(UPDATE: 4:48 p.m. California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger joined a growing chorus of officials today and called on the state's attorney general to launch an investigation into ACORN due to the latest charges of illegal activity by the group, this time in San Bernardino, Calif.

His letter:

Over the past few days, I have seen a series of news stories regarding the ACORN organization that have concerned me greatly. As you may be aware, the most recent report has come out of San Bernardino. 

Given this, I believe it is appropriate that your office launch a full investigation into ACORN’s activities in California. My administration stands ready to assist in any way necessary.

No immediate response from the office of Jerry Brown, a Democrat who used to be governor and would like to return to that office in next year's elections.)

When Barack Obama entered the White House with the idea of moving politics from the nonfunctional, confrontational style that marks Washington to a different, bipartisan approach, he didn’t count on a resurgent conservative movement. After a summer of attacking Obama’s healthcare plans and forcing Obama appointee Van Jones to quit his post as an advisor on green jobs over crude remarks and 9/11 conspiracy beliefs, conservatives, their media allies and a vibrant community of bloggers have turned their attention to ACORN.

The Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now is a national group that....

The Libyan government has owned an embassy (read: 25-room mansion) in Englewood, N.J., since 1982. And Col. Moammar Kadafi, the country’s sometime-pariah president, was planning to stay there – and pitch one of his famous tents on the lawn – during his visit to New York next month for the United Nations General Assembly. In preparing, construction workers were even renovating the place.

But the hero’s welcome that Kadafi gave last week to Pan Am 103 terrorist Abdel Basset Ali Megrahi – the only man convicted of killing 270 people by blowing up an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 – has infuriated the good people of New Jersey.

 "People are infuriated that a financier of terrorism, who in recent days gave a hero's welcome to a convicted terrorist, would be welcomed to our shores, let alone reside in our city," said Englewood Mayor Michael Wildes, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. "My citizens are furious, I am furious."

 "I want him barred from New Jersey," agreed Democratic Rep. John Adler. “Let him land at the U.N. by helicopter, do his business and get out of the country."

 Ditto Gov. Jon Corzine, up for reelection this year, who declared: "Kadafi is not welcome in New Jersey."

The decision by the Scottish government to free the terminally-ill 57-year-old on compassionate grounds  infuriated families of the Lockerbie victims, many of them from New Jersey.

And it has sent the State Department searching the law books to see if the government can preclude the Libyan leader from pitching his tent in New Jersey.

 "We can impose restrictions on the use of diplomatic residences," State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said the other day. "That's a very broad provision, and we're expecting that we'll be able to come to some sort of agreement where all of these sensitivities are respected."

Why a tent? Kadafi, who has camped out in such beautiful settings as the Elysee Palace in Paris, says the unusual sleeping arrangements help him stay true to his Bedouin roots.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo Credit: Mel Evans/Associated Press

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Vice President Biden traveled to Ohio today, trying to salvage public support for President Obama's $787-billion stimulus package. (Details from the vice president's office below.)

With the president in Italy for the G8 summit meetings, it falls to his vice president to try to staunch the fall in public opinion. And with more and more Americans questioning the effectiveness of the massive government bailout, a new Quinnipiac Poll shows that Obama's approval rating has dropped 13 points in the last two months in Ohio, a bellwether state for presidential elections for more than a century. The plunge: from 62% approval in May to 49% now.

"The economy in Ohio is as bad as anywhere in America," said Peter Brown, who runs the Quinnipiac Poll. "These numbers indicate that for the first time, voters have decided that President Barack Obama bears some responsibility for their problems."

Adding to the administration's woes is news that state legislatures are -- imagine! -- playing politics with decisions on where to spend the stimulus dollars. Tracing the first monies dispersed by the....

At the rate New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is spending his own money in the current re-election campaign, he's likely to end up with only about $16,410,400,000 left to his name.

But that just shows to go you the kind of sacrifice that some public servants are willing to make in order to serve the people who elect them.

In the latest 60-day campaign finance reports, multi-billionaire Bloomberg reveals that he's spending a little more than a quarter-million dollars per day to purchase a third term in Gotham's City Hall.

That's about twice the rate he'd spent at this point four years ago in his previous mayoral campaign, which cost him $85 million by the end and produced a landslide victory.

But it's not all easy. Remember last winter Bloomberg did get bitten at a photo op by a grumpy groundhog.

