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The Cold and Flu Season Grips the White House

The Cold and Flu Season. Normally this time of year is considered an annoyance by most people, perhaps a cash cow by the over the counter pharmaceutical industry.

This year is a little different. Yesterday, October 24th, President Obama declared swine flu a national emergency.

Nobody is immune from catching a cold or the flu, and this is true in a political sense as well. The decline in Barack Obama’s popularity since July has been the steepest of any president at the same stage of his first term for more than 50 years.

Does the Obama Administration have the political equivalent of a fever? What better place to take the temperature of the Obama Administration that the White House web site.

Deciding to look at President Barack Obama’s White House web site I launched my trusty web browser and pointed it to www.whitehouse.gov to see what may be ailing the Administration and what they’re doing to, in a manner of speaking, get ‘well’.

Nothing about the Iraq War or the Afghan War.

Nothing about bipartisan answers to the problems facing the United States, which was a theme of the Obama Presidential Campaign.

Nothing about addressing the Culture of Corruption in Washington, DC.

The impression that President Obama isn’t focused on the two wars, or fulfilling his moderate campaign promises, is killing him in the polls. The White House communication gurus don’t realize they have huge gaping political confidence holes on the President’s web site.

What are the issues the White House is working on a cure for?

First and foremost is ‘Health Insurance Reform’. This beast has a different name almost every week. Not so long ago ‘it’ went by the name of ‘Health Care Reform’. However, that was a week or so back and focus group research must have led to a rethinking of what to label a takeover of 1/6th of the U.S. economy.

To the left on the page is a column, or series, of ‘blog’ entries. These entries are fed out via RSS to any site or person that would care to receive them. No doubt this is an example of the Obama Administration’s fine tuned understanding of the New Media

Going through the blog entries from top to bottom one sees a story about President Obama signing a National Emergency Declaration concerning the H1N1 virus. Okay, here’s the ugly truth, the U.S. Government failed to manufacture enough vaccine, “The federal government had expected that 120 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine would be readily available by October end but the CDC will only have 27.7 million doses of the vaccine by the month’s end.”

So remember the same U.S. Government who came up 100 MILLION doses short of H1N1 vaccine this year still intends to take over the entire U.S. Health Care System.

Next up is a video, the President’s Weekly Address: Working with Small Business to Drive Recovery. The video as served from the Whitehouse.gov is unwatchable, coughs and gags, incredibly slow. Searching YouTube I found the Working with Small Business to Drive Recovery video and was able to view it without difficulty. The gist of President Obama’s Working with Small Business to Drive Recovery video address is that banks aren’t loaning money and that’s why the .

Next is a political damage control story directly related to the President’s Weekly Address. On Thursday, October 22nd, Christina Romer (Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration) testified before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee that the 780 Billion dollar Economic Stimulus Package is a bust. In her piece Mrs. Romer uses a misfiring automobile metaphor to explain what she was really trying to say before Congress.

Following the apology by Christina Romer is blog cocktail by Brian Bond, President Obama’s Deputy Director of Public Liaison and point person to the LGBT community. Mr. Bond was the leader of the Victory Fund, The Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund is an American political action committee dedicated to increasing the number of openly LGBT public officials in US political life.

In brief, Mr. Bond writes about a series of efforts by the White House to placate the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Community. If you aren’t aware the LGBT forces are unhappy with President Obama, specifically because President Obama hasn’t overturned the Military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy. To remind the LGBT Community that President Obama is on their side Brian Bond writes about the steps the White House is taking to support the LGBT Community. This apparently includes tax payer subsidized housing and a Community Center for aging Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and Transgender senior citizens. We are in the middle of the ‘worst economic downturn since the great depression’ but there is enough money to throw towards niche political groups?

There were two more ‘blog’ entries, one about clean energy and one more about the H1N1.

To the left of the blogs column was a column labeled Featured Legislation, there is no RSS feed for this content. It’s getting late in the day and I only scanned the Legislation.

One piece of Legislation immediately caught my eye, a Omnibus Public Lands Management Act was signed Monday, March 30, 2009. Having a background in ranching, oil and gas, as well as a short stint with the local Conservation District I was quite interested in the details of this legislation.

The article is written by a Jesse Lee. Who is Mr. Jesse Lee? Well, Jesse Lee is the Online Programs Director for President Barack Obama. My guess is that among many hats he wears he is the webmaster for Whitehouse.gov. And what are Jesse Lee’s qualifications? “Lee launched his political career as the author of a one-page anti-Iraq war leaflet distributed in cafeterias, coffee shops and libraries across the country. Lee got his start in politics running a popular Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) blog in 2003. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) snatched him up in 2006 to run The Gavel, the representative’s YouTube generation-friendly blog. In the months leading up to the 2008 presidential campaign, he ran the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) rapid-response team“.

Interestingly enough the Omnibus Public Lands Management Act also included funding for the Christopher and Dana Reeve’s Paralysis Act, which boosts research and rehabilitation for paralysis. I don’t believe Jesse should have included the apostrophe, a Google search indicated as such. Possession of?

However I was more interested in reading the bill itself, so I clicked on the link to the legislation itself.

And received a 404 Page Not Found error.

Yup, the webmaster for Whitehouse.gov got the link wrong. Now that’s funny. Or sad. You be the judge.

Enough for one night. It’s time to ask what is known now that wasn’t known before the exploration was begun.

First, the Obama Administration is negligent in communicating with the American People on Iraq and Afghanistan goals.

Second, those things that are on the website seem to telegraph a state of short sighted damage control. Be it the economy, energy or pandering to a niche political group I certainly didn’t come away with a feeling that the White House really believes the choices made to ‘fix’ the economy are working or will work.

Third, the White House web master (Online Programs Director for President Barack Obama) is mediocre and likely in over his head.

Being no doctor I do know that to get well you have to correctly diagnose the problem.

The Obama Administration promised transparency and has reneged on that promise. There is no shortage of smoke and mirrors, but the Administration has fallen woefully short on results.

Cold and flu season has taken hold of the United States, and from the looks of things it will be some time before the Obama Administration starts feeling better about itself or anything else.

The only question left is asking the Obama Administration is suffering from the political equivalent of the flu, or something much worse.