An interesting story today by Michael Goodwin in the New York Post.  According to Goodwin, he has heard from several people that Obama is becoming more reclusive.  Here are some of the highlights:

• President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and to David Axelrod, his political strategist.
• Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.
• The Obama’s workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m.
• Obama often retreats to his private study with briefing papers, however, some say they’re not sure what he does.

An article in the Washington Post today more or less confirms the story by the New York Post.

• This president endures with little joy the small talk and back-slapping of retail politics, rarely spends more than a few minutes on a rope line, refuses to coddle even his biggest donors. His relationship with Democrats on Capitol Hill is frosty, to be generous. Personal lobbying on behalf of legislation? He prefers to leave that to Vice President Biden, an old-school political charmer.

If you want my opinion, Obama has finally realized that his been lied to for the last 32 years.  Everything that he has been told and taught about Keynesian economics, Socialism, and Liberalism was wrong.  After nearly three years as President, he realized that those socialized programs don’t work.  Everything that he’s been taught and told about the economy hasn’t worked and he recognizes that he’s wasted so many years supporting a lie.  Further, Obama is such an egomaniac that it bothers him deeply now that members of his own party are running away from him.

It is sad to see such a precipitous decline of support and popularity, perhaps the greatest in US history, for a man who so many thought could do so much.  Fortunately, in just 15 months there will be a Republican President who will fix what Obama and his liberal ideology failed to.

Courtesy:  John Paulus

Expect Vice President Biden to be called into the White House for a bit of a scolding.  Biden told Florida radio station WLRN on Thursday that voters should hold President Barack Obama, not former President George W. Bush, accountable for the poor state of America’s economy.  “Right now, understandably — totally legitimate — this is a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature of the state of the economy,” Biden said.  “Even though fifty-some percent of the American people think that the economy tanked because of the last administration, that’s not relevant,” Biden stressed. “What’s relevant is we’re in charge. And right now we are the ones in charge and it’s gotten better, but it hasn’t gotten good enough… I don’t blame them for being mad. We’re in charge,” Biden explained.

In the final few days on the month, the Obama Administration pushed to get $1 billion in additional loan guarantees to green energy companies.  One of those companies, SolarReserve LLC, based out of Democrat Senator Reid’s state of Nevada, received $737 million. But this story gets more interesting.  PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund (East) LLC is one of the investors in SolarReserve LLC, and Ronald Pelosi, a San Francisco political insider and financial industry polymath who also is the brother-in-law of Nancy Pelosi is an executive at PCG.  This is not to imply that Ronald Pelosi will benefit financially from the loan, but it is interesting to note all these connections between donors, Democrats, and family to these “green energy” companies.  By the way, the $1 billion in loan guarantees is expected to create just 65 long term jobs.

Parents are outraged that a liberal teacher in California intends to punish any student who says, “God Bless you”, in the classroom.  Steve Cuckovich, a health teacher at William C. Wood High School in Vacaville, California believes it is both disrespectful and disruptive.  The school has come to agree with concerned parents, with the teacher now pledging to implement a more palatable punishment for the offense.

If he were a republican governor liberals would be recalling him and the media would be reporting the story ad naseum.  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo started the process of laying off 3,500 union workers Tuesday night after the state‘s union rejected wage and benefit concessions negotiated to balance New York’s budget, reports Business Insider.  Union members voted, 54 percent to 46 percent, to reject the five-year deal that called for employees to forgo raises for the first three years and accept 2 percent increases in each of the final two years. The deal also called for union members to pay more for health insurance.

“I was not always the very best student that I could be when I was in high school, and certainly not when I was in middle school,” Obama said, speaking at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington DC.  “I did not love every class I took. I wasn’t always paying attention the way I should have,” Obama said. “I remember when I was in 8th grade I had to take a class called ethics. Now, ethics is about right and wrong, but if you’d ask me what my favorite subject was back in 8th grade, it was basketball. I don’t think ethics would have made it on the list.” Nothing needs to be added to these comments.

Courtesy:  John Paulus

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Last year, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn announced the city had won a coveted $20 million federal grant to invest in weatherization. The unglamorous work of insulating crawl spaces and attics had emerged as a silver bullet in a bleak economy – able to create jobs and shrink carbon footprint – and the announcement came with great fanfare.

McGinn had joined Vice President Joe Biden in the White House to make it. It came on the eve of Earth Day. It had heady goals: creating 2,000 living-wage jobs in Seattle and retrofitting 2,000 homes in poorer neighborhoods.