The municipal approval rating for the ex-Democrat, ex-Republican, current independent has only hovered in the 60s.

Bloomberg is in such a tight municipal race that he's heading down to the University of Pennsylvania tonight to give tomorrow's commencement address. That's how worried he is.

As long as he reports it, Bloomberg can spend as much of his personal fortune as he likes. Scores of millions. A hundred million. Or more. Completely up to him.

And the little guy doesn't even have an actual opponent yet.

Other than that he's in deep silt.

But before anyone jumps to the conclusion that the world's 17th richest man, according to Forbes, can get re-elected to try to run the nation's largest city just because he has a bargeload of $10,000 bills, consider this:

Once Bloomberg decided he very much enjoyed the high-profile job and would really like to have a third term, he had to convince the City Council to change the law banning a third consecutive mayoral term.

Once that happened, most of the potential candidates who thought the mayor's throne would be vacated this year began whistling and walking away.

Any possible opponents now seem in disarray. They have to raise money the old-fashioned way -- begging.

Bloomberg's stash simplifies everything. He does none of that. Easier just to write his own checks. Day after day. Week after week. A quarter-million here. A quarter-million there.

Sure, New York City taxes have gone up during his reign. Yes, critics note, unemployment's up too. And, OK, homelessness as well. Schools are crowded. But since when is any of that a rich mayor's fault? There's no real mention of those troubles in Bloomberg's massive advertising campaign.

So why should anyone else be bothered?

Anyway, anyone who's ever under-tipped a New Yorker knows those folks don't really care about money there.

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos credits: Ronan Robert / Flickr (top); city of New York

(UPDATE: A statement by the Republican National Committee chairman is added at the end.)

Following is the transcript of President Barack Obama's third national news conference, April 29, 2009:

President Obama: Before we begin tonight, I just want to provide everyone with a few brief updates on some of the challenges we're dealing with right now.

First, we are continuing to closely monitor the emergency cases of the H1N1 flu virus throughout the United States. As I said this morning, this is obviously a very serious situation, and every American should know that their entire government is taking the utmost precautions and preparations.

Our public health officials have recommended that schools with confirmed or suspected cases of this flu strongly consider temporarily closing. And if more schools are forced to close, we've recommended that both parents and businesses think about contingency plans if their children do have to stay home.

I've requested an immediate $1.5 billion in emergency funding from Congress to support our ability to monitor and track this virus and to build our supply of antiviral drugs and other equipment. And we will also ensure that those materials get to where they need to be as quickly as possible.

And, finally, I've asked every American to take the same steps you would take to prevent any other flu: Keep your hands washed; cover your mouth when you cough; stay home from work if you're sick; and keep your children home from school if they're sick.

We'll continue to provide regular updates to the American people as we receive more information. And everyone should rest assured that this government is prepared to do whatever it takes to control the impact of this virus.

The second thing I'd like to mention is how gratified I am that the House and the Senate passed a....

There's a wondrously simple U.S. economic recovery plan bouncing its way all over the Internet this week to fix the recession, end unemployment, boost the banks, refinance the automobile industry and repair the housing crisis all in one bold stroke -- and at a fraction of the cost of the Obama administration's complex, grandiose and costly government spending plans.

Of course, this new idea plopping into and flashing out of thousands of excited e-mailboxes all over would never work politically because it wasn't designed in Washington like, say, the tax code and therefore is quite simple. Nor would it grow the size of the federal government, which would be unacceptable to many in the federal government.

Here's the idea and the math as devised by a devilishly clever, now anonymous Internet author:

Take the 40 million or so American workers over age 50 and give them each $1 million tax-free. Yup, just put that money into private hands. This seems like a wonderful idea to those whose hands are over age 50. But, of course, there's a catch. Three catches, actually.

While you were sleeping, we were reading and writing:

How do you reconcile this?

As you read here, President Obama and wife Michelle released their 2008 joint income tax return, like all recent presidents. They reported $2.7 million in income. Not bad for someone who spent most of the year not working at his elected job in Washington.

The total means Obama will pay a higher tax rate this year under his own tax plans to get the very rich more than they're already gotten.

The taxes also show that last year the couple generously donated $172,000 to 37 charities, not counting not one dime to their former Trinity United Church in Chicago. That's about 6.5% of the liberal couple's adjusted gross income.

