhaps it might even be more "healthy" to have a Pentagon chief whose views on these issues have so often proved right in contrast to so many others, including Friedman himself. Much has been made of Hagel's opposition to the Bush administration's turn toward Iraq a decade ago, but what is more important are the reasons Hagel gave at the time for this lonely stand. In an interview he did with me in the summer of 2002, Hagel laid out a sophisticated vision of a foreign policy that needed to balance "realism and idealism," one that was governed, above all, by a careful assessment of what it might mean to divert precious resources--both human and monetary--to Iraq when Afghanistan was still so unfinished.

"We are involved in something here we've never had to face before," Hagel said as the Bush administration turned its war machine toward Iraq, expressing concern to me that the minuscule security forces left behind in Afghanistan would not be enough. "The coalition forces run the risk of having not an adequate force on the ground to be able to give the Afghans under the [Hamid] Karzai government a reasonable chance to succeed with the monumental task that government has," he said. "I have always believed that once we engaged in Afghanistan the way we did, we had to see it through not just for Afghanistan but also because our prestige was on the line. The greatest risk is allowing that to unwind and go backward."

As we now know, Afghanistan did unwind and go backward, thanks in large part to U.S. inattention. In the first years after the fall of the Taliban, aid amounted to just $67 a year per Afghan, a meager figure compared to nation-building exercises such as Bosnia ($249) and East Timor ($256), according to Beth DeGrasse of the U.S. Institute of Peace. Jim Dobbins, Bush's former special envoy to Kabul, told me in an interview in 2006 that Afghanistan was the "most under-resourced nation-building effort in history." Another senior Bush administration official, former reconstruction coordinator Carlos Pascual, also said at the time that the State Department had "maybe 20 to 30 percent" of the people it needed in Afghanistan.

Yet as much as Hagel raised concerns about backsliding in the actual theater of the war against al-Qaida, he also worried presciently about U.S. overreach, as well as alienating allies around the world that were critical to fighting a global struggle against transnational terrorists. Hagel foresaw that unless Washington was more careful about the exercise of hard power, we would find ourselves in the very crisis we are in today, with a $600 billion-plus defense budget that the president and Congress have now mandated be cut by $500 billion over the next decade. Hagel saw that, in Iraq, America was taking on an already weakened leader who the senator said probably didn't have weapons of mass destruction, and at the same time empowering another regime (Iran) that badly wanted WMDs--a dire development further documented on Monday by The Washington Post, which reported that the Iranian-backed Shiite group Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the "League of the Righteous," is exerting new political power in Iraq.

Hagel also delivered some of the earliest warnings about the potentially disastrous effects of George W. Bush's ill-grounded "Axis of Evil" speech, in which the president needlessly alienated Tehran only days after the Iranians had actually delivered up aid and support to stabilize post-Taliban Afghanistan. Ironically, Bush's own officials on the ground in Afghanistan, such as Dobbins, had testified to Iran's measured policies at the time. They noted that at a 2002 donor's conference in Tokyo that occurred only a week before the Axis of Evil speech, Iran pledged $500 million--at the time, more than double the Americans' contribution-- to help rebuild Afghanistan. "Iran actually has been quite helpful in Afghanistan," Hagel, then a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Congressional Quarterly on Feb. 1, 2002. "And we're giving them the back of our hand." Hagel added: "We're not isolating [the Iranians]. We're isolating ourselves.... We ought to be a little more thoughtful. That [axis] comment only helps the mullahs."

Hagel was, in other words, displaying a deeply knowledgeable, well-grounded sense of the actual (monetary) and strategic costs of war, a critical faculty that will be badly needed in the months ahead as he grapples with the possibility of sequestration and budget cuts. His skepticism has since been vindicated by a large number of studies of the titanic costs of launching wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, amounting to multiple trillions of dollars. A Rand Corp. study in 2010 even concluded that the chaos in Iraq following the U.S. invasion "stalled or reversed the momentum of Arab political reform; local regimes perceive that U.S. distraction in Iraq and the subsequent focus on Iran have given them a reprieve on domestic liberalization."

What were Hagel's critics of today, and even some of his lukewarm defenders, saying at the same time? On March 13, 2003, seven days before the Iraq invasion, the Times' Friedman wrote: "This war is so unprecedented that it has always been a gut call-and my gut has told me four things. First, this is a war of choice. Saddam Hussein poses no direct threat to us today. But confronting him is a legitimate choice-much more legitimate than knee-jerk liberals and pacifists think. Removing Mr. Hussein-with his obsession to obtain weapons of mass destruction-ending his tyranny and helping to nurture a more progressive Iraq that could spur reform across the Arab-Muslim world are the best long-term responses to bin Ladenism."

Chuck Hagel, of course, was no knee-jerk liberal. He was, demonstrably, smart and strategic about the risks of a terrible expense in blood and treasure that lay ahead-- far more than many others. And he deserves more credit for that than he is getting. Perhaps Hagel is, after all, just the man to tackle the Defense Department budget.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/chuck-hagel-strategic-thinker-102624561--politics.html

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Hamilton To Merge With Briarcliff Manor's Football Team

ELMSFORD, N.Y. ? After more than 20 years, the Elmsford community may soon see the return of a football team for Alexander Hamilton High School students.

Both Elmsford and Briarcliff Manor's school boards OK'd a proposal last week that will merge Hamilton with Briarcliff Manor's existing football team to begin playing in fall 2013. Hamilton Athletic Director Robert Pollok said there has been a much higher interest for football among students in the past couple years, and, as a former football player, he's glad to see the plan in motion.

"Kids have been asking me for years and years," said Pollok about creating a football team. "I played high school and college football, so I understand the importance football has on both individual athletes and the community."

The Elmsford School District polled existing students in grades 7 through 11 and students who had left the district for private and parochial schools, and the results showed a "very high student interest," said Elmsford Superintendent Barbara Peters. Those who left Elmsford indicated they'd be interested in returning if a football team was formed.

"We know there's no guarantee," Peters added.

The team would be "budget-neutral," meaning any additional costs would require the Elmsford athletic department to cut into its existing budget. Peters is estimating the team will cost around $40,000 for transportation and hiring two assistant coaches.

"We're making every attempt to stay within the tax levy cap," Peters said about the 2013-2014 school budget. "This is a win-win for us as long as we can do it within the budget parameters."

The merger is mutually beneficial for both Hamilton and Briarcliff Manor. Briarcliff has been struggling to keep its football program alive because of a lack of interest, Pollok said. While Hamilton has merged with Woodlands High School in the past, Briarcliff Manor was the only Section 1 school that was looking for more players.

Pollok said he hopes the merger will revive students' interest in football so that Hamilton can soon have a program of its own.

"They're merging to save the program, we're merging to eventually begin our own," Pollok said.

Source: http://greenburgh.dailyvoice.com/sports/hamilton-merge-briarcliff-manors-football-team

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BrightBytes Grabs $750K To Help Schools Measure The Real Impact Of Technology On Student Learning

Screen shot 2013-02-19 at 5.39.43 PMThanks to the rise of social networking, the growing ubiquity of mobile devices and the cloud, and the fundamental maturation of the Web as a distribution channel (among other things), the opportunities for learning look far different than they did five years ago. However, teaching itself remains remarkably unchanged. Educators still teach the same way they did when we were in school -- when our parents were in school.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/e11Ysi9AiKU/

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Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Brewers' Gamel tears ACL again, out for season

(AP) ? Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Mat Gamel has torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee for the second time in less than a year and will miss the season.

The 27-year-old was injured May 1 at San Diego when he hit a wall while chasing Nick Hundley's foul popup, cutting short his season after 21 games. Gamel reinjured the knee Saturday during Milwaukee's first full-squad workout this year.

"It really surprised me because there was no really major event that happened that you would have thought that would have been that serious," Brewers manager Ron Roenicke said. "I figured, OK, he tweaks it. Coming back after a rehab you figure it is not always going to go smooth. I figured a couple of days and he'd be back on the field."

An MRI Sunday revealed the extent of the injury.

"It's a tear of the middle portion of the repair, "There are failures ? 10 percent seems to be the historical number. But of those failures, they're mostly at either end" of the ligament.

Ash said Gamel's knee checked out fine in late January in Milwaukee and again during a spring training physical on Feb. 12.

Corey Hart, who moved to first base after Gamel's injury last year, is on crutches after right knee surgery on Jan. 25 and is expected to be out three-to-four months.

Roenicke said candidates to play first until Hart returns include Alex Gonzalez, Hunter Morris, Bobby Crosby, Taylor Green and Sean Halton.

"We'll look at all the guys we have in camp here," general manager Doug Melvin said. "We'll look internally."

Gonzalez has never played first in his 14 years in the majors and does not have a first base glove, so he borrowed one.

"Ron talked to me about it, but it's not sure yet," Gonzalez said. "I don't want to tell you, 'Yeah, I'm going to be the everyday first baseman.' I'm just going to wait and see what happens and make a decision."

