Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal claims in his new book -- titled "Leadership and Crisis" -- that President Obama threatened him after he asked the White House to expedite approval of Food Stamp benefits for Gulf Coast residents left homeless by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
"Careful, this is going to get bad for everyone," he quoted Obama as saying. Standing nearby, according to Jindal, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was throwing around F-bombs while chewing out the governor's chief of staff: "If you have a problem, pick up the f---ing phone." When Jindal later expressed worries that a White House-imposed moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would drive up joblessness in his state, Jindal claims Obama was more concerned about standing in the polls. "The human element seemed invisible to the White House," Jindal said in his book.
The Louisiana governor is anything but a disinterested observer in these matters, to be sure, but neither are Republicans like Jindal the only critics of Obama's seeming distance from the harsh economic realities of the spill and his obliviousness to how federal policies compounded the misery. Even hyper-Democratic partisan James Carville lamented the tardiness of Obama's response to the spill, calling it "one of the greatest lost political opportunities I've ever seen."
The political fallout from Jindal's book is likely to be magnified by an Interior Department inspector general report. Interior IG Mary Kendall investigated claims that the White House misrepresented the views of seven scientists who had been asked to assess the effect of a six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf.
Read the rest at the Washington Examiner >>
"Careful, this is going to get bad for everyone," he quoted Obama as saying. Standing nearby, according to Jindal, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was throwing around F-bombs while chewing out the governor's chief of staff: "If you have a problem, pick up the f---ing phone." When Jindal later expressed worries that a White House-imposed moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico would drive up joblessness in his state, Jindal claims Obama was more concerned about standing in the polls. "The human element seemed invisible to the White House," Jindal said in his book.
The Louisiana governor is anything but a disinterested observer in these matters, to be sure, but neither are Republicans like Jindal the only critics of Obama's seeming distance from the harsh economic realities of the spill and his obliviousness to how federal policies compounded the misery. Even hyper-Democratic partisan James Carville lamented the tardiness of Obama's response to the spill, calling it "one of the greatest lost political opportunities I've ever seen."
The political fallout from Jindal's book is likely to be magnified by an Interior Department inspector general report. Interior IG Mary Kendall investigated claims that the White House misrepresented the views of seven scientists who had been asked to assess the effect of a six-month moratorium on drilling in the Gulf.
Read the rest at the Washington Examiner >>
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