President Obama’s New Meal Ticket Strategy

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President Obama is meeting the press tonight in Washington, D.C. He'll be having dinner tonight at the Gridiron Club, an organization of journalists, at a downtown hotel.

But only one print pool reporter will be allowed to cover the event, which is supposed to be humorous and in good fun. And a camera crew was once again not allowed to cover the event.

Here's the first print pool report of the evening:

The motorcade departed from the South Lawn at 6:51 p.m. and arrived at the Renaissance Washington Hotel four minutes later. There were no sightings of the president, who is speaking at the 128th annual Gridiron Club and Foundation dinner this evening. 

Of note, this is the first time a president’s Gridiron remarks will be pooled. Print pool only and only of the president’s remarks. The WH will also send a transcript tonight. I’m told to expect the president’s remarks to begin in the 10 o’clock hour. ...

Pool will hold at the Renaissance until the president’s remarks begin.

FROM the GRIDIRON CLUB and FOUNDATION:

President Barack Obama, political leaders, media executives and journalists sequestered themselves Saturday for a night of bipartisan satire at the 128th  annual Gridiron Club and Foundation dinner. 

The president headlined the white-tie event at the Renaissance Washington Hotel and was preceded to the Gridiron podium by Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, representing the Democrats, and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, speaking for the Republicans.

Gridiron President Charles J. Lewis of Hearst Newspapers started off the evening of musical skits skewering Washington for its budget impasses, political infighting, gun-rights battles and sex scandals. I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA

Nowhere was the place to be if you wanted to see the signs of end times for the American Empire up close. It was the place to be if you wanted to see the madness -- and oh yes, it was madness -- not filtered through a complacent and sleepy media that made Washington’s war policy seem, if not sensible, at least sane and serious enough. I stood at Ground Zero of what was intended to be the new centerpiece for a Pax Americana in the Greater Middle East.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a joke. Not for the Iraqis, of course, and not for American soldiers, and not the ha-ha sort of joke either. And here’s the saddest truth of all: on March 20th as we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion from hell, we still don’t get it. In case you want to jump to the punch line, though, it’s this: by invading Iraq, the U.S. did more to destabilize the Middle East than we could possibly have imagined at the time. And we -- and so many others -- will pay the price for it for a long, long time.

           The Madness of King George

It’s easy to forget just how normal the madness looked back then. By 2009, when I arrived in Iraq, we were already at the last-gasp moment when it came to salvaging something from what may yet be seen as the single worst foreign policy decision in American history. It was then that, as a State Department officer assigned to lead two provincial reconstruction teams in eastern Iraq, I first walked into the chicken processing plant  in the middle of nowhere.

By then, the U.S. “reconstruction” plan for that country was drowning in rivers of money foolishly spent. As the centerpiece for those American efforts -- at least after Plan A , that our invading troops would be greeted with flowers and sweets as liberators , crashed and burned -- we had managed to reconstruct nothing of significance. First conceived as a Marshall Plan for the New American Century, six long years later it had devolved into farce.

In my act of the play, the U.S. spent some $2.2 million dollars to build a huge facility  in the boondocks. Ignoring the stark reality that Iraqis had raised and sold chickens locally for some 2,000 years, the U.S. decided to finance the construction of a central processing facility, have the Iraqis running the plant purchase local chickens, pluck them and slice them up with complex machinery brought in from Chicago, package the breasts and wings in plastic wrap, and then truck it all to local grocery stores. Perhaps it was the desert heat, but this made sense at the time, and the plan was supported by the Army, the State Department, and the White House.

Elegant in conception, at least to us, it failed to account for a few simple things, like a lack of regular electricity, or logistics systems to bring the chickens to and from the plant, or working capital, or... um... grocery stores. As a result, the gleaming $2.2 million plant processed no chickens. To use a few of the catchwords of that moment, it transformed nothing, empowered no one, stabilized and economically uplifted not a single Iraqi. It just sat there empty, dark, and unused in the middle of the desert. Like the chickens, we were plucked.

