Government Party Time & Obama’s ‘March Madness’ Picks, Despite Economic Woes in DC & Across America (video)
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on March 17, 2011
Are these DC elitists so clueless?
From The Washington Times, In face of government shutdown, it’s still party time:
Despite the looming possibility of a government shutdown, federal layoffs and furloughs, there’s at least one thing members of Congress from both political parties can readily agree on these days: partying.
Morning, noon and night, more than 150 fundraising parties are scheduled all over Washington this week for Democratic and Republican politicians in bars, restaurants and private town houses and at sporting events — even to watch the woeful Washington Wizards play. Other lawmakers are gearing up for March Madness, the upcoming NCAA basketball tournament, with luxury suites for fundraising at the Verizon Center.
The flurry of fundraising comes as the end of the first quarter for reporting election contributions comes up. Also, Congress will be adjourning next week, so politicians might be scurrying to raise money in Washington while they still can.
“It’s an every-three-months tradition where we tend to see an uptick,” said Nancy Watzman of the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, which tracks fundraising parties by members of Congress. “With the March 31 deadline approaching, there are a lot of parties with people looking to pump up their numbers.”
Fifty-seven fundraising parties were scheduled for Wednesday alone, according to Sunlight, which points out that the group still doesn’t know about all of the events going on across town. Last week was busy, too.
Democratic Rep. Bruce L. Braley of Iowa appeared at a fundraiser for the Populist PAC, which was held in a $1.8 million Capitol Hill home where donors got to mingle with politicians like Rep. John Garamendi, California Democrat. Mr. Braley’s office declined to comment Wednesday.
Even ABC News’ White House correspondent Jake Tapper has noticed the casual attitude:
Golf, NCAA brackets, Democratic fundraisers, trips to Rio….the president may be engaged in a lot of hard work on Japan, the Middle East and North Africa, the budget and the economy behind the scenes, but he seems conscious of the fact that participating in some of these other activities might not look so good.
[...]
President Obama urged those watching his NCAA picks special to donate to Japan relief at http://usaid.gov. Today a reporter asked White House press secretary Jay Carney if it was appropriate for the president to be addressing a crisis of this gravity as he’s standing before a whiteboard talking about the basketball tournament?
[...]
More criticism is likely to come; tomorrow President Obama travels to Capitol Hill for a St. Patrick’s Day event with congressional leadership. On Friday the president leaves for Brasilia and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Santiago, Chile; and San Salvador, El Salvador.
Obama’s version of “getting skin in the game” as he fills out his NCAA brackets…
Obama’s 2011 March Madness Picks on ESPN
From Village Voice, March Madness Day 2: Obama Makes His Picks, Biden’s Bookie Won’t Accept His:
ESPN released Barack Obama’s March Madness bracket today, along with a video of the president making his picks. Depending on your political leanings, you think this is either a lighthearted exercise showing the president is a normal guy, or a potentially catastrophic waste of time while America crumbles from within. (Also, he’s so quick to produce his bracket, where’s the birth certificate?) Obama has all the top seeds making it to the Final Four, with Kansas beating Ohio State for the national championship. Do these conservative picks mean he will shy away from socially progressive issues? Is he trying to woo two battleground states ahead of the 2012 election? Are we really attempting to surmise substantial information from something called “Barack-Etology?”
Pundit & Pundette weigh in… On Planet Obama, life’s a beach:
Yes, it’s all going beautifully, and in case you were concerned, he’s really enjoying himself, even if the job is a bit tiring:
“There are times where Michelle reminds me that I volunteered for this job,” Obama said to laughs. “Because she looks at me and I looked tired. But I’m telling you, I am having an extraordinary time, because there aren’t many moments in our lives where we know that we’re making a difference. And this is one of those moments.”
Tired? Maybe he can catch up on his sleep on the beach in sunny Brazil. The White House defends the flight down to Rio:
‘The President is taking this trip because he is committed to growing the economy and rebalancing our national security posture,’ Mr Carney said after he was asked if the trip might be shelved.
‘He remains confident he can fully execute his job when he is on the road,’ added Mr Carney.
He said the President will monitor ‘all major issues, all the time’ wherever he is.
Which means they get ESPN in Brazil.
Mr Obama will be giving a speech at the Cinelandia Square in Rio on Sunday and his family is expected to join him to take in the city sights, including the famous Christ the Redeemer statue on Corcovado Mountain.
The Obamas will be heading to the beach after meeting Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in the capital Brasilia on Saturday.
JWF calls him delusional. It just seems that way to those of us stuck on planet Earth.
UPDATE… H/t to Iowahawk for this graphic — click image to enlarge:
From NY Post, Obama the Invisible:
Where is the president? The world is beset. Moammar Khadafy is moving relentlessly to crush the Libyan revolt that once promised the overthrow of one of the world’s most despicable regimes.
So where is the president?
Japan may be on the verge of a disaster that dwarfs any we have yet seen. A self-governing nation like the United States needs its leader to take full measure of his position at times of crises when the path forward is no longer clear.
This is not a time for leadership; this is the time for leadership.
So where is Barack Obama?
The moment demands that he rise to the challenge of showing America and the world that he is taking the reins. How leaders act in times of unanticipated crisis, in which they do not have a formulated game plan and must instead navigate in treacherous waters, defines them.
Obama is defining himself in a way that will destroy him.
It is not merely that he isn’t rising to the challenge. He is avoiding the challenge. He is Bartleby the President. He would prefer not to.
He has access to a microphone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If he tells the broadcast networks in the middle of the day that he has a major address to deliver on an unprecedented world situation, they will cancel their programming for him.
And yet, since Friday and a press conference in which he managed to leave the American position on Libya more muddled than it was before, we have not heard his voice. Except in a radio address — he talked about education legislation.
And he appeared at a fund-raiser in DC. And sat down with ESPN to reveal his NCAA picks.
He cannot go on like this. Niall Ferguson, the very pessimistic economic historian, wrote the other day that the best we can now hope for is that Obama leaves the country in the same kind of shape that Jimmy Carter left it in.
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