When the going gets tough…the not-so-tough go on vay-cay.

Fox News reports that

The White House brushed off concerns Friday that, with the crisis in Crimea intensifying, now might not be the best time for President Obama — and his vice president — to go on vacation.

The travel schedules of both the president and Vice President Biden have come under scrutiny, given the rapidly changing situation in Ukraine. Obama, already in Florida to talk about education, was planning to spend some family time this weekend in Key Largo, Fla., where he arrived late in the day. Biden, meanwhile, will be in the Virgin Islands.

Despite some apparent discussion over cutting the president’s trip short, White House spokesman Josh Earnest indicated the president would be able to handle the crisis from out of the office.

“The president over the course of a very busy week has maintained his schedule and his ability to monitor ongoing events in Ukraine. I would anticipate that he’ll do the same thing this weekend,” Earnest said. “And the fact of the matter is what the president is doing this weekend in Florida is essentially what the president will be doing if he stayed back at the White House. It’s just that the weather will be a little warmer.”

He said Obama plans to spend time with his wife and daughters while in the Keys. “There are some recreational amenities on the property, including workout facilities, tennis courts, a couple of golf courses,” he noted.

So, who’s “minding the store”? Why, Valerie Jarrett, of course.

In an article, posted on August 12, 2012, on AmericanThinker.com, “Obama’s Strange Dependence on Valerie Jarrett” by Karin McQuillan, it was reported that…

…According to Edward Klein, a reporter once asked Obama if he ran every decision by Jarrett. Obama answered, “Yep. Absolutely.”

Edward Klein, former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor of the New York Times Magazine for many years, describes Jarrett as “ground zero in the Obama operation, the first couple’s friend and consigliere.” Klein — who claims he used a minimum of two sources for each assertion in his book on the Obama presidency, The Amateur — writes in detail about Jarrett opposing the raid on bin Laden. She told Obama not to take the political risk. Klein thought Obama ignored Jarrett’s advice. Miniter tells us he listened to her, three times telling Special Operations not to take the risk to go after bin Laden.

We need to understand the role Valerie Jarrett plays in Obama’s private and political life.

“If it wasn’t for Valerie Jarrett, there’d be no Barack Obama to complain about,” starts Klein’s chapter on Jarrett. He quotes Michelle Obama on Jarrett’s influence over her husband: “She knows the buttons, the soft spots, the history, the context.”

No one outside Michelle has the access or power over Obama’s decision-making like Jarrett does. Here’s an odd little fact that gives some insight into what kind of president Obama is: Michelle, Michelle’s mother, and Valerie, and only a few others in Washington, are allowed to call Barack by his first name. After work, Jarrett joins Obama at night in the Family Quarters, where she dines often with the First Family. She goes on vacation with them.

Jarrett’s title is the weird mouthful “Assistant to the President for Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs.” She is the gatekeeper, but she is also much more than that. She occupies Karl Rove’s and Hillary’s old office and has an all-access pass to meetings. She shows up at the National Security Council, at meetings on the economy and budget. She stays behind to advise Obama on what to think and do. Obama uses her as his left-wing conscience. Klein’s sources describe how at each pressing issue, Obama turns to ask her, “What do you think the right thing to do is?” As president, he likes to have her next to him “as the voice of authentic blackness in a White House that is staffed largely by whites.”

A longtime friend told Klein that Jarrett is the “eyes, ears and nose” of the Obamas. She tells them whom to trust, who is saying what, whom to see at home and abroad. Michelle wants her there: “I told her … it would give me a sense of comfort to know that (Barack) had somebody like her there by his side.” As Obama told the New York Times, “Valerie is one of my oldest friends. … I trust her completely.”

…Valerie Jarrett reflects Obama in many ways. Like himself, Valerie looks more white than black. Her mother had three white grandparents, and her father was black. Like Obama, she lived in the Muslim world for part of her childhood, when her father practiced medicine in Iran. Like Obama, she is a committed leftist. But there are crucial differences. Her father was not a drunk Kenyan polygamist like Obama’s, but a famous pathologist and geneticist. Her mother was not a leftist expatriate like Obama’s, but a distinguished psychologist. Valerie married into Chicago’s black elite, the top rung of African-American society. She went to Stanford, got a law degree from Michigan, and became Mayor Richard Daley’s deputy chief of staff, “the public black face” of his administration.

When Valerie Jarrett hired Michelle to work for Daley and befriended her, the Obamas gained access to the exclusive world of upper-class black Chicago politics. Valerie knew everyone whom it was important to know in black and Jewish money circles. She gave Barack entrée and legitimacy. She financed and promoted his ambitions for national office.

Obama finally belonged. Not that Jarrett’s record in Chicago was anything to be proud of. Jarrett was known for her corruption and incompetence. Daley finally had to fire her after a scandal erupted over her role in misuse of public funds in the city’s substandard public housing. She went on to become CEO of Habitat Executive Services, pulling down $300,000 in salary and $550,000 in deferred compensation. Again, she managed a housing complex that was seized by government inspectors for slum conditions. The scandal didn’t matter to Obama. The sordid corruption was all part of Jarrett’s Chicago success story.

Every insider in Chicago told Klein the same thing: Jarrett has no qualifications to be the principal advisor to the president of the United States. She doesn’t understand how Washington works, how relations with Congress work, how the federal process works. She doesn’t understand how the economy works, how the military works, how national security works. But she understands how Obama works.

The president turns to Valerie Jarrett for definitive advice on all these issues. She has given him terrible advice over and over, and still he turns to her.

Her true job is to make Obama feel proud of himself. When Obama looks at Jarrett, he sees himself as whole and good and real. He is no longer the fake black, the fatherless kid flailing around in a white world, tortured by the unfairness of it all. She fills the emptiness at the core of his identity. She admires and adores him. Jarrett told New Yorker editor David Remnick that the president is “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.” And the icing on the cake — she shares his left-wing politics that project unfairness out onto white America.

Obama relies on Jarrett to create the White House bubble he likes to live in, where his narcissism is stroked and his desire to do the big, left-wing thing is encouraged. Jarrett is the doorman. She runs access to the president. As Klein puts it, she guards him from meeting with “critics and complainers who might deflate his ego.” No one gets past Jarrett who has an incompatible point of view.

The authoress goes on to report that Ms. Jarrett is the reason that Rob Emmanuel and Richard Daley are no longer members of the Obama Administration.

For both the President and Vice-President to not cancel their Vacation Plans, with an “involuntary excursion” into the Ukraine going on, is negligent at best and Dereliction of Duty, at worst.

And, for a non-elected individual, such as Ms. Jarrett to wield so much power in our nation, is equally as distressing.

Now is not the time to spend more of the taxpayer’s money on vacations. Especially, after it was just announced that Michelle Obama and her two girls will be taking an extensive “fact-finding trip” to China, courtesy of us American Taxpayers.

All Nero did was fiddle.

Until He Comes,

KJ