But more than a year later, Seattle’s numbers are lackluster. As of last week, only three homes had been retrofitted and just 14 new jobs have emerged from the program. Many of the jobs are administrative, and not the entry-level pathways once dreamed of for low-income workers. Some people wonder if the original goals are now achievable.

“The jobs haven’t surfaced yet,” said Michael Woo, director of Got Green, a Seattle community organizing group focused on the environment and social justice.

“It’s been a very slow and tedious process. It’s almost painful, the number of meetings people have gone to. Those are the people who got jobs. There’s been no real investment for the broader public.”

‘Who’s got the money’

The buildings that have gotten financing so far include the Washington Athletic Club and a handful of hospitals, a trend that concerns community advocates who worry the program isn’t helping lower-income homeowners.

“Who’s benefitting from this program right now – it doesn’t square with what the aspiration was,” said Howard Greenwich, the policy director of Puget Sound Sage, an economic-justice group. He urged the city to revisit its social-equity goals.

“I think what it boils down to is who’s got the money.”

Organizers and policy experts blame the economy, bureaucracy and bad timing for the program’s mediocre results. Called Community Power Works, the program funds low-interest loans and incentives for buildings to do energy-efficient upgrades. They include hospitals, municipal buildings, big commercial structures and homes.

Half the funds are reserved for financing and engaging homeowners in Central and Southeast Seattle, a historically underserved area. Most of the jobs are expected to come from this sector.

But the timing of the award has led to hurdles in enticing homeowners to bite on retrofits. The city had applied for the grant at a time of eco-giddiness, when former Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels was out-greening all other politicians except for Al Gore. Retrofits glowed with promise to boost the economy, reduce consumer bills and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

“A triple win,” is how Biden characterized it.

By the time Seattle won the award, homeowners were battered by unemployment and foreclosures. The long-term benefits of energy upgrades lacked the tangible punch of a new countertop. And the high number of unemployed construction workers edged out new weatherization installers for the paltry number of jobs.

“Really, we couldn’t have rolled out this program at a worse time,” said Greenwich, who had helped write the city’s grant proposal.

“The outcomes are very disappointing. I think the city has worked really hard, but no one anticipated just how bad this recession was going to be, and the effect it was going to have on this program.”

City feels ‘cautiously optimistic’

As of last week, 337 homeowners had applied for the program. Fourteen had gotten a loan, or were in the process of getting one.

“Yes, we’re not seeing as many completed retrofits as we wanted to,” said Joshua Curtis, the city’s manager for Community Power Works. “While everyone would like to see more upgrades, I think we’re feeling cautiously optimistic.”

He said the residential portion of program didn’t launch until April. He said there was a normal summertime lull in work and that he expected things to pick up in the fall. He was confident that the city’s marketing campaign and loan partner held promise.

Curtis said there were factors outside the city’s control, such as the economy. And he attributed frustration among job-seekers to a “mismatch” in the timing of two federal grants.

Before the city got the $20 million, some local agencies, including Got Green, had received funds in a government push to train workers in weatherization. But the anticipation of landing career-path jobs evaporated as months went by with no work.

“People are frustrated and rightly so,” Curtis said. “There’s been sort of a lag time when people graduated from those programs.”

They include Long Duong, 32, who got a certificate in sealing air leaks and insulating walls after he was laid off from a job handling bags at the airport. But he soon found that other men had more qualifications than him, and he took part-time gigs – installing light bulbs and canvassing doors – while waiting for work.

A year later, he’s still looking.

“I haven’t given up yet,” said Duong, of South Seattle. “Weatherization is another opportunity for me.”

Curtis said the money that financed the Washington Athletic Club and hospitals doesn’t draw from funds reserved for single-family homeowners. He said the program’s standards will ensure that people targeted by the program – low-income workers – will get good jobs. And he said the WAC project will create some new work in September.

“We’re not where we want to be, but we have a path forward,” he said.

City needs to ‘step up its game’

But will the city hit its goals? Curtis was hopeful Seattle would make it by 2013, when the funding ends. Greenwich, of Puget Sound Sage, said the city needs to retrofit 100 to 200 homes a month to create 2,000 jobs. Woo, of Got Green, thinks the city needs to throw more money on incentives.

Greenwich said the energy retrofit market has turned out to be extremely complicated, with required hammering out of job standards, hiring practices, wages and how best to measure energy benefits.

“The city is really going to have to step up its game to get the 2,000 retrofits,” Greenwich said.

