By Judi McLeod ——Bio and Archives--December 8, 2015
The very first thing Barack Obama did on his first full day at the White House was to jack up the heat.
Out on the campaign trail, he had advised the plebes of the world to keep their thermostats--- to “72 degrees at all times”--no matter how frigid the winter and had lectured plain folk to pump air into their tires for the sake of the environment.
It was said that the new administration made it warm enough in the White House to grow orchids.“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.”The balmy heat at the White House didn’t grown orchids, but encouraged instead the return of flies and rodents, one fly daring to stay long enough to be photographed where it landed above Obama’s lips. For jacking up his own thermostat but demanding that the little people turn down theirs, Obama was roundly accused of being an environmental hypocrite, and when David Axelod joked that his boss was a hothouse flower having hailed from Hawaii, Obama detractors soon countered on social media, “He’s from Kenya!” Whoever would have suspected back then that Obama would utterly turn down the heat on the world by banning coal and oil before partnering up with the Bishop of Rome to force through global warming/climate change as society’s number one threat?
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