Don "The Pirate" Surber points out this morning that Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, donated almost the same amount of money ($166,000) to charity the previous year.

But since Bush wasn't making millions off Obama's book sales, that similar sum was 23% of the Texan's income, nearly four times larger proportionately than the popular Obama's.

But since No. 43 currently resides on contemporary history's reviled list with one of the lowest exit approval ratings ever, we'll all have to overlook that inconvenient truth.

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All wet

The Washington Post took an interesting look the other day at the new life of retirement for Bush, who's starting his book, giving high-paid speeches and planning his presidential library at Southern Methodist University. The big news from Preston Hollow: Bush has improved the sprinkler system at his home on Dana Place in north Dallas.

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What are a few words here or there?

Speaking of retirement: In case you read somewhere else recently that Dr. James Dobson, the recently retired conservative evangelical founder of Focus on the Family, had conceded defeat on ...

When President Barack Obama walks before the cameras on national TV this evening for his second formal White House news conference (5 p.m. Pacific), we'll all get the latest retweaked version of his main economic message: a little more hope than gloom, more push for his (overly?) ambitious budget plan and a repetition of Treasury's toxic asset plan from Monday.

Which the administration is trying to rename "legacy assets," because who advertises their home: "Used House 4 Sale"? And, let's be honest here, who wants to buy financial Superfund sites?

Obama and his political advisor, David Axelrod, are clearly trying to maintain or regain control of the political debate, depending on your view of last week's road show. The message of the president's warm reception at his two California town halls was in the end overshadowed by his clumsy Special Olympics crack on Jay Leno.

Americans clearly are ready to like the president. They're still drawing first impressions. His poll numbers have slid a little more, still close to 60% but no longer closer to 70%.

By itself that gaffe, minimized by quick overnight damage control by phone from Air Force One, matters little in the long run. But coming as it did in a spontaneous moment on national TV, it played....

For all the two very long years and $750 million worth of talk about real change to believe in, Barack Obama is showing day-by-day that he is precisely the same as every other smart president when it comes to Washington trouble and dominating the news:

Get out of Dodge.

Nothing but an unexplained and possible terrorist attack -- not even the senseless death of actress Natasha Richardson -- can dominate the American news the way a president of any party can in the capitol for sure. But especially when he travels outside the politically charged, yabbering environs of Washington, which may very well be the largest single man-made cause of global warming.

And when a president is as extraordinarily skilled as a public communicator as Obama, there's every reason to get out and about. If your style of governing in the nation's capitol looks kinda clumsy -- even inept at times -- get outside and do the easier work, what you and Bill Clinton so love to do: campaign.

Just as the president has done frequently and is doing again today with the second West Coast town hall meeting in as many days and a taping with Jay Leno of the "Tonight Show"  to become only the second sitting president on late-night TV, in case that matters somehow.

While Obama is likely asleep in his soundproofed bedroom with the electric blinds and actual shower on board Air Force One en route back to the White House this evening, about 5 million....

(UPDATE: Turns out Dwaine Webber in this story is unemployed, but he and his former employer now agree publicly that his departure was voluntary. An updated item appears here.)

The last question for President Obama was certainly the most poignant.

Dwaine Webber, a burly 45-year-old from Norwalk, had written down on an index card exactly what he wanted to ask the president: "Thank you for taking the time to listen to me. Last October, I lost my job after 13 years. I was laid off. Now when I look for a job, people tell me that I have a felony from 20 years ago -- I can't get no work. I have a family to support. What do I do?"

The crowd reacted with uneasy silence; Obama had joked that he wanted to choose Webber for a question because he was a big guy and he didn't want him to get angry.

Obama seemed to struggle for a moment, mentally cataloging the possible answers.

"Well, first of all, I know how hard it is for you right now being out of work -- because I can tell you've got pride, you've been working, you've been supporting your family. And one of the things that's been happening in this most recent recession is men have actually been losing jobs faster than women. And that is a very difficult thing. I mean, I know that I take great pride in, you know, taking care of my family. ... The fact that you've been working steadily for 13 years post-felony seems to me...

We grant you that the whole AIG bailout and bonus debacle -- the credit default swap mess, the mortgage-backed securities swamp -- are very difficult concepts to grasp in detail. Which is why we hope in the future that when President Obama gets a notion to explain them to folks in town hall meetings, he polishes his spiel.