“But if this would have been easy, it would have been done already.”

Courtesy: Komo News

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President Barack Obama met for less than an hour Saturday with congressional leaders in debt crisis talks, and a leading Republican said afterward that top lawmakers were “committed to working on new legislation” to cut federal spending and avert an unprecedented U.S. default.

There were no immediate signs of a breakthrough, however. The lawmakers and Obama were unsmiling as the meeting began, and most of them avoided reporters when they left the White House.

In a statement released afterward, the White House said, “Congress should refrain from playing reckless political games with our economy. Instead, it should be responsible and do its job, avoiding default and cutting the deficit.” The statement renewed Obama’s insistence that any agreement tide the government over until after the 2012 elections, to avoid a rerun of the debt dispute in the heat of the campaign.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell issued a somewhat more upbeat statement of his own.

“The president wanted to know that there was a plan for preventing national default,” he said. “The bipartisan leadership in Congress is committed to working on new legislation that will prevent default while substantially reducing Washington spending.”

House Speaker John Boehner also pledged to work for a bipartisan solution.

“As I said last night, over this weekend Congress will forge a responsible path forward,” he said in a statement. “House and Senate leaders will be working to find a bipartisan solution to significantly reduce Washington spending and preserve the full faith and credit of the United States.”

The meeting followed a collapse in negotiations late Friday, when Boehner announced he was breaking off talks with the president. A visibly irritated Obama summoned Boehner and three other top congressional leaders from both parties to convene Saturday and try again to find a way to raise the debt limit before an Aug. 2 deadline cuts off the government’s borrowing authority.

The president was flanked at the bargaining table by Boehner and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. Also at the table were Vice President Joe Biden, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and McConnell, R-Ky.

Courtesy:  AP

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President Obama was briefed by his economic team in the Oval Office today, the first such meeting in more than a month.

The Hill newspaper reported last week that the once-daily economic briefings had disappeared from the president’s schedule of late, even as new data have spurred growing pessimism about the direction of the economy.

The addition of a daily economic briefing to the president’s schedule was the first announcement made by then-press secretary Robert Gibbs after Obama took office.

He said at the time that Obama asked for an economic briefing along with his daily intelligence and security briefing so he could receive “the most up-to-date information as it relates to the economy.”

A review of the president’s daily schedule finds the last formal economic briefing was scheduled for April 26. Even that briefing came after a hiatus, following back-to-back briefings on March 8 and 9.

The scheduled economic briefings appeared to become less frequent after January. In total, he’s had 15 economic briefings since last November, according to the schedule provided by the White House.

Obama has, however, had regular meetings with senior advisors, which occasionally include members of his economic team. Vice President Joe Biden’s schedule in recent months has also included a series of meetings with Jack Lew, director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Gene Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, to discuss fiscal policy.

Amid concerns about a new economic downturn, the state of the economy is far improved from those early days of the Obama administration, when daily economic briefings were more common. Still, Republicans pounced on the scheduling shift, saying it showed the president was not sufficiently focused on the economy.

Courtesy LA Times

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As part of the Obama administration’s campaign to promote transparency, the White House announced today it intends to eliminate the public’s access to half of the federal government’s websites within the next year.

The White House said there are nearly 2,000 websites operated by the federal government, which it said confuses people.

“With so many separate sites, Americans often do not know where to turn for information,” the office of Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. said in a statement. “The administration will immediately put a halt to the creation of new websites. The administration will also shut down or consolidate 25% of the 2,000 sites over the next few months and set a goal of cutting the number of separate, standalone sites in half over the next year.”

It called the campaign of winnowing access to government web sites part of the president’s campaign “targeting duplication and waste.” The administration did not give an estimate of how much money it believes could be saved by halving the government’s Internet sites.

A White House official defended the move, saying it will actually improve access.

White House New Media DirectorMacon Phillips has said previously that the government doesn’t need, for example, multiple web sites dedicated to invasive plan.

In a statement, Mr. Obama said, “as we work to tackle the budget deficit, we need to step up our game. No amount of waste is acceptable — not when it’s your money; not at a time when so many families are already cutting back.”

Mr. Biden hosted an event at the White House Monday to announce he is taking on a new role holding the Cabinet accountable for cutting waste in their agencies.

White House officials didn’t say how the administration will determine which web sites to cut. But the president is creating an 11-member “government oversight and accountability board,” comprised of current executive branch officials, “to help federal agencies improve their performance.”

