Million+ Americans Without Heat While Pres. Obama Cranks White House Thermostat

WASHINGTON — The capital flew into a bit of a tizzy when, on his first full day in the White House, President Obama was photographed in the Oval Office without his suit jacket. There was, however, a logical explanation: Mr. Obama, who hates the cold, had cranked up the thermostat.

“He’s from Hawaii, O.K.?” said Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, who occupies the small but strategically located office next door to his boss. “He likes it warm. You could grow orchids in there.”

Meanwhile, in Kentucky…

Gov. Steve Beshear called up his entire Army National Guard on Saturday, tripling his troops with his state still reeling from a deadly ice storm that knocked out power from the Midwest to the East Coast.

More than half a million homes and businesses, most of them in Kentucky, remained with out electricity from the Ozarks through Appalachia, though temperatures creeping into the 40s helped a swarm of utility workers make headway. Finding fuel – heating oil along with gas for cars and generators – was another struggle for those trying to tough it out at home, with hospitals and other essential services getting priority over members of the public.

The addition of 3,000 soldiers and airmen makes 4,600 Guardsmen pressed into service. It’s the largest call-up in Kentucky history, which Beshear called an appropriate response to a storm that cut power to more than 600,000 people, the state’s largest outage on record. Many people in rural areas cannot get out of their driveways due to debris and have no phone service, the governor said.

“With the length of this disaster and what we’re expecting to be a multi-day process here, we’re concerned about the lives and the safety of our people in their own homes,” Beshear said, “and we need the manpower in some of the rural areas to go door-to-door and do a door-to-door canvass … and make sure they’re OK.”

And it’s not like this “let them eat cake” attitude is new. It’s been going on for a while.

Sidwell Friends, the private school his daughters attend, was among area schools that closed or started late Wednesday after a 2-inch snowfall and freezing rain overnight. D.C. schools opened two hours late.
…
When it comes to winter, “Folks in Washington don’t seem to be able to handle things,” he joked. Maybe, he suggested, they need some “flinty Chicago toughness.”

Obama’s heated Hawaiian attitude goes beyond mocking those who are reluctant to cast send little girls out into the cold, and his deliberate ignorance at and silence at the suffering of the million people in Kentucky who have been without power or heat for days. No, in times of “national economic crisis” [Obama’s own words], he’s called upon us all to sacrifice (while he turns the Oval Office into a greenhouse). Yet, even the far left greeniacs like Al Gore are somehow too self-conscious to point out the new President’s hypocrisy. There was no mention of a new style of green-living at the White House when Al Gore was on Capitol Hill (down the street from The White House) testifying about Global Warming. Even he didn’t want to point out the snuggle-buggle factor at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Sad. Since the media at large is silent on the arrogant duplicity, one might wonder about the reaction if President Bush had done this?