Or maybe a nice PowerPoint presentation would help.

We were with him when he began by saying, "Let me talk about the larger issue -- banks -- for just a second. I am so frustrated with this banking situation."

Then, he went pretty wonky about over-leveraging and the weakened housing market and we just thought, OK, fine, let's see if he can describe the mess in a way that makes sense and doesn't make people want to go to sleep. Our on-the-scene colleague, Tony Barboza, reports that people sat still, listened and fanned themselves with paper. No one but us fell to the floor in a swoon.

Obama tried to localize the issue and summed up the reason the Feds had to step in to save the banks.

"If you just got one small bank, take the community bank -- what was the name of your community bank?" he asked the woman who had posed a question earlier. "If Fullerton Community Bank fails, we've got something called the FDIC -- the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. -- that would take it over, guarantee the deposits and it would be able to kind of sort things out and sell the bank fairly quickly and it doesn't threaten the system as a whole.

"When you've got big big banks -- Citicorp or Bank of America or Wells Fargo -- that control 70% of the banking system and all of them are weakening, you can't afford to have all those banks going under, even though the deposits might be guaranteed. We had to step in, it was the right thing to do, even though it's infuriating. ..."

Well, OK, that all made sense, but then he compared AIG to a suicide bomber, and at that, we really perked up.

"Same thing with AIG," Obama said. "It was the right thing to do to step in. Like they've got a bomb strapped to them and they've got their hand on the trigger, you don't want them to blow up, but you've got to ease them off the trigger."

And the president held out his arm and pantomimed a hand on a trigger, and we were rapt, waiting for what would happen next.

But then he called for a final question from the crowd.

-- Robin Abcarian

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Photo: David McNew / Getty Images

At 3:45 p.m. President Obama entered the room to thunderous applause in Costa Mesa. He thanked Jerome Ruddins, a surveyor/construction manager who introduced him. Obama introduced Democratic officials and apologized to Rep. Dana Rohrbacher, the Republican in whose district the town hall is taking place, for failing to invite him in a timely manner. (The crowd began to boo when the Rohrbacher's name was mentioned, but Obama gestured for them to pipe down.)

Always nice to get out of Washington, the president said. "The climate is a lot nicer and so is the conversation."

Boy, he doesn't mess around. He brought up AIG bonuses right off the bat.

"I know a lot of you are outraged about this, I am outraged too. ... It goes against our most basic sense of what's fair, what's right, it offends our values."

But the bonuses, he said, "are a symptom of a much larger problem ... a culture where people made enormous sums of money taking irresponsible risks."

Did he comfort anxious consumers by saying, "Washington is in a tizzy, all pointing fingers," referring to the financial mess? "Listen, I'll take responsibility, I'm the president," Obama said. "It's my job to fix these messes even if I don't make 'em."

"Hard work, not the bubble economy is what must be rewarded. We don't need these house of cards, these Ponzi schemes even, when they're legal, when a relatively few do spectacularly well while the middle class loses ground ...

"We are not only gonna make it through ... we are gonna come out on the other side a strong and more prosperous nation. ... I can promise you this, there will be brighter days ahead."

He mentioned local projects that will benefit from the stimulus package including an expansion of SR-91, the Orange County highway. There was heavy applause when he mentioned funds for a new hospital at Camp Pendleton, the Marine base.

Obama said he plans to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term but vowed not to cut investments that will lead to "real growth and real prosperity."

The speech was familiar -- healthcare reform, the importance of an educated work force, reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, clean energy, green jobs.

He paused when a man yelled, "We love you, Obama."

"I love you back," Obama said.

The president sounded very much like he did on the campaign trail, where he loved to set up and knock down a straw man: "Obama's trying to do too much they say.

"Now, there are those who say these plans are too ambitious; that we should be trying to do less, not more.  Well, I say our challenges are too large to ignore.  The cost of our health are is too high to ignore.  Our dependence on oil is too dangerous to ignore.  Our education deficit is too wide to ignore. To kick these problems down the road for another four years or eight years would be to continue the same irresponsibility that led us to this point. And I did not run for president to pass on our problems to the next generation, I ran for President to solve them."

The first question to Obama: "Do you have intention[s] of running for president again?"

-- Robin Abcarian

Photo: Bryan Chan / Los Angeles Times