Courtesy Washington Times

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The home of Alan Ginsburg where Biden aides held an American reporter in a small closet during fundraiser

If you haven’t read yet, pool reporter Scott Powers was imprisoned in a closet by Vice President Biden aides at a fundraiser held at Alan Ginsburg’s home to ensure that he didn’t talk to guests.  Well, now there’s reaction over this despicable and inappropriate behavior.

When Ginsburg learnt of the treatment that took place at his home, he immediately called the reporter. Powers said: ‘[Ginsburg] said he had no idea they’d put me in a closet and was very sorry. ‘He said he was just following their lead and was extremely embarrassed by the whole thing.’

Other some guests were shocked by the Vice President’s staff.  One emailed the Daily Mail paper saying: ‘I was in attendance at the Fundraiser and enjoyed a nice lunch. ‘If I had known there was a reporter stuffed in the closet, I would have been compelled to stand up and demand answers. ‘I would also like to know if this is actually legal to treat people like caged animals. I’m disgusted by these actions.’

According to Florida State law, kidnapping entails ‘forcibly, secretly or by threat confining, abducting or imprisoning another person against her or his will and without lawful authority.’

Powers said of his imprisonment: ‘It was frustrating and annoying that I was not given a chance to do my job fully and properly. This was an extreme, and extremely inappropriate way of handling the press… it was essentially a rude and uncomfortable way to treat a reporter.’

Updated at 1:30PM, March 27, 2011

“One of Biden’s staffers… met me at the door, led me through the party, then said, ‘We want you to wait here until the vice president arrives’”.

“’Here’ was basically a storage closet. It was about 8 feet by 10 feet with shelves full of stuff and boxes and baskets piled up all over the place. There was an old desk in one corner with files and papers all over it – and just enough room for one chair close by the door to sit on.

“They gave me a bottle of water and shut the door.

“I was puzzled, but assumed this was only going to last a few minutes. Instead, it went on for an hour and 15 minutes.

“A staffer who was guarding the door told me, ‘I’ll let you know when you can come out.’

“They were obviously waiting until Biden and Senator Nelson were actually on the podium – and didn’t want me to speak to a soul at the fundraiser.”

Powers was finally escorted out of the closet to listen to the non-headline-making speeches by Biden and Nelson.

“But as soon as the speeches finished, a female staffers escorted me back to the closet and told me, ‘You’ll have to wait here till the motorcade clears’”, he said

“Finally after another 15 minutes they let me out and walked with me to my car – making sure I was on my way.”

“Should I have made a scene?” he wonders. “Maybe – but I was more concerned with thinking how the hell I was going to get a story without talking to people.

“As far as I’m concerned, Joe Biden is the first politician who’s kept reporters and fundraiser guests apart.”

Ironically, says Powers, he knew many of the well-heeled guests and would have had no problem talking to them.

And two days later, after news of the bizarre incident spread, he got a call from the embarrassed host of the fundraiser, Alan Ginsburg.

“He said he was very sorry – he had no idea I’d been confined in the closet,” said Powers.

Vice President’s staff emailed him an apology which he said ‘I found far less satisfying than Ginsburg’s.’

The incident should be especially embarrassing for an administration that’s condemning the treatment of journalists trying to report in Libya and which campaigned on more open government.  Just ten days ago, President Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney told reporters: ‘journalists should be protected and allowed to do their work.’ Perhaps the administration might want to start practicing what they preach.

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I don’t think I could be anymore speechless than I am about this next story. Staffers for Vice President Joe Biden gave an Orlando Sentinel reporter the “Guantanamo Bay” treatment when they confined him in a closet this week to keep him from mingling with high-powered guests gathered for a Democratic fundraiser.

The reporter, Scott Powers, was the designated “pool reporter” for the vice president’s Wednesday visit to the grandiose mansion of developer and philanthropist Alan Ginsburg. Biden hadn’t arrived yet, however, most of the 150 guests who paid a minimum of $500 had. Meanwhile while, the guest were enjoying caprese crostini with oven-dried mozzarella and basil, rosemary flatbread with grapes honey and gorgonzola cheese and bacon deviled eggs, before a lunch of grilled chicken Caesar and garden vegetable wraps a ”low-level staffer” put Powers in a storage closet and then stood guard outside the door. Powers reported that, “When I’d stick my head out, they’d say, ‘Not yet. We’ll let you know when you can come out.’”