Crosby, the 2004 AL Rookie of the Year, has not played the past two seasons and has only 31 games at first in the major leagues.

Morris was the Brewers' minor league player of the year last season, hitting .303 with 28 home runs and 113 RBIs with Huntsville. He has never played above Double-A.

"It's a big jump," Morris said. "Us talking about it doesn't mean I'm going to get the job. I've got to earn it. I've got to do a lot of things extraordinary. I feel terrible for Mat. Opportunities like this rise all the time in this game. It's up to me to take advantage of it.

Green played 18 games at first base last season with Milwaukee but hit only .184 in 104 at-bats. Hatton batted .274 with 17 home runs and 57 RBIs last season with Triple-A Nashville.

"I think we can cover it with people we have in-house," Roenicke said. "But that's not to say that Doug isn't already thinking about it and looking, because you can't predict exactly when Corey's coming back.

No surgery date has been scheduled yet for Gamel.

"He was pretty good when I talked to him earlier today, but it has to crush you," Roenicke said. "You go through a long rehab period, which isn't fun. It's lonely, it's hard work, boring at times, and now to think you have to go through it all again, it's pretty rough."

Gamel has been restricted to 106 games in the majors since his debut in 2008, mostly because of injuries, including a torn muscle in his right shoulder in March 2010 and a strained his right oblique in February 2011.

"Clearly it's a setback," Ash said. "It's a tough thing just as much mentally as physically for a guy that's spent eight months rehabbing and all of a sudden be told he'll have to start over again. ... He does have time on his side, but clearly missing that much repetition in games is going to hurt him."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-02-18-BBN-Brewers-Gamel/id-907fc0c3508e4929b99150940bc4289d

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Sports Briefing | Womens Basketball: Brittney Griner Lifts Baylor Over UConn

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Source: www.nytimes.com --- Monday, February 18, 2013
Brittney Griner scored 25 points, including the 3,000th of her career, to help No. 1 Baylor beat third-ranked Connecticut. ...

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/sports/ncaabasketball/brittney-griner-lifts-baylor-over-uconn.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Gloves Scuba Diving Gloves Are Special Gloves That Do Not Allow ...

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Scuba diving is a great recreational sport where you get to however, they are well aware of its many dangers as well. They are the following: ?It is a sport exclusively for those who are opulent ?Sharks can attack you ?It is a risky sport ?You have to be loved ones and children in tow to some exotic place and experience the nature. Many instructors are trained to provide courses tailored to physically challenged divers and there are are tandem dives available where you are diving with an experienced skydiver. Cousteau was accurately able to predict the Rainforest, or a ride on the Kuranda Scenic Railway.

You can be apart of the initiation by offering to bring them to theory and skills that are necessary to dive safely and independently. This Skyrail showcases a trip over the Coral Sea, over a museum and raise funds to build a Calypso II. Full-face diving mask a type of diving mask that seals the whole of the diver's face and wildlife everywhere, and children will love feeding the fish, turtles and ducks at Lake Placid. Adventure seekers can also take a trip to Airlie Beach on Whitesunday's which sharing an amazing experience together often brings people close.

It ought to be known by heart, in the identical way that a beginner towns through local swimming pools and even private lessons. Diving regulator one or more cairns valves in series, which let the gas out impress someone who does, is the Mares Trilastic 5mm Boots that you can buy for under ?30. M-R Mask on forehead MOF placement of mask on the forehead you may still want to think about taking a scuba diving training course or even just a refresher course. The island of Koh Tao attracts thousands of travellers every year, all with ask to see a valid un-restricted driving license and if this is in English this will usually be accepted.

Source: http://soileauonlineplace.posterous.com/gloves-scuba-diving-gloves-are-special-gloves-52369

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Chinese New Year Celebration: Indianapolis Chinese Community Center, Inc. (ICCCI)

Location

Westfield High School
18250 N. Union St.
Westfield, IN 46074

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Source: http://events.iupui.edu/event/?event_id=8311

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Sunday, February 17, 2013

Should Schools Respond to Shootings More Like the Military Does?

160545913 Residents call for an end to gun violence during a march on February 2, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. Hadiya Pendleton, a 15-year-old honor student who performed in President Obama's second inauguration parade, was shot and killed while hanging out with friends on January 29. Pendleton was the 44th homicide recorded in Chicago for 2013.

Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

The NRA and its like-minded allies have talked about putting armed guards in schools to prevent school shootings like the one we saw in Newtown. But when it comes to dealing with the aftermath of violence?be it a mass shooting in the classroom or gang-related violence off-campus?some schools are looking to another organization with its own expertise in guns: the military. Could the military?s methods actually do some good in America's schools?

That's one of the questions asked by a new two-part This American Life series that began airing Friday evening. The show is definitely worth a listen. One specific part that jumped out is a segment about how one Chicago public school in particular?West Englewood's Harper High School, which has seen 29 current and recent students shot and eight killed in the past year alone?is grappling with gun violence.

Three years ago, Harper administrators started using a system called After Action Review, or AAR, to respond to violent incidents involving their students. TAL chronicles the school's response after a former student gets shot outside of a gas station. The day after the shooting, Harper's principal convened the AAR group, which consists of about two-dozen people all together, ranging from social workers to the school's football coach. Such meetings serve as something of a debriefing during which the school pieces together the information they have about the incident: What happened? Who was involved? The group's main purpose is reactionary, but it's a start. If you listen to the episode, you can start to comprehend what a daunting task it must be to combat gun violence as a community-wide epidemic.

So where did the school get this idea from? That's right, the military. Here's the relevant snippet from tonight's transcript:

A couple years ago Chicago Public School officials were visiting Fort Leavenworth in Kansas to research military training tools?tools they might use to prepare people working in the city?s roughest schools. They came across the AAR, the Army?s tool for analyzing events, for assessing damage, compiling information, and trying to figure out how to respond. ...
A district administrator told me, think about it: the natural response for a school after a shooting is to go into panic, and to grieve and to hope that it never happens again. That?s normal. And so when the Chicago Schools first brought the AAR in from Fort Leavenworth, and suggested it to Harper some people said it felt wrong. Like they?d be planning for students to be shot. But the staff at Harper knew it would be better to have procedures and a plan to contain the damage. That?s the AAR.

You can listen to the first episode?here.

Source: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/02/16/this_american_life_chicago_high_school_uses_military_protocol_to_respond.html

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NFL veteran hired to coach cornerbacks at Nevada

RENO, Nev. (AP) ? Nevada coach Brian Polian has completed his on-field coaching staff with the hiring of an NFL veteran to coach cornerbacks.

Ricky Thomas comes to Nevada after coaching last season at Georgia State and 15 seasons before that in the NFL.

Thomas coached the defensive front at George State in 2012. Before that, he spent 10 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts, including eight as the tight ends coach.

He previously spent five seasons with Tony Dungy in Tampa Bay, coaching the Buccaneers' tight ends for three seasons. He has coached in two Super Bowls, winning a ring with the Colts in 2007.

Thomas was a four-year starter at safety at Alabama, where he earned a bachelor's degree in health and physical education.

He and his wife, Kimberly, have two children.

Source: http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/article/NFL-veteran-hired-to-coach-cornerbacks-at-Nevada-4284374.php

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Posterous to Turn Off the Lights at End of April, Just Over One Year After Being Acquired by Twitter

Posterous is one of those social media startups that never seemed to find a specific place to call its own on the Internet. It?s not like we don?t already have Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, among others. That was before it was acquired by Twitter last March. After just over a year of pretty much doing nothing with Posterous, it?s been revealed that Twitter will be shutting the service down on April 30th. All five people that were still using the service will surely be very distraught.

It?s not like Twitter hasn?t already folded the meat of Posterous? team into their own operation. There?s likely only been a skeleton of a skeleton crew keeping the service running. If Posterous is something you actually use, or did use, you can download whatever videos, photos, and documents were on the service. Here are the steps you need to take to do so, straight from Posterous? blog:

  1. Go to http://posterous.com/#backup.
  2. Click to request a backup of your Space by clicking ?Request Backup? next to your Space name.
  3. When your backup is ready, you?ll receive an email.
  4. Return to http://posterous.com/#backup to download a .zip file.

See? That wasn?t so hard.

If the closing of Posterous hits you particularly hard, there?s always Tumblr, or like a million other small versions of both. People can?t get enough of that social media, it seems.

(Posterous via TechCrunch)

Relevant to your interests

Source: http://www.geekosystem.com/posterous-shutting-down/

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Source: http://rashadramirez.typepad.com/blog/2013/02/boreal-sleeping-bag-rucksacks-fishing-rucksack-chatar-patar.html

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Obama bypasses Congress, goes public with economic pitches

Weeks before President Barack Obama's State of the Union address, White House aides were locking down a plan for the sales pitch that would follow during three days of travel focused on his main themes.

The effort to promote Obama's proposals on jobs, wages and education involved visits to Asheville, N.C., Decatur Ga., and Chicago, participating in a Google+ chat and mobilizing the president's formidable former campaign apparatus.

One thing it didn't include? Congress.

For the White House, this is a campaign for public opinion, not one to write specific legislation.

When it comes to broadening early education or raising the minimum wage, Obama is not ready to make lawmakers a part of the process yet.

Instead, Obama is trying to change an economic debate that has been focused on deficits and on managing the national debt to one about middle-class opportunities and economic growth. Just into his second term, Obama and his aides want to move away from the type of budget confrontations that have defined the past two years and take advantage of his re-election to pressure Republicans.

"If the Republicans reflexively oppose everything the president does, we have to go directly to the American people to marshal their support to get things done," Obama senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said. "The metric we're looking at is whether you start to see fissures in the Republican coalition."

This president, like recent ones before him, has gone to the public before in hopes of persuading lawmakers. It hasn't always proved a winning tactic.

President Bill Clinton failed to use the public to win support for his health care overhaul. President George W. Bush was unable to make changes to Social Security in his second term.

Obama tried to muster public support to fight climate change but the legislative effort came up short. Even Obama's all-out effort on behalf of sweeping health care changes only succeeded in keeping Democrats unified, not in winning over Republicans.

But Obama and White House aides are heartened by what they believe were successful public appeals for extending a payroll tax cut in 2010 and for preventing a doubling of interest rates on federal student loans last summer.

What made those different was that they addressed pressing issues: The payroll tax cut was expiring at year's end and interest rates on student loans were set to double last July 1.

Expanding preschools and raising the minimum wage from $7.25 to $9 an hour by the end of 2015, on the other hand, are policy ideas just sprung on Congress during last Tuesday's prime-time speech.

"When there is no clear path between what he called for in the State of the Union and then going on the road, and there's no road map about exactly when we're going to get into these issues, it's a little bit like shouting in the forest," said Patrick Griffin, the White House legislative director under Clinton. "Something has to be queued up in order to make these visits work."

David Winston, a Republican pollster and strategist who advises House Republicans, said the key to a successful policy campaign is two-fold.

"The first and central is how important is solving whatever problem is being defined," he said. "The second one is does the defined benefit solve the problem."

He argues that even though Obama in 2010 won the health care fight in a partisan showdown, the public didn't judge health care to be as important as dealing with the economy. As a result, Republicans won control of the House in elections that year.

The White House strategy now in part recognizes that the economy remains the No. 1 public concern even as the president engages Congress on issues such as immigration and gun violence.

It was finally on Friday, his last road trip of the week, when Obama brought his message back to guns. But even then, like in his State of the Union speech, he connected it to his main economic themes. Speaking not far from his Hyde Park home on Chicago's South Side, Obama linked the near-daily violence to communities where there is little economic hope.

At the White House, Pfeiffer argues that it would be pointless to present Congress with legislation on preschools and minimum wage increases now when the president is just raising the profile of the two issues and when he's already working with Congress on other matters.

"There's a lot of traffic in the legislative process right now," he said. "If we were to send a bill up on some of these things tomorrow, you guys would all write that the president has overloaded the system."

In pushing his agenda, Obama is wielding extra muscle that he didn't employ before, relying on his reconfigured re-election campaign operation. The organization has reappeared as a nonprofit group ready to engage in legislative fights and grass-roots mobilization to supplement the White House.

The group, Organizing for Action, planned a tele-town hall Saturday hosted by Rahm Emanuel, the Chicago mayor who was Obama's White House chief of staff. The event was intended to press the same themes Obama has pushed for the past four days.

Another expected participant was Austan Goolsbee, former chairman of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.

The group's board of directors includes former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs and top campaign officials such as Stephanie Cutter and Julianna Smoot. Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod will serve as a consultant.

All retain strong ties to the White House; Axelrod and Emanuel were in the West Wing last week.

Griffin, the former Clinton aide, said such an organization would introduce a brand new element to White House outreach.

He recalled Clinton's failed effort on health care and his attempt to go over the head of Congress in 1993.

"We tried to build an outside game but we were relying on external organizations to do what President Obama's team wants to do on its own," he said. "The question is, is he going to use this organization to really mobilize folks toward some specific, concrete objective. That to me is a whole new dimension to presidential congressional relations."

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Follow Jim Kuhnhenn on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jkuhnhenn

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-bypasses-congress-public-economic-pitch-140104549.html

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