During the week of Oct. 6-10, residents of LA’s “Toney” WestSide have been repeatedly tortured by a Two-Fer of, first, Veep Biden’s visit early in the week, followed, like a one-two punch (a right cross, and an uppercut to the chin, gridlockwise) by POTUS himself, visiting for the end of the very same week.  Both come here, repeatedly, far too often if you ask me, to raise money – and, when they do, they assure that residents of LA’s WestSide are unable to get out and about to do what they have to do to earn money to support themselves and their families.  ENOUGH ALREADY~!

Last time Obama visited, they actually closed the Canyon which I live above, which has, but one means, of paved access and egress off Sunset, because Obama had a morning event down below us in that Canyon – we were literally trapped in our lovely Canyon from 8am to noon.   A couple of years back, I was trapped on the Eastside of Beverly Hills, by an earlier Obama visit, and despite my best efforts, every single east-west street and avenue was made impassable, trapping me at a Starbucks for hours before I could return to my WestSide office.  This week, and especially Thursday, they are actually closing an entire major boulevard through Westwood to accommodate POTUS’ Democratic fund-raising, thus repeatedly interfering with John Q. Citizen’s ability to raise funds to support his own family.

Now, both POTUS and Biden have spanky, shining, fully-featured, and, as an aviation geek I can tell you in great detail, truly amazing, airplanes.  Why, O why they cannot simply entertain donors aboard their planesat some out of the way location at LAX, and raise all the funds they want – thus sparing the Westside, already such a mess due to endless construction is beyond me.   Just invite those FatCats with pockets bulging with greenbacks, and other folks with “TMMS” (too much money syndrome) onto those bright, shiny planes that we taxpayers pay for; I’m sure it would be a real treat.

I keep having to go home and work from my home to hide out because you can be caught in gridlock for hours, if you time it wrong.  The LAPD, bless their hearts, have been providing information for us WestSide residents on what areas will be impacted at what times of day, and, for that act of human kindness and compassion, I salute them; but, it is just amazing how badly these visits can screw up our little realm of this earth, and how little POTUS and Biden seem to care in their constant chase for the Almighty Buck.

And, by the way, if you haven’t noticed, our world is blowing its stack lately, what with Russia at war with Ukraine; Ebola now in America; ISIS taking the Middle East back to the 7th Century (the time to which, I fervently hope, we soon man up, and carpet bomb them back into . . . ); Boko Harum (not the band who recorded A Whiter Shade of Pale in our misspent youth), the African crazies who kidnap school girls; our crumbling American infrastructure (how many more water mains need to blow up in LA before we address these issues?), and; our nearest neighbor, Mexico turning into a NarcoState right before our eyes, just to name some of this month’s greatest hits.  Why aren’t POTUS and Biden back in Washington DC, planning a bombing campaign, figuring out how to really stop Ebola, or otherwise doing their jobs – why the constant need to keep ferrying themselves back here to the tie on the donation feed bag on LA’s WestSide, over and over again, at the cost of the sanity of this author and all others affected by the too often repeatedPresidential Visit Gridlock?!?

I remember Pres. Reagan visiting LA many times when I had an office in Century City, looking out over the Beverly Hills High School football field.   The Gipper and his entourage used a few Presidential Choppers in those days, a couple of dummies, and one carrying the then POTUS – why can’t Obama and Biden use helicopters?!?  Why the need to cause endless gridlock, motorcading all over the place?  And, with our Secret Service in shambles, I footnote this rant by observing that a visit or two ago, when Obama was fund raising here in Brentwood and there was shooting at Santa Monica City College, south of him, but in the direction he was going next, on Pico, I literally stood at my office window, overlooking Wilshire Blvd., watching police barricading each intersection along Wilshire, both east and west from me, and then seeing to my utter astonishment, a whole Presidential motorcade re-routed down Wilshire, and right in front of my building, past me.  If another would-be Oswald, had stood in a window like the one which my office has, overlooking Wilshire with murder in his heart for POTUS (God Forbid!), with absolutely no advance checks conducted by any Secret Service personnel of any of thousands of such office windows, can we really take comfort that Obama is being properly– reputedly the most threatened (in volume of threats) President that we’ve ever had?

Mercy, Mr. Obama; Mercy, Mr. Biden . . . .  Please find another financial feeding trough, and stop making life for LA’s WestSiders a Living Hell every time you visit to raise money, preventing us from making our own living in the process!!!