Home of Alan Ginsburg

What’s worst is the imprisoned pool reporter was only given a bottle of water to sip as he sat at a tiny makeshift desk, right next to a bag marked “consignment.” Powers was imprisoned at about 11:30 a.m., held for about an hour and 15 minutes, came out for 35 minutes of remarks by Biden and Sen. Bill Nelson, Florida Democrat, and then returned to his jail for the remainder of the event.

Powers’ phone didn’t work in the closet, but his Blackberry did, so he fired a picture of his impromptu prison to his editors, who posted a short blog item on the lack of freedom of the press under the vice-president’s control.

While I’m angry at the way this President’s administration handles freedom of the press, I don’t feel sorry for the sycophant reporters who have worked to prop up this President.  I leave open the possibility that this latest attempt to infringe on the freedom of the press will inspire reporters to report more honestly and more critically of this administration and machinations by Democrat.

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I don’t need to tell you you can see for yourself, according to Monday’s Gallup Poll the war in Libya has the lowest approval of any US military action in the past 3 decades.

Fresh off of Obama’s much criticized Latin-America trip, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney refused to give an on camera press briefing.  Could it be because there are questions that haven’t been answered regarding the war in Libya.  For instance, why wasn’t Congress properly consulted?  Who is leading the campaign in Libya?  How is winning defined?

Another thing I realized looking at the above list of prior US military actions, in each of those engagements I can recall the President addressing the American people from the White House.  Not with this President.  In fact, must feel that he doesn’t have to address the American people at all.

There was a report out today that Obama was “accidentally” locked out of the Oval Office today… one has to wonder if his administration felt that they could do a better job without him or whether that other bumbling idiot Biden thought Obama had already been impeached and had the locks changed.  Perhaps the lock doors were an omen of what’s to come in 2012.  We can only hope.

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First, let me begin today’s blog by honoring one of the greatest film actresses ever, Elizabeth Taylor.  Ms. Taylor died of congestive heart failure today at the age of 79.  She will be remembered fondly for her great acting and her contribution to the fight against AIDS.

Now on to one of the worst Presidents of all times, Barack Hussein Obama who cut his trip to the Mayan Ruins short so that he could return to Washington to salvage this illegal war he has entered.

Obama, in a news conference yesterday, tried to justify the war by saying that innocent people were being slaughtered at the hands of a brutal dictator– sound familiar?  And for this reason alone, military action against the country was necessary.  By this justification, we should expect bombing in Iran to commence shortly.

In a flashback, Vice President Biden is quoted as saying, “If he gives authorization to go to war…without Congressional approval, I will make it my business to impeach him (video here).  When can we expect these proceedings to begin and will we be any better with the gaffe-prone Biden as President?

This illegal war has no defined mission. No one knows who’s leading it.  There are no clear goals or objectives.  In fact, the entire operation is a complete mess.  It comes as no surprise that these are today’s headlines:

There are accusations flying back and forth between allies.  Allies threatening to pull out.  The British claiming that this could last 30 years… what is going on?

There is, however, some amusement in all of this.  Turn on MSNBC or CNN or read one of the liberal sites and you’ll find liberals tripping all over themselves trying to rationalize Obama’s decision to go to war.  One of the more hilarious things I read was one reporter calling Obama the, “reluctant warrior” whose hand was forced.

Listen, I’ll be the first to give my support to the President to use military force if he has defined goals. If it is in response to an attack.  If the use of force is to protect the United States from imminent attack.  If it is to protect the interest of the United States.  If it falls within the scope of the NATO charter.  Or, if the use of force is authorized by the United States Congress.  The illegal war in Libya is not justified by any of these requirements.

King President Obama had over 30 days to demonstrate leadership and to bring his case for going to war to the United States Congress.  He did not. Had the President presented his case to Congress, there is a good chance that Muammar Gaddafi would have ceased his brutal killings having witness the destruction of Iraq and the eventual capture and hanging of Saddam Hussein.  Sadly, that’s not the course that Obama took.

One could argue that presenting his case to Congress would have been politically risky.  Obama would have received push back from the Left.  He would have to explain his position and reasoning for going to war to the Congress risking that his comments as a candidate would come back to haunt him.  One could argue, because of these likely possibilities, Obama lacked the courage to go to Congress and instead decided to launch a war while out of the country minimizing the political heat from the left.  If this is the case, and I believe it to be, then we have a coward residing in the Oval Office.  If you can’t stand up to a bunch of tree-hugging, hippie, lefties how can you stand up to America’s  enemies?