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Opinion: Week ahead: Obama to Denver, Phoenix, Ottawa. Clinton to Asia

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After a soft holiday start, President Obama has scheduled another week of campaigning on the awful economy, signing a big bill and slipping in a day of foreign affairs next door.

The president and family are enjoying a long holiday weekend back home in balmy Chicago, where he’ll get in a little basketball action himself today before, who knows, watching a little of the NBA All-Star Game where Obama no doubt favors Pittsburgh again. (He also likes Pittsburgh in the Daytona 500.)

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During the game Obama will see himself in a taped promo for community service with another reminder of how awful times are in this country:

‘In this time of so much need in our communities and across the country, we are blessed with endless ways to restore hope and opportunity in places that yearn for both.’

Monday afternoon, Obama returns to the White House. Tuesday off to Denver, scene of his Democratic National Convention, Greek-columned stadium triumph over the forces of intra-party evil last August that made Oprah cry her false eyelashes off.

The president will do another event there to highlight how bad economic times are and then whip out the huge $787-billion economic recovery bill that’s worth about $1 billion per page and is so urgent it wasn’t signed over the weekend.

Obama will take his immense airplane on to Phoenix late Tuesday, where with the tall NBA crowd cleared out, he’ll be able to find a hotel room and talk about...

... energy conservation. No, actually, his Wednesday event is to discuss relief for the ongoing housing foreclosure crisis, since Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s presentation didn’t go over too well in the markets last week.

Back to his White House housing Wednesday night. And then because it’s Ottawa and so close and cold up there, a quick day trip Thursday to meet in the scenic capital with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper and discuss their struggling North American economies (And Ottawa’s NHL team isn’t doing so well either).

In the Oval Office Friday.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now an Obama teammate, left today for Asia on her first official foreign trip -- Japan, China, South Korea and Indonesia, where Obama spent childhood years. Her message: ‘We need strong partners across the Pacific, just as we need strong partners across the Atlantic.’

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And speaking of partners, ex-President Bill Clinton visits Nevada this week to help Rory Reid raise campaign cash for his anticipated run for governor, political payback for Reid’s ardent support of Mrs. Clinton during last year’s hard-fought Democratic primary season.

Rory, as the Ticket’s Canary Island reader may not recall, is currently chairman of the powerful Clark County Commission (Las Vegas) and the son of angry Harry, the Senate majority leader, who’s acquiring his own campaign bucks for next year’s reelection bid. Republicans would love to knock him off as they did Tom Daschle in 2004. Now, all the GOP needs is an actual statewide corruption-free candidate. And a bunch of money.

--Andrew Malcolm

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