Helen Thomas told by Walt Whitman HS to get lost

Affluent Walt Whitman High School, with a sizable Jewish student body, in the Bethesda / Potomac area of Montgomery County, has told Helen Thomas she is no longer welcome as their commencement address speaker after she made controversial remarks in an interview with Rabbilive.com regarding Israel on a Jewish Heritage Day celebration at the White House late last month.

To add insult to injury, the 89 year old Thomas who is widely referred to as the “Dean of the White House Press Corps” and has been a trailblazer for woman in journalism has recently been dropped by Nine Speakers, Inc.

White House welcomes new social secretary; The one Washington has been waiting for

The Syndicate largely abstains from covering “national” political news, even if the news in question concerns the walking, breathing, and mobbing epicenter that is our city. [Ed Note: This is the first story that has not focused exclusively on DC or the city, but instead focuses on the "Washington" as seen by tourists, media, and world leaders.]

The Syndicate came up UPTown with southside affiliations and is not quick to swoon, believe, or even listen to big brother’s echoing and pretty, yet utterly meaningless, rhetorical and youthful dogma such as ”We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for.”

The Syndicate keeps it where it needs to be kept; in the company and under the direction of true to life move makers, not fakers.

Desiree Rogers, former Social Secretary for the Obama White House, was a faker in all things great and small. From taking the heat, or rather the WH throwing her under the bus, for the “gategrashers” to playing an accusatory, however small, role in weakening the historic friendship between the US and UK, Rogers was out of her league from the get. This speaks to a larger question that The Syndicate will surely ask in the future.

As the NY Times reports,

Ms. Rogers’s hip style, expensive clothing and presence at fashion shows at first were seen as symbolizing a new Camelot but ultimately struck many as tone deaf in a time of economic hardship and 10 percent unemployment.

The White House eventually clamped down on her public profile. She was ordered to stop attending splashy events and showing up in fancy clothes on magazine covers. When Michelle Obama learned one day that Ms. Rogers was on a train heading to New York to attend an MTV dinner, the first lady told her longtime friend to cancel, associates said.

Bye-bye Rogers, hello Julianna Smoot.

From the Post,

….“President Obama’s new social secretary, Julianna Smoot, sets a new bar in bringing powerful connections to the job. Smoot, 42, served as national finance director for Obama’s $750 million presidential campaign, overseeing the single largest accumulation of political contributions in U.S. history.

Smoot, in other words, was in charge of wooing and managing many of the same high-dollar donors and bundlers who would most like to be invited to state dinners and other White House events.

To some good-government activists, the move seems contrary, at least in spirit, to Obama’s repeated vows to curb the influence of special interests in Washington. The appointment also comes amid grumbling from some of Obama’s moneyed supporters, who complain they have not enjoyed the kind of White House access they had hoped for and who have bristled at the administration’s increasingly harsh rhetoric against Wall Street.

“If you’re having problems with high donor maintenance and you’re going into an election cycle, who better to be in charge of White House social functions than your chief fundraiser?” said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group.

Even so, Sloan and other public-interest advocates acknowledge that it’s hardly the first time a White House has turned to a staunch political supporter or operative to serve in the social secretary’s role.

Smoot’s predecessor, Desiree Rogers, was a consummate Obama insider who helped raise money and attract supporters within Chicago’s business community. Rogers announced her departure this month after a string of controversies, including the state dinner fiasco that occurred when a Virginia couple crashed a White House event for India. The White House quickly named Smoot as her successor.

Working in politics, The Syndicate knows that Smoot is the right person or “star” for the job, and should have been from the get, but “hope” and “change” has to, with all thing, run its course until the rude awakening comes that sometimes things have been done the same way for a long-time because it, and they, work.

Mrs. Rogers, regardless of her patois, was not ready to do this job. She’s not the only one.

This will be an intense summer as the campaigns for the 2012 mid-term elections heat up and our elected officials clamor to stay in office.

Camelot 2.0 has taken many hits, including the recent announcement that an actual factual birth-rited member of Camelot, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, is calling it quits. Expect more consequential ones to come.

Tree Branch Falls on Presidential Motorcade near White Hosue

From msnbc, video of tree branch slowing Presidential Motorcade a half block from the White House.

Be CAREFUL out there!