In keeping with the madness of the times, however, the simple fact that the plant failed to meet any of its real-world goals did not mean the project wasn't a success. In fact, the factory was a hit with the U.S. media. After all, for every propaganda-driven visit to the plant, my group stocked the place with hastily purchased chickens, geared up the machinery, and put on a dog-and-pony, er, chicken-and-rooster, show. I thank you FirozaliA.Mulla DBA

this says it all.... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dee-evans/more-media-selective-memo_b_2240615.html

Sure hope the boys ate 2% less in honor of the sequester.

he's taking the Republicans out to dinner while the poor little children are starving due to the sequester?

where is the liberal compassion?

I am always irrationally hopeful that these dinner things will have a Jehu/Priests of Baal dynamic. Always disappointed. However, if the President can pull a bipartisan pearl off of the necklace the Republicans clutch so fiercely, I will progress from disappointment to astonishment without passing GO or collecting 200 dollars.

As they snack together  remeber  their is no free lunch for the kids in school?  while millionaire Elected officials pass the meat and potatoes  in Congresss.

@ipolisci @Student I like Sen. Collins response on this: "necessary but not sufficient." nytimes.com\/2013\/03\/08\/us\/…Edi

@TIME @TIMEPolitics Obama should continue inviting representatives of both parties out for expensive meals. Perhaps the parties will settle.

@ipolisci Maybe. Sounds a little like back-door Green Lantern theory.

So, Obama is pretty much holding out the 'olive branch' again like he did when he was first elected, when the Republicans kept slapping it out of his hand. 

Maybe, just maybe, the GOP have read the writing on the wall. People are sick and tired of their hysterics & refusal of any & every proposal the President suggests.

> But the spirit of the city is shifting, and the commonalities between the two parties, for the first time in several years, are taking center stage.

It's so nice to see that the political media is getting the displays of bipartisanship it has been asking for. We'll see if this good faith dining extends to good faith policy negotiation.

Not. Holding. Breath.

What a disgusting display. Who are these one, two percent-ers? How can they remain so disconnected from what is actually happening to people who are not wealthy? Do they even know what poverty is? Poverty in this country is $40,000 for a family of four. The super-poor make less. Do these people have any idea how much it costs to feed a teen boy? These neo-conservative pols are only spokesmen for the corporate super rich. What the president seeks is fairness. I wonder what was in those plates of food they consumed. Not a skinny man among them - they seem well-fed. Fat hogs. A group of unwise men consider a cut to the nose to spite the face just because it feels like the right thing to do.

McDonald's for dinner? 

Yeah. And the President's administration has "begun talking" like he doesn't care about the sovereignty of U.S. citizens, at home or abroad. Just a couple of days ago his Attorney General said, in the context of drone strikes against U.S. citizens on U.S. soil, that he can imagine a scenario where U.S. military force is justified on U.S. soil. So we can figure in the part about it being against U.S. citizens, as well, because that's what the conversation was all about. And furthermore, he cited Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as times when it would have been useful to do so.

"a outrage"

Does no one proofread these articles?

Isn't this what the media wanted.? Obama and republicans dating.

"balanced approach" -- I need tax increases so I can pander to my base and divide the Republicans.

"meeting and eating with his foes, and things have been looking up ever since" -- Do I look like I am reaching out or what? I'm watching those polls.

"But the spirit of the city is shifting, and the commonalities between the two parties," -- See, it's been their leadership all along. I have always been ready to do my "balanced approach" of taxes in January, then demand more "taxes on the rich" and offer some decrease in my increased spending -- sometime in the future ... if I feel like it.

At least we do have the legacy figured out -- The best Political Campaigner to ever sit in the White House.

How else are those 'You mean chained CPI was on the table all along????" moments going to get generated?

Let's hope "thumbs up" doesn't mean the veal was delicious.  Words are cheap...let's see what transpires before patting anyone on the back.

BHO may have stumbled onto a smart strategy. When he bypasses the media and communicates directly with the population he has more success. And now when he bypasses the republican leadership (leadership in name only in the case of Boehner) in Congress he makes progress. 

Media elites and republican leadership seem to have something in common.