Pit Stop in NO to placate Katrina victims on the way to SF for gala fund raiser

City Square has a short piece and lots of pics about Obama protesters in San Fran. Apparently it was a mixed bag of protesters, but most were still tea partiers.

Obama was there for a fundraiser, where guests contributed $34,000 per couple. Clearly, the penny groundlings were left outside. According to Politico, Obama continued to press the “inherited” mantra.

President Barack Obama addressed an adoring crowd of supporters at a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in San Francisco Thursday evening, where he told the assembled that “When I’m busy, and Nancy’s busy, with a mop cleaning up somebody else’s mess, we don’t want somebody sitting back saying, ‘you’re not holding the mop the right way’ … ‘you’re not mopping fast enough’ … ‘that’s a socialist mop.’”

“Grab a mop. We need help.”

Obama, at the Westin St. Francis Hotel here after visiting New Orleans earlier in the day, addressed a small group of donors at an intimate dinner for 160, and then moved several floors downstairs to a larger ballroom, where he addressed a sold-out crowd of about 900 attendees. The singer Tracy Chapman warmed up the ballroom crowd with her 1988 hit, “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution.”

Revolution? Of whom? People who can afford $34K just to eat with Obama? That’s his revolutionaries? I thought that was GWB’s base. Well what about Obama’s supposed base? What about the people he promised to help many times during his campaign – Katrina victims?

Obama arrived in CA after making a four hour stop in New Orleans. Four. Hours. Four. The Week had a short bit.

As a candidate and senator, President Obama visited New Orleans five times, said Peter Baker and Campbell Robertson in The New York Times. So there was some “frustration and impatience” in the city that it took him nine months to visit as president. Thursday’s four-hour stop was meant to assure locals that, despite the “backlog of problems” he inherited, he “would not forget about New Orleans.”

Again with the inheritance. But I’m sure NO appreciated BO’s need to jet off to San Francisco to meet with a small, exclusive group and to later speak to a larger one. Back to Politico:

Guests at the dinner contributed $34,000 per couple, and tickets for the main event ranged between $500 and $1,000. The DNC expects to have raised about $3 million in total.

Taking to a small stage by himself and without a teleprompter, Obama joked, “I am not going to spoil a good dinner with a long speech.” Turning to Pelosi, he said, “Everybody has a story about Nancy’s kindness … I just want to say a little something about her toughness.”

“Day in and day out, she faces down some of the toughest problems,” the president said. “She doesn’t break a sweat.”

“I love Nancy Pelosi,” he said.
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He sought to reassure the dinner attendees that Washington was making progress. “If we stopped today, this legislative session would have been one of the most productive in a generation,” he said. “I hope that all of you guys understand that we’re just getting started.”

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A quick elevator ride downstairs, Pelosi again introduced Obama, this time to the larger audience. “Barack Obama is in the house,” she said. She again said she wanted to introduce the crowd to Obama, because, “you are the greatest.” Promising to pass health care reform, Pelosi led a brief chant of “Yes we will.”

In remarks that began shortly after 11 p.m. eastern time, President Obama recycled the “other party” joke for the larger crowd. He also told an anecdote about President Abraham Lincoln, who, when told that one man was particularly responsible for electing him to the White House, said, “It’s a pretty mess you’ve gotten me into, but I forgive you.”

“That’s how I feel about you,” Obama told the ballroom crowd.

No doubt a fawning crowd felt a lot better than a frustrated one.

The president stood on a large stage flanked by giant screens projecting the DNC logo and the slogan “Organizing for America.”

I find something distasteful about a quick trip to New Orleans followed by meaningful discussions with big donors and party jingoism.

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If you watched any news today, you’re familiar with the “balloon boy” story covered in exhaustive detail by, among others, CNN. Blitzer was all over it. The NJ Star-Ledger had this to say about the silly story:

There are few spectacles in our culture more predictable, and more depressing, than the non-stop cable news coverage of a “developing story” with no new developments. The cable news channels have so much airtime to fill, and they’re all so terrified of viewers changing the channel if they move off whatever the day’s big story happens to be that they encourage their anchors, and reporters, and “experts” to just talk and talk and talk and fill all that air until the occasional scrap of new information comes out.

True, that. But bad as that is it is not what I found most depressing. The part I really loathed was Wolf Blitzer speculating that a dot on the screen could be the balloon boy falling to his death.

Wolf covered himself by saying “it could be anything.” Feh. He wouldn’t have bothered with “video forensics” if he hadn’t thought it could be a 6 year old falling to his death.

Disgusting. Beyond belief.