I read the list and the article. Did you?
You might recall that Obama has been dealing with a banking crisis and a collapse of the auto industry - hence the visits from CEO's of banks and car makers.
I'm guessing you missed this paragraph from the artcle you posted:
The White House warns that many names that may appear familiar — and controversial —do not in fact refer to the most famous people to carry those names. Jeremiah Wright is on the list, but it's not the president's former pastor. Michael Jordan is not the basketball player. This Michael Moore is not a filmmaker. William Ayers, who took a group tour of the White House, isn't the former radical from Chicago. And the Angela Davis on the list has a different middle initial than the activist and former fugitive.
he copies and paste the article and conveniently misses that paragraph in the middle of the other two. here's how it was printed on the page 333386 got his article from
The White House has been barraged with requests to release the names of its visitors. Today they release the first 500 visits, all from the period of Jan 20-July 31. Some of the Names you can find on the list are, George Soros 4x, the head of the ACORN affiliated Union the SEIU Andrew Stern 20x, Scott Levenson (ACORN's spokesman who was thrown off of the Glenn Beck Show), GE/NBC head Jeff Immelt 5x, Jesse Jackson 6x, John Edwards 2x, Al Sharpton 2x, and of course television goddess Oprah Winfrey.
Note: According to the White House In September, requests were submitted for the names of some famous or controversial figures (for example Michael Jordan, William Ayers, Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Robert Kelly ("R. Kelly"), and Malik Shabazz). The well-known individuals with those names never actually came to the White House. Nevertheless, we were asked for those names and so we have included records for those individuals who were here and share the same name
Strangely each party's house leader Pelosi, and Boehner were only at the WH once. The Senate leadership weren't there even once. I will be spending some time investigating the list, but in the meantime, an embeddable version of the list is below. If you have any knowledge of some of these names, please contact